Hello the Internet, and welcome to this episode of the Weekly Zeitgeist.
Uh.
These are some of our favorite segments from this week, all edited together into one NonStop infotainment laugh stravaganza. Uh yeah, So, without further ado, here is the Weekly Zeitgeist. I gotta give a shout out to a zeit gang Geist listener, Smooth Lou I believe is the name Smooth Lou, who solved the mystery? Did you see this on Twitter?
Wait?
What was it?
Grand Puba? It's a Grand Puba track from nineteen ninety five.
I guess. And did you go back and you checked it out?
Yeah?
Yeah, it's definitely that's the song.
Oh wait, wasn't it was just a check on two thousand?
Yeah.
I don't know why it took us so long. I guess it like didn't didn't really hit that.
Wow.
Wow wow Yeah, check out that song. It's okay, kind of it's kind of good. I wow. Stand to buy my reference two.
Thousand Yeah, I still love Okay, the energy is still there.
Wow.
Shout out hiking. Honestly, you guys, fucking between all of y'all, we don't need Google and we could have googled it, but it was hard to just google two thousand song lyric.
Really so Smooth Lou great, great Twitter handle even better at saving my ass from making it seem like I was referencing a Billy Joel's song.
Yeah, Smooth Lou, we owe you a hamburger.
Yes, Smooth Lou came through with that said, I got you, fan, thanks for all you do. And then somebody else came through and vouch for Smooth Lou. Was like, pretty cool, dude, I miss you Smooth Lou like no forever, so much love to Smooth Lou. Wow, this one goes out to you. All right, Miles, it's a special episode. We're talking labor, I'm talking.
I'm still blown away that smooth loop. I mean, did you hear it? You know?
Yeah?
I started playing a little a second ago and I'm like this speaks Wow.
Yeah, big poopa head over here.
Yeah damn all right, anyway, sorry, anyway, Back to you, Jack and back to you, Miles.
Yep, No, back to you, to you fam this episode we are no and I'm still gonna go back to you. Pal. Shoulders are loose, Yeah.
Shoulders loose, head on a swivel. Yeah, the Hipscott Honey, so it's time. You know what that means, It's time to be thrilled to be joining our third See professor of Alaska Native Languages at the University of Alaska Southeast, the host of the podcast The Tongue Unbroken from Next the Next Up Initiative.
Please welcome doctor who Lance Twitch. Hi, It's me.
I'm the problem. I'm colonization. How's it going. It's so good to do you good.
Yeah, good to have you back.
You know, someone tried AI with our thing it language. There was no there's a reporter here in Juno for the Juno Empire, and so she had entered a short she wrote a short story and then she entered it into this thing that that had the Clinket language as an option, and then she sent it to me. She said, could you just take a look at this? And I said, well, those are words, but it's just grabbing words and just putting them at random, including my name, like my name
was in the story like ten times. And so I said, wow, it's just complete gibberish. It makes no sense.
So the computer like from it, from it trying to glean information about cling it that it found your name and it's like Okay, so this must also be part of the mix. Yeah, yeah, and here we go, here's your story. Wait, I didn't you read what It was truly out of order? Just like yeah, yeah, there's a couple of words. But like one of the big problems is when you change a urb in our language is
it changes a lot. And so to be able to man you could you could develop something that could manufacture stuff in our language, but you would have to spend a lot of hours. And so what it seems like it did is found a dictionary and just sort of grab words but never really looked at what they mean, I guess. And so it's just like here's a bunch of words, here's a word salad, and that's your story.
So you know, task complete. Yeah, I mean that's good.
Get to know that AI is still right now, it's only fucking up like English.
Yeah right, and so but it's probably coming for everything eventually. And so but maybe maybe there's a world where you have someone to talk to because with our with our language, we have about forty people left who could speak, so it does get pretty scary. And we have a language north of us that's called Ea that lost its last living bird speaker, and when she was the only speaker for quite a while, she would say, I talked to my TV, I talked to the walls. I talked to God,
and nobody talks to me. So like, what we're trying to do is like keep that from happening. So I started with a Taylor Swift take on a Taylor Swift song because I thought, maybe if we can get the Swifties and the Beehive on board with decolonization, right like they they've got so much energy and commitment, and so I think maybe we'll get somewhere.
Yeah, I think it definitely makes sense for Taylor Swift. I feel like she her career has gone from being just like ah shucks.
I don't know.
I guess I'm just kind of a good songwriter to like she We've like witnessed her waking up a little bit to the complexities of the modern world. So I don't know at least, Yeah, you know, which isn't isn't that her?
Yeah, that's why I got those new albums Private equities, because version Baby, private equity, All lines go back.
There, even a bro clock, you know. Yeah, what is something from your search history that is.
Who you are?
My search history is chaotic and just like so I looked at it and was like, oh, this screams helped me. I was looking up asexuality, the difference between attraction and desire, but I was also looking at STI rates in America and non toxic condoms.
Okay, so asexuality SDI rates non Wait, so wait, what are toxic condoms?
Most condoms are owned by the most condom companies are owned by the same five companies, And if you get a box, you'll notice that it doesn't have ingredients listed on them, but they do have ingredients that're just not required to which is really crazy, and a lot of the ingredients are harmful, irritating, or in some cases toxic.
I didn't know that, Like I do all this.
Research for the show that I have, and I just interviewed these ladies who have a non toxic condom company, and I had the same reaction. I said, I'm sorry, right right right, I've, like, you know, been with a toxic dood or two.
But I didn't realize.
I was, yeah, that seems like something I can control. So yeah, things like parabins or preservatives, Like why would a condom have preservatives for.
The flavor, keep it fresh.
You're not wrong, Yeah, you're not wrong. But if it's just if you just have like just latex and just silicone, right right, don't need those other.
Things, right, So what is it preserving? Exactly? The patriarchy?
I didn't no, no, no, bad ass, Like that's really what it is.
It's like, it's like, I don't know, it doesn't fuck the guy up.
Yeah.
Basically, it's just like all those memes about like is he worth risking your pH over this? It's like, no, that's really accurate, right truly, I know. So anyway, that's how I spend my time.
There you go, Jango. What's something you think is overrated?
Oh my god, Well this is going to kind of fly in the face of my whole summer tomatoes love. But I am coming to the conclusion these last couple of years that I think the season of summer is overrated. I think, no shit, yeah, well there you go. It's a consensus. I think it's just too hot. People are a little too weird and angry. In New York City especially. It just kind of like bucks the brain chemistry a little. So I think as I get older, I'm quickly transitioning
to a fall man. I think falls where it's at falls where all the dreams come true.
Summer is just sticky, repetitive, day in day out. Yeah, rain falling apart. Can't sleep at night, three showers a day, I just can't take anymore. Guys, you're a fall guy, the fall guy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it is like we it gets really positive media. Like we were talking about how heat waves the deadliest weather event in the United States year and year out, and the photographs that get like posted next to that story and the news is like children playing in a sprinkler, like drinking out of a fire hoser, right, not.
People at the beach.
Yeah, like going to the beach or just somebody sweating while pouring water on their head. So it's like, but yeah, summer, I mean, in addition to just like the straight up heat deaths, like violence always rises during the summer bedtime.
They should show the beer.
Ll should be like a guy freaking out of the subway, like my car's not working, my car's not working, my car's not working, Like yeah, losing his mind.
That's what summer kind of vokes for me.
Yeah, it's interesting too, how climate change is just completely souring people now on seasons that used to be like the cool one, like like it used to be like no one would ever. I think summer is overrated unless you're like someone was, like I get burned easily. But now it's truly it's like it's fucking unbearable at times
outside and that isn't a good feeling. But I wonder if then that swings with like winter, when we get like more intense winters and we're like, yeah, fuck the Arctic freezes that we have every six months too.
Yeah, got a lot in store. It seems like what's what's something you think is underrated?
Oh? Boys, strap in for this one.
I've become all about room temperature water. Okay, I think I think I want my water the same temperature as my bi I don't want it hurting my teeth. I don't want space and my refrigerator, my tiny New York refrigerator filled. So lately it's been a pitcher.
Of water on the counter, you know, a nice eighty degrees pound it easy.
That's that's my approach going forward.
So it's a sipping thing.
It's more like you're doing like an F one pit stop just to get the hydration quickly.
Yeah, purely, efficient, efficiently, and also like I think like this in this in the same way the media hypes up summer, the media will hype up glistening cold glasses of water with perfect, perfect cubic ice cube.
But I don't think that's about it. I think waters be nice, nice and mild, so it's not to offend my delicate sensibilities.
I can I feel like I can only drink ice water. I don't know why. I just like it feels. I think that's how in my mind I elevate ice like water to like a fun thing. It's cold and nice and crisp. But now I can just drink jugs of it. But yeah, yeah, body temp water, all right, I'll try it. I'll think of it in the way of like, it's more about how can I get it down quickly?
Yeah?
Yeah, I'm alos like neurotic drink a shill out of water every day, guys, So I think it just makes it easier for me. So maybe if you have more like pleasurable relationship with water, it would be different, But for me, it's all about the function.
Right right, Yeah, Why do I think room temp water is like drinks slower than cold water. Is that just because that my preference is cold water? I'm not sure, but yeah, I think I can like just hammer back a lot of cold water, and room temp water is like harder to get down.
Don't you ever get the shivers?
I don't know.
A little bit. You're like, I'm a delicate little flour. I think it's the lesson we're learning here, is I really?
Yeah, it's like, don't the water can't be too hot or too cold now, it has to be just around the temperature of his internal organs.
Something related to what you said about tooth pain that I've just discovered is underrated for me is sensitive toothpaste. I was I wasn't for some reason. I was just not not paying attention to that as an option. I've started using it lately, and my teeth don't hurt anymore when I when I eat stuff that's cold or so.
Yeah, I don't know.
I thought I picture, I like I limped lumped sensitive toothpaste in with elderly toothpaste for some reason.
Yeah, people with dentures, Yeah, that's how it started, you know what I mean.
But we all, we all got those little sensitive spots you know, sometimes it's better to do it like that.
You got a G T A five poster behind you.
I was just me, oh Jesus, now this is south South Vietnam, North Vietnam, A great, great.
Place for the g T A franchise to go far jacking people.
Yeah right, exactly the fall of Saigon. Okay, because there's a there's like that little peninsul at the bottom. Because I'm so yeah, game brained, I'm a GT.
Five mat bro totally yeah. Yeah yeah. It does have a little icons like banks and safe houses.
Yeah yeah, yeah, cool, cool, cool.
All right, let's take a quick break and we'll come back and talk about and imploding presidential campaign. We'll be right back, and we're back, and we are thrilled to be joined in air third Seed by a very friend of comedian, writer, executive producer, TV host and labor organizer who you know from Adam Ruins everything his podcast factually and being out in these streets picketing, acting as member of the negotiating committee, serving on the w.
GA West Board of Directors. It's Adam Connor, and.
That that was all my credits. I have a lot of time them have those things. I'm not doing now because I'm on strike. I'm not a TV host right now.
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean things nascent.
When it's all over, I'll be back on your screens, you know.
There you go, yes, yes, yes, Well thanks for joining us.
I can't imagine this is a busy time for you at all.
Yeah.
I was just sounds like I got nothing going on.
I was just out on the street nel for for three four hours. Ninety degree he with a sign, talking to people. It's a blast, man, It's I'm having so much fun out there. The solidarity feels so good. It's just it's great.
I love it.
Yeah, yeah, I mean people are making sacrifices, you know. But there's our political directors, a wonderful woman, Rachel Torres.
She's brilliant.
She told me, you know, if you're smiling while you're sacrificing, if you're having a good time while you're making the sacrifice, then they can't beat you. And I think that that is really true.
Yeah, for sure, big cheerleader smiles out there on the Yeah, great, people, it's it's a party.
A guy brought a sound system to Netflix and now he's playing like sort of mid tempo like dance music. You know, it feels like kind of that outdoor day club like pool club kind of people almost feel like they should be having frozen cocktails walking around like it's just the vibes are good. And then he's like remixed like people giving speeches like fran Dresser's speech. Someone told me he like remixed one of my tiktoks into a song.
Of like you know, so you want to pick a line, lil lil, Yeah.
And you sent them a takedown notice immediately.
I'm yeah, better who signed off?
But yeah, I mean we were talking with this feels like a huge moment for labor. These are you know, with the w g A some of the most influential like unionized union protected workers on the planet. But with with actors, with the Screen Actors Guild, you know, the.
Faces, the beauty, beauty and brains coming.
Together, you know.
But yeah, I don't know, just kind of thinking about this, think about the history of labor and unions in Hollywood. It feels like Hollywood to this point. The fact that unions have been a presence in Hollywood for as long as they have. It's a great learning moment for why capitalism doesn't work without unions basically.
Yeah, yeah, well.
It's an open question where the capitalism works at all, you know.
And I think you're arguing, yeah, like unions are the thing that keep people from being like, oh, Marx was definitely right, yeah, yeah, right right.
I mean, look, I sort of don't get into Marxism socialism. I don't do isms. I just know that the union and the union structure is the only way to fight back, right, and so so I you know, the union is a hammer and I grabbed the hammer and I start smashing ship and it's it's really fun.
Yeah.
So, I mean the only reason people even think of writing, acting, directing as.
Being lucrative jobs.
You know, like if you say, oh, my cousin's a actor in LA, you might be, oh, he's if he's working, he's making good money.
Right, That's what the assumption is.
That's only because we've got strong unions in this town for ninety years. The Writer School was founded ninety years ago, and it's only because those unions went on strung. The last time the writers and actors went on strike together was nineteen sixty and in that negotiation, we won our health and pension plans, and we won the existence of residual payments, which are the payments we get every time
the product is aired. Right, and that's why I have a health and pension today is because they went on strike. Then that's why I've gotten residuals to help tide me through the slow periods of my career. Is because of those actors and writers going on strike. And so now it's our turn to do the same thing, and that's why we're out there.
Yeah.
As a thought experiment, I was trying to think of, like, what do we think the last ninety years of movies and TV look like if the industries were never unionized.
YouTube looks like YouTube, you know, people barely scraping by, or it looks like I mean, look at Korea for instance, there was or the anime industry, right, those are two extremely popular. You know, they make a lot of media that's consumed by a lot of people, and the people who make the media aren't able to make a living. There was a great piece in La Times a couple of weeks ago about how the guy who created squid Game, you know, they and Netflix trotted this guy's story out
as a hero story. You know, Oh, he tried to make the show for ten years and he couldn't make it until Netflix gave him a chance.
They became a worldwide hit.
Right that guy made from the first season, which was a again worldwide smash like Game of Thrones level, you know, people watching it, he made two hundred thousand dollars.
Yeah, that's you know, that's a good living. Right.
That's not what you should get if you made the most popular show ever, right, And that's the guy who created the show, the people who worked on the shows, and the people who create you know, your more average K dramas, right that. You know, you know, I hear about one or two K K dramas or K comedies a year, but you know the ones that are a little further down the down the pipe, that that the the real fans watch. Those people are literally not making
a living making television. They are writing those shows in between their day jobs or they're working eighteen hour days, and then when the show ends, they're just like, well, back to my day job.
Right.
And this this article, you can look up La Times, you know, squid Game Korean Google that and you'll find the article goes into really long detail on that. And the reason is there's no unions and Netflix is exploiting that. I mean they talk about Netflix came into that market and said, oh, we want to you know, spread Korean content around the world, and they created a lot of work. They created a lot of shows, but no one's being paid because the stand the work standards are so abysmal.
It's sweatshop media unfortunately.
Yeah.
Yeah, I had no idea that that was the thing. I mean again, obviously because a lot of Korean media is so good that I was like, oh, yeah, is a natural progression of things. And then I remember, oh, Netflix is going in like but there was a moment I was like, oh, they're going in like to the point where I was like, oh, they might. They're really trying to put their foot down in Korea. I had no ideas because they're like, yeah, man.
You can get away with anything over here.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
I mean, it's just like it's a car company, you know, moving to Mexico, right, or to any other or you know Nike in Bangladesh, right, it's uh there they are taking advantage of poor work standards to get the product a lot cheaper.
And you know, why do the companies love anime?
You know, it's awesome as an American you know, someone who grew up you know, trading VHS tapes of anime that it's like popular in the US now it's popular around the world.
That's great. But I mean, you guys know that.
Horrible conditions that anime has made in I mean people, people die in that industry.
Make jokes about it. I remember, and I was like, is that a joke or is that one of those Simpsons jokes? So they're like, no, no, no, that's real.
It's awful. It's awful.
And that's one of the reasons they're pumping it out, is they is they feel that they can, you know, get more content for less dollars.
Now. The thing about that, though, is that.
American American media is still the most popular valuable media in the world.
Right.
It's still what people want to watch, like from a big budget thing like Avatar to right to you know, even you know, reruns of old sitcoms. Right, people are still watching Friends in Australia, you know, yeah, and Ireland.
Yeah, and new shows as well.
Right, that is what people want to watch more than anything else, both in America and around the world. And one of the reasons for that is because the entertainment industry has been the only place that paid creators fairly for the last hundred years. You know, if you are a great writer and you want to make if you want to if you want to buy a big house of your writing, you know, where are you gonna go. Are you gonna work in journalism? Are you going to
work in novels? No, You're going to go try to sell a big movie script.
Right.
That's been the pattern in Hollywood up until basically the early two thousands, where you had the best writer literally Faulkner and Fitzgerald came to Hollywood right to write movies. And you know, to think about, well they both drank themselves to death, but too much money.
Yeah, but you know that was that was the way it worked.
And the companies have broke in that compact, and as a result, the content is getting worse. Unfortunately, you know, we're entering this Marvel period where they're trying to you know, they're saying, oh, the actor doesn't matter, the writing doesn't matter.
All that matters is Spider Man.
People will go to see Spider Man no matter what, you know, no matter who's in the suit, no matter what he's saying, right, and it's not actually true because you know, look at what happened with The Flash, right, they realize they can't just cram in superheroes and expect people to show up. But you know, all that that makes the CEOs think is they need to pump harder. They need to you know, get more blood out of that stone. But so these companies are destroying the compact.
And why did the compact work because the unions. We had strong unions here that that you know, meant we had good working nditions, meant people wanted to move here to Los Angeles or to New York to make the content. And we're fighting to change that to make it the way it should be.
I feel like The Flash is a good example of you know, the Flash recently came out. Indiana Jones recently came out and the primary complaint that you heard from them is creepy CGI, like terrible, weird CGI that take takes you out of it, and like effects are a frequent complaint and you hear people like wonder why, like how this happens on some of these movies. They spent three hundred million dollars in effects and it's at least
partially because the effects houses are not unionized. If that is not a part of the industry that is protected, and so you have situations where the effects house that won the Oscar for Life of Pie is out of business by the time they get the award.
You know, you know if you.
Talk to I've talked to people who work at effects houses for Marvel, and they're treated terribly. You know, they're they're asked to do impossible things on impossible turnarounds that you know, well, we want we want to like this. No, we want to like this. You have to change everything, but we're not going to pay you more, and you have so much time to do it. You know that kind of request. The people who work at these companies, you know that their careers last five years and then
they burn out because they can't do it anymore. It's like video games, and you know, the proof is in the pudding. But also you know, we're we're in a new era of the special effects. Right, it used to be the special effects the CGI was there to impress and delight the audience. Right, Oh my god, look at the terminator and terminator too, right, he's melting. He's the Melting Man, it's look how cool or toy story right, Look how great it looks.
Now they use it as a cost cutting device.
They use it in order to they're like, oh, if we just like send it all to a VFX house that's not Union and make them do all the work, it's a lot cheaper. You know, if you look at the difference between Look the New Mission Impossible, Right, I saw it.
Look it's not a good movie, but.
You don't think it's an accurate depiction of AI.
It is interesting that the villain is AI. Right, but the script is I don't want to get into it.
Right.
But the action scenes, right, It's got these two incredible action sequences that are totally worth seeing in a theater. Had people hooting and hollering great time. And why did they work so well? Because they fucking happened in real life, because they put in the effort and the craft and the time to you know, go to the place and do the stunt and shoot the thing, or to build the set, or to buy the car, or to put the person in the place right.
And uh, for movies like The.
Flash, they're like, just have the guy stand in front of a green screen and we'll make some underpaid couple bozos. Yeah, you know, sorry, they're not bozos. They're great artists, but they're underpaid. They don't have enough time.
In terrible conditions.
Yeah, so it's cut rate. It's sweatshop content, you know.
And about another lightning portal in the sky, what if we did.
It was coming out of portals?
Yeah, yeah, there's portals, flashy stuff.
Yeah, Adam, I gotta ask though, right, like these costs they got to the studios got to cut costs because I've heard it.
Straight from their mouths. Times are tough. Oh yeah for studios.
I heard Bobby Jay I'll say I grew in a very fancy way. Uh, you know, really be out here being like you know, their their demands are unrealistic or other people.
I've heard that.
I've heard the thing over and over that times are hard for studios. And we've talked a lot about this where you know, Iiger's pay was what approaching twenty seven million for the year, and like people like what David Zaslov almost be like a quarter of a billion dollars in twenty twenty one. Yeah, what how would you define from their perspective, it's it's that they're trying to inaccurately describe a problem that they maybe they have created through their own business decisions.
Yeah.
I mean, that's a wonderful answer to your own question. That's a great way to put it. I mean, look, these guys are raking it in. And let's be really clear. So writer producer pay has fallen by twenty three percent at the median over the last ten years. That's the Writer's Guild's own figures. That's total pay. Over the same time, show budgets have gone up by fifty percent. Revenue has gone up, profits have gone up for these companies, just
their entertainment divisions. I'm not even talking about you know, Disney's got they've got theme parks. We're not talking about that. We're just talking about literally the entertainment divisions of the companies. Revenue, profits, budgets all up while our salaries go down. At the same time, they're paying these companies, these CEOs, massive, massive
amounts of money. I mean, Bob I here, when he made those comments, he had just negotiated for himself an additional two years and he's making an extra fifty million bucks a year.
That guy doesn't fucking need that money.
He's already incredibly wealthy if you look at the aggregate he's made over the last ten years. How dare he go on television and plead poverty while the rest of us are not able to make a living while his workforce is not able to make health insurance or you know, make a living anymore.
It's revolting, but its line goes up shit right, it's their answering to the Wall Street And for Wall Street, it's never enough, like when you have a good year, that that is an indication that you should keep being better years. Like that's what we want to consistently see that line.
Also these but it's not just that because growth is growth is possible, right if you do you can do it the right way. You can pay everybody properly and make good shit that people actually like and make more money. That's my belief in life. And there's companies that fucking do it right. And also it's what the entertainment industry did for a long time, Like a lot of people were paid shitty in the entertainment industry, you know, like the unions are the ones that you know that protected
us PA's We have always been paid shittily. There's a lot of bad shit in Hollywood. But like you know, from the eighties through the two thousands, everybody liked the product. Right, we had peak TV, Right, everyone had cable, We were watching ads. We were fine with it. We could watch on demand or use DVR if we needed to.
You know what I mean.
Everything was people were making so much money. People are going to the movie theater. The content was good, you know, and the people who made it were paid. And now what's happening. People don't like the product anymore.
You know.
The Netflix revolution was a lie that they you know, the idea that you could pay fifteen dollars a month and never have to pay another penny and never watch an ad, and watch every show ever made. They were lying to the public that that was possible. They destroyed a profitable business model in order to find a new one. But at the same time, they kept enough of the money for themselves that the people at top at the top are doing better.
Well, everyone else does.
Worse, But the companies would grow more if they if they did it the right way.
Period.
Yeah, the Golden Age of TV is a great example of the WGA working because you know, like you mentioned like the WGA, and like the things that the WGA has provided, like writers with like the ability to make a living during dry periods or whatever, like helps writers,
you know, remain writers. And a lot of the best TV is created by people with the long time experience in like past successful and unsuccessful TV shows like Breaking Bad is created by a former X Files writer, Like there's a big break between the Sopranos comes from a writer on Northern Exposure, like Matthew Weiner cut his teeth on Becker and in Laws before.
He got on Sopranos, you know.
Yeah, but like the you know on your episode where like where you were talking about the strike, you were talking to I think David Goodman, Yeah who and you know his family guy writer who all told a story about how he almost quit the industry, but like a residual check for a show he wrote on in the past that he said like wasn't very good, but him it got him through so that he could keep being
a writer. And there's just all this all this information that gets passed down, Like I forget where I heard it, but somebody was saying that, like the family tree of all of the Golden Age TV shows it all like traces back to Colombo and like that show then like created all like all the writers on that became showrunners on other shows and it just like branched down. So
we magically have this period of Golden era TV. But like that doesn't happen if the television industry works the way like the industry that I think all three of us have a background in is like creating content for the Internet. Yeah, like just the way that we've seen that devolve over the past fifteen years.
It doesn't exist anymore.
It doesn't exist like.
There are no guardrails and there were no ways to you know, like ensure good outcomes for the people that were contributing to that environment.
Yeah, because they the company has decided to pull them, sell them for parts.
You know.
I mean look at look I like I play video games, right, so I like reading video game websites. There's no such thing as video game websites anymore. I mean there's sites where people upload it for free, like YouTube right right, where people put in all the work and all the risk themselves of putting up work and then you know, if you're lucky, you get paid by YouTube if you happen to hit, right, But in terms of being somebody who is like a journalist who covers video games, goes
to E three interviews, people break stories right. There literally are not outlets left that pay people to do this because they've been stripping them for parts. One of them that I read is Kotaku. I've read it for years. They're trying to replace those writers with AI. They're trying to, like and like, what's what's the fucking point of that?
Do they do?
They think I'm gonna go to kotaku dot com to read AI generated articles.
I also have chat GPT. I can just ask chat GPT if I want an AI answer.
Why are you hiring someone to copy paste from chat GPT? What the fuck is the point of that? Why destroy your own industry? People go because they like the people right.
Right, And I guess there's like that that's just like that disconnect we see like in every industry where again there's like a motive to make sure that like you provide value to shareholders while completely like missing sight of like the actual products that are being made and like if consumers are going to be savy enough, because look, I love bullshit reality TV, but I like, like actually well written television also, and I can already see like you like just that that shift to Max was like
sort of like a preview of like the worlds we're looking at. It was like, well, remember HBO, there's that, and then there's just all this other unscripted nonsense that fucking is really cheap to make, and like.
You know, kind of maybe where things should be.
Going if writers and actors don't get off their shit.
Max is such an antithesis of the last you know of how you build a successful media company, right, like HBO. There's a wonderful book about HBO. I read it this year called It's not TV, It's It's a History of HBO.
From the beginning, what you realize HBO is like this, you know, starts out as just a cable company that you know, you pay extra and you can watch fights and stuff like that, right, right, And then they find this niche of oh, we can make content that doesn't exist on broadcast, right, we can make science edgy, we can da da da da, Right, and they build it on exactly dreamond this show with a pride to watch that because there was boobs in it, right, but you
know they did the Larry Sanders show. They did the Sopranos right, and they sort of create prestige. TV is created by HBO to the point where you know, by by up to you know, three or four years ago, you know, if a show comes out on HBO, you're like, I'm going to assume this show is good, right, because you know that their creative culture is like, if HBO is putting their muscle behind that, it's got to be good. There's exceptions, there's stinkers, of course, yes, like like you know,
the Idol or whatever. But that's the it's the cathedral of television and people know that, right. And so when Netflix comes along and all these other channels starting their streamers, what would have been the easiest thing in the world.
Call the streamer HBO.
Yes, people are already subscribed to HBO for fifteen bucks a month.
There's a streaming service called HBO.
Have HBO make more shows, keep the brand that people know, the thing people care about. They actually like HBO. It's for adults. It means something to people. It's not TV, it's HBO instead. Now HBO is a vertical underneath this mystery meat thing Max that no one's ever heard. That's not a brand that was literally what they called it instead of Plus. They're like, should we call it HBO plus? No, too small, We'll call it HBO Max. Right, it's extreme HBO.
And then like but then they got rid of the part that people fucking knew and just called it Max.
That's like if Disney Plus just called itself plus. Right. People are there for the Disney, they're not there for the Plus.
I'm so mouse and then the Max ads.
We're all trading on these like icons of film, Like, yeah, the things that like are completely outside of the model that they're trying to force things in the direction.
Or called it fucking Warner Brothers. People know Warner Brothers. Call it Warner Max. People love the people. People have been watching Warner Brothers in this country for one hundred years. Like just call it that.
But instead, you know, Zoslav treats this company it's like a stock portfolio to him, Right, He's like, oh, I put this in, I put that in, I put that, and that's my tranch of content.
That's my big batch of content.
I don't give a shit what it's called, right, because his plan is to sell it or whatever he wants to do. He's financialized it. But that's not that's not how you build a media brand. And you know, it's it's a shame. Like it often feels stupid to say, why don't these companies like respect these old time values of having like a good media brand that people actually care about, you know, that means something to people. But like I feel stupid saying that because they don't care.
They only care about money. But like they lose money by doing this, you know, like people, how have we forgotten the lessons of the last hundred years of capitalism? Did these people go to fucking marketing school? Like it's just basic brand shit? Sorry no, but.
It's I mean, it's it's so reactionary, and it's everything about like whatever is good in the short term with no long term thinking. Like everybody he's getting into streaming. I guess we're getting into streaming too. Wait what does it take to do that? And now we see like I mean, like with HBO Max, we saw half of the ship that was like interesting to people get absolutely vaporized.
Yeah, it's it's hard.
Yeah, all right, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back to talk more about this and AI.
And we're back and so do I just repeat that question?
Yeah, but like I was saying, no, like, and I think if you didn't just skip ahead, the point being is I think there's there's a lot of like you've you've spent a lot of facts every time you've come on, but have really made me think about how much the way that we this like our societies were built in this country was built, how much it affects us now, how much it poisons us now to the point that we have no connection to each other, community, to land,
and things like that. I'm do you see this as part and parcel of that disconnect or is there is there another way you're looking at it?
Well?
So, I guess I think of a couple of things. One is, when I was going to school in Hawaii, I was living with one of my teachers named Larry Kimura, who we call him the godfather of the Hawaiian language movement. He's just he's an amazing person, and at one point he was just he kind of started going off about these people wearing these shirts that say Aloha Aina, which is like love the land, and he says, you love the land, show me your fingers, you got you got dirt?
Underneath your fingernails. Have you been out working in the land, You've been digging, you've been planting stuff, You've been doing stuff. And so for me, I think, if the world starts glitching out, go out on the land, right, just go go see what's out there, and and go get your hands dirty. And then I also sometimes I have theories that maybe people don't want to hear. So I was in a class on American literature and the theme of
the class was paranoia. And at this sort of culminating moment in the class, this was for an MFA and creative writing, and the teachers who was really he was a great guy, and he said, well, why do you
guys think there's so much paranoia in American literature? And this person had an answer, and that person had an answer, and that person had an answer, and I raised my hand I said, well, I think it's because America stole everything from Native American people's and they're just kind of waiting for their comeup ins.
And I also think that it's you can.
Really geek out on sci fi theories and stuff, so you don't have to assume that your ancestors did something really horrible. And so I think if people say, no, this is all part of this larger program that we have no control of. I think it's another system to avoid doing the work that it's going to take to sort of start moving towards a sense of equity which
is totally attainable, which is totally possible. But I think colonization sets up all of these mechanisms like either like it's already in place, it's too late to do anything, it's this thing or that thing, or the limitlessness of resource extraction and the absolute limit of budgets and time and energy, right, and so it just sort of gets you trapped into these systems. So for me, I'm always, you know, I'm always paranoid that something is racism, and
I'm always paranoid that something is colonization. And I'm usually right, but I'll also say, you know, so that's my matrix that I'm stuck in, you know. So sometimes I'll be dealing with something I was like, is this a colonization thing or is this a race? Like am I getting Am I getting treated different because of you know, my name or because of who I am or how I look?
Are my kids being treated different? And so I'm always sort of I'm paranoid myself, right, but I'm also I have it, you know, I don't have TikTok channel for it, but I've been right quite a few times with this kind of stuff too. So for me, I think it's fascinating and it's neat to look at, and like I have friends who've seen UFOs and I have friends who've seen We have our own monsters here that live in the woods. We went camping last weekend and it's fun.
It's it's a blast. We're like, we're in Alaska. You can just walk out your door and you're in the wilderness. But that means, you know, the dog starts barking. You're cooking some delicious dinner out in the middle of nowhere in the dark. Well it's not in the mill of Nore, but far from you know, a hospital, and the dog's barking and looking down the trail, and you're like, grab all the food, get in the cabin, you know, because there's probably you know, like, we respect the grizzly bear
so much that we got two names. Like, so Hoots is what we would call it. So it means brown bear, and we say it's Eke for black bear. But the brown bear is the one that's it owns the forest and we know that. But when we're out in the forest, we say yet see neat, which means a living thing. So we don't even say its name when we're out there, because we're like, you say its name, it's going to be like you talk, you call me.
Wait, you're in my house. And so we talk to them.
Before we go into the woods, and we sort of live this life that's pretty connected to the natural world.
So I think the other thing too, is there's a fascination with an artificial world because there's a prescribed disconnect with the natural world in order to maintain a sense of colonization and economics the way that it's required today, like you have to be separate from it to say, yeah, cut all the trees down, yeah, like kill off all those buffalo you know, like this, these mountain lions scare me, so just murder them, right and so, but in order
to do that, you have to remove yourself, which you know, Christianity kind of did that already. It's like man has domain of everything, including women, right, and it just creates tons and tons of problems because I think human beings, and especially if we just narrow it down to one gender, don't have enough skills and ability to like men, and
it's the universe. It's sort of like, actually, you should just be in the universe and figure out how you're part of that, because you're not You're in the food chain, you're you're in You're in all these circles, you're in all these cycles, and what you do affect all of these things, and so I like the conversations. I think it's fun. I think it's fun to watch this stuff. You're like, oh, yeah, that is weird and that's pretty cool.
But you can also zoom in on your iPhone. It starts to get pretty grainy, and then it's probably pretty easy when you got.
To share his camragns in my house, what the fun I think?
I mean, I think that kind of ties nicely into just, you know, if you have any additional thoughts on Avatar. But like the reality of you know, what we're doing to the world and other humans and the history of what you know, white people have done to the world and other human beings is maybe too uncomfortable for some people to take in, and they want to create an artificial reality. In the case of the Matrix, it's like just coming up with a system of belief that like
we are in an unofficial reality. But in the case of Avatar, it's like creating an unofficial like an artificial reality that you can go live in for a couple hours that also like rewrites that history where you get to like be on the good guy side, on the on the side of the victimize the people being victimized
by colonialism. Like I do think Avatar is really interesting just as a phenomenon, because I don't, like, I can't think of another cultural, pop cultural thing that that is as successful as that those movies when they're happening, and then as completely embarrassing the second they stop happening, Like like it happened once with the first Avatar and everyone's like, man, that was weird, and like Avatar was like a punchline.
But then they did again like you brought you brought Avatar too out and every everyone went to fucking see that one too, and like they are the two of the three most top grossing movies of all time, but like nobody would put a movie poster of that movie up except ironically, And so I don't know, I think
there's like a weird disconnect. And then we also have the thing where like people were experiencing depression after they came out of the movie because they couldn't just like experience that reality.
Around the clock.
So it's definitely filling a need that people have, but one that is disconnected from their mind in a way that makes it unique where they can't like kind of incorporate it into their lives the way they can a Star Wars or something like that, where they make it part of their personality. Like, it just feels like Avatar is the thing that is an experience that then you like try not to think about when when you're not
at an Avatar movie or something. But yeah, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on Avatar.
Well, you know, I think largely there's this fascination with white savior films, you know, and so dances with wolves. What was the one dangerous something where there's like a white school teacher who goes into dangerous yeah, a black neighborhood, and you know, and and like there are certainly stories of people who come in and embrace community and become part of it and become something different and do fight racism and fight colonization, you know, but it's it's very rare,
especially when they like they win or something. And so I started to think about this stuff quite a bit.
And then there's a film called Real Engines, which is spelled r E E l I n j u n s, which is a documentary on the history of Native Americans and film, and it kind of goes through a number of different sort of scenarios and at one point it talks about all these different white actors who have played Native Americans, and so there's a growing list of you know, well, you know, there's quite a few of them who have
played Native Americans. And then you also just get really interesting things like there's a guy I think his name was Ironized Cody or Cody ironized, I can never remember which way it goes, but he played so many Native Americans and films that he full on believed he was Native American when he died, and to some extent, I think his children do as well, and so like he can assume this entire identity, and so I think there's a fascination with that to think about what if there
was something different.
But then.
There's a disconnect as well, because you don't really see that embraced in people's reality because if they come out of like, let's say they came out of Avatar and said, whoa like, I should learn an indigenous language, and I should go contribute to a land back initiative, and I
should actually do something that's embracing decolonization. Because the film, you could argue, is about decolonization, right, it's a totally fictionalized decolonization, and so you could, like, if it translated into real action, that would be more interesting to me than just sort of saying, well, you know, it's a nice fantasy to say, oh, yeah, well, what if we had actually done something a lot more humane instead of
taking everything from everybody? Because if you look at some things, like we talked a bit about the Supreme Court, who is all kinds of fucked up, like just the types of things that they're doing, these decisions are horrible and they're just destructive for movements towards equity. But the one thing they couldn't do is dismantle the Indian Child Welfare Act,
you know. And so the reason why the Indian Child Welfare Act exists is because in the mid to late nineteen seventies, one out of every four Native American children were removed from their homes and placed with white families. In addition, one out of of every four Native American
women were sterilized without their full consents. Like this kind of stuff was still happening, and so the removal of people, and so like the other thing, I think there's a fascination with the idea that colonization had an endpoint or it had like we're in this post colonial sort of world, which we're not and we could be, but it requires a consciousness that's going to move you beyond going to a movie for two or three hours and completely immersing
yourself in this other idea and just saying, actually, we can have a reality that is kind of close to the Avatar universe, which you know, I'm not opposed to that reality, but what I'm opposed to is the idea that it exists, or that going to the movie is somehow enough.
Right right, Yeah, it's funny too, because like to your point, if you're not coming out of the movie being like, wow, we got work to do, then really, then I don't know how good it's doing. Because most people come out of that movie and be like why is it Pandora Real?
Why can't I go?
So the message was maybe like secondary or tertiary to like the Wow, isn't this shit fucking cool?
Anyway?
Like then there's like some other shit happens to these blue people whatever. I came out and inspired to be seven foot six.
Because that does help with balance, it turns out, Yeah, well, who knows, such a pleasure having you back on the show? Where can people find you? Follow you all that good stuff?
Yeah?
Well, I have a podcast called The Tongue Unbroken, and season two is launching in November, so we're going to launch during the start of the Native American Heritage Month. And the Next Up Initiative is fabulous and I really
encourage you to just go check it out. It's the Next Up Initiative with the iHeart Radio and look at the current this whole new generation of Next Up Initiative folks who are coming out, and I'm really excited to hear their podcasts and to be a part of this movement where we're trying to find voices in the margins and pull them closer to the center so you can find me. I'm sometimes on Facebook, sometimes on Twitter, although Twitter has gotten a lot less interesting as.
They would have to be. Oh, you know, this.
Billionaire bought it and like uh, and now his tweets just keep popping up, like you know, and so I tried to mute one of his tweets and says, this will make Twitter a better experience for you, and I was like, it will actually make Twitter a better experience for everybody if we saw a lot less of that voice.
Yeah, I've been getting a lot.
Of AI ads that are just like really insulted, Like here I just screenshok. One crazy thing happened with Asdata dot Co today, still in shock. I was troubleshooting with a customer on Zoom and he had just gotten his person and it's like keep reading meat days to get it done. And it's like a promoted post for fucking some bullshit. They're all over the place. Anyways, I'm glad I interrupted for that.
Yeah.
The other thing I really want to promote is just indigenous language revitalization. So if you're not familiar with what the Hawaiian Language movement is, or a Jibwe or Mohawk or the sale is of Spokane, go look at what they're doing. Like it's very possible. So on the Tongue Unbroken, we like to talk about how do you do it? How do you take these steps? If you have a thousand speakers left, if you have ten speakers left, if
you have no speakers left of your indigenous language? What kind of steps could you possibly take?
And we like to.
Envision a world where we dream the impossible dream and we get back to a place of strength, which takes action, which takes courage, which takes determination, and also takes a ton of self analysis. Like colonization isn't just about people creating a bunch of harm to people. It's like also the indigenous people internalizing that harm and then hurting each other, which we got a lot of work to do with that as well.
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 de Miles.
He needs your validation, folks.
I hope you're having a great weekend and I will talk to you Monday. By st