Hello the Internet, and welcome to this episode of The Weekly Zeitgeist. These are some of our favorite segments from this week, all edited together into one NonStop infotainment laugh stravaganza. Yeah, So, without further ado, here is the Weekly Zeitgeist. What is something from your search history that is revealing about who you are?
I yesterday was looking up the public pool hours in New York because I'm a huge, huge, huge advocate of going to the public pools in New York City because everybody's like, I mean, itw gross the public pools, like I'd rather go to a hotel, and I'm like, okay, but the pools are run by the city and have like really intense guidelines about how clean they have to be. And you know who doesn't have those guidelines any hotel. I don't know if any hotel pools are getting cleaned.
And the way that the public pools in New York are so I'm a huge fan freezing cold if you live they're super They're like because they're like cooling centers, like they're four people, especially if you don't have air conditioning in the summer. They're also the location of a lot of the free lunches that get you know, for students, so in the summer you're not in school, that's where
they do it. I love, love, love the public pools, but I was I've never gone early enough to know what time they opened, so I was like, I guess I should find out. And it's eleven, which I think is a little close for me, so I don't know if I'll ever get there at opening, but noon feels.
Right right, right right. Did you grow up in New York?
In New York?
No, Yeah, I grew up in Maryland. But I've been here for sixteen or seventeen years, which is crazy because I'm twenty.
God so much just kidding.
I would never want to be twenty again, my god.
Oh yeah, some of the most chaotic times in my life because like La, the pools in La are just because of the ambient heat, not always like super but you definitely cool off.
But then we also have like all those like splash parks.
Now we're just basically equivalent like an open fire hydrant, yeah, a like foam ground area to make it sae yeah for kids.
I love the public pools in LA though, too. I used to go swim in those when I lived there. They're the best.
I love the proofs.
I guess that's that's something about me. I love pools.
It's I've talked before and hear about how my first job out of college was as a pool boy at the Soho House, the roof deck of the Soho House when that had just opened, and I was in charge of just to your point about them not having regulations, I was in charge of like the chlorine levels.
Also.
Yeah, they were like like there was Oh no. I had somebody who like knew more about it, who checked with me every once in a while, but I was like doing the pH testing and yeah, and I was in no way equipped to do that. I had to like pull a drowning kid out of the pool one time I there. I was there during the blackout of whatever year that was, yeah, two thousand and three, and everybody like came to that pool. It was a tiny pool. It was like halfway between a pool and a bath tub.
Yeah, it's like the size of a couch.
But everyone thought it would be a cool place to hang out. And it was like milky by the end of it. Because I didn't know what I was doing. They just like put whoever's up there in charge of like the chlorine levels.
Yeah, because like on the other side, like in Vegas, their pools, Like if you open your eyes under the water, it will just strip like membranes from your like eyeballs, so.
Your eyes turns like five shades, Like, yeah, you just have white walker eyes open them underwater. What is what's something that you think is overrated?
I think that Wes Anderson is overrated?
What the job for saying? What exactly about less Anderson?
I think, Look, I he just tells the same quirky little story over and over again. Granted I have not seen Asteroid City yet, so maybe this one will just blow me away and I will be excited again. To be clear, there was a time period where I did like his work, but I don't know, Maybe I think it's just like too repetitive. I don't know. And but like, yeah, I get it, like he's an a tour so he's going to have a distinct style that he kind of
just keeps recycling over and over. But like, I don't know, I just like find his quirky little quirkiness a bit tiresome these days.
What era.
I would say, Well, the for me was fantastic mister Fox. Hell yeah, that's probably my favorite of his and leading up to but then like after that, I felt like there was just a declose moon Rise Kingdom. I think that one was like, okay, fine, and then and then again another controversial take here, but I thought that Isle of Dogs was speaking of toilets.
Yeah, oh gosh, I think that's totally fair. I okay, here's my experience watching almost every was Anderson film. She was like, gosh, that's really pretty Ohen Wilson. He's always delightful. Costume should get credit. Wow, the fits are fitting. That movie was that. I'll never watch it again and don't revisit Wes Anderson films. They're like very beautiful. I feel like they have just en a story to avoid being music in pieces, you know what I mean. You've seen a movie in the museum.
Yeah right, but it's like, tell me the plot of any Wes Anderson movie. You can't like, I can't do it, Like, I don't like, they just don't stick with me. I feel like it's just like you see a frame and you're like, wow, look at all that headroom. That's nice, and look at this misan sen whoo and then you're like, but what was the plot and also why did I watch it?
Yeah, feel like he is going to be the least likely filmmaker too for you to be like, Oh, he really surprised me on this one. This is this is not. I did not see this one coming. I think his like French Dispatch, was his attempt to do something different, and I think it's like it's it's definitely my least favorite of his movies.
I skipped it. I couldn't be bothered.
Yeah, but it's it also seems like I don't see that many people like Riding for that one usually, Like I feel like his movies are some people really like it, some people really hate it, and you know, it's it's kind of random, Like I really like Grand Budapest Hotel, but I don't like a lot of the ones around that, and that's kind of the only later era one that I really enjoy. But a lot of people like really
love The Life Aquatic. I've never really connected with that one either, But yeah, French Dispatch felt like people were like, huh, we're we're not going with you on this one. There are some really good performances in it. Yeah, I don't know, I like part of me wants to see the Asteroid City one because I don't know, it just looks like the he's instead of trying to do something different, He's like, I'm going to do the same so hard.
Oh you didn't like it when I tried something new, Well fine, I'll do the thing again. Yeah.
How about if Wes Anderson tried to make a Wes Anderson movie. He like got jealous of all the people being like on social media being like what if your day was a Wes Anderson movie?
And like wild to me that he was upset about that, Like I was really trying to.
Was he upset about that? Yeah?
Oh wow, Yeah he came out he was like I would never look at those and people realize it's like people are just homaging.
You felt like that.
I think that the highest form of flattery is like the entire Internet got together and was like, I think your aesthetic is so utterly charming. I'm gonna place myself inside of it.
It was I really liked to meet.
I thought it was cute, disappointing court your fan base, please. I think it's this is the best ap para social relationship can be. Is just to say hey, guys, I see you and I liked what you did and thank you and then just move on.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I wonder if it's also like you. It would just be like he's worried. It would like fuck him up a little bit to see everybody's like version of him, the way that like seeing someone do an impression of you can be a little unnerving for the first time.
You know, that is fair that Okay, maybe, or.
Maybe he's just an asshole. I couldn't possibly imagine a universe where that's true.
That's from Wes Anderson. That's got his quote directly. So okay, So Wes Anderson said about the memes, I'm very good at protecting myself from seeing all that stuff. If somebody sends me something like that, I'll immediately erase it and say please, sorry, do not send me things of people doing me, because I do not want to look at it thinking.
Is that what I do?
Is that what I mean? I don't want to see too much of someone else thinking about what I try to be, because God knows, I could then start doing it. So to your point, Jack, this is a form of self protection. And now I dismissed love his fans.
Yeah, okay, all right. Also he does betray in that quote, like a little bit of like a thing I always suspect about anybody who got famous before like a certain point like that they just like don't know how technology works, because like if someone sends me something, I erase it, like, what do you mean you RaSE it the link that they sent to you?
They delete it from Internet dot com.
Oh man, what's something you think is underrated? Teresa?
Okay, there's this really cool taco spot right around where I live. It's like my neighborhood. But it's just a guy who sells tacos in front of his house, and he's really cool and it's underrated obviously because you guys.
Don't know about it.
But I want to kind of out because I love this so much. Literally, I feel like it's like I don't want to say I manifested it, because obviously this man is an individual person who has his own life and needs. But I was thinking right before I move, like, oh, it would be really cool to just I think I was just having existential dreams about you can't tell, like what's my future and livelihood?
So it's like what if I just.
Like opened a little restaurant in my garage. But that was mostly like I don't actually want to do it, but I was just thinking the idea of like, let's just go back to It reminds me of like Taiwan, where people just have these little eateries and you know your neighborhood and you enjoy your community and it's nice and and it doesn't have to be you know, a
Chipotle or bought by Facebook. But then, like the first week I lived here, I saw a sign that was just like handwritten I just like in Spanish, I said, like Tacos Fierness East Abado, like Fridays and Saturdays. And my first thought was like, oh, that must be good because if it's a handwritten sign, it's not advertised.
He's only doing it up two days of the week.
Just go sheer love of the game.
Yeah, but Friday comes around, I'm like, oh, I can't wait. First time I go. And he said it was the first time he was doing it too, So oh, mine line's coincided.
Yeah, and so and did You're like I made you do this, Like I've never heard of tacos before.
Yesterday He's like, I just spun tuously appeared, but no, he like started this little business in front of his house and he's so good. He just like starts cooking in the afternoon on Fridays, and then around five he started telling it like I was trying to buy it, like at like two, and he was like it's.
Not ready yet.
And then now, but they're so good and it's so cute, and he's been doing it now for the last couple of weeks every Friday Saturday, and there's like a crowd, and he started here's by Papa's Talk Tacos Papa Jose, And like every week I go there, there's like a new sign now, like he's like adding more marketing. Like now there's a sign down the street along like the you know the main street, that has an little arrow that says tacos. And then the other day there was
one that you could scan the QR code and follow him. Oh, Tacos Papa Jose.
It's actually brilliant marketing strategy. Could you actually give him my number? I actually want to reach out to him about getting his brand online. That's it. That's really like a cool thing because I feel like the lemonade stand model, like you you never hear that applied anything else. It's just like kids trying their first taking their first whack at capitalism.
It's like very and they don't know it's because they're cute.
That's why they're selling it.
Yeah, right, right, But like if you're good at making stuff, why not do a little talk.
It's so good and it's like like it's homemade and there's like, you know, people sitting around. There's usually like a TV and his family's hanging out, so it's like really nice. But also like the first weekend, I think there was a graduation, so a lot of people were coming. But also he just said he I asked them how we advertised, and he just said he was posting on Facebook. So I mean, whatever, fuck it, Zuckerberg, But like that's
kind of nice. I don't know, there was something really like sweet about just like it's good and he's just urgently trying to do it that way. But in my mind, I'm like, oh my god, what if this is the next sting type funk because that's how you hear about these like huge eateries. They always start from.
Just okay, So then maybe you need to get in as an investor.
Yeah, ground investor. This is how you get the Wilding's name after you.
Yeah you do. You can stand up and it's gonna.
Be called Taco's.
Mama Teresa.
I did a leverage buy out. I got chased this outside of town. It's all mine now.
This idiot made the mistake of showing me his process for making.
Meary recipe true capitalists.
They're also only two dollars nevery good.
That's the other thing.
I'm like, oh so so near Salazar, but I'm like this place that's great. Yeah.
I love like I love local food, local eateries. It's it's so funny when you meet people like I don't know, maybe it's just being an Angelina, like I've never grown up with like the fear of street food. And also maybe just like in Japan to in Asia, like they're just like in Japan they're called Yatai's where they're just like fucking people just throw up a tent and ship and a grill.
Yeah, like they're serving outside of a train. Yeah yeah. Yeah. So like it's it's always funny me.
People are like, I don't know about that. I'm like, you have clearly not felt the love of street food.
That I will so you can't get stick of you.
Like when I went back to time, wanted, I hadn't been for a while, and I just like late, I got something that probably had been out for hours. I was like, I'm going to be like, yeah, you gotta know how to be a little savvy about what time and where which stands are going to.
But I like to just say, yeah, it's because you've been out of country too long. Yeah it was. It wasn't their fault.
It was you, wasn't They were like, why would you buy this meat thingless?
It was clearly a shoe on a stick. I don't know.
I thought it was like a gag, like a fun shape.
All right, let's take a quick break and we'll come back and talk about cocaine, and we're back and back in our crack days. I worked on an article about like cognitive biases that affect our ability to understand money, and like the piece really like zoomed in on examples of how traditional media interacts with a brain that was designed millions of years ago for an animal that was trying to survive the food chain, and like our brain is designed to process like fairly simple visual stimuli in
a pretty straightforward way. That tree has fruit on it. Remember that tree. And then you know, the point in the article was like if you only show the person who won the lottery on TV and not the you know, billions of people who lose the lottery every day, it creates a imprint of like that's the fruit tree, that's that's the place to go, and like that is so basic.
That's such a basic thing that just feels like so quaint and antiqu antiquated compared to the modern world that we're existing in, where the increasing use of AI to create intentionally false stories, use of like technology really seems to be accelerating things to in some cases like make them worse or at least there's a feeling that that is the case in like day to day our day
to day lives. And so we wanted to talk about kind of all the ways that the modern world is sort of this fun house mirror that our brand's ability to interact with it like just warps and stretches, and it's it's not going well. It seems like based on some of these statistics that you pulled, Jason.
Well, I wanted to pull some stance because when we talk about like people being anxious or depressed or whatever. These days, it's not just talking about vibes like you can look at the statistics. So, suicide rates been climbing in the USA for the last twenty years. Around two thousand is when most of these trends started to skew higher. That is a distinctly American phenomenon. Most other countries suicide
rates have been steadily following. This is an American thing, but there's a large number they call deaths of despair where they want together suicide, alcohol debts, drug related deaths, and all of that has skewed up since two thousand and then since around twenty ten has started to like most of them have kind of started to spike. Now part of you you mentioned like the deaths of the
drug overdose deaths. Some of that is separately just the opioid epidemic and fentanyl, but also some of those overdoses are intentional, but if there's no note left behind, they just put it down as overdose because of course, how do you know, so that's and so. And then anxiety and depression both have been rising up specifically among the youth again going back to around two thousand and nine twenty ten. Now there's two ways people interpret this that
are controversial. You can either say that these things have been going up in the internet era and then have accelerated in the smartphone era. Or you can say, well, these things have gone up since nine to eleven and accelerated since the financial crisis of two thousand and eight. When we start talking about how the media and smartphones, all those things make people more anxious, this obsess people because the response is always, well, we're not anxious because
of phones. We're anxious because the world is on fire. Our assertion is not that there are no problems in the world. Our assertion, or at least mine, is that the way media, the media environment is one of those problems. It's one of those things that make things worse.
Yeah, I think there's a lot of things, like all the things that you were saying, like the world is on fire nine to eleven, the economic collapse, and then also having devices in our hands feeding us a steady stream of media that's like specifically tailored to us and specifically based on preferences of what makes us angriest or most frightened. Like those things can't be good and yeah, I think there's miles you pulled to Al Jazeera story about like outrage headlines increasing well because.
I mean, yeah again, like we're there's so many facets of how we end up with bad vibes. The bad vibes decades uh trademarked, but yeah, like I think one of them is, you know, like this is some version of like mean world syndrome where a lot of your media diet are just giving you sort of an over emphasis on the terrible things that are happening, which can just lead to like being more cynical or just being
like what the fuck is going on? And yeah, like with Al Jazeera, they analyze like headlines like well, like tens of thousands of headlines from twenty to twenty nineteen just to see what the emotional charge of was of some of these headlines, and they've noticed that things have just gotten more and more increasingly negative since the year two thousand, like you know, headlines that say like quote, Brazil prison riot leaves nine dead rather than things like
a new lens restores vision and brings relief.
And we're seeing just that sort of that.
Rise in those kinds of headlines be equally sort of distributed between the right and left, but there is there is an edge on the right, like with conservative media definitely having those you know, a bigger emphasis on the fear based kind of headline. And I feel the same way too, like because reading as much news as I do, or we have to making this show like that absolutely has an effect on me.
But then you kind of have to.
Take a step back and like, what are the statistics saying you're actually getting something completely different?
Yeah?
Yeah, what the headlines? And again note that there's the year two thousand again when going back to the origin of that, what was driven by that was the death of news being a print medium versus news being an online medium because again with newspaper headlines, like of course once pon a time they had to sell papers that now individual stories have to get clicked on. Yeah, and very very quickly, just through ab testing. Again there's no
conspiracy here. Just through trancking user behavior, they figured out that the more emotionally charge i mean, we saw this cracked, the more emotionally charged headline gets clicked. So now every individual headline because you know, once upon a time you'd have a newspaper with a big headline across the top. You know, Nixon goes to jail whatever. I don't think Nixon never actually went to the other Yeah, yeah, it doesn't matter.
Would have sold papers and it would have been a headline in the modern.
Are and then a lot of the other headlines would be very boring and straightforward city council votes to do whatever. Well, now, if you want people to click on that boring city council story, if it's your job as a journalist get people to click, there's got to be an angle on there that's going to get people mad. And so beyond the examples you gave here, you have the news, you know,
the actual news organization's gathering news. But then you have the aggregators of the content like Coffington Post, BuzzFeed, Vox, all of these sites that basically would take the headline and then do a little blog post about it, and those titles would be things like, you know, if you're not paying attention to this, you're not angry enough, or this clip is going to leave you outraged when you see how they treated this disabled man at McDonald's, you're
going to be furious, Like literally putting the emotion in the headline. If you're not mad, You're not a good person, right, and making that part of the ethos of the time that it's like, if you want to be a good person who cares about the world, you must be angry all the time because there's so much there's so much injustice or whatever. Never Mind that that doesn't help that person in the video. Never Mind that you're watching a clip from three years ago and everyone has forgotten about it.
It doesn't matter. It has bubbled up on the Reddit and now everybody's mad again to no effect, Like it's not motivating you to help this person.
Yeah. What one old, outdated technology I think we're underrating is newsies. These headlines are doing. You know, newsies just used to yell at you to read the newspaper and people would just listen because they're scared of the newsies.
But now they have to scare us with the actual content of the headline, and then I think, you know, we We've also talked recently about how the number of people who identify with a religion or involved in a religion, and the number of people who have access to or regular contact with a community like both are just on
an all time low and going lower. And so I think that there's a broad kind of you can call it spiritual or like broadly psychological level more than ever before where we don't have access to answering some of
the big questions. And so, like we speculated in past one of these like kind of broad episodes about the idea that like maybe stand culture is coming from that this need to sublimate ourselves to something higher and like some mythical like godhead figure or like leader person like because we're not getting that anywhere else, and so like we get stand culture or the stories of the movies that make an imprint on us when we're very young, like Star Wars or you know, Harry Potter, the Matrix,
Like these are our mythical stories that we have chosen to kind of put ourselves like derive our meaning from. And that actually made a lot of sense of how people react, like how Star Wars fans or like fandoms react like there is a religious war when something happens that doesn't cohere to the dogma that they were raised on.
But I think there's a lot of like kind of grasping for meaning as technology has isolated us from one another and from the communities that used to allow people to sort of dissolve their sense of self into like a broader, less kind of self centered way of viewing the world. And I mean, yeah, we were talking about like consumer culture as like kind of another example of
where we see this. I mean with with I guess stand culture is one example of that, but consumerism people have become like very serious consumers, like to like on a deep, deeply personal level.
I feel like yeah, because I mean, like to your point, I mean, I don't you know, the lack of religion or I think the sense of community more than like finding. I mean, people are finding meaning in other things, but I don't know how many people are explicitly like I
just at least something that kind of explains everything. And I think the way we pivot to that is just to find, like you say, like, because we feel so isolated where we want to find community in these other ways that like are interesting to us because I'm not interested in religion, Yeah, but I'm interested in Arsenal Football club, and that is the closest I begin to devote myself to something that's like part like there's a group, there's like a in group where I'm trying to be like
identify with these other supporters. I go through the religious ceremonies of like watching the matches and getting very emotional as I watch them, and be very like emotionally moved when things go up or down, and so like, I find that like most people have like a topic where they will bring that sort of level of like devotion to, you know, like what they're paying attention to and what
they're willing to debate people on, et cetera. Because yeah, like we're all we're all just trying to find something that like feels good and helps us feel connected at the end of the day at least certainly that I can speak for myself in that very narrow example.
Yes, this is something else where you can tract and statistics like the average number of friends and close friends a person has again has been dropping since the nineties, and it is just the people used to meet their friends at church, They used to meet their friends at the office, and now a lot of people work at home,
you know. And that's the thing where we can sit here and talk about as like a mystical thing like there's no sense of unity or community or whatever, but from just a practical point of view, having a friend who will give you a ride to the airport, or who will help you move or you know, like just as in a practical manner. We that's part of what people don't get this. It's part of what a church provided.
Like the church when one person got sick and couldn't work, the other members of the church would bring food to their house. They would come help them clean like that was and you did it because it's like, hey, we all are Baptists or whatever, and we are all on
the same team. And it was That's something that is humans do everywhere that you find humans as we organize and get together, but we usually have to have something to rally around, a symbol or something a tree, this tree si, we all yeah, whatever it is, you know. And unfortunately that also makes us go to war with one another. If you see somebody in a Red Sox Jersey Yankee fan and then it's like, all right, let
let's go punch that guy. But when you talk about and there's a term that is for the modern situation, which is atomization, where you've adomized people to where now if you need a ride to the airport, you're going to you know, pay for an uber and so many of these things that used to be stuff that friends would do. It's like, well, now it's a corporation doing it for you. And I'm not saying that the friends you know purely online aren't your real friends, but it's
a different type of friendship. If it's somebody who you can't call when you've broken your leg you need somebody to go get groceries for you, or vice versa. If you're not the person that like, you feel obligator to do that because they're my friend, like like they depend
on me. It means something to be needed, to be dependent on, Like to get in a situation where nobody depends on you, and like I don't have children or whatever, but like I don't have friends where that friend's gonna call me in the middle of I said, hey, I need you to come bail me in it. Like that sucks in the moment, but knowing that somebody needs you is what keeps you going When you're that isolated from real life connections. It's too easy to just drift away.
Humans need to be needed. Do we need that actual in real life connection?
Which is interesting too because I see this like on TikTok more and more of people posting like these strategies that come off as like the most manipulative, sort of like sadistic things where they talk about it's like you got to be needed, and that's how you do It's
how you develop even deeper relationships. I do this thing with my wife where I unhook the chain from the toilet handle so she'll need and when the toilet isn't working, she will then associate me with someone who can come and solve a problem, and then that helps create a deeper love.
And you're like, oh my god, and people are like really.
Like I mean, that's a kind of fringe element of TikTok, But more and more people are taking these sort of things and sort of finding to like manufacture these kinds of connections because they aren't happening like normally either, and you're kind of like this sounds like sociopathic. But on the other side of it, you can see people sort of like yearning for like, yeah, how do I cultivate a deeper connection?
Do I need to sort of gaslight this person?
And then thinking that the toilet never works and I'm the like magical fixer of that. But again, like you see it expressed in so many ways of that there is this deeper human thing lacking.
Yeah work, I mean then a system from it's always sunny in Philadelphia, right right if you don't know that reference right.
About but a strange like when one of your human interactions most common human interactions is like an uber driver, like a person a stranger you can put on quiet mode like when when you're having a conversation with them. Then it makes sense to me that that sort of manipulation and viewing other people as a means to an end bleed into how you view like other other parts
of your life. Right if everything's just sort of a transactional and I mean they talk about this new sort of information and also like just day to day economy as being a way to reduce the friction of that like got in the way of some of our consumer like spending habits, and like friction in many cases seems to be human interaction. So I think one thing we're
going to say overall human interaction good. Find ways to be part of a community, you know, preferably one that needs you and gives you meaning.
Miles The next time you go on TikTok, like there's a meta narrative in that video you saw, because that algorithm floated up to you a video where the actual message was people are crazy out there and relationships are weird and toxic these days. You would be shocked at what percentage of the feed is some subtle message, some subtle version of out there is dangerous.
Right.
Guys are sexist, women are crazy, their standards are super high. You'll be accused of sexual harassment if you ever try to talk to a woman in any setting. And there's this meta message of the only safe place is at home looking at a screen.
Yeah, women out there and sees people who aren't there, just as you mentioned as a video like it's a person having a mental health episode. That was everywhere for like a week, and I never would have seen thirty you know, twenty maybe like ten years ago.
You know, there was a time when that wouldn't have even shown up in like the police boughter and your local paper. It was a non event. Somebody threw a fit on it, but because it was captured on camera. But the message is it's scary to find there's crazy people out of there, and any conservative news like you if you look at the comments on any conservative news outlet. It's like, well, I won't even drive through this city, like it's just mac It's like, no, it's not. I've
been there. It's people walking around and shopping and eating in the restaurants. Bit It's like no, from from their point of view, it's just cars on fire, smashed windows. Like if you are a white person, the minorities will just drag you off the street because they all it's Antifa and the Black Lives Matter. It's like, you've got such a weird view of the world, but it's all
you're only safe at home. Like you have people living in the middle of whatever, Oklahoma or Montana, someplace where they haven't had a violent crime, and you know, like in six months, where they've got cameras all over the outside of their house and they've got a shotgun under their bed because they're sure that at any moment a gang of twenty five guys is going to come try to take over their house because it's something they saw
on the news. It's like, well, you know, in like in Portland and the Walgreens, they'll just have like twenty five looters show up and steal everything that could happen to me at any time here in North Dakota. Right, It's like, and you see when you see their fear and how irrational it is from the outside, your fear also looks like that to someone else, Like we all have been put into kind of a little a little box, a little fear box.
Well, I think, like to your point, like especially about like I think of things like reddit, right, and the subreddit public freak Out. There's like a subreddit called public freakout that's really popular and it's mostly a lot of people just having some kind of like mental health crisis or something like that, or just some wild thing that's going on. But when you think about like when you're like a kid, I remember being like, oh, what's the ocean like? Or I'm trying to like, you know, draw
on experiences I have. Most of them are like media reference to memories I have, like of a movie or something I saw on TV that was forming even my
own concept of what something was. And now that we have like video that's like IROL type sort of video from cameras that sort of that ups the stakes even more where people begin to associate Well, I did see this one clip of this thing happening in this place now that is exactly what is going to happen to me, and has this effect of just ramping up these fears and like a good like you know, an example of this is, like you're saying, Jason, like, especially on conservative news,
the way they portray certain cities and what quote unquote crime waves are happening. That has this effect on us just as human beings, where the more we're put into
a fear state, the more malleable we become. And also it we inch closer and closer to being in a mindset or a mind state where solving things violently is acceptable because we see just how fucked up and like agro and violent the world is, and just looking at all of those things feeding on each other, it's like, at some point for me, like I realized that the way to even break that kind of cycle was first just to have awareness because a lot of the time, if I am getting caught up on what I read
in the headlines, it it feeds on like, you know, I start ruminating on things that aren't actually necessarily helpful to me because it's also not the reality. Because we talk about the quote unquote crime waves that were that everyone wanted to talk about in the last year that just didn't exist, and it's it's much easier to be like, Okay, I know I'm seeing a lot of like over emphasis on these like visually really like you know, uh, provocative
images and videos. But that's not actually, that's not that's not the most accurate depiction on what on what is happening.
Yeah, And it's specifically like designed that way, specifically based on like it's nothing is based on reality as much as it's based on what is going to feed. Like nobody was sitting back and being like, what we're going to make up a crime wave? It was that people's like that that was the story that made people have the most scared reaction, and therefore they clicked on it, and therefore they got more of it, and the media you know, keeps feeding them. All Right, let's let's take
a quick break and we'll come back. We'll talk about climate, which I think plays into this in a bunch of ways. And also just you know, are there solutions like what can we do?
No?
Then nothing and we're back. And so the latest Mission Impossible dropped last night or two nights ago. It's getting great reviews. It does indeed seem to be about Ethan Hunt battling a self aware AI program known as the Entity, which I don't know this like he might as well from my perspective, like that is as dramatically impactful as like he's battling a wizard this time. It's just like, Okay, well that doesn't really make sense to me or like does It's not like really a thing, and that does.
When people are critical of the movie, they seem to say, like all the stuff about AI kind of drags a little bit, but and visually it is depicted as basically an evil screensaver from nineteen ninety nine, like it's just the black circle with with like white dots of light. Three hundred million dollar movie, by the way, but it can. So. The main claim that the movie makes about this AI, and I guess AI in general, is that the program can also see the future, like very specifically through its
predictive technology. And that's like based on what we're seeing in news headlines like the you know, deep learning teaching computers to predict the future is like a headline I feel like I've seen a hundred times spooky Artificial intelligence can accurately predict the future, and it's about to be asked more questions. AI can now predict crime before it happens as well, we'll get into in a moment.
And you mean like that movie Minority Report. Also, yeah, Tom Cruise Cruise, Yeah, he's he. I feel like his sense of reality is probably more blurred by the movies he's in than any other movie star.
Well, yeah, because he has.
An entire organization blurring his reality. Yeah, before he hits set and then you're in that magical landscape where he's made himself king. Yeah. I mean that that guy's not living on planet Earth.
He doesn't need too.
Yeah. The this movie actually was like written, it was supposed to come out like years ago, but the production famously shut down due to the coronavirus outbreak, which, according to reports in February twenty two, when he was putting a real damper on offshore location shoots. Wow, gave us the Tom Cruise thing where it was clear that he thought he was the last barrier between like the end of the world and you know, coronavirus just like killing
everyone where he was like shouting at everyone. But first of all, I just want to say too, Ai, speaking of I'd like to issue a big where were you on that one? Dipshit to the AI on predicting the global pandemic, Like you couldn't We couldn't see that one coming. A lot of people saw it coming, people mere people saw it coming. But yeah, the whole predicting the future thing seems to be vastly overstated. Like there's a so the MI T researchers who had created a computer that could supposedly lose.
Mission Impossible Technology Mission Impossible Technology am I technology.
Yes, yeah, they are loosely associated. But it was basically like they were predicting. They would show the computer a picture and then the computer would predict, like what would happen for the next one point five seconds in that picture? And like that it was like someone walking across the golf course and they were like, that thing's about to keep walking across that golf course. They were like, holy shit, you guys. Or like one was a wave crashing, they
were like, I think it's gonna keep crashing. Call me crazy, and they were like, fucking a, do you think it's brilliant? Thing's magical and yeah, and then like MIT Mission Possible Technology also developed an algorithm that could predict how people will greet each other and got a lot of cool headlines for that. It was trained on YouTube videos and reruns of the Office and Desperate Housewives. Amazing, and it was only right just over forty three percent of the time.
We never greet each other like we do ones for Housewives. I wish we did, but like, I can't just walk up to my enemy and slap them across the face.
It's not reality, I know, and that sucks. And hopefully we'll get to that world soon. That's my future that I'm hopeful for. But so one second away from the greeting, they could only predict it forty three percent at a time. So this is what I'm always wondering, Like, what how does that compare to humans? Humans making the same prediction were right seventy one percent of the time. Oh so much better than this AI that everyone did. You guys ever see the sixty minutes where they like this sixty
minutes about AI. I think it came out like back in March or April, and like Scott, I think it's Scott Pelly, like one of the old journalists on sixty minutes, is just like okay, like write a speech for me about this, and then he seems to be blown away, like the amount of text it produces, like he's like that just rolled a whole speech in four seconds, Like
he's it's like he's never seen a computer before. But I do think we're at a weird place where people will you can just be like magic AI is bad guy in movie, and everyone's like, yep, that makes sense, because like we we should be afraid of AI, but people don't really know why necessarily we should be, and so we just you know, like it's the same thing that happens with all our conspiracy theories, and you know, we should be scared about the pandemic, we should be
scared about the government's response to the pandemic, but people create like vast conspiracy theories just to make sure they're like scared about it for nonsensical reasons. It's like we need that like cognitive dissonance transference happening, and I feel like we're starting to see that with AI, Like AI is going to be magic and tell us everything that could happen to us for the rest of our lives. And that's that's not the scary thing about AI.
Right, The scary thing is like Skynet. And that's the thing. Like movies have been having AI as the villain for like decades now, and I feel like I don't know what my point is gonna be. But remember Terminator one. I remember the Matrix from nineteen ninety nine, over twenty years ago. Like, I just think it's funny that AI, I guess, hasn't evolved very much in movies. Yeah, I don't know, No, I mean for real, like we've been knowing tho is what I'm saying.
Yeah, And I think it's interesting. You know, movies, by their very nature have to heighten and dramatize in order to effectively bring home their messages, particularly if we're looking at genre films, and the AI has always been like, you know, turns into a cop and now it's hunting you, or you know, it takes away your freedom of choice. You know, if we look at the matrix, Yes, what's the other one that report a minority report, Like they're saying that crime.
And it's said in the future. It's like a sci fi movie where sorry, mission impossible is supposed to be. Like even though they can take masks off that make them look exactly like the other person like you wouldn't see Tom Cruise fighting robots necessarily, or like, no, you know that that feels like it's a step into this is ship that can actually happen.
Yeah, yeah, and I appreciate the grounding. I think we got there because it's so much more tactile in this moment. I think between if you think about your grocery store workers who have been concerned about self checkout for like over a decade, a lot of those stories are unionized and have actively been like, hey, you're taking jobs from like checkout counter people, some of whom are elderly, and this is like the last place they can work and
make money consistently. To the writers and actors who may be on strike by the time this comes out, and there feared that not only could AIBS to take their job, but I mean for performers, can my face be doing things long, long, long after I'm dead and what will that look like? I think, as we're sort of confronting these things, AI is a really freaking dope tool. I'm so much more concerned about these executives who are like,
oh great, now I don't have to pay people. Did you guys see the on nine article that was written by AI. They came out a couple days ago. They have Internet in a tangle.
Yeah, this is like I've ever since I've been you know, working on the Internet, creating trying to create like unique interesting content. There's also been this push to just flood the zone with shit. To quote Steve Bannon, like we we used to like crack cracked zoned by a company that was like also just destroying Google's search results with just like fake articles like answers to questions and stuff. And they were like trying to get us to like do that. Just like there was like scale, how do
we scale? And like that's been you know that that intersection of tech and media has always been scary because it's very easy for them to just create ninety nine million articles using technology now that like yeah, pass like a little bit like you have to like read a paragraph to be like wait this this wasn't written by a human, wasn't. Yeah.
So article was like ranking the Star Wars movies in like chronological order, I think, yeah, And they got the dates wrong on many of them. Sometimes they weren't even listed in chronological order. The way they were dated. The information in individual movies was in corect. It was just error filled, like no logical saying editor would have been like and publish. And what's crazy is I don't know his entire union that's actively been like, hey, we do
not want this. It does not make sense to ask an AI program that cannot consistently write fact checked articles to be publishing these and then asking somebody an editor to like go through and essentially rewrite this incorrect work that isn't benefiting anyone, because who needs this list? We have twenty seven thousand of this very specific Well, this is dumb uh and it's wild that, you know. I'm glad the Internet roasted the editor in chief pretty intently.
I'm really hoping that brings them back to the table and there can be working discussions about how this company decides to use AI and the future. But it's that kind of stupid shit that's like really draining, I think on workers across job titles.
It's just like, what are.
We what are you trying? You just want to force people out of work and that's not a logical thing for you to do to yourself.
You mean the product money.
Yeah, to your point, the product sucks, like the product like the AI as bad as it's bad at its fucking job, like with regards to like the self checkout thing, that the AI like can't stop people from stealing stuff, and so the companies are like losing massive amounts of money on theft, and then in order to combat that, they're just like making claims that like everyone's shoplifting when it's just like no, like you just put a like inadequate program like as the thing in charge of like
making sure people can't steal stuff or like that they don't want to steal stuff, and it's just not going to it's not going to work.
But they made it way too easy because when I was in college, we would for sure bring up like a full roast chicken as like some griefs man, we're good stop no uh, And there's personators is the possible way you could get like that used to be somebody's job to scan and bag your stuff. There's no possible way to get around. So that's what I'm saying though, like none of these things are thought out. They just see a way to potentially preserve money without looking at the long term.
Costs, and then they still have to hire someone to monitor the self checkout area, so it's like, well, how much money are you actually saving, mister grocery.
Yeah, big Grocery, which are now owned by just like two companies in all of America. But yeah, like so they've also been using it in like predictive crime fighting technology. But of course, first of all, the data that it's being fed is from police data, so it's you know, using the it's not predicting. It's predicting like where police are spending their time is essentially which is in low income and you know, non white neighborhoods, And it's just
complete bullshit. There's one great anecdote where Chicago's predictive policing software, created by the Illinois Institute of Technology, compiled a list of people most likely to be involved in a violent crime and they're, oh, no, a AI, baby, check out this because it was generated by AI, you can trust this. And then an investigation later found that the software is list of future criminals included every single person arrested or
fingerprinted in Chicago since twenty thirteen. WHOA, So it was just like copying off of another like data size A I can do.
Is it can gather and redistribute information using keywords that the person using it inputs, which means it's logically going to be flawed because it's not understanding the words, it's just organizing them in a way that it thinks make
sense to you. It's on a thinking machine. Yeah, the technology is not there yet, and people are way too eager to jump into it and in a way that would almost assuredly collapse society, which is why it's insane to me that we're still having to like explain this to people to be like they're like, did you see the article from was it the Hollywood Reporter that came out about the executives and how they're choosing to fight the unions.
Yeah, by just waiting them out.
Yeah, essentially, And the key part that's resonated with me was like, this is a necessary evil.
Yeah.
It was the verbatim words from this quote story. So we're pretty sure this is a scare tactic to get sagged to not strike and them saying, hey, we'll wade out. The writers will wait out the actors as well. But I think what's really happened is they fired up the base of unions to be like, excuse me, a necessary evil is not destroying the beautiful industry can be that people have tried to create here for literally over a century.
It's nonsensical. I just I can't understand the end game other than I guess forty people will be a little bit wealthier.
Yeah, that's all it is. Yeah, I don't think it's going to cause society to collapse. It'll just accelerate the thing that's already happening, which is just like grotesque inequality like gets worse and like they're able to hire fewer people to do jobs. And also the other thing that that seems to be happening is like the quality of everything is getting worse, and like that's going to keep happening, you know, like TV shows, movies.
Or But to my point, isn't that like if we can track revolutions based off the price of bread, right, Like, so when people can no longer afford bread, that's when they riot in the streets and take out leaders and get very serious about their actions because everybody's base staple
for survival. Then we have a fairly largely the entertainment community is huge, which I know some people think this is like a very small or elite space, but it's ginormous, and most of the people working in it are like working class people.
And so if you.
Eliminate everyone who I mean, because essentially, what when AI gets good enough, when it's actually usable, it will eliminate everybody who is of average talent. Right. What you do is you write pretty cute Hallmark stories and you're pretty good at that, and they're successful enough to get commercials into air frequently. Think you can probably buy a house, and you can fut your kids and send them to college,
and you can have a very comfortable life. If AI can do that job, then you're wiping out hundreds of thousands of jobs, and that is really really bad news for like Los Angeles, the county. I just to me, I know, it's like a small first step, but to me, like the dominoes seem large and looming absolutely like probable, like if things are not stopped immediately. And I really think that that's the takeaway from the WGA strike in and I really do hope SAG joints because it's not
just going to stop at the entertainment industry. It's going to continue to all out to it, like we are one American workforce and we're all about to be impacted by this ship.
It's great, all right, that's gonna do it. For this week's weekly Zeitgeist, Please like and review the show if you like, the show means the world to Miles. He needs your validation, folks. I hope you're having a great weekend and I will talk to him Monday. By spe