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. Uh yeah, So, without further ado, here is the Weekly Zeitgeist. We are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by an award winning journalist who's worked for places like The Washington Post, The La Times, the Financial Times of London.
It's also the author of the books The Jakarta Method, Washington's Anti Communist Crusade, and The Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World, and more recently If We Burn, The Mass Protest Decade, and The Missing Revolution. Please welcome to the show.
Vincent Bebe, Hello, Hello, thank you for having me, Thanks for doing that. Yeah, it is tomorrow, really national ambrosiaday. Is that a real thing that you Yeah, it's legit.
There's a there's an entire website that just has every day there's something nonsensical or of deep consequence like yes, the same time deeply yeah exactly, runs.
The gamut from sensical to deeply nonsense, deeply nonsensey yeah, but yeah, Like mainly it's consumer groups. Corporate groups are lobbyists just naming something a day to yeah, give themselves a reason to collect a paycheck exactly, exactly, the bullshit economy thrives. We like to cover the bullshit economy as much as possible. And you're coming to us from London. Yeah, I'm in London now.
We've heard Los Angeles by the end of the year for you know, home for the holidays. But I'm currently in the United Kingdom.
Is that where you? Is that your home base at the moment?
Yeah, it has been. I mean I've been on the road like actually for years for the second book, between South Paulo and London often, but I'm like at the end of this book to our I've yeah, resettled into London for a bit.
Cool cool love. You've been at some of the protests in London for you know, Palestinian rights and survival and depending depending where you get your news, I heard it was a pro homans.
Right, yeah, I kind of yeah, Yeah, I've been. Yeah, I've been at the protest weekly here like not far from from from where I am now. Yeah, absolutely, and like, uh absolutely that presentation they tried it here, certainly, I mean the government here is quite committed to demonizing anyone like to the left of I don't know, uh Joe Biden even or even to the left of britsuye snak. So yeah, there was there was quite a big narrative that was either antie like mostly anti Semitic, or quite
about supporting Hamas. And then when I went there, you know, even though I should have known better, I even kind of expected to see some elements maybe there are out there, but what I found was like quite a lot of families and kids, and quite like.
If they're out there, they'll find them here. Yeah.
No, That's the thing that's kind of the I to what I've been working on is that, yeah, you can if a protest is large enough, you can usually find an element in the crowd. You can usually find a fact to support your narrative if you look hard enough.
Yeah, And sometimes the narrative will be you know, anti Semitism, and sometimes it'll be they just like really fuck with America. They just want to like be America, just like whatever honors their preconceived notions coming.
In this This rises to the top quite almost all the time. Usually when you sign a Cadre of US based or correspondence for the US media to cover some uprising in some part of the world. Someone will see a desire to become junior, like the League America, which often like shocked and horrified some of the actual people that I met that put together protest movements in the last fifteen years, But it almost always happens.
Yeah, what is something from your search history that is revealing about who you are?
The only thing I can think of is that I went out to eat with one of my friends the other day and I had to search what is what is the sushi that's a taco but not really a taco and it's tamaki because it's like the open face like sushi, but I didn't.
Know what it was. Oh okay, okay, so you're talking about just the little bed of rice with the sushi on top of it. But it's like wrapped in the seaweed. But yeah, like, oh okay, like a hand roll.
Yeah, yeah, I'm like a foodie, but like I don't always have the right names for stuff, So I'm like, okay, well, what is the sushi kind of taco hybrids?
It looks like an ice cream cone filled with fish kind of right, it does, and it was good.
I mean, we went to the place and it was amazing.
There's a there's like a place in la that's just all hand rolls that I know, Like I don't know, I'm sure they have that kind of yeah, and like they have it by the I forget the name and way, but yeah, Timucky is like my one of my favorites. Usually you eat it at the end, like when you have like a sushi meal, because like the mentality is you like it's it's meant to be the closing sushi that you eat to make sure like oh oh so you think you're full now, well then try this one and now go home.
Yeah, get down.
Yeah, that's why I like the philosophy behind it. It's like no hit hit yourself with the big one at that is.
There a study of food that like passes through you at like different speed, the speed at which you go from full to not full anymore? Because sushi, I can eat myself to like stuffed to the like very bottom of my esophagus, like I can feel the sushi down there and then like be hungry an hour and a half later, Whereas like Thanksgiving dinner or something like that, I'm done, like I'm cooked, like yeah, it's just stuff. I don't I don't know what it is. Korean food
also goes right through me. I feel like, I feel like it's a lot of the foods from Asian countries that are like that. You're able to eat a ton. I mean, it's probably able to eat a ton and then be hungry at like the next the next time a meal rolls around.
You look, we like to eat, man, we like to Yeah, so we're not gonna get slowed down. And I think I don't know. I mean, I know the same way. I think a lot of it, like when eating sushi. There's also the part of it you're like, how much fucking money is this costing? So like you can't I mean, unless you want to really go there, like you could you I'm I'm sure you could eat that amount.
But I'm sure there's also like a psychological effect of.
Like, Okay, do I get another fifteen dollars thing and see if that will do it, you know what I mean, versus like what fifteen bucks gets me a Chipotle or something.
I think there's that part of it too. I don't know if anyone's eating to their full potential.
Yeah, yeah, I mean starches make you feel full, right, yeah, and they fiber stuff. I think, no, But I feel like it's like things that are super fatty or whatever, like they make you want more because like if I eat bacon, I never want to stop.
You know.
It's like if I eat.
Like pork belly or something, I never want to stop.
I want to keep going.
Oh so you like the like the luxurious kind of juicy, fatty parts of I Look when you said bacon and pork belly, it's the same part, but we're doing it different ways. And I'm like, I love.
I say the number one food for like what I'm talking about is pancakes, because pancakes you eat them and then get less and less hungry after you've eaten them as they expand in your stomach, you know, oh right, Like I get more and more full, like even after I've eaten them. Right, So, like there is a science that I'm sure like chefs and culinary artists pay attention to the like, Okay, this is how it's going to
feel going down. But also like once you've eaten it, because you do have like taste buds in your stomach. You know, That's that's a part of there's definitely stuff that when you eat it or drink it, it's like, oh, I liked it when I was having it in my mouth, but then like there's just something about it that fucks me up once it's in my stomach. You know what is something you think is overrated? Blair?
Oh, thank you for asking, Jack Boy? Do I have an idea for you? Okay? Overrated? I don't want a small salad bowl. Okay, I need a big daddy salad bowl. I need room to work without shrapnel going everywhere. I throw elbows like we're on our test.
I need a dexter room to eat that well. I need it.
Salad am I gigantic bull. I'm digging in a well. I'm finding creature down there without any fear of lettuce flying out. Okay, I'm working, I'm swirling. Can't do that with a small salad bowl.
How big are we talking?
Like?
What's a small salad bowl? Are you going to be able to get some torso in there? Like some of your torso? Elbow above elbow?
Show these small salbows, you know, the ones that the standard size, the standard side, these little tiny bulls. I said, this is not correct for a solad. Oh a plate. Do not even get me started on salad on a plate in a restaurant that you pay to go to. These people are sick.
Yeah, maybe if you get me a cubicle with like dividers around it. Otherwise it is going to be there will be projectiles and people are going to have to like take cover as liabilities.
I don't want to do that.
Is your like salad eating style just sucking Tasmanian devil? Is that to do?
Just a blur of fle.
Do you think that? You think that, but it's not steady. I'm polite. I just don't want to be sort of feeling castrated in that situation. Okay, I'm trying to have it be a really acting spall like experience. I'm not trying to do too much. I'm just being appropriate. I'm just saying there's a flaw in the system of what we're doing right now and what we have been doing.
Yeah, I like whenever I eat a salad, like, are you a trader Joe's bag salad?
I eat that in a gigantic mixing bowl.
Yeah exactly. That's peace, that's peace, that's.
Well being because you got to toss it to yourself. You can't do that. Shit, the tight I can't get j with when I'm doing that.
Oh yeah, how am I supposed to spread the salad dressing in a tiny bowl when there's no room to even there's not even any air in there?
Thank you? And do you toss? Do you put like the salad dressing on and then put something over the top and like shake it up? Or you you mixing it? How are you doing that?
I'm even more delicate than that, I'm lighter than that. I'm just do a quick swirl with the I'm not trying to do anything. Crazy people are gas lighting with these.
I do dressing in the bowl first.
Then that's smart, Miles. That's like a pinter as bitch.
That's just how they do that.
That's out every time I watch like like behind the scenes ship in like a restaurant, they'll like dress the bowl and then put the leaves in and then they really yeah yeah, damn man, that.
Just fucking blew my mind. That's great, great.
Advice, because then all you do is like if you just keep scooping from the bottom like all the dressings there and.
It kind of mixes really well. So yeah, anyway, Blair's right, it does sound like some pinterest ass like I actually make my nachos on my tabletop, just directly on the table.
Yeah yeah, but slop sloppy style, Yeah, slappy style.
What is something you think is underrated?
Okay, you guys gotta bear with me on this one. Underrated Taylor Swift? Hear me out here?
Go on? Now, what is it about Taylor Swift I've been wondering.
Okay, yes, she is so overexposed. We're hearing news about her every single day. She's a billion dollar business. She has like a million products. She's always selling something. But the way I still see like half of people be like I don't like her. Oh no, she's like I don't like her music, Get her off my TV screen. The thing that I love is we now have like another like a princess Diana Michael Jackson. We have a single person to focus our whole culture on, which is
so unifying and fun. And I think I don't want people to like her. I don't care if they like her. I want them to accept that it is her world.
She is verse.
Yes, when the aliens come down, Why would I send Joe Biden a.
Taylor swift.
You know what, if the alien are smart, they might just pull up straight to Taylor Swifts like place in Manhattan.
Oh she's I remember early on we were like, is she like she just like has she looks alien adjace? Can you run a full marathon while singing songs? I know? Oka? Or is that some kind of alien technology? I feel like she would be If I had to guess who has access to the alien technology a'llah Independence Day, it would probably be her, right, Like, that's who first of all they would want to give it to, because they're like, You're like, I think, what do they call the really
tall slender like pale aliens? The grays? The grays are the short little ones eyes, the Nordic aliens. I feel like they might be like yeah, or they might be like you're one of You're not one of them? Okay, like you're just really really she's the freaker, the out No, no, you're one of us. Let's go, let's go. We've talked about this before quite a bit on the show. As a show that tries to take a look at the national share consciousness and the zeitgeist, Taylor's swift may have
come up a time or two. And the question that I feel like we come up against is is she, like so time person of the Year has never been a entertainer. Really, it's been a Bono made it for his humanitarian work with and I am making the jerk off him gesture as I say that. But she's the first one who's just like this year. Yes, exactly so.
Is this One of the theories that we like to talk about is that as humans in the in this modern world have lost access to religion, like our Beyonces and Taylor's swift have come in to like replace those foundational spiritual myths. Do we think that she is like it's on par with Michael Jackson and Princess Diana or is she even like a loves that at this point?
Mmm, she's not quite there. I still contend she's not quite there.
She had a not quite no no, no, no no, like you're gonna have you're gonna you're gonna need to pull up to like Sub Saharan Africa, show the picture and they all got to be like.
Trouble, Like if they're not doing that, then it's.
Not quite You're not hidding globally, but because like everywhere else, you know, like in Europe, fucking North America and South America. Even it's definitely, I mean, she could be on her way for sure. I think at this moment it's it's not quite there. But I think more interestingly, we were talking about an episode I hate to show our hand for a future episodes coming up, you know, we were actually asking is she the anti Christ?
Mm hmmmm mmm.
And like and not in like a ah get away, but the you know, the influence that she has and the fear that she strikes in the hearts of conservatives and religious figures, something like that, she might be something there.
Yeah, yeah, and people love people are always looking for labels for themselves so that they can feel like they have a spot. That's what religion does. That's what being as swifty is.
Yeah, she could.
She could use those sweets. I mean, not that I'm not as swifty. She could kill all of us if she wanted. She could just be like swifties attack.
Honestly, I have a feeling she could manage to do like irl damage in physical space more than like Trump could with maybe maga people if you really wanted to start turning the dial up, you know, so it's you know, with just.
World War Z level waves of humans just running, Like I feel I could scale like a wall, you know, but they're all like seventeen year old girls. But which I mean, don't never underestimate a seventeen year old girl. No, Yeah, I like this argument. I think I think it is counterintuitive. But I do think that people people are sleeping on tailors swift.
I just want people to stop resisting.
Stop resistance, you go, thank you. Yeah, just fucking become one with the borg that is Taylor. Yeah, you'll be happier. Do we just see this continuing? Like on some level, I've heard people like she can't get much bigger, and America loves to see someone torn down right. On the other I think saying it can't get she can't get any bigger is a little like saying like, well, it's not like it can get any worse. Politically, It's like,
well you just lack the imagination. Yeah, hold all these beers, please, yes, watch this happen. So like, I do think she could get any bigger, but I think as she gets bigger from here, we do start to enter unprecedented territory.
Yeah, it's a weird spot where we don't this is the first time we don't have a break from someone ever, because she's been re recording those albums and just putting them out in the middle. So she's been in the news every day for over a year now, and usually with you know, Olivia Rodrigo just put out her new album and that was huge too, but we didn't hear from her for a couple of months before that we got a better either. So I have no idea what
it's gonna look like. You know, I isn't gonna explode and everyone's gonna hate her all up.
Do you think like that sort of like American misogynistic pattern is gonna come for her or like, because like you say, Jack, every anytime anyone gets big, it's there is a teardown phase, like with entertainers no matter what. And I'm curious because I know, like even in reading interviews, how she said she was much more affected by things that people said when she was younger, but she's older and now like it doesn't nearly affect her. So maybe
she's like, I've reached my final form. You can fucking try, motherfuckers. But I like the madam Anti Cruxes.
Yep, yep, yeah, I feel like I think Oprah like left the planet a long time ago, but it is still very consistent Lee Oprah, you know, like there's nothing that changed it. I feel like I could see Taylor Swift just evolving in that direction of like no longer on this planet, because I think the thing that often happens. First of all, people want to see a giant, giant celebrity taken down just because for the same reason they
watch like buildings being detonated. But I I think that also just it is such a strange like level of fame and like psychological experiment that it's hard to maintain one's like coherent gravitational equilibrium of reality at that level. And then so it you know, if the whole world is rooting for you to fail spectacularly kind of even if they don't admit that. And also you are in a bizarre psychological experiment where like nobody has told you
the truth in twenty years. You know, like everybody around you is just like WHOA, yeah, you're killing killing that it's almost an impossibility that you maintain anything resembling normalcy. But the kind of how you get weird can go in a direction that just keeps making you more and more famous, right.
And she's so weird by the way, Taylor, I saw the concert. The way she like pauses for applause after every three words is so funny, and I love how crazy she is.
And but like, also, yeah, that's a good example of she is. Every single gesture and micro gesture and micro expression is perfect. Like that's how she's gotten weird. That's how she's become inhuman, dialing it in tighter and tighter into exactly what people want from her, right, Yeah, So.
I feel like that's got to be the point at which fame actually is purely worse than it is good, when nobody's being honest with you anymore.
Yeah, oh yeah, that's gotta be it. The thing that like you really don't want to see is when they like build their own universe that has its own name, like Graceland and Neverland and right right, right, I think like Eddie Murphy had that for a little while, and.
It's and then he came out Jamaican came that reggae album and they were like, what the fuck it?
Yeah, yeah, Prince had it, and Prince maintained his prince ness up till up until the end.
But he got weird too. You know, you gotta get weird. I think that's the thing. It's like, we gotta get.
Yeah, but he was weird. He was known for being weird. That was kind of his whole thing, and he just like kind of honed it and honed it more and more. She is famous for being like very broad and miss Americana, but she is seems able to hone that more and more and more somehow.
Right, Yeah, yeah, we seem to find out that she has like a like a secret Dunkin Donuts in her garage or some weird shit like that, like bring.
On the Dunket Donuts more. I feel like, I know, right crazy, that's I'm saying.
I don't.
That's why I need to see the weird tailor phase, Like, yeah, weird Tailor, take everybody with you please to the weird Land.
I just like want to see what her media diet, like what her just like intake is like, like is she reading Barbara Streisand's memoir or is she reading books about Napoleon right now? You know, like what is what? What does she think is next for her? It's like I'm reading a lot of bell hooks. Actually, yeah, it would be done day. All right, let's take a quick
break and we'll be right back. And we're back, and you know, one of the kind of central questions that I went into the book with and that I just think is interesting and you kind of open up talking about is just the way that like a you know, we're interested inherently in these like the idea that there
is zechgeister a collective consciousness. And you know, you open your book, which is about like one of these things where for a decade there were these movements that seemed to resemble each other in some ways, kind of often superficial,
but spreading around the globe. You also open your book talking about the spirit of nineteen sixty eight, the idea where like revolution is happening across the globe all at once, almost like there's something in the air, right, And this is you know, sixty years before social media, and you know, these protests and uprising sweep around the world and even
in communist countries. So I'd just be interested in first just for framing of the entire conversation, like hearing you speak about what what are the dynamics that are at play there? Like how do you think something like that happens.
Yeah, absolutely, So whether or not we really truly understand, I think we can come up with theories. But historically, revolutions uprisings are common waves. They cluster around certain years, and you know, the best way we have to explain this is people hear about things happening us where they think, maybe I can do this here, even if their conditions are different, even if the things they're protesting against are different.
And I think media has to be part of this story, right because before media would be impossible for people to find in Germany to find out what's happening in France, and you know, unless somebody came and told them that's the story. So even like in eighteen forty eight, like you know, the Spring of Nations in Europe.
You saw like common.
Commonalities across countries, and I think you see in a acceleration of that process the more media ties we become. So nineteen sixty eight you have quite a lot of back and forth happening between Western Europe in the United States,
especially California, but also like they're doing different things. Like if you just if you just like look at the pictures of it, it may look the same, but there's different things happening, and certainly the people in Prague, or in China or in Egypt, which in my book I kind of say that they all do kind of have their own type of nineteen sixty eight.
They're all very different types.
Of movements in protesting, very different types of governments. But like this seems to be a thing at least in the histories, in the history of revolution. Most serious thinkers do think that there is some kind of like a zeitgeist of rebellion in the air, that there are waves
of rebellions, there are clusters of uprisings. I think media has to be part of that story about like again, we have to that's something we as an explanation, we pose on retroactively to make sense of what's happened after it all explodes.
Yeah, I mean, there's also the phenomenon of like parallel invention, where you know, the light bulb is invented in multiple places around the world, like within you know, month of each other, like at least you know, years of each other, and so like we're all kind of working from the same book and coming up with the same ideas. So yeah, I'm just just interested. It's not really the central thesis
of your book. But just as somebody who's spent a lot of time thinking about that, I was curious to hear your thoughts on that.
So yeah, I mean, I guess Zeitgeist is kind of a Gelian idea, right, And like in this book and in like this the understanding of what's supposed to be happening in protests, there is kind of some like deep Hegelian assumptions that there is kind of like a world historical spirit like this, like history with the capital H.
Moves forward right in some grandi mystical way.
And so whether or not that's true or not, I think we can you know, probably most people are not Galiens, but some people, but you know, I think a lot of people do kind of have this deep, deep down feeling or assumption that there is kind of like a history with a capital H that moves forward and this Yeah, this this ends up actually coming up in the book for better or worse.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Another thing you talk about is just this sense among revolutionaries of and this is something that I've just noticed across you know, reading about history of like the joy that people feel, and reading about protests like the fading out of these capitalist roles, and you know, you mentioned the idea of a medieval carnival where they would kind
of topple hierarchies for a set period of time. In the book Dawn of Everything, David Graeber talks about, like, you know, doing archaeological studies of these tribal Native American civilizations that have like that was actually built into the structure of how they operated, where there would be these holidays where people would change and you know, the chiefs or the police, the people who acted as the police would become clowns, and you know, just all of these
like switching of the role the people had, so and it it was kind of built in that if somebody had a really great hunting season, they would then be kind of ritualistically humiliated in front of everybody so that they were not attached to their kind of hierarchical role.
But yeah, I don't know, it's just interesting, like giving people an environment where they can forget their capitalist lives and dissolve into a collective seems to more and more like connect with people, and I feel like is kind of an important part of the equation and part of what makes me hopeful about you know the fact that there could be some people driven change is how much there is just that that urge there. But obviously you know, this is something you think about and put in the book,
so just curious to hear your thoughts. Is that part of the thing that makes you come away from this and still be hopeful even though the of the protesters often get swarted repeatedly in these stories.
Yeah, it's part of it. I mean, I guess the main thing that makes me hopeful is that I came away from this book that I did. You know, through two hundred two hunred and fifteen interviews in twelve countries, and almost everyone, even if they had been, you know, apparently defeated in the short term, had experienced some kind of a crushing defeat. Almost no one had given up on the idea of getting together with other human beings
and tried to build a better world. They had thought about new strategies, they had thought about doing things differently. They maybe had to leave their home country or gone to jail, but they had not given up. And a lot of people have said even if they knew, even after they knew how things ultimately turned out, even if they now know that the story ended in disaster. They would say things like I could relive that day every
day for the rest of my life. It's the most alive that I've ever felt, and that feeling is something that I will never stop reliving.
And I think.
That that feeling is related to not only what you said about this historical practice of inverting hierarchies and sort of creating more direct links between people that you see in all kinds of any civilization, of any complexity. I think you see these things, kinds of things popping up, the medieval carnival, the case you just online have.
I've read a lot of Graver books. Graver's books been not that one.
But I think it's also related to that other phenomenon we spoke about earlier, like the feeling right now, which I think drives the elections of people like Schwartzenegger and Trump and Bolsono in Malay, that we're not actually in control of what's happening. The structures that you're supposed to
represent us are not actually representing us. There are a few moments in your daily life when you really feel that you're making history, that you're part of something, like guys that you're actually working connecting with other people and actually imposing your will in the most part positive sense, like trying to reshape reality in a way that actually
matters at all. And so when those feelings come around for people in this day and age, at this level of like social complexity and in a world of interconnected political systems which I think it is right to believe don't really represent us that well anymore, it feels so incredibly powerful. It feels like this is something that I've been starving for because the like right now, what I'm
actually doing feels like it's really changing things. And that is a feeling that I think that even if we didn't have to improve the global system, which I think we do, it's like there's a deep there's a deep yearning for that in humanity to connect with other people and build something, connect with other people and do something really like to make a difference, and there's not We don't feel that way very often. Often where you know, much a movie.
There's like a meaningless that has like been encoded and everything that is pretty frustrating. And I think people assume might be like something that we just like take for
granted as like part of day to day life. But it really when you read you know, historical accounts and like interviews with people who are parts of things like this in your book, and it's really like there is something that makes you feel alive, which suggest to me maybe that's how we're supposed to feel, is like in our lives, you.
Know, yeah, I mean, yeah, you don't feel a lot you know, yeah, you feel something when you you know, like scroll in social media all day and like get mad at a post and then do a post and people get mad at you.
You feel something. You don't exactly feel alive, right.
Yeah, it's not that omnipotence that like being in the streets or being the collective can kind of bring you when you're just kind of yeah, when it's the digital response version, you're getting to feel something, and I'm like, I'm curious, like in that, you know, like that feeling that allow people to come together and be like, yeah, you know what, I'm also not pleased. I'm angry about
this thing. You know in your book, you know, for people who aren't fully aware, you're examining a lot of these mass movements that you know, most of the time didn't actually end up bringing about the change that the people were seeking, and the fact that the movements get co opted and you know, can turn into, as you say, like almost bringing the opposite effect of what they wanted initially.
Is there something do you think there is something woven in that like that the like obviously there are very politically minded activists and people who are organizing and understand like maybe mechanically what has to happen, But because so many are just sort of taken up by this larger feeling that we kind of get stuck in the loop of doing the explosive like this is our feedback to the leaders of the world kind of thing, and then forgetting what happens after that.
I think that, yes, partially, I think that.
So the phenomenon that I choose to build this history round is is mass protests that gets so big that
they either overthrow governments or fundamentally destabilized governments. So these are movements that at first unexpectedly appear to be incredibly successful, Like so enough people came on the streets that actually the president or the dictator is like fleeing the country or is so scared and so desperate to stay in power that they want to that they'll give something up to the people in the streets in order to stay in power. Now, what happens next ends up being the
focus of my book. Is what I try to do is I go back and say, well, what actually happened in the years that followed, after a lot of the foreign journalists have stopped, you know, reproducing the very inspiring images on screens around the planet, what really happened? And
to answer that question as to what actually happened? I think is related to your question someone indirectly, but related is that the way that we are living starved of this feeling, starved of this actual connection with other you know, we are like digitally quote unquote connected because we're you know, we're we're sending you know, messages on screens. But we're living more individualized lives than I think most of humanity ever has.
We are often responding to like posts.
This, This way that we have been living for several decades shaped the type of the types of responses which were easiest to put together to real injustice. They've shaped the types of things that we did first when confronted
with real abuses of power. And I think that is yes, part of the story and a lot of a lot of the people said this at the end, like you know, we at the end of the book, you know, after I've interviewed everyone asked them to look back in what happened, and a lot of them said, yes, it was not only this system that we thought that it had had been oppressing us, but that shaped the way that we understood political change.
It shaped the way that we could put.
Together responses to injustice, and that ended up meaning that we couldn't get through that first of apparent victory to the next step, which was actually creating something better.
So yeah, I do. I do think it's all related.
I think that we we and then you know, that's part of the learning process, right, That's part of the what happened in the twenty tens is a lot of people got much further than they expected and then.
Realized where the barriers were.
But I think that the fact that we have been living this way for so long is part of the reason that explains why it was the mass protest that came together very very quickly. That was the way that often was the automatic response, Like why the twenty tens the dominant mode of the twenty tens rather than other of these you know, years of uprising was mass protest or the mass why it was a mass protest decade if you want to use the subtop of my book.
You know, I think one of the things that you end up pointing to is that a lot of these protests were coming at the right time, right, there was this energy and this desire, but they were specifically horizontally
organized or organized to resist leadership. And is that kind of the big takeaway that you just you think that future protests protest movements need to kind of take away from this book, Is that some manner of organization, some manner of like, you know, if you aren't prepared after you create the change to step in to lead, somebody
else is going to lead for you. Is that would that be kind of the big you know, because that there is the example of this actually working, right, and the big thing there was that the leftists who created the change then involve themselves in national politics, right right, So like would you say that is the big takeaway that they just need to be ready to organize and then lead that dynamic? I think that you just outlined is.
Goes a big goes a long way towards explaining a lot of what happened in many of the cases in the book, there's like ten to thirteen depending on how you count them. But that dynamic if you you know, if the book is indeed built around the question, how is it possible that so many mass protests led to the opposite of what they asked for? You've outlined I think, yeah, A major part of the answer, which is that what happened unexpectedly is that more people came out in the
streets than was planned for. They joined a very specific type of response to injustice, a very specific type of mass protests, which is you know, which has various elements. It is apparently spontaneous, leaderless, digitally coordinated. Often you know, people are finding out about this because of social media or media and general and then horizontally structured, which means that there's not hierarchy, and there's often an idea that
there shouldn't be. And then these are protests in public squares or in or in public spaces, and when more people come than expect, than are than are expected, then yeah, the government is perhaps dislodged or the government is so weakened the power is up for grabs. And often what happened and you know that this is where you know, cases really diverge. But often what happened is whoever was already there organized waiting in the wings, steps in and
takes power. The person that was like waiting, you know, off off off camera, off stage, takes over, or you know, sometimes that is local national elites. They're not always on the right.
Sometimes they are on the right.
Or especially in the cases of countries that are weaker than the US, you often had some neighbor or the US itself coming in to to fill that vacuum and crush the movement, and then that kind of counter attack coms, just like it did in seventeen eighty nine or in the revolutions in previous eras of global revolution, there's usually
a counter attack of counter revolution. That protest that had it planned on going to war with anybody that had not planned on even actually overthrowing a government is really was really not really ready for it was really not ready to defend this project, which really concretely consisted of millions of different people with different ideas as to what it was. Because they came together so quickly, and you know that part of it, I think is a strength in the beginning is you can get so many people
together very quickly because the sort of everyone's invited. But once you get past that first moment, often there was a brief moment when there was an opportunity, and usually the people that took the opportunity were already organized, already ready, and already waiting in the wings to seize power, where whereas the stream movements couldn't decide if they believed in taking power, was supposed to do it, or if what they were doing with it, if they would and while
that sort of non conversation was not happening, like the military sweeps in or a right wing popular sweeps in, or NATO bombs of your country and so on.
When it comes to like kind of like looking like because you know, looking at the book and just kind of thinking about everything I'm always thinking of, like you know, like how this like relates to the United States too, and how we've we dabble a lot. I mean, yeah,
we've seen a lot of mass protests. I mean, like in twenty twenty felt like a huge moment with Black Lives Matter and people beginning to sort of be able to articulate like sort of what is wrong with our system of policing only to just get like Nancy Pelosi kneeling in the kintake cloth at the Capitol, right, and then like like what.
About qualified immunity. There's like a lot of things we could do.
And so I look at things like you know, like United Auto Workers or Organized Labor right now, and they've been able to wield some really inspiring like collective power
and we're able to extract tangible concessions. But I feel like that a lot of that is because these groups are organized around proper power and in a specific industry, and their tool is to withhold their labor, which then affects revenue, which then affects the leadership, and then that's how they bring them to the table when you know, how do we take sort of like you know, what's from your perspective, what are the learnings?
Like?
That's a very obviously potent tool that it's like it's very specific, and I think that's probably the benefit of those kinds of movements is because they're all they're very focused on like some very specific things. But when we're talking about sort of like the discontent that people are experiencing in the United States based on inequality, et cetera.
How do we take that going merely past the point of these sort of huge gestures, you know, these expressions of anger and translate that into outcomes, because a lot of the times, like you're saying, these movements, they're not there, are horizontally organized, or they get so big, like people like at the picket for police were travels, some guys got to sign. He's talking about like batteries give you cancer, And you're like, well, what the fuck is what?
Like what are we doing now?
Like, so what do we do when it sort of falls outside of that realm of something as specific as like the workplace or outcomes as of workers.
Yeah, that's that's a good that's a good way to pose the question because those two two's two phenomena I think are interrelated in different and important ways. On the one hand, one of the things that people said in Egypt, for Brazil, or or or or Libya or around the world at the end of the book is I wish we would have been more organized before the explosion came.
I would I wish we would have organized when it seemed like nothing was happening, Like the lesson, the lesson of being essentially built in the off season because you don't know what's gonna come, and when something, an opportunity does, does arise, you want to already happy word you know, connected with other people that believe in the same things as you. And this is kind of the story of the UL right. Like in twenty seventeen, you do have people that are from the kind of the world of
progressive politics realizing, oh, we kids try to reform. There's the UAW reform concuss. This is a process that starts in twenty seventeen when it seems like, you know, there's no opportunities for organized labor right now, you know, Donald Trump's just won the presidency. What you know, you know, But but it ends up paying off much much later. And it pays off because as you say, you withdraw,
you withhold your labor. And not only do you withhold your labor, because this is a this is the really hard move that is almost impossible for the horizontally structured mass protest to pull off, is that you withhold your labor asking for a raise. You may ask for all kinds of things that you think you're not going to get. You ask for them, but you know that there is a amount of money that you can get that will lead you to go back to work. And the boss
also knows that. The boss believes the boss will make an offer, and then the union says, oh, yes, if we get this amount of concessions from you, we will
go back to work. And that's why the boss gives it because there's this exit ramp right like everyone can you know, even if you could, even if you use the strike to raise consciousness about working class part in the United States, even if you make all kinds of some demands that you're not going to get this time, the only reason for the boss to give the raise is the credible promise that the labor is restored the
next day. And this is something that this was the very strange, like it really confounded everyone that was living through it, Like as it was happening, the politicians and the original organizers for example of this unexpected mass explosion in Brazil in twenty thirteen, didn't know how to deal with this phenomenon because the president wanted to give the street something but could not figure out what it was that would that could be given and then that the
streets could say, oh, yes, that's great. We'll take that for now, you know. And again in these movements you may ask for really really radical reforms. You may you know, bring up the possibility of entirely changing or getting rid of the current policing orcarceral system. That's that is a
thing that can be part of this larger process. But when there's no when there was no ability for the people in power to understand that they would somehow get out of this like because they're often, like I said, they're scared. So if you're not willing to actually overthrow the government and form a new one, but you can scare the government, then what you want is to use that moment where they're kind of on their back on
their heels to get something. But they're only going to get it if they think that, okay, well that that means that I can stand again that if I do give this thing, I will be it will be demonstrated that you know, mass protest extracts goods from me.
It will be it would be proven.
You know, on the other side of this equation there might be all this more this radical energy that's that's born. But at least I can hold on for now, and and a lot of times in the twenty tents, the government couldn't even figure out what to give in order to full order, so then they just they end up opted opting for And this depended on context repression just like crack like just cracking down or just waiting it out,
which turns out kind of works. And and that that that that that that dynamic that you brought up too, like because I you know, in twenty twenty, I mean I didn't write I know very little about the George flot uprising, and I spent a lot of time learning about the rest of these in the book, but I did get like I did watch of course, and and this was something that I started to talk about with my friends that were in you know, involved on the streets,
that if the government just kind of does nothing, the longer things go on, the more likely it is that that guy with sign that says batteries give you cancer, we'll get on television. Right even if and again to go back to the very beginning of a conversation, even if like that's an fbhiaja, you know, if like it makes sense for the government to just send three people out there to do the dumbest thing that you can imagine point a camera at.
Them and be like, this is what you are? Is that what you are?
And in the case of these horizontally structured uprisings, the uprising cannot say no, we're not, no, it's not, which is something that the Black Panther Party and CORE and SNCAC, the civil rights groups in the fifties in sixties then inspired so much of contemporary process as we know it. So much of the sixties movements in the student new Left were really inspired by the civil rights organizations in
the fifties and sixties. They absolutely would have had an ability to say that guy, we don't know that guy, right, but that was lost in the you know, it's it's
a mixed bag. There's positive negatives to the to the dynamic which allows people like a lot of people to come to the streets at the same time, whereas often it took like two years to together the mass demonstrations that were common in the fifties and sixties because they had to like slowly slowy, one by one recruit people invent them, whereas now we can everyone can show up, but then there's no one to say yeah, really anything full on behalf of the streets right.
Yeah, like when Boogoloo boys showed up at like BLM things and they're like, wait what, well, hold on y'all. They're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we like this too, and it's like, okay, no, this is not it, not over here.
But yeah, let's take a quick break and then yeah, I want to keep talking about this. We'll be right back. And we're back. We're back, And BuzzFeed has dropped what I hope will be a tradition going forward, a tradition unlike any other. That is twenty twenty three's most out of touch celebrity moments. And I had missed some of these because I don't pay that close attention to what Bryce Dallas Howard and Kim Kardashian are doing on social media.
Oh Jack, you're missing a whole world nonsense, a whole new word.
Roolery was what was bryced own? I remember she was getting like the NEPO baby thing. Yeah, I think what was going on.
Yeah, So in May she did an Instagram post that was about the challenges of breaking into the film industry and your dad Ron Hid Yeah, one of the most successful directors working and has like a massive production company and your first roles were oh, let me see here. In Ron Howard films like How the Grinch Stole Christmas. By the way, she does have the perfect nose. I feel like the noses of the Who's in that movie were modeled off of her.
I would die to be a who.
Oh you kind of have like a great hoop?
Yeah, kill it as a who?
Are you like?
The who that they're all like, Like, Blair's kind of like a little different than us, right, I.
Got a lot of love and holidays cheer in my heart to spread around. I think I fit right in. I think they would be like, you're the who that we never knew we miss, you know?
Yeah, yeah, all right, all right, petition to have Blair transported to Whoville.
There we go. Also, she was in A Beautiful Mind, which I didn't even realize. I need to watch that. You got to rewatch a Beautiful Mind to see Bryce dllice how that shit hits different when you realize Bryce Dallas Howard's in it and.
See her out of touch celebrity moments.
That was just example of teeth acting. Someone was like, oh, yeah, you remember Russell Crow's teeth in a Beautiful Mind? Oh, no, no, he's tooth. He's tooth acting. I don't know. Yeah, all right. We also got Kim Kardashian promoting a wildly expensive, totally unnecessary according to medical science MRI scan for some reason.
Yeah.
Oh I saw that one.
Yeah, pre nuvo scan. Yeah, And in August Instagram post, Kim Kardashian promoted a two thousand, four hundred and ninety nine dollars so kind of a deal a medical scan, which sorry, did I say scammer scan? It doesn't matter medical yeah, way, actually both are correct, which isn't covered by insurance because it's, according to medicine, completely unnecessary. It's her in a picture next to an MRI machine. I believe she is wearing figs like the form fitting medical scrubs and.
She wait, that's a thing they got, like they got like sexy medical scrubs.
I mean they're not like they're just sexy, but they're you've seen you've seen medical scrubs. They are like cut to fit box yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah exactly, they're like built for Minecraft characters. And yeah, figs were just like what if we like recognized that humans worthies? Oh okay, all right, yeah yeah, but Anyways, Kim said, I recently did this at pre Nuvo scan and had to tell
you all about this life saving machine. It has really saved some of my friends lives, and I just wanted to share hashtag not an ad.
That's that's that's how that's that's a potent endorsement, I guess. But like to your point, I like that the American College of Preventative Medicine and the American Cause of Radiology they're both like, this is nons it's not necessary, it's not this isn't something you need.
But hey, it saved some of her friends' lives, but it is. If you talk to doctors like a thing, everybody's like, I think I'm gonna need an MRI on this one to confirm what's going on.
Say that, though, because like I saw that, and I mean, I'm very easily influenced. So one of my flaws, I was like, I need that.
I need that.
My head hurts. I didn't breathe that deeply for a second.
I need that. Kim Kardashian that Kim Kardashian m R. In the David Wayne movie The Ten, where these two neighbors get competitive about collecting cat scam machines try there's like an arms race between two neighbors collecting cat scam machines. And I feel like that is we're not far from that, Like people are gonna be like I got I got my own damn MRI machine at home.
And I just love the way that this country just makes money off of deep medical issues in humanity.
Right and neurotic people.
It's soulful. Yeah, I'll include I'll throw myself it's a it's a soulful nation, and I'll throw myself in the neurotic.
I would love like if it was somehow a scam and it's just a bit like it was just somehow like tracking like your brain activity to.
Be like okay, we've we've downloaded another person with the pre new it's a girl, she's working there it is. There's also a trend of rich celebrities pretending to be working class. There was a moment in the Beckham documentary where Victoria Beckham to come from a working class background and like David Beckham was like what she was.
Like my father would bring me to school and pick me up, and David Beckham's like, in what kind of car?
It's not really relevant. It's not in what kind of car? What kind of what kind of car? Was it a Rolls? She's like a Rolls Royce and it's like and then no, he like looks at He's like, is this your queen Rolls?
Right?
Yeah, because Beckham definitely had a different upbringing than Victoria Beckham.
But I love how he couldn't stand for the cosplay, Like he's like, I thought that that that. I mean, her name was Posh Spice, like that was her whole You can't go back on that.
It wasn't like trade Spice, you know, because she's a trade or something like that.
Right, then there were celebrities actually costplaying as people with real jobs. Charlie d'milio worked at a Walmart cash worked as a Walmart cashier for I think like one belts worth of food and a video to promote her new snack brand. But she was like just so found it so amusing to be like and then what do you do you do? Like this? Oh it's okay here, I am underscanning the growth. Oh my gosh, your jobs. Yeah, and she and worked at a Starbucks. I had missed that, but that's like.
Going in the trenches though, we gotta give him that one. I mean that job. Whenever I go to Starbucks, I go these men and women are the greatest people I have ever met. The things they go through, what people tell them. I'm like, I would blow my brains out. I mean, these people yapping in their ear about fucking almond milk and ship.
Yeah, oat milk, oat milk. Come on, now, you know how we get down in la Oh you're sick. You moved on to oat milk.
You know you watched it, you heard the oat milk?
Yeah, no milk. I'm just dropping.
I'm dropping little references here and the special for people to get get involved in a fan I.
Know I am not. I am not a fan, absolutely not.
It feels like it has a little more viscosity. It's a little more like it's the back of the fake milks. I'll say, Wow, we're doing too much.
How do we even get to oh oats are our oats are not milkable? That we've gotten way too We've strayed too fall do.
You sound like that like American dairy lobby right now? They did help pay for the hour, but.
The taste is that warrant.
We need to be honest, I truly love milk so much, like like cow's milk. Yeah, I really do. And the fact that they have lactose free milk now is like, why are we doing anything else? I need that toast, bro, I need that toast. Oh the toast fucks me up. And we we have a lot of non lactose digesting individuals in my household. But it makes sense, it really, Like I don't I don't notice the difference between lactose free, Like does anybody make the claim that they're like, no,
this tastes like shit without the lactose. Actually, I've never even tried, like like lac takes.
It either.
Well. Yeah, it used to be just a product made by lack Tad, which are the people who make the chalky little chewa bowls that you eat before you have lactose, And so that was kind of gross, like that got lactose free milk off on a bad foot. But now like all the regular milk companies now have lactose free milk and it's exactly the same.
Yeah.
See, I have learned so much in this short time together. It is crazy. I've always seen lactaid, but it sounds so pharmaceutical.
Keeps Yeah, exactly, it got us off on the wrong foot. But try try lactose free milk if you don't.
Like yeah, And also if you did, you're built for it.
Yeah, David Letterman made a video in which you pretended to work at a grocery store. Will forgive him for that? I cannot. Prince William served veggie burgers out of a food truck and looked but wildly uncomfortable. But this was I think his attempt to be like, I'm the people's prince, not Harry. Look at me.
He's like he's like using like fucking hand sanitizer every time he hands something off to a regular person. Oh my god, Okay, what's the next one?
All right? Anyways, shout out to BuzzFeed because I talking a lot of shit about how bad the internet is these days, and that it is bad. Everything is written by AI. Now it turns out it looks like but BuzzFeed still doing their thing out there. Yep. Hashtag not a ned, hashtag not an ad.
Hashtag, renewvos can save my life hashtag, hashtag, hashtag marketting, hashtag just kidding.
Hashtag beautiful on the inside and the outside hashtag all right, hashtag This Christmas gift will change your life by getting you to finally shut the fuck up exactly put your ass on mute. I'm all heres, bitch, Okay.
So we like we talk about all the time on the show, like how we're like we're always as every day getting closer to like a Wally type world. And I'm curious what you guys think of this thing if is dystopian or useful. So there's this picture if you could all look in the dock that is not a virtual oral sex simulator, that's actually a device called a mute talk and if and you're like thinking, like what
the fuck is this? Guys, We're in a VR headset with like a box strap to his mouth and you're like, so, if it isn't a kunnelingis simulator, then what is it? Well, it's a Bluetooth device that serves as a microphone.
But here's the thing. It also slightly muffles the sound of your voice, so people nearby can only kind of hear what you're talking about. U does it like suck the words out of your mouth, like like like someone speaking from beyond the veil in a horror movie? Like it sounds like it's being spoken backwards.
No, it's yeah, okay, look, if you're really into the science of it, it's using something called the Helmholtz resonator principle, which is just a muting. I don't know, man, it's about like taking it's a Hamlt's resonata, man, thank you, it's a Hamultz resonating exactly. It's using car mufflers and things like that. It's like, I don't know. Look, I'm not a I'm not a science guy. I'm only into weird digital SMM products. That's why this had caught my eye.
But like, so it's being marketed as a device for people who are on the phone who like want to be on a wild ass conversation in public or something, or at gamers. That way, you don't wake your family while just getting totally pooned on Fortnite or some shit.
And so I get one of these things on Donald Trump, oh Base, Yeah, that's gonna be. We send a pack of these two Congress maybe thanks Bill Mahrk.
But yeah, I mean I get the need for something like this if I guess you're allowed talker in public, but it's it doesn't might it just doesn't make sense fully, Blair, what are your thoughts on a device like a fucking bomb you?
I'm conflicted. Honestly, there's part of me the loves the idea. But then also if I get the fantastical side of my brain, it's like that sounds cool. The other more responsible high school principal in me says, we must stop this now before we are taking over.
Yeah, what's that? It looks like a view finder like that want of you know, like it looks like a you finder that goes over your mouth. It looks like an oculus for your mouth.
Oculus is such a sick word.
Yeah, that they got they got the good name back then. They should call it the talk u Less. Yeah, you talk fucking sucks.
I was.
That was my main note for this is that the it looks like an S and M device and the name sucks. It sounds like a like something having to do with mucus or something thing. But yeah, it's like Tom, you less miles, Look, Howard are you bare? I ask myself that every.
Death, because I have so much debt that all my billions go to the servicing my debt.
I have billions in debt.
Jackson, I am under somehow I have billion dollars worth of debt. But the reviews are also decidedly men. Like people are like, I don't know, you can use it. It kind of sounds like it's definitely muffled, but your kind of mouth has to get used to talking like
in this little tiny box the whole time. But the company behind this is Japanese, which now makes a lot more sense to me, because since being audible in public is like peak rudeness, Like you do not want to be out here on your phone in public, so I guess, like if you absolutely had to, this is like the wave. But they also this same company makes this other device called the wear Space, and it's like horse blinders for
a human. It looks like a it's like a noise canceling headset that can basically like envelop your entire head.
Blair, I know you're laughing just by looking at this thing.
I'm well, no, I mean, I gotta, I gotta make a hard turn and say this. Actually this company seems suited for my knees, because I was like, that sounds like my heaven. I try to check out.
Take me blind, take me to horse blind.
Mute me, yeah, put me in the matrix.
This all looks like like you know how every year there's a new American horror story like cover like cover art that comes out. This all looks like that ship to me, like it just yeah.
Between the wear Space and Mutak. The wear Space from the designers is quote. It's a device that allows yous to wear a personalized space, equipped with the noise cancelation technology and a partitioning function that visually blocks portions of the space.
It allows horse blinder. It's not space horse wearing space horse blind. You stay in your lane. That also allows words to quote instantly create a psychological boundary with their surroundings and acquire a personal space while being in such open environments. Keep yeah, Blairs just did ten burpies.
I was like, oh yeah, that's incredible. Actually that psychological barrier coming up.
Give me that psychological barrier. I haven't searching for that.
My whole life. It's like, yeah, so this is interesting too.
It says it's equipped with a visual angle adjustment mechanism, which just sounds like some kind of like bendable thing to just maybe block off your field of vision, operated by opening closing the partition a noise cancelation function and a sound filtering function that allows you just to customize only those sounds they don't want to miss, such as someone calling their name or knocking on the door.
This is uh, this is this does invent a new rudest thing to do when someone asks you a question side and then block yourself yeah, and then look at them again and then put them you talk over your back.
I need one of those. I need one of those. I will spend all my money on that.
What would you how would you use this horse blinder for humans? Like? What context are you thinking? Okay, this is this has Blair Hockey written over.
I'm thinking twenty three hours a day.
I come out.
It's like, you know, I've always looked at turtles. I've been so extremely jealous of turtles. They can just retract inside their home built in. It's incredible saying no, thank you, go back inside. Now, someone's mid conversation. The turtle just goes back bye bye. Yeah Michelle, And this would be like that for me.
Yeah, like a like a like a like an online dating app date isn't going well, and you're like, actually, just one second, while you're talking about crypto, hold on, let me get this one.
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye in.
This conversation right now.
I do like that it has like ego adjustments. So it's like, I mean, the one thing you do want to cut through is someone saying your name. Yeah, so you know that that will wake you out of your digital comba.
How does it does it learn your name? I don't know. I just open it up a little bit more.
Yeah, it's probably like any noise canceling stuff that can kind of give you brief like fil sound filtering. But yeah, again, this thing is all it's all very futuristic. I don't know what it's saying about us. Talk about brother's little helper. Just tune those kids out, talk shit about them to your friends and into the mutalk right.
Like, I can't believe him.
He's so fucking embarrassing my kid, so selfish anyways, Uh, true nightmare that we're living in. But I mean, for some a fantasy, as we've learned, Blair, this this thing might be purpose built for you.
Oh no, I mean this was this person we've never met, but they're my greatest lover of all time. Soul there in my spirit, during my mind, body, spirit soul.
You just see a couple both wearing wear spaces with utahs, Like just like, that's.
My dream, that's my literal dream.
Like I just like to feel that someone's there. I don't want to acknowledge them really beyond that.
That is your romance in my heart.
Oh fuck amazing. 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 he needs your validation, folks. I hope you're having a great weekend and I will talk to him Monday. By nothing,