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. Katie. It's a full Crack reunion because we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by the best selling author of books like John Dies at the end Zoe punches the future in the dick if this book exists here in the wrong universe and the new Zoe is too drunk for this dystopia, which I believe you can pre
order still. Yes, he is also one of the hosts of the podcast Big Feats, which, if I'm reading this Paris Review article correctly, is the only Mountain Monsters podcast officially endorsed by Big Feet. He's our former coor Cracked, co creator of the Cracked podcast. Welcome back to the show, Jason Pardon.
Now, is it okay for me to do my fake Italian accent that I do? Sometimes? I don't know, I realize there are some accents that are inappropriate to keep.
I mean deeply as as a one non Italian person living in Italy, I'd be deeply offended.
Okay, then I won't because it's one that's so much fun that I don't know if I'm doing an actual Italian accent or if I'm doing a Hollywood accent of actors who themselves were in no way Italian but just and did not have a language glos here it's like, what are you breaking my balls?
Yes, there it is there.
It is the concept of Italian accent is immigrants from Naples who came to the US, and that's it.
And Chris Pratt's interpretation of Mario. Those are the two kind of key texts, the cornerstones.
He's a national icon in Italy. Actually people don't think that, but like Chris Pratt Poplar.
All right, Jason, how are you doing? Where are you coming to us from? Undisclosed?
Sure, I'm in the state of Tennessee. If you want to try to find me, I'm sure. There's there's one guy on TikTok who can locate anybody just from any photo they take. If you want to show up at my house, I'm sure you can do it.
But it has he do it, like even if you're inside, he can do it.
Well, probably not but if you're standing like just in your yard, he will take the sliver of sky behind you. He can identify exactly down to your address, and that's his whole his whole bit.
Yeah, that's crazy and terrifying. Katie is coming to us from Europe, not Italy.
Though, this time from Barcelona.
Hey, well well done on the pronunciation key it's bart Yeah, now that feels like it should be offensive.
It probably is. Yeah, Okay, you know I'm in for it.
What is something from your search history that's revealing about who you are?
The very last search that I did just last night was quote the Winter Palace Wikipedia, the Tsar's ancient palace. It is the setting of a show on Hulu called The Greats, which is why I was googling it, and I went in a deep dive on Russian history, which is always hilarious, just like the show. I'm amused by the buffoonery of our friends from Russia.
I don't know the story that well, what was what was going down in the Winter Palace?
Is that?
Where?
What wasn't going down in the Winter Palace? Jack?
Am I right?
Scott chess bump.
Oh yeah, well there is one.
There wasn't anything especially great about the Winter Palace Wikipedia article, other than the fact that apparently two I think it was two hundred thousand people died building. It seems like which seems like it's like.
That seems like a whole city.
I don't know, but did you see it? Pretty fucking worth it, you know what I'm saying. It looks pretty good.
I don't remember been now more in it, and.
They maybe could get more of those little onion domes everyone seems to love.
Oh yeah, no, the onion domes. Those are classic. That's classic Moscow. This is Saint Petersburg. Baby, I know I've never been. I've never been to Russia. I studied Russian in college and sucked at it and then stopped.
But ever still language. You study Russian language?
Yeah?
Wow, the accent on that is not great here.
I was expecting you to be like it was fantastic. I gotta I gotta tread carefully, Sophia. Are you from Russia?
I'm from but I'm fluent in Russian. Yeah, that's my first language.
Do you know my favorite word in Russian is no what kaladilnik.
It means refrigerator. At least that's what I remember pretty cool. That's a good word.
So I'm listening to an audible, a two volume biography of Joseph Stalin ship not a very nice gentleman, Joseph Stalin.
Wait, really, you're like my fucking grandpa was like, those are exactly the fucking things that would absorb him for hours.
Yes, it's it's it's absorbable. It's absorbed me for eighty hours. Now, can check it out. Yeah, and there's one left left to come. It ends on a cliffhanger. Guys, Hitler's about to invade the Soviet Union, so I can't wait for three it's.
Gonna work out.
Well, I think they're going to be.
I think there's gonna be a lot of unhappiness for decades to come. But yeah, I think that that that particular invasion things work out.
I think Hitler, that guy is just like a flash in the pan. Like not to ruin it for you, it's just it's not I.
Mean, it kind of was, but you have like a brief rise. By the way, I feel like you shouting out Russia's word for refrigerator, I feel like the English language where like the English language really went off on the word refrigerator. That's pretty good like that. I feel like maybe maybe there was like a Cold War competitiveness that was happening there. But refrigerator is yeah, I kind of like it. That's a cool word. Yeah. It sounds
like a brand name or something like. It sounds like it was workshopped, right.
It sounds like it has a motor.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know.
What I'm saying.
Yeah.
Do you think just sounds like it makes cold?
Well, that's what it means, right, It doesn't mean cold or something.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, but I just mean I feel like refrigerator doesn't make you think of cold. It makes you think of motor. Yeah, keeping it.
Cold, frigid, throwing frigid in there, which is a good evocative way to word for cold. So I don't know. I think they really I think they saw what Russia was doing and was like, we got we gotta do better than ice chest. I think was what they called it, ice automatic ice chest.
Ice chest has like a chalice vibe.
Yeah yeah, yeah it does.
You know, like I'm gonna sit on my ice chest with my jealous of mead. My favorite Russian word borgia. It is how you say ladybug. And it means God's Little Cow, and I'm obsessed with it. My favorite isn't that the cutest thing.
You've ever heard? Are you just are you just dying right now?
Because I'm dying every time I think about it.
God, Yeah, look at that little guy. So fucking cute and also not gendered the way that I guess it is. It is because cols are girlies. Yeah, never mind, I'm against it. God's Little cal is so cute.
I always thought that, like, if I was gonna like be somebody that opened like a I don't know, like a kindergarten or something, that's what I would call it.
God's Little Cow.
Be like that is the cutest. All of the kids are gonna go here.
That's amazing, like a preschool, a Ladybug Ladybug preschool. But there's probably many of them, so it really works. I think it's a great name.
Thank you so much, Scott.
Scott. What is something you think is overrated? Massages? Massages?
I do not like giving massages, and I do not like receiving massages, and they make me feel intensely uncomfortable, and the fact that so many people love them so much is a total mystery.
To me, have you ever had a good one.
I think I've had some some good ones. Yeah, like on my honeymoon and expensive couples massage and like grease or whatever that we paid lots and lots of money for. I found it uncomfortable and akin to torture the entire time.
Well, money's not really how you judge it, because anyone can just be like, oh, you're in a hotel, fucking pay me a thousand dollars to touch you. That didn't come out right. But I just kind of want to know, do you get like the light kind, do you get the deep kind? And do you think when they touch you it's like too much pressure or too little or do you just not like people touching you?
Yeah, it's it's all of the above. I've tried more than once. I've had the light massages. I've had those deep tissue massages that leave you feeling ill for days. Like anytime they warn you ahead of time, like oh, hey, this is this is gonna you're gonna just feel sick and stuffed up for the next forty eight hours because we're gonna rub so many toxins out of your flesh and send it forcing through your your system, out of.
Your nose and drink a lot of water.
So they do tell you that.
I'm not no one, no one ever does myself included. And then you're like, oh, why do I feel that nice? I'm like, well, bitch, they told you.
Yeah, I like to go from massage directly to just drinking a giant a train to of a cold brew.
Oh my god, you're the healthiest. That's how the voice came around, and that's why I sound like this, Scott. I think it's bold of you to admit that you hate massages, because I think a ton of people do, but they won't say anything because they're like, people think I'm insane. It's like when someone says they don't like wacam on.
Mm hmmm. Yeah.
Well, I mean it's a little more selfish to say you hate giving massages. I think that's probably more, you know, for that total you're a master.
I was going to come back to this podcast for that.
What's what's like? What is it a massage giving? What is what is like? When is it okay to be annoyed? Like how many minutes?
Because you can feel it, You can feel when the person giving it is annoyed, so it's always done bad, even that three minutes that they give and I'm like, you know what, take your fucking lobster ass hands out of here. I don't this pity massage.
They're just giving like mitten style massages, four figures together and then.
Yeah, the fucking zoidberging my fucking neck.
I don't want that.
Fuck that, Scott, is that your style to do a bad job?
So you're just out of there.
I mean, I try my best, but I promise it's bad. That's I mean that no matter what I'll do, I'll give it my absolute awe and will still disappoint and then the annoyance will will come through. So I mean, maybe that's at the heart of why I don't like them, because I've never really had a good experience, either as a giver or a receiver. But no, it's just not it's just not my thing. Are you an expert massage giver?
Would you say, yeah, I'm awesome. I have the hands of a cossion worker, but the gentleness of an angel of.
One of God's little cows.
Exactly.
Yeah, I like giving and receiving. I was complimented in the past year that I received massage well from somebody, and I took that. I was like, I didn't know I needed to hear that about myself. But it really.
Possibly mean other than making noises really receptive noises.
Being like that is the spot. How did you know.
The person? Growner jack. Yeah, it's an nicest.
Way to say you're a.
Vocal Cross's really sweet. She gives uh, my wife and I massages and she I think she just likes us and so she like comes up with ways to compliment us. But like that, You're right, it doesn't make sense to like have a for that to be a skill that somebody has. But I totally took it to heart. I was like, yes, did she.
To your wife?
Yeah, she loves my wife. I mean she's given my wife every single compliment in the world.
Maybe she's running out and that's why she's like this massage your husband.
I don't know, did a good job taking a massage from me?
She's taking a massage?
Sounds like so Dommy like yeah, yeah, of hers like yeah you take that massage?
Good?
You take that, don't you?
Yeah?
Exactly?
What is something you think is underrated?
Popsicles? I've been obsessed. I so I bike everywhere in the city and that's how I get around, and it's very humid. I know you were you guys were saying that someone a previous guest had said summer was overrated, and I and I agree, it's very human here and I'm biking everywhere. And when I get home, I want a popsicle immediately. And I just found these new popsicles. They're they're They're not sponsoring me. They're just Halo tops
pineapple popsicles. They're so good, They're so underrated. I ate a whole box and one night, two nights ago. Wow, I'm just obsessed with popsicles right now. So I think they're deeply underrated and everyone should be eating popsicles all the time.
Such a ringing endorsement. Now, are these halo pops are they especially?
Is they're like.
Coconut milk mixed in there? Or is this just like pure pineapple flavor?
I think it's just pure pineapple. It's like it says like only forty calories per popsicle, And I'm like, how how they taste so good? How is this possible? Yeah, they're del by some of these.
I was looking at Rocket pops is doing like some kind of advertisement for a new video game. But every time it comes on, I'm like it was the last time, Like a rocket pop, Like those things used to rule my summer because that's usually you gave whatever is in like the little plastic and they're like blue, pink, green, whatever, and those are good. They're tasty, they're cold. If you get a rock a pop, you're balling. Somebody has paid
you to mow their lawn. You have gone fat in the house who's rich and you're just really living high on a rocket top. Like I'm an adult, I have one of these one ever, I gotta reinvest in my childhood.
Yeah, I think. I think popsicles maybe is a smaller thing for what I'm really saying is underrated, which is like, yeah, absolutely doing the things as an adult that you wanted to do as a kid, and being like I can do this anytime. I want to know, a whole box of popsicles in a night, Absolutely, Yeah, I did that.
Have we been improving on popsicles? Yeah, it seems like we have like the the Halo Top Pineapple pop popsicle, like the again Halo Top, Like doesn't I think they're lying to us but at least we feel better when we're eating their ice cream and frozen treats.
There's also good pop and then make like a mango chili pop and like a watermelon a gave pop and those are also like very good and supposedly healthier for you.
So yeah, Total Wine is making margarita pops and I have just transcended to another earthly plane. They're eighteen dollars with the tequila in them. Or let me see hold on, let me see the variety path. There are gluten free children give that they got a mango margarita, pineapple, strawberry and lime does contain alcohol made with real tequila?
Wow, all I freeze that. Though I don't understand that scientifically cut.
Water frozen margarita pops, I don't know, but I want to purchase these.
Yeah.
Every time I've tried to, like do the homemade popsicles like, they don't turn out they're like more icy than I feel like the ones that you buy in the store. Like there's two. I feel like there has to be like some sort of concentrate, like it has to be concentrated juice er mm hmmm.
You know what makes the best homemade pops Jack kool Aid.
Kool Aid does I feel like it's very watery, not if you had extra powder to so you just go extra yeah, yeah, got extra.
Hard on it.
And then you pour them in a dixie cup, right, and like maybe about halfway stick your popsicle in, freeze the whole cup, and then you just like pop it out of the plastic.
It's old school and it's delicious. That sounds good. I'm gonna have to do that.
Popsicles are great. All right, Well, let's take a quick break and we'll come back and talk about some news. And we're back and Ted Cruz, I think we've talked. We've checked him with him before on his journey of trying out his catchphrase of kiss my ass. Like there was a point where he said my and my pronouns are kiss my ass, which I think he stole from Roseanne,
like a Roseanne stand up special. Sounds sorry, but he's back trying to differentiate himself, make people care what he has to say, and so earlier in the week, he shared a video of a cop car knocking down an environmental protester who was blocking the road to Burning Man, with the caption play Stupid games win stupid prizes, so seemingly he's in favor of cars mowing down peaceful protesters and also implicitly is a fan of people flying private jets to an event that has a literal orgy dome,
because that's what they were protesting, as people flying private jets to burning Man. But somehow that wasn't his cringiest move this week. So recently, the director of the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism said in an interview that the group could hypothetically one day adopt Canada's recent health guidelines recommending that adults should consume no more than two alcoholic drinks per week. That there's no they Canada did not say you go to jail if you drink
more than that. They just said, we would suggest that it is healthier if you drink this much as opposed to more than this much. And then the person from the US made this just loud, unwavering statement, he said, I mean, they're not going to go up. I'm pretty sure with regards to like the alcohol guidelines. So if alcohol conception guidelines go in any direction, it would probably
be toward Canada. And that is what the right has seized on and been like, no, you will take these beers out of our cold, dead.
Hands unless it's bud light.
Unless it's bud light, which case they're cool. But yeah, so then he went on this news Matt. So he goes on Newsmax and does just the most performative act of beer drinking from anyone that's not a fourteen year old at their first house party. He's just I don't know, he just seems so uncomfortable, and he's like talking shit about how they don't want you to use house fans or ceiling fans. And then he's like, and if they want us to drink two beers a week, frankly, they
can kiss my ass. And then he cracks open a cold one, and then there's like these cowboys behind him.
Did you guys see the video. He's like in a barn with like six cowboys standing behind him holding beers also, and then when he takes a sip of his beer, like they take a sip of their beer, but it's like very quiet, like they do it all very quietly, like nobody makes a sound, so it's all just like solid, like men drinking in a dark room is the vibe which terrifying yeah, terrifying, and also like probably, you know, if you're trying to be like nobody has a drinking
problem here, Like just all these guys silently drinking in a dark room like with just the weirdest vibes ever, is probably not not the thing you want to go for. But it's clear.
Alcohol it is meant to be consumed quietly with no talking, yes.
And then the anchor is like, well, haha, you said it, Ted gonna, I'm gonna crack a non alcoholic beer here due to station policy because I'm not allowed to drink alcohol on air. But so that just like made it
even more embarrassing. And incidentally, the Canadian guideline classified as a standard drink twelve ounce serving of five percent alcohol beer and he was drinking a Shiner Bock, which is four point four So the beer that he's talking about wouldn't even count as a drink under the Canadian guidelines.
That's amazing.
I think Ted Cruz was having flashbacks to his college days of like trying to get into parties and being roundly rejected, and he was like, no, guys, I'm really cool. Look how I want drink this beer? Like yeah, watch me fit in This Is How You Do It right?
Watch right?
Yeah, Yeah, he's a that's a character I like. Craig Mason, who some people might know as the showrunner of the Last of Us. He also worked on the Hangover movies back in the day. Was his roommate when Ted was a senior and he was a freshman, And he's got great stories to still live on Twitter if you want to re visit some of.
Ted's crazy college days. I've seen this thread where I can't even remember any specifics, but just how crazy he was in college was like, ma'am, there's no way you could accept him as like a friend or a normal person. But maybe if we had, he wouldn't be here constantly trying to get acceptance from everybody.
A greasy film on everything. My friend Eric dubbed the substance cruz. See are uh z rhymes with scuz? Now there's cruz on my TV. Craig Mason, January tenth, twenty sixteen.
More delightful stories like that.
Wow.
Yeah.
He also made Chernobyl, which was a favorite of ours. Craigman.
Oh yeah, a good show, very good show.
All right, Well, just moving down the conservative lineup, we've got Rudy Giuliani. So we had covered before that he was putting his apartment up for sale, and the price point he's suggesting is six point five million dollars and so no one has brought it yet bought it yet, probably because first of all, it's Rudy Giuliani's apartment, so
it's like trying to sell a murder house. It might have actually like been additive when he was America's mayor, but now things are wildly different, obviously, but it's it's being listed by the so called broker to the fallen Stars, who also had to sell off Bernie Madoff's penthouse. What a title, I know. It's just this person is like specializes in selling off the homes of people who made
their millions in Ponzi schemes, and now Rudy Giuliani. But people are pointing out that like it doesn't doesn't even make sense, Like he's asking for like way more than it's worth. Another unit in the same building that's basically the same size currently on the market for two point eight seven five million, and this is on the market for six point five Wow, the last sale in the building was three point seven.
Does he think that like the celebrity boost. Yeah, we'll put it there. That's wild.
It's desperation because he knows he's has giant legal fees coming up. There's no money coming in from anywhere. Everybody who's even halfly intelligent Coutock ties with him, so there's no I know, Trump's not helping him. Apparently he asks for some help Trumps like get out of here.
Well Trump does not money either, so that makes sense.
Right, I Mean what one theory is that he's actually doing that. He's putting his house on the market to like show that he is in financial straits and like can't pay any of his lawyers or whatever, and like I think there's like some legal reasons for that, while also like he doesn't want to sell the apartment and so he's basically putting it on the market at like an irrational like a completely unreasonable listing.
Will buy it?
Interesting, Yeah, that's kind of the idea. It's like that he wants to argue he's like close to broke in order to excuse the fact that he hasn't shared discovery documents in the case brought against him by Smartmatic, the election technology company that sued him and Fox News in twenty twenty one over false claims of election fraud and that like this way, no one will pay in order to have like verifiable proof that you're broke and therefore
immune from certain legal responsibilities. And so in an earlier case, he actually automatically lost his defamation case in which he was sued by two election workers from Georgia for failing to turn over evidence, and in that case, he was also slapped with a one hundred and thirty two thousand dollars bill for legal fees. So it's helpful for him to be like, I'm in duress. I can't pay all
any of this stuff. Please leave me, leave me alone, Please have pity on me, sir, And it seems like nobody's buying it.
Essentially, it's nice to see people get what they deserve, even if it's just so little.
Yeah, that's nice karma.
I'm really I can't wait to see the behind the scenes of the mugshot, like how Trump's mugshot came about, but also like what the messaging was to because like Rudy seemed to have the same like be tough and like angry face as Trump did, but like I just want to know like what went into all of those photos? Because he also looks just like a a corrupt businessman who just got caught.
And you think they gave him a three to two one countdown or I like smile click yeah he heads up, or where they're just like and stand here click next, like wait, But because I feel like he would have tried to, like, I don't know, appear less guilty.
Yeah, they both looked so guilty. He looked really guilty. He was giving off like the subtext of his picture. The first word in the subtext of his picture is guilty. He's just like, Oh, I would have gotten away with it too.
Now, I'm like, has anyone ever smiled in their mugshot pictures?
Oh?
For sure, Lindsay Lohan, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. There's a bunch of like celebrity ladies are constantly like, listen, you won't catch me with a bad photo.
I don't care. Where is this my good side? Okay, now book me.
But in that earlier case, like the judge literally wrote, donning a cloak of victimization may play well on a public stage to certain audiences, but in a court of law, this performance has served only to subvert the normal process of discovery in a straightforward defamation case and then you know, found him guilty and charged him one hundred and thirty
two thousand dollars legal fees. So it's not I don't I also don't know, like what the theory is that, like someone's going to feel sorry for him that his six point five million dollar apartment isn't selling. Like that doesn't feel a great strategy for making people like causing people to feel sympathy for you.
Yeah, listen, it's all what else could he possibly try? It was like, you know, bad housing markets totally, there's some people who could empathize with the difficulty there because he can't. What are you gonna use like his family, no, his job situation. You did that here, rich Wakey.
What else you got to make empathize? But you try to buy my house? That's yeah, it's an interesting strategy, all right. And finally, let's talk about the pandemic two point zero. This is a new conspiracy theory. You're probably starting to see because Trump went on a long rant about how left wing lunatics are trying very hard to bring back COVID lockdowns and mandates, specifically to steal the twenty twenty four election naturally, And yeah, I don't know,
this kind of came out. It seemed like he came out of nowhere, but apparently.
It's been it's been a thing that's going going around for a little while. First of all, I just want to note that under the video that he posted on X, like the two stories that they're linking off to that like disprove his claims are actually like approaching the debunking from the perspective of like, actually, Trump's the one who started the lockdowns, which I get the logic of that, like that even his even somebody who thinks the pandemic
was like a scam, will be convinced by that. But it does just feel like, I don't know, I'm I feel like I'm seeing that more and more, just the embracing of the logic of like, yeah, well we didn't need to go that hard and everybody overreacted right, like we can all agree on that.
Yeah, from folks who seemingly before we're like, oh no, I'm definitely like mask on and stuff. It's been weird, like a weird turn of events to watch folks be like and I'll never go back again, and I'm just at a convention. I just still can't understand why wearing a mask is seen as such an inconvenience. It's so easy, It hardly does anything. It make you spell your own breath,
which you know is nice. If it's bad smelling, you should know, you should you should be aware of what's happening in that area of your body.
It's also great if you're like on the subway and you're practicing lines for I don't know, an off Broadway show you're about to do in a week, and you don't want to look like a crazy person. You can put a mask on and no one will be the wiser. It's great.
You're having a bad day, looking not great, throw a mask on. Guess what Now you're mysterious. Who's that girl?
What she's up to?
Yeah, it's honestly such a help. It's weird.
It's especially knowing that the numbers are going up and I really feel like folks are like, I'm not going back inside.
Screw of you.
Yeah, it's very funny that, like that's the mindset when it's like the opposition none of us wanted to do this. It feels like the argument is like someone's planning this and they want to do this and I'm never going back.
It's like none of us enjoyed the lockdown, right, Yeah that was not nobody's like pro pandemic. But that is like how the argument.
Is being exactly structured?
Yeah structured? Is that like we're for so anyways, they're like the There's been rumblings among right wing conspiracy theorists for weeks now, basically following suggestions from public health officials the people who are at higher risk may want to wear masks in public following a rise in COVID cases, and some colleges and companies, including the movie studio Lionsgate,
even reinstituted mask mandates Briefly. They are claiming that, like a countrywide lockdown is coming this fall, and you know, Alex Jones shockingly is responsible for this. He's claiming that on August eighteenth, he claimed that a TSA whistleblower informed him that mask mandates will return in September, followed by
a full blown lockdown in December. Called an anonymous Border Patrol agent who confirmed the oddly specific claims and said that we would imminently return to full COVID protocol of twenty twenty twenty twenty one, and then perhaps because this is a total bullshit, he also gave himself an out, adding that the lockdown may not actually happen because he had exposed it on the show.
Oh that's why think about Jones for saving us all. Yeah, another lockdown?
Crazy, I know, But people on social media kind of picked up on his claims, suggesting that the new COVID surge was somehow connected to Trump's indictments. So this, this is like the social media brain malfunction where like everything like there's you just assume like everything is happening to the too. This like only two or three people that
you're able to. It's like main character syndrome of like following world events, we're like, oh, well, because COVID's going back up, that must be related to Trump being indicted. Like you just want to connect to the dots on things that have nothing to do with one another because your brain is only so big and can only you know, hold so much information.
Oh man, I even know what to say about like these conspiracy theorists, who I think when anyone is controlling the spread of a pandemic, do you know how it would be so epic if somebody could, They're like, Okay, dates coming up. I'm going to drop the pandemic right here in the same way I drop a music video. I'm going to make sure this many people get it so that we go into lockdown.
There's just no possible.
Conceivable way to start time releasing a pandemic or a disease, and then on top of that to then think how does this help and or hurt Trump? Right, Like the math is a mathing, like either we are insider, we're not. I don't know what effect that has on on whatever Trump is going, other than maybe it would delay his trial for a little.
Bit, right, Yeah, Yeah, I think the main thing that is challenge is a challenge for Trump is that he is like the most indicted human being in the history of the United States, right, is also trying to run for president while while dealing with that.
Yeah, the hubers on that guy amazing, it's wild wild and paid a bail Bonceman too.
Right, Yeah. Steve Bannon's podcast co host Natalie Winters went viral for posting out of context screenshots of Department of Veterans Affairs purchase orders, suggesting that it was proof that the US government was buying up equipment for a planned pandemic, and the equipment was testing supplies and computer equipment, totaling seven million dollars, which is like, to put it in perspective, like they spent I think four trillion dollars on the pandemic,
like across all all of the different things that they had to invest in.
I wish I could just post whatever and be fine with it.
I know that's what they've discovered.
Truly, Truly, they like the truth is suggestive.
Right, whatever the fuck you want, and it will be so and then so just like it's a it's a good study in how these stories kind of happened, because then you know it's it. It becomes this thing where it's like all these dumb little like one person pointed to a suburban target store was putting in more pickup only spots in their parking lot. Like so it's like
all these ridiculous statements being made on various outlets. But then The Daily Telegraph published a op ed warning about Biden's lockdown plot, citing Biden administrations buying COVID equipment and hiring pandemic safety protocol officers not to mention the Return of the Mask mandates at the Lionsgate Film Studios in
Los Angeles. So it's like, that's how they launder their bullshit from you know, a couple Twitter posts and you know what, Steve Bannon's co host says to being in an op ed as like, and this is evidence.
I like that they were like Targets putting in more spots. It must mean the pandemic. So listen, Target do that because it's so easy to order online and then you're not tempted to order inside Target. This Target delivery slash pickup is one of the greatest inventions ever. No more are you perusing the aisles getting lost in pillows you
definitely don't need twelve more of. You can just order and then they bring it to you, and then you can go home with the money you intended to spend still your pocket.
It's beautiful.
I promise it's not a sign of forthcoming pandemic lockdown.
But it does feel like it Probably loses Target money though, because then you're not spending that money on ten pellows you don't need. It probably hurts Target a little bit.
But also I'd consistently coming back, so I don't there you go.
Yeah, it lowers the friction. That's what they call like the difficulty of buying something if you just like go hit the button, show up, and someone arrives and puts it in the back of your car.
I will say, whatever AI is operating their system to you has gotten pretty good at being like, hey, this is on sale. You could just add this to your cart right now.
Yeah. Well that's the other thing like they've perfected, like the AI and the you know, web design and all the things for like our little skinner box you know, smartphones that we all live basically live inside, so that they can sell you more. And actually that's what our next story is about out, which is kind of the reason that Taco Bell and a bunch of other companies want to go cash lists. So yeah, let's let's take a quick break and we'll come right back and talk
about that. And we're back, and just a few things I wanted to hit so like that. There is this one experiment where they figured out people who were particularly susceptible to placebos, and they then like during the course of a experiment, gave them a thing that like blocked the opioid receptors in the brain. And the placebo effect cut off, which.
Means, I mean it's that's super weird.
Yeah, it's weird, but it's basically it makes sense when you realize when you think about the fact that, like the brain is like its own pharmacy. It's creating the dopamine. You know, the like add medication and stuff like that, or you know, they're illegal drugs that cause your brain to like make more dopamine that like make you feel even better. But your brain is creating its own dopamine on its own schedule.
My brain is my favorite dealer.
Yeah, your brain is its own like drug dealer slash pharmacist. And you know that, then doctors get involved when like it's not doing the job that it needs to do. But you know that what is happening in like that, This study would suggest that what's happening when people experience the placebo effect is that your brain is producing the actual chemical that the medication is supposed to be producing.
It just didn't need the medication to actually be in the pill to get you to to to get the brain to do the thing that your body kind of knows it needs in that moment. So I mean, from that perspective, like being susceptible to placebo is such is such an amazing like superpower where it's just like, oh, yeah, my body and brain can just like make these medications for.
Me, right, And it's not I think it's important to note it's not like gullibility. It being able to get the effect of a placebo is not that like you are stupid or gullible. There's like a study on seeing like, oh, are people who are easily hypnotized also like susceptible to placebo? And there was no connection there either. It just seems to be a thing that like affects almost everyone in terms of being able to you know, benefit or suffer from the placebo or no Cibo effect.
Yeah, we understand. We understand so little of this because listen listening to what you guys say, think about how difficult it is to study this, and how difficult it is to set up an effective trial that perfectly filters out every possibly confounding thing that could be some form of placebo or no Cibo effect. This is why our mental health medications have barely improved in the last fifty
years or something like that. It is unbelievably difficult to nail down the effectiveness of something like an antidepressant or an anti anxiety because again, placebos work really well for anxiety. When you have somebody telling you, well, my anti anxiety pills, I go work in my garden, they're not lying. Like repetitive motion, exercise, sunlight. Those are physical things that affect all of those biological reactions to anxiety. They're not being a hippie. And you know, I don't you sound like
a scientologist. We start ranting about how ineffective these medications are, but the truth is you get about seven of the same effect from a passebo for mild depression because of
course you do it. You know, if you've got some whatever fancy t that's supposed to really you know, to calm you down, just the ceremony of making it, and given the ceremony of making it, sitting down, drinking something hot, drinking it slowly, there's yeah, that can have most of the effect of a medication without the terrible side effects.
The issue is that is such an incredibly dangerous thing for people to hear because some people who have very severe symptoms, who definitely need prescription medication, they tend to be the ones who like, see, I don't, I don't need that voodoo. It is incredibly difficult to nail down the effectiveness of any of these because, as you just said, like that, we even now have doubts about exactly what's
placebo and what's just no treatment at all. Depression is just like a lot of those things we mentioned earlier. It cats better and think about all the factors in a person's life that can improve their mood. Yeah, it's like, we have three months, three months on these sugar pills, and my depression went away. Also I got a different job and the boss that terrorized me is no longer in my life. And also my chronic knee injury stopped hurting, so I didn't have the chronic pain weighing on me.
It's like, which of the four million factors in a human life caused your depression to go away? And us people who to sound smart, who like to say, well, it's all just brain chemicals, it's all just serotonin or whatever that is that is boiling it down. That's simplifying it so much as to make it.
Wrong, right.
I mean, it's like it's true that it's like all brain stuff, but your brain responds very well to your environments, so environmental things are going to have a massive effect on your brain. Like you know, your your general habits, what your life is like, what you're eating, what you're doing, what you're thinking. All these things just kind of like form this like cyclone that can really affect your state
of mind. It's also really difficult with the studies on medication for like say, depression, anxiety, et cetera, because the like everyone's brain is very different, so the heterogeneity effects in these studies are just very hard to compensate for, Like a medication that works really well for someone may not work at all for another person even though they both have depression. Because one person's depression and another person's depression.
It's not like a you know, simple like disease. It's not like a broken bone where it's like, okay, you can kind of like the procedure for healing a broken bone for one person another person is generally someone similar. But for something like depression, it's like you have a totally different thing going on from one person to the next, given how complicated the brain is and how like broad spectrum something like depression is in terms of what's causing
it what's going on? And I mean the same can be said for a lot of like non psychological disorders as well, Like there are a lot of diseases where it's like, well, treatment for one person seems to work before another person does not work at all because their bodies are different and their systems are different. So it's like a huge challenge in medicine.
Even if they were genetically the same, which they're not. Are their diets different, are their sleep patterns different? Is their home life different, is their social lives different? Do they have different numbers of friends? All those things can impact how your brain works exactly.
I mean, your brain structure changes over time based on your environment. It's not like you're born sort of with a baby brain and then it goes like it's genetically programmed to turn into an adult brain. Like you're born with the very plastic brain that responds incredibly sensitively to your environment and what happens to you.
Yeah, the two examples that jumped out to me this time doing the research on the side of like just a straightforward placebo effect, like this is a pill causing you to do causing your body to do a thing, it's still like the pill color things is still like
so mind blowing to me. Like they gave a group of medical students two new drugs, one a sedative and the other stimulant, and like they were given either one or two blue or pink tablets, and the tablets were all inert they were sugar pills, but the students' responses on a questionnaire indicated the red tablets where pink tablets tended to act as stimulants, while the blue ones acted as depressants, and two tablets had more effect than one.
And it it's not it doesn't really make sense, but like you, you can't boil it down to anything that is like happening other than with like meaning like pink or red means like hot or danger, and blue means like cool and quiet, and right.
Blue means cool ranch stritos. Red means flame.
And hot nacho cheese. Yeah exactly. And that's why I wake up, to get wake up in the morning, I eat nacho cheese and to go to bed and I eat cool ranch.
Yeah exactly.
Yeah.
I can give you an example even without an experiment. I know people who will drink an espresso or drink an energy drink and while they're drinking it, we'll talk about how wired they are, like, oh my gosh, it's hitting me. Well, it takes forty five minutes for caffeine to enter the bloodstrain. Yeah, that's you. You drinking the red Bull, and after two gulps is like, oh my gosh, I can feel it hitting me. It's like it's like you didn't inject it into your vein. You drink it.
It has to be absorbed into your system. But that spasibo effect, you know, And if you if you felt that that soon, you just told yourself. So think about did you need the energy drink at all? If you can talk yourself into bouncing off the walls because you thought that, oh my gosh, the whole eighty hole milgrams of caffeine has slammed into my system, which by the way,
is not very much. And I personally believe making the can big and with a big, loud, stupid name like C four bomb sickle and it's got like a stick a dynamite on it, I think that helps the placebo effect. I think you drink a big, bombasting can of something, it's like, man, that's going to hit me like a freight train. I think it can have it could be decaf, and I think it would hit you mostly the same way.
Yeah, I want an energy drink that's just called brain bone or juice.
Your brain is gonna fuck so hard. And then the other example that's kind of in the other direction was they looked at the cause of death between China, these Americans, and randomly selected group of white people in California, and it was found that Chinese Americans, but not the white people, will die significantly earlier than normal if they have a combination of disease and birth year, which Chinese astrology and
medicine consider ill fated. And so it's you know, Chinese Americans whose deaths were attributed to lymphatic cancer and if they were born in Earth years and consequently were deemed by Chinese medicine like especially susceptible to diseases involving lumps, not nodules or tumors, had an averaged death age like four years younger than people who were not born in one of those years. And no such you know, difference
existed among the group of white people. So it's just and that was true across like I don't know the ins and outs of what Chinese medicine believes and like what the different year meanings are, but like it just it feels like very strongly determined by like meaning and like the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves and that like we like exist within and so I don't know, it's I find that one like kind of hopeful in a way because like you can I don't know, like
tell yourself stories and like sort of free yourself from some of the stories that we tell ourselves that it can be damaging about ourselves. Like like what there was also a study where they told people the truth. They were like, this is a placebo effect study, and like the truth is that like placebo effects have been shown to like help people, and like that it had clear like positive results just by being honest, which I always thought like an important part of the police Cibo effect
would be the lying. But yeah, apparently not, which doesn't really make sense to me.
But like rituals I think can really have a strong effect. Like you put the pill in your mouth and you swallow the water, and even if you know it's a placebo, you've still done the ritual in your body. You may still have sort of this like connection to the ritual
and feeling better. So it's you know, it's like if you've ever found like a calming routine, like some kind of meditation routine or calming routine that you do, like once you sort of get into the typical position that you're in, that it's like, well, I start listening to music, I sit on the couch or something. Once you practice
it and do it a bunch, it works better. Like meditation or calming yourself down, like works better once you've practiced it, because once you start to do it, you make the association between like, well, once I when I light this candle or listen to this music, I start to feel calm. And then it's like, even though you know it's not like medicine, yeah, you've come to associate the ritual with feeling better, but yeah with the with the that study on like the zodiac or wait is it zodiac?
Yeah, che medicine like right, It's it makes.
Me think about when we when someone has a disease and they're given a time frame for like how much longer they have to live. I've always had mixed feelings about that because on one hand, I think it's good right to like prepare people for like, hey, you know you have terminal cancer, so you might want to like prepare and get your affairs in order and all this.
But having a time frame in a way also seems like you are kind of potentially negating any kind of like placebo effect of like, well if I can like, you know, like maybe this thing will kill me eventually. But then if you feel like, well, I'm definitely going to die in like a year or X months, I wonder if that has an effect on how long you
actually have. It's not to say that the diagnosis is incorrect or that's something like terminal cancer you can just think your way out of, but there is something on the margins in terms of like how healthy you are
and continue to be based on your mind frame. Right, So it's like, I don't think you could beat a terminal diagnosis through some kind of placebo effect, but I could imagine your quality of life and your length of time left could be affected by whether you feel completely doomed or not within a certain period of time.
Right.
I think you stumbled on a big, big thing in our society, which is, for example, to me, it is not surprising at all that yoga cures all sorts of things. You're stretching, it's you've got to a room to see the silnd or with white noise, or with music. It's something you often do in a group where a bunch of people all doing something in sync. You know, we humans are social animals. That has its own benefit. It does not surprise me that that helps cure all sorts
of things. None of us stretch enough and just. And it's also its exertion. You know, it's very strenuous. If you've never done yoga before, it will kick your ass. You don't. It's not just stretching like it's holding difficult positions. But part of yoga is that there's a religion around it basically, and it's all of this stuff that I know is on scientific about Well, this stretch will release any financial stress in your life, because financial anxiety tends
to store in your hips. Yeah, you've got to realign your chakra. You've got to the mystical spiritual energies and the body. Thetans have to be released through your spine. So the question is does the mythology make it work better? And once you apply it, think about yoga, you think about all of the other things in society where we tell people a story to get them to behave a certain way and the story is not true, but it is effective at healing that we're making them healthier, And
what are the ethics of that? Because, for example, it is my understanding that studies has consistently found that placebos work better when they are expensive. Yeah, because you don't want to feel like you wasted your money. So the ethics of selling somebody a powder of ground up shark bones or something, and this is going to carry you anxiety and it's like, well, actually, people don't just buy it once, They buy it for years because they swear, they swear by it.
It works.
I would like to accuse those people of being thieves, But are they right?
We should start making it not like shark bones and stuff, because sharks are endangered in some cases and it's bad, But like animals that we hate, we should make up stories about their bones and blood and stuff being good, Like, hey, round up mosquitoes are an aphrodisiac because like, who cares they kill a bunch of mosquitos? Or like an invasive species of like you know, like hey, the crowd of thorns starfish? You know they're invasive, but if you grind
them up, it'll give you a boner. Like let's let's let's like, let's start making shitty animals the ones that we turn into medicine.
Yeah, I think I think a lot of supplements are mostly sawdust. By the way, Like when they test what's actually in there, they're like, oh, this is.
Well, yes, yeah, this is just things like saying because it's not regulated, that doesn't have to go through the FDA, and because it also doesn't do anything so who hears. But if you buy Saint John's Word or Jensing or any of that stuff, you'll often find that the amount in a pill is somewhere between ten percent or four hundred percent of what it says in the label because they're not being precise about it because you can't overdose on it because it's just just an herber or whatever.
Yeah.
It's also just like medicine is a relatively news science. I know we think of it as being very old, but it wasn't that long ago that we were like cutting holes in people's skulls and thinking that would like take the demons.
Out, and it did sometimes and.
Sometimes trepending sometimes worked it's not to say, you know, like I don't think any of us, well I don't want to speak for anyone, but I don't think any of us believes that like medicine is bs. Like I think, you know, if your doctor is like, hey, you need treatment for this thing, you shouldn't be like yeah, right, jerk,
Like there are like medicine. Modern medicine is pretty incredible in terms of how actually like we have actually figured out how certain proteins interlock with other proteins and that it affects your body. And that's incredible. But it's also I think there's this separation of like, all right, here's the real hard physic cold medicine, and then the brain the mind stuff, which is just kind of like you know, like hippie dippy brain stuff. It's not real. And I
think that's I think that's a big problem. Like I think that a lot of things could be accomplished if we kind of didn't have this disconnect between like the body's health, the like the body and the brain, and this like separation of like, well, there's real medicine and then there's like you know, like just sort of mind
over matter, you know, silly stuff. And I think combining the power of modern medical advancement and the understanding of how the brain impacts the body can help in a lot of ways, like you know, preventing like over medicalization of things, but also treatment of things that do need medicine, but could also use like the idea that you know, you treat just the thing that's happening in the body without addressing sort of the psychological impacts I think is kind of limited.
I also think we have unrealistic expectations of medicine compared to where we are, but we think everything should be be able to have an instant diagnosis. Here's what it is, here's the pill that fixes it. Including things that are like well, I'm fatigued all the time. It's like, well, what else do you have going on your life? As like, wow, I work three jobs and I have a figure and I need you to give me a pill that will make my fatigue go away. Or you know this is
Ask any therapist and they will have the patient. It's like, I'm depressed. I need the treatment for depression. It's like, oh, when did your depression star Approximately, well, when my wife died and then my dog died six months later and then I lost my job because of my I was so sad about my wife dying and now I got kicked out of my apartment and it's like, Okay, your life is a disaster. You want a pill that will and I think that you know, it's it's stupid to
say we have too much faith in science. It is unfair to ask a pill to fix that. You have a long rountain to climb of getting things back in your li but your body is telling you, you know, man, this sucks. It's not because your brain's producing too much of a chemicals because your life is a disaster. It just is. Your life is not as good as it
was before, so it is part of it is. It is funny because you have part of the population who refuses to believe in science or vaccines, but then you have another part of the population that, for example, thought that the moment they invent a vaccine for a disease, that are just vanishes overnight. It's like, the truth is, these are inventions by humans. They're not magic. They're miraculous and since compared to what we were able to do
three hundred years ago. But no, sometimes you're going to go to the doctor, and the doctor's going to say, we don't have a way to fix this yet, and usually patients do not take that as an answer. They demand a to walk out of their with a prescription, and lots of times they just gave you something to make you go right, because it's like, we don't know how to fix this yet. It's just that's the situation.
I've literally like felt, oh man, I'm so fatigued. Am I sick? And then I realized it's nighttime, it's bedtime. I have to go to sleep. I'm like, oh god, am I coming down with something. It's like, well, no, it's midnight and I should go.
To bed this nighttime fatigue disorder.
And I did the normal thing where I looked at my phone for four hours after I went to bed, and I woke up the next morning feeling my crap, I'm coming down with something, right.
Happy, 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 you Monday. Bye.
Stinging