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. Miles. We are thrilled to be joined in our third seats by an author, a documentarian who MIT called one of the
world's ten most influential intellectuals. He's published many twenty books, including the one we're going to be talking about about today's survival of the richest escape fantasies of the tech Billionaires. Please, welcome to the show, Doctor Douglas rush Cover.
Welcome, Welcome, Thanks for having me, Thanks so much for joining us. Yeah, like we were saying before, we're we talk like we always like to have experts on on certain things. And one thing we always keep hearing about is like the scaries that billionaires get when they think
about the poor people rising up. And we've like we've touched on like people buying properties in New Zealand and like these like billionaire escape bunkers and things like that, And so when we were wanting to sort of discuss this further, it was like it was just great to like sort of see your work sort of completely overlap with that, but also have like a larger look at like it's really not so much about the bunkers themselves, but the flawed thinking around even wanting a fucking bunker
to escape it all. So, yeah, we're really stoked to have you on that.
Cool no, and thanks for that too, because some you know, I write this book and there's this opening scene right where I meet the billionaires who all want advice on their bunkers, and most of the journalists and newspapers and stuff who've covered it, they're like, oh my god, the billionaires are going to leave us behind. It's just happening. And it's like, dude, read the book. These guys are pathetic. None of this is working. The whole point of that scene,
it's a comedy. It's a comedy. This is laughable. These guys are nuts, right Yeah.
Yeah, So it kind of leaves that behind pretty quickly, yeah, and then focuses on, you know, like tells the story of how we got here, why we are here. If you needed any evidence, any more evidence that we are here, there is a sixty minutes piece I think last this past week where they were talking about Sam Bankmin Freed, and like Michael Lewis was like, man, he's a great guy. Like the world needs a Sam Bankment freed to like save us from ourselves type shit.
Oh no, he was saying that, I know he's got a new book, Michael Lewis, you know he's like Moneyball great right or yeah, the Big Short and he's he's got a book coming out like next week or the week after about Sam Bankman Freed. And people don't know that's the crypto crazy he you know, giant crypto crash, zillions and billions of dollars of people's money with him on this. Uh basically, I mean maybe he meant well, but it was a crypto pyramid scheme that he was running.
And but the weirder thing is like he's an effective altruist. He's he's basically one of these people who believes that the human beings alive today, like the eight billion people around we're just like the Larval stage of humanity. We're like the maggots on the original medium, and the ones that matter are the posthuman ais that are going to spread throughout the universe. So if you have to make choices now that cause pain and suffering for these little
eight billion worms. It's okay because the super ais are going to be are going to be happier, and.
We will be we will be come back.
How many people there are going to be before like after that? The direct quote from michae lewis there is still a Sam Bankuin Freed shaped hole in the world that now needs filling. Say, maybe not so, but but yeah there is. I mean you talk in your book about when Jeff Bezos went to space and like this big media kind of orgasm that they had about just this idea of like a private person. We're now at a place where a private person can get so rich
that they can go to space. It's like the the ultimate deliverance of the American dream, like on a cartoonish scale. But yeah, it's like people, really it does seem to be of the zeitgeist to like buy into this shit still, like we're starting to see some of the magic wearoff thanks to Elon Musk being a public dipshit, but it's it's still a mess. So we're going to dig into all of all of that stuff. What is something from your search history?
Well, if I skip over all the moms with huge jugs searches thumbnails obviously thumbnail thumbnail, jpeg, jpeg jpeg.
Yeah, this one's kind of embarrassing. It was. Let me look it up here.
It's David Foster Wallace on being entirely yourself. Now, that is something that a man of my age would quote, who wishes he read more and want and wants to figure out who they are, would Google. This is a midlife crisis of a search. Yeah yeah, do you.
Write something good on being yourself? It's just a YouTube video. It's a commencement speech.
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah, and it it. It's probably the most embarrassing thing I've ever And I'm just alone in my home office being like, how do I know who I am?
Yeah?
Yeah, let me watch this guy tell me? Yeah, this guy who wore a bandana? Was he really stuck guy? That ship? Yeah? I mean, does you think he was copying Brett Michaels or was Brett Michaels copying him? It's it feels like impossible.
Did Captain Leue Albano come first? Like we really don't know? He can say like I do, like what I wish somebody had asked to Davin Foster Wallace like why maybe they did haven't liked? Does he touch on it in his on Being Yourself commencement, like, for instance, look at this fucking thing that I'm wrong.
One was like, uh what why?
Yeah, it's whatever.
Davin Foster wall is foremost intellectual of your generation. What the fuck with the bandana? Yeah, but that bandana is not it is.
Except who you are and be yourself unless you're balding that up.
It's shameful.
Like rock and roll.
There's a picture of him in two thousand and six and he's rocking a full head, full head of hair. Yeah, two years before he passed. So you know I didn't I made Is it entirely aesthetic? I don't know. David Foster Wallace fans dial in, let us know about the dfd.
Oh and the lines are lighting up? My lighting up, David Foster Wallace fans who all use land lines. Yeah. I feel like I got I got into a real David Foster Wallace hole in like my early thirties and like were starting to take his books out of the library, tried to read infinite Just yeah, that's what you do, you know, Like I got really dedicated, Like I really tried. I got like a couple of hundred pages in okay to that shit. Like, you know, I don't know that
anybody's ever made it that far. I haven't checked the record on how far the furthest anyone ever made it into infinite jests before.
But a fun thing to do is when someone says they've read David Foster Wallace and an infinite jest, you go, especially, you go.
Yeah, what do you think of the ending? Crazy? Right? Watch them?
Do you think of.
All the spaceship were crazy? Dude? Wasn't expected, dude. The his non fiction was really good though.
There the the I think Big Red Sun is his like magazine, like long ass magazine piece on the porn industry.
I highly recommend that.
Did he read Did he write one an essay on on taking a cruise?
I think he did?
Yeah, like a supposedly fun thing that I'll never do. Yeah, yeah, I remember that too. Yeah that was good.
That was good. So we're learning people. Yeah. I Meanwhile, I'm like, I haven't read a say. I had to read his whole.
Damn name as too many as too many names.
So anyway, my life's in shambles. Yeah, I'm kidding.
OK, what is something that you think is overrated?
More than overrated?
I feel I've never seen more positive affirmations or motivational messages in public spaces in my entire life.
I mean from a point of view of capitalist branding.
You walk into i don't know, a Starbucks or whatever, there's the positive messages everywhere, and I believe positivity has fallen in much like the American flagged. Positivity has fallen into the wrong hands. Yes, because it is uh, it's.
It's like mind control.
So I think there's a lot of like gratitude. We all have to be more gratitude. By the way, gratitude journaling, I don't think. I don't know if you guys do it. Have you ever gratitude journal No.
I'm not. I'm not grateful for fucking anything, So I don't thank you. Point I would, but my life fucking suck. I have nothing to be grateful for.
Yeah, right, it's like all of this stuff, like, come on, just be thankful for the little morsel that you've been given to by your overlords. Anyways, I hate the I think it's all. I think none of it is real.
That's right.
Overrated I think none of it is real.
I have personally, like I feel like I can it's better for me when I am focused on the people around me as opposed to myself and like my own shit, Like it's better for me to just be like, all right, let's let's like hear what they're interested in, what they're what's going on with them, and like that, thinking about things like in a grateful gratitude and old that's not a word. I like it. I like it can sometimes
help me do that. But there is definitely like we have a shampoo in air shower that says there the greatest study. It says, release that which no longer serves you right on the fucking shampoo on the shampoop.
That's like all it says. It doesn't really like I don't even know if it's shampoo. It's just the you know, and it's just like such a bottle.
It's such a bummer like that, like all these ideas, like any good idea just gets fucking taken and stamped onto a bottle to sell you something that is just chemicals in a bottle.
It's just chemicals in a bottle that.
If you like the gross that's gut.
Wow. I love.
These head chemicals tell me to release that which no longer serves me.
And I gotta tell you, as a woman, this stuff is like shoveled at you.
Yeah right, It's like it feels like kind of like the Fall of Rome. It's like bread and circuses and affirmations. Yeah, just to kind of stave off the ene exactly. A fuck, the bread and the circuses aren't working. We need another thing to kind of get them to focus on, not the fucking fall right now.
I am with you, Yeah, I am totally with you. I'm like shiny, shiny everybody, happy, happy, big smiles, big smiles everybody.
And I think that's where we're all realizing it's book, because everyone's reaction to it is like, you know what, I've read this really fun thing at Starbucks. It's like, shut the fuck up Starbucks.
A reaction to those things. So I don't know if they're working. I don't know if they're working. I like, shut the fuck up Starbucks. It's like that's the story. Yeah, just a T shirt, just.
Fucking a middle finger at the African it's the album cover, middle Finger Starbucks, Shut the fuck up Starbucks.
My new ep that's just with the hair around it of the old Starbucks.
You know, I will say, it sounds like both of you have not yet today this morning released that witch no longer, sir, know we.
Have not clearly haven't had my coffee.
That's right. Okay, let's go to something a little bit different. What do you think is something that is underrated?
Okay, something that I think is underrated is listening to classical music at the gym. And this is something I only started doing kind of recently, and it's been a huge game changer. It's like it's really meditative and energizing at the same time. Beethoven's fifth goes especially hard.
Interesting, that's basically house kind of yeah, that's yeah.
Yeah, it's a very like that's Beethoven's fifth.
Excuse me, yes it is. Yeah, dun dun, dundun.
It's a very arousing, and I mean that in the just it's a very sick okay, stimulating, like it's on.
And like to the point.
Where I was like, like, I didn't, I don't. I didn't know too much about Beethoven's history, and I was like, this kind must have been like the guy of his day, right, like he's probably doing. He's like the usher in Vegas, you know what I mean of his time. So I looked it up and uh, that is not the case. Turns out it was like the exact opposite, and he was actually a very romantic and love sick person who like didn't consummate his love with the many women that he fell in love with.
Which interesting that you created a romantic king. Okay, yeah, I mean exactly this other thing.
I mean, are we claiming him? You know, because the other rumors that Beethoven was black, Okay, I have seen hilarious and they're like, look at this, he might be light skin and I'm like, okay, sure, maybe a very interesting internet of like Beethoven was black. Oh sure, I guess.
I mean I love a black Ludwig.
But yeah, what about Okay, so you got Beethoven bumping through the headphones? Is it?
Like?
Is that like good? For just in general? It just puts you in a good place to focus. Because for me, whenever I've listened to music, I kind of needed to be like a motor that drives my limbs to keep going. It's usually in the context of like running, but again, that's my very narrow experience with it.
I think it has that vibe.
You know what it is too.
It's the absence of lyrics I think help you focus too, and you really are kind of like focusing on the rhythm and the tempo and and you know, the various instruments coming together, and it could propel you to like, you know, lift or run or whatever. I find that it like, Yeah, it's effect of like just keeping you motivated and kind of tuned into your body.
Also got you what other classics are you spinning someone?
If you're picking a workout playlist, who also show it.
Up classical workout?
I really like a Tchaikovsky, Yeah you like so you like the aggressive ones? Yeah?
Yeah, you.
Divorces New World Symphony, You're like, okay, there bangers?
Yeah, you know some Vivaldi.
Love Vivaldi, love the Love the Four Seasons, you know what I mean.
I might recommend Maurice Ravel's Bolero is a good warm up track.
It's my classical music nerds out here. I used to play in a youth orchestra, so I was all I was all about the classical music back in the day. Okay, but you said lyrics distract you, so who is an artist you can't listen to or else you're gonna just be just completely singing along or completely distracted by the lyrics.
That's a great question. Okay, okay, I'll just reveal it.
I'm just gonna say so, I've gotten really to also the Venga Boys. Yeah, I'm back to that like nineties early two thousands, like you know.
Electro whatever.
Yeah, it's so hard not to sing along and be like boom.
You know.
Yeah, yeah, class Okay, so wait we're like vengel I'm sorry, I'm avengl I'm a Venga head.
Yeah okay, good, I'm in with my Kindred Spirits.
Yeah yeah, yeah. Where are they from? Like they were like from all over, weren't they? Are they really Dutch or something? I feel like the most European Yeah, because of the era when like every like nobody was from America back then, like all that electronic music was either coming from like Sweden or Germany or you know.
Euro dance group Like yeah, okay, they're Dutch.
Okay.
Also Deepen and Dennis vander Dreichen, they're very touch all right.
So yeah, wait, what was the l I said?
USO?
I did live in Holland for a little bit, and I don't see that much touch.
Okay, yeah, there we go. Let's go, let's go.
That's it. That's how I though offer this one.
Okay, let's take a quick break and just figure out what's going out with Joe going on with Joe Brandon's now Joe Brandon's wall. I guess we will figure that out when we come back after this.
And we're back. We are, And this story has been knocking at our door for days now, and we've been trying to resist. We've been saying we don't hear you, we don't care about you House Republicans. But there it seems like something might actually be happening.
I mean, like so all last week, right we didn't really talk about like the potential government shut down because the Maga Republicans are like, we don't want any money for Ukraine or this or that or whatever, and we'll shut it down. We don't care if kids like miss out on their like social you know, safety net programs
and things that we don't care. We don't care if the people that serve us in the cafeteria of the Capitol are laid off, like we look in the eyes, so turns out it all it all ended up working out because Kevin McCarthy at the last minute pulled off a squeaker and funded the government with the help of the freaking Democrats. So because of that, Matt Gates is now like he's taken upon himself to represent all the maga freaks in the in the House and be like
that's it. He's he's crossed us one too many times, and we hate that he's working with the demon crats. He's like, he's actually a puppet of the Democrats, is what he's been saying. Yeah, okay, but now he's basically saying that it's time to call it on his speakership.
And if you recall, Kevin McCarthy is not a good negotiator, uh, not only because not only because he is an untrustworthy scumbag that's lower than snake nipples, but also because he is a terrible negotiators, just terrible, like even understanding the dynamics or leverage of a negotiation. So on his way to get the votes to this become speaker, if you recall, you'll like they a call like fifteen votes before we find It's like, what do you want dude? Like, oh,
name my kid, Maga McCarthy. If you want, like just preaze, let me get this. He basically said, here, I will hand you the Maga freaks, a big red button in the form of being able to oust me if one member wants to pursue a motion to vacate the speakership aka get me out of here, then if you got the votes, then fine. And we've come to that moment where now Matt Gates is like, we're doing it. I'm doing it. I'm not going to do it. I'm gonna
do it. And he needs, like he less than ten votes right now from his Republican colleagues to be able to oust Kevin McCarthy. Yeah, and so it looks like he's going to be ousted. Well he Here's this is where it gets fun. He would need the Democrat. I already stopped listening. Yeah, you would here.
To be honest, I stopped listening when he turned into James Carbon and said lower in snake nipples, nipples, step loaded snake nipples. Yeah.
I don't know why. I just had to. I've been trying to put that in a cart and I was like, I had to. That's the thing when you're dealing with somebody like that. They're lowdered the snake nipples and you can't trust him. But the thing is the Democrats would have to save him, and most Democrats have just laughed at this notion where they're like, hey, would you vote?
They're like what, and like you Alexandria Kazuo Cortez was like, the only way I would even think about it is if he came with some kind of deal to be done. But then still preface that was like, but this guy's lowered than snake nipples, So there's no way we can believe him what he says, because the second he works with us, he goes around and says the opposite thing on Fox. So he would need the votes. We will
see what happens. But like when you look at quotes like this from Democrat Jerry Connolly of Virginia, this is like you would you would imagine the deal would have to be gargantuan aka impossibly, we said quote upon examination, I do not understand what any Democrat would find of redeeming value to allow him to persist in the speakership. We should not enable aid or a bet his continuation in office. You know, when someone pulls out the word of bet.
Yeah, yeah, that's it does sound like this was like a twelve year old trying to write a sentence that sounded official.
It's all twelve year old.
They had like a little Twitter war x yeah yeah, or where it was like.
Bring it on.
Just did it, like they're having little back and forths like on a school yard.
This went on. Yeah, just did it?
Yeah, really like it's already been just did it. It's already been brought.
It didn't go for that. I'm of a retweet that would have been yeah yeah yeah, So we'll see where this ends up. But I mean, like if the vote.
Happened and he didn't get the he he does not have the votes McCarthy correct, which seems to be the only place he's comfortable.
Yeah yeah, yeah, I mean not having the votes beautiful back to my sweet spot. Yes, oh yeah see eyes of right now. They tried it, but yeah, just by the he just barely got out, so.
Oh so he's still in. But he also the it was not an encouraging.
Vote, no, no, got it.
Yeah sorry, but just the notification well yeah, recording the story anyways, guy like that, he's he's only comfortable when he's down in the muck getting mugging it up with them other boys.
Because yeah, just.
Trying to figure out how to best represent the American people, That's right. That's always trying to do.
Everybody, it's all trying to do.
That's all I'm trying to do.
Didn't know that was a crime. Didn't know crime?
Hey, speaking of didn't know that was a crime. That's what Amy Coney Barrett's going to be saying, because the FBI is apparently interviewing several individuals alleging that they were abused by members of the People of Praise, the Christian cult that Amy Coney Barrett belongs to. That got a lot of attention in the run up to her confirmation. Yeah, and not mentioned once.
Yeah, it got attention from the activists and other people who were just so shook to their core that a creature like this would ascend to the Supreme Court. But yeah, and the hearing people were like, and you're a family woman, right, It's like, oh boy, we need not our grandparents to be in those confirmation hearings.
So apparently the group encourages members to speak in tongues, make prophecies about the future and expel gay people. So apparently that group not totally on the level, which I think we all find shocking.
I mean, I feel like the gay people are getting the best deal of all.
Yeah, you're not allowed Like cool, oh.
He that?
Oh no, you're like, oh no, way, okay.
This is terrible news.
But private schools closely affiliated with the group have admissions policies that in effect ban the children of gay parents from attending.
Very frightening and what right, wow.
But the thing is, though, like, it's not we're not sure if it's active, right, because the one thing we know is like it was I think the Guardian confirmed that like five people were interviewed, were so, but we're still not sure if they're like is this going somewhere or is it one of those things like yeah, we'll look into it and then do nothing. Yeah.
Yeah, they tend to they have the ability to just ignore the ship out of some pretty well.
Right.
Yeah, but they're like, yeah, we interviewed people, but we didn't really follow up.
Like, so they've been contacted by this group people of what's it called po People of Praise, People.
Of Praise, People of Praise.
Yeah, people of Praise. There's also the group People of Praise Survivors. That sounds like a first draft. Don't you think that's a first draft of a name for a cult?
Yeah?
Man, I bet it was the result of the longest, most boring meeting of all time when I came up with that.
Holy shit.
But yeah, so this group People Praise Survivors are a group that's like designed to call attention to the claims of sexual abuse survivors, and members have been in touch with FBI have been apparently confused that the FBI hadn't reached out sooner following press reports about alleged abuse, which, yeah, it's just all further illustrates how strange it is that her membership in People of Praise never came up in a Senate hearing to confirm her as an appeals court judge.
Yeah, well, it's like, on one side, Republicans, there's no way they would bring it up because it's like get her in there right the scales of the of the court. And then I'm sure Democrats it's like an optics thing where it's like they don't want to like because this is how they're probably thinking about it. If I question People of Praise I'm going to open myself up to being painted as an anti Christian like atheist person, and
I just don't have the spine for that. I'm also lower than snake nipples, it turns out, so I just don't touch it.
I just want Yeah, I tried to get into People of Praise and they rejected me so.
Exactly, and I don't want to mess up my chance in the future by casting aspersions on them publicly.
That's right, They're just jealous.
All right.
I want to offer an official overrated from from me. Oh, I know we usually save those for Monday, but yeah, Roman Concrete, there's a new AP story about how they're trying to figure out the secret to Roman concrete and they just made a breakthrough earlier this year in a study where they found out that it is self healing, that it's able to heal its own cracks.
That story.
We've like covered that story multiple times like over the past five years, like it keeps coming up.
Yeah.
The last time was the beginning of this year, okay, where they're like they've cracked the code, and when I was like, this is like nine months old. The story. Yeah, at the very least because for people don't know, we're not. Roman concrete isn't like a new street drug. We're talking about the concrete that the Romans used, Yeah, that they were using because everyone's like, look, thousands of years it's still standing. They must have a secret to their superior concrete.
Yeah. So, like just yesterday there was a new ap story being like another breakthrough, and it's the same shit that we've seen before that like nothing has changed about the story. The acknowledging the story also some things that we didn't have before, like that it couldn't hold over three stories like it if you tried to build a building out of Roman concrete today, it would crumble.
Noah, it sounds like all the buildings in New York, right, the Roman concrete.
Yeah.
But so part of the reason it survived as long as it did is because Rome was basically abandoned for like it went from the center of the world to like thirty thousand people and like livestock just roaming the streets. It just immediately like there's the fall of Rome, and then nobody wanted to live there anymore. So nobody was building new buildings, like nobody was trying to knock down
the old buildings to build the new buildings. So like in the article or in an article I read, they compare it to London, which, like all the old buildings in London for the most part got knocked down like because they were building new buildings. But like Rome, nobody was fucking So that's why we have the ruins.
Yeah, I think you have to go to like Bath to see like Roman relics anywhere like in it, or at least that's the closest thing I've heard of.
The crackout Poland that wasn't it has the super old you know, buildings and architecture purely because it wasn't bombed to shit, right y.
Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, And so it's.
Like, oh, it's like, well, actually it's just it wasn't destroyed. Yeah, not that it made it, it wasn't destroyed.
Just nobody was really fucking with Rome like that.
But the one thing I love about the Roman cement Roman concrete, I'm sorry, cement is the street drug that is the that is wild.
It's amazing.
It will optimize your workflow. Actually, it makes you so effective at spreadsheets.
HR meetings with that. Let me tell you, they just fly by. Is that so it was like, right, they have these limestone chunks in it. Is that it and that's why it's self healing. There's like chunks in it. And that's one of the theories.
That's one of the theories.
But I just love it when people look at the way things were constructed in the past and they just go, oh, you know, like in this case, they're like it's all lumpy because they were dumb and they just didn't stir well, right, Like, yeah, no, no, that's that's They weren't just bad stirs in the past, and it just evolved to be better at stirring.
Yeah. Yeah, that's my take. I mean, that's that was our secret.
But so the API article points out that like a lot of their cement mixtures are different, Like you check one sample and a different one and like they're like, it's weird. They put like a bunch of beer in this one, and then this one has like a lot of piss in it, and we're not sure why. It's basically like the experts in this article are like, yeah,
they didn't. They were just like trying different shit, like seeing what worked, and obviously the buildings that worked are the ones that lasted and everything else crumbles, and we're giving them credit for like being masters of concret But they were just like trying a bunch of different shit out seeing what stuck. The stuff that stuck was able to last because nobody was trying to like knock it down to build a highway to help with you know.
Luxury housing. There was no luxury housing going up. I would put the beer one neck near the piss one. I'm sure those two different mixtures were happening. Pretty sure it was across the street, across the street. But yeah, I guess what.
One of the things that doesn't get brought up a lot is like you can find examples of this where architecture has lasted for a long time, but it's in India, and you know, India doesn't the colonial brain doesn't like to think about India having figured stuff out. They like to think about Rome, right, men are supposed to think about Rome every day? Is that? Is that what we're being told with Ruse?
The Romans didn't have any any slaves working on those things. It was all people that were pretty they.
Were seeing good jobs.
Yeah, volunteered happily.
Yeah, because they just believed in the project. You know, it's a shame we don't have that kind of work ethic. Now you believe in something I know.
So like just a quote from the article describing the two processes Cecilia Pesche Materials Scientists at the University of Sheffield in England said they'd toss just about anything into their mixes, talking about Roman architects as long as it was cheap and available, and the ones that didn't work out have long since collapsed. But some materials seemed to show more intention, like in India, where builders crafted blends
of local materials to produce different properties. According to like a civil engineer at the the Lore Institute of Technology, in human areas of in India, builders use local herbs that help structures deal with moisture. Along the coast, they added jaggery, an unrefined sugar which can help protect from salt damage, and in areas with higher earthquake risks, they
used super light floating bricks made with rice husks. They know the region, they know the soil condition, they know the climate, so they engineer a material according to.
This, Yeah, but how much piss is in it? Though?
Exactly how much vodka?
Yeah, just dumping it in I should put in that one. I'm drunk man of no idea. How did we lose the recipe for Roman concret because you gave it to Darryl.
You gave it to Darryl. Daryl did not pass it.
Yeah, I know.
It's it's kind of funny that this nothing was passed along stories. Tons of folks tales, we have mythology, but not one. No one decided to write down how you were making your cement.
Not a person, Yeah, just pee, just some pee man, you know what it is?
Yeah, no limestone or volcanics. And I don't know.
I think it's just just piss. I think it's my magic piss.
Is that anything?
The one man who piss into all of us structures?
Could you imagine? Like if that really really Someone's like it's yeah, I think it's the piss dude.
Right, But then they're too embarrassed to pass it down.
Yeah. The generation wasn't writing that one down.
Huh yeah, wait till they find out it wasn't. It wasn't.
Uh, it wasn't you know, the leader, and it wasn't the strongest man.
It was the librarian.
Yeah, right, we.
Would get Mabel out here, should be I don't know something about it.
It's a lot of cats, might be I don't know.
Is that the t she likes tea?
Yeah?
Anyways, apparently we're supposed to be thinking of Roman the Roman Empire every day, and I just this is my excuse for why I don't think about the Roman Empire every day.
I just think it's just never occurred to me to think about the Roman Empire. And like when I first saw that thing, like the TikTok trend of like dude, dudes be thinking about Rome, I'm like, maybe is it is that. I don't know, how who is the white guys that are thinking about Rome?
I don't know.
I guess just a good model of something else that has fallen.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do think, like, you know, there it's an ancient culture that is also you know, a like full of self devouring cannibals of consumption like we are, and exactly.
Yeah, towards the end of Rome, they had an insatiable urge for micro militarism to go outside their borders and just deplete their resources. I don't know, it doesn't sound like the US at all anyway. Anything. Anyway, guys, release all that to you, which is no longer useful. Thank you, and also watch season three of Love Is Blind and enjoy National Taco Days.
Do you like your hair shiny?
Yeah? Chemicals?
All right, let's take a quick break and we will come back and talk about our Roman concrete, the Las Vegas sphere, the monument to I think this is the monument, like the ultimate, the furtheringest of capitalism.
That we've gotten. This is the peak, and.
It's not necessarily a good thing. We'll be right back, and we're back, and just to kind of summarize what we were talking about before, like this, because I did find the book ultimately hopeful, because like it really clarified this idea that I think we all assume that there's something happening with resources and the earth that is inevitably
leading toward a climate apocalypse. And you talk about how that assumption is purely based on like their mindset of like this extractive kind of their addiction to ten x growth is really what's driving this inevitable move towards a unsustainable world and climate. And like if you, if people are able, if like the zeitgeist is able to switch over to this more these more circular economic models. We
have enough water, we have enough resources. That's what we've found over the past Decadeyeah, you know, but it's hard, you know. I mean I get that it's hard, you know.
And I talk to you know, middle class people and they're like, yeah, I'll do the kind of things you're saying. Once I've got like a million dollars in my four oh one k plan, right then I'll stop. Or just I just need to work two more years at this bad job that I know is just drawing the planet and then I can stop. And when I listen to them, they sound like addicts, you know, where it's like, dude, hold, I just got to drink until this project is done,
just until this, just until the next thing. And there is no it actually it's it's now, it really is now. There is there is no next first, there's no next big thing that's gonna save us. I was talking to a billionaire who says, Oh, I've got this carbon capture device. We're gonna put it right on the back of the car and right on the back of the truck and it's gonna suck the carbon out so we don't even have to go to EV's Like, oh, good, the fuck luck with that, you know, or oh, a eco city thing.
It's like a pill and you drop it into the water and the city is going to grow out of it. That's you know, magical, crypto perfect city for children and regenerative agriculture, and there's a stack for this and a stack there's no thing. But it's hard to tell people like right now, how do they start?
You know?
And that for me, if we talk about it and and I've given up with this, if we talk about it as oh, a new economic system or a thing, then they're like, oh, no, it's a socialist or something. Oh god, yeah, you know. And if we could sort of take the ism off socialism and just make it like social yeah, social like and it's interesting, you end up in the same place, but you win the argument.
So I do that thing about, you know, instead of buying a drill from home minimum viable product drill from home depot and making all this waste and using it once, go to Bob's house, knock on Bob's door and say, Bob, can I borrow your drill? Right? And Bob is gonna bring a big, thick matterfucking drill plugs in the wall. The way God intended. And he's gonna come over and say, Doug, you're a fucking nerd. You don't know where to you don't know where to find a stud. I'm coming over
and drill in the hole for you. Right, He's gonna make the hole. It's gonna be great. But then like three days later, that weekend, I'm supposed to have a barbecue at my house. Bob's gonna smell the barbecue, and Bob's gonna think, wait a minute. I went over and helped Doug drill a hole in the wall, and he didn't invite me over to the barbecue. So now I'm gonna have to invite Bob over. All right, So I invite Bob to the barbecue. That's fine, and Bob turns
I know. It turns out he's nice, and his wife's kind of nice, and his kids are cool, and they're like, all right, well that's so bad. But now the other neighbors smell the barbecue, and they're like, wait a minute, why is Doug inviting Bob to the barbecue, not us. Before long, we're gonna have a block party and everybody's gonna be having fun at this barbecue, right, that's the nightmare, right, that's the downside the brand thing. It's like, But now
that we're all together and talking, how did we meet? Well, you know, I borrowed Bob's drill. Now people on the block say, you know, I wonder I was gonna need a new lawnmower. But instead of me buying a new lawnmower, what if we just like use two or three lawnmowers for the whole block and we just share the ones we have because I don't use it more than a couple hours a week. So now we're buying less lawnmowers, buying less drills, and we have more money to start
doing stuff. I'm teaching Bob's kid algebra because I'm paying him back for the favor that he gave me, and it's all working out. Someone invariably gets up when I do that in the talk and says, well, yeah, but what about the drill company.
Yeah, bad for sales.
What about right, and the person who was the job at the drill company and the old lady? Someone said, what about the old lady who has a pension fund that's dependent on the stock and the drill company for her to uh for her to survive. It's like, well, luckily we're going to be taking care of that old lady because now we have a neighborhood, and hopefully we're gonna wind this down. That's why we're not doing it in revolution. I'm not saying everybody today stop buying drills, right,
it's not gonna work like that. But slowly and surely, as we replace some of that activity, the power of these giant mega corporations kind of diminishes. This huge, you know, ridiculous global supply chains end up kind of shrinking down, and and we we slowly kind of turn the corner towards something more social, more circular, more on the ground. We we take some of the weight of government and
social service programs to take care of us. We we take some of the weight off the climate, off the economy, and all that stuff all at the same time. The that's what I meant by you know, I have more hope in people that people could kind of flip and go, oh this is fun. Right, Yeah, I'm okay with this.
What if life was actually fun? Like that's yeah, kind of a crazy idea. But how many drills do I have? But I need drills? Drills there's this David Wayne movie The Ten where like he and his neighbor or two characters, like two neighbors get in a cat scan buying frenzy
where they just like they get competitive about buying cat scans. Anyways, I don't know, I mean, but yeah, you like, just to the point of the socializing you reference a couple times in the book, like these powerful, unconscious connective forces that are happening at the level of like mirror neurons, right, and you also mentioned that like the powerful, the more powerful people get, the less likely they are to have
this exchange to engage in the mirroring of others. So it almost feels like that we're being delivered from this very powerful, you know, way that we become part of a network connected to other people, made up of other people that's very natural, very human, like how humanity got this far. We're being delivered from that by these powerful
people who are like mapping onto us. They're weird thing that is like that doesn't value that, that doesn't see the intrinsic value of that, and it's making us miserable, right yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I mean the way like a Marshall McClue in or somebody immedia theorist would look at it is what you're talking about are the values of the television age. Right, We got television, and we use television to paint pictures of the world that made us feel inadequate about where we are that we need to get that other thing.
Right.
The television is sort of what put us in competition with each other and kind of desocialized us because the less, you know, the less satisfied people were, the more likely they were to go buy stuff. So television was this really terrific influencing machine and it's supported markets and companies and consumption and all that. And now we've moved into a digital age and we're kind of using that same
industrial age television era. Oh, let's use it to influence people and get them to buy more stuff and all that. And it's like, well, maybe that's not the digital thing. I mean, it's not sustainable. It's too when a digital algorithm can can reconfigure itself in real time to influence your behavior, it's like, this isn't gonna work anymore. This isn't just gonna get people to buy forward cars, right, because people don't even have jobs at Ford where they
can afford a Ford car. It's like this is this is flipped in a different place. So I think we have to stop kind of using media to get people to do stuff and start looking at using media and technology to provide people, you know, some of what some of what they need, which is it's a it's a big it's a it's a big mind shift. But you know, you know what I mean, This is like a very different media environment that this stuff works differently than industrial
age stuff. We're not just coaxing people. It's as if television was more like social media, which is more like say the missionaries, they go to a population and they propagandize them, They get them to worship the new God, and they do a lot of intelligence on them, and then the missionaries send the intelligence back to the crown. And who comes next The conquistadors, right right, They know how the beta population works, they've got the intempts. They go in and they get them. That's kind of what
the AIS and the digital things are. They're the conquistador is not just coming to influence us, but coming to annihilate and replace us. And that's wait a minute, that's not that's not going to work. So that's why we have to flip the script and say, well, what you how can they how can they serve us instead? And
this technology could you know? I once you start saying wait a minute, once you get out of the framework of how do we retrain people for better jobs once the ais come, and start thinking instead, how do we retrain people for lives of meaning and pleasure and leisure? And it's like, ooh, that would be that'd be kind of fun.
Right, because I feel like so much talk even like with like universal basic income, it's always just like offset the damage that tech innovation is gonna do. It's not because humans like we just because we're so productive, we should begin shifting to something that resembles more like leisure time or family, like, right, the ability to just commune with nature because you want to. It's always like, well, yeah, man,
when this tech comes online, everybody's fucked. So the only way we can keep them at bay is by giving them like a pittance every fucking month. And that's universal basic income. And it's always interesting to see, like in your analysis, like a lot of these things that we are we're getting preached to us by like these tech people. It's always like it's never actually to solve anything. It's it's a solution that is just it's it, but it's a it's a new product packaged as a solution that
is never actually tended to address what's happening. So we're in this snow, like this constant, like this never ending thing that only leads to increased like to your point, depleting our resources, you know, degrading the environment. Which for them, it's like, well that's the end game is then it's gonna all break because I'm too good at capitalism, and then I got to shoot the pores.
I know. It's like for programmers who are so big on disrupting systems, you think they would consider disrupting corporate capitalism, they would consider something other than running to Morgan Stanley with every new invention they have, But they're ultimately so reactionary. They're so conservative, they don't challenge the underlying assumptions that their companies are based on. I'm going to go disrupt the taxi market. I'm going to disrupt the book market.
But what about disrupting the market market asrupting that with abundance? You know, it's like this is this is so much easier than then writing another clue to make this current system, you know, churn another ten years while you look for a way out. And and the other side, you know, like the Koch brother side of this thing. You know, those guys are the big climate deniers. You go to an actual Cooke Brothers conference. They all believe in climate change.
They've got all this stuff on what's going to happen and the methane gas and the this and the that. But their objective is, don't let us be the only ones who know what's happening so we can prepare for it, while the rest of society is is is told that this is a myth.
Yeah yeah, the very like elitist thinking that's happening.
That's like it's really cynical, Yeah, yeah, of the mind. And the more that that happens, and the more paranoid people get, then they get into QAnon and five g Towers and the Great Reset and that COVID was here to reduce the population of the world. And you know, because I get it, it's comforting to believe there's like an Avengers style Doctor Evil super villain, George Sorow's Jew you know, who's who's controlling the world with is you know,
from the Italian embassy with space lasers or something. But it's like, I know, however comforting that is. It's time to grow up and say, no, no, we are we are in charge here, We're actually this is much simpler. This is much simpler than it looks. The only time we really get into problems is when we're trying to operate at scale, you know, like Zuck or Musk or whoever.
If you want to operate locally, like ninety nine point nine percent of us can operate locally, and we could, let's just dedicate one million people to thinking at scale, you know, is that enough? We want ten million people thinking at scale? It's like, let them go do that, so we could just take care of each other.
Yeah, And it's like funny too because like for for all of like the ways I think we're just you know, propagandaized into thinking, oh, you know, there is no solution, Like the only solution is to just hit the fucking pedal harder and go through this, rather than like slowing down or looking at it. Like we have so many examples even in our recent history that shows that, like
you know, like you bring up the Greenwood District in Oklahoma. Like, black people were completely excluded from the mainstream American economy, so they figured out how to do it on their own outside of it. And it was something that was cooperative and just like, well, if we only have us to rely and then like, let's make this work. And sure enough, it got to a point where it invited all this resentment that we had that race massacre.
Right well, because the whites were confused. Wait a minute, if these black people were cut off from the economy and they're not allowed to participate, why are they doing better than us?
Right?
Right? So they went in and killed them, right right, But we got to look back at that and go, oh, they were doing better then that The blacks are doing better because being cut off forced them into local, circular economic activity. They started relying on each other, and yes, doing better. Now, do you need to be cut off? No, there's a balance, right, you shouldn't have to be completely
cut off either. But boy, oh boy, when you see a lesson like that, when you see the way American farmers got out of the depression, you know, through stuff that really look like communism and cooperative land ownership and local currencies, you realize what we need is a more balanced set of economic instruments, you know, different ways of operating where we're doing favors for each other. Doesn't look like wrong on some level. You know, people these days,
can we want to do a clean transaction. We'd rather have someone we don't know come in and clean our house for money than the neighbors kids are trying to you know, right, do something.
Yeah, the I mean the dumbwaiter effect, which you've already made reference to, like the invention of the dumb waiter by Thomas Jefferson, which in you know, elementary school history classes is claimed to be. Oh, he wanted to save the quote unquote servants at his house from having to walk up and down the stairs with heavy plates, and it's actually no. He wanted to hide the fact that he had and cost slaves behind the you know, hide
it from people on a lower floor. There's this anecdote in the book that really drives home like what we're up against, where so it's the people assembling our iPhones for Apple are made to use this toxic fingerprint cleaning solution to make the new product, to just make sure there's absolutely no smudges on an iPhone when you open it in the box. When it comes out of the box, it is toxic. It poisons them, but.
You get premature babies come out of them and stuff. I mean, it's really bad but completely like but.
It's such a good example also of the genius of capitalism as this like singularity, like you're rasing even the subliminal clues of the exploitation behind our most beloved products, so it doesn't even like enter into our minds like they're they're doing this like five levels deep thinking because and it's like you know, the people like these Harvard educated people are like going to work for Apple and coming up with that innovation of like we have well,
like what we found is that if they see the smudges, then like they start to become like get a vague sense of unease with the world. So it has to look like this perfect gleaming cube that that was just like delivered down from on high and like with Amazon
does it less artfully but like more blatantly. It is their entire business model to remove the workers at the store from our lives by replacing them with packages that just show up and you know, I mean, and they're not high, Like they have a company called the Mechanical Turk named for like that that's a historical event where like a robots beat everyone at chess, but was really just a chess master in a like suit that was
made to look like a robot. So like it's we're up against a lot of very complex things that like knows exactly what it's doing, that is really going out of its way to try to deliver you from having the thoughts that you're talking about of like maybe I should like hang out with people in my neighborhood, Like maybe, you know, maybe maybe this isn't as simple as I
wanted to be. Maybe the thrill that I get from opening this box and having an iPhone there that looks like the object from two thousand and one, you know, like that that isn't a thrill that I should be pursuing, but that they're They're working hard, but it does feel like we're getting further and further away from like just fully being absorbed by their bullshit. But I don't have a ton of evidence for that.
Well, I mean that's why I try to write a book about them that makes us laugh at them, so you can see, Okay, if these are little nerd people who are scared of human beings. Then that's why they project onto us the fear of a fingerprint, the fear of knowing, you know, the fear of the people and the dirt and the women and the nature and the
all that stuff. It's like, I get it, you know, And there there are there are pills that can help us emotionally survive in a world where we don't have that human contact certain whatever SSRIs and antidepressants and all that. But there's also ones that are sort of encouraging complexity. There's all the new people out microdosing and trying mushroom
therapy and doing other things. Although I'm still confused that you could take a fucking tech bro, send them down to South America and have them to do a bunch of ayahuasca and you would think it would bring their great reckoning and they'd go, oh, you know, I've got to reconnect with the world and the people and the thing.
But it's like some where between their their ayahuasca trip and their their G five flight back to San Jose, they reverse engineer that the friggin' social network they've made is that solution.
The product they're already working on, is actually the thing, right, if they can just find this one like tweak to the algorithm, that's actually what is going to right.
But when their focus is on post humans rather than humans, which a lot of for a lot of them, it is right. You don't post humans don't have those fingerprints. Post humans don't have the the you know, the aborted fetuses. The post humans are are this sort of idealized idea of the human, the kind of the tech bro idea of human as information as perfectly auto tuned, soulless, you know, abstraction, right, which which I understand. I understand the yearning for that.
You know, anybody who's fallen in love with an anime character knows what that is. But it's a stage, right, It's a stage of adolescents, not a fruitful place for us to go to the civilization.
Yeah Jesus, 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 he needs your validation, folks. I hope you're having a great weekend, and I will talk to you Monday. By