Hello the Internet, and welcome to season three thirty one, Episode two of dir Daily's Like Guy Say production of iHeartRadio.
This is a.
Podcast where we take a deep down and do America share consciousness. And it is Tuesday, March twenty sixth, twenty twenty four.
That's right, March twenty six It's National Nugat Day. We don't understand what nugat is. Technically Epilepsi Awareness Day, National Spinish Day, shoutout Popeye, an American Diabetes Association Alert Day. But nugat, what is it? And how do we continue to live without knowing what it is? I just know it as white chewy stuff in the middle.
I thought it was the stuff in the middle of three Musketeer bar and in Milky Way with carmel. But yeah, when I look at the Google image surge of nugat would indicate that it's like a white budge thing. It looks terrible. Look at this nugat right here. Yeah, yeah, Like all the nugat that Google image search returns is not what I had in mind.
It says made by whipping egg whites together and adding honey or sugar, roasted nuts, and sometimes candy fruit. No thank you on the cant Oh. It dates back to the Roman Empire. See that's why I think about Rome so much, because I love nugat.
I feel like they also it's from so long ago that just anything that was sugar was like called nugat. You know, they just like it was from a time of like when the only candy was like necho wafers and nugat. Yeah, what's that. I don't know.
I dropped some eggs and some sugar and I just whipped it up furiously, and I don't know my kids then it fell.
On the ground and they're like nuts and sticks stuck in it. So we're gonna call that on purpose.
Yeah, I mean I needed to like the etymology of fucking nugat Nugat.
My name is Jack O'Brien aka.
Welcome to my golf course, Palmersaurus. That's Jeff Explore the Titanic but before it got wrecked. All these medals I've sold, I'm the smartest god because of cold.
That is courtesy of Rezik on the Discord in honor of the Australian billionaire Clive Palmer, who first of all came to our attention most recently because he's rebuilding the Titanic and like doing the trip again, making the making the captain get drunk again and just like kind of sloalow them through those icebergs. But already had turned the best golf course in Australia, like I don't I don't know from golf courses, but like the golf course where
the PGA like would hold their big tournaments. He bought that and started putting animatronic dinosaurs all over it. Called it Palmersaurus. It's called it's called you gave it a put a giant plastic t rex on the ninth hole and named it Jeff. So anyways, shout out to that man. I'm thrilled to be joined as always by my co host, mister Miles Gras.
That's right, it's Miles Gray driving in a busted Honda Prelude down lankershim because he's a lord of Lankersham. It's the black and the showgun with no gun. Miles, Great, thank you so much for having me back, Jack again. Always appreciate it.
Hey man, let's you know you're you're one of the faces on Mount site more. Yeah, thank you. I love one of our favorites.
I love getting that email from you on a Monday morning and being like, hey, man, would love to have you back another season.
I'm like, I do email. You've been on every episode so far. I do email you every time and invite you back to the next season to keep you in your place, so you know, yeah, I mean at a certain point, I'm like, well, this is kind of contractual. At this point, Hey man, I don't know if you're doing anything. I always open it. Yeah, man, no, every time at the same time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. Sure, I'm already here. I'm sending you the zoom. I'm actually
into the zoom. Thanks, thanks, thanks, thanks for that man. Anyways, Miles, we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by a writer, media critic, host of a couple podcasts. You Are Good, a feelings podcast about movies, and the classic the Mount Rushmore Podcast. It's not a podcast about Mount Rushmore. It is like on the Mount Rushmore of great podcasts, exactly You're wrong about Her writing has appeared
in The Believer on BuzzFeed. Truly one of the best people in the world at interrogating the myths and narratives we use to define ourselves. In the world around us. Please welcome the brilliant and talented Sarah Marshall.
And what a crazy intro. I feel so pumped up. I feel like I want to be one of those kids running onto the stage of Marian. Yeah. I don't care much.
Yeah yet, did you ever do an episode about that?
He really should? I was just thinking this morning. One of the things I find most fascinating is the question of, like the inner workings of a nineties daytime talk show.
Yeah, like, my god, right, because I mean, like, I feel like we got the like the darkest glimpse after the Jenny Jones thing. Yeah, that's when we started to be like, oh no, no, no, was.
The what if our actings have consequences?
Jenny Jones one was where they outed one of their guests for being in love with this other man, right, and then the guy was murdered.
Oh Jesus.
Yeah, I'm gonna be iffy on the details, but yeah, they and I don't think they aired the episode, but right they they did facilitate a murder there.
Yeah yeah, wow.
Yeah, And you know you're wrong about as big on the satanic panic and they were such a big part of the wonderful things. Yeah, a real accelerant to the like the wet cardboard and the mushroom growing experience, my colleague metaphor, that's where we are.
Which we are? Yeah, I was going to ask for the best micology metaphors. You could call it what. Yeah, We've talked about You're wrong about a lot on this podcast, especially around human trafficking, and uh, it's just I think the foremost debunker of bullshit myths and our show pedals bullshit. I mean, it's what we do. We love to know. We also like to bust bullshit myths when we're heads
up enough to catch them. But so we wanted to just have you back on the show and go through some of the stories you've covered, some of your favorites, some of our favorites that we just want to make sure our listeners are aware of because it's a great show and.
I'm so happy to be here. This is so love and I'm so happy that we're in your zeitgeist. And it's a really it's like a lovely and bleak and lovely distinction to hold when it's like, you know, myth busting is one of the most important roles in society today.
Unfortunately. Yeah, it truly is all right. Before we get into all that stuff, though, we do like to get to know you a little bit better by asking you, what is something either from your search history that's revealing about who you are, or you could tell us something that you've recently screencapped that is about who you are.
Oh, I like the screencap question. Screencaps were such a big part of my life in the Twitter era. Okay, something I screen captured from a New York Times article that I'll have to look up, but it was from a couple of years ago is about the history of food writing. And it was I was screencapping a quote from Benjamin Disraeli from a letter he wrote and ate in thirty one while he was in Cairo, and he wrote, the most delicious thing in the world is a banana.
And I was like, I gotta save that. Wow, Now, why did I think that was interesting? It's hard to articulate, but I guess I guess need I need to have. I can't remember that kind of thing anymore, so this is the kind of thing I save.
I am sometimes struck by the deliciousness of bananas, don't I don't think I've ever made that claim, like to that degree, but as an ingredient, and like it is kind of a miraculous ingredient. There's a whole trunk.
Fruit is kind of miraculous.
Really, fruit really is an amazing invention invented by people whose names we don't know, but like corticulturists years ago made these things through just ingenious skills that we have completely lost track of. Yeah, the banana being as creamy as it is, Like the difference for me between a smoothie with banana and without is like I don't think you should be allowed.
To where would smoothie be without? We will be nowhere?
Thank you.
You think it's the high potastic I feel like it's like those high potassium foods like avocados and bananas, they got that butteriness, that creaminess to them.
Yeah, Nature's custard. And it's also like do you ever get too high and think about like what if the plants are in charge? You know, because they make the fruit, and you know, we human ingenuity, like you said, has done so much to make this fruit delicious, like we've carried it forward, but like they make the fruit so that we spread it around and we've like you know, sward high and now we're crashing, and who's going.
To take We've got these dipshits do for us? Yeah? Yeah, no, take me over one game. Yeah, bring me to France, that one big square mile of their finest land and just like do everything to make us as comfortable as possible on that land. Yeah, I uh, don't get too high anymore. But when I did, that is the sort of thought that would occur to me, I think, didn't was it Michael Polland who wrote about plants like from that.
The yeah read that book? But yeah, he did the botanist dilemma, the Botany of Desire. He did a ton of plant books.
Not a type, but is isn't He also like the drug the mind expansion, like yeah, rugs.
He wrote a book that I can't remember what the title is because my friends and I decided to call it Michael Polland does drugs.
But it is funny that that is such a high thought that has like dominated the New York Times for like a decade now.
Right, the New York Times seems to frequently get high though, based on the.
Oh now this is your mind on plants? The mind on plants, yeah. Then I think he was a guy behind the Netflix Mind on Plants documentary as well, like that that was an adaptation of this is your Mind on Plants. But yeah, and then you've all know a Harari and Sapiens kind of had a chunk where he was basically like, we got trapped by wheat. We're in the wheat trap and we got outsmarted by wheat.
It's the lowest horror movie. That horror movie Millennium the making. Oh my god, it's beautiful.
The happening, Yeah, it is. The spoiler alert, but that is the plot of the happening is essentially the plants are killing us much quicker than wheat does, and much more directly the corn too.
Corn.
Think what is something that you think is underrated?
Sarah, hmmm, God, I love this question. And I think here's a little vend that I have, which is that we've really seen sort of the technologization if that's a word, probably not of bread in the past twenty years, right, bread has become this thing people make spreadsheets about, and like, God bless them. If you're making bread spreadsheets, then you're probably doing things that mere mortals aren't even capable of.
With bread bats, Yeah, exactly. Yeah, And there's so many you know, there's so many ways to approach something, but I think that it's made people feel like bread is overly technical and something they can't just kind of like fake their way through. Yeah, and really, and to me there's a whole other I think both ways and other ways are equally valid, and to me, there's a lot of joy and just kind of muddling your way through.
I was just watching a video about how to agedly create your own yeast using dandelion fermentation, like dandelions and sugar, and you kind of create a wild yeast that way, and that's not you could approach that technically, but you could also just be like I am a witch and I'm gathering weeds and getting them in a little right.
And I think something underrated is just like messing around in a way that isn't meant to be successful the first time, but that gives you a feel for something, whether that's bread or whatever else, right, as long as you're not like a surgeon, you know, don't do that.
Right, right. Yeah. It feels like if like a jazz musician was like recording all the notes they played in like a solo and Okay, that was good.
See right there, I probably should have gone to the deflat not nice time though. It's like, no, just just let it flow out of you, because I mean, I'm not a baker myself, but based on what you're saying, i'd imagine it's not that hard to completely fuck up a loaf of bread if you have the ingredients in the semi correct proportions, right right.
It's like, you know, you'll end up with something that's like basically bread. It might not be exactly the kind that you want, but like it's bread, you'll be pretty happy with it. Put butter on it, who cares? Do another love learning it?
Make a soup out of it, just soak it or something.
Yeah, yeah, this is one of the krutons. This is one of the things I am most strident about is that I hate it when people sort of create the illusion that something requires book learning.
Right and like analysis and spreadsheets and.
Yeah, I feel like it is a way into it, but it's not obligatory.
Yeah. I feel like a lot of like I'm very bad at cooking, or at least it takes me a really long time to cook because I am like very precision and do not trust my instincts at all, Like I believe I have very bad instincts and in that in particular. But then you will see people who like who think that you need to like over explain and be like how did you make that exact cut in that movie or like how did they choose that precise word?
And yeah, like like you were saying miles about jazz, it feels like it's really the distinction between like people who are good at an art and like not good at an art, Like I suck at cooking, and so I want to overanalyze it and just be like no, but like if if I step here when I'm stirring the dough, then like it could totally fuck everything up. And it's like, yeah, because you don't have any instincts in that regard, what's the.
Yeah, there's you have to you have to find the joy in it, because like even there are dishes that I make a lot, and I don't I don't really write down what the difference was every time. I just kind of like intuiting that or just like realizing like, oh right, I did this last time, Oh don't do this next time, And I think I'm engaging with it in a way that's more playful rather than.
Like I'm cooking for the fucking head of state, don't there's some kind of energy, And I think that's where the spreadsheetism kind of creeps in, because we're not allowing ourselves to be more playful about it.
It's like so results based to maybe an overly rigid degree.
Yeah, yeah, and it's you know, and it's about whatever's
fun for you. But like, something I also love that I read once in a Jillia Child cookbook is that she's like, I will always tell you why I'm asking you to do something, because I never do something if a cookbook tells me to do it and doesn't tell me why, you know, because there's there's so many things, you know that it's kind of like trying to learn how to speak English perfectly by studying grammar, where like you get to a point where experts agree or where
you sound so correct that people can understand you. And like a lot of the joy of it is colloquial colloquialism.
At a certain point, you just have to watch the soap operas. You have to watch Jenny Jones and learn English from those exactly.
And you got such good vocabulary.
Yes, oh yeah. What is something you think is overrated? H?
I think texting is overrated. I think we're all texting too much. We got to stop all the texting. Like, I think it's a great tool, but I feel like there are relationships I have where like we only text with each other for years, and I realize that phone calls are terrifying, but I don't know, maybe bring back postcards or something which is like a text, but there
isn't a pressure to return one immediately. You can let it simmer for a minute, right, I feel like we should be talking to each other more, Like I am feeling genuinely disturbed by how we are drifting farther and farther apart technologically. And I also like, I love not just TikTok, but any form of addictive scully short form video the same way I loved Tumbler ten years ago.
But I was thinking about how we've come to the point where, in a way, it feels like if you don't make a montage about something, did it even happen? And like it's so cool that people have the ability to like take cinematic approaches to their own lives. But again, it's like, it's your life, you know. We don't have to we don't. I'm just a big ludite who wants everyone to make bread without a recipe. That's my dream.
Yeah, and just dump your whole SD card of digital photos into a Facebook album like the ways of the ancients did ago.
I don't know, maybe there's something in there. I don't know, you have some weird stuff and then checked that out. But yeah, let's go.
We'll sit for a Daghera type once a year when the dagheratype man comes to town on his pony ryes.
Stay very still, very very still.
I mean, yeah, I know that feeling of like having these like pure like feels like text exclusive friendships, and they're like the way I've like cause again sometimes they're not people like you would always talk to on the phone, but somehow you just have good banter over text more than you do over like on a phone call. But then I did the thing of the bro version of of escalating the socializing by being like, hey, man, are you on PlayStation?
Do you play this game?
Then I can Then I'll then I talk to them while playing a video game, and that becomes like sort of the basis for like a phone call or substitute. But it's interesting how sometimes they're like you have this feeling of like, I don't know, man, like it's just kind of cool just texting somebody. But to your point, there's something much more like I don't know, Like I think being an older millennial, like I grew up talking on the phone endlessly, right, so I do miss that
to a certain extent. But I think with adult responsibilities, it's not possible to be on the phone for three hours watching cops.
Oh my god, what a dream. Yeah, I or a Lifetime the Lifetime Movie Network. Maybe I feel like, yeah, there's something some inevitable process of aging at least today. When you know time is marked by technology, is that details of your early life begin to sound made up. And one of them is that we could only send a certain number of texts per month.
Yeah, exactly right, right right?
Yeah, or be like, dude, don't call me like fucking before eight fool, I don't have I only have free nights.
Yeah, we had minutes, we had character limits. We were very we had to be kind of economical.
Yeah, yeah, I'm not. I'm bad at texting in a lot of cases. But yeah, there are some friendships where it's like easier to just text, and then I have like text exclusive friendships about where we're constantly talking about how we should hang more, we should hang out in yeah, yeah, content of the text.
And it's like this plant that's like barely alive in your past room and you give it like a teaspoon of water every two months, and it's like I avenge me.
Yeah, or you're just like, oh, good thing I did to turn the exhaust fan on while I was showering because the humidity actually nourished that plant in as still just mean alive a little bit, right.
So yeah, it feels like we have all these relationships that are like scraggly and attenuated, and then we're like, why do I feel lonely? I talk to people all day? And it's like, well not really.
Yeah, did people used to have those types of friendships where they were like I've got a got a drawer full of letters that I'm supposed to get back to.
Like you know, I don't know, because even then you would be like, dear Elisha, the sheep are lamming early this spring.
Right, It's like, yeah, I had to ground more wheat at the water mill than I had expected this spring. I hope you are well and yeahs.
You know, dear Jack, let's go fishing yours.
Yeah, exactly, Jack, twist fish and nasty. Just one word.
Letter, dude, my mom's favorite movie. She'll always say that, Dude, my mom fucking loves Broke Back Mountain. She's just like it's so powerful. Like she'll because like she's a film critic and in Japan, you know, she's she kind of has kind of got a bit of a reputation there, and like sometimes when there's like Oscar coverage that they'll bring her on for it because like.
You've been in La for you know, forty years covering the business blah blah blah, and they'll be talking about like the movies that are popping right now. She's like, but what was it? What's the best film for you?
She'll always always, she's always about it that I respect the hell that consistent.
She's consistent when that's your favorite movie, that's your favorite movie. You know I can respect that as a as a Jaws fan, you know, who will bring that up no matter what. Yeah, I mean, I just brought it up there, he did. Hey, all right, let's uh take a quick break and we'll come back and we'll dig into some great stuff from the podcast you are wrong about. We'll be right back. What are we wrong about? You are wrong about? And we're back. And I think we already
mentioned that you're wrong about. Is really you're really good with, like moral panics, the satanic panic in particular, and just the role. Yeah, it turns out the role of evangelical Christianity and some of our biggest social movements of the past half century. And you recently had an episode about the pro life movement that was surprising to me, Like I think you said this right off the bat that I was not expecting you point out the pro life movement is younger than Jeff Bridges the Deuce.
This is how we mark age now, right.
Yeah, but it's yeah, Like I guess it's specific, Like there were people who were opposed to abortion before that, but the kind of concerted, cohesive, evangelical driven version kind of starts in nineteen seventy three, and it's part of this movement by evangelicals to be like, hey, so our values, people hate them. We're we've got bad values. We're we're pro segregation. Nobody else seems to like that very much.
They're pretty uh, you know, they recognize that they're going the wrong way in terms of relevancy.
They're in need of a real makeover exactly.
And so yeah, they settle on abortion, which the most well known evangelical in the seventies was Jimmy Carter, which is like, that's not who I come to associate evangelicals with. But it was like a different time, and at that time you didn't necessarily like being super violently against people's right to have an abortion was not one of the first things you associated with evangelicals, no.
Or with the Republican Party. And I always love to cite the fact that Betty Ford famously was pro choice Republican and that that was a coherent political position for the first lady to have at the time.
Wow. Yeah, and Jimmy Carter being an evangelical again, I a social justice warrior. Some would say he.
Loves building houses for people. Yeah, I feel like there's something that it is. Really it's interesting to reflect on maybe arguably what has been lost because this is not exactly my field, but many of my fields brush up against it. And the history of evangelicism in America really connects to the idea that God really is of and for the people, and that prayer is about direct communication with the divine and that you deserve to have a connection to the Holy Spirit without there needing to be
some kind of conduit. So it really is, in a way, another wave of you know, the various religious reformations that we've seen throughout history that have made Christianity more and more egalitarian. And there's historically been a lot of potential for good in that and still is. But it's just that, you know, evangelical Christianity in twenty twenty four, I think is absolutely synonymous with the unbelievably sinister, the acratic, kleptocratic,
fascist dictatorship that we're now basically living in. So that's really fun. It's nice.
They really did not see it going that way, like I guess I did, because we.
Get it's the compliment sandwich. You gotta start with the good and then you're like, now we have some news we have we do have.
About how things have gone since then. Yeah, I mean you point out that one point. I forget if it was that episode or not, but just if you look at what the evangelical movement has done over the past forty years in our lifetime, it's kind of what paranoid eras of the US, you like, accused communists of doing. You know, that there's going to be this secret takeover that they were going to secretly infiltrate our Supreme Court, and like.
They have failed to infiltrate the media, which is nice. You know, Interestingly, there's nothing conservatives are worse at than making media.
Yeah, they tried turning their hat around backwards, turning the chair around backwards, they try everything. You still can't Yeah, but yeah, and then it's kind of what they accuse Satanists of doing in the eighties, like secrets.
Absolutely, yeah, and what they're accusing you know, all these drag queen groomers of doing. Now, there's a very in any kind of abusive relationship where you think that your user has more complicated motives than you ultimately realize that they do. It's I think largely a projection game.
Yeah, right, And it seems like so many of the moral panics too, like they're like, you know, like all the ones you've mentioned, even human trafficking, they're just sort of like built on people's inability or like unwillingness to examine actual systemic forces, and it's just much easier to chalk it up to like, yeah, it's this other thing, man, it's these Satanists that are going that are freaking out.
It's like, it's not that there's inequality, is that there are these flash rob where they just go through and steal everything and it's a crime wave, and it just allows, i don't know, for people to sort of neatly put some kind of larger issue into a problem that doesn't quite actually get to the root of the cause.
Yeah, I've been fascinated by slasher movies for a long time, and I think that they do a weirdly great job of illustrating this very i think kind of core piece of American folklore where you know, if he was Friday the thirteenth, as the er example, like some kind of like the traditional slasher template is that somebody is wronged in the past, Jason drowns because the counselors weren't paying attention to making Doodle that boy drown and then some
kind of force avenging the wronged party shows up in the present and innocent teens who are simply you know, smoking a joint or making out suffer. And the sort of arc of it is that you can sort of momentarily acknowledge that injustice has occurred in the past, but as long as you turn a representative of that injustice into a force so dangerous that there's no proportionate response except killing them, then you can justify any action in
the present and kind of even out the lecture. And that feels like a really I don't know some way that we were we were thinking through with these summer camp movies, the kind of dominant political ideology we were all living under.
Yeah, well it is a kind of frontier wilderness setting that everybody's familiar with, right that is where you know colonial like these.
Summer campser I can never populated my camp.
They're always way out there in the woods. And then yeah, they are being punished. Like I just think that at a certain level, there's like an unspoken knowledge amongst Americans that like, oh, yeah, we we've got it coming, like this is this has been bad, Like what every everything we've everything you see around you is built on top of just ashes and atrocities, and we've got something horrible coming.
And so yeah, it makes sense when slasher films like it does feel like if an alien came down and just like looked at our films. Slasher films would be pretty difficult to explain if you if they didn't have like a psychological read all right, like we get no, no, no, it would never happen. It's just a thing we like to imagine happened to us. Why what is wrong? I think we got to come in or something. I don't know, I.
Just kind of active masochism. Yeah, we know we are not what was intended.
People, Right, So we put the Poulter guy's house on top of a Native American burial ground and yeah, yeah, that gets it out, That gets it.
It's just funny how like that that sort of that angst manifest in different ways, sometimes in films other times, and people screaming at school board meetings, and like.
I don't want my kids to know what a civil war is or was about.
People should be watching more horror movies, I think, yeah.
Right, I wonder if that's my aversion? Why am I so horror averse? I wonder what am I? You don't feel guilty about anything? Yeah, I've got to clean consciousness.
Yeah, I guess it's like a black and Japanese American. I'm like, I don't know, bro.
Yeah, yeah, y'all got that shit coming. Yeah, you shouldn't feel weird about not liking the horror movies. That's us man before liking them.
Yeah, it's just yeah, white people four hours a week go to the horror movie clinic a movie because I.
Mean, like there's also like bad.
I mean there's Japanese horror films, and there's clearly there's a laundry list of atrocities that Japan has committed to. And I wonder does there are there like what's German horror? Like does this is there?
Is there like a universal language of like sort of expressing this like through what we consider horror, because I know, cultural.
Difference is really interesting because I feel like Japanese horror movies there are often ghosts.
Yeah, no, precisely, and we have so.
Few ghosts nowadays in American horror. We love demons. We won't shut up about demons. Yeah, my chagrin.
Germany just has Werner Herzog, who's just everything is an.
Her SOG's new TV? Why crayons?
Why do you need horror movies when nature is trying to kill you.
Always gardening with verner herd song.
It's just a it's just a documentory about hummingbirds.
In the abundance of these queens pushings that way out through the soil. I see none of the divinity of springtime or the pagan gods. I see only pointless tea. But I can also use them to make a nice pesto.
The While we're on the subject of movies, you kind of stumbled on I don't like the Andes. You did an episode on the Andes rescue the Alive story, as I think it's mostly known in America, the rugby team crashes in the Andes is living there for months.
On a fricking glacier on a.
Glacier, freezing to death, starving to death. Eventually turned to cannibalism to avoid starving to death a couple. So this past year, one of the best movies I saw was Society the Snow, which does a really good job of updating. You know, there was the version in the nineties Alive with like Ethan Hawk, I think, and you know it was like the hollywood ized version Society the Snow like updates it and like adds a lot of the humanity back to it, which was something that your episode really did.
But both movies really missed something that I loved that you brought up, which is that people like they were doing bits the whole time, right, Like the number of bits that they did was like, at one point, they're waiting to be rescued, and then they look off and they see an avalanche like a white wall coming towards them, right, and then they realized that somebody is actually using a fire extinguisher to like make it look like there's an avalanche coming with them as a bit, and then they're
like pretend they were like talking like planning bits for what to do when the helicopter arrives at the scene of their plane crash, like talking about like the funniest thing to say while they were in it. But it's just it's, I don't know, generally, just movies about true stories and history feel like they have to be as humorless as like a Christopher Nolan film, you know, right, and totally it's just not how reality is. Like I would have loved the bits in both of those movies.
Oh yeah, well, because even you think about like the like the like the wild stuff, like engineering students pull like while they're in college, you know what I mean, the fun they have like like JPL is nearby in LA and like they do like wild just pumpkin carving contests, just weird things are like now we're using our like power, like brain power to get stuff to other like the moon, to have fucking fun. And yet to think that like they were just I don't know, at the in where
were those alamos. They were just like hanging out counting marbles or something. They're like, all right, I'm gonna go to bed, Yeah, see you later, like the horse and around come on.
Though, Yeah no, yeah, those they were doing goods constantly, like all throughout history. And I think it, I really do think it's the same reason that comedies almost never win at the Academy Awards, is the reason that they feel like they need to launder movies of any like fun when they're about history. Yeah, no, this has to be serious. We can't. We have to like remove the fun.
But I feel like it would just feel more lived in and yeah, I don't know, it would be be a blast if we actually saw how the people were funny at the time.
Well, and you know, and I think about when you think about the movies that endure and that are a part of your life and that you watch a lot, like and you know, it's different. People have different requirements. Some people have comfort movies that have no funny parts in them at all, God bless her, But like, aren't most of the things that you watch more than a couple times funny?
Yeah, they have fun the characters are having fun or they're funny.
Or yeah, there's the you know, because it's like a full spectrum of humanity. It's kind of like eating an entire meal with nothing, no sweetness in it at all, Like you can do it, but it's it feels there's something missing.
Yeah, right. Yeah. The other thing that gout left out of both movies that your episode kind of restores is like it's kind of an important detail. Like you go from the story of them like surviving getting rescued to that that's kind of it. And then like today we know them as like the cannibal people and the media discovering the cannibalism, like the doctor checking them out and being like, wait a second, these guys like had to
have been eating something. And then like a big like moral judgment ensues and like everybody's like their family is like upset buy it and they're like, wait, would our parents have rather us starved to death than like the Catholic church weighs in and is like, no, it's good that they were eating people, which was very Yeah, every once in a while they nail it. And then the other detail was that they were like a few days
walk from a hotel full of food. Was like, I don't know, I can see why you left it out, but Jesus Christ, that's I mean, it's like triangle of sadness like that. It's I don't know if you guys saw that movie. I did.
I really liked that movie and I saw that the night that midterm results were coming in, so it was like perfect for that very distracting.
Yes, oh that's a good idea. Just watch a really good like, save a really good movie for when for election night. Yeah, gets sucked.
You need to be transported for real?
Yeah. Is.
I think that the kind of texture of tragedy is what makes it feel real. And I think that to some extent, when we tell stories that are so grim and feel so distant from us, that that's a way of us feeling like it's not going to happen to us, when you know, really, so many of these things are the result of being in a boat, being in a skyscraper, being in the path of a forest fire. Like, we're going to have more and more epidemics and disasters and
they're just going to become part of everyday life. For those of us who don't feel that way yet.
Yeah, I hope we can remember to be funny, and we're going to.
Be so funny. We're going to be the funniest generation that has ever lived.
The has ever lived through an apocalypse? Yeah right, you know the aliens will come and they're like Wow. As their civilization was dying, they put out some of the best comedies.
Best content came right near me.
The guy need a Drum set out of billionaire skulls and they're scouring doing solos. It was really quite artistic.
I have to say, oh, yeah, great, I think you should leave quotes. As their city was burning.
Down, well then once the grid went down, they had to make those meme museums, right, those were a real tree.
Yeah, that would be fun though, to like figure out which memes go in the museum, Like, I might as well just do that now. I feel like it would be a good public works project. Biden, Come on, yeah, come on, but these Yeah, because we're gonna have somebody out of work TikTokers when you ban the app. Uh you know the new Civil Conservation Corps of Meme Collection and Remembrance. Yeah, all right, let's uh, let's take a quick break and we'll come back. We'll keep talking and
we're back. We're and just generally not to like put you on the spot, but I am curious that, like, do you have some common flags that like pop up where like just at this point, you've seen so many stories that are full of shit, like where you're just like, oh, like I think one that you mentioned during the I
think it was the human Trafficking episode. Yeah, it was the human trafficking episode, because right, yeah, the Bob Craft thing where it's it's a tactic you see used by these low rent journalistic outlets like the New York Times where they will just use a like the only source in the article will be a cop or multiple like laws.
That was the first thing I was thinking of.
Yeah, yes, oh, they love to do it, don't they.
Yeah, And It's so interesting because it is you know, not just within moral panics, but you know, really any story that we get wrong or report in a biased fashion. It is just journalistic tradition in this country to write a story where the police are your only source and where you say, you know, police say this and that, and treat it with utter credulity, because that's how the
profession has worked historically, and so it is. It's an interesting area too, where you know, something that has gotten grandfathered in as a convention that we've only recently begun chipping away at, has allowed for worse reporting because you know, we've inherited it from I don't know what I would say, basically the sense that reporters have to work with and to an extent for the police in order to get access.
Yeah, that's what they've told themselves the least, right, like we need to do this and you know, talk to the people who skulls they're cracking. They're a good source, right right. And then the sense that you're you're on the same side or on the side of the establishment,
which is also you know, hopefully that's changing. Yeah, the Robert Craft story, in particular Robert Craft is the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots who got caught in a massage parlor in Florida paying for sex, And the New York Times just extensively quotes this one share of talking about how the women were brought in like China, from China, from China. They were smuggled in from China,
presumably in shipping containers. I don't know if that's specifically mentioned, but God, the trafficking people love that.
It's just like the shipping container thing. Just get this woman a coach, a seatan coach. It'll be just as uncomfortable, and her break her spirit just as well.
But he's the cops and the forced sex with thousands of men and you know, new women, right, new shipments of women every couple of days or you know, every week.
Like and again, the overhead of this kind of an outs think about how hard it is to manic inventory if you're selling.
Beads just like an evil massage parlor corporation with the budget of Amazon.
You know, right, yeah, And I hate to sound insensitive, but it is like it's stuff like that where you're like, what are the physical realities of even the building that we're talking about this happening in because that's such a big part of the Satanic panic, where the direness of the crimes people are being accused of means that people are less likely to be like, excuse me, I was just wondering, how are this many infants going missing from
hospitals every year? None of them are reporting these crimes or you know, because we know that, like people actually study real crimes that occur, and so we learn sort of, you know, it's imperfect, but we learn certainly that there are trends, and one of them is that people who kidnap babies from hospital nurseries tend to be a woman who's lost a child who's trying to replace that child. Yes,
that's kind of the typical profile. And that doesn't mean it covers everything, but it means it's you know, that kind of accounts for the cases that people have noticed. And if there were thousands of babies needed for Satanic sacrifice going missing all the time in the eighties, then why weren't hospitals noticing that? And that's just a question about are we advancing by degrees into a worldview where
none of these questions matter? And you know that has happened for some people clearly, but it's I don't know. I hope it can still have a cooling effect to bring these things up.
Yeah. So, I mean when the human trafficking episode, when I first heard it, it was at the time when TikTok and social media was full of videos where people would be like, you see the zip tie on my car door handle?
Oh, the one that you could have put there?
Yes, impossible, actually impossible when that matches the stuff that's in your trunk. Now that means I've been marked for trafficking and there's probably a man under my car right now waiting, and it's.
Like, cool, why did he put the zip tie on there then?
To remind himself obviously? Is it like parking enforcement when they chalk your tires, when they're like, oh, this person's been here for these two hours. Yeah, they're still there in that chalk's there, I'll know. But yeah, it's a very like it just it obscures like the real dangers.
Because I think that was the really eye opening part of the episode, is even understanding how we're defining trafficked people and who they are, because most of the time it doesn't conform to the very like Liam Niesen based version taken version of like trafficking that people think of like you were snatched up violently in broad daylight and then sent off to some you name whatever.
Specific horror appeals to the audience right to be.
One of the thousands of women servicing thousands of clients at a massage parlor next to you palm stry place with three parking spots in front of it. And also it's like, you know, there's this great inflation of tragedy where it's like, do we care about people who've been victimized in like less extreme ways, like what about people? Because it And again this ties to the satanic panic where it feels like it becomes a way of obscuring the importance of trauma that happens on a more modest scale.
Not that extreme cases don't exist, but they're more rare.
Yes, we take real world tragedies that are mundane or are the things that people just don't want to think about, and we put movie tropes over them, like we put the movie tropes that like the warning the zip TI thing is a perfect example because it's like movie villains love to warn you before they do a thing. They like to be.
Coming for you and then like disappeared just a lot a Danny Gonzalez video I was reminded of through a YouTube comment that force of literature I'm most familiar.
With these days about I think about flat earthers, but some nature of conspiracy theories, where so many conspiracy theories hange on the idea that like there are these clues, there's this puzzle you're in, like a Michael Douglas in the game game and he's like, if the government was hiding something from you, then why would they leave clues to help you figure it out? Like why wouldn't they just not do that?
Right? Because they're the snowman. They wanted to give you all the clues, mister policeman.
You know.
That's that's how they get their sick kicks, is right.
I guess. And these stories where it's like where you get to imagine yourself as the hero of a complicated game or Harry Potter and your letter is coming and it's just like you're just a person. Like there are a lot of conspiracies going on, but the thing is that the people who conspire tend to be doing it internal memos or out loud or in books that they publish.
Yes, right, and just they have all the money and a big enough legal team that you can't point out and it's.
Not a puzzle. They just say it because they don't really think there's anything wrong with what they're doing, or if they think that what they're doing is illegal, then they'll you know, still say it like Rudy Juliani.
Right right, and it's be like, so what though, like.
Everybody does that actually do think? Yeah.
The other thing that really struck me too is just like the the way that especially things like human trafficking it's talked about, is like they talk about it is if it's this this gigantic thing that's happening, like hundreds of hundreds of thousands of people perhaps are being taken and trafficked.
Or it happened to anyone, could have happened to anyone.
But then it's the way to white women in their thirties who are beginning to feel less valued by society now that they're aging visibly. I personally think.
The Stepford Wives episode, right.
Or even like or even just like the idea of you know, like that they were like you know, certain teachers, there was information circulating around about be like how to identify if one of your students are being trafficked and it's like depressed?
What if they're being abused by their very own parents?
Right right, Yeah, we don't care about that. No, no, no trap.
But that's what I mean, Like, that's it's always interesting to see because even that description was so bad. It was merely like even you brought up on the show. It's like you're describing a teenager.
Like someone who's like becoming maybe a little more confrontational, maybe tired because they don't sleep, maybe like they do they have a bar code tattoo, Yeah, a bar code perhaps, Like come on, now, like there's not skew numbers like this, Now what movie is?
You would just chip them? At this point That's what I do at my child trafficking concern. Of course, what everybody does now.
Right, and so much of that is born out of just the way even these numbers are gathered. But then people, depending on what your perspective is, like, well, I don't want to go off what law enforcement said that there's maybe around five hundred cases. I'd rather go with the number that is by the thousands, where the reporting on that is not it's not accurate, and it's quite flawed. But again, for people who want to sort of pedal this sort of myth around it, it's very convenient to
be like, well, look a look at this reporting. I mean, now, don't look too deep into how that is, because it can be a child that runs away multiple times and if a parent says I think they're being trafficked, that we can count that as like ten times. Yeah, that's ten traffickings. Yeah, that's ten takens.
Right.
I guess watched my own Private Idaho for the first time in a really long time, and it's, you know, such a kind of artifact of thirty years ago, but it's also you know, it's about young like teenage hustlers working in the Northwest, and there's a scene where some of them are telling, you know, these really horrifying stories of assaults that they've expect sperienced and what they've gone
through at the hands of clients. But also you know that this is a picture of you know, this pretty you know, as far as I can tell, pretty realistic view of what it's like to be kind of on your own trying to make it in a world that's dangerous, but maybe is the only world that there can exist for you because you have no home to go back to or you were kicked out of it, or at home is still less safe than being out here, you know.
And that's I think, so much more present of a danger and so much more real danger, yeah, than what we've been talking about as a conservative fantasy. But then it's like, again, that's a problem that directs our attention inwards, and so we love to make up a bigger problem outside to distract ourselves with.
Right, right, trafficking is like that. The crimes of trafficking, the section abuse, the you know, being under the influence of somebody who is you know, exploiting you. Those things
actually do happen. The numbers are not on par with like what the guy who made Sound Freedom might lead you to believe, but they do happen, and it's usually too like you mentioned, like queer youth who are kicked out of their homes, just people who are living in poverty and like need a place to sleep and are therefore like forced to do things that they don't want to to just like avoid being on the street and
like having their lives put in danger. And but yeah, those are things that are endemic, systemic problems that people would rather not pay attention to. And so you get this, like it's really wild how there's not like the original like that the US, the world is such a big place, like you could you should be able to find an example of the thing that you want to happen, Like you.
Can find examples of really weird versions. You can have anything you can think of. Someone is put in their rectum somewhere in this country.
They have not come up with, like all they have is taken and now the sound of like they have Liam Neeson movies and the sound of freedom, like that's what they've got. They don't even have their like one news story that they've like just exploited to be like this happens all the time, because yeah, it's just there's so little there there.
Right, there needs to be a ranking system, and this is like a level lower than like you know, crime like stranger danger kidnappings, which do occur, but just not on the scale that we ever said they did, and so therefore can be blown out of proportion and used to pass laws that chip away at the rights of defendants. But but yeah, we're we're now on on a lower tier, the tier if you will, where nothing is real.
Yes, just the guys from w Liam Neeson.
Like, from your perspective, do you think a lot of you know, pushing these kinds of like moral panics because like the are to do with trying to criminalize things that they don't want. But it's also because like in built with all of these moral panics, like we've just said, is like this just lack of desire to actually confront what these systemic forces are. And I guess by trying to solve it, then they just enact all kinds of like you know, criminal like just to try and criminalize
as much shit as possible and that's the solution. What do you think the sort of balance is between like the agenda and just sort of the human sort of the human nature of not wanting to actually take on a problem at all, because it feels like they work so hand in hand with so many things that it feels like maybe they do start with something but being like, no, this is an issue, and then it turns and actually no immigrants are bad, and you're like whoa, whoa, Okay,
well which one was it? And I know that some people are absolutely on the anti immigration thing, but a lot I think people get pulled in, probably because it's the don't want to confront the realities of what's going on side of the coin.
Maybe yeah, yeah, And I think that there's I think something, you know, this kind of connects with the pro life movement, And as you've been saying, I think that something you know, the human trafficking panic, the satanic panic, a really strong moral panic, feels like it endures and it returns and it never really leaves us, partly because it comes from so many fronts, and also because it addresses some kind of real concern right because I think, you know, we
saw such a huge takeoff in the summer of twenty twenty of you know, the claim that you can't put your kid in a mask because that's that makes it easier for the human traffickers. Do you remember that we were doing that for a while.
It was like, you can't put.
Your kid in a mask because God knows, you can't tell what your child looks like with their face covered. You don't like wash their clothes and do their hair right, and you know, and that felt to me, this at least was what I thought at the time and still think some kind of response to the fact that, like we understood that what was happening was really really bad for kids, you know, Like I was very very conservative,
small c conservative, careful con conservative about you know. I didn't go into like a place of business for like a full year. I was extremely strict with myself in terms of COVID coutiousness, just because I knew that if I gave myself any parameter to screw up, I probably would.
And I had sort of sensitive people in my orbit, I mean, immune system wise, so you know, just being fully on you know, that being my life at the time, I felt I still felt, as it's very reasonable to feel that like we were all being sort of broiled alive psychologically and there was nothing we could do about it,
and that this was dangerous for children. And I think that the kind of the way the trafficking panic about children took root at that time, I think, and maybe this is charitable of me, but I don't think it's you know, it's not maybeing nice to say this. It's just kind of thinking about what would be on people's minds that like, if you want and also cynically, if you want to whip up a panic. You look at
what are parents upset about. They know that something bad is going on in terms of their children's welfare, so you can invent something that they would rather be the bad thing going.
On, right, Yeah, and just all that everybody's under a lot of emotional purmoil.
We're not thinking critically right in those periods so much. Yeah, Yeah,
I certainly wasn't. But I think just ultimately the point that you land on in that episode is to kind of understand what is actually at stake and what is actually the intention of this concern over human trafficking, Like when they actually bust a quote unquote human trafficking ring, Like there's an example of a place that was providing, you know, services for sex workers in Seattle and it got busted, and you know, when they're criminalizing the people,
they don't seem interested in taking care of the victim. They basically tell the victim like, you can go to jail for sex work, or you can like go to this shelter where we'll take away your phone and internet, you know, like a trafficker would like, you know, like we'll now we'll treat you like we are cleaning about it.
Yeah, but yeah, it's and a lot of it. Like
I mean, people should go listen to the episode. There's also some really you know that you're much more likely to be called out as a trafficker if you are part of like an interracial thing family these days, and that actually goes back to the what the intent of the original trafficking laws was were was like you know, anxiety over slavery ending and women's rights happening, and like they needed a way to make it against the law for interracial couples to date each other.
And yeah, so and perceived advances in civil rights seem like a really important ingredient. Yes, for moral panics too, Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely, because what was that Like I think there was something that was that was in the episode is essentially that like around any kind of trafficking pipeline, it always led to some kind of anti immigration sentiment.
Oh yeah, Like it was just sort.
Of like that was like the that was the sort of sequence there, and I think just yet, yeah, with like so many things, like so many of these sort of moral panics, right, like whether it's the anti choice movement or human trafficking, like the rhetoric is so victim focused.
Yeah, and but.
Really you just but it really reveals itself how much the victims were merely just sort of the road to the criminalization of something, because at the end of the day, there's no one actually advocating for helping the victims in any meaningful way for all the people like, well, then yeah, how about adoption if that's a route without having to have an abortion, but we have we do fuck all in terms of creating a system that helps people, whether that's like a foster care system or making it easier
to adopt. It just like it just falls apart. It's just sort of like, let me just chum the water with this first part. And then if you're really asking me to do the work, Oh no, I'm not.
I'm not. It's not more about the end.
It comes back to Shaws.
Yeah, Sarah, what a pleasure having you. Thank you so much for taking the time to gosh, where can people find you and follow you and all that good stuff?
Ooh, you can find me at You are good And you're wrong about wherever you get your podcasts. I've always said I should start a podcast service called Wherever because I would get free advertising everywhere into the past and you can find me there. And also I live in Portland and I'm always looking for fun stuff to do. So if you have an event or a art thing or a fun I don't know you got a neat squash variety, let me know about it.
There you go, And is there a work of media that you've been enjoying, either a tweet, anything from a tweet to a film.
I'm so happy you asked, because I fell in love recently with I don't know if either of you remember this, but the web series Chris Fleming did like ten years ago, Gail. It's like forty episodes of it. There's a whole arc. Gail is the ultimate high strong mom from Massachusetts. I agree,
an absolute genius. The Gail series got me through the darkest days of winter and there's an episode I think called The Dinner Party, Part two where Gail forces her a cappella troop to lip sync to Yannie Live at the Acropolis and it is still one of the funniest things I have ever seen in my whole life. And the Holy Spirit was in Chris Flemming that day. That's what I believed.
Amazing miles. Where can people find you as their working media you've been enjoy it.
Yeah, at Miles of Gray on Twitter and Instagram. Obviously you know about mad Boosties. You know about four to twenty day fiance find me there also, uh working media.
Man. These Korean reality shows on Netflix, they get me all the time. There's a new season of the show Physical one hundred that's out that's like just about like I guess they just pick like one hundred fit people to do just like the wildest stuff. Like the first thing is like who can just run on it? Yeah?
The first season is like who can just hang off this till their muscles give out? Or like in the second seed the second season, the first challenge they do to like start sorting people's like who's just gonna run so hard on these treadmills?
Like yeah, just spread someone? Yeah Yeah. As someone who would never do that, I'm always like, Wow, I'm just fascinated by people who are just such physical specimens. And it's just a very interesting way to watch a competition reality show and learn some Korean along the way. Also, So yeah, watching amazing tweet I've been enjoying. Jason Smiley tweeted a picture of Lenny Kravitz looking shredded and said Lenny Kravitz turned sixty in a couple months, what's your excuse?
And then honey, I am a guy and I shrunk. The kids on Twitter retweeted that and wrote, I don't understand was I supposed to kill him? What's your excuse? You can find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore Obrian. You can find us on Twitter at daily Zeikeeist. Read The Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram. We have Facebook fan page on a website, Daily zeikeist dot com. Wore you post our episodes and our foot note where we link off t information that we talked about in today's episode, as
well as a song that we think you might enjoy. Miles, is there a song where you think people might.
Yeah, there's a just some new Chromebin.
I love Krumbin, I love the vibes. I like being dreamy out there. They're a great, great band. They have a new track called May ninth that's out that came out.
Just this year. So check this out. This is May ninth from Chromebin.
May the ninth be with you and all right, you will link off to that in the footnotes. The Daily's like as a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio Wrap, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. That is gonna do it for us this morning, back this afternoon to tell you what is trending and we will talk to you about fight by