Shoplifting Wave Still B.S., Lunchables Replacing Lunch Ladies? 03.15.23

Christy Amagucci. May just referencing the the idea of carless Sundays, which you know, at a certain point in the Netherlands they decided to stop having cars run their lives. I know there would be a ton of problems at first, and you know, we would have to build up an infrastructure for people to get around if we decided to do that, But still I still think it's a nice

idea to aspire too. All Right, Well, I am thrilled to be joined by a very special guest co host one of the best best podcasters doing it anywhere, an old friend from the crack day is a Jeopardy champion the host of the podcast secretly incredibly fascinating. It's Alex Schmidt. Hey, it's me Alex Schmidt. Heyka, John Jacob Jingle trend Er Schmidt. There is thank you, thank you too, there us your

name is Lady Feet on the discord. I was telling Jack, I just searched the name Schmidt in the Zeitgeist discord. That may not be for me, but I grabbed it. Thank you. It is for you now. And I took your AKA because you wrote it into the dock. I took your ak to be you are both John Jacob Jingle Trender Schmidt and also known as Lady Feet on the disc Yeah, I thought that I was like lady feed Interesting. I like that for you, A truly wild disclosure if that's where I was like that. By the way,

By the way, I really in defeat. Ladies could use some picks. Thanks Alex. We are thrilled to be joined by an interdisciplinary artist and writer who's writing you can read it hyper allergic about stuff like Netflix for getting to include Puerto Ricans and their reggaeton show and house psychedelics influenced artists. Please welcome the brilliant and talented Denise the vamp de Ville subis that best intro ever? It's wonderful to have you. How are you doing. I'm doing

really well. I need that intro though, for like that should be my morning alarm. Yeah, make it. We'll give you the download. There you go. Um, where's everybody coming from, alex I know you're on the East coast as our Yeah, we have snow flurries in New York City. Hey watch celebrating the IDEs of March with snow. There you go, fun times, how about you, Denise. I'm in Denver, Colorado. Our weather is actually getting nicer, funny enough, so we're seeing some sun. It's a beautiful day out. Hey did

we trade weathers? Hey? What's going on here? Give it back? Yeah, it's a rainy Manhattan day in Los Angeles here as that that seems to be the new norm. It rains a lot, which I'm not complaining. I ain't complaining, you know what I'm saying, Denise. One of the things you wrote about at hyper Allergic the psychedelic art scene. Psychedelics I feel like a're having a moment right now, or

like increasingly a big part of culture. And I'm like I was just curious to hear you talk about where you think or do you think they're having a moment?

Have they just always been here? I think when I was a kid, psychedelics were associated with my parents' generation as like hippies, and they just like made it look bad and uncool, and so like I wonder if like that is just what happened, is we've had enough separation from the baby boomers making it look really silly and weird that we can now get back into the good

parts of psychedelics. Yeah. And I think also for my generation, right, it's the Dare generation, right, so we caught a lot of like just say no to drugs and really nothing else, so no one will offer them to you for free, right, So I think there was a disconnect there with psychedelics. Now, I don't think that they're having a moment. I think

they've always been there. I think that the conversation has just become a little bit more open, right, We're open to having larger discussion about the impact of a psychologic lead mentally and where we're kind of going to go from there. And I think it's kind of amazing what's going on in so many of the states now as we're discussing especially like mushrooms, you know, and more natural, holistic quote unquote ways to get high and to tap

into other parts of your consciousness. So I'm completely fascinated like the whole process. Yeah, yeah, I don't mean to imply I just found out about psychedelics like when Joe Rogan started talking about them, but like, yeah, they they've been around for a while. I do feel like they're getting like somewhat more even like mainstream cultural purchase than they they've had even in the recent, fairly recent past. So your articles really fascinating. We'll link off to it

in the footnotes, but everyone should go check it out. Yeah, with I'm curious with reporting something out like that, like are people down to talk about it and share about it or are they still kind of don't use my name or don't share details about me. That was what I was afraid. I was completely petrified that people were going to be like, absolutely don't share who I am.

But I particularly went through the painstaking process of finding artists that are already pretty open about that conversation and that are really like have dived deep into the whole conversation and what they're kind of going to do with it in the future and with their work. So I got really lucky, like with Alex and Alison Gray, you know, who were amazing, Like they were just like, he here's all of this information on psychedelics. I was like, dude,

I should do this. Sometimes sounds cool. Yeah, So I was purposely looking for artists that were open. Yeah, and you, yourself or an artist, can you to talk about a little bit about like something you're working on right now or something you recently completed. Yeah. So I'm mixed media interdisciplinary, which is always weird to say. Sometimes they just say like I'm a very highly hyphenated creative, like I'm everywhere

and all over the place. And that's part of my neurodivergence as well, right Like I cannot sit there for like more than a certain amount of time on one kind of project, soart to jump all over and for me right now, I've been focusing a lot of my work on kind of reclaiming, reconnecting and healing the imagery of the Daino people of the Caribbean with my work and kind of retelling their stories. They're like Taro and you know, framework that looks really baroque and lots of

gold and stuff. I'm like giving my gold back. So that's been a lot of what I've been working on right now, and I should be doing an exhibition soon with Redline Contemporary Art Center. Still very hush hush, but I guess it's not so much because I just said it. Yeah, bleeping all this out, Yeah yeah, Yeah, We're gonna get to know you a little bit better in a moment. First, we're gonna tell our listeners a few of the things

we're talking about to day. I'm seeing the shoplifting panic story bubble up again, so I just wanted to offer an update to our listeners on that that it's still bullshit, still bullshit. It's even more real than you thought. Yes,

we're gonna talk about lunchables, so big, big win. There's the story from ABC seven dot com that reports the fact that they're going to be serving lunchables as like school lunches going forward starting next year, and it's reported like the story is told as a like success story for Kraft Hinds. It's like an underdog success story about how they got in line with the nutritional requirements to have this victory. So I want to just talk about that,

get your thoughts on lunchables in general, your experiences. This was apparently one of the biggest BIS success stories of my lifetime that I wasn't aware it was a business success story. I was just eating the lunchables as a child. But Oscar Meyer saved their bacon, so to speak, by inventing lunchables, and it was like this massive success and probably very bad for everyone. I do I like to figure of speech because they probably withheld the good bacon

for other products, like lunchables had much worse meat than bacon. Yeah, yes, saving their bacon and providing meat paste to the rest of us. Yeah, even in the ingredients. I love how it's like meat meat alternative. Yes, Okay, I don't need to know what it is. Hey, it was the nineties. Alternative was huge alternative music, so they we were we were down for some meat alternative, some grunge meat. We're a little flannel. Yeah, yeah, all of that plenty more.

But first denise the vamptaville sub sa. Do you have something from your search history that is revealing about who you are? It's so funny my search history is and I know I can curse on here because I've heard it, right, So I'm super excited because I'm still a Puerto Rican girl from Jersey, right, like I have a dirty potty now. And I'm a former sailor as well, so it's like wow, years away, like sailing boats for real? Uh No, I

was in the United States Navy veteran. Yeah, so I that's thank you for clarifying as some one ships, but that's for real and thank you fantastic, Yeah, thank you actual sailing. I have no idea like so, but my search history is pretty much a clusterfuck of shit, Like I'm constantly googling everything because I am just like dying to be a useless bat of like information for some

strange reason. But the most recent thing I googled, I think was probably partly frightening and then pertly like just pure scientific curiosity, where I was like, can I do this in my own home? Where scientists found out that there was a they found a zombie virus that spent like forty eight thousand years frozen in the perma frost. WHOA, Okay, the virus doesn't make you a zombie, right, The virus itself is a zombie because they brought it back to life,

good good thinking. First of all, Yeah, there's so much at the perma frost, Like, you know, we haven't had enough of crazy viruses in our sci fi plot decade, so apparently we need to add some more. And that was kind of insane. Yeah, people say they're not doing enough about climate change and the melting of the polarized caps, but they're bringing back zombie viruses. That's something, right, They're yeah getting to work there. Yeah, it sounds like more life,

not less. Yeah, more life hords so basically good. And are people worried about it? Are they? Is it going to increase our scientific understanding of what it was like to have a cold in the Paleolithic or like what is the what's the end goal here? Like, to be fair, the virus is very large, which is interesting. Rightly you could see it under a regular microscope instead of needing like all sorts of other technologies to kind of zoom

into it. But it's specific to like single cell organisms, So they're not trying to bring back a virus that's going to kill the entire human rings, right, and then make a movie after it, right with the five people that are left behind, probably Joe Rogan will be one of them, yes, Joe Rogan, Chris Brett. I haven't settled on the other three, but yeah, yeah, but it is.

It's to try to help us kind of learn a little bit more about how kind of viruses develop where we are in that process, you know, and dissecting all of the things that they're kind of finding as these perm as the permafrost starts to bounce. Yeah, and I'm fascinated, but at the same time, like, I don't trust anyone enough to be like science, you've got this. You haven't

fucked us yet. Let you take this one. It's funny to me to think about viruses that are big, like you can see, like there'd be a much easier to avoid the common cold if it was just like a guy, like a thing that was hanging out on the surface of you know, everything that my six year old touches, because animals were so much bigger in the ice age, right, Like it's a wooly mammoth equivalent of a virus or like a virus tiger instead of a housecat. Yeah, ivirus

eats you really cute personalities too, that's the thing. They're like little woofies. They're they're so hard to resist that, Yeah, what is something you think is overrated? I was it's so interesting because I was looking at these that I was like, Man, this is going to be difficult for me because I actually have a list of things that are annoying me. Let them know. It's like the first

thing on my list, and I think overrated. The first thing on my list definitely is the term latin X. I'm so tired of hearing it, and I just did a talk on it also at Redline where I kind of had to like share some information where I'm like, I really don't understand why we're kind of persisting in this space, and I don't think a lot of people really are having that discussion. The majority of people in

the community don't really use it. So I finally like, it's absolutely annoying to me that it's still here, It's sticking around, and it's everywhere I can't escape it. Right, is the word that you prefer is Latino like for broad or what? What? What is the preferred word for me? I prefer to just be called Puerto Rican in Cuban. Sure, it's much more descriptive. Right, so that you understand what

my cultural nuance is right my milieu, Yeah, totally. And so the term Latino in general to me or Hispanic or all of these other kind of terms that jumble us all in together, just continue this process of us being all seen as the same, right, continuing that monolitht So for me, it's kind of like Latin X. It's like, you know, you've heard it, right, you can shine a turd, but it's still a turd, right, You're trying to modernize a term that's already like super offensive invested up, So like,

I really don't understand the need for the hegemonic like nature of it, right, for it to now have an English ending, like have the woke version of the hegemonic insulting term. Yeah, we're good here, okay, I put. Yeah, well that's good. Yeah, I think formative. Yeah, it's good to hear about that, because I've heard a little bit about it in general. Yeah, that it's sort of been imposed from outside or brought in by people who didn't

ask for new words or additional words that aren't as helpful. Right, And there was already like a gender inclusive word in Spanish,

so latine already existing. So it was interesting to see the X kind of get thrown in where you're like, dude, we don't I don't use it X ever, like it's there, but don't talk about it, Like how did you put it at the end of the word, Like this is so confusing, And it just seems like English now is really starting to meld in and we've kind of moved from a new level of Spanglish to just the bastardry of these languages together. Yeah. Wow, What is something you

think is underrated? Underrated? For me definitely is the Puerto Rican independence movement. I think a lot of the time it's like it's always statehood and everybody wants to talk about statehood, and I'm like, nobody wants to be a state right read the room, Like, so, I think the talk of Puerto Rican independence is often like pushed aside, even in the major movements that it had throughout time.

Right now especially, it's definitely not getting the push that I think it really needs to have because there's not a lot of background and how it can be something that's functional. So I think it's definitely underrating. The guy who invented Latin X is like, fine, will let you be a state, but you owe us. Okay, how many favors do I have to do? You jee? But you

don't like debt. You don't like debt. Wow, all right, let's take a quick break and we'll come back, and we'll talk about the wave of shoplifting that is taking over the country and making it hard for our favorite people. They're people too. Walmart is a person, and we need to admit that and take care of our Walmart. We'll

be right back, and we're back. And I think it's since the last time we covered shoplifting, we talked about the wave of shoplifting being out of control that was used to try to get Chase A. Bootine out of office in San Francisco and like helped lead to his successful recall, and just generally that was a favorite talking

point on the right for a while. And in the mainstream media, you know, the New York Times is not immune from a story decrying the crime wave that's out of control and writing an op edge that says, all we need to do is higher one million more police officers, and America's problems will go away. So since the last time we cover this, there's been a couple of big stories about shoplifting focused on the walls, both Mart and Greens,

Walmart and Walgreens. And the news story that I'm seeing everywhere in the past week is that Walmarc Walmart is saying that they don't call them their name, they're Walmart. Now we don't like their Walmart Walmarc's Walmart claims they've had to close every single Portland's store because of shoplifting. That that is how I've seen it quoted on Twitter. They've had to close every single Walmart in Portland, like

they are their stores there still every single Walmart. It turns out there were two Walmarts in all of Portland and they had to close these two stores for reasons. That so, at the end of last year, their CEO got on an earnings call and dick ride theft. It was around the same time that the Walgreen CEO was getting on an earnings call and being like, we were exaggerating.

There really wasn't this massive theft problem. But anyways, I think this story is getting traction because people want to believe that Portland is a city that's out of control like San Francisco. They just want the entire West Coast to be liberal progressives who've lost control of their societies and that's the problems are coming home to roost West. That's right, the ocean turns them crazy liberal West. Yeah,

I'm sure. I'm sure that has been a chiron on the Tucker Carlton shot show, like the Wild Probably not liberal, probably more like the Wild Marxists West or something like that. Yeah, that's easily one of my least favorite conservative tropes. That's a heated competition. There's a lot of bandwids, but like being being from Illinois, they just demonize Chicago that way, and Wisconsin just demonizes Milwaukee like conservatives just want to argue that we should remove cities as if they are

not part of the country. Yeah, even though they're full of people from the country. There's actually a lot of Americans in there. No, yes, but dare those people county? So the truth Usually these articles are fueled by industry groups and you know, city departments of commerce or you know, lobbying groups, and the statistics are always super vague when it comes to what, you know, how much shoplifting has grown.

It's always anecdotal as fuck. And but even on this Walmart story, which is gaining so much attraction, even the industry groups are like, this doesn't seem to be what's going on here. So there's this article from Oregon Live that says thefton other crime. The Walmart watchers said, it's surely a concern for the chain, but the impact is is rarely enough to close an otherwise successful store without warning and especially without appeals to local officials for assistance.

That's the other thing. They never actually want to do anything about this problem other than, you know, get the media on their side by complaining about it. And then they say, the decision to close down a store is typically linked to sales, said Neil Saunders, Managing director of the Retail division at Global Data, which often has nothing

to do with thefts or shoplifting. And then they point out that Walmart just has never had success in Portland because the people of Portland prefer established stores like fred Meyer, which that's just a guy's name but apparently also a store in Portland, and it also sells general merchandise alongside groceries. And they say Walmart typically needs to be where they can be a big player and capture all the shares. There are some locations where they've struggled to gain a

strong foothold and they've left those places. So this man, Yeah, I just it drives me so nuts when any highly automated, highly mechanized business suddenly loses track of all the numbers. When they want to how we track shoplifting, We're we're basically a bodega. Stuff is just on our shelves. I

don't know, we don't, we don't know. Yeah, that's right. Well, you know that if this was the problem that was causing them to have to close stores, they would be working with Boston Dynamic to create some manner of robotic security cat that, like every Walmart would have a greater that was also an ED two O nine from RoboCop that could just turn around and light people up. Like that's that is what would happen in America if this was as big a problem as they claim it is. Yeah,

to your point, Alex. The so the way that the company's account for this is they lump theft in with shrinkage is what they call it, which includes problems they have tracking inventory. So like, and people who work at Walmart are like, no, that like it's a small part

of that. It's most of the problem is that they lose track of inventory because it's a massive store, and like you know, things get lost or they over order and the orders are under delivered, and it's just like general businessman fuck ups, and of course they don't want First of all, that's more boring than showing videos of you know, an isolated incident of a shoplifter, you know, doing something awesome like shoplifting. Yeah, exactly. The name is

out of control. Yeah, I feel like it was a corporate ploy, like from the top of the top, like they had a meeting. They sat down and they were like, how can we get away with making people think that we're losing money? I know, have them check out themselves. How do we make ourselves the victims in this store? This narrative where we just like parachute into the middle of a community and put all of the businesses out of out of business by just you know, using our

massive scale. I know, we claim that after we've put all those businesses out of business and people are so hungry they have to occasionally shoplift, we blame the shoplift for rising prices because yeah, and then they put in that prime option, right, so it's like right here, you go check yourself out. There gets Okay, don't worry about it. Hey,

we're not going to arrest you laters. Stop it. That's the other thing we talked about is that a lot of the shrinkage that's happening is because and a lot of the theft is driven by the fact that they have switched to automated checkouts. Right, Automated checkout systems make it much easier to shoplift. They have. It's not like they were not aware of that when they switched to automated systems. They just made the calculation that the theft was not going to cost them as much as they

were saving by not having to pay human employees. Yeah, they just they just built it in and now they're like finding one video of one guy, right, and especially honestly shout out to anybody's shoplifting food. Keep it up. There is humongous food waste all across America all the time. We have a community fridge here that we've been like getting stuff for and it turns out you can just because stores are like, we don't sell all this stuff

have it. So if you're shoplifting it, you're basically doing it that good. You're putting the food use like you know legally, I did not tell you to do that. Legal handwif read you know, wink wink quick Alex did put parents. He did put bracket around the brackets around the whole thing with his hands, so legally you cannot sue him. Official, so official, yes. So they grow out so much too, Like have you ever seen the dumpsters

behind a Walmart? Like they push it to the end possible, like the possible degree of like this is still kind of good, but not really, but I would rather throw it away that give it to you. So it's like there their purchase orders and like the whole thing is just such a mess that it's just kind of hilarious to me that they're confused. I was reading in the old. I was reading an old I forget what it was, but it was like an old work of nonfiction, like

from I think it was like the eighties or nine. Oh, I think it was a City of Courts actually about La, like the really great history of La and everybody should check it out. But the author is writing about this new thing that they're seeing, and he like can't get his mind around it. And it's that they put locks on their dumpsters too, and he's just like how dystopian is this world where they're putting locks on their dumpsters And that's something that I've like took Mike Davis as

the author. So Mike Davis is like writing in the about Los Angeles in the early nine these like late eighties, as like they've started putting locks on the dumpsters to prevent people from getting to the food that they're wasting. Like what is happening? And that's something that I just was like hedge taken for granted a long time ago that that's just something corporations do. But it's interesting to see see somebody see it again with fresh eyes and

just be like, oh no, what are we becoming? And then the guy from the corporation is like, not only could they get food out of this, they could use it for shelter. Imagine that horrible event, right if someone did that, if they have like yes, because this is my top choice, right, Like I definitely want to be in the meat dumpster behind the Walmart in the middle of a blizzard. You know that's a Friday for me? Um? Oh is that where I know you from? Were we in the same in the same This is what kids

are doing these days? This is where they party, is that the dumpsters behind walmarts to get free handouts. The other article that I was seeing a lot of a few weeks back is a supposed deep dive by New York Magazine that like goes into the seed underbelly of these crime rings that are supposedly driving this out of control problem in New York and that it like definitely starts from the position of, Hey, you're in New York.

You've seen that all of your like all the things that Walgreens and Dwayne Reid are locked in big clear plastic boxes. What's up with that? And so they're you know, use that as the starting point, and they're like, crime is out of control, and they get listened to these people, you know, the industry experts who are like they're actually big organized crime rings or these people called boosters who just nine to five take stuff from store shelves. That's

an organized crime wave. And they find no evidence of that, like all all the shoplifting is. He doesn't find a single example of somebody who's a shoplifter, like a regular shoplifter who's not trying to support an addiction, like a drug habit like that. It's just desperate people. Yeah, all of these stories are like almost just scorsesy movies or something like. Just get your entertainment that way, folks, you don't need to read these faky news stories that claim

this is going got like, just consume crime fiction. There's so much of it out there. Yeah, just go all the way they're coming for the couponers next, you know, like, yeah, i'd see that at the arc light or whatever. Sure, yeah, totally.

Like my Southwest, they openly acknowledge like their statistics are impossible to buy, but they don't acknowledge that the fact that statistics are impossible to come by is because the companies don't want you to know, like that it's not as big a problem as you that as your story wants it to be. And then there's just a lot of language like this to the extent that there has been a nationwide spike in shoplifting and the problem likely

got worse during the pandemic. So it's just a lot of those words that if you have like taken a journalism course or something, you're like, uh huh, oh okay, So we were just suppose supposing that there is this problem that this entire article is predicated on because it's clunky enough that it sounds like they forced the anti shoplifting robot to write it, like they sat about a computer, beat their big metal hands at it. Yeah, you tell them what was right? You tell them? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This is a quote from the area. Every generation goes through a shoplifting panic, and comprehensive data on this frequently unreported crime is nearly impossible to come by, and it's like, yeah, there's there's a reason why you're you're getting the scoop on this one. And other journalistic institutions have not done their big shoplifting article yet, but it doesn't stop people from writing about. The New York Post had a headline Walmart too close remaining Portland stores as crime ridden city

battles shoplifting wave. So it's you know, it's going to keep going, unfortunately, and that's frustrating. But as long as as long as we know, you know, as long as we know the truth. I feel like I'm talking to like a five year old. Well, you know, you have friends, so don't listen to them. They're bullies. Yeah I do.

I do. Always kind of hope this story will this kind of story will wear itself out, you know, like every every election they've been doing a conservative story about a migrant care van, and you would think there's not enough juice in that to do it eternally, you know, And so hopefully this one wears out too. Everybody owns a thesaurus over there, right, like they're just lifting in every way. You just headline again, different words though, yeah,

same thing. Yeah. And by the way, if you're shoplifting at the saurus almost as good as shoplifting food, keep it up. That's that's just gonna teach you stuff. That's I honor that we support the shoplifting of food. And the sourus size I don't know. I don't know the souss of all the time to not have one, oh boy, oh geez. Does the sourus have the soaurus in it? Does it have the word the sourus in it? It just creates a black hole when you look for it.

That's it. Yeah, this is I don't know. There's I'm reminded a lot in covering the news these days. I'm remind did a lot of the documentary hyper Normalization and just the concept of that, which is that we created this massive global economy that is too powerful and has too much inertia for anybody to do anything about. So we're all and have been for the past, like since the eighties, just been sitting back and watching whatever it

chooses to do. Like whatever this massive like hyper I don't know, I wouldn't call it a hyper intelligence, but like it's making decisions that aren't controlled by any human and we're just sitting back, like watching it and trying to tell a story around it. At this you just described the shape monster from Dogma. Yeah, yeah, well Dogma

Guts first thing that popped in my head. But yeah, I mean the with climate with and yeah anything with it prices change, it prices going up, and people needing to steal to eat, and it's all just sitting back

and trying to tell stories about this thing that. You know, we talked yesterday about this massive drilling project that Biden just approved, and it's like this vast chunk of land in Alaska, and in order to make it possible, they have to put chillers into the earth to make the earth cold enough for them to be able to drill into the earth to get the oil out, which will

then exacerbate climate change. And it's it's just like, you know, he ran on stopping these sorts of things, but it's there's just this massive machine that's out of everybody's control, and everybody's just posturing around it. Basically, I see the next story here. It's about lunchables, just humongous economy forces. I'm imagining like a lunchable's pizza over the earth, like the Independent Stayship. Yes, like we're just yeah, you know, yeah, I'm ready welcome to Earth. And he takes a bite

out of it, you know. Yeah, all right, let's take a quick break and we'll come back and talk about good news such as the lunchables will now be a core part of school lunches. We'll be right back, and we're back and speaking of the extra Extra Cheesy because that is one of the flavors that made it into like made it through the school nutrition filter and is

going to be on offer. There's the turkey cheese crackers and the extra cheesy pizza is the other version of lunchables that will children will be able to buy for school lunch next year that I never did, you guys ever eat the cheese pizza version of lunchables that always grossed me out so much, far too many times, my friend, far too many times. How does it not feel like you're eating a pizza before it's in the oven? Or

is that what it feels like? To be fair, I was living in Florida at the time, so if you just left it outside for a little while, you were good there you go, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly exactly, and nothing else would eat it. So it was great, Like you could put it on the sidewalk at the bottom, you know, ants wouldn't touch it. You're like, this is this is totally good for me. I'm gonna put this in my pie hole. Super gross. The ants just move

out of the neighborhood. So the story is framed as you know, as a story would be in the United States, as a success story for I mean, we're like we've been talking about how the new go to movie protagonist is like brands that we like, you know, the The Air Jordan one of my favorite most beloved brands. There's a movie coming out that is where that's essentially the protagonists. They didn't even cast anybody to play Michael Jordan. It's just the story of like people coming up with the

marketing idea that people like. People I've heard of who saw it say it's good. It's directed by Ben Affleck, who has made things that I've enjoyed in the past. But when when I was growing up in Chicago, I had a lot of posters on my wall of the shoe company executives who had developed Yeah that film Nights poster where he's just kind of leaning against a wall and a brown blazer. Yeah, but this ABC News story

is kind of written from that perspective. The opening sentence, Kraft Times has succeeded in getting it's ready to eat packaged lunchables into school lunch programs starting this fall in a major new initiative. So we know who our protagonist is. It's the Kraft Times company, and they've apparently been trying to do this for a while. Like, that's what I got from that whole line. Yes, Oh, this isn't new. Yes, it's been a long effort of just having honest conversations

and probably no lobbying efforts or anything like that. No, it's right, it's probably been. Yeah, this is the problem with having a society that is run by massive multinational corporations who are ultimately making the decisions and like have

the power to bend regulatory agencies to their will. So, in what seems like a major emission of guilt, in order to get their food for kids served alongside you know, burnt rectangular pizza, Sloppy Joe's, like the stuff that is normally in school lunches, they had to reformulate the ingredients to meet the guidelines of like stuff that you should be allowed to serve two kids that's actually put food in it. Yes, yeah, well we can't just give them salt.

It would It would be funny if these are amazing. Now, I do want to see one where like it comes out and it's this amazing gourmet pizza or something, because beautiful. I would just watch all the all the kids squirting that sauce onto that cracker which is a pizza, and I just never looked great. But man, I've read the ingredients and I love that the sauces that it says like red an orange vegetable paste, and I'm like, I don't I don't know what that means. I don't even

do I want to know what that means. I think that's that's always a real problem when they go from extremely complicated scientific terms that like make your brain hurt to even try and like figure out how to pronounce them back to something that is like extra basic like natural flavors or yeah, red and orange vegetable paste is like, oh, why are you guys being so vague? That is that suggests there is danger here. Hey, we disclosed both colors. Okay,

we disclosed both colors, being very open about this, that's right. Yeah, you should have seen it first. Okay, it was a really horrible ship round and we managed to make it work with some food coloring and some pure carries, like you've got this, Like that's and that is the act one break where you where they succeed in getting the brown paste to look red. And that's when that that's

what gets people excited for. That's like the inciting incident in the in the movie about lunchables getting to be the school lunch directed by Ben Affleck It so it looks more like pizza every day, Like I really want

to see that. That that movie would be amazing, Like obviously you couldn't, you'd have to call them something different, but yeah, just a really straight faced, triumphant tale of them trying to get these under the sensors who are like, this is this isn't food, Like I can't, it can't in good conscience. Let let you sell this to children. And they're like, go back to the drawing board. It's gonna be food. You get on board. Yeah, they're like, it's food to me. Musical yeah, immediately you have to

break out his song. It's so bad, like yeah, but they still will be selling the sodium bomb variety that I'm pretty like, when I eat something that is this high in sodium, I look the next day like my face was like be stung all over the place from just the amount of water retention that happens when you have this much sodium. But I have been giving your bees so much grief and now I too, Yeah, the whole hive. I know. Well that's what I tell people.

I slew forward, I've been be stung. But it's actually just ate four bowls of ramen the night before instant ramen choices. Can't open my eyes all the way. But yeah, so I don't know that this feels like what we should expect. This is what our best scientific minds are working on, Like now that they've mastered the doritos, like the mouth feel of the nacho cheese doritos and made them like as addictive as possible, and you know, figured out how to turn them into taco bell taco shells.

They are onto bringing the cold, extra cheesy pizza factory aid meals like just under the barrier for nutrition guidelines and still addictive enough to probably warp the entire health of these children for years to come. But I don't know the the other goal here that they really By reading an article wherein Kraft Hinds is the protagonist, you get this they're just openly like sharing what their goals are.

Like they said one of the main selling points for schools is that the lunchables for schools don't need to be frozen but kept refrigerated, quote, minimizing school labor needs and costs. So it's just a way to cut out more labor to fire lunch ladies essentially, I don't know how they're saving costs them, like does it It's going

to create more waste, right, oh for sure? So doubt you're gonna spend more in disposing of this waste that you're definitely not going to recycled, right and right, which even if you did recycle, it probably wouldn't actually get recycled, right, so like the cycle continues, you know, fun times. Yeah.

I feel like this is related to Walmart in the sense that a lot of capitalism for the past like thirty years has just been reformatting, like our markets and our you know, societies, so that all of the is just being like siphoned by these big central corporations, right, and so this is another way to just cut out any spending that goes to the local community, like in the form of chefs who come into the schools and like make hot lunches for children, Like you gotta get

rid of that, because that's wasted spending. We could just be getting that money directly here at Kraft Hinds and just siphon all the money directly to a publicly traded corporation. I also wonder, like, what are the pharmaceutical drugs that are going to come from this being advertised to children going to look like, right, here's for your hypertension, and it's in the shape of a you know, yeah, to be like flintstone gummies, you know, for hypertension, and like

seven year olds, Yeah, don't worry. We used every color again. We are really big on the whole rainbow. You know the rainbow, right, great, we used the whole rainbow. Looked at him. You don't know what a zucchini is, but you know, you know what this color is, right, It kind of looks like something healthy. Yeah, you don't know what zucchini is, but you know green vegetable paste that you get to spread on your turkey and cheese crackers.

We actually have to put the turkey and quotes on the box, unfortunately, but yeah, you again, if we read it out loud, we have to say it in a really sarcastic voice. It's just it's the law. We follow law right for the purposes of and by the instruction of our legal department that will be making this entire statement in air quotes. Thank you. And then so I just want to read this other quote from later on

the article. But offering lunchables in school cafeterias might be welcome in some school districts that are struggling with higher food costs than labor shortages, says Diane Prett Hevner, spokesperson for the School Nutrition Association, a trade group with fifty thousand members representing school food service providers. So the it's that that seems like, okay, that person was on part of an organization that got lobbied to ship to uselessness.

But also just the higher food costs and labor shortages are also these talking points of like, well, you could lower the prices on food because the inflation was really just a thing where fuel companies decided to raise raise prices and get more get more money. And then labor shortages is the thing where it's you know, sorry, guys, we can't open the bar because nobody wants to work anymore. It's like like some school districts are struggling, like in

other words, marginalized communities that we don't want to feed properly. Yeah, like that's exactly what they're trying to say, Like we know these kids at like charter schools and like these really really well funded areas are not going to be eating extra extra cheesy lunchable hardwork pizza. Right. Yes, they're ordering from like door dash for lunch. They're like, Mom, I'm having sushi. Don't care what's on this lunch many right, you're gonna have it delivered for me today. So I

also find that that's kind of funny. Like the way that they tend to work those things make it seem like they're trying to really help in a situation where they're actually just making things so much worse for those children in those communities. Yes, yeah, I also wonder if if kids know how powerful this Kraft Heinz company is, right.

I think I was a kid when they merged those used to be two companies, and they were already huge, and then they were yeah even, and then they just decided, we don't like to compete with each other, and let's just be all of the food. Like like, there's there's so many levers for solving the problem they have described, and it doesn't have to just be their favorite lever to pull, you know what I mean, We can we

can do other ways to do this. Yeah. I also wonder if they saw the school lunch debt stories that we all saw. Instead of seeing like a problem that illustrated how bad things have gotten in our country, they like saw an opportunity to like get some of that squeet sweet school lunch money. They're cool school lunch debt, you say, that's that's where it's at. School lunches call a lot of money. Anyways, what did you guys have a favorite lunchable. Let's on the back end, so let's

talk seriously though lunchibles. I do think lugibles made me like crackers and cheese and crackers more than I otherwise would have. I still really love cheese and crackers, I think because lunchables, my brain like lit up every time I got to eat. My parents didn't give me lunchables and I was mad at them for that at the time. Yeah, I wasn't given them and I felt left out, But also I think that led me to believe they're incredibly expensive when I don't actually know that they are or not.

I just I was just like, why do the other kids have that? But I had a lot of like similar food, and I really liked ritz bits in a similar cheese and crackers way where it was two tiny ritzes and then like a cheesy spread in the middle, which is probably lunchables essentially, and was great. It was

really good powdered cheese twin two crackers. Yeah yeah, but with quotes around it and you have to say it real sarcastic and yeah, yeah, absolutely, I got whatever it was on sale, so like, yeah, yeah, my mom was like here you go. What's on sale. It's on sale in bulk. Yeah, I think the day that she got like a it used to be a different store, but now I guess it's bought It got bought up by Costco. Right, so price Club. Right, She's like, I have a membership.

I'm so excited. What am I gonna do? Lunchables in bulk? Like, right, yeah, don't ask me for nothing. I don't want you to ask me for snacks, don't ask me for breakfast, don't

ask me for dinner. That's right. Yeah. And when I like read the story about the tremendous success of lunchables, it was in a book that was at least partially about like the obesity epidemic and in the country, and how these companies like it was basically the people who manufactured the smoking like you know, got everybody addicted to cigarettes.

Like once those became less and less legal and more and more regulated, they shifted their focus to food and basically use the same approach to get people addicted to their food and make money and drove the obesity epidemic. And yeah, I mean they're still regulators, but they regulators don't stand a chance with Kraft Hyns. They wouldn't stand a chance with Kraft or Hims, let alone Kraft Hynes

now that they're one giant conglomerate, like you own everything. Yeah, well, Denise, it's been such a pleasure having you on the daily zeitgeist. Where can people find you? Follow you all that good stuff. I am not a huge fan of Twitter, so you can find me on Instagram. There you go at the Vampdeville and on my website at the vampdeville dot com, where you can find out what I'm up to and what I'm doing. It's pretty much the only place that I'm hanging out. There you go. I wish I was

more social media friend? Is there that I think that's probably healthy? Yeah? Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I'm in one place that's it. Is there a work of media that you've been enjoying. It's so funny. It was so hard for me too because I was like, I don't tweet,

so there was no tweets. But then what I saw going around recently is the quote from Peggy noun In's article in The Wall Street Journal about Ronda Santas where she's like, he carries a vibe as I've said that he might unplug your life support to recharge his cell phone. It was like, I have never heard a human being described so elegant, eloquently, perfectly. Damn Peggy Bars fucking ethered him. It was great. It's everywhere, like especially interesting because she

will eventually endorse him. That's all right, yeah, but it's okay, it's okay. His phone is charged, his phone will be charged. Joe Biden would let my iPhone run out of battery or whatever? Yeah, that fast, you know, Alex? How about you? Where can people find you? Is their work of media?

You've been enjoying? I I've been enjoying watching TikTok's in general, and especially a specific kind where people take their house pet and then they play that old Mister Sandman song under it, like bum bum bum bump bump bump bum. But then you split up the frame and so then it looks like a bunch of your cat. You like lift it through like it's a synchronized swimmer in those Buzzby Berkeley musicals. It's great. That's the main media I'm enjoying. And if you go on TikTok, I hope the algorithm

gives you one, it's the best. Well, now, how are none of those nominated for an Academy Award. There's so many categories for shorts. How like they fu Yeah, that sounds like art glories. I see what you did there? Okay, yeah, there you go. I'm feline like they got ripped off right boom and us boy? Why did I do that? Then transition into a plug. Folks, please check out my podcasts more like that. I thought it was good. I

didn't know that. I only knew what the categories thing was referencing once you said that, So I did not do mine on purpose. I'll tell you that much. But uh, and folks, please check out Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. We're newly on the Maximum Fund Network and newly with the wonderful Katie Golden co hosting every week. There's other folks coming through too, but the great Katie Golden of Creature Feature. Of course, check out Creature Feature and just her Secretly

in your app to find Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. Such a good show and now even better, two of the best in the biz. Yeah, yes, yeah, a tweet I've been enjoying. I'm still riding free elon over here. At rsgat. Is that what that means if I still go to I'm

just lazy, I don't and I have followers. It's the only place I have followers allow me to continue to lark on Twitter at rsgat tweeted everyone with student loan debt right now and it's the it's the Willem Dafoe still and he's saying, I'm I'm something of a failed venture capital bank myself. I really enjoyed that. You can find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore O'Brien. You can find us on Twitter at Daily Zeitgeist. We're at the

Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram. We have a Facebook fan page and a website, Daily zeitgeist dot com, where we post our episodes and our footnotes where we link off to the information that we talked about in today's episode, as well as a song that we think you might enjoy. Superproducer Justin has been absolutely killing it with the recommendations. I believe that somebody created a playlist with some of his, if if not most, of his song recommendations. If we

ever find that, yeah, I hope that's true. I'm gonna look for it, but yeah, I think I saw it in the discord. If you did that, reach out to one of us on you know, Twitter, and let us know and we will well, we'll share that link in the footnotes. But Justin, what is the song that you think people will be enjoying today. Well, considering the discussion of psychedelics up top, I wanted to suggest this track. Please forgive me if I suggested this song before. I

truly can't remember. Sometimes it just means it's extra good. If you did, you should check it out again. Yeah, okay, anyway, I'm not a fan of the Beatles, but I do find myself liking the psychedelic rock that they inspired, and this track sounds like if they took a lot of acid and scored a cosmic car chase sequence. Um, it's a song called the fuzz Jam. This is a band from Australia called The Lazy Eyes. They're very inventive. I think their first album just came out last year, So yeah,

check them out. This is fuzz Jam by the Lazy Eyes and you can find that song in the foot notes. Also, somebody needs to just create a poetry book of Justin's descriptions of the songs that he recommends, because always so good, so great. If the Beatles took a lot of acid and scored a cosmic car chase, I think, yeah, it's the first thing that popped in my head. I feel like people will agree with me. It's the only image that came to my mind. It's it's right there. Yeah,

Everyone's like, yep, that's it. Amazing. Well. The Daily Zeitgeist is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. That's going to do it for us this morning. But we are back this afternoon to tell you what is trending and we will talk to yell though. Bye bye