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. Well, Miles, we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by the host of the fascinating podcast Sea Change, which is produced by New Orleans and Batmano's Public Radio. Please welcome to the show. Carlisle Calhoun and Hallie Park.
Welcome, Welcome you, thank you, happy to be here.
Thank you so much for having us.
Yeah, of course, it's nice to have people who are doing really good investigative podcasting, unlike us who are subjecting you guys to try to figure out a food and wine.
I was going to say, two peers in the world of just doing important podcasting, groundbreaking podcasting. It's it's great to be in the same room with some people who I can just let my hair down and be like, I'm.
With my people.
We both get you know, we both we both get it and are breaking new ground.
Yeah, yeah, you know, I'm loving it in the space that you all are providing here.
So thank you.
Well, you're I'm already thoroughly entertained.
Oh, thank you're too kind, You're too kind. I don't know if our names will ever be listed or mentioned by anything with the word pullets are in front of it.
But probably not.
We are we are definitively unassociated with anything to do with the bulletsers. They were like, we just wanted they issued a statement just making sure that everybody with just for no purpose. Yeah, just to just to be clear. We have nothing to do with that show f y. I nobody suggested we did.
But we just want to get we'll get ahead of it, get ahead of any misunderstandings for sure. For sure, you guys are both in New Orleans.
Yeah, yeah, we're both based in New Orleans.
How is New Orleans? Right now? This time? Here?
Steamy put in a charming way, right, yeah, drenched in history.
That grown from holly kind of I said a lot for me.
It's the time of year where it's just air conditioning all day. You get to see the sun outside. You want to touch it, but can't. You know you'll get burned.
It's like the inverse of everywhere else Like the rest of the year, everybody like looks at our zoom backgrounds and they're like, where are you. God, that looks amazing, Oh, New Orleans, and this summertime it's just us being like everybody else is like yay summer.
And we're like, yeah, just the deafening sound of insects, like drowning in heat.
Yeah, the muggy or the place I feel like, the less enthusiasm from people who have to go through it every year. They're like, no, that's fine. I mean I have to bring seven pairs of seven outfits with me just to go outside for ten minutes exactly.
Yeah, I know that.
I know that.
Plate air conditioning huh what a what an innovation?
Need to get the one in my car. Thick, it's been a year, guys, oh wow, And it's crazy being a NEWARS.
That is not okay. That is not okay.
So are you just like driving eighty down in a thirty five just to get the wind airflow, to.
Feel a breeze and also feel some life.
Yeah, just feel a lot.
Yeah.
When I had I had an all black car that did not have air conditioning in the dry desert heat of Los Angeles, and when I was in that phase in the summer, I had no joke. I would have a driving shirt I would wear because I like, when I get to my destination, I cannot look respectable stepping out of the vehicle like this that I had. I had them on deck.
But that's actually genius. I mean, ideally I'll get my act together and just get my fix, but it's not I can make sure great innovation.
The way my problem solving works is especially at that time, like is it gonna cost money? And I'm like, well, what's the other thing I can do money? Yeah? Yeah, exactly.
Oh man, the stands that would have grown out of that thing.
Podcast about another existential threat to humanity?
Scientifically, what is something from your search history that is revealing about who you are?
This is a very specific to Ian Carmel right now search history result, but it is best billed for Mage BG three. I recently downloaded the video game Balder's Gay three and it has it didn't even come out recently, I think, I think it's come out in the last year, but it has completely swallowed my life. I have I have been lost in a world of dungeons and baggons role playing. Yeah, for the last uh, for the last
few days. I'm currently unemployed. I'm about to go on the tour for the book and everything, but I am in this beautiful period where there's not quite enough time to do anything constructive. So I am playing a video game, a video game where when you're creating a character, there are different options for what penis they have.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, can you get to see them?
You get to see them. You get to cycle through three different penises or a default or three different volvas or the default.
Okay, do you see it? Like?
What what it looks like in action? What it looks like just like kind of hanging out, only you never.
See it erect And honestly, the biggest changes are in pubic care, like the amount and thickness of the pubic care that I've noticed. There are no I think, as this is supposed to take place in sort of fantasy world of the past, no circumcision. So it's huh, you're hanging wind sock on every penis available.
Can you can you like? Is that like an other? Are there sliders for customizing the foreskin to be like I would have more junk on that?
There's not, there's not. They haven't gotten that in depth yet. I'm hoping for a patch at some point or maybe a mob that does let you get maybe a little more involved in the foreskin.
Dynamic full on wizard sleeve, Yeah yeah, I got it.
Yeah yeah, full of hanging down wizard sleeve.
I'd like piercing of age wizard sleep wizards sleeve.
Right there? Is that mage just short for major?
Is that major chips?
R Ip the major chips. I'm hoping for some sort of vascular content as far as the foreskin goes, if you want to make a Vanny or less Vandy. But again that's the boulders get for. It does have to come out at some point. Boulders get for skin.
Thank you, You're welcome. Love that you're welcome. So Boulterers Gate. I'm hearing a lot about I'm hearing a lot about this.
Talking more and more about this game, what.
It combines, like what's great about dungeons and dragons with like are you fighting? What?
What?
How is the game? What is the game play?
Like pretty fucking immersive? The storytelling is is the immersive storytelling of our eminem Pumpkin launch was our goal everything storytelling. Now that it feels corny to talk about something that's actually telling.
A story, actually storytelling.
It actually is. Our menu tells the story of airloom tomatoes. Underneath it's actually welcome to Panera bread, Today's stoop story, soup stories are as. Probably it's just it's like fun. It's corny. I mean it's it is like a corny like Dungeons and Dragons video game. But it's just fun. I'm playing like a fighter. You're you've got like a brain maggot that is that gives you super psychic powers that you have to like either remove or like it's
fucking ripped from the headline. You really do have a brain work you literally. Balter's Day three is about having brain worms, about this good kind, the good kind of brain worms, and also a speech impediment that we're not allowed to make fun of. Robert.
That's the one we should be anytime it's a Kennedy like, shouldn't we especially.
Like a minion. I kept my powder for Susan Collins too, you know what I yeah, he's got I wanted to kept it dry, kept it dry for that one. Yeah, well that was brave. A few miles we.
Were coming back to her ten years later. We're gonna do a Susan Collins.
Oh yeah, dunk contest Vince carter Ship on her.
We're just trying to negotiate it. So she somehow has beef with Kendrick Lamar and we're gonna let him handle the Yeah. Yeah every time. Maybe this is just being a white dude approaching forty, but every time I even reference Kendrick Lamar, I do feel like a white dude approaching for it.
I know people, I know white women who have gotten into the beef because they're like, I can't believe what, Like, is Kendrick Lamar about to like blow the lid open on the entire industry. I'm like, hold on easy, Like, yeah, this is I don't know about all of that.
It's like I just think he's so brave if he's standing up for the children, and I was like.
Are we about to go to Qanontown.
Yeah, that's not what I mean.
It's it's like a dose of Qanontown. And I think these are already intersecting worlds. Anyway. There's also like a healthy amount of true crime podcast in the Kendrick stuff where it's like, yeah, it's like serial Kendrick Lamar, where like he has like he's done research, they've got evidence, he's breaking news, you know, Like in the third song, it's like, oh, now we have receipts, we have mentions of Ozemtic like all the It works the same way
a true crime podcast works. That was the Kendrick rollout. But right, right, right, yeah. Anyway, I'm playing this role playing game and it's just it's just but I'm also I'm also so worried that I'm doing it right the entire time because it is such an investment of time. Like you play these games, they take like, you know, one hundred hours or whatever to like complete. So I'm like making sure I'm doing the right thing because I
don't want to be ninety hours deep. And it's like, oh, you forgot to fucking pick you know, you forgot to like throw this pumpkin at this wall two hours in, and now you're going to lose to the boss. Like whatever it is, so.
I should have maxed out dexterity. Fuck? Is it multiplayer? Is it open world?
What?
What are we talking?
You can multiplayer in this one. I am someone who I've never liked multipl I've played this game called Ultimate Online when I was a like between and a teenager, I was heavy into it, which was an mm RPG. Ever since then, I have stayed away from online games because nothing scratches that same mitch. Nothing has ever quite a sad.
Requent Yeah, first time in there, I lost myself to it, all right, amazing, that's I think that's our first baulders Gate three search history, even though.
I think we've had elder credible search histories. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
I think everyone I went through it and everything. I haven't looked up one constructive thing. It's all like BG three, Best Weapon, BG three, How do I beat the troll Master at BG three? Just like every single one of those things. And then like way down there, it's like a mortgage. How to pay?
What is a mortgage exactly? How how many months can you not pay? Mortgage?
Yeah?
Roof hoole bad question mark?
Question mark? Question mark?
Second mortgage good? Right, the first mortgage good? Second mortgage?
Why not first mortgage asap? Just like stuff like that, Yeah, yeah, RFK. How to vote multiple times?
How to use hee loock to buy Fortnite skins?
What is something that you think is underrated?
Dating without intention? Which is something I've been doing quite a lot, and It's just it takes a lot of the pressure off of dating, well not out here trying to find anything. In particular, I'm not going in with much in the way of expectations, and part of that is because the bar for male behavior is low. But you know, I go in with the expectation that I'll be like treated well and.
Stuff.
But I it's bleak out there. Let me tell you. Yeah, dating is maybe bleaker than ever. But I'm just like, you know what, I don't really.
Has that helped. I mean, like, are you saying so the intent being I don't need to I don't have to go into this saying like every day I go on is to potentially find the person who I can have like a meaningful long term relationship. You're sort of switching gears. So like I'm meeting people I don't really expect shit, and if I meet somebody that's cool, that's a bonus.
Exactly, Yes, got it. So not that I'm like very like oriented toward uh finding like a long term monogamous relationship like that isn't super my thing anyway, But I'm like, oh, maybe one day I'd like to have some kind of companionship. But now you ever, Like, well, mister Wright, I'm afraid doesn't exist.
So I'm just like, you're truly shrek brained. You're not waiting for Prince Charming. You're waiting.
It's and that that is an expectation, But I don't know. Yeah, I'm just sort of like I'm gonna just have a night, yeah, where I'm not sitting at home by myself, and I'm you know, meeting a new person and it'll probably go anywhere from mediocre to badly, but it's a way to pass the time. So that's how I dating.
Dating for yeah pretty much? Right, right right? What's a non shitty date look likely not to say stellar, but just not ship.
I mean someone who can carry a conversation and who I don't end up arguing with, because the past few dates I've been on, I have like gotten in a fight with them, and like a date I went on recently, he was like carrying on about how it's pointless to protest, and he was specifically talking about like pro Palestine protests, and I was like, what the fuck are you talking about?
And he was like annoyed at the like effects of protests, and he's like, oh, people are trying to get places and they're blocking stuff off, and I'm like, yeah, that's the point, is to disrupt like the status quo and get people to notice and pay attention and do something about it.
He was just like, it's just annoying.
And I was like, okay, well I have to leave now. I hate you and I never want to see you again.
Kaylan is currently like five seconds from punching this person in the note, just based on the.
Yeah, yeah, it got very heated.
So yeah, I mean I get, yeah, it's fucking wild, like, especially when you're looking for someone to potentially like relate to that they're so far off with something where they're like honestly like people being up in arms over a genocidal campaign happening some places, not even here, Like it's annoying, and if you're like, oh, that's your fucking worldview, then we have nowhere to fuck truly.
I was like, there's no world in which we would ever have anything to talk about or get along about anything, And.
So who do you have empathy for those people who are trying to get places? Dude?
People sitting in traffic, like traffic sucks.
And while I get to like, yeah, you see things or people like I'm legitimately having to go, I'm gonna lose my Like I get that there are all sorts of extenuating circumstances that make that disruptive. But yeah, to to say things like and because it's annoying, don't fucking do it.
Yeah, he's like, what about the people at Starbucks who like have to get to work. I'm like, well, that's a problem with capitalism, not a problem with the protesters, Like do you not see any see the world?
What do you like? What are these antifas?
What is something you think is overrated?
Sorry?
Sorry to start screaming on the podcast.
No, no, get it out. I like, like, I'm someone as someone who's so ignorant of what the modern dating world is like. And I mean I have single friends who everyone says the same fucking thing. I'm like, what I mean, vackup?
I don't.
I don't know what the difference is like. And that's like the hard thing to wrap my head around is like, is it that it's too many options? Because for me, I was like, I'm going to sea of loneliness. I'm just looking for some drift wood also out there, and we can hold on to each other till the rescue boats come, and that's how you made a relationship work.
Who many options of the problem. I think it's more just the quality of the options that are available is kind of at an all time.
You're too high valuable, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. That's a yeah.
I feel like I've seen an unofficial trend online of people being like it's really hard for guys on these dating apps. Like I just helped my roommate with like his dating profile and he didn't get any bites and he's good looking and like he's awesome, so what's going on?
And people have standards.
Yeah.
Someone had a theory though that because of like the frequency of new dates, you can get to that like the Again, this was someone's take on Twitter that I'm not entirely sure is accurate or not, but that it's different than like when before pre app dating, like you meet someone and just you try to make it work because you're like, I don't know, let's see, let me try to make it work, and then from there you
either adapt to someone or don't and move on. But now like it just feels like it's easier to just be like ah, I'm not feeling it time to move on, and I don't know that that feels like a little bit fatalistic, but that that.
Well, that's something I now do, like immediately in the middle of the first date. I'm like, if I sense that, like.
Right, but you should for something like that, that's disqualifying for sure. Yeah. Do you always tell them you're leaving? Or do you ever just like pretend? One time?
I did consider, uh, just walking out the side door and running away, but I didn't. I was like, I just like sat back down. I was like, so I'm gonna leave now. I don't think we're connecting at all and I have to go. And he's like, oh, all right, well we can't all be for everybody. He took it surprisingly well, and I was like, so true, so true.
Are you mad that I again? Are you mad that I insisted on this date being at Lappoo Belle. I thought it's cool that this is where Danny Masterson always used to hang out. You really, Yeah, there's like a huge thing because the owner of Lapoo Belle is also like a big Danny Masterson defender.
And a lot Yeah yeah, wait, that's that French restaurant near uc B. Yeah, Frank, okay, never go there again. I've only been like once or twice, so yeah, yeah, yeah, but never.
Master saying you go into the poobe later. What are we talking, man, LPs dude?
Later? All right? What's something you think is overrated? The primary?
Well that was kind of in there is overrated primary?
Primary? All right?
Red, yellow, blue, especially like for little kids and stuff. I feel like they're like, you guys are too stupid to understand secondary colors. Here's a bunch of primary colors for you.
Yeah, yeah, no, for sure.
Wait what's the RGB scale like for projecting video and things like that?
That's why I was That's why I was saying, maybe they're teaching your kids to make television because it's different with.
Light, right right right yeah, Because like in my weird la brain, I was about to be like red, green, and blue because I was always us to seeing those three lamps like on a projection TV or some shit or a projector back in like the eighties and shit. But anyway, let's move on. Now I know what it is, and I can keep my child from being ignorant about primary color. Breaking the cycle, breaking the cycle, you.
Know, hanging out at the school being like talking you know Green, You've got an AirPod in where we're like telling you what about the colors.
On the playground, Like y'all heard about Green?
Yeah, they're like, I think that man is trying to sell the kids cannabis over there. You don't know about that Green. Green. HiT's different. Green is way different nowadays, you feel me?
All right, let's take a quick break and we'll come back and do some overrated under it.
And we are back. We are back, and we are back, and we're back.
Hallie, Carlisle, Carlisle or Carly, what do you prefer?
Well, on sea change, I'm Carlisle, but my friends call me Carly, so please car Carly's great?
Or are we are? We? Are we familiar? Oh?
We we're on Carly terms.
All right, Carley, Well, all these familias like that. You broke it into New Orleans pology. Amazing.
So your show is based out of New Orleans, and I've heard you as mentioned that like living on a coast, and particularly the coast of Louisiana is kind of the front lines of global heating, and so I just wanted to he guys talk about kind of what you see there that we might not be seeing elsewhere right now, but might be a preview of like where we're headed.
Oh, such a great question. I mean when I was thinking about this, what really stuck out in my mind. I was here twenty twenty one, Hurricane Ida came through, and that was a storm that strengthened really fast, rapidly intensified as we say, and then after it blew through, it wasn't really like a rainstorm. It was more of like a windstorm. It caused kind of damage, especially closer to the coast. People I think we're out and you're out of power near the coast for over three months
for some people that were really far down there. Yeah, it was crazy. But then not only that we got hit by a hurricane, but then immediately after that hurricane goes through, we then get hit by a giant heat wave and so people don't have power. It's I didn't have power for a week, and I couldn't sleep because there was just this extreme heat going on. And so for me, that's like the picture of what climate change
means and what we're facing. It's one hazard after the other, you know, having to deal with all of these different problems, all at once.
Yeah, And I mean that's just to just to keep like the cheerfulness of what's coming for us all going that the other thing is a.
Worst case scenario.
Yet.
I mean, seas are rising across the South and across the Gulf faster than almost anywhere else in the world, so already so many people are having to move from from where their families are, from where they live in South Louisiana, and like across the southeast coast you're starting to see that too, with like more sunny day flooding and just like the seas are rising, and it means houses on the outer banks in North Carolina are falling into the ocean, and it means that people have who
have lived for generations in Southern Louisiana are having to think or already having to move. And it's pretty intense. And that is like that is around the world. Seas are rising, So it is definitely something that's going to change like what our coastlines look like and where people can live, I think, pretty like faster than we're planning for for.
Sure, right yeah, right, It's one of those things that is already happening, but we it feels like the mainstream kind of consciousness, Like that's kind of what we chart on our show, and it feels like people have a fairly easy time blocking out when it's happening to other people as long as it's not happening to them or possibly like to their neighbor, than they're.
Going to such a shame what's happening there. Yeah, like that's sort of a level of earth. And yeah, I mean, I'm really I mean, I think about just the what the NOAA was saying about this season's hurricane season and how they're like, this could be one of the worst ones we've seen in a long time in terms of like the something like potentially twenty eight named storm systems
in this season, and that's a huge uptick. And the other part that was really to your point about these sort of like compounding natural disaster events, is like FEMA and other disaster relief agencies can only handle so much that if you have like storm after storm and then God forbid another thing over in this part, supply chains get strained, and we truly are looking at a thing where like they'll be like there's there's literally so much
going on we can actually not really do anything right now. We're spread so thin. And I think that's an other real dimension of like sort of like the bureaucratic part of it too that you I think people always presume they're like, no, they're there, they'll be okay, they'll be ready for this, where even for the experts who deal with this or saying this, like we're trying to figure out how we can even like simulate how we wrap our heads around multiple storms hitting multiple places with you know,
the kinds of devastation that require our assistance. And yeah, it is definitely we are going to begin really seeing it in a way that we're going to be even harder to deny. I mean, I think people who live in these areas already see it, but yeah, we're we're definitely the messages are there that we need to do something about it, which is why liquid natural gas kind
of comes into it. And the whole impetus for this is to talk about the expansion of liquid natural gas or I guess we shouldn't even that's like euphae, that's like a euphemistic term.
I mean it's natural. So I feel like we're good here, like yeah, yeah, natural, right, I do that shit worked on me like when they first were like, well, guys, we're like moving over to natural gas, and oh that shit.
Is natural that's nice.
Yeah, and we see it on our buses and like Los Angeles are like, oh, all, like either it's CNG or LNG and you're like, don't worry, this is this is cleaner now because it's operating that and you have these like subtle messages around you that reinforce the sort of like non threatening nature of this of natural gas.
But yeah, what what is it? What should we be first of all, what should we be calling it so we can use the right terminology when we sort of think about when we get all these stories hitting us, like what should we be calling like liquid natural gas if you want to honor what it actually is.
It's something Halle and I talked about a lot as we were writing this series, because everybody knows it is natural gas. So like us all of a sudden just using another term, people be like, what are you talking about? I'm already first of all, you're already trying to tell me about liquified natural gas. Now you're now you're talking about some other term I've never heard about, right, So, I mean, we did call it natural gas in our in our series because that's what we all know it as.
But I mean, a lot of experts are saying we should be calling it methane gas or fracked gas because we get it from fracking, which explains, yeah, fraggy guice. But it's mostly it's mostly methane. Natural gas is mostly made up of methane, which is like, in the short term,
way worse for our climate than carbon dioxide. So we've all been like talking about, you know, carbon emissions in this kind of thing, which is like really a serious issue, we should be concerned about that, But methane in the short term, it's like I had a scientist described it to me as like carbon dioxide is like wrapping the world in a blanket. Methane is like wrapping the world in eighty blankets. Like it's eighty times more potent at heating up our climate in the near term.
That's right.
So when at least it's bad.
You know, I thought it was good like eighty percent, Like if you had told me, guys, it's only eighty percent is bad, I would have been like, damn, like they lied to us, But eighty times worse is yeah? So wild that I can't believe it.
What are sort of the benefits that have, Like when you see a municipality be like, we're going to change our entire bus suite to LNG or whatever, what what for them? When they're like it's better. What's like the very tenuous data or argument they're holding on to to be able to say that out loud in public and not get laughed at.
Yeah, So, like very simply, methane does burn cleaner than like regular gas fleean or something like that. But that's only when it's burnt, like when it's actually being burnt by those buses, that it is cleaner. But the whole life cycle, you know, happened to get it up out of the ground, all of the gas that goes out transporting it, all of those different pieces. Yeah, you add that all up, and it's not yet. The leaks, right, it's not good.
You know.
We hear from climate scientists like that. There's been a number of like reports where they're like, guys, it's going hotter faster than we expected in our some of our worst case projections. But I've not heard it connected to liquid natural gas until your show that Like that's one of the theories as to how we're we're getting there, how it's getting so much hotter, so much faster. So that's just I wanted to make sure that we made that connection too right.
And what kind of kicked off the LNG boom Like, is was it like a green washing thing where the emphasis on oil created like a lane for like LNG to move in the shadows because everyone's so focused on oil, or was there like a pr moment where proponents were like, Okay, we can claim that this gas is different, let's do that. What sort of like what what were the what were the building blocks to kind of get us to this point?
Now we're like, y'all, we are absolutely destroying our planet like one of the worst ways possible, and we're barely even talking about that dimension of it.
I mean, what really kicked this off was like, don't remember the fracking boom, Like it was really took off like under Obama's time, where like the technology for fracking got so good that all of a sudden, these oil and gas companies like out in West Texas and New Mexico and like the areas where there has been a ton of fracking, like they got so good at it that there was a surplus right of all this natural gas, and they're like, okay, we can only sell so much
of it domestically. Where are we going to sell all this stuff? And we went at that time like there were the first correct me if I'm wrong on this alley, but I think the first LNG terminal on the on the Gulf coast was for bringing it was for importing LNG because at that point we didn't have that much.
And then it goes, you know, in a few years, and went from that import terminal becoming an export terminal, and then all of these plans for all of these this rollout of the like this huge expansion of LNG export terminals because we just have that much natural gas that you know, the industry is like, well, let's sell it, let's lipify it, ship it everywhere else and sell it overseas.
Yeah, and we know that natural gas well hm hmm. I was about to saying, no, natural gas is cleaner than coal, but you know, again that's like a big question mark. Not necessarily, but that was at least the argument that was grasped by the pr agencies, by the oil and gas industries that they promoted that gas is cleaner. Right, gas is the cleanest fossil fuel, And so when you make people think that, they're like, oh, aren't we already doing the cleanest that we can do?
You know, right? Right? And would I be correct in assuming that when Republicans and some Democrats tout the benefits of LNG expansion, like new jobs, increased revenues for the community, the opposite is happening? Is that is that? Is that correct? I mean, like it sounds like locals are not benefiting and the environment is absolutely taking an absolute care in the teeth because of it. But I don't know, maybe there's maybe these people that live in these areas are
shareholders because those people seem to be getting value. So maybe the a lot of the shareholders for these companies live along in the Golf coast or this is all just pr spin.
That's a really good question. I think like they're for sure supporters on the ground in these communities because there are some jobs the whole Like you know, how many jobs are construction jobs so around just during the construction, and then how many are permanent and how many jobs are actually in are the people in the community getting those jobs? Like all of that it gets a little more nebulous of like how many jobs are really how many good jobs are really? You know, is are these
new export terminals providing? But like on the other side of it, for sure, the impacts of the environment are crazy. I mean the amount of pollution that these communities are having to live with are pretty extreme. So like, yes, there are some benefits, but to they outweigh the other and then at right, yeah, and then a lot of these companies are getting massive tax breaks as well, so how much money is coming to these communities. So there are a lot of questions like that.
But the share but the shareholders, right, they are winning. The shareholders are winning.
Shareholders are doing gang bus Okay, great.
Thank god, Okay, I was worried. I told you Jack, they seem to stay winning. It turns out shareholders yeah, yeah, and yeah, I I like there there's a recent I forget which episode it was, but just talking talking about how as long as it remains business as usual, they're
going to keep finding ways to do this. Like the natural gas starts as this like buzz term that's like this is the future of energy and like it's cleaner and it's a bridge fuel to like a cleaner tomorrow and then it becomes enscounced and like, you know, the second that something is making money, it becomes more powerful.
And it brings me back to this, Like I remember an article in the Wall Street Journal that was talking about how DEI and like environmental justice initiatives like were like they were like, you know, these once had momentum, but now they're a bad word on Wall Street because they've been like determined to be less profitable. And it just it feels like the way the system is set up, like you really can't use the logic the internal mechanisms
of like hypercapitalism to fix this. It feels like it has to take into account that they are going to find a way to keep things the way they're going for as long as possible, Like they're going to go down kicking and screaming.
But I don't know what.
Like does that does that seem true to you? Do you like, you guys do a good job of highlighting things that make you hopeful? Are there examples that kind of contradict that of what where people you know, where BP is like investing in clean energy in the future or something, you know, like what just how do you guys think about that.
Big question, Jack, I know, like the role.
Yeah, just like specifically the ability of like entrenched power to ever be like part of the solution.
I feel like. And Carly, I'm so curious about what you think here too, Like you know, I don't I'm not sure if you guys are familiar or if your listeners are familiar with the IPCC report. It's a giant international report that's basically a collection of all of the latest and greatest climate science that's summarized by you know, all the big climate scientists out there working together on it. And when you look at those projections, they always have
this one option that's business as usual. And so that's of like, we kept doing the same thing that we're still doing, still rule our society the same way that if you look at those projections. Obviously this is audience. So I have to explain my hand gesture here. The graph, the temperature graph just keeps going up. It's just an exponential graph to the top where our planet just kind of burns up. And I think that that says that
we should not continue business as usual. We need to find other ways to do our business.
Okay, so your anti planet burning up Okay, interesting, that's Europe.
Yeah, not going to come in with the counterpoint to that, but but I am going to bring in the hope that I think you are looking for, Jack, which is like renewables are also doing gangbusters, and like the solar installations and wind capacity that we're adding every year is like we're doing better than expected. And so like renewables are taking off, they're getting everybody knows, they're also getting cheaper.
They're becoming the cheaper option. And so yes, entrenched power, an entrenched industry is really hard to like dislodge from their place of power. Of course they want to keep doing business as usual. But when the market keeps saying, yeah, but this is so much cheaper and better for the planet, then there's only so long you can you can fight that, So right, I mean that's really hopeful. It's just how much renewable energy is taking off around the world.
Yeah, just to bash capitalism a little bit more though there.
And then and then right after that, Carly with a counterpoint.
Last year, I was talking to this like retired like longtime environmental lawyer, and he I don't know if I's have heard of the rights of nature movement, it's basically this like push by different indigenous groups to be able to steward these different pieces of nature and give them their own rights, almost as a person, like a river could be have the same protective rights as a person. And that's actually moving forward. In South American countries, that's
moving forward. It's actually been ingrained and a Latin American country's constitution, and it's moving forward in places like Europe, areas that are more socialist. That moves forward. And when I was asking him, like, is there any hope can we get that done here in the US, He's like, I mean we could, but capitalism.
Yeah, it's like how many guillotines you got? Counterpoint, that's ridiculous.
The only thing that should have the rights of people is corporate.
Corporations capitalism yea burnt Yeah, yeah.
Sorry, I could tell you. Yeah.
No, I mean there there was successful legislation in Where was it? It was in a US state? I want to say Minnesota maybe, but where like a group of kids basically and keep it. I don't know enough to finish this sentence.
Minnesota Timberwolves or something. I was thinking of.
The Minnesota Timberwolves had a good run in the NBA Playoffs. I'm sorry, Yeah, you mean the kids lawsuit, like the.
Yes, that's the one I was thinking of.
Yeah, seeing companies for our future.
Yeah yes, yeah, yeah, a question like oh, all right, all right, let's uh, let's take a quick break and we will be right back. And we're back, and time to discuss one of my favorite ridge farms, Pep Ridge Farm, makers of goldfish, who recently unveiled a new flavor, spicy Dill Pickle, which isn't the first time that they've released a different flavor, but it does seem they got old Bay, they got old Bay, they got flavor blasted goldfish. Flavor
blasted goldfish are fucking incredible. I got it's too much.
It's a hat on top of a hat for me, No sore.
The ones that are like that have like a powder on them right now, Yeah, they have like dorito dust. I don't want that.
That's why the originals to begin with, they were they weren't a finger altering substance. Yeah, yeah, no, the originals are probably the best.
But of the additional varieties, I do think flavor blasted original, you know, like you blast it with the original flavor, you doubled down on what was working in the first place. That is what I'm talking about. None of this fucking parmesan stuff.
Yes, that's gross.
I better stop here before I start saying stuff about Italian people that I'm gonna regret. But Jesus, let's just say I did say parmesan in a weird way there.
That sounded more hateful than it. Okay, wow, okay.
Parmijeon spit on the ground.
I only like the crack ship in the green can the fake stuff?
Yeah? Give me that American cheese.
You don't actually put American cheese on my pasta When I'm at an Italian restaurant.
Individuals, I would like cheese, not that ship. Though I have my own what you call them bread. You please take this plastic sleeve. I don't eat any singles.
That gros.
That's how we had lasagna. I remember at my school cafeteria it was all American cheese.
Yuh that grows. American cheese is objectively the worst of all the cheeses you were alive.
Is incredible, like what we ate growing up, It's unbelievable.
Do you aw expensive American cheeses? Though?
Is like the price does not make four for.
Like a thirty pack, but each pack is individually each piece is individually wrapped, so it doesn't it doesn't go bad.
Like there was like yeah, like one of those little half sacks was like on par with buy like legit just cheddar cheese, And I was like, what what the fuck are they trying to do? Like why are you charging this much for just water and oil in the shape of a cheese.
Whatever oil is, it has to be made in a machine, has to be drilled out of the earth miles.
It's made with crude petroleum.
That American cheese point like doesn't make sense from a physics perspective.
American cheese is made with jet fuel, crude oil, and bullets.
But anyways, Goldfish taking a big swing with a spicy dill pickle. There is a like market research firm somewhere that has been like, guys pickles the wave of the future because like that, the city of la is covered in billboards for like pickle companies and like the pickles that are coming out, and now Goldfish is like getting in on the pick craze. That was congratulations to them.
Yeah, about eight years ago there were like people around here like dude, I'm starting to make pickles, and I'm like, okay, sure, like thanks whatever.
I make pickles. Whenever I bought buy a jar of pickles, I eat the pickles. There's a lot of pickle juice left over. And then I buy a cucumber and I wow it up and put it in the pickle juice. Let it sit, let it, you know, fester for a bit, and another jar pickles.
Yeah, and they're all in the cookbooks.
Nice.
That nice, Just you can you really do that? Though I legitimately do that.
That is the most sustainable ship I've ever heard of.
Because it feels wasteful to dump out all that pickle juice.
That's a lot of pickle juice, or use it as brining liquid. Yeah, exactly like chicken thighs and like really grind that ship in pickle juice, because you know, that's what they say about. Like the rumor was like a Chick fil a or whatever that you nkle brine or whatever. But I think in general, like it's a good salted brinding liquid.
It was that.
Or I would just buy a bottle of whiskey and just do a bunch of picklebacks.
That too, Oh Okay, wait, wait you say it.
You're in recovery and you never were drinking picklebacks. No, drinking tequila with tabasco sauce. That was my like, oh I don't like this, but I can't stop drinking casco tabila casco.
Wow.
No, you take a shot of whiskey and then you chase iti with pickle juice.
Goddamn. And I was drinking. I was hooked because the way it neutralized that alcohol flavor in your mouth and gave you a little bit of that like briny like ah, I thought it was a health food for a while. Yeah, I was like, it's vegetable water. Yeah, this is basically what they used to drink, and lethal amounts of salt. I'm drinking.
But okay, I you know vinegar, which I'm sure is the main ingredient in pickle juice. Yeah, it's it helps with your digestion. It's good for you.
Yeah, so there, so there. Yeah, I just dumped my leftover pickle juice and my gas tank and Jesus does not go well that smell. Yeah that's not bad?
All right.
So you know, some theories have it the Pepperidge farm is looking to distract from the fact that they recently got sued for allegedly misleading customers with claims that goldfish crackers contain no artificial flavors or preservatives. It's wild because that phrase artificial flavors was invented to be so broad as to resist like definition at all. Right, Like they were like, yeah, we're gonna the food industry is going
to create this as a thing. Nobody knows what an artificial flavor is, but we can pretend like the food is somehow more pure than other foods by just claiming this. And they even got caught using that, Like why, I mean this could by no definition? Are these not artificial flavors?
I am so fucking stupid that you saying that just fucked up my entire worldview. It's crazy out here being like, oh, no artificial flavors, Yeah, except for industry is straight up some fucking blacking combo that doesn't exist in nature and would have to certainly be artificial. I like, but they said no artificial flavors, but they said yeah, wow, wow, wow wow.
Which brings us to our random aside. Apparently, the origin of goldfish crackers. They were originally created by a with a machine built by a World War Two Nazi code breaker who was instrumental in convincing Hitler that the Allies
were set to land in Kala, not Normandy. Wow, so we have goldfit and that so retired from being a Nazi after World War Two, and like somebody was traveling around and was like this guy makes cool fish shape him cranked crackers, and they like sold it to Pepperidge Farm and that's how we have the goldfish cracker today. But that person basically was so bad at their job as a code breaker that they allowed the Allies to win the war.
Wait he no, no, no, he's a Nazi coach. He was breaking Nazi code he was breaking That.
Was my question. Was he a Nazi?
No?
No, he was breaking Nazi code breaker?
Who is He's good guy, He's Jack. If I can't I can't in one go, I can't learn that artificial flavors is bullshit and I'm eating NTS goldfish crackers, man, Like that would have been such a blow to my entire identity.
Oh wow, Okay, yeah, okay, so he on purpose wrong, like convinced Hler the wrong thing. So he was like fucking undercover.
Good for him. Yeah, I'm back on board. Oh I gotta go fish so many bags of goldfish crackers out of my garbage.
Not eating this fucking third Reich bullshit.
Okay.
So anyways, though it ties into D Day, yeah, you know, shout out to that. I also just think it's funny that like that was like an invention goldfish shaped crackers. They were like, you hear about this guy over in Germany. Crackers are shaped like little fucking goldfish. Like they had to hire him to Like it feels like it should be easy.
But well it makes you wonder about like who invented the dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets?
Right? And I don't want there, I don't want.
It'll break you, you can't.
It was Oppenheimer. I'm like, no ah, goddamn it.
I mean these I.
Just want to resist saying that this is the bomb, but it's damn close, damn close. Yeah, who invented dino nuggets? Because those aren't. That's also I feel like we do need to know the history of the dino nugget there.
I haven't had them, you know, since I was a kid. But they're delicious, yeah, probably, and probably terrible for you. But then that's fine, and that's.
Fine, and that's fine pissed.
So who am I?
I'm watching it down with a forty Shrek piss Okay, that's the of my words. Oh shit, amazing. Should we do one more? We got we got a couple kind of media ones. All right, Uh, did you guys read the three M story that I remember it was getting teased out last week or the week? Yeah, f three ms got forever chemicals problem.
It's bad, man, it is so I so I finally read the three M story.
We'll link off to it in the footnotes.
It's a collabo between Pro Publica and The New Yorker. I've always resented three AM a little bit for being the company that actually invented post it notes and not Romeo Michelle, you know, but the business press like also trained me to like the business press like has a
crush on three AM. They've always been like, like they love to tell the story of like how they came up with the post it note, Like they like came up with this glue that was two weak to be effective for anything, but then they put it on the
post it and realized it could be. Like they there's so many like Gladwell Light writers who like love to tell the story of how it Riam is this little place for like ingenious little tinkerers, and you know, so they started with I think their first invention was like masking tape. But then they like, now they make a bunch of the different kinds of bandages and sponges and all sorts of shit. Scotch Guard the thing that like
makes various papers and packages waterproof. And that's the one that got us in trouble because so one of their scientists in the late nineties was given a weird assignment, very foreboding, where they're like.
Hey, weird.
They take this broad cross section of Red Cross blood donations and start looking for our chemicals in these blood donations. And she was like okay, and she found she found these pfos, the things that are in Scotch guards, in every single sample, every single way.
God.
And so they were like, well, this must be a mistake kept because they were like, okay, well here take this blood sample. She was like, yeah, it's in there too, and they were like, well, that's my pet horse, so you must be lying. And then they realized, oh no, it's like getting into your pet horse's bloodstream through like fish meal because like it's so pervasive in all water, like it's in all the fish, it's in everywhere, it's
fucking everywhere. They realized like that all their readings were accurate when they finally like found a blood sample of like people who died before the invention of these chemicals these pfos and found and find that was the first sample that they tested that didn't have these pfos in it. And it's like gotten more and more over time because it accumulates, like our body has no way to get rid of it, and it just gets more and more.
So like at first they were like, well, this is no problem though, because even though the chemicals are in our bloodstream, like they're not that harmful, but they accumulate and get more and more, so we actually don't know what's going to happen. And now some people are speculating that it has it's like the cause of some types of cancer, and it's the cause of lowering like sperm count and lowering reproductive rates around the globe. And it's
just a again we'll likek off to it. It's a must read, but it's really you know, we present a lot of reasons on this show that unregulated hypercapitalism doesn't seem to work as the organizing principle for all of human civilization, all of humanity. But this is like maybe the biggest and scariest that I've ever encountered.
Like, we have.
These companies steering the ship who have nothing but short term profit in mind, and they will poison us all to death if the poison is slow enough that they can get enough of our money before we die. Like that's essentially Like so she discovered this in like the nineties and immediately started getting like frozen out by her like co workers. She was asked to present the findings
to the CEO of the company. The CEO, like all all of the head lead executives, like higher up executives, started attacking her and being like who told you to do this? And like what what is your motivation for? Like doing this research that like tears down the amazing
inventions that people at this company have done. And while they were doing that, the CEO fell asleep and started drooling on his dress shirt like in that meeting, and then she got like reassigned away from that and then like this article, as this article uncovers like they had known about it, for like twenty years before and like there there were various executives who were like, this is really bad, but they basically like laundered the findings through
her because they knew it was going to be bad for whoever's career like was associated with it. Jesus, it's this fucking bonkers thing. But it doesn't like it just feels like how every single corporation that you read about like operates they you know, it's just they are hostile to whatever is going to prove counter profitable. You know, if it's going to slow down profits, it's going to be wildly unpopular.
Okay, first of all, sounds like we need a sequel to Aaron Brockovic.
Yes, yeah, I mean I think Darkwater is somehow related to these chemists.
Dark Darkwater is the all male reboot of Aaron Brockovich.
Aaron Brockovich.
I don't know if anyone saw that movie, but I did in theaters. Brag and there you go. I forget what company. It's not three a M. It was a different company that Mark Ruffalo's character was like learning that like all this like lun or something is in drinking water, Yeah, DuPont, Yes, yeah, and a bunch of people were being poisoned by their drinking water in a certain region, and so I guess we just need another movie to complete.
Yeah, that's what it takes. Like did you see the movie about three of It's like that pro public article came out seventeen years.
Ago, right, and you're like, oh no, yeah, but the movie's great. Anya Taylor Joy is fantastic as the human manifestation of one of those p Foss.
Chemicals Powerhouse Performance, Powerhouse Performance.
It is wild, Like how like there was a part of me like I had been incepted with goodwill towards this company by like articles that were just yeah, we're just like and we think your stuff ingenuity works, and like yeah, we're just like kind of the people behind the people. And like once you read about them, you start looking around you see like, oh three M is
like their labels on everything. And for me that was like a fun discovery back back in you know, ten years ago, it's like, oh this here's a company out of like the humble, you know, state of Minnesota who's secretly like doing all this good work. And now it's
like fucking terrify. It's like the end of usual suspects where it's like three m is everywhere and they don't give a fuck about your health at all, and even like some of the stuff, like now that they've been sued, they have like a ten billion dollar settlement that people are saying it is just the tip of the iceberg, but they are like even the they've like made a big show about like, you know, we're evolving with the
new scientific findings. That was before this report came out, proving that they like had had the findings before any of us, and like now even now like they're wording around like what they're actually agreeing to do, it's still like very hedgy and like we're gonna we are going to get rid of these things as long as we can find a profitable replacement.
Too, you know, like.
Right, yeah, yeah that literally one of the things that they started replacing the p fos with was like pfas and like or pfbs and that scientist who is now you know, a whistleblower and like the main source for this report was like and I knew at that time, like those are also going to be bad and accumulating in people's bloods through So it's just a crazy story but shout out to pro Publica. They do really great work.
Yeah. Damn, it was wild too, because I remember they like a few years ago, like right before the pandemic, they were trying to get legislation through that three m was fighting hard about designating these chemicals as like fucked up, and they were successful at defeating that legislation. And now we're like, yeah, because it's so fucking bad. Cool cool, all right, Yeah, I mean yeah, so need a new
system anyway, That's what I'm saying. Just take eat a handful of goldfish, wash it down some Shrek piss.
Yeah.
I might just have to get out there and like help people with the misinformation. Like this is the only way we're gonna get through folks.
Yeah, let's do it.
Yeah.
But yeah, drink your Shrek piss, eat your gold fish, dr fish, you take down three.
All right, that's gonna do it.
For this week's weekly Zeitgeist, Please like and review the show if you like.
The show means the world to Miles.
He he needs your validation.
Folks.
I hope you're having a great weekend.
And I will talk to you Monday.
Bye.
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