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 you be are thrilled to be joined in our third seats by a journalist who's been published in plays like The
Guardian Enslaved. You probably already follow her on Twitter at Socialist dog Mom for her in depth investigative work on white supremacist, neo Nazis and hate groups in the US. Her new podcast for Cool Zone is Weird Little Guys. Please welcome Molly Kongu.
Intro. Glad to be here.
Yes, it was weird to do that when we were just talking, so let's well pretend I didn't just scream up.
But anyway, what's up. Thank you for joining us.
Yeah, I'm pumped about it.
The show is so good.
Weird Little Guys, Well, yeah, well we're gonna get into it that the timing, Like, I'm just curious to hear how it felt as the entire Democratic Party kind of coalesced around the messaging of like what if we called these guys weird, like as your podcast is about to come out, basically making that point.
I mean like cynically, that's marketing you couldn't engineer, right, that's the SEO on that is beautiful. But at the same time, like you know, people are like, oh, you're just aping democratic messaging. It's like I don't. First of all, this is this is my first job in you know,
in audio media. But so maybe people don't know. But the production cycle on this show, like if we could turn around a whole show from the day Tim Waltz called him weird, Like the trailer came out like two days later, like do you think, right, do you think the art department mocked this up yesterday?
Yeah?
It's like take like two three hours here, and nobody could have thought of like that way to describe these weird dudes.
Like now, I have been saying that for literal years and that's that's why the show's called that.
Right.
He's like in a meeting months ago, I was you know, we're sort of talking about production of the show. Is like a regular like work business meeting, and I just can't help myself. I'm always looking at a weird little guy. So I'm you know, interjecting, you know, how is everybody's day going? What are we doing? And I'm like, you, guys, I just found the weirdest little guy. And so if you wrote it down her little notebook. And that's why it's the name of the show, because like I.
Always like, yeah, yeah, the only way to only way to describe it, only way to describe it.
What is something from your search history that's realing about who you are.
I have been searching a thing from my childhood, which is the characters in a like game franchise called Backyard Sports. There's just an announcement today that they're gonna they're going to bring back the backyard Sports games, which are the names are just like backyard football, backyard baseball, backyard soccer. And I played it for PC like all the time, and it has a very passionate, devoted fan base. I think of kids who played it. And they just posted
a trailer today that it's gonna come back. Yeah, and that's right, Victor.
It's awesome.
I'm seeing a chat already in the table. We're loving it.
This is like that gap where Okay, so it came out in ninety seven. I'm in seventh grade. Yeah, yeah, I'm I'm off that.
I'm like, what backyard sports? What is this?
And then I'm like, oh, yeah, this is the era of me being really like a cool teenage kid.
Producer.
Victor in the chat wrote, Yo, that's pretty exciting.
Double X.
There it is, Alex. I hate to bring it to you that Victor's chats are actually unrelated from the conversation we're having. He just does that throughout the thing based on what's going on in his.
In his living room.
I think he's probably watching a replay of the Dodgers game.
It's not a good bird outside.
Yeah, yeah, was it sports?
He just said, I just wanted slots. Are you hey, you're not at the casino again? Are you sure? Just one slots? Yeah? Remote work man. We are.
The games just like super simple like video game versions of like sports, like you know, baseball or dodgeball or stuff like that.
Yeah.
I'd say it's like it's the right simplicity, Like it's fun and tough, but it's simpler than like a super realistic Madden er FIFA or something. Right, and and it also I don't know if he knew or got word of it, but a couple of days ago, a real baseball player named Bobby Witt Junior had a custom bat with the player Pablo Sanchez printed on it. Pablo Sanchez as a character in the Backgyard Sports and the best one. He's a secret weapon. So it's it's very fun that
this is like back. I feel like I'm a child again.
It's great.
I love that Superducer just said a bit like we sports without the motion detection, I think low stakes fun. I'm just looking at I'm looking at the Backgard Sports characters for the first time. They're drawn in a way where very cute. Their eyes are extremely close together, which leads me to believe that they are predators. They're extremely dangerous predators who who don't require peripheral chasing forward and
extremely close together, no peripheral vision. They're always moving forward in attack mode.
So would kind of be bad at those sports that require any kind of spatial awareness though, Like they're terrible on defense.
But man, they can find Russia basketball.
Wait, a guy was cutting behind me.
I'm sorry, man, I sell the guard bringing the.
I shouldn't exist. Is there feedback to coaching.
I had an experience where I was at my parents' house for a couple of weeks and reading books off their shelf to my kids, and came across a book from a series that I realized was read to me from age like three to five. It was like a big part of my world, and I totally forgot it existed.
It's called Sweet Pickles.
Has anybody ever heard of Sweet Pickles?
Sweet? I don't know.
The books are not great, and they're like from the late seventies, which I was like.
Oh, yes, I remember these being in my school library.
Yeah, they were all over the place when I was a kid. I think they Yeah, they came out late seventies and then early eighties. They were all over the place. The story was a complete disaster that I really read to my kids. Yeah, just a mess where they're just like, dad, what is this shit? They're like, why is the fish in a spacesuit? Like he wants to be out of water?
I guess, but.
Like they don't even mention that shit. They just have one of the characters a fish in a spacesuit, like in a water spacesuit. But then he's like jumping over a river, which he but he treats the river like it's not full of his natural habitat water. But I mean, maybe is a saltwater fish. Anyways, sweet pickles, check it out or don't. What is something blake that you think's underrated?
Making nachos at home is an underrated thing? Because okay, yeah, so I believe ordering them nacho delivery is insane like that. I think we can breathe that. Yeah, that insane.
That's absolute foolishness.
Yeah, your home.
Now, there was a place that we would order a nacho kit from where the ingredients would come separately, which was kind of cool so it wouldn't mush up. But still you might as well just have the increase, you know what I mean, Like it was being marked up in a way that it didn't five dollars for this little cup.
I can get a can for two.
Yeah.
I also order pieces of an inhaler to my home for one pot every time I need to use that.
There is something as yourself.
There are some times during the pandemic when like we would order food and they'd be like, all right, here are the ingredients, and like it's up to you to kind of put it together, and I just felt humiliated.
Oh yeah, the best of the subway was selling their ship like their stock. You know, you can buy a whole bag of tuna fish and I'm like, yeah, yeah, that's what I like. Open up, open up those fucking cupboards.
And is it measured out before they put it in a bag?
No? Loose? Loose if you know the guy you get hooked up, do they give be a heavy one?
But what's your home? Your home recipe?
So we'll go chips and then.
Interesting, yeah, and then we bake them twice, put them in the oven, pull it out, put it back in.
No chips.
Obviously the cheat well had a little on there, yeah, Klama. And then the key will put like whatever, treeso whatever on it and then add extra stuff afterwards, so you can't bake it. We'll put some saucea on it, but you can't do that for the whole duration of melting cheese, you know what I mean? Yeah, a little bit of sour cream some what else will we put on?
Kranma and sour cream?
We'll do one or the other.
We'll do.
Like a thick a thick dairy.
We don't want you to feel judged here, but that's fucking disgusting.
We don't want you to feel judged, but you're giving yourself an allergy, like you've trained your body.
Like you're buying like the brand, like grandma.
Bu your mouth.
But yeah, no I will, yeah we will, yeah for sure. And no, but we like to mix that up and and then just like the other stuff that you put on there and but yeah, no real deviation.
But it's it's like, are you ever made nachos at home?
Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, you poker games if.
You're gonna put me on the spot, you know, the frosted flakes on the on the side.
An entire bag of sand, sand bags of sand bowl like, yeah, a root vegetable unwashed and dirt dirted vegetable. Yeah yeah, great, great, but yeah, no, it's it's also you can make as much as you want, is the fun part, So like you can eat until you're sick, where you know, it's a limited serving size, I think, and this is an important question. Are you a fan of just a canned cheese like you know, high school football game style chemical notches versus like melting the ship.
On nots but on like cheese steaks a lead it, you know, So it's it's not an aversion to the fact that it's not like, but you.
Prefer a real yeah yeah yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
It's not a food recognized by nature or the laws of nature. But I will yet half what you did. You can put that all over your skin and like go into the sea not get a sunburn.
It's really good.
That's your regimen.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, really.
Blair, what's something you think is underrated?
Okay, So I don't know if you guys are involved in this or not, and maybe the rest of the country right now probably wouldn't agree that this is something that's underrated. Oh but for me, the amount of joy it has brought me this summer. Love Island, USA. I'm sure it's been brought up, but I I had never seen Love Island before this season. Obviously I got involved due to one Aria automatics. I had never seen any of the UK seasons, and I became so immersed because
it's on every night. Yeah, so, like I started to become very irritable should something interfere with my six to seven PM program, and I had to be home every night from six to seven. It was just incredible. It's over now, and who knows if I'll continue watching past this, but it was an incredible moment in time, and I encourage everyone to watch it.
I've seen the UK version, and I remember during the summer, like one summer when I was there, like the people we were staying with it was They're like, yeah, we'd love to go out, but Love Island is about to come on, so no, And I was like, but yeah, I get it. I like a show that's on that consistently, that has this kind of drama that's easy to follow and intrigue. But yeah, I haven't watched this latest season of the US version.
I've never heard it. Like, I didn't realize it was something nightly like there's something dystopian futuristic about it, but also really nostalgic, like the radio nightly after dinner in like nineteen thirty six or something, right.
Right, Yeah, gather around the Victor Rola as we listened to Love Island.
Yeah, I really enjoyed it that.
It also sounds like what like a Beach Boys song from that era would call having sex with someone is like taking them to Love Island, USA.
Absolutely, I took her own down to Love It's definitely like a Boardwalk T shirt. It's like, ask me how to get to Love Island USA. It's like a crew drawing of like finger hand circular gesture and it's like.
The Boardwalk shirts.
Man, I'm the Captain God.
Boardwalk Shirt's incredible, and it they're putting a new show out every day.
Yeah, I mean it's over now, Like I don't know when the next season will come out, if it's not till next summer or something like that. But while it was on, it was every day.
Yeah, that's wild.
That's I mean, I'm not just saying that because we have one, but like the amount of editing and all the work that has to go into a reality show.
Yeah, and it's like so it's it is odd that you're watching it like I think they edited it's like from the day before, so you're really watching music in current times.
Pretty well, it's crazy.
I think it's only like speaks long, but it was like hours an hour since TV and then really fast. I want I'm not going to even elaborate on it, but Ladies in Blue on Apple TV. It's in full Spanish and it's really good show.
Oh is that the one about the cops?
Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, I love it.
I just got Apple Plus TV or TV whatever. It's called because I got an iPad, so it came with three months of that. But I that's a good one. That's what I'm seeing that add a lot.
Oh really, I hadn't seen an adult like because Apple TV does not advertise it all, and it has the best shows far and far and wide above any streamer. It's like, there's so many good shows on there. Obviously I'm a TV freak.
But it's amazing.
What is uh, what's something you think is over it?
Okay, I'm sure someone has already said this, but it is really chapping my ass. And that is this demure bullshit. Stop saying demure. The wrard is ruid forever. And if I see or hear that, I'm gonna block you.
Yeah it's I mean that TikTok trend.
It's ruined my life.
Yeah, I heard that that TikTok person like got invited to the DNC.
Yeah, and that feels right for.
Her that, Like I think I think she's transitioned, Like I think I read that like it paid for her transition. I was like, Okay, I'm glad like this, all these wonderful things came out of that. But I just hate like when something becomes so ubiquitous like that, like where I feel like they can't breathe their escape right right.
And it's also not like when people say it, it's just like a reference. I've not seen it used in a way that's like funny or interesting. Yeah, it's just a hey, this is a word, right, Yeah, we're just saying demure okay, right, okay.
And I liked the word Jamir before this, like that was in my rotation and now I can never say it again until my last time bread Wow.
Yeah, so you're like, yes, I knew that band before they were big about.
It's not even like that.
It's not even like Demure in ninety eight.
Okay, all right, now it's I find it annoying as well. And I'm if I sound distracted, it's not because I'm editing Demure out of the outline for the rest of the show. Yeah, oh my demure references.
One more point to that, Like I am not one of those people that is like I have to claim my obscure knowledge and interest in something before it got popular, because I like a lot of really popular things, specifically, you know, like huge fantasy franchises in certain pop stars.
Yeah.
No, one's making accusation.
I felt felt okay making that joke because I knew it was so not true of you. Okay, okay, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back to talk and listen to what Donald Trump's up to.
We'll be right back, and we're back.
We're back.
And yeah, So just to kind of give people an introduction, although everybody should just go listen to episode zero, where you do a beautiful job of giving an introduction to the premise of the show. But one of the ideas is that these people who you know, organize the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, stage domestic terrorism, storm the Capitol on January sixth, They are associated with these big ideas and huge historical trends, but ultimately they often turn
out to be just some guy. You compare to the end of a Scooby Doo episode, except Scooby Doo doesn't have the courage or run time to then like spend an hour digging into the weird backstories of.
The people under the masks.
But you do.
You tell us what the fuck is going on with these people? And it's endlessly andered. Is there an example that you use to explain the premise of your show to someone who asks, like what your podcast is about?
Oh man, they should have should have prepared me better for this marketing.
Right.
No, but like you said, the idea is that they're all just these kind of sad little freaks, and they want us to believe that they're like the second coming of Hitler, right, that they're mighty and powerful and impressive and and you should be very scared of them.
And that is a compliment that gets like thrown around. They're like people are like this person might be the second coming of Hitler, Like, and that's good, and that's what he wants.
He wants you to think, like, oh, it's this powerful monster.
I'm not saying that.
Like the things that they did are not serious, right, Like, you know, the end of an episode of Scooby Doo when they unmasked the you know, the caretaker who's been haunting the mansion, like he still did what they think the monster did. He said, a monster, He's just the weird old caretaker, right. No, So, I mean, I don't want to spoil in future episodes, but for the two episodes that are out now, you know, the first one
was an exploration of Kevin Strome. He was a member of the neo Nazi group National Alliance, And you know, he thinks of himself as this sort of learned intellectual of race science and race purity, and he mix this little show every week since the nineties. And he's pedophile, right, he has been too Britain for childborn, and he's his commitment to racial purity is so extreme that he won't let the foods on his plate intermingle because that's too much like race mixing.
Oh wait for yeah, okay.
Right, yeah, Like you can't book Bravy on mashed potatoes because that's missagenation of flavors.
Yeah, the freaks. I do the normal thing. I put in a little teacup and I and I sip it. Well, I have one bite after I fully swallowed the mashed potatoes.
But I mean, like to your point, right, Like, whenever we hear about these like violent plots or these groups that have like you know, acted out like all kinds of wild violence in physical space, like we create this image in our mind of like some fucking master criminal like with no soul that if like we saw on the street, we would immediately be like, oh, my god,
run in the opposite direction. This person is fucking scary and they're dangerous, and like, clearly it's clear that all these guys are like not even close to being some kind of cloaked Marvel super villain, and like we would run in the opposite direction if we saw them on
the street because they're literal just fucking creeps. What do you think is like the like, obviously there's a power to demystifying our sort of like reflexive tendency to be like, oh, this person because like what they're into is so odious
and dangerous that they themselves must be dangerous. But like it's clear that you find there's a way to sort of by taking the curtain back, we're able to just sort of reckon with these kinds of characters or you know, not characters, human beings and like a much more objective but while also being like, look, these aren't the kinds of people who are like absolute like these masterminds that we do need to fear.
Is that sort of part of it?
I know at one point you said, it's not about it's about understanding the creeps, like in every facet of our lives that they do exist, right, And.
I think, you know, on a broadle broader social level, just you know, emotionally, understanding that this isn't some sort of amorphous ontological evil is empowering, right because like, right, you can't fight a monster. That's disempowering. It feels like, well, this is just this is something we can't change. There there are monsters in the world, and it's just a guy.
It's just a guy who's afraid to talk to women, right right, It's a guy who got a free sex doll heads he complained to the fucking customer support.
And you're like, oh, okay, huh, that's weird. But he's making bombs too, Yeah, well, yeah he is.
Right, like he knows how to make a pipe bomb, but like he's fucking a used sex.
Doll, right right right, You're like, yeah, not now, it's now it's giving me the creeps in a completely different way for sure.
Yeah.
The episodisode about the Civil War re enactment false Flag is so wild. But before before we get into the details of that, I do just want to talk about this idea of weirdness because it has become the focus for the Democrats and the presidential campaign and it happened as you're preparing to launch a show focused on the weirdness of right wing fascists, their policies, their personalities. What
was it that made you focus in on weirdness? Like, based on the content, it feels like it just naturally took you in that direction. But first of all, was it like to have that emerge as like a central Democrat talking point? And do you have an opinion on how they're doing with regards to calling it out?
Yeah?
When I think arriving at the idea that, you know, talking about these guys in the context of their idiosyncrasies and their their their weirdness, the fact that they're out of step with the world world arose naturally for me, right, Like, I'm researching these guys in the context of domestic terrorism and trying to understand that, and something I keep coming across is like everything about the way they engage with the world is weird, right, Like, it's not just their
ideas about race, their ideas about the Jews, or their ideas about how political power should be achieved mainly through violence. That's not separate from the fact that they're just weird
on a personal level. These things are intertwined, Like they have all these ideas about, you know, whether women should be able to vote because they just have weird ideas about how the world works, and so that was sort of a natural progression for me and I think, you know, separately, the Democrats have recently arrived at the same place that like their weird personal lives and the weird shit they want to do to your personal life are obviously related.
Mm hmm. Yeah.
It feels like for the longest time, like prior to this, like we were using very like academic terms to like accurately describe like their ideologies. So it's like, well, they're these are ethno nationalists, these are proto fascist model, like you know what I mean, And like it does in a way it clearly identifies like where they're you know, political might how like where their ideologies lie in terms
of like a political spectrum. But the weird sort of cuts through that to not only be like, well it is weird to already be so like ant like like the race mixing is terrible. It's like, what are you a fucking Civil war ghost? Like what the fuck are we talking about? But the weirdness it does sort of
in a way help sort of cut through. I think a lot of these like sort of very academic terms that are used to accurately describe them and really sort of remind people of like maybe what is sort of what we consider normal for the most part in terms of like it's not being obsessed with people's genitals, it's not being obsessed with like children's genitals, it's not a being obsessed with like, you know, miscegenation or whatever these things are, that these are all like all of these
things that they believe are weird are actually normal, and now it's it is actually them now that has crossed over into this space. So I feel like that was sort of like the one thing that I was like, Oh, I think it's it's able to connect in a much
easier way for people because it's much more conversational. But it does feel like a little bit I'm sure you're a bit frustrated, as someone who's been reporting on this for a long time, not to be not necessarily that it's like the Democrats, but that the warnings about being like these people are dangerous wasn't sort of enough until it's like, oh, wait, they're weird.
We're getting we're getting a ratings bump from being interested in this, like.
Yeah, you know, betterly than never.
I'm not complaining. Sure, it's a weird coincidence, but I think the reason it cuts to the quick so badly for them, the reason it's like so shockingly hurtful to them to be called weird, is because they're whole ethos is that we are the arbiters of what is acceptable and what is normal, and we want to return to this nineteen fifties Norman Rockwell painting of imagined American life,
and that's what's normal. And so you're the ones that are weird for you know, continuing to move forward in a society that progressed is with time, right, and so saying like, actually that that's not normal, you're the weird one. You're the weird one. It undercuts their their belief about you know, their their reason to exist.
And they their personal lives so often fall completely out of line with that ethos that they claim to like they are. It's in line with it, but it's just like a weird. When you first encounter they're like, well, all I care about is families, and then you see like the strange directions that spins off into and then you look at their personal lives, it's I don't know, I guess I guess it's unexpected at first, and then it's like totally expected once you take the time to think about it.
I mean, like the it's you know, it's spoiler for this week's episode, but like, you know, these guys who want to talk about you know, traditional white values and Western civilization and you know, restructuring society so that we have you know, traditional Western values. One of the guys in this terror cell was making degrading hardcore pornography and it's like, that's not that's not the world you're talking about building, right right?
Well, yeah, I mean from your perspective, from like looking at all these people for years, and you know, even like this latest episode with the Civil War reenactor, Like, is it that they're just that they're sort of repressing some dimension of who they are and that's that's manifesting them in like this like externalized hatred of people that like might intersect with their own like weird interests or feelings or how do you sort of look at these
people sort of through the prism of like what they're espousing, but also the context of like their personal lives, like how like how do those things or interact like in terms of like how you've how you've looked at these people.
Oh, that's that's a question for a psychologists. I mean sometimes these sometimes these manifestations are like desire to control. Like a lot of fascists they want to control society just the way they want to control their wife or their children. And so for a lot of pedophiles, it's about the exertion of control over a powerless victim, and that's kind of what they want to do to society. But I don't know, I don't think the cognitive dissonance
matters to them at all. Like you know, you see a lot of white supremacists with Latino wives like that cognitive dissonance is irrelevant to them, right, So, like there's no making sense of it as a psychological drive. It just the rules don't apply to me. I'm just going to do this to society.
Yeah, because psychology is like not a thing. It's not even like concepts in their head. They're just like, yeah, this is what I do, Like my shadow self are you talking about?
I mean, like maybe maybe we can like necromance, Freud and get them to take a look at this. Like for years I had this Nazi cyberstalker who would send me these messages that were like really graphically about like sexual fantasies involving feces. Yeah, and it's like that that doesn't involve me, right, right, Maybe you should talk talk to Sigmund Freud about that, Like you're stuck in the anal development stage or something. I don't know, so mixed bag, Yeah, it's yeah.
I mean but I feel like historians, like or at least the History Channel like kind of does it with Hitler, right, Like Hitler behind closed Doors is not this amorphous ontological evil, right, He's driven by very strange demons and a lot of scatological you know shit. And then but then I feel like, I don't know, it popped in my head when you were talking about Richard Spencer, like when he first came on the scene years ago, and it felt like the mainstream media was like into him, you know.
Oh yeah, They're like, oh, finally like a handsome, well spoken Nazi. Yeah yeah, we can put on TV.
Right because they want, yeah, they want a Nazi that is like central casting of a fascist in a non comedy movie. But when you look at them, it's just doctor Strange loves all the way down right, just time after time. It's like, nah, they have like weird suppressed urges and repressed repressed ideas that are like bursting out of them in these strange ways.
But it does.
Yeah, the real Richard Spencer is the Richard Spencer in that leaked audio from the evening of Unite the Rights, Like the rally got canceled. They didn't get to give their speeches because there was a terrorist event, and he was so mad that he didn't get to give his speech.
He's like purple in the face, screaming about how like they don't get to do this to me, they don't get to do this to me, and he starts busting out racial slurs that you would have to look up in a dictionary, like I think he called someone an octoroon or something like.
Oh wow, yeah wow, take it all the way back.
But just like that sort of petulant, childish rage, like you could put a suit and tie on a Nazi, but he's still just an angry little guy.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I mean, because I think so many of these people have like very similar like they're similar themes in their lives, which are there operating in this bizarre parallel reality. But when they're like forced to reconcile their perceived world and the one they actually live in, they just go deeper into the void because it's just that like that recon
like that sort of dissonance is like too much. It's like no, no, no, And now they like sort of increasingly become more hell bent on bringing their fantasy world to life like upon the rest of us. And it's like when they inevitably fail and realize they don't have the power or means to create the world, they typically will just resort to violence or destruction because if I
can't make something, then I can destroy it. And either way, like I think, there's just that feeling of powerlessness that has to be addressed, and this sort of.
Direction construction of this alternate reality. It just keeps coming up sort of recurring theme in these stories that I'm telling, Like I think this Scot left out of episode one, but after Kevin Strome was arrested for possession of child pornography, he so he was the webmaster for a neo Nazi group, so he knew how to use the Internet, right.
He was.
He was an Internet guy, you know, from the nineties, so early internet adopter, and he made a website that convincingly looked like an actual local news outlet, and he peppered in like real local news stories, stuff about the weather, stuff about you know, just like local goings on. But like every third article on this fake newspaper website was about how actually Kevin Strom isn't a pervert.
In other news, like what, like this guy really not bad.
It's like, I mean, it's the exact same thing, like even with the Civil War reenactor guy like also creating fake news articles like that, but he was such a boomer. He's like cutting and pasting shit onto physical paper and then xeroxing it and be like you've seen this article and it's like what sharing it with like a teenager he's working with.
Yeah, he was like, okay, man, this to me.
Yeah, man, Sniper's got a bunch of people. It's like what newspapers. That doesn't matter, man, it happened.
It happened to you too, huh yeah.
Yeah, but but it is like this very weird and then like even like this the sex doll thing, like it's a like there's just about creating, like insulating themselves truly in like this world of half truths or total fabrications to kind of like, yeah, I don't know, it's very they want.
They want to live in a cigarette ad from a nineteen fifty five issue of Good Housekeeping, Like the world you're imagining was never real, Like not only can you not go back to it, it was never real? Like that was on queludes, right exactly.
She's so high that mom' serving that turkey, like that turkey is not cooked middle Yeah, yeah, she is out of her mind. Yeah, let's take a quick break and we'll come back. And I just wanted to talk a few of the details about the subjects of your first couple episodes because they are absolute bangers.
We'll be right back, and we're back.
We're back, We're back.
Remember that Poulter guys too, and from nineteen eighty four, remember that guys.
Yeah, man, all right, so let's go big news.
I don't watch scary movies into a week for that.
Yeah, I'm scary.
That was Bolser Guys too, scary.
I think Polser guys fucked me up.
Old guys fucked me all the way up. I don't even remember.
I don't know if I ever saw Polter Guys Too, but I saw the trailer at the first movie I ever watched in a theater, which was Rocky. For the trailer for Polter Guys Too played and I was very frightened.
It looks like the still image from the trailer looks like a character that Walton Goggins could play.
Okay, of course, Well you could play anything. Oh yeah, of course uncle.
Baby Billy like ten years in.
The Yeah, that's Uncle baby Billy.
That's Uncle baby Billy.
Goddamn good teeth in his.
Yeah.
That guy freaked me the fuck out. And he's terrified just and he's just an old man in a hat, but his general vibe is very frightening.
Caroline, that's what the guy said.
No, no, no, no, no, I'm with Blair. I don't I don't need that ship. I'm already like, I have enough anwer nervousness in my life. I don't need content to amplify that.
Caroline, come towards the light.
And the light is a TV. I have one of those in my home. That's scary as fun. I could be Caroline, all right, And that's just a preview of the type of content you won't be getting on chick fil A's streaming service. Wait, I feel like we might have mentioned this earlier. Maybe not, but it seems like a joke as a headline. But just when you thought streaming entertainment couldn't be any more dire, news just broke to chick fil A is quote moving aggressively into the
entertainment space with their very own streaming platform. They will license and create original family friendly shows, most of which will be unscripted, so you know, wow, fun, incredible chick fil A reality shows.
Wow.
For documentaries, Yeah, I'm sure it's really in depth documentary is about you know.
Yeah, why chick fil a is a good place for a twelve year old to work or something?
Just chick fil A if you're listening to this. I'm available to be paid one hundred million dollars to be filmed doing monck Banks of you Chicken, thank.
You Banks, thank you, you do muck bang content.
I have incredible plans to do to become to transition fully into being a TikTok monk banger.
Wow.
Yeah I love wake Okay, Well, I would love to know more about it.
But like Chase version. Don't get any freaky ideas, you sickos out there. Okay, I'll be fully closed up to my chin, just absolutely plowing.
Actually this might be.
Yeah, the Chick fil A like just you're wearing like sister wives, like where like a turtle turtle long sleeve everything and then just gorging on Chick fil A.
But you have to do your hair like super Southern conservatives, like big, big and high.
That's right, someone has a shock under the back of my head.
That's actually part.
Of what I love this show.
Put my favorite show on.
I actually love that we're not able to stream on Sundays. I think that's rarey.
Yeah, it just goes.
On Saturday.
Yeah, so this isn't a total shock for those of us who monitor Chick fil A closely.
Last year, the company.
Released a job posting looking for a quote entertainment producer for a new half that doesn't even sound like a real It was yeah, I know, right, entertainment producer, any entertainment.
They're new to the space miles.
Oh my god, that's like when I see producer on hinge, I was like, what does that mean? SoundCloud? Are you like?
Uh No?
I actually once I moved about four flats of crystal guyser water from a sound stage to a transpo van. You know, I mean I usually I used to when I was like a PA, I would be like, yeah, I'm a I'm a produce I'm a production system.
Yeah yeah, anything.
So this is where it gets weird. Though, So Chick fil A, and none of the previous part was.
Weird, that is what I'm saying.
Uh So Chick fil A has already been producing entertainment and we just like didn't notice because we have better things to do.
With our lives.
But their YouTube page has an original animated series about like my friend and I were talking about this. My friend is a writer who's, you know, struggling like many writers are. We're talking about this streaming service and we're like, what is it going to be like those cows from the ads, like just like like the universe of like the cows who can't spell that much, but like ken
still write telling us to eat chicken. And I was like joking when I said that they already have like an an animated series where those cows are basically domestic terrorists that routinely target a burger chain that murders and sells their friends and family, and it's yeah, it's aimed at kids. It's about domestic terrorism and like these people,
these these cows being mad that they're being murdered. There's also like Coca Cola product place went all over the place, but it has five million views on the most recent one that like went up a week ago. Uh, there's an earlier one from last year that has thirty two million views. Oh so I'm like very confused and slightly suspicious over those numbers. Like I don't want to say because I'm sure they're like more sophisticated than that, despite
the fact that they they're posting, said entertainment producer. I'm assuming they have like people who are telling them more detail about the metrics and like where those viewers are coming from, because it would be very funny if they like just got fooled by like a social media firm that's like buying clicks and views to their video. Look at this, We're gonna double down and launch an entire streaming platform because of these.
Kid Are they going to charge people for this?
That's a great question.
Or is it just like that, Because that's the difference. I'm like nobody is I don't give a fuck what's on there. Nobody's fucking buying chick fil a streaming service. But unless it's like you know, they try and get people into like buy a fucking kids meet or some shit. Maybe, but even then the content doesn't make sense. Like brands that make like content like this, it always fucking stinks. So maybe it is just a way for them to
like create more. I mean, because obviously the family that owns Chick fil A is super conservative and freaking out there with it. So yeah, maybe this is just their way to be like, yeah, man, we got people to sit through some weird white supremacists ethn national cartoons or or talk shows, you know for kids.
Is there get the message out.
Like a conceivable universe? Because I like all bets are off after like skibbity toilet seeing the view counts on skibbity toilet, realizing I don't know anything about YouTube. Is there a world where people are that into Chick fil A and that they want to see like an expanded universe of those cows?
No, Okay, everyone thinks because one movie Barbie, that everything is like an ip now.
Exactly, and now we are fucked.
It fucked us so hard in a way I hadn't realized one.
Well done, just one in a million execution, and now we're all ruined forether.
Right now, it's like, what about our cow billboards? Can that be a show?
No?
The ones that misspell more when they're like eat more.
No, I can't. I just know DJ Tanner is going to be at the top of their list. She's going to be a huge get for them.
Oh yeah, absolutely, absolutely, like showing you how to make other meals out of like Chick fil A meals or something No no, and her.
Video being like I want the opening ceremonies at the Olympics, And I was just sad, to be honest, I was just so sad to have Christ to be demigrated.
I'm like Christ, Christ, but Jesus Christ. But yeah, I mean, like, I guess the one thing that they do have is the fact that the like the Kathy family or the guy the owner is like behind one of the biggest like physical production spaces outside of Allywood.
He owned, so he He's spent millions and millions of dollars turning a bunch of farmland in Atlanta into like a massive the biggest movie studio or production studio outside of Burbank in the United States, So.
They shoot all the Marvel movies there, man, so maybe we'll get a Christ level, more Marvel level christ superhero.
They've just just around your question of like, are they planning to charge for this? They might have ulterior motives.
They've also been releasing in addition to their wildly popular Cows Fighting for the against the slaughter of their Brethren for kids, they've also been releasing an animated Christmas series called The Stories of Evergreen Hills for years and and that series has been violating privacy laws by harvesting personally identifiable information about the people who view it on their website. So they might be just like trying to build out immense data profiles of people who are interested in Chick
fil A and question Mark. Question Mark control the World, the Thousand Cash Signs God.
Anyway, Yeah, look zygang let us am I would look Chick fil A came laid out to the West Coast, So I don't know if maybe these are time Mark honored cartoons that everyone is waiting for, But part of me is a bit dubious.
Yeah, our success, our viewers or what if our listeners are like, yeah, man, like I love those cartoons, dude.
I found out about the daily Zeitgeist through the Evergreen Hills series.
Got a Small, Got a small contingent of ZiT Gang
in the Evergreen Hills community. It seems like this is basically like we get these bad idea is because we live in a world where one person wields the power that like one hundred people should have through just like massive wealth consolidation and accumulation, and so like this person who should have you know, one hundred more, you know, he should be rich, but instead he is like this industry spanning mogul because of how our systems set up and so.
Oh right, rather than like I have a successful franchises of a chicken sandwich story, I.
Am a chicken mate. And that's where it ends, right. But because we have a thing where it's like you can just keep getting richer and richer and richer and richer. And because like that one brain of the person who has all that money is only so big, they're going to try and do everything because they have the power
to do everything. And so instead of what what should be happening is like a new streaming service gets launched by somebody who has a good idea for one, right, you know, yeah yeah, But instead of that, it's the guy who has all the money at Chick fil A because he has the power to just like make it happen.
I don't know, man, that's the America I want to live in.
Yeah, just you know, just want to brute force my own streaming platform and have people just be like yeah, yeah, yeah, because I like underwrote a huge segment of the Atlanta film industry.
Yeah wow wow wow wow wow.
So it just seems weird, like for a brand that has only ever gotten themselves in trouble when it comes to like cultural output, you know, it's like that that is not your strong suit. That's where you get boycotts and like people thinking you're the fucking worst.
But that's what they think otherwise, clearly right, they're trying to put a steak in the sand. We're not afraid to ruffle feathers. We're the chicken guys.
Yeah, if anything, we'd like to fucking.
Run shape the culture with our through our chicken sandwich shit.
Right again, just like Blair said, Chick fil A, if you're looking for like some unscripted content. I will I will get high on camera if that.
If that's something that fits into the mixing, I second that.
I have a lot of ideas. Yeah, mister Chick fil A, if you're listening, I like his sauses.
Okay, look, we missed.
I missed the quibi checks, you know, Jeffrey Katzenberg, I could have got one of those coveted quibi checks.
Miss that.
So if you're again, you could have literally.
Made anything nobody ever saw it. You could have made the shittiest thing ever gotten paid, like just like completely phoned it in. Like that is really a failure on my part. I feel like not not getting it, not getting the quibi check, and me and everybody, Yeah, everybody missed the quibi check. Like, oh, we could have just been because we all knew it was going to fail. But that's no reason not to take their money, right, they're gonna know.
I went in their offices once it looked the way Koly Kardashian's pantry looks, with like just walls of beautiful candy organized in jars.
Oh really, it was exquisite.
It really was something to see.
When you could eat the candy.
Oh yeah, yeah, it was.
It was asked a question like a five year old.
Yeah, and you can eat the candy now.
That was That was a five hundred thousand dollars candy jar wall. It was impressive.
Yeah, okay, well look again, bring back Quibbi, bring it back.
Let us we missed one of those checks.
All right, Well, bring back Quibbi, I think is where we try to end all our podcasts. So thank you Blair for joining reminding us saying these important things about the future of entertainment.
And I just have one more thing to say, if you don't mind, yes, please, I did see Just to clear I was engaged. I couldn't want the d n C. But I saw a clip of Tim Waltz talking about talking football and I was like, I'm about to run through a freaking wall right now. And then and I was like, oh no gold and then and then I saw I woke up this morning on that godless site that I go on, and I saw these people shitting on his beautiful son, who I was like, yeah, him
crying made I was crying immediately, you know. And I was like, I'm gonna have to beat some ass. Yeah, yeah, that's why. I was just like what's her name?
That ghoul In and Coulter.
I was like, I'm gonna take you down, your skinny little skeleton, mouthy ass witch, shut up right.
It's and it's also while they're talking like it's funny every d n C night there find a way to attack someone's kid, Like whether it was you know L. M. Hoff, Yeah, like the night before or then this time it's like this seventeen year old. They're like, this kid.
Is crying because he loves his dad.
What about weird is going on with that?
And then like but also like Tim Wallas has talked.
About how like his son is like ADHD and like a nonverbal like learning disorder, like just like all this other stuff, and they're still like what the whoa, what's going on with this kid?
Yeah, they're like but they're like, whoah, bitch, I'm like, oh sorry, your son would never speak to you in public.
Right.
It's so telling that they are so fixated on these people with like adoring, loving kids, where like they're not they're no longer invited to Thanksgiving and Christmas because they're fucking monsters.
Yeah, Like normally, you know, I feel in politics is really like this could be slander. I'm not sure, like a really rancid industry. Like I don't really trust even the liberal side. I just vote, tried to vote with my soul, with the lesser of two evils. I think there's a lot of problems on both sides. Yes, But when I saw that ship this morning, I was just like, oh, this is just like a report makes me sick.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. There's like these moments where it's just like, God, I do not like a lot of the what's going on with the Democrats, and yet a lot of broad the Republicans are so much worse. And yeah, we can hold both of those thoughts in our Yeah, definitely at.
The same time.
Yeah, I mean that's the way we have to be. We have to hold complexity because that's the truth of nature.
Oh, talent well said, that's all I had to say.
But the football speech was really good. I loved it.
Yeah, we got to with the football speech.
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.