Hello the Internet, and welcome to this episode of The Weekly Zeitgeist. These are some of our favorite segments from this week, all edited together into one NonStop infotainment laugh stravaganza. Yeah, so, without further ado, here is the Weekly Zeitgeist. Miles. We are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by a writer, media critic, host of a couple podcasts. You Are Good, a feelings podcast about movies, and the classic the Mount Rushmore podcasts. It's not a podcast about Mount Rushmore.
It is like on the Mount Rushmore of great podcasts, exactly You're wrong about. Her writing has appeared in The Believer on BuzzFeed. Truly one of the best people in the world at interrogating the myths and narratives we use to define ourselves in the world around us. Please welcome the brilliant and talented Sarah Marshall.
What a crazy intro. I feel so pumped up. I feel like I want to be one of those kids running onto the stage of Maury and.
Yeah I don't care much?
Yeah yet did you ever do an episode about that?
He really should? I was just thinking this morning. One of the things I find most fascinating is the question of like the inner workings of a nineties daytime talk show.
Yeah, like, my god.
Right, because I mean like I feel like we got the like the darkest glimpse after the Jenny Jones thing.
Yeah, that's when we started to be.
Like, oh no, no, what was.
The actings have Consequences Jenny Jones one was where they outed one of their guests for being in love with this other man, right, and then the guy was murdered.
Oh Jesus.
Yeah, I'm gonna be iffy on the details, but yeah, and I don't think they aired the episode, but right they they did facilitate a murder there.
Yeah. Wow.
Yeah, and you know.
You're wrong about as big on the Satanic panic and they were such a big part of that other wonderful things. Yeah, a real accelerant to the like the wet cardboard and the mushroom growing experience a my college metaphor, that's.
Where we are whischh we are? Yeah, I was going to ask for the best micology metaphors you could call it what. Yeah, we've talked about You're wrong about a lot on this podcast, especially around human trafficking, and uh, it's just I think the foremost debunker of bullshit myths, and our show pedals bullshit. I mean, it's what we do. We love to know. We also like to bust bullshit
myths when we're heads up enough to catch them. But so we wanted to just have you back on the show and go through some of the stories you've covered, some of your favorites, some of our favorites that we just want to make sure our listeners are aware of because it's a great show and.
I'm so happy to be This is so lovely and I'm I'm so happy that we're in your zeitgeist. And it's a really it's like a lovely and bleak and lovely distinction to hold when it's like, you know, myth busting is one of the most important roles in society today.
Unfortunately, it truly is, Caitlin Drante. We do like to ask our guests, what is something from your search history?
Okay, well, obviously I'm looking at Shrek stuff and I found out slash. I think someone told me, someone damned me on Instagram and told me about something called Shrek's Adventure, which is like a I don't think it's quite a theme park, but it's like some sort of attraction in London, and I will be going to London on said Bechdel cast tour, and we're doing the Shrek Tannic Tour, AKA, we're covering Shrek and Titanic on this tour, so I
have to be going to Shrek's Adventure. And then that sent me down a rabbit hole and I discovered that there's a whole section of Universal Studios in Singapore called Far Far Away, so there's a whole Shrek theme park basically, and so I just have to go to all of these places. So I was just googling and doing some research, looking at the photos, and so that's my recent s urch history.
I'm wondering if Shrek is popular in France, is.
It in any way comparable to the other live experience that has been getting a lot of press recently and that the man who put on said it quote unquote ruined his life.
Oh of Caitlin's live show again.
I was talking about that Willy Wonka man.
That that truly that truly.
Yeah. Yeah, the fire the Firefest of exact media.
I mean not according to the website, it is not similar because these families in the photographs look very happy taking a picture next to a man in a Shrek rubber mask in front of Big potentially Shrek. Oh yeah, sorry, my bad. Next to Shrek himself in front of Big Ben, just looking and waving at somebody in the sky off in the distance.
Wow. Yeah, So I'm going to that and I'm going to have the best time.
Will you wave to the sky for me when you go?
Of course?
Yeah?
Yes, sure.
I feel like mileage may vary based on what country you're in, But Shrek is universal and international.
Literally a property of Universal.
Yeah, that's more universal. Did you get right? Actually just went to Universal Studios with my kids for the first time on Saturday morning.
Did you go to the Mummy Ride?
We? No, they we just we We hit the like it was poor and rain out. Highly recommend that go while it's poor and rain because then the lines are very short. And we hit the Simpsons ride.
Did you go to water World the show?
No, we had to like leave right before everybody. I know. But the theme, the concept of water World I mentioned. I was explaining it because I thought we were going to have time to do it. I explained it to my kids, not going. Yeah, my six year old like two days later was like, what was that movie? What was that world you were talking about where everything's like there's no land. It was like, Sun, you're talking about
water World? And I can tell you are of me and mine kind, because yes that I remember when that shit came out. Man, like, oh my god, I was so excited, so bad that the world is water.
It's water World. It is wild that you're bringing this up because this is very relevant to my overrated.
What uh, Alex, what is something you think is underrated?
So underrated? I want to shout out Cherry Coke zero. Okay, it's a fantastic And I thought about it for a weird reason because me and my buddy Katie Golden, we made like a weird TV recap podcast recently and we almost did it about a TV show called The Young Pope, which is not a very good show I remember years ago. Yeah, and like ju Law is the Young Pope, And the one thing I always think about with that show is
that his character was obsessed with Cherry Coke zero. So it's a show where like the Pope is going around the Vatican and before a meeting, he'll be like, where's my Cherry Coke zero? At one point, he just says, like cherry Coke zero and like a pounding his fist on the tableway, And unfortunately he is correct. It's a fantastic beverage. I want to have it all the time. I guess, I guess we're celebrating good Friday by talking about the Pope Cherry Coke zero.
Good Friday.
I have a good Friday, Friday, the best of Fridays. But it's great. It's a it's a step up from Coke zero. If you've only had that.
Oh what do you think about the You know, coke is always experimenting, right, full disclosure. I am based in Atlanta, Georgia, and so we hear a lot weird coke stuff. We get our finger on the pulse, you know, we get the weird the why old swings sometimes just will show up in your neighborhood, like there was, for instance, recently, there was Coca Cola dream and I tried it right, yeah, And in their defense, they never said whether it was a good dream or not, but that was I was
not the vibe for me, man. And they've got they've they've always got these new flavors coming out.
So Cherry Coke zero that's one for you.
Yes, I'm glad you bring up dream because I was not into that. The spiced coke is okay, it's just called spice. It's not a duing thing or whatever.
And uh.
And then at one point they did like seven fruit flavors of diet coke, and I was mostly not into those.
Yeah, they very coke zero though as a.
Winner, it's and it's pretty available. You don't have to be I assume you're you have some kind of Atlanta vault that you open up then and just grab it whenever you want.
But I'm so plugged in. You know, we got retinal scans, We've got actually the Coca Cola Museum, which is heavy propaganda, just to be completely always. Yeah, yeah, if you've been there, there is the culmination of the tour is a Willy Wonka esque room where you can try, at least at the time I went, because all the kids take a field trip there. You can try every single flavor of
beverage that the Coca Cola company makes. Yeah, and it's you know, there's some cinematography or a choreography of the soda, I would say, because it shoots across the room in an art.
What.
Yeah, and you're like amazed and you try.
It sounds so sticky shooting through the air.
Shout out to the custodial staff. Yeah, that's going to be rough around like six point thirty PM.
Like that must be. They must be like recruiting custodians around the country, just like this guy's got talent. Like looking at close caption and CCTV footage of like people wiping up spills, being like, this guy's like a first round draft pick. We got to get him and coke Fountain Room.
And they have PTSD from it. You know, they talk about they talk about.
Their seen some shit.
Man.
You know, Cherry Coke zero.
I can't look at it.
Cherry Coke zero. I've never purchased it outside of a movie theater, but it is my whatever that like universal Freestyle Coke machine is just as a system. Yeah, oh my god. Yeah. I go Coke zero and then I put the cherry in and it's bright red for some reason, And man, I love that there's like a bright red I mean, not the whole drink, but there is like a you know in the in the machine, there's like
a portion of the stream that is bright red. So there's like some manner of like Cherry Zeru that's coming in that I think makes it different than the The Hot Poke Bottled Cherry Coke zero's version. The Hot Pope wasn't that. That wasn't that basically his the character was Yeah, what if what if the Pope fucked? Like it was?
It was so weird because it went through like you sometimes you watch a show and you become very curious about the creative process in the writer's room, you know, And I thought maybe these guys just got real deep on Cherry Cope Zebra, or maybe they had like they were like, here's a checklist, or maybe maybe Jude Law came in and he was like, I will do this with the with the following eccentricities.
Right, Yeah, I'm not sure if that's the particular variety of coke that that show was written on, but yeah, right exactly, it's non negotiable.
Man.
What a blast from the past. Man, But I can't it's unhinged. It is unhinged. It is unh it is it is freestyling.
That's what they did.
It is off the dome.
What if there was a.
Pope who was Jude Law? Drop the beat?
You know, drop the beat now, Yeah, there is a fascination with Catholicism in like I think that was made by like a great filmmaker, like a European filmmaker. That was like people were there, yeah, an Italian filmmaker. Everyone was like, you know, this prison does not miss, Like what are they going to make next? HBO was like blank check, what do you want to make? And they're like a show about like what if what if Pope was young and kind of hot?
That's the bitch, right, that's what they did.
Yeah.
But like Scorsese's making a new series for Fox Nation. We talked about this on yesterday's Trending. It's making a new series for the Fox, like the place where shows that were turned down by everybody else go to like have a brief afterlife, the Fox Nation, right, like the streaming platform. Scorsese's making a show about the Saints for that station, like are they hot? Are they hot? Saints? Probably hotter than you would expect, but unclear, and I
just I don't. Yeah, the Catholicism when people are like, hey, you know what, it's like Pascal's wager is like, you know, religion can't be all bad and like what, what's the worst that can happen? You know, you just you go to heaven and it's like, well, no, you like waste a lot of good talent and energy on stuff could could have been otherwise, but who knows. Maybe hot Pope is uh is cool and I'm missing out.
Sounds like I am.
It's made by an Italian filmmaker, and then July is an English actor, right, but he's also playing an American pope like a lot of bitch is like what if the pope was hot and really young, so he's going to be pope for a long long time and American? What if these three crises strike?
You know, and he.
Is like cartoonishly new York really yeah, yeah, dude, hey, am the pope over here?
Exactly that?
And the drink I think the drink is maybe supposed to be a joke about Americans. I think he doesn't have coffee or tea or whatever, like he's looking for mourning cherry coke zero, right, So I think it's like kind of a It's like the joke on Arrested Development where the American themed restaurant has piles of doughnuts that no one could ever eat, like it's like kind of how dumb we are mourning.
Cherry Coke zero is one of is in the Coke vault, but it's spelled m O U r n I n G. It's supposed to give you a feeling of foreboding and sadness. Yeah, slogan, pour one out, poor one out, directly into your mouth. What some of do you think is overrated?
Right now? I'm gonna go with mental health.
I just think being well mentally is overrated right now, at this point in my life and in time, I'm really just leaning into mental illness.
Let's just let it go, you know, let's let's just lean it.
Like if you're depressed, watch as many murder sad documentaries as you can. Let's just see what happens. That's you know, I just I feel like I'm a bit weak. I gave mental health the shot and let me just go the other way for a bit.
Yeah.
For years, It's like I'm gonna just I've leaned one way, I'm gonna lean the other and see where I net.
Out, see where I not out?
Yeah, you know, I've been watching so many things that are to improve myself or educate reading. No, no, you know, what I say, sat and I watched I binged a four episode documentary about some YouTuber I've never heard of in my life who like groomed a bunch of people. It was sad and dark, but I want it to Hey, I leaned in, Now I know about this person? Yeah,
which I was gonna say, which, which which documentary? Because I feel like there's always a fucking documentary about YouTubers out a grooming people.
I oh, I've.
What is this?
Like Osiren? Oh not?
Oh?
Oh?
In real? Yeah, I had never heard of this guy. And the whole time I was like, what's his name? Oh, Ryan.
Nyan?
Yeah, And I felt like the oldest person in the world because everyone else was like he's very well known.
It's so wild too, Like I do the same thing, Like it's weird when like I see something on the internet that has like millions of views and like just like youtubeer.
And I'm like, what the fun I never heard of I've never heard of sun? What the fuck is this? But yeah, I know, yeah, I too have fallen down the oison.
Oh yeah, And that that broke me a bit mentally, so.
Yeah, right, and that he's like what I need mental health for what do I need a YouTube video?
Did it?
Yeah?
Yeah, I'm off the cliff now, okay, Yeah, I feel like I was like, sometimes I'm doing mental health wrong. But I'm when I'm focusing too much on how I'm feeling, I feel like I tend to you know, you know what I mean, Like if I'm focusing, if I'm thinking about my mental health and thinking about how I'm feeling and how happy I am, like that fucks me up because is then if I feel bad.
It's like you're sucking it.
Feel bad about feeling bad, you know. Yeah. So yeah, just like not great.
So that's why you just have to create. That's I just think of it more of like just putting yourself in the good of the right environment. Yeah, all the time, Like more so than being like, am I one thousand percent happy? Like ecstatic going off? I was like, no, man, I just need to make sure like I'm I'm in a good I'm always putting myself in the right environments, creating myself the right.
You know what. I throw that all out the window and uh, just go just ball, do what you want to do. Just do it for the story.
Yeah, don't even think about how you feel how do you what do you want?
How does it feel right now?
Right?
That's what's underrated.
There, you go, all right that in oh while, obviously let's take a quick break and we'll come back and talk about the Supreme Court. What are those crazy kids getting up to? And we're back, and I think we already mentioned that you're wrong about is really you're really good with like moral panics, the satanic panic in particular, And yeah, it turns out the role of evangelical Christianity and some of our biggest social movements of the past
half century. And you recently had an episode about the pro life movement that was surprising to me, Like I think you said this right off the bat that I was not expecting. You point out the pro life movement is younger than Jeff Bridges.
This is how we mark age now.
But it's yeah, like I guess it's specific, like there were people who were opposed to abortion before that, but the kind of concerned, cohesive, evangelical driven version kind of starts in nineteen seventy three, and it's part of this movement by evangelicals to be like, hey, so our values, people hate them. We're we've got bad values. We're we're pro segregation. Nobody else seems to like that very much. They're pretty uh, you know, they recognize that they're going
the wrong way in terms of relevancy. They're in need of a real makeover exactly. And so yeah, they settle on abortion, which the most well known evangelical in the seventies was Jimmy Carter, which is like, that's not who I come to associate evangelicals with, But it was like a different time, and at that time you didn't necessarily like being super violently against people's right to have an abortion was not one of the first things you associated with evangelicals.
No, or with the Republican Party. And I always love to cite the fact that Betty Ford famously was a pro choice Republican and that that was a coherent political position for the first lady to have at the time.
Wow. Yeah, And Jimmy Carter being an evangelical again, I'm.
A social justice warrior. Some would say he loves building houses for people. Yeah, I feel like there's something that
it is. Really it's interesting to reflect on maybe arguably what has been lost because this is not exactly my field, but many of my fields brush up against it, and the history of evangelicism in America really connects to the idea that God really is of and for the people, and that prayer is about direct communication and with the divine and that you deserve to have a connection to the Holy Spirit without there needing to be some kind
of conduit. So it really is, in a way, another wave of you know, the various religious reformations that we've seen throughout history that have made Christianity more and more egalitarian, and there's there's historically been a lot of potential for good in that and still is. But it's just that, you know, evangelical Christianity in twenty twenty four, I think is absolutely synonymous with the unbelievably sinister, the acratic, kleptocratic,
fascist dictatorship that we're now basically living in. So that's really fun, that's nice.
They really did not see it going that wave, like I guess I did, because.
We it's the compliment sandwich. You know, you got to start with the good and then you're like, now we have some news we have we.
Do about how things have gone since then. Yeah, I mean you point out that one point, I forget if it was that episode or not. But just if you look at what the evangelical movement has done over the past forty years in our lifetime, it's kind of what paranoid eras of the US, you like, accused communists of doing. You know, that there was going to be this secret takeover, that they were going to secretly infiltrate our Supreme Court, and like.
They have failed to infiltrate the media, which is nice, you know. Interestingly, there's nothing conservatives are worse at than making media.
Yeah. They tried turning their hat around backwards, turning the chair around backwards, they tried everything. You still can't get man. Yeah, but yeah, and then it's kind of what they accused Satanists of doing in the eighties, like secretly, yeah, and.
What they're accusing you know, all these drag queen groomers of doing. Now, there's a very in any kind of abusive relationship where you think that your user has more complicated motives than you ultimately realize that they do. It's I think largely a projection game.
Yeah, right, And it seems like so many of the moral panics too, like they're like, you know, like all the ones we've mentioned, even human trafficking. They're just sort of like built on people's inability or like unwillingness to examine actual systemic forces, and it's just much easier to chalk it up to like, yeah, it's this other thing, man, it's these Satanists that are going that are freaking out.
It's like, it's not that there's inequality, is that there are these flash rob mobs where they just go through and steal everything and it's a crime wave and it just allows, I don't know, for people to sort of neatly put some kind of larger issue into a problem that doesn't quite actually get to the root of the cause.
Yeah, I've been fascinated by slasher movies for a long time, and I think that they do a weirdly great job of illustrating this very i think kind of core piece of American folklore, where you know, he was Friday the thirteenth as the er example, like some kind of like the traditional slasher template is that somebody is wronged in the past, Jason drowns because the counselors weren't paying attention to making that boy drowned, and then some kind of
force avenging the wronged party shows up in the present and innocent teens who are simply you know, smoking a joint or making out suffer, and there the sort of arc of it is that you can sort of momentarily acknowledge that injustice has occurred in the past, but as long as you turn a representative of that injustice into a force so dangerous that there's no proportionate response except killing them, then you can justify any action in the present and kind of even out the lecture.
And that feels like a really I don't know.
Some way that we were we were thinking through with these summer camp movies, the kind of dominant political ideology we were all living under.
Yeah, well it is a kind of frontier wilderness setting that everybody's familiar with, and that is where you know colonial like.
The summer I can never populated my camp.
They're always way out there in the woods. And then yeah, they are being punished, Like I just think that at a certain level, there's like an unspoken knowledge amongst Americans that like, oh, yeah, we we've got it coming, like this is this has been back, like what every every thing we've everything you see around you is built on top of just ashes and atrocities we've got something horrible coming, and so yeah, it makes sense when slasher films like it does feel like if an alien came down and
just like looked at our films. Slasher films would be pretty difficult to explain if you, if they didn't have like a psychological read like.
No, no, no, it would never happen.
It's just a thing we like to imagine happen to us. Why what is wrong? I think we got to come in or something.
I don't know.
I just.
Ol masochism. Yeah, we know we are not what was intended.
So we put the right So we put the Poulter guy's house on top of a Native American burial ground, and yeah, that gets it out. That gets it.
It's just funny how like that, that sort of that angst manifest in different ways, sometimes in films other times, and people screaming at school board meetings, and like, I don't want my kids to know what a civil war is.
Or was about.
People should be watching more horror movies, I think.
Yeah, I wonder if that's my version? Why am I so horror averse? I wonder what am I?
You don't feel guilty about anything? Yeah, I gotta clean consciousness.
Yeah, I guess there's like a black in Japanese American and I'm like, I don't know, bro, Yeah, yeah, y'all got that shit coming.
Yeah, you shouldn't feel weird about not liking horror movies like that. That's us man before liking them.
Yeah, it's just yeah, white people four hours a week go to the horror movie clinic because I.
Mean, like there's also like bad.
I mean there's Japanese horror films, and there's clearly there's a laundry list of atrocities that Japan has committed to. And I wonder, does there are there like what's German horror?
Like does this is there?
Is there like a uni versal language of like sort of expressing this like through what we consider horror, because I know.
Cultural difference is really interesting because I feel like Japanese horror movies there are often ghosts.
Yeah, no, precisely, and we have.
So few ghosts nowadays in American horror. We love demons. We won't shut up about demons.
To my chagrin, Germany just has Werner Herzog.
Everything is.
Her SOG's new TV crayons.
Why do you need horror movies? When nature is trying to kill you, always.
Gardening with Werner herd sog.
It's just a it's just a documentary about hummingbirds.
In the abundance of these queens pushings their way out through the soil. I see none of the divinity of springtime or the pagan gods. I see only pointless. But I can also use them to make a nice festo.
The While we're on the subject of movies, you kind of stumbled on I don't like the andyes, you did an episode on the Andy's Rescue. The a live story, as I think it's mostly known in America, the rugby team crashes in the andes is living there for months on a freaking glacier on a glacier, freezing to death, starving to death. Eventually turned to cannibalism to avoid starving to death a couple. So this past year, one of the best movies I saw was Society the Snow, which
does a really good job of updating. You know, there was the version in the nineties Alive with like Ethan Hawke, I think, and you know it was like the hollywood ized version. Society the Snow like updates it and like adds a lot of the humananity back to it, which
was something that your episode really did. But both movies really missed something that I loved that you brought up, which is that people like they were doing bits the whole time, Like the number of bits that they did was like, at one point, they're waiting to be rescued, and then they look off and they see an avalanche like a white wall coming towards them, and then they realized that somebody is actually using a fire extinguisher to like make it look like there's an avalanche coming with
them as a bit, and then they're like pretend they were like talking like planning bits for what to do when the helicopter arrives at the scene of their plane crash, like talking about like the funniest thing to say while they were in it. But it's just it's, I don't know, generally, just movies about true stories and history feel like they have to be as huge umerless as like a Christopher Nolan film, you know, right, and totally it's just not
how reality is. Like I would have loved the bits in both of those movies.
Oh yeah, well, because even you think about like the like the like the wild stuff, like engineering students pull like while they're in college.
You know what I mean.
Yeah, like the fun they have, like like JPL is nearby in LA and like they do like wild just pumpkin carving contests, just weird things are like now we're using our like power, like brain power to get stuff to other like the moon, to have fucking fun. And yet to think that like they were just I don't know, at the in where were those alamos. They were just like hanging out counting marbles or something. They're like, all right,
I'm gonna go to bed, Yeah, see you later. Like they weren't horsing around come on.
Though, Yeah no, yeah, those they were doing goods constantly, like all throughout history. And I think it, I really do think it's the same reason that comedies almost never win at the Academy Awards is the reason, and that they feel like they need to launder movies of any like fun when they're about history. Yeah, no, this has to be serious. We can't we have to like remove
the fun. But I feel like it would just feel more lived in and yeah, I don't know, it would be be a blast if we actually saw how the people were funny at the time.
Well, and you know, when I think about when you think about the movies that endure and that are a part of your life and that you watch a lot, like and you know, it's different. People have different requirements. Some people have comfort movies that have no funny parts in them at all, God bless her, But like, aren't most of the things that you watch more than a couple times funny?
Yeah they have fun. Yeah, the characters are having fun or they're funny or yeah.
There's the you know, because it's like a full spectrum of humanity. It's kind of like eating an entire meal with nothing, no sweetness in it at all, Like you can do it, but it's it feels there's something messing.
Yeah. The other thing that gout left out of both movies that your episode kind of restores is like it's kind of an important detail. Like you go from the story of them like surviving getting rescued to that that's
kind of it. And then like today we know them as like the cannibal people and the media discovering the cannibalism, like the doctor checking them out and being like, wait a second, these guys like had to have been eating something, and then like a big like moral judgment ensues and like everybody's like their family is like upset by it, and they're like, wait, would our parents have rather us
starved to death? And than like the Catholic church weighs in and is like, no, it's good that they were eating people, which was very every once in a while they nail it. And then the other detail was that they were like a few days walk from a hotel full of food. Was like, I don't know, it's always the way. I can see why you left it out, but Jesus Christ, that's I mean, it's like triangle of sadness like that. It's yeah, I don't know if you guys saw that movie.
I did.
I really liked that movie and I saw that the night that midterm results were coming in, so it was like perfect for that very distracting.
Yes, oh that's a good idea. Just woutch a really good like, save a really good movie for when the for election night, Yeah gets sucked.
You need to be transported for real.
Yeah, it is.
I think that the kind of texture of tragedy is what makes it feel real. And I think that to some extent, when we tell stories that are so grim and feel so distant from us that that's a way of us feeling like it's not going to happen to us, when you know, really, so many of these things are the result of being in a boat, being in a skyscraper,
being in the path of a forest fire. Like, we're going to have more and more epidemics and disasters and they're just going to become part of everyday life for those of us who don't feel that way yet.
Yeah, I hope we can remember to be funny, and we're going to be so funny.
We're going to be the funniest generation that has ever lived.
They's ever lived through an apocalypse. Yeah right, you know the aliens will come and they're like Wow. As their civilization was dying, they put out some of the best comedies.
The best content came right near me.
The guy need a Drum set out of billionaire skulls and they're scouring doing solos. It was really quite artistic. I have to say, oh, yeah, it'll be great.
I think you should leave quotes. As their city was burning down, well then once the.
Grid went down, they had to make those meme museums. Right, those are a real tread.
Yeah, that would be fun though, to like figure out which memes go in the museum, Like, you might as well just do that now. I feel like it would be a good public works project. Biden, come on, yeah, come.
On, but these Yeah, we're gonna have somebody out of work TikTokers when you ban the app.
Yeah, there's no work.
Uh, you know the new Civil Conservation Corps of Meme Collection and Remembrance. Yeah, all right, let's let's take a quick break and we'll come back. We'll keep talking, and we're back.
And this is your notice that we are a little over one week away from the total solar eclipse on April eighth. This is an especially rare event because it's path of totality will be much wider than the twenty seventeen eclipse, which was one of the first stories we covered on this show. So April eighth will be one of the last stories we cover. We're ending it. It's a we just do what the sun tells us, you know, exactly.
But this is going to give more Americans a clear view of the phenomenon than the last time I have. I'm on the record as saying like I've been mostly I haven't been in the direct path of any of these eclipse experiences, but like they've been mostly underwhelming in my experience.
It's because you gotta it's because you got to be in the path.
You gotta go on the path path to Yeah. Yeah, but we still try. We still go out there and we're like, whoa, look that light reflecting off the thing kind of has a wow, look at that.
Look at the shadow?
Yeah, oh yeah.
Or to use like a like a like binoculars or something in am so you can project a shadow onto the ground.
I remember doing that.
Yeah, and then I go, Honestly, I think I could look at it. I really don't think anything will happen if I look at it.
I'm just and my way where I goes don't know, no, And I'm like, Okay, come on, I don't think it happens.
I'm taking a sneaky look at the eclipse.
I like, I look at the sun every day in my life.
Basically, you gotta give it. I got I like to give a good solid three minutes of direct morning.
Wait, that's how I reset my day. Okay, that's how I elevate as a human. You need a human It's just eye contact with the sun.
Factory reset.
I know you're saying you put a what is a hyper ice massage gun to the temple as a way to do a hard reset factory reset on your brain. The new one go outside firsting you wake up direct eye contact with the sun for three.
Straight solar eclipse lasts for four minutes twenty seven seconds. So that's the that's the ice fucking challenge of this solar eclipse is staring for the whole at four minutes twenty seven second twenty Yeah, there you go, Yeah, there you go? Are you real? How much do you like solar eclipses? Bro? You've got like science people who are like, yeah, no, we're traveling there. Oh yeah, you're about that. Then you look at it. You go look at it with the high.
Exactly, spend the rest of your day blinking a lot because there's a big blind spot there.
Yeah, exactly the rest of your life blinking. But people are going nuts. I specifically, when our writer Jam put the story in the dock this morning, I immediately was like, oh shit, I better do something, and it's way too late. So these people aren't wrong, they're just more prepared than me. There's been a small spending boom across the country. Campgrounds
and rental cars have sold out. Hotel rooms are getting booked up thanks to a massive number of tourists planning to visit states in the path of totality Indiana, which actually isn't that where you're Where are you held from?
I am from the Midwest.
I'm from Illinois, from the midwest, Illinois, but I'll claim it is Midwest. But we are older than them.
Yes, of course, Indiana is preparing to get five hundred thousand visitors.
That's probably that's a lot for Indiana who goes there. That's that's probably the most they've had in a while.
That's more than seven times the attendants at the twenty twelve Super Bowl in Indianapolis. So they're they're in trouble now.
I was gonna say, that's probably more than the last time the Colts were in the Super Bowl.
Yeah, wow, it's too many people. So, I let's say, for for a city like Indianapolis. But despite the fact that eclipses are totally free astronomical occurrences that anybody can witness, corporations besides, you know, not just hotels, are trying to monetize the eclipse as much as possible. This one sounds pretty good, Like I'm actually not mad at this first one. You're six Flags mad? First one, you're mad at six Yeah.
Six Flags in Texas is trying to get people to pay them to witness the eclipse while simultaneously trying not to puke on the Superman Tower of Terror with the sixth Flagg Fiesta Texas Solar Eclipse at the Park aka Solar Coaster.
Mm hmm.
That sounds cool.
It's cool as what's okay?
Because I don't I don't think the experience is gonna be that cool, right, I think the the I guess the hottest ticket would be what if you're because I know those Superman rides. It's like basically a big J shaped thing where they shoot you up to like fucking seven hundred feet in the air and then you're like, you know your bag, like you're just looking straight up at the sky. I get maybe being that high up in it when an eclipse is happening, you're gonna be
but that's like that's like forty people. Yeah, that's what I'm like, makes funk. Yeah, and I like it only lasts four minutes, so yeah, exactly, and it's like one like it's actually between like deployments of the like the amusement.
Car, so it's like no one actually ever can sists up there.
It's like they're just getting on and off.
It's yeah, dude, it's happening.
Get off so we can go up to Like sorry, that's.
A really good point. Like they are selling an idealized version of what this could be in your mind. That is going to not happen for ninety nine point nine percent of the people who play them. Most people are going to be in line.
Which that's a good drift. That's a good drift.
It is a good better grift.
Okay, I definitely I'll tip my hat to the grift. I think the Delta one is a has me hooked a little bit more. But then realizing this will be a fucking problem. I don't know how fun it would be. But they're offering flights that basically followed the path of totality and then you can basically they're saying unadulterated views from quote, extra large windows. I'm sorry, it's just the fucking windows that are on the plant.
Yeah, like what, it's just a new plane. What are you doing to make the windows extra large. I like this, things are made by bowing. I don't know if you've seen hell, but.
Not with everything going on with planes, I think there's a mercury retrograde.
And then no, I am not going to be on a plane during this.
But I can see like the people of being like, oh, you might be able to see like the land like become dark in these strips. Maybe that's cool, but like if you only but imagine what if this is like a one of those planes, Like how big is a plane?
Is it a three? Like they got three aisles or three rows in the fucking middle? Like what if you sit in the middle, or if you have a fucking aisle seat? Then you're like, hey, man, can I get a little bit of a look? Like fuck you?
I pay so? Did I? That's your fucking problem.
That's your but yeah, that's I mean, like, but you know, I see they're doing a good job of you know, dangling this like magical experience in front of you. But if you just think it out for like two or three steps, you're like, oh wait, yeah, like why would I do that?
I feel like even the like news footage from the like places that are in the path of Totality and
previous eclipses. The people remind me. I think I said this before of the interviews with people after they saw Phantomenace, Like you know, they like the when they have like the local news reports and they're like, and these Star Wars fans have been camped out for seventy two hours for this, and we interviewed them like before going in and after, and then you like have them coming out and they're all like, yeah, it was oh man, it's like, oh it was cool, so cool. Like it they're like,
is it as good as the other Star Wars better? Yeah, Like but you can tell like like the light has gone out like behind their eyes a little bit, Like they're just like, ah fuck, like put some part of them is coming to terms with the fact that it sucked. Like I feel like I've seen that in some of the footage of like parents who have like taken their kids across the country to be there, and they're just like, yeah, I mean, well we're in a field here, and sure it's cool. We're glad that.
It's I remember I think somewhere in Oregon was like the best place to see it the last time it happened.
Yeah, And I remember seeing footage of that, people like we're like, yo, we got so fucking cold.
All was like all that shit together. I was like, Okay, if I was fucking AI, I.
Would be like that'd be cool.
Yeah, wild, But then it's four minutes and.
Then you're like, oh, it's like okay, well that happened.
Yeah, there we are worth twenty five hundred dollars for the overpriced plane, hotel, and cars.
Well, we'll have all the.
Money we spent. That's the memory.
Right.
When the fuck is that's right?
When are we getting ours? Out here? In La? Come on?
Man, wasn't there Come on, God, wasn't there an eclipse out here? We had like an LA like mini eclipse or something.
We had a yeah, but not like a total yeah, Like we were never in the path of totality.
We've never been path of totality exactly.
But I mean, like, yeah, while you know people like Delta doing their shit, I'm glad that the fast food companies are also. They're they're on their game too, making sure that they have solar eclips based puns, but really just offering nothing of substance.
Yeah, yeah, I mean the Burger King is offering free whoppers for that whole day.
For some reason, I wouldn't eat a whopper if it was free.
Yeah, I know that's that connection. I'm not saying I would, I actually would. I like, I like a whopper, but I think we're boycotted.
I don't know.
I haven't had berg a year or so. No, just just for me, I was like, every time I've had a burger like a whopper, I'm like, am right?
But then that what that like? Yeah, every other time it's bad, but when when it hits.
It and it only happened, Yeah, it only happens on Wopper Wednesday. That's the one day that it's really right, oh man.
Or an eclipse, Yeah, during an eclipse, it's the one.
Maybe the guys were actually gonna like make the whopper good this time.
Really put some fucking effort in, y'all.
Pizza Hut has a total eclipse of the Hut deal, which sounds like the New York Post headline after Pizza Hut goes out of business. Yeah, it's kind of weird that they've gone with that, but maybe that's what they're going for. They're like, this deal is too good. We're actually not going to survive it. But it's any large pizza for twelve dollars.
Yeah, and any toppings. I think that's the big one there because that's the topics are extra.
Toppings will fuck you up. Twelve dollars for as many toppings as you want.
Well that even but I know recently you're like you're not feeling Pizza the Hut, So are you? Would you entertain that load that ship down?
Yeah? Yeah, I love I like pizza topping, full pizza. I love supreme pizza, Like that's my ship.
Yeah, so they're thinning. Crispy's pretty good too.
You love Pizza Hut just generally, yeah, Like I like, yeah, I.
Loved the mini pizzas growing up as a kid, and so it just kind of became one of my favorite pizza spots for you know, like cheap fast pizza.
It's that's better than like a Papa John's or Little Caesars.
Yeah.
Yeah, who was the guest I was saying that it's basically they're they're they're selling you Little Caesars pizza at a slight is how they describe.
Cheese is way better at Pizza Hut.
Okay, but you know what crazy bread at Little Caesars. That's still little is in the left.
Little Caesars is experimenting with like little like pizza cupcakes. Yeah, just like they caught that out of the corner of my eye and they're struggling. Not now, Little Caesars. Not now.
They're paying a lot of people on Twitter to promote it.
Yeah, they're like, please, please, please, I can't deal with this right now. They're like, eat ours from the ass end.
You're like, what that's like?
I think that was one of the marketing when they had like the fucking wild ass crust on the side.
They're like put it that way or something. But yeah, from the back, we know how are Yeah, they likes so eat the from the ass end.
Litza Pizza.
Sun Chips have woken from their slumbers again. Another brand that only we only think about once every twenty years. The sun Chips will be selling a special eclipse themed flavor, but only during the time of the eclipse. So you in order to experience this, you will need to be during the eclipse, spending that time on your laptop. Time to buy sunships. Yeah, it's available, like the marketing says, available for four minutes. Twenty seven seconds.
I Okay, this sounds dumb, but when I read the flavor, I was actually like, I would do it.
I want to try it.
It's different enough.
Yeah, you're like, oh okay, because sometimes they'll be like the flavor description be so vague. They'll be like, it's like a combination of the dark side of the moon and the head of the sun hitting your mouth in one go, and you're like, get to the point. Yeah, hot pineapple hob and narrow black bean, spicy guda chips.
That's too many flavors I want to see.
I'm like, how are we doing this?
I mean, like, I think they have two options. They have pineapple, hobbinaro and black here like.
Flavors straight pon me tongue now, no way. Okay, Well I'm gonna buy them both. I'm gonna eat them together.
So whatever.
Yeah, all right, So this next detail of this story is one of the rare things that made me say that's fucked up out loud. Well, ri everything we just said, yeah, right, everything we just said. So, Eclipse tour Us are being screwed over by greedy hotels who are allegedly canceling reservations that were made over a year ago by people who were like on it, Like, we've known about this eclipse since the sixteen hundreds, so you couldn't this ship.
Prepared?
Yeah yeah, And they booked it over a year ago in order to you know, be there for the eclipse. And the hotels are canceling those reservations because they're like, not fair, we weren't able to gouge you enough and so basically trying to resell the room at a higher cost. Now the demand has risen, that make like that should be the thing that starts the uprising, Like fuck that people angry nerds starting a war. No, like that is so infuriating, and that they'll just like get away with it.
They are like, yeah, it's just it's the price gouging shit, it's the whole like you know the fact that they don't mind just raising prices during the fucking pandemic because they can. And the mainstream media is just like, yeah, well,
that's market got forces at work. It's like, no, that's companies making for record profits during a pandemic, like they this this drives me fucking crazy that it's just like market forces is a get out of like morality term that they're just gonna use to fuck people over like forever, and like this is that is that makes me so mad for some reason, canceling the reservations of the people
who because like that could never be me. I could never be the person who was like, oh the things coming up in a year like this, this would be a great experience for my kids. I'm gonna book it a year in advance and we'll like plan this thing like that is. I look on those people like they are professional.
Yeah, yeah, I would never that would never be me.
Wow, you're amazing.
You are you should benefit.
I feel like, though, Jackie, if you did put in that effort and then a fucking hotel canceled on you, you would be the main character in one of those like uva bowls falling down.
Yeah, like it would be yes, I would be. It would be over for these hopes in that hotel industry, in these hotels.
I'm burning down.
Yeah yeah, I would be so angry. I'm so mad. I've never been there, so mad on behalf of like complete strangers who just like kind of got screwed out of like some money. Yeah, but well I guess they got screwed out of the whole thing, because like now all the hotels are bucking up, and so they're just like without reservations.
I mean, at the very least, like if in the most cnical version they should be like, hey man, we're thinking about cancer. Yeah, somebody just offered us a fucking back for your comfortable your double twin room that you you book you want to match, maybe.
Yeah, and giving you first refusal on this one. The other one that your people are probably more likely to fall victim to is the fake ass eclipse glass take eclipse glasses, which will damage your eyes. Yeaheah. So basically you need if they don't clearly state on the glasses that they have quote International Organization for Standardization ISO one two three one two DASH two certification, do not buy those for your kids. Yeah, you make sure it's that
DASH too, not the DASH one you don't want to Yeah. Yeah, that one just means like oh Dash one, No, that will accelerate the damage. Yeah yeah, you actually won't have eyebrows or eyelashes. Yeah.
Yeah.
Back in twenty seventeen, Amazon recalled sketchy eclipse glasses sold through their site, but they did it just two days before the eclipse and ended up facing a class action lawsuit. So nobody's gonna save you from capitalism. This is the message of this eclipse. Maybe yeah, eclipses have set off like big historic events, but in the past, maybe this, this will cause cause us to overthrow capital.
Something activates the whole country's manchurion in Canada. That's just like what destroy our masters. It just reminds me too of just like in like the height of the pandemic, whenever one's like, oh yeah, these are these n ninety fives I got man, I got these?
Yeah, oh yeah, inxactly they were not they were if they.
Are not niosh approved or whatever, Yeah, shit, here we go, and people.
Are just like, those are joke sunglasses from someone's barmits for that.
Don't you see that they have eyeballs attached to springs. Don't you see the fake mustache thing that one still has it on. They forgot to rip it off.
That shit.
All right, all right, that's gonna do it for this week's weekly Zeitgeist. Please like and review the show. If you like the show, U means the world to Miles. He he needs your validation. Folks. I hope you're having a great weekend. And I will talk to you Monday. Bye.