Did you fly across the country with that arm and that I did? Wow, I need did it get did you check it? Or did you take it and carry.
And checked it and wrapped it in a bunch of clothing.
It removed his kids? His kids like car seat.
And yeah, yeah, the kids are just riding loose in the back. I like to call it raw dogging highways, the American.
Highway system, the prenator, you know, prenator, Hello the Internet, and welcome to season three fifty one, Episode.
Three of dar Day's I Stay production of iHeart Radio. This is a podcast where we take a deep dive into America's share consciousness. That it is Wednesday, August fourteenth, twenty four, almost halfway through August. We're getting there, We're making our way. Although I think I think we all just want to pump the brakes. Let's let's, you know, let this time past slowly enjoy August. I don't really need November to come at all, to be honest, I'd be good with no Halloween for maybe, just like.
No November November.
Yeah, no, no November November. Let's get it started. My name is Jack O'Brien aka well I fuck couch. Yeah, fuck love. See get that ottoman over here, I'll fuck an armchair. That one courtesy of First Blood five twenty two, in honor of the great JD Vance the loure Is Building. It's not just couches, it's all furniture. Now.
When someone submits one of those, are they submitting are they like doing a voice note and or are they just saying to the tune of to the creep And then you have to go to you And I.
Am lazy enough that I will rarely go and re listen to the song to remind myself. So I just picked the ones that I can immediately. I'm like, oh yeah, I know, Creep. That one's easy. That's been review since since it came out. I'm thrilled to be joined by a very special guest co host with the guest mo host, a hilarious and brilliant stand up comedian, writer, actor, improviser.
Bitches. They didn't kill me, and.
They tried, they tried, Reagan tried. The beef has started, and Reagan it's started well. Paulay, thank you, thank you so much for joining filling in for Miles once again, we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by a podcaster extraordinary, you know, from this day in esoteric political history, from radio toopia. He's also hosted thirty for thirty for ESPN, the five thirty eight politics podcast. He's the lead producer on The Puzzler. It's Jody Abergade.
Oh that was a nice little yeah, yeah, I appreciated that, Dan, thanks for having me. This is great and probably nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you.
I have an AKA for you if you want if you want to.
Oh you want to do it? Yeah, let's hear.
Hey Joe doy Aver again, where are you going with that podcast? Mike and your hand?
Ah Man? That one, that one was not suggested by a brilliant listener. That was just from the top.
But I think you know, it's not all about the syllables actually fitting sometimes that's all.
It's about the delivery about.
It just like what pops into my head and it.
Gets about the heart and believe. And that's exactly what Raygun told herself.
How badly do you want?
Just about the passion.
It's just about believing in yourself, having that attitude where you're kind of like looking back at the judges just you know, can you top this thing them.
Do you know what she reminded me of. She reminded me of like a Missy Elliott video reject you know. Oh yeah, that's the vibes I got.
My early rounds of American idol type ery. Want one of our greats to ever cross the I don't know, but that's right. All right, Jody, We're going to get to know you a little bit better in a moment. First, we're going to tell the listeners a couple of things we're talking about today. We are, of course talking about the big Trump Musk interview, which I don't know I
could have. I feel like I could have predicted most of the thing that were going to happen in that interview, the talking points, the technical problems, the technical problems both in terms of Twitter being able to stay up and also his teeth being able to stay in his mouth. We might get to Rey Gun, we might get to the mind of Hollywood. We'll get to Raygun. All right, we'll get to ray Gun, all of that plenty more.
But first, Jody, we do like to ask our guests, what is something from your search history that's revealing about who you are? Well?
I just this morning actually it's going to come out in a week or two. Recorded an episode of my political History podcast where we looked at the history of like weird convention moments because the convention's coming up and we're just a fun episode to look at some strangs. So my search history is full of like videos of like Clint Eastwood talking to that empty chair in twenty twelve. If you remember that, that was the moment moment iconic. I got to tell you that the one that has
ingered with me the most. And we go back way back in time into like there's some amazing stories from conventions in like the twenties and thirties, but the when Al Gore kissed Tipper Gore for like an uncomfortably long amount of time in two thousand. Do you remember that? And it kind of.
Yeah, and I kind of do that. It left my brain too, and now it's come back and I'm like why again, and weirdly.
Like it's the one that has just continued to rattle around in my brain.
So you know, why did I do that?
Yeah?
I know, I've had this reputation as being like stiff, and so I think they wanted to come out and show like I got a little this like it looked look we do it, we do a like real zupprudor breakdown of it on our show. But it looks like they hadn't decided they were going to do this, Like Tipper looks caught off guard and does that little uncomfortable leaning back thing and he keeps going in and it's
like a solid three seconds. Anyway, it's, for whatever reason, the one weird political moment that has got.
The lean away from his wife.
Yeah.
Yeah, and they separated in twenty.
Ten, twenty ten, but yeah, nobody know.
It was, but they were on that. Yeah, two days in a row. We're talking Gore because real had Yeah, we had Rhiann and her mom on yesterday from the five to four podcast. Oh yeah, and we were talking about Bush v. Gore in the context of the upcoming election because the Supreme Court is poised. They kind of were ready to get involved in the last one. They were doing all sorts of funck shit like in the lead up to the last one, but they didn't have like Amy Cony Barrett was like only half through the
process or like was just freshly on. So she was like, I'm not going to weigh in. But they were like throwing out mail in ballots and doing all sorts of wild shit, like along ideological lines. I just read a biography of like the first I guess forty years of JFK's life, and he fucks that guy fucks like too much. It's a problem, but it made me realize that we've been robbed of like an entertaining thing is probably not the best in terms of political order and like how
things work. But like the conventions, like they used to determine who was going to be vice president, like.
He was, I mean, it was like, yeah, we'd go in and it'd just be a sort of open.
Question and then they would like fight for it.
We almost we almost got that this year, and I think we're getting I mean, I'll be curious to see if we've gotten enough of a taste this year of what it's like when you this isn't a year and a half long process where it's like there's all this energy at the end.
You know.
I'd be curious if the parties come out of this and be like, you know what, maybe we should just kind of like lay low and then like the summer before the election, just go for it. Almost every other country in the in the world dies amazing.
If they actually learned from this process, that would be beautiful.
I thought I had like after the twenty twenty election and seeing like and it was really like, you know, after twenty sixteen with like Obama's popularity was like kind of low, and then you had it's just any sitting president becomes unpopular in the modern world, And so it
made me wonder, like, will it become a thing? It's going to be a struggle between the incumbent who has a lot of power because they're the president, and I think like more and more party officials are going to be like, it does not make sense for you to be our candidate again. Everybody fucking hates you, like they just don't like, like, no matter what you do, if you have four years as president in our current media environment,
people are going to hate you. And then yeah, if if Harris and Walls are able to like sprint through the finish line, I think you're right, like that will be even more reason for people to kind of change the way they approach this and just be like, yeah, what if we what if we like switch things up all the time, What if you know, just throw throw a Wammie in there, throw a reverse.
No, they just keep making the candidates get younger and younger until their babies.
The president, right, but you only get to run for one term, so at the age two.
To six, so they're like the baby is thirty or the president is thirty six months old.
Now a lot of youthful energy.
That's right, What Jody is something you think is underrated?
I don't know if this is underrated. This might be more what I've been listening to lately, but I was, but I've been personally riding the rated and overrated and underrated roller coaster with Charles Mingus lately. And that's because in part because of the Kamala stuff and all those pictures of her holding up all those records and one of them was a Mingus record, And do you know
what I'm talking about, those those memes of her. So there was there was this video of Kamala Harris, like from a couple of years ago, and it started flying around when she was once she captured the nomination, and it was like her coming out of a record store and she had like some you know, a lot of great albums, and one of them was a Mingus album.
And then someone made a little thing you could where you could like insert have her had like a photoshop automatically photoshop her holding up any album you wanted, and it was very clever, right But anyway, so it just Mingus has been one of my favorite urts for a long time and and seems weirdly criminally underrated. And it was nice to see Kamala buying a Mingus album and it's put me back on a very big Mingus kick
over the last couple of weeks. A jazz musician, oh yes, sorry, jazz musician who also trained his cats how to use the toilet. But that's another story.
Really, that's why I'm a fan of him.
Yeah, I actually jazz work. I just you're a fan of the Charles Mingus a cat for toilet training your cats. You used to be able to write Charles Mingus a letter to a peel box in downtown Manhattan and then if you and enclosed two dollars and then he would mail you back a photo.
Method method, the method with the Mingas method.
It's incredible.
Yeah wow, And do we have access to that method?
Yeah? We did. I did a whole radio piece for it one time, and then tried to train a kitten using the Mingus method and it didn't work that way. But but yeah, I talked to a cat. I talked to a vet and like sort of cat psychologist who validated that Mingus really had sort of tapped into something about cat psychology in terms of the method he was using to coax cats into using the.
Toilet was one of the steps, like play just the smoothest jazz for them, like so that they get super relex.
There's some joke about scatting in here.
There is there is, It's in there.
I saw Kamala won some Italian pasta making contests, like all of these things from when she was like from twenty twelve or something. All of these random facts are coming out about her, and it's just very surprising, Like what's being unearthed?
That's cool. What is something you think is overrated?
Jody, Okay, here's what I've been thinking about a lot. And I don't know if I think it's overrated underrate, but I've been sort of working through it. But I have maybe reached a saturation point on talking about vibes and like it's a phrase that I use a lot. I find it very useful I will very likely utter it at some point in our upcoming conversation. But I have been catching myself lately and been like, maybe this term has run its course and maybe its aura. Now,
did you know right exactly? Yeah, yeah, but ora is.
A little it's the same thing.
Yes, in theory, it is right, but it doesn't aura feel like it's being used more to talk about individuals, the presence in a room and vib is.
More more flexible. It be a person, or it can be like the general feeling in the room right or.
In the country or whatever. Yeah, but you know, I've been hearing it. I mean, you know it's it has clearly reached a saturation point and maybe a played out point is the sort of what I'm identifying. But you know I'm hearing it like on fucking like Meet the Press, They're like, yeah, calm of the vibes around common Like, okay, that's probably a flashing CD.
You know, it's definitely like old head news now or head terminology. But I'm like, yeah, I'm definitely in the like embracing the hello fellow kids moment where I'm just like, I'm I'm still going to use it.
It's still it's I don't care if it dates.
Me, And it is very useful for when you kind of like I mean, I think like intuition, sort of that ineffable thing about like excitement and emotion feeling like sometimes it's a little hard to put language that in vibes is very useful in that case. But I also sometimes feel like people are just falling back on it way too much.
I think it can also be like discriminatory, not because I do think that back like ten whatever years ago in Silicon Valley, they would always call it like we don't know how your fit will be at this company, and that was always like.
Coded racist terms or something.
Yeah, and so it can be used like in that way too. So it's definitely fun that it's intangible, but it can also be used weaponized in a way that's not good.
Right, You just say the vibes are off it. You don't have to really copey on that.
Yeah, exactly, not quite sure. It's just the vibes. Something about the vibes, toxic vibes.
The vibe seemed ethnic.
He's being called the vibes candidate, Like, I feel like that was every news lead on Tim Walls. For sure, Yeah, yeah, it's any any way that you can like. Once it becomes adopted by establishment powers, then it becomes a tool for like you said, like on all the Tangibles they're great, but the Vibes category they were they scored a zero point five out of ten. And we're not sure why, but the you know, like it just gives you a new language for doing whatever the fuck you want.
Essentially, they always said that a joke was dead when it hit late night, when like a late night host would start using it like an internet joke, and then you're like, all right, that's done.
We're done with that.
Oh and you know, Jimmy Fallon has been talking about vibes for a year and a half ages. Yeah, oh my god, it's dead. But I like zeitgeist. I mean there's a word that I find myself using a lot and what do you what's your tagline? And then showed the shared shared consciousness. That's a nice little I like that. But that's what it's kind of getting at. And I think it is useful to talk about that kind of stuff, you know.
And this is good because we're canceling our planned rebrand to be the American Vibes Cast. Was there a new.
Title Vibes Cast USA.
That's right, you're gonna be hosted by Casey case All right, Uh, let's take a quick break and we'll come back and talk some news. We'll be right back, and we're back, and the vibes of this show may never recover from the al Gore tipper door kiss that has entered my mind.
And I don't know, like I wonder are we doing a disservice to our younger listeners, because I do feel like it had been somewhat purged from the shared consciousness, Like I feel like it was where we were like we're actually doing a solid for ourselves for a mental well being, and we're going to pretend that never happened because he didn't win, so like you don't you don't have to like remember it. But yeah, that sucked.
I'm happy to.
Bed.
I really hope I never get to a point in my life where someone sees me kiss somebody else and is like that sucks.
Oh God, I guess watching watching people kiss is never great, Like even movie kisses. I'm always like, is that really? I don't know, like that it never feels great, but that that one is way way off, way off base, your way off bass Al Gore, all right, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, the Big interview vibes, So we are and by the way, we are completely just leaning in.
On vibes and I apologize Judy's.
The We will not be using it to fire anyone. During carrying this episode, it was this like to announce that Donald Trump was back on Twitter, I couldn't. I couldn't tell, Like it seemed like that was part of what people were saying, like, was it just he's back because he's doing the interview.
I don't, No, I feel like he came back and they interviewed. I don't know if it was in conjunction with that. I think it was definitely for Elon Musk just to kind of be on his dick, you know what I mean.
I think it was just for Elon Musk to tell.
The trold why association, Yeah.
Why he's voting for him and doesn't care about the comments he made about electric vehicles or anything. Right, So I'm not sure, but it definitely is a move of desperation for him to come back to Twitter because the stuff he was posting on truth social was insane, and so now he's like, let me bring that back to Twitter, because Twitter isn't assessedool?
But has he started posting posting again because his account got reinstated right by mostous was one of his first moves after he took over. And then yeah, I think this is clearly he's trying to do this and try and get him. It's funny how Trump posting on Twitter, like everyone thinks that's good. Well, I mean Democrats like, yeah, go for it. Yeah, I mean, you know what, love this guy to be. It's like you you being crazy
fifteen times a yeah, right into people's feeds. And then Republicans are obviously like, yeah, you know, we don't want to.
He has been posting insane shit on Twitter, like recently starting audio well, it was starting yesterday.
Actually, there you go.
He's so yeah.
His first tweetback was like a like a two minute video of him speaking to crowds and stuff, and then the next one was are you better off now than when you then you were when I was president? Our economy is shattered, our border has been raised for a nation in decline. Make the American dream affordable again, make America safe again, America, make America great again.
And then just a lot of.
Like I want to see where he's going with this. That sounds pretty good. It was just like campaign talking points.
It doesn't campaign talking points. A lot of really weird graphics of him and and I.
Mean, life was great four years ago. It's a little it's a little hazy, but I feel like summer twenty twenty it.
Kind of was because he did get COVID and that was fucking awesome.
Ye may have been Twitter's greatest night ever.
That was a wonderful moment for Twitter.
So just big, big picture impressions. There seems to be a lot of talk about the word I'm seeing is slurring, that Donald Trump was slurring. Yeah, it felt more like he was speaking without his teeth in, or his dentures were sliding out, or like becoming unstuck. It sounded like he had old prospector mouth going on, you know.
Allations.
Yeah, the scourge of old prospector mouth that you have to a cordon off and quarantine year old prospectors if you notice it in your old prospecting community. But yeah, I mean, I don't know. It does feel like part of the energy that has been released from the switch to Kamala Harris is all the stuff that was bad about Biden we can now point out about Trump and him slurring and seeming incredibly old is one of those things.
So I think that's they still haven't gotten the memo though, because in that space, he was still attacking Biden, like he still didn't want to let go of his talking points about Biden, and then he kind of slipped Kamala's name in there, and it was like, you sound insane right now because you sound old, right and you're still attacking someone who isn't even there, Like he's not convinced he's in the current race as it is.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, he desperately wants to keep running against Biden. And I think it's like that campaign was like and it's sort of incredible that they didn't. It seems to have really not occurred to them that Biden would really drop out, and they were called flat footed, which is kind of stunning because I think it was pretty obvious for a while at least it was a
big possibility. But the slurring lisping thing, I mean, my first instinct with stuff like that is that I tend to get a little I tend to be a little dismissive of it and get a little exasperated of it because it feels a little bit of like, you know, orange Man, bad Resistance, blue wave shugar kind of thing to focus on. And it's like, yeah, you know, why not just keep focusing on The guy is clearly aduled, And the thing that's adult that tells you he's addled
is not some like slur that you may hear. It's like the actual words coming out of is the fact that they can't put together.
Yes.
But then and then I like, also the radio producer of me was like, yeah, microphones are really wonky things, and like sometimes connects to the combiny. We've all been on zoom calls where like you're talking to someone's like you sound like a robot, Like what's going on? So I'm like, maybe it's that. But then I saw a video from like inside the room that was shot and presumably released on purpose by someone in his camp, and he's like kind of Lispian slurring, So now I'm like,
maybe it's the denture thing. I don't know it's And like that's just such an encapsulation of this moment where it's like you want to be the rational one who doesn't go down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole. But then it's like maybe it actually is, and like, you know, it's just very destabilizing.
Yeah.
The one thing I would say, the reason that it is important and that it's not just like blue wave Twitter, like it goes outside of that bubble is because how this election has been run has not been on policy.
It's been on aesthetics.
Yes, and so because we are playing the Republican's game, I think even though it's kind of been proven that voters don't really give a shit about hypocrisy, I think if we're going to kind of beat them at their own game, then you have to point out these inconsistencies and how he kind of fulfills.
Their version of weak. Yea, because this whole thing has.
Been I'm strong, law order whatever, this man's old, he doesn't know what he's doing.
And then you have like, like.
His whole thing is he came on Twitter not to have a contentious interview. This wasn't the black journalist you know, Caucus. This was this was a very easy interview, and it's still caused people to think he was weak as a presidential candidate. So I think that's why it's being emphasized so strongly.
Yeah.
So in terms of there was also the fact that it took them a good thirty minutes to get things forty minutes to get things up and running. Not a great look. This is the second time that they've tried to create a big like appointment viewing moment on x post, you know, Elon Musk and just like with the DeSantis
announcing his candidacy, glitched out forty minutes late. A lot of like blame going round, a lot of denial that it was glitching out, a lot of you know, blaming, saying that Democrats were like trying to stop, yeah, launch a d DAWs attack, Which that.
Was so funny.
It was so funny to actually say that.
I think, I don't know, I don't know what that was, but I think, like, if that's the case, I like, I just think it's so funny because you're saying that you're susceptible to that after being at Twitter for so long, you're saying that you're not as smart as the Democrats at reassuring the people using your platform that you can be secure against those types of attacks.
Yeah, I don't know if you specifically blamed that Democrats definitely floated the idea that they were under a DEDOS attack. And first off, I mean the Washington Post, who had a much better article about this than the New York Times, I gotta say, But the Washington Post like called someone at Twitter and was like, were you guys under and the guy and they were like no, every other part of Twitter was working just fine. Like you know, it's just not you know, I think you scratch at that
excuse and it falls apart pretty quickly. But I do like the possibility that has put that into the zeitgeist as a possible excuse for when things are going bad. I'm going to start trotting out, yeah, I'm under addos account and attack anytime something goes wrong for me.
I'm trying to look through Elon Musk's replies to see where he talked about the Democrats. This man I'm scrolling and it's just a few hours back from now. This man is constantly on Twitter. Yes, like he's not like I understand using, but doesn't he have a lot of work to do?
Like this is insane.
He just bought it to be Twitter Twitter guy number one. I mean just he literally bought the company because he just wanted to be able to tweet all day.
And call it for Twitter. That's so wild in terms of the context of what they were talking about. It felt like a couple of billionaires gassing each other up, saying things that you would say if you didn't realize
you were being recorded. And like at Davos, like Trump talked approvingly about Elon Musk's attempts to intimidate workers in a way that got them both sued the next morning, Like the UAW on Tuesday filed federal labor charges alleging that Trump and Elon Musk attempted to intimidate and threaten workers during their Monday evening interview on x And you know, from a political standpoint, it gave the UAW an opportunity to reiterate why they think Trump is really bad and
why they do not endorse him. It was just again, you keep seeing these calls from within the Trump campaign and within Republican circles to like rein it in and like stay on message, and it's just like that is definitely not who you signed up with, you know, like that is I.
Mean, this is the message. There's no message to stay on I mean people haven't realized that by now. I mean, like I thought this after the NABJ thing, where honestly, my first thought when Trump gave that interview to that National Association back journalisty, you know, question whether Kamlo is actually black? And I had the same thought after this, I literally was like that probably went about as well as it could have, Like what else should we have expected?
Like this is this is it for him? Like this is what we have. This isn't an aberration or a failure. It is just who the person is. And Americans don't like that person. And I think the more that person is in front of them, the more they remember that they don't like that person. And so you know, yeah, we'll see.
He said, I mean, I look at what you do. You walk in, you say you want to quit, they go on strike. I will mention the name of the company, but they go on strike. And you said that's okay, You're all gone. I'm sure. Elon Musk was like, like, guess he's saying that. Likewise, it's like no, no, no, that
would be illegal. That is that thing you just said, i'd you is not legal, but also said jokingly but in a way that while discounting global warming and climate change, you know, said that like, at most it's an eighth of an inch every three hundred years of sea level rise, which is like one to one thousandth of what middle
of the road estimates are. And then he also said that it was going to create more beachfront property, like fucking lex Luthor, which is just like it's a thing that a rich guy would say to another rich guy in confidence, you know, and be like yeah, you know, like fun joke, but just such a fucking wild thing to say that.
That's also not the only time they joked about people dying and not giving a shit in this entire thing, right like, we'll talk about it. But later on they talked about Hiroshima and stuff in the same flippant way, like they did not care that people would die. They literally just look at it as property.
I mean, so much of the GOP power base seems to be around this way, you know, where you described rightly, Jack, like just two rich guys chatting with each other, and like, you know, the whole world of like these VC red pilled podcasts that seem to have like a lot of juice inside the Trump world right now, and then this was effectively that, right, So I guess I'm curious what you the two of you think about whether this then
has an impact. I mean, are regular voters listening to this one or as Twitter just become a place where rich, red pilled people go to talk to each other and guess each other up. And two, if they are listening to this, what are they actually making of it?
I'm kind of actually bummed because I don't think many regular voters are on Twitter and are definitely not active enough to understand how to use spaces, let alone stay in it for forty minutes or figure out the technical difficulties. So I actually think that this isn't going to get as much play or breadth of reception as I kind of hoped for, you know, people to hear him sound aesthetically like displeasing to his what you would think is
constituents to want to hear. But I really I think this is just all of his interviews are just going to be like this, Like people are just gonna be like I hate it, I love it, whatever, you know.
I feel like unless something happens, like I think with when he got COVID that really like struck a chord at his messaging, and that showed him in a light where he where he was vulnerable and incompetent in a way that like I think did affect like how voters felt about him, because it never is like I don't think people. I don't think the American people like I think they're more swayed by things like that than like, you know, specifics of policy because of how contradictory the
legislative system is. So I think, basically I'm saying, I don't think it got to a broad enough audience for it to make a difference.
Yeah, I don't think people were listening along and then like going to CNN and like looking at the twenty fact checks that they ruled were false claims in the conversation. I think some of the wilder shit that he said might make it out to people I didn't. I haven't seen much like come out of this interview that was
like playing to his strength. Like the Drudge Report, I always check that website to see like how they're covering something because they are like probably the most powerful online kind of right wing media source, and like their headlines are Trump slurs through interview, increasingly bizarre claims Musk megamania.
So I mean in the sense that I do think unfortunately Elon musk endorsement fucking matters, because yes, his his brand is very powerful, like in the way that people used to quote Einstein for anything smart sounding that they like heard someone say and maybe like, actually Einstein says the definition of stupidity is doing anything, Like I've now heard people do that with Elon Musk, where they.
Do you really think that's still the case? I mean, after like three years ago, people were like, yeah, he's Tony Stark in real life or whatever, but now he's like Howard Hughes late Howard Hughes. I mean, like, I don't know that.
That's broken through yet. Definitely for people who pay a lot of attention, right, I guess I'm talking about like whoever could still be these mythical undecided voters you know who were Yeah, I just I don't know.
I also think like, unfortunately, next to Trump, Elon sounds smarter even though he buys into the same effective policies or you know, things that could harm the America. People like they when they were talking about nuclear power, and it was very confusing about because Trump initially was talking about nuclear power, and then he talked about army tanks, and so it was unclear if he understood that nuclear power is different than like nuclear weapons.
And then Elon was.
Talking about his ability to like eat food around like plants.
Yeah, I was.
It was just it was just confusing to Trump in a very obvious way that made Elon sound smarter. But then Elon was still like, Yeah, I'm gonna vote for you. I'm gonna vote for this man who doesn't understand simple things that he should. For having nuclear codes.
Yeah, it seemed like they had nuclear power as one of the things to discuss, and Trump took it to be like the danger of nuclear powers, and so he was like, but to me, the big problem is the nuclear power. The power of nuclear is so great. When I talk about I'll prevent World War three, I will. The truth is that you have to because this is no longer army tanks going back and forth and shooting at each other, being being this the level of destruction and power that nobody's ever seen before.
And then he also responds to a conversation about a nuclear power plant he just launched.
He just launched into it. And then Elon Musk has to come in and be because I think they were talking about energy, and then Elon Musk had to come in and be like, Okay, so there's a bad side of nuclear which is a nuclear war, very bad side, but there's there's also I think nuclear electricity absolutely underrated and it's actually you know, people have this fear of nuclear electricity generation, but it's actually one of the safest
forms of electricity generation. And then Trump was still like he finally like allowed himself to be talked down, but was still like, I don't know if Fukushima was really bad and you know, Three Mile Island, Like, I feel like he's not going to be somebody that you could actually bring over to the side of nuclear electricity. Well.
He also people are starting to suspect that he thinks like asylum seekers are like people from an insane asylum. Yeah, and also that people who are looking for visas are looking for credit cards because of like the contextual clues of like what he has been saying.
Yeah, they could not be I mean even Trump.
I don't know, like I don't know, maybe maybe not, but it's just it doesn't seem I mean, he's not smart. He doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. So it's just really funny that we have given him such a benefit of the doubt that now we have to be like, wait a minute, this whole time, were you actually dumber than what we.
Thought this all the time.
I think the asylum seekers thing, and I haven't heard the visa thing. But I suspect, like so much of what he's doing is free association. I mean, he has like a recurring riff about fucking sharks because.
He's in an improv warm up like it would be he would be zip zapsop in.
Yeah. So well, I suspect he's like also on speed and so his brain is just like banging between ideas.
Well. That's another one of the theories, right that he that he he popped something right before because it was running late and he needed to pick me up with the energy. And I can't believe I'm this far down in this conspiracy rabbit hole. This is not how my brain normally operates.
But I'm telling you, oh, I don't feel like it's a conspiracy theory that he is on.
Like now I'm talking about the specific slurring, the source of the slurring. Last he had to pull extra pills because it was delayed by forty five minutes. Okay, what am I doing with my life?
That I know your on air show American Vibe Cast And we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back after this. And we're back. And it was recently reported that Apple is working on raining in some of their streaming spending, which I feel like makes sense considering that they've spent thirty billion dollars on original content but get fewer views in one month than Netflix gets in a day. And that's I didn't just say
that as like like that. That's a quote from the get fewer views in one month then Netflix gets in a day.
That is insane. They have so many good shows and they just refuse to tell us about it.
They really do. They just don't promote.
We all stumble on them even though we so those of us who have subscriptions, we also forget that they exist and that there's like good shows on there.
There's a show called Hello Tomorrow Exclamation Points starring Billy Crudup as a salesman who lives on the moon, and it's like gotten solid reviews and like I had to google it just to make sure it wasn't like I.
Never heard before ever.
Yeah, it's it feels like they had the idea of investing content and like create some like a massive, broad powerful media company, but like didn't think of any of the steps after that.
Like even Shrinking Shrinking was like known to people the TV show and like people enjoyed it. And I found out that season two is out because my friend.
Is in it.
And that's how I found out.
I had no idea. I'm like, didn't you have a billboard up at some point? What's going on Apple TV? What are you inventing technology in the background and distract it?
Is this like a front? What's happening?
Yeah, I mean you know there's some good stuff on there, Like I really like that show in the midst of Chaos, you know that one with a never made that.
That was a good one.
That's the first second. But no, it is true, like people will be like my favorite show is this is I could never ever.
Never talk to me about shows that are on Apple Amazon Prime, like even though I have Amazon Prime, Like I just it those shows go on there and just like don't exist as far as I can tell.
So the theory of the case, I've always heard with Apple is they're spending a ton of money and they're going to get all this great content on there and then and everyone says, they're not marketing it. They're not marketing it, they're not marketing it, And there's an expectation or sort of implication that at any moment they could just like snap their fingers, slip a switch and market it and all of a sudden they would just dominate. And that second step it feels like those what's that
meme of like step one s two to profit profit? Yeah, And it's like, uh, why has there been this long running assumption that Apple can just like Marcide to have hits and turn all the and turn a profit and have this be success. And I feel like in the last six months a year it's been people have been calling bs a little bit on that idea that we've all had to know. Oh, it's Apple. They could just when they want to, they could just turn them into hits if they want to. They just don't want to.
It's like, why would you not want it?
Turns out, I guess the marketing part is hard.
I guess it feels like Beyonce dropping an album, except they're not the Beyonce of television. Yet like they they have good content, but they don't have that reputation. So they assume that people will just word of mouth or figure it out and will be like their marketers. But that's not how it's going to work.
Has anyone ever bought an iPhone because of an Apple TV production? Like that? That's the thing that I don't understand, Like, was that the theory of the case when they first decided to get into it, that there would be like this free platform that you could watch on Apple products?
And oh, I don't know if they're pushing to have to be watched. They're not quit they're trying to just be stream It's just.
Just their own separate streaming thing that they then have just totally neglected too.
But I also think like and I've and I worked in a very small, weird corner of the Disney Corporation, so saw a little bit of this play out when
I was at thirty for thirty at ESPN. But it's like there are some parts of these massive companies where it's like you're here to just like burnish our reputation and like if we win a couple Academy Awards, off of this and we win some awards and we get to say we worked with these with Billy Krutdup and Jennifer Anderson and whatever like that has its own value to companies like this, Like it's just like we get these famous people to come romans and we get to
say we're doing this. So it's like, you can't just look at it as the money they're spending in the audience they're getting, but thirty billion dollars for fewer viewers in a month and Netflix that's in a day. I mean, it does feel like there's some hard questions getting asked about what exactly they're up to here, And I mean, to me, I'm curious what the two of you think about, Like why what does it take to get a platform? Like is Apple TV? Like in your rotation, like you
sit down, you don't really know what you want. You have a sort of half formed thought in the back of your head. Is it on that list the places that you open and search for? And why is it not? And how does something work its way into that routine?
My log in is so annoying.
When I log into Apple Tea, it's not as smooth as Netflix or Hulu for some reason. I don't know why, but it's like it's more annoying to log into. That's one thing, it's a multi step thing. And then the other thing is it didn't start as quickly as Netflix and Hulu did. So those tend to be the two main ones that I open because those are top of mind streaming. When I think Apple, I think products before I think streaming. When I think Amazon, I think products
before I think streaming. And so I think until they're willing to come to the forefront and market themselves. Maybe I don't know if it's like a change of name or something else, but unless they're willing to kind of redefine what they're known for, they're not going to be the top of mind streamers.
Like create us just a separate brand or something. But yeah, I mean it's not Apple. Yeah, and thank you now we get to my pitch. Yeah everything. Yeah, they're just so far from that. And when you look at the streaming like numbers, which nobody does, like that's always been interesting to me. We used to look at the ratings on TV like the you know, every week and be like, oh, this was the top show, this was the top that has all gone away, nobody looks at the streaming because
it comes out a month later. But it's all like the top ten is all Netflix, and then there will occasionally if there is a Game of Throne, like a new season of Game of Thrones, like one episode will pop into the top ten and it will like go up to six and then immediately drop out. It's wild how dominant Netflix is. It just feels like they have kind of cornered, like Paul of You is saying, they've
sort of cornered that part of people's brains. And then everything's gotten more expensive, so people can't really afford six different streaming services and so it's just a it's a mess for all these other streamers who are trying to break in.
Poulla, I, I think I buy your argument, and I've kind of tended to It's just something I feel like I've learned and seen, and it's just like companies tend to just do one thing, you know, and like there's just yeah, I just think that like most places they have a DNA and it's like this is what we're about and everything else you can kind of tell that it's a side hustle or whatever. And I feel like there's something there's something to that with Apple.
Yeah, there's that book Good to Great that the study of like companies that go from like good to being like generationally like they just last and do well. And like some of those companies no longer are like doing as well as they were when that book came out, but like.
The one party.
Exactly, these companies actually sucked. But the one thing that they found was that, like the companies that had sustained like success had a very specific focus and like definition of their mission. They called it the hedgehog principle, very business speak, but it was like, you know, a fox is clever, and it like knows how to do all these different things. A hedgehog just knows how to like roll up into a ball and survive, and like it
does that better than anyone else. And like that, they were like, if your company can just like figure out the one thing it does better than anyone else and just do that, and yeah, all the entire stream wars seemed to have been, to a large degree a illustration of that principle, because the companies that have consistently like poured the most money in and gotten the least results are Apple and Amazon, and they're like, yeah, well that's not what you guys do. You're just like trying to Yeah.
It's also what they originally branded themselves as. It was almost like they were too good to do anything else, especially Apple. They prided themselves on their products. So for them to kind of diversify, it's just I think harder for the audience to buy it. After all the like all the work that Steve Jobs put in to be like,
this is our main thing is phones. Our main thing is these computers, and then for them to be like, we're artists too, Now we understand culture in that way, I think it's harder for their market to buy into that.
Yeah, rebranding, Yeah, I think that's right. I don't know. It feels like Netflix is just getting more and more ingrained in its position, as.
Though like a year ago there was a lot of talk about Netflix being on shakier ground or whatever, and then maybe it's like two years ago and then they just kind of snap.
Well, if they're doing so good, let us share passwords again. Damn it.
Well, part of doing good is that that, Yeah, get that experiment worked.
Yeah, it was like a rousing success in them.
So fucking mad about how there are commercials in everything now, Like we we're just used to commercials in Netflix now, that's insane.
We're we're used to commercials for the entirety of your life until like five years ago.
Yeah, and I don't want to go back. Okay, I'm paying for these streaming services. We have the technology of this, and.
They get to pretend like they're innovating by reinventing commercials.
It's literally like watching Elon play with Twitter, destroy it and then bring it back again.
Well as all of us, all of us in some part or another our careers to commercial to advertising funded media. So you know this part of me that's like, I'll take the commercials. Yeah, very nice to have some of those.
That's their problem.
I do get mad when I'm trying to watch a video and an at comes up, like in a way that doesn't make any sense and it is completely irrational.
Particularly movies, particularly movies on Netflix, because the whole reason that Netflix is such an advantage is that you get to you know, going to the movie theater is an experience, it's a very communal thing. Netflix is consuming the media uninterrupted and in a more efficient way. And then when you have commercials in the midst of movies. I'm like, this is I just want to go to the theater now again. I don't want to watch this here anymore. It's interrupting the whole thing.
You're not going to like my pitch to AMC about damn it. So this is the most captive audience.
You bring the lights up to the audience.
Jarital a guy just comes out and pitches Jared tal to you. We're just gonna keep going back and back and back until it's like, you know, this movie brought to you by coughing powder or what.
Like cocaine and you're so na.
That's right. Well, Jody, what a pleasure having you as always on the Daily Zeigeist. Where can people find you? Follow you all that good stuff?
Well, you mentioned my political history show, and I'm produced Trevor Noah's podcast What Now, so people should go listen to that, and then I'm also but the big news is with my political history podcast, we're doing our first ever live show, So for listeners in Boston or anyone who knows someone in Boston on September thirteenth, we are doing a live show at w b u R has this really cool event space there, So I would love
to have people come out to that. It's gonna be it's gonna be really fun, and we're gonna be talking a little bit about the history of October surprises, kind of last minute things that happened in that up end elect And so Friday, September thirteenth, if you're in Boston, I know someone in Boston, encourage them to come out.
What's the biggest October surprise?
And I mean the big one that's always tried it out is the is the is the hostages and you know, Reagan arranging for the hostages to not be released until after the election, you know, and that's a big one. But you know there's stuff like, I mean, this is what we'll get into on September thirteenth, Friday, but uh, you know, like does the Access Hollywood tape kind of count? You know, it's like a last minute thing, the sort of up ended things that really did have an effect.
But some of some of it is like shenanigans, you know, in terms of like withholding information or revealing information at the last minute, and there's long history of that. And then some of it is just like news that breaks at the last minute and destabilizes things right right cool?
Is there a work of media that you've been enjoying, Jodie.
Well, we're not gonna talk about Raygun, so I'm going to talk about right now.
We missed No no, no.
I just I feel like I'm playing a how deep does this rabbit hole go role on this show that I normally don't but I gotta say, the Raygun thing keeps keeps giving to me. And like at first I was just like, yeah, you know, she had an off day.
It is what it is. And then I'm like, now I'm like weeding these Reddit threads about how she was the one who who and you know what was the head of the organization that picked the thing and her she put her husband in this, and it's like it's a I don't know, how deep does the ray Gun thing?
I don't know. This one goes all the way to the top of Australia's break dancing community.
But it is. It is remarkable how there were so many other memes and like characters in the Olympics and then she just came storming at the last and completely took over. It is. It is amazing.
It is Paul of where can people find you as their working media.
You've been enjoying I'm at Vegan Alan p A L L A v I G and A L A n I a show at the Comedy Store Facial Recognition Comedy. Next one is August twentieth one. After that, it's September twentieth in the belly Room. It's going to be super fun. I can't find the person who tweeted it, unfortunately.
I think it.
Refreshed and I lost it, but it was it was The quote was when I sing both parts of that evanescent song and it was Jdvans and as regular clothes and then Jadvanson drag.
I really enjoyed that one.
Amazing. You can find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore O'Brien tweet I've been enjoying. Jamaine Clement from Flay Concords tweeted I've been to Australia. That was their best dancer.
Very very key. We coded that's right.
You can find us on Twitter at Daily Zeicheist. We're at the Daily Zeichgeist on Instagram. We have a Facebook fan page and a website Daily zeigeist dot com, where we post our episodes and our footnote 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. Super producer Justin Connor, is there a song that you think people might enjoy?
Yeah, this song will put you in the mindset of a spy on the run in like a seventies pulp noir movie. It's an instrumental but it has a whole narrative arc. There's tension and suspense and relief all expressed through composition and musical skill. It's a song called The Trader and it's performed by this collective of artists who are from groups like the Dap Kings, the Roots, the
Black Keys, and they're called the Menihan Street Band. And that song again is called the Trader, and you can find that in the footnotes.
Footnotes Trader t R A I t O R A.
I t O R Yes. Yes, would be my tour trade to us, right like Liz Chain, you know. The Daily es Guys is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from My Heart Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. That is going to do it for us. This morning. We are back this afternoon to tell you what is trending, and we'll talk to you all then.
Bye bye bye