Weekly Zeitgeist 311 (Best of 2/26/24-3/1/24)

Hello the Internet, and welcome to this episode of The Weekly Zeitgeist.

Uh.

These are some of our favorite segments from this week, all edited together into one NonStop infotainment laugh stravaganza.

Uh yeah.

So, without further ado, here is the Weekly Zeitgeist. Miles, it's appropriate that we have a little special AKA song today because we are joined in our third and fourth seats by two of the hosts of the podcast George Center. It's the them Jorge Center Boys. But first we've got America Stepdad, Christy Amagucci man aka will Pool, and we got Josh Robbins that they are them Jeorge Center Boys. Welcome fellas to.

D and I'm thrown out because I think there's an aka. But let you an upper willow Josh.

Josh to take this opening Workkay, thanks for having us on again. We're gonna go back to nineteen seventy seven.

On a podcast with Miles Grade Wo Big Gas with no hair.

Worm passing.

Gord eat Us rights up from Jack O'Brien's chair, numb ahead for the listeners, Wow, futures not.

Looking, brian us Us heavy and the topics grin.

It's time for Daily's that guys will we find out some more ways rock going to hell. I was thinking to myself, I could really use some taco bear, So a little fat one said, first let's get place.

Then I heard the voices from my phone.

It was Jack and Miles. Great, Hello the Internet, we got bad news for you, United States.

The United States sent a shy please who.

Forced too late and.

We die We're hair to born you.

It's election year.

It's election. You should hate it here.

So smartest tip on it's will I'm just I'm just kidding.

Through the entire I was like, when it starts coming into play, wow hours, Hello the Internet, We've got bad news. Yeah, it's great. Might as well be the subtitle of the show.

Yeah, and not to not to outshine, uh, the the other guests that I'm on here with. But I know he just had PTSD from high school of me breaking up the guitar.

Once again, plans on somebody he will outshine me.

Whatever, Josh, let me take this real quick, Josh, this is all you three.

Okay, let's see all right, A K Josh Robbins and we got every.

Kiss begins okay, jewelries on the way.

My wa please down lay may Now about a lay may, I'll get your chick fl if you promise, Mester.

Promise rings not fank gold, one phone fries, not a dang owl.

That's what I got.

That's from the before and went to see fantastic.

Wow. I love Yeah, beautiful work there's in there.

Yeah, I'm actually impressed. I don't I didn't need a guitar.

Yeah, you just went a straight voice.

Yeah, I'm not like, I'm not a prop guy, so you know, but I know I respect like, you know, meetings like Carrot Top and stuff.

But yeah, yeah, for sure, man Gallagher, I think you know really.

Also, apologies to whoever has to edit this episode and level all of that bullshit that I just did, because I have no idea the wave file like the it looked okay, but I have no fucking idea whether any of that's going to be usable.

Yeah.

One one eye on the on the lyrics and one eye on the wave files.

Yeah exactly.

Yeah, that's what's very considered.

Okay.

I thought you're just confused anyway, how are what so? What are you both coming to us from North cac.

Yeah that's right, I'm down at the beach, Josh's former hometown of Wilmington, Okay, as always, And then Josh, I.

Live in Charlotte, North Carolina. I've lived here for probably so long. I'll just say I'm from here, but you know, my heart.

Is in Wilmington. But Monkey Junction, Monkey Junction.

Yeah, yeah, that's where we grew up, near Totem and Zoo, which probably called something else that's not as inappropriate now. Yeah, but yeah, I don't know, I moved away.

Yeah, yeah, here we are. It's good to have you both. You know, we've had you know, Will over here, Christy Yamagucci Gucci Maine many times and obviously been a lifelong contributor to the show. So it's dope to have you yeah, both on and you're both podcasting. It's just dope to kind of see how you know just and then like you guys have been best friends since we said sixth grade.

Yeah, sixth grade. Josh was one of my groom's men in my wedding and I was in his wedding as well. So yeah, we've been so like the first time I remember Josh was like I knew Josh since sixth grade, but the first time, you know, you have those moments

He was.

He was like a good like six three six four, and he just comes out of like my periphery and tackles both of them. I think it was over like throwing French fries at each other and uh you know, yeah, French cafeteria And I was like, holy ship, that dude is awesome. He just got tackled by mister Taylo.

So yeah, which is funny because it's funny that it took that long for Will to remember me because we sat at the same table for like.

The whole year.

Is that what you were doing, You were like getting into a fight to get him to notice you.

Yes.

Yeah, it was a long time to get from the corner singing softly with an acoustic guitar to like just a cloud of girls.

Yeah, we'll just yeah, we'll go with that.

We'll totally say that that's my middle school and high school. Yeah.

Sure, geometry teacher who's like, yeah, let me go get my guitar man, or the institute, well remember the youth pastor comes right. Actually, I got a song about a guy named j C.

Who is pretty all right.

We had a substitute. His name was mister Beveridge, and every time you started a class, he will go, all right, my initial spell tab it's mister Beverage. Get the jokes out, and like we were like okay.

Okay, all right, and then he's like, now let's crack this one open and get into he juggled.

Oh yeah, you got Yeah.

I think everyone knows everyone knows a juggling unicyclist teacher at some point in their life.

I think so, I think yeah.

But yeah, it will author of many of the best aks of all time, the voice of an Angel, as you heard, I mean, as you may have just heard. There is a chance that he actually was so close to the real song that it will get a takedown notice for the first time from an AK.

But that'd be amazing. And apparently the Eagles are very litigious. I just found out that they're in a lawsuit right now over some handwritten notes to Hotel California. I just learned about that yesterday.

They got some they got some skeletons, they got some things to be over. Let's just yeah, I can imagine, Yeah, you might, you might not want to look into their history. And then Josh is in a band called Late Bloomer. Let's dropping an album on Friday. The musicality of this episode is out of every pore that right, What is something from your search history that is revealing about who you guys are?

I have an exciting one. I can start, Hey, this is Alex.

Yeah.

So I'm building a chicken coop because my second job, or rather than were one of my third jobs, is kind of being a little suburban farmer. And so I'm getting some chicks delivered from a hatchery and they said, you need to put this directly into the brooder. And I'm like, what's a brooder? And I had looked up what a brooder is and then came up and found that it can be anything from a rubber made tub where you put the chickens well they're very small, until

And wait, just so it's just like a like it's like a pen, like a mini pen for.

The chien to just kind of yeah, it's like a little pen for the chicks, and you put in a heat lamp, you know, because they need to be warm. Small, and they don't. They have only got that chicken fuzz. They don't have the chicken feathers.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, they need to me this sounds like a job for a shoe box. But that's probably too small, too small, small, Unfortunately, that's what they're getting. If I'm building a chicken, you can if you're in if you're in a if you're in a rush, you can use your bathtub if you have one of those, and put the some puppy pads.

Yeah.

I learned a lot about this today as I was just waiting for another meeting to start and just read everything I could.

Nice And of course that chicken coop is gonna come in handy free eggs during the robot apocalypse, right, which Sam Altman has told me is coming. So I have to assume that's also what you're thinking, right, right, She's she's prepping for the eventual DEMID.

Yeah.

I think during.

COVID, I think there was a run on chicken eggs. And then so I'd go to Costco and you couldn't get the gross of chicken eggs. And then I'd go, hey, and I went to my backyard.

Market.

Got it for eight bucks an egg if you want to.

Yeah, yeah, they are still really expensive, Emily, how about you? What's something from your search history?

So I took a look, and it's a bunch of boring stuff like I can't remember it can't be bothered to remember the website of a certain journal that I was interested in. So I'm like searching the name of the journal. But then like down below that, and we've been watching for All Mankind, which is this like alternate timeline thing that that's a what happens if the Soviets.

Landed on the moon first?

Right, right, So it diverges in the nineteen sixties, but it keeps referencing actual history. So my search history is full of like, okay, so when did the Vietnam War actually end?

Right?

And like you know which Apollo mission did what. So it's a bunch of queries like that sort of comparing what's in the show to actual history.

How does that line up? Based on your sort of cursory research as you watch the show so interestingly.

So there's there's a point where Ted Kennedy is like in the background being talked about not going to chap Equittic. Oh, and then an episode later he's president.

Wow.

So there's and I suspect there's way more of that kind of stuff that I'm not catching right, right, right, a.

Subtle things right right.

The media is like, and Ted Kennedy missed a barbecue this weekend in chap Equittic. That's that's super interesting. Yeah, this is ye know, third or fourth person who's mentioned for all mankind to us. I think this is pushing it over the threshold to where I have to have to watch this damn thing.

It's enjoyable, but it's tense. I don't know anything worth Like people in outer space really creeps me out because like that that degree of like loneliness and sort of lack of failsafes, you know, like when you when all the fail SATs are are the ones that you built and beyond that you know your s o L.

That's that's creepy, seems uncomfortable outer space. Yeah, Caitlin, what is something you think is overrated?

I might have said this before, and I am running out of thoughts and opinions also because my brain along.

With the rest of.

Have you done the massage gone on your brain?

On your temple, just like.

Like chatter all my teeth and just break them, bite my tongue off. You know, something I think is overrated is soup, just in general soup.

Someone who's I feel like two weeks ago someone came in hot soup was overrated? Yeah, yeah, yeah, and we're talking this is pretty Is it filling or not?

Yeah?

So the one person came in I forget who's so that? Forgive me they're overrated was soup because it wasn't filling that you would have to drink or eat a lot of the soup for it to feel like a meal. Now what do you say to that?

I know I agree because this is soup? Is my overrate? I think it's I think it's hot salty water.

With some shit in it.

Like I don't like, Okay, a little.

Hot salty water with some shit in it?

Thank you?

Yeah, you mean I'm gonna eat up this whatever I just scoop out of the toilet.

I just think it's a racket.

I don't like brath.

Yeah, there's just I find it to be a frustrating meal to eat. I don't think it's filling. I think broth is a racket. I do like a tomato bisk.

Yeah, you're saying it's underrated. Over on the over the massage gun was underrated, dude, I'm my brain is racket, dude. I'm telling you the Massage Gun to the Temple aka the hard Reset.

I learned about it on the Cuban lad Factory. Reset your brain, yeah, man, just go, oh my damn, what is wrong with me?

Sorry? Yeah, we had someone who said it was overrated. You should fight them.

Yeah, my god, sorry, my brain.

It's whoever that was? Maybe I think it might have been More Was it More or Joe?

I think it was last week? It was one of them.

Best friend because yeah, anytime my friends are like, let's go get some soup.

I'm like, to what end you're you have specific group of friends though I've never had a friend come. Or maybe you just have more friends than me. But I've never had a friend suggest we go get soup.

I've done that. Well, here's the thing I liked. The lobster bisk a hamburger Hamlet in the Valley. I would always go there like that was like my fancy meal. I remember like when I was something, do you say let's go.

Get Hamburger Hamlet or do you say let's.

Go get bisk And they're like what And I remember I it gave me the worst gas. It's like to this day, my friends remember we call a Hamburger Hamlet when I fart really loud because it was so it was so intense. But I haven't had it since to be.

Let's take a little trip down to a Biscayne Bay exact exactly. You like do a like thing you gesture with your hands like you're doing a coke reference.

Yeah, I really means just like, what are you doing a line now?

I et?

Yeah? Yeah, how do you fart a bunch?

Yeah? Saturday night, get with it. I like soup that eats like a meal, you know, like a stew. Yeah, I love.

Oh fuck, I guess I just don't like anything like just like a thin chicken or beef bra Yeah.

I feel that.

So yeah, when when I'm having soup for dinner, there's a part of me that's saying this isn't this isn't what I signed up for this isn't this don't count as a meal. This is a drink. You gave me drink for.

Meal, hot salty drink and who wants that?

Now? How do you feel about smoothie for meal? It's a rare similar object for me. Yeah, a meal that does not make I would say, yeah, I need.

I need solid. I'm not a baby, a baby, apple headed baby, and I want solid, grown up.

Tell me, thank you. I will just yeah, just on principle, I will eat like something solid to go with a smoothie. Like I just said, this can't my body will not accept it. That's a full meal.

What is?

What's something that you think is underrated?

I think being a hater is underrated. And we talked about this in one of our episodes. Haters really are the impetus to so much like if you had somebody hating on you, you just feel like you have to prove them wrong. You have to go so hard and a lot of things that we have in society, you wouldn't be there without haters. But they get a really bad rap. And I was like, y'all need to like genuinely thank your haters and not like I like to thank my haters, but like, for real, right you yeah you.

Gave Yeah, your outside opinion of me sort of spurred me on.

To do something different, something great for sure.

Yeah, if you were just being nice to me, I would have just been sitting around doing nothing.

I just like in my search history is somebody so Sony had this like outspoken critic who just hated all things Sony and like criticized everything they did and his he made so many good points when he was criticizing them that they hired him and he became the president of Sony eventually.

WHOA, That's not how I thought.

I was, like, what so, I mean, truly you can find a well informed hater like where all their criticism is like actually, like the reason I'm so mad is because they make some really good points. Then maybe listen to them, maybe keep them close for reasons other than you know that you're just watching them, make them your boss. Yeah.

I feel like the.

United States should do that for me, for I'm the biggest hater of the United States.

Like president, Yeah, but you don't want to be president though.

I would do some stuff that we would not come back from.

But I was thinking it could be this could be everybody could just be a hater, like in the aftermath of the quote unquote great resignation, like everybody could just focus on hating and that that'll be our pathway.

It's employment.

Yeah, here first we heard of your first.

Plus, it's such a thin line, Like whenever somebody gets caught doing something really bad, their first response is always like, I'm not listening to the haters on this. So it's a real thin line between hater and like person who is just calling out you know, horrible behavior.

For sure, especially if like you see your fath getting hated on mm hmm, sometimes you're like, yeah, they're just hating, but it's someone you don't like. There's like, it's a very principal critique that person, right.

Start coming out.

Yeah, it's the principal critique, and I will stand by as it's made. Eves, what how about you? What's something you think is underrated?

So I think rekindling old friendships is underrated and this is.

Underrated.

Yes, she's thinking for you, because that would have been how I kind of felt in the past.

I was like, you know, it's a new day, it's a new dawn, and I don't need to go back to these old friendships. But you know, I'm rethinking it now after having communications with you know, somebody who I used to know is mother today and she was.

Like, oh, you y'all should talk and I'm like, I'll think about it.

You know, I'll consider it, because before I'm like, you know, if they're not in my life anymore, then it's for a reason.

You know how all the kids say they're in your.

Life for a reason or a season or something like that. Yeah.

Right, So I don't know if I subscribe to that anymore. So that's that's what my underrated is going to be, Okay, all right?

And I actually needed to hear that. There there's somebody that I've just been like toying with the idea of, like, man, really get back in touch with them. I haven't talked to them in years. And yeah, that needed to hear that. Thank you very much. What's something you think is overrated?

I think biopics are overrated? And this is coming from someone who is I love biography and written form. I love it in podcast form. I love it in those forms. But for some reason I have something against biopics. Like my husband coerced me to go to the Bob Parley Bob Marley Biopics the other day, and I'm just for some reason, it's just something about seeing somebody who looks nothing like the person and sounds nothing like the person.

Or right or like someone who could do no wrong or something like that, like and he was actually the hero of.

Everything, right, yeah, because they had structure.

There's some complexities there with his life for sure. And also we were hating on the wig. First of all. The first thing I said, are like, no.

No, no, no, nobody wis right?

Nobody does That's like you could have find it a Jamaican, a Jamaican actor who already had dreads or something like that.

You had to go find this isn't he from the UK?

Like they do that. Yeah, I just remember being like this is trash man, Like I can't even I can't. I can't look at this because the wigs were the wig was so bad.

The wig was wiggy. Okay, it's always the scalp with locks. It's the scalp.

Yeah, they get wrong. It's really hard to do, and it's always like a helmet with like it feels like a helmet was popping off.

Yes, it was giving Tyler Perry wigs or from Walking Dead. Yeah, yeah, it's that's exactly what it was. And they try it too, Like shout out to the wigmakers. I know it's a hard job. I'm not saying that.

They are fully talented and skilled and have been working on their crafts.

They like tried to.

They lengthened the wig throughout the movie. Yeah, and all of that, and I'm like, okay, okay, all right, wow you.

Did the guess the church. Oh okay, all right, well take you yeah, okay, bless your heart. At least you tried. There is there a thing too, like with because we were talking about this, I think maybe off Mike Jack, but like some people are just kind of so cool, like don't even bother trying to get somebody else to capture that cool on screen, like there was like a Miles Davis biopic.

I'm like, you can't that. This dude is also all over the place. You can't just be like, yeah, now you're Miles Day, You're Bob Marley or whatever. They're so iconic that you either have to like cast the person who looks the most like them, like they did with that Tupac one, but then person he could not be able to act, So yeah, then yeah, it's you're it's a real like you are trying to thread the thinnest needle.

I feel, yeah, it needs some distance, and it didn't make it any better that at the end of the Bob Marley film. I don't know if I'm going too hard on this right now that much, but at the end of the Bob Marley film, they show like actual footage of Bob Marley and comparing his energy on stage to the energy that the actor was giving was just

Yeah, Chatwick, If Chatwick was alive, I feel like you could play anybody great actor.

Yeah, that's what you need. Like sometimes it works because yeah, just like.

Marshall, I don't remember you played someone super super you better quit it in that.

Yeah, I think he did. He did pay their good Marshall.

I believe that wasn't matter at it actually Yeah.

Yeah, also with a Kingsley ben Adeer, that's the name of the actor who played him. But yeah, like I'm sure when you see that juxtaposition of actual Bob Marley footage, it really feels like your parents being like, yeah, we got Bob Marley at home, don't worry.

Yeah, Katie, what's something that you think is overrated?

I think Chick fil A is overrated, And I think once we all band together and stop eating Chick fil A, that's when the revolution will happen.

Wow.

Because they don't like the gays. They don't like the blacks for real, because the Blacks and the Latinos being a bad and not in the front interacting with customers.

Wow, the chicken.

I haven't had chicken in maybe ten years. It was it algohol. But other people make good chickens. They're not the only ones, and people be acting like they're the only ones just because they say please and thank you in my pleasure. We how to high higher standards for ourselves.

The hard thing about this is that they're expanding.

They're expanding like crazy, especially in Georgia.

Oh really, country across the country. Yeah, there's like four of them on my exit. Yeah, they're a franchise model, and it's like super hard to get into. Like their franchise, they have a specific way and they're never gonna po They're never gonna go public.

Right, I don't know.

How, but I believe.

I believe it.

If you believe it, I believe it.

Yeah, the revolution is gonna start right when we give.

Up to a when people can like, yeah, the first principled consumer decision like the entire country can collectively make, they'd be like, aside from the morality, the chicken, also like Popeyes is better man? When I in the Atlanta studio that's by Delilah's. I had a chicken sandwich from there that blew my socks right off my feet. Like I saw that. I was like a Willy Wonka exhibit. But yeah, that was definitely like, Yeah, I think it's

It's probably one of our most common overrateds And yeah, yeah, I think it's time.

I think it's like one of those things. It's like one of those things too, because in the West Coast we never had it, Like so when it came out on the West Coast, it was like what in and out is to other places, the thing I heard about from our relatives that live in this out through the East Coast or whatever. And yeah, and I think once that subsides, maybe people can, you know, we can all band together break just.

The novel a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I think if anybody Katie and I are actually from the land of Truett, Kathy spent a lot of time going up there where he lived, and.

I think if anybody can do it, we can do it. Because we can.

Yeah, we have original quaim the land of the Chick fil A. And if we can do it, anybody in this country can do it.

You know.

I went on a field trip to Chick fil A ranch in elementary school.

Ranch.

I don't know if it still exists. It was so fun. They had not picking them up now.

Yeah, they're like we actually you know thought I love that.

It was so fun that it was like they had I guess it was like a cow sanctuary something because you know they don't, right. Yeah, and they had like those like what are they call connas Conna stago wagons? Yeah, the people going west was that we're in uh so we slept in those. It was an overnight trip, mind you.

Wow.

We did somemores, We like cooked on the fire. It was real fun.

That does sound fun today. We should look you.

Let me change my overrates.

Actually they're underrated.

Under it over the restaurant. Yeah. I think I've talked about this before, but I got as an award in middle school. I got to go on this field trip and it was just the long John Silver's headquarters like corporate headquarters, the worst version of your field trip, right, not even like they didn't have any fun themed thing. You just like sat and watched the fucking them go through some spreadsheets and then got to eat one.

Yeah, they need to work on their propaganda game, you know.

Yeah, I think it would be pretty cool if they would have showed you all the different kinds of fish that go into.

The Actually yeah right, we usually at a pet store to get this stuff put together.

That would be wild if the.

Goldfish mash is what you're actually getting. Oh man, all right, well that's disgusting. Sorry to leave it on that note, but we are going to take a quick break and we're gonna come back and we're gonna talk some news. We'll be right back and we're back, and Josh, you want to kick us off with a little bit of what you think something underrated?

Underrated as it actually ties into my overrated but plane Zelda Tiers of the Kingdom. Because you're unemployed, it's just because, yeah, because it hits different. Yeah, when you're unemployed. It has helped and probably hurt my job search. Playing Tiers of the Gadom not like a game player guy. But I got laid off around the holidays and my in laws gave me Tears of the Kingdom and I was, I don't have the time, right then, I wait, wait, I do have the time. Yeah, and so yeah, I've I've

You mentioned that it has both hurt and helped your job search. How have you met prospective employers while playing Cheers of the Kingdom? How has it helped your job?

I brought it to a job interview and I was playing during the.

Interview, and to go to interview to figure out why I can't find a job, have no clue.

I think it hurt because it's probably hours I could have spent.

The hurt is clear. The hurt is clear. How's it helping?

Oh uh, it's helped because it's helped my mental health. Like there you go, like I have this, Yeah, I have this to look forward.

To you today.

I have to finish this temple, you know. I tell my wife like, hey, I know you're in a meeting, but I really have to beat this boss down. Yeah, I'm focusing Daddy's cacusing, can't you use headphones?

Josh, No, I can't. Really didn't have headphones back then in high role. So then what's you're overrated?

My overrated is being unemployed due to tech layoffs. It is is uh fun enough when you start out, you're like you're getting some money in when you get unemployment and things, but then that runs out. Because we live in North Carolina. I'm not sure what the how it works in California, but here in the South we get like a certain period of times and then you're like done, You're cut off. You can't like reapply, and you're just actually.

Come to your house and kick you in the nuts.

Yeah, you could get I think like somewhere around twenty something weeks in California. I think it's like six weeks or something.

Yeah, well the swift kick in the nuts. Yeah.

So with that, I mean, with that, it's led me into, oh, I need to figure out where I'm going to go and tex So that's where there's ui UX classes come in there, because you got you got to get things on your resume. I think you gotta, you know, you get it's like catching Pokemon. You got to have these little things so that people will look at you and go ooh something. Besides Tiers of the Kingdom, you can also add Pokemon to yours. Put that on a bunch

Sorry, oh that's my problem.

There you go.

Will.

How about you? What's something you think is underrated? What's something you think is overrated?

Underrated? I would say, uh, normal human beings attempting to fight professional football players. Did you guys see the video of Cam Newton, Yeah, handling those three dudes, four dudes,

Yeah.

I And and it's underrated because I then get to watch the video of you getting your ass kicked by a football player. People do not understand how big these human beings are and how strong they are, and how they're used to just like again, like Cam Newton's one of the greatest runners of all time, not for a quarterback but in general.

Just period, just period.

He's six four six four or sixty five and two hundred and forty five pounds and he just he handled those guys. His hat didn't come off, like his hat hat literally stayed.

On his head. Yeah, what kind of hat.

It looks like he's wearing like a witch's hat or something. Yeah. He he absolutely looks like like he's in wather. He's got that hipster flat brim kilgrim hat with like his dreads coming out of the top.

Yeah, he looks he looks like he's Dick Tracy almost, or like a Dick Tracy villain. But it's this specific brand of hat that he's been having made custom for him for a while now.

It looks like the old guy from Pultrygeist too.

Yeah, he does have like Quaker oats guys. Yeah, a lot of people don't realize that. I think kids.

I feel like kids forgot. Do you remember the Mike Balley fighting videos he was a professional skateboard.

Oh yeah, they were like inky and stuff.

Like kids need to watch those, And that's like the probably like Cam Newton is going to suck you up, like it's like Mike Valley can take on fight five people.

Yeah he was.

He was like a big guy. Yeah, but like that's that's the lower and that's the lower.

And especially like, yeah, like a quarterback who then starts growing dreads, like that's because they've had some kind of evolution, you know exactly, So like they were probably on top of the physical prowess. They're like mentally now on another plane too, where they're like, oh, the three of you against me.

And the amazing thing is that Cam didn't even like he didn't really get violent back with them. He just used their momentum and did the quarterback thing of like I'm like, it's it's like he went it's like he had a a like a Vietnam flashback and went into soldier mode and just didn't want to get sacked. So he's like immediately it's like it's like the pocket closed in on him by three guys who are also swinging on him, and he just he just moved them around like they were.

Absolute racked unnecessary roughness.

Yeah, yeah, penalty. Yeah, it was.

It was super funny to watch, and I obviously don't want people going and trying professional athletes, but also I kind of do because then I get to watch the videos, so you.

Get bonuses as a professional athlete.

Yes, absolutely, Yeah, well something you think is overrated, will I'll keep this one short.

Not wishing things on your worst enemy, not they're your worst enemy. You should try it sometime and it feels great. You should wish all the worst things on your worst enemy. So yeah, it's pretty straightforward.

Do you think we're right now?

Like America is just it's just chicken shit now, we don't even worst wish the worst on our work. Yeah, it's like it's nice to our worst enemies.

So what happens, I'll say, you know, because so much of my h I guess, like persona revolves around Twitter and shit, so I get scolded on there a lot. Like there's been a few recent tweets where I've started fake rumors about awful people dying and like like Mitch McConnell and Ian Miles Chong recently I started a whole like Time quoted my tweet on their website and stuff. I said that the president of the Premiere of Malaysia

Of views, and people were like, what the fuck did this really happen?

And people, and of course I get scolded by people who are like this is it's wrong when the right does it, and it's wrong when the left does it, and I'm like, yeah, but I'm correct and I'm not a.

Piece of shit.

You know this, This this quote came out of a Dale Earnhart avatar account exactly exactly.

The only reason it got traction is because I used the little red light alert emojis and put like breaking I and my song executor signed by the premiere of Malaysia he was thirty four years old or something like that, and pusted his picture.

Hey man, Dale would know because he's up there. Exactly, thank you, thank you very much.

But yeah, people, so I have fun online and people get mad about it, and I'm just saying, get off your high horse, stop being high and mighty and like, wish you know, they're your worst enemy.

You should it's a wish. Your wish doesn't matter exactly exactly, there's no matter was kind of annoying to me because I started my painting of Dale Earnhardt and Ruth Bader Ginsburg welcoming him into heaven, and a week later it was debu Yeah, fake news.

Yeah, it was fake news. Well, I'm glad to know that you're gonna have the same post like your second career as uh, you know, George W.

Bush.

You're gonna yeah, you're just gonna get into jack.

Both war criminals.

Yeah, a lot of people don't know that about me. Yeah, little fact, little un fact. I'm glad. Do you guys like my flight suit? My mission, mission accomplished?

I love the banner behind you too.

Don't ask them, let them compliment you organically if they have to, they'll do that if they like it.

Don't I'm taking I'm taking this pick up course for Miles, and he's got to teach me a little.

Man. Just let the outfit do the talking.

Do you guys like my shirt man? All right? Should we talk about libs of TikTok?

Yeah, here's a daily zeitgeist, a typical hard turn into dark ship. Yeah, so libs of TikTok shaia chaya rachick, right, chick.

And again really unable to articulate anything resembling a thought it's a lie and.

What harm is it causing?

Do you believe.

I like the truth?

I like truth, right, but I'm saying, what's the harm of people expressing their gender identity differently than you believe.

It to be?

What harm are they causing?

Like I said, we are a nation of truth and I seek the truth.

But that's but I'm asking about the harm. What's the harm? You might believe it to be poss but.

The harm is that there's a lie that is very mainstream and as being abouted into every institution.

I guess I'm wondering what the material harm is, aside from it's maybe something that you disagree with, is in your version of the truth is different than their version of the truth. What is the material harm of them living in their life as a woman or man or gender that you don't have.

Not anything that's wrong? Is there a material harm necessarily.

So there's no harm.

Not everything that's wrong as a material harm. Eight not anything that's wrong as a material harm.

And then there's this other clip too that kind of summed up just how like all over the place this interview was. This is this is like another section of the interview where Taylor Loren's asking a question and then gets interrupted. Oh, this is my favorite part.

I think that's good.

I'm curious kind of how you're thinking, you know, when you think about your the way that you put out content and the way that you think about growing your media empire.

Kara, this is a blowdob.

What?

I don't know what?

You know? What?

I don't know what?

What?

What are you showing me this for? And yeah, like I said, like the interview, it's it's not anything where you're like, wow, this.

Is one of these like this person is here, this is a blowjobhow.

Sorry, it's like two middle it's like two middle schoolers on the internet exactly on the internet.

What do you want me not to show it to you?

So?

Now what but it's a blowjob? Do you do you deny? Sir?

I don't.

I'm sorry.

How is this relevant to what I was asking about about the real world harm that your account is causing in your actions, and you know this thing has taking evolution like rather now it's just beyond like just sort of this right wing you know account where people are just you know, get to all the the people can fill their tanks filled with hate by ingesting her content.

She's basically a resident. Yeah you've almost gotten the school blown up in a state you basically live. You can.

That's how you register to vote, Yeah, that's that's how that works. And so now a lot of people are noticing her role in Oklahoma, especially after this death of a sixteen year old non binary student, Next Benedict. So this, this student was violently attacked in a school bathroom in

At the moment.

But yeah, it's like, but it's just also alarming when you have these kinds of people, like like you know, running this libs of TikTok account and they truly have no idea of like what they're like, what their actions are doing, how they reverberate in space. They're just kind of like, yeah, I get clicks like this and it's fun. And I don't know, they call me stochastic terrorists. I think it makes me feel important.

I think that's fucking tough as hell dog, right, But yeah, and then meanwhile, just attacking the most vulnerable people in a society, like children struggling with gender identity and just and then attacking the people who might support them and make them like slightly less vulnerable. It's just like going down the list of like the easiest like people to fucking bully and harm in a society and making that your mission.

Yeah, like we've said this in the past, like a lot of this is to do with, you know, trying to make mainstream the shame of not being like a cishead person because from their perspective, the world has become too inclusive. So the way to push back against that is to try and revive, like this the culture of shaming people to do that. And yeah, so unfortunately it's like going after people who support these very like vulnerable it's.

Still there, Like it's not it doesn't need to be revived that much. Like there's still a fucking hell of a shame culture for these people to deal with. They're already you know, the most vulnerable to this sort of shaming culture, and then they're just piling on it.

Didn't it didn't go anywhere, that's for sure. They're just like adding fuel to the fire. They're dumping you know, gasoline on it. Yeah, yeah, this this rache is is uh watching that interview. I didn't watch the entire thing.

I could not take it. Yet, I could not. I could not.

How just for lack of a better term, stupid she comes across because she you know, not that I expected her to have some like well thought out reasoning behind her her hate campaign. She doesn't know what she believes exactly. She's never given it thought because she's never been pressed to explain it. She's only ever, you know, she only

Tough question in it. No, nothing, nothing tough was asked of her whatsoever, Like, Hey, you grew up in this community, right, yep, so you've never like met you don't know that you've met an LGBTQ plus person. Nope, just online? And like have you met them online? Have you interacted with them online? Nope? Just just seen videos about them.

But she had the nickelback portrait, things like this is this is a bow job.

Yeah, it was.

It was absolutely incredible. And also for the listeners if you haven't seen it, her fit that she is wearing during this interview. I put a picture of it in the chat. I don't I don't know if y'all can see it. She's wearing like the most Christian homeschool mom denim jean skirt and a picture of Taylor Lorenz on her on her T shirt.

Like that is the yeah.

Like, and then she sounds as like if you wear that outfit to an interview and then sound as stupid as you do as she does, yeah, you you've You've lost on all fronts, on all there's no coming back from that. Now, Having said that, I know her fans are gonna still support her no matter what she says, no matter how stupid she is from that outfit.

They're like, oh, two shirt, it's perfect.

Yeah, yeah, you have to you have to come stronger. I still I still feel like, like ideally in my mind, her Ardent supporters were just like typing that out. But then like you know, with the with the crying behind the mask, yeah, faces, like there is something undeniable about that interview of like, oh, this is this is the leader of our little stochastic terrorism.

She sounds this stupid.

It is weird when you see people that can't support their own argument, because it feels like if I don't agree with someone, and it's like the horrible thing. I'm like, well, if you have a thought out, so you know, like some libertarians, you're like, oh, I guess you believe if you believe what you think. But it's like she truly doesn't.

Twenty minutes of conversation to get to the bullshit with them, like you're like, oh I so you're like picking up momentum, I see how you made this mistake and then it's like but yeah, But.

With her, it was just straight up it's hard to look at that fit because I was raised Kinecostal and that's like how all all of us dressed, you know, And but it's weird. It's like, but it's like if my church was in Brooklyn kind of it's got this kind of thing where it's like like, you shouldn't be if you have those views on top of anything, you shouldn't be allowed to dress halfway hip like that should you should?

You should?

I don't know what you should be dressed in, but it shouldn't be something that's sort of it's like it's like the hip version of like the movie Mimic, you know, like I think that's a human being over there wearing that that fit, but it's really just like a cockroach hands on its face.

Yeah. I think she did a good job of basically distilling the like this this mentality of hatred down to its essence, which in the end is stupid, you know what I mean, you can't actually say what are the damages that like a more articulate sort of homophobic, transphobic person might be able to be like, well, then this could happen to our kids, But really, at the end of the day is not There's not really none, none really, and it gives.

It gives the game away of like their their ultimate goal is to get rid of trans people altogether. You know, it's like, well, what harm are they causing? Well, this, ultimately, I'm gonna sit here and sounds stupid, but that's because I don't want to say out loud they're not causing

You think that owning the libs thing would have a platform by now it doesn't, but it's like it feels like it eventually you would put fill in the bullet points. But the only purpose is to essentially like reak havoc. But they don't have any actual platform that they stand on.

It's liberal tears. That's their platform. That's that's the reactionaries thing is just like I don't know why I'm so angry, but I'm angry. And as long as it upsets my you know, left leaning ideological opponents, that's all I give a shit about.

Yeah, I mean, one thing we can learn right wing hate mongering fascists are getting better at wearing ironic T shirts and the left is terrified.

I am scared.

Yes, Yeah, all right, let's take a quick break and we're going to come back and talk about the coolest museum coming to an empty, closed down Kroger near you. We'll be right back and we're back. So yeah, just in terms of juxtaposing like what these companies are saying and the mainstream media is buying versus what is actually happening. So I was reminded of Sam Altman telling The New Yorker that he keeps like a a bag with cyanide capsules ready to go in case of the AI apocalypse.

Oh that was a Google That was a Google senior vice president, not not a senior of Google VP. Greg Corrado is one of the heads of Google Health.

Yea, there is yeah, And there's also this story from your show has a fresh health segment at the end where you talk about just saying examples headlines that are just fresh. Yeah, it's just fresh out. It's new versions of Yeah. The one about duo lingo from a recent episode where they're getting rid of human translators, firing them, cutting the workforce, replacing them with translation AI, even though

Yeah, So the AI doumerism, which is when Altman says I've got my bug out bag and my sinanite capsules in case the robot apocalypse comes. Or when Jeff Hinton, who's credited, has a Turing Award for his work on the specific kind of computer program that's us see Gabbo statistics that's behind these Lars line models. He's now concerned that it's on track to becoming smarter than us, and it's gonna like these piles of linear algebra are not

Right, yeah, Yeah, And it's just leading just to I mean, I like this kind of thought on this, I mean this kind of process. And Corey Doctor has got this kind of sister concept of AI hype, which is in shitification, which I think that the luistic society America, it was their their overall.

Yeah, American dialect Society Dialects. Yeah, picked it as the overall word of theyear for twenty twenty three. But in shientification is something very specific, right, It's not just like we've now we're now swimming in ai extruded junk, right ais always it's something more. The companies create a platform that you sort of get lured in because initially it's really useful. So this is like you think about how

And I would say there's some kinds of processes you can think about in sentification. The kind of idea that you have to rush to a certain kind of market that you have a monopoly on this kind of thing, and I guess yeah. I mean, the thing about large language models I think that we get on and talk a lot about is that large language models are kind of born shitty with content. So it's not like the platform started and that platform monopoly led to this kind

Yeah.

So here's an example.

The other day, I came across an article that supposedly quoted me out of this publication from India called Bihar Praba, and I'm like, I never said those words. I could see how someone might think I would, And then I searched my emails, like, no, I never corresponded with any

Yes, because it seems like you might have, and the large language models they don't like that. That's isn't that? What hallucinations are a lot of the time is just the large language model making up stuff it seems like is what the person wants them to say exactly.

But here's the whole thing.

Every single thing output from a large language model has that property issues. Sometimes it seems to make sense.

The whole thing is trying to do a trick of like predict, I figured out what you wanted me to say, ha ha, But it's like, well, but what I wanted you to say is not always That's not how I want my questions answered that that's actually a wildly flawed way of coming up like answering people. It's definitely something that I do in my day to day life because I'm scared of conflict and a people pleaser. But that's not I'm not a good scientific instrument for that reason, you know, Like, but.

You just got you just an avoidant attachment style, which as a as another avoidance.

They've just made me a scientific model that's terrible, Like, you can't believe this.

I was like, I don't know if you saw that headline where Tyler Perry was like I was going to open an eight hundred million dollar studio, but I stopped the second I saw what Sora, this video generator AI could do, and I realized we're in trouble. He said, quote, I had no idea until I saw recently the demonstrations of what it's able to do. It's shocking to me. And he's basically saying he's like, you could make up a pilot and save millions of dollars. This is going

A very o GPT's paper was.

So yeah, where it's like, huh, you know, like just sort of the unethical nature of how even these companies are doing research and creating data to support this.

Can we just stoples, Can you just stop and explain exactly with the methodology of that paper one nose? I will.

I will allow the experts to do it, because it's it's it's absolutely bonkers to hear because any person who's like been at any like tried to look at a study or something, and you look at methodology like om.

So, methodology is a very kind term for what was truly truly, So Alex, did you want to summarize real quick? What was in There was two different things we were looking at. It was something that came out of Open AI and something from Goldman Sacks. And the Golden Sacks one was silly, but not as silly as the Open Eye one.

Yeah, I mean getting in the detail. And I went through this and I puzzle this paper, I like poked my friend. As a labor sociologist, I'm like, what the hell is going on here? And you know, okay, so there's this kind of metric that you can use to judge how hard a task is that the government collects, and there's this kind of job classification. They rd him from you know, one to seven effectively. And so what Goldman Sachs said was well, basically, any from one to

So you know, and so you'll never guess what the answer was. You'll never guess.

You'll never guess.

They took the output of that as if it were data. Yeah, and then like you know, these ridiculous graphs and blah blah blah.

It's just like the whole thing is is is fantasy, right, so is the danger You're they're just sort of this reliance, Like I guess, so if we're classifying the sort of threats to our sense of like how information is distributed or what is real or what is hype or whatever, or if they're actually taking jobs, what is something that I think people that people actually need to be aware of or to sort of prepare themselves for how this is going to disrupt things in a way that you know,

There's a whole bunch of things, and the one that I'm sort of most going on about these days is the threats to the information ecosystem, so I want to talk about that. But there's also things like automated decision systems being used by governments to decide who gets social benefits and who gets them yanked right, things like doctor joybul and WHINNI worked with a group of people in I want to say, in New York City who were pushing back against having a face recognition system installed as

It was apartment complex, yeah.

Wanted to basically use biometrics as a way to have them gain entry to their own homes where they lived. So there's there's dangerous of lots of lots of different kinds.

So it's hidden by that.

If you're seeing those things on Twitter, and it's completely opaque, right, if you are not in the note, if you don't know what open ai is, if you don't know that fake videos might exist, that doesn't tell you anything, right.

So these are the things I'm worried about, And the.

Things I'm really worried about is, you know, these things doing a pretty terrible job at producing written content and videos and images. And so it's not that they could replace a human person, but it just takes a boss or a vik he to think that it's good enough, right, and then this replaces whole classes of occupation. So again,

I was gonna say.

There's also things like shot Spotter, which reports to be able to detect what a gun has been fired. And this has been deployed by police departments all over the country, and there's you know, there's no transparency into how it was evaluated, how it even works, or why you should believe it works. And so what we have is a system that tells the cops that they're running into an active shooter situation, which is definitely a recipe for reducing police violence.

Right right, yeah, right, our time, Microsoft.

Yeah, and there is a reason an investigation that that showed that it's always almost always used in neighborhoods.

Yeah, communities, the communities of color. Yeah, the Wired, the Wired piece on that basically, Yeah, I think they said about what seventy percent of the census tracts something ridiculous like that.

Yeah, Yeah, it's absurd.

And then there's things like EPIC, which is a healthcare electronic health records company, is partnering with Microsoft to push the synthetic text into so many different systems, so that you're going to get like reports in your patient records that were automatically generated and then supposedly checked by a doctor who doesn't have time to check it thoroughly, right, And they're going to be doing things like, you know, randomly putting in information about BMI and when it's not

Right, Yeah, And it's easier to do in creative fields because there's such a just inability for executives to you know, like they don't know it. They've never known anything about like what what is quality creative work? So I feel like it's much easier for them to just be like, yeah, get rid of that and we'll, yeah, like the way that we'll find out about that that isn't working is the quality of the creative output will be far worse.

Right, I mean, what I mean, all those folks really tend to care about our you know, content and engagement metrics. You know, you can't actually have something that's kind of known for quality or or creativity.

Right.

It does remind me a little bit about kind of you know, the first rebels against automation, the Luodites, and you know, the kind of the kind of way in which they did have this apprentice guilt system in which they trained for you know, a decade or so before they could you know, perhaps go ahead and open their own shop in a way that you know, those folks were replaced by these these water frames that were they called water frames because they were produced by hydraulic power.

Yeah, and then we made their name a synonym for like hater, Yeah, decater.

There's been some nice efforts to reclaim them by Brian Merchant and.

Yeah, totally so. Just in the comparison to crypto, it feels like the adoption here, the hype cycle here is more widespread than crypto like with Crypto, there was that moment where we saw the person behind the curtain who was you know, the people that there was the fall of Crypto with With AI, I don't feel like there is any incentive for anyone to any of the stakeholders. I guess I got it involved to yeah, to just

We're still trying. That's what we're up to with the podcast right a lot of our other public scholarship. There was an interesting moment last week when chat gpt sort of glitched and was outputting sense. Yes, I mean it's actually Spanglish or people just calling it because it has some Spanish in it.

It had some it wasn't all I mean, it was doing some spangless stuff with this stuff is just even more inscrutable than usual. It was just completely nonsense.

Yeah yeah, And that the sort of open Aye statement about what went wrong basically described it for what it is. They had to like say something other than what they usually say. And then there was a whole thing with Google's image generator, which you know, so the baseline thing is super duper biased and like makes everybody look like

There's some true.

Believers out there who are not going to be reached, sure, but I think it may have helped for some slice of society.

Yeah, I know some people who are like, how do we know that Reinhard Heydrich didn't have dreadlocks?

Clear?

Wow?

But okay, sure, go off.

Yeah.

And I mean I think it's this is such an interesting question, right is like where does when is the AI bubble going to pop?

Right?

And I mean in some ways it feels like, you know, we're where I mean, as much as we can do, we're kind of prodding it, right, you know and seeing you know, And one thing that I handedly said one one time, and Emily loves is really cule as practice. So you know, one thing, you know, and I will in a turn of one of Emily's great quotes is you know, oh gosh, I'm want to mess it up right now. It's I and I it's it's the refuse to be impressed. Oh yeah, resist the urge to resist,

The writer's room. 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 demiles he he needs your validation, folks. I hope you're having a great weekend and I will talk to you Monday.

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