Hello the Internet, and welcome to this episode of The Weekly Zeitgeist. These are some of our favorite segments from this week, all edited together into one NonStop infotainment laugh stravaganza. Yeah, so, without further ado, here is the Weekly Zeitgeist. Miles. We
are thrilled to that voice saying no buns. His famous catchphrase is one of our favorite guests, a very funny comedian, the host of the podcast The Frontcast, Pod Yourself with Gun, Pod Yourself, The Wire, and his latest podcast, Bad Husbara, which happens to be the most moral podcast in existence and of all time. Please welcome one of the funniest people doing it anywhere.
It's Matt leeb a tend Baby Francesca and Matt Lee got a baby whoa.
Leafter she came from ball? What's U?
Wow?
That wasn't that was your birth announcement?
Yeah, that's how I announced to everyone that my baby was born and she came from my balls.
Like, thanks, we didn't we know in case people were like, cause you wanted to know?
Is that your baby?
Yeah?
From your ball?
Yeah, from both from my ball one ball single, yeah, although I mean it's only one sperm, so brilliant only came from one burn.
One ball, one burn, Yeah, one of the balls.
You never know left nut or right nut. That's the thing about it.
It's it's like, uh, you know the way if you're left handed or right handed, that's how you know which ball.
That's how you know. It's like a firing squad.
You know, everyone shoots, but no one knows who's actually got a real bullet and who's got a ball right.
And that is what I used to when I was a bully. Instead of saying head er gut, I would say left nutter, right nut?
Which one do you want me to just when I was a bully.
When I was gut. You know, I was a big time bully man.
But yeah, yeah, I'd be like, which shoe lace do you want? Untied loser and bully sick bully ship I was doing.
It's like good will hunting.
He's like, yeah, yeah, Jack O'Brien made me choose the ranch at a belt.
I said both because fuck him. That's why you.
Know, I said, flip both my nuts.
Yeah, flick both my nuts. I wish I could. I can't really do the act.
No, that was perfect. Yeah, all right, and we're.
Gonna be you're gonna be reading Gordon Wood, regagitating Gordon Wood.
You know, Yeah, how do you like damn apples?
All right?
When you're gonna read Zin and it's gonna blow your hair back and it's like everybody's rich and by okay not everyone?
Hey, mat what what up?
Though?
It's great to have you.
I'm so excited to be back. I love you guys, you know. I love love talking to you guys about stuff.
Yeah, and we're going to talk to you about your podcast.
Okay, okay, yeah.
Okay the stadium at the moment.
Yeah, what is it?
That's that's the only question I've got written down?
Yeah, what is it?
What does that mean?
And is it bad?
I mean your title says it, but is it like bad like the Michael Jackson album title? Yeah?
Is it bad? That means good?
Imagine redo that album cover is bebing it in Yahoo with the.
Changes that what I'm.
Going to make that on my phone right now.
Was that a miss at the time or were people like, all right, let's see where he's going with what's that? Yeah?
I just remember as a kid, I was so stoked because I was like, yo, need to like it?
Fulled my assi yeah, I yes, this is the most I've ever liked an album. Is how much I like that album? When it dropped, I could name.
I'm trying to think of what were the other good songs on that album, because I think I.
Put on a concert of that in my neighborhood, just me and my friend lip synking two songs that we didn't really know the words.
Are you ever bought Michael Jackson album before? So I don't know what his albums are all the way through. I only know, like you know, the hits, but there's so many hits that it's like.
Oh yeah this, yeah, okay, because I'm definitely I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know the way you make me feel. That's smooth criminal leave Me Alone Alone? That video was wild, dude.
I thought that was a dangerous leave me alone, the one where he's like going, he's on the rye.
It's on the bad remastered, I'm looking at the bad. I thought it was too but that was off dangerous anyway off the walls. Also, any what.
Is something from your search history that's revealing about who you are?
You know?
What is it my search? I could I was like trying to go through all my Safaris, and I was like, what the fuck I've been doing shit, I haven't been researching anything, but I did. Last week during the DNC, I googled Kamala's dad because I was like, because everybody talks about I don't know if they did anything on her dad. I don't know if I missed it.
I feel like they he was very I don't. I don't feel like he wasn't mentioned.
No, he wasn't mentioned from what I saw, and I'm pretty sure I watched most of it, and and they do the whole like it's too bad her mother won't be here because she's dead. Make she rest in peace. But I googled the dad because I was like, what the fuck? You know, what's his deal? He's still alive, like do we not? He's not getting a shout out?
And oh no, she did mention him in her speech.
Actually, but I'm saying, like a background, yeah, you know.
Like a profile, Yeah, sure, sure, I think her.
I think that moment when she mentioned him is when I was like, let me google this motherfucker.
Because I was dead like, no he's not.
Yes, So I was intrigued. And what was funny to me is that both her dad and Obama's dad are both like economics whizzes, and I just found it very interesting, and because I mean, they didn't really talk about they don't really talk about these deadbeat dads, and these guys aren't deadbeats at all. They're fucking intelligent. And the reason that these these politicians are thriving because they got that
weird math brain. And I just I just found him interesting here at Stanford, and that's that's that's what I googled recently.
He's a emist economist and emeritus. I'm so smart, I don't know how to pronounce that professor emeritus professor at Stanford University, who is, of course, and I'm not reading this off of Wikipedia, known for applying post Kynesian ideas to development economics, so that that actually placed him for me. I was like, Oh, he's that Donald Harris. He's the one who's for applying post ideas to development economics. I always get him confused with a different economist who applies
pre Kynsian ideas to development economics. That's cool, Yeah, I feel like I don't I don't know why he's not a bigger part of the picture. But that's that's a cool dad to have something.
Yeah, there obviously is something contentious, but I definitely was impressed by what I did see about him, and I was like, yeah, he's probably an aggressive piece of ship, like most dads.
Too much, just way too much.
Yeah, to too logical to the point of, you know, he's dead inside. That's that's how I which explains a lot about her personality.
He's an economist, and like economists have been such bitches about her economic policy, like they've been like price controls, Yeah, okay, let the market decide around here. It's like, how's that working out for you? Yeah, exactly, And that's why we have so many of these fucking problems. So maybe that's it. Maybe it's just one of those well, actually, guys, that probably is. Yeah. What is something you think is underrated?
Underrated? Yeah, probably said this before, but I really think getting older. I think aging is very underrated. Because I'm trying to tell you, like day parties make great. You know, started three, you home by seven, or is over by seven? I'm in bed by nine, you sleeping more like the day you have a day the next day. I feel like you could decide, you know, when you've grown you could be like, you know what, I'm not gonna drink today.
Why because I have foresight. I know that tomorrow. Do you know what I'm saying, I am going to regret it and I am going to make a decision. You get that when you're older. I found I think maybe three years ago was the complete like death of fomo, like I stopped having. I was like, na, so for you, like, no,
it's cool, like enjoy yourself. I am fine. Somebody asked me recently, like about an artist that I've known forever that does you know, pretty similar stuff And they was like, Yo, why have y'all Why are y'all not engaged in any sort of civil war? Like because he's doing all the stuff that you do. And I was like, literally, the thought has never crossed my mind. You know what I'm saying, because I'm like, because that's the homie and I like him and he does his thing and I don't and
I do. What do you like?
That's a weird move for somebody to be like, hey man, how can we not get in his ass?
Bro was like what why yo?
Fuck him? Well?
I was like what, No, he's dope, Like what are you talking about?
Yeah?
But like it was like realizing that like oh that, oh, I guess that comes with age, Like I'm supposed to be I'm supposed to be jealous, Like I'm supposed to come for his spot, he's supposed to be coming from mine, I guess, but I'm.
Like but not such a like yeah, but like with age, right, you get you kind of lose that sort of zero sum game mentality and like and then you sort of philosophically, I definitely had to shift to like from a scarcity mentality to an abundance mentality to use them like hokey you know, the woo woo type shit, but truly like if you believe everything is so scarce, like you're gonna be in a very defensive position all the time. And but truly, like they're the resources are out there for
many things. And I see that that manifests with people in a lot of different ways, like where how people respond to certain things where they believe things are super scarce or there is an abundance of things that we can share or that everyone can win and shit like.
Yeah, the amount of times I'll be having like coming up that now it's so obvious to me, but having to remind myself that people have more than one album downloaded on their phone. It's not single file. You can listen to multiple artists. Like, just because they listening to this person, don't mean they not go listen to you.
What are you talking about? You know what I did?
This friend come to you in the form of a serpent and whisper it in your ear with elongated asses.
Right, you shouldn't trust them.
Speaking of which, one of my homeboys sitting another homeboy sent me a meme. It was a picture of like Adam being handed fruit and wrapped around a serpent, and the guy was like, yo, studies showed that one hundred percent of men would accept food from a naked woman. I'm like, yeah, Adam's defense.
Yeah, Adams defense.
Yeah.
I mean we we we firmly blame me on this podcast.
I mean that was the whole point of the story.
Yeah gave me, Yeah, I gave you a rib.
Yeah. See, that's why I don't share my ribs with you anymore. You see what I'm saying.
I have a rib, and yet look what she did with that rib you know.
Yeah, yeah, left a bunch of meat on the bone and everything. Am I right? Am I right?
What is something you think is overrated?
I'm gonna stay with my food theme. I actually think we've gotten to the point where brunches is overrated. I think, yeah, what do you like? Everybody's doing brunch every weekend, and it's getting the point where it's just like flat, flabby breakfast food at a different time of day, and I'm no longer excited by it. I'm no longer inspired.
I think brunch like loses its appeal the earlier I wake up, Like when I was like younger and like like you know, going out and shit like that, and I'd wake up lane, I'm like, yeah, brunch, but yeah, let's eat at one that's breakfast. But now I'm like not already eight or it's depends on, you know, if there's an occasion, but yeah, I get that. I guess is that is that maybe one of our latest food fads that's going on you now?
It is a brunch Oh it'll never go away?
Yeah maybe I maybe.
Actually the right answer to how to live one's life is to only have brunch and tea. I mean maybe breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Or two meals. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, two meals. Give me a brunch, Give me a.
Tea, Give me that tea.
I mean, does the enthusiasm for tea just like make you less likely to have anything at dinner? I feel like dinner becomes an afterthought at that point at dinner, spread for tea. Okay, I like that. Yeah, brunch is not a natural time for me to be hungry. If I've eaten breakfast, then like brunch is not real.
Or you do the thing where you wake up and like, fuck, dude, brunch is in four hours and you're like, I don't want to like go and not eat anything. So then you're like walking this tightrope of not eating before or showing up hangar and you're like this showing up mean.
Yeah, yeah, all right, Uh, let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.
And we're back.
We're back, We're back. We are The poles continue to seem like good news for the Democratic Party.
Yeah, And when.
It comes to Republicans response to that, it is oftentimes to get with the fuckery, make with the fuckery, make it with the voter fuckery now, not fucking yesterday, fucking now, I need a fuckery on my desk yesterday.
So yeah, every state, Like you know, there's like you're i mean, not that one is going hand in hand, but clearly the Republican strategy going in to this is to do every single squeeze the margins as much as possible, even if it's illegal, to try and win the election, and also tell all your voters that the election might be stolen. So get ready to brace yourselves for some fuckery on that end. But at the same time, a
lot of races are getting more competitive. Yeah, and you're seeing I mean, not that their reactions happening one in the other, but it's it's it makes sense that the fuckery is intensifying in places where races are getting, you know, much more competitive, and even places where they're not, just to ensure that certain states go red. So like in Texas, right, Governor Abbot announced on Monday that like, roughly a million voters were purged from the voter roles. Say's like to
quote stop illegal voting. Many experts were quick to point out that, like, there are already routine processes in place that already remove people from voter roles, like whether they've died or if they've moved out of state or whatever. But there are a lot of people are also saying that this is merely just to stoke fears of a stolen election. That's why government. Abbott is out there saying like I had to get a million people, these people are voting illegally.
He also claimed he had to remove some voters that weren't citizens, but that's hard to believe given a scandal that happened in twenty nineteen when the then Secretary of State made similar claims about voters who turned out to just be naturalized citizens they weren't illegally voting or non citizens, and then they had to resign over the bullshit.
The racist attorney general had to resign. Yeah no, this is secretary Secretary of State.
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, for doing for going on in and like these people are illegal and they're like, no, they're not, and what the fuck are you doing? Like and they got sanctioned all kinds of shit in the Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was also this week behind numerous raids targeting Latino voters in Texas. From an article quote, at six in the morning on August twentieth, nine officers, some with guns, showed up at the home of a activist breaking down a door to raid the home of
Manuel Medina, the chair of the Tehano Democrats. All across the strait, apparently police were raiding the homes of Hispanic voters. The head of Texas is l u La c Gabrielle Rosales, who was on TV said recently, this is pure intimidation. When asked for an explanation, Ken Paxton said, without any irony, quote,
secure elections are the cornerstone of our republic. So we're talking about the legal voter intimidation, getting people to have to lawyer up, drain their funds, like all this kind of bullshit because these are these are people who are running groups that are helping people get registered, you know, and just doing the very just the basics of supposed democracy. But they are being you know, run up on by police. This is the I mean a few things.
First of all, I know, personally a cup like about four friends that was like, yeah, all of a sudden, I'm not registered. It was like like that just was like I don't know what just happened, but apparently I'm
not registered no more. And that live in Texas that are like, I don't know more than four worth I don't know what they talking about, you know what I'm saying, right, But like, these are the moments that make me wish that I in some ways worked for a campaign to like write like to do like copy, like just to
write copy for it. Because this would be if I were in the if I were running helping a democratic like election in Texas, this would be such a layup to like, you know what I'm saying, it just be like, Okay, I guess you know this is this is the American way. So you figure rather than having some points, you just gonna you just gonna beat.
Us up for it.
Like that's right, that's what you're gonna do, right now, That's that's your defense.
Your defense is Yeah, it.
Just seems like like that's all you have to do if you're running for yours. Like I don't know, guys, like I came here to give you a reason why you should vote for me, and that's what I thought we was doing.
And they're kicking down my door.
So waym if something happened to your door yet, know you already kicked it down, it already happened. That threat actually doesn't work.
I'm like, yo, I mean, y'all really do believe in like seventeen seventy six, because like that's the way we used to vote, was like you know, a mob would come to your house and drag you out and be like, you know, vote for the Whigs or we burn your tavern. Like that's used to be how we did it. I thought we was past this, you know.
No, no, but again, and this is also part of like Ken Paxton's legacy as attorney general because if you remember in twenty twenty, there was this whole thing. He prevented people in Harris County, where Houston is and a lot of Democratic voters are, from using mail in ballots when the pandemic was raging and people were like waiting hours in line because again they're hoping like yeah, well, you know, force people to wait in line and maybe this will they won't they won't actually vote, or maybe
that can suppress the numbers. And he was even on Steve Bannon's podcast recently saying like he was like taking credit for Texas being read because he did that. He's like, if I didn't do that, those like some hundred thousand votes, you know, Trump may have Trump made the outcome. May he may have lost Texas so you never know, that could just be him, you know, obviously pumping his own ship up, but he's proud of the fact that he does that kind of shit.
You could just say exactly, you could just say, okay, so worse. So what you say is and correct me if I'm wrong. I don't want to put words in your mouth. What you say is if people vote, you're gonna lose. Yeah, right, right, So the way I win.
So the way I win is I have to make sure that they don't vote.
You know what I mean, we call them illegal when you say people, I'm gonna be a little more specific.
Oh but they're but but they're not illegal. But we have to say that, so people we get to say, clutch their pearls when I do say that.
Didn't they got it?
Didn't they like stop except they had to like shut down. They didn't have to, but they chose to shut down a bunch of like drive through mail in ballot centers.
Yeah, and I feel like they had to get it like an injunction to like try and keep them open.
It was as it was always breaking down along like oh, what wouldn't you know it? The six conservative Supreme Court justices are all in favor of like making it harder to vote.
You know, yeah, yeah, so mean, I mean that's the whole project for them, right, yeah, the political project is just too obviously just like they don't have the numbers, so just so mask off from voting.
Yeah, yeah, it's some mask off. But because Biden one, I feel like we kind of memory hold it. But like yeah, yeah, just like like right before Amy Cony Barrett was confirmed, the Supreme Court handed down the decision that prevented ballots that arrive after election day in the state of Wisconsin from being counted even if they were, like they just changed the rule by timing of it like right before election day.
Yeah, just so that's just how like how do y'all say, Like, I just feel like I don't know how you're saying this with a straight face, saying, yeah, we less people to vote and we need to make it harder for you because it it's harder and it's less of y'all than we're gonna.
Win, exactly, And that's been the game plan.
And it doesn't matter. I mean, I think the writing's been on the wall for a long time. That's why before, like in the nineties, they were so panicks because they saw how the demographics were changing in the United States. They're like, wait, there's gonna be a lot of brown faces in this country that we can't contend with their numbers. So we'll have to create some kind of moral panic about immigration or aborse whatever it is to try and
like to slow the you know, changing demographics of the country. So, like in other states, right North Carolina, the GOP is asking a court to purge over two hundred and fifty thousand voters because the voter registration database does not have a driver's license or social Security number linked to a person in their database. So this again, this, and so they're asking a court to do this while we're like,
you know, very very close to election day. But it's all bullshit because as people who work on like the actual election boards in the state point out that, like, if a person doesn't provide those things when they register, they would have to show ID when they go to vote. It's not just like all right, they'll take your word on it. Yeah, they're protections in place to ensure because this is all bullshit. There's no This idea that people
are legally voting is fucking bullshit. But they have to keep seeding this story over and over to keep people's suspicions up, because again, like we said, it's the only way to kind of have the energetic foundation to do something pretty fucking up.
You know, it's just so years because I'd be like, y'all they never y'allly never voted, right, y'all y'all don't remember, you know, like obviously because this is the year of our Lord, twenty twenty four, I'd vote early because why would why would not it come in to mail. I'm just gonna do it. But when you did have to go, it just of course I showed them d like you don't, Yeah, you don't, you have to show the ID like I just don't understand I exactly.
But again, it's it's it's meant, and that's why most people don't also because they're also bought in on the same thinking. They don't care. They just like, yeah, that does happen, and they completely ignore their own experience and just sort of be like, yep, whatever the TV is telling me. And then yesterday Charlie Cook, the god of election forecasting, shifted North Carolina to now sort of be like a plus minus zero to now favoring Harris over Trump.
So again they see what's happening elsewhere. Similar efforts are underway in swing states like Arizona and Wisconsin, and all of this is happening while like voter registration data is showing that the registrations are surging compared to twenty twenty, like one hundred and seventy five percent increase in voter registration for young Black women, one hundred almost one hundred and fifty percent increase in young Latina voters.
I think this is this year, this July twenty first versus twenty twenty, this same period, who was registering, who is registering?
What numbers? And ninety eight percent of Black women and ninety eight percent increase in Black women that have registered to voters, an overall eighty five percent increase in Black American voters and eighty three percent increase among young women. So there's just a ton They're just like, fuck, these aren't these aren't the people standing? Yeah? Yo, again a
reminder make sure that you are registered to vote. If that's you know, if you live in the state where shit is all fucked up and you're planning on voting, you just make sure that they haven't purged her.
And we probably don't have to tell you this, but definitely do keep an original copy of your birth certificate on you at all times.
I have on't folded up my wall, keep this.
I keep that thing on me and by that of course.
Original certificate. Absolutely. Yeah, and it's all fucking all the ink is faded, you know, like a receipt just looks blank after.
A while, Like my vaccine card. After a little while, that shit was blank. Yeah, here's my vaccine card.
Oh yeah, when they put the little sticker on of like like dose you got there, like sir, like this.
Look man, it's the card bro.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, the ink sucks, you know.
In yeah, those numbers are very encouraging, and like the people who pay attention to this ship seem to be like this is really bad for Donald Trump.
Yeah, it's crazy to watch even some of the some of his like just that weird universe still kind of be like hey, bro, like I don't know if y'all know, but we're finna lose. Uh you'll notice it. I don't know what the hell you talk about with You need to stop talking about that and start talking about this, because like just even then being like.
To that point and couldiers like, yeah, Trump, maybe because you won't shut the fuck up.
Yes, that's what.
The wor the banks she said that shit about it. That's why they want the mics hot because you don't know how to shut the fuck up, yo.
Like listen, help me, help you. I do wonder though, if I do wonder if if if JD. Finneget drew bledsold out this mug like.
I'm replaced replaced by So I've been researching this because that is a real fear for me because it feels like the sort of big swing that could do something like they need a big swing. They need a big wing right now. And I think like, legally it is too late to actually change.
The back okay, so I think August seventh or something, the window closed back in early August.
I think he's gonna be like, we're gonna have a three person.
He's gonna do all three. I'm gonna have them both. I want both. Hey hop on the trizz tickets, Like, yo, what is going on? But yeah, I don't. I think, yeah, they they do need something like at this point he needs to come out with like a new hairdoo or something like a big wig or something. I don't know.
Just you don't think the Trump cards are gonna do it? Are good? No?
No, he's like a face tattoo, like some shit, I just figure out something.
Hey, amazing transition, Thank you prop because you know, he knows that the assassination attempt like that was where it kind of peaked for his campaign. Yeah, then he had sort of a low energy convention right after that. It was like the weekend after and he picked jd Vance like right after it. It was just it just it fell apart really quickly on him. And so he keeps
going back to the hits. You know, he's like a you know, micro version of the macro trend of famous people who just can't move on from the peak of their fame. So Michael Jordan keeps wearing baggy boot cut jeans like just you know, whether they're in style or not, because you know, it's the nineties. Every everywhere he goes, it's still the nineties.
Don't go He's Donald Trump is.
Stuck around the assassination. He opened his interview with Elon Musk talking about that shit, and now he is making it kind of a core part of his message by saying in an interview with doctor Phil and he's also like made reference to this in past speeches that the assassination attempt against him, which somehow, by the way, only happened last month, like that, Wow.
Yes, that was Oh that was July thirteenth or something.
That was mid July. Oh my god, not even the beginning of July, like mid July.
I mean, it might as well be to Kennedy assassination right now, so far away.
But he's saying that was actually the Assassination's assassination attempt was actually Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's fault because they weren't too interested in my health and safety, and they've been making it very difficult, very very difficult to have proper staffing in terms of Secret Service, which reportedly the Secret Service did complain about a lack of personnel in the past two years. But since the at Hack, agents from the Biden detail have been diverted to Trump. So
he's like, here, man, you take him. He called him immediately after in Troubles, like, oh my god. He was so nice. He was like asking me how I was and was complimenting how I like moved my head in a way that avoided the shot. That was pretty cool. And yeah, I mean, I think probably part of the issue is that there's never been a ex president who is as constantly in the public eye and as controversial
as this mother. I mean, there's never been a person who's as controversial and as in the public eye for as long as he's been. So, yeah, they had to go outside of protocol and shift resources, which they did after the assassination attempt. The Secret Service not great at their job, it turns out in some cases.
Yeah, armed law enforcement not good at their job. Knows at eleven that everywhere the thing that's while it's like to your point, right, like most presidents, they fuck off. They go to their layer because they know they got away with it. They're like, no, bro, I did some war crimes. Bro, just shut the bro. I don't exist. Just don't talk about me. And I'm stingy. Yeah, I'm buying an awquard for in Mexico, so I have a bunch of clean water resources. I'm gonna paint my little paintings. Okay,
don't talk to me. I don't exist anymore. Forget about me. Nope, don't look at me. You're looking at me.
You're looking at me.
I'm not here. I'm not here.
How much how much is it for me to come speak for fifteen minutes? Okay? So the gross national product of a small country word, I got you home?
Okay, Yeah, we're good. Wait hold on you. Oh Spotify wants to give me a deal, yeah, to get out the house.
Like I'm not getting I'm not getting out the house unless it's the gross national product the Budapest.
Right, right, Like George W. Bush killed million, like over a million people. Yeah, And I bet his secret service detail is like a retired com Like it's like at the end of like no Country for old men like that. Who is with him is like a couple people you know, like Trump? Yeah, Trump, Trump is a special case. He also suggested, and this is one of the great times when you can tell he's being fed information because it's coming from like a different word set than.
He is working with.
He said that the would be assassin was inspired by Democrats rhetoric, flaming it on JJ rhetoric. Right.
Yeah. I feel like it is like if you're like a teacher grading a paper and you come across this vehetoric.
Hey, Donald, come here, rhetoric. Mean, yeah, just I'm just.
Gonna ask you, what is E D E R I c K rhetoric rhetoric?
When I got it, my Otherest daughter was like a sixth grader. She was it was very clear that, like she's just not doing her homework. Like I'm like, so, I'm trying to explain to my wife. I was like, baby, she's just not doing it, Like it's not she's oh right, yeah, not even She's just not doing it. I'm like I And then so she's in the car and she goes and my daughter from the backseat goes, yeah, I think it's the curriculum. And then my wife was like yeah, yeah,
because my wife's a pad she's she's an educator. So she was, yeah, there is a problem with California curriculum. I was like, hold up, what does curriculum mean?
Yeah?
She was like I don't know, I said, but that's the problem, right. I was just like, she don't know what that means, right, She's just not doing the work, babe. Yeah.
Yeah, it's like that weird uh. Jaden and Willow Smith interview from like seven years ago where they were like talking about all kinds of weird. Yeah, yeah, yah, philosophical ship. They're like, y'all are fucking twelve years old. Yeah, what the fuck are you're saying right now? But yeah, you don't know what rhetoric means.
Bro.
Yeah.
By the way, he did not say shit about assault rifles or gun control, the thing that is actually to blame for the history of many assassination attempts and shootings in this country.
I'm goa throwing here racism. Let me tell you why I'm a thrown here racism. Let me let me tell you a lot. I'm glad you asked, because what's the name of that city in Pennsylvania that they was.
At Butler Farm? Butler? But it was the Butler Farm showed ground.
So look, we're in Butler, Pennsylvania. Of course there's a little white boy walking around with a gun. Of course there is wearing Butler, Pennsylvania. Of course he gonna climb up on the roof. Well, well, Huckleberry Finn had asked, and nobody had nothing to say about it, because y'all don't suspect little white boys, you said. The whole time, they're like, huh, there's somebody there, not until the boy got the got the whole last president in his scope
was y'all like, wait a minute. So I'm just saying, let anybody else walk around Butler, Pennsylvania with a with a whole assault rifle. You know what I'm saying. I'm like, you couldn't even got out the car. The fact that y'all was like, of course he walking around here all open with a gun and climbing on the roof because that's a little white boy in Butler, Pennsylvania. That's everybody over there. So to me, I'm like, that's what y'all get for not assuming that that little boy dangerous.
Not that's what you get. You understand what people. Yeah, but people with a gun can be dangerous. White white kid with ben Kyle written that's Kyle Rittenhouse and I love that and look.
Chevy, little chubby little cheeks. I'm just saying, your little chubby, little cute, little eighth grader might be a murderer.
Mm hmm.
You might be.
That's all in fact on camera doing it with with no second thought, just like I just like I just y'all wouldn't gonna stop me. I just walk right in here.
Yeah.
Yeah, but he Trump just doubled down on his opposite position to gun regulations, and this was all happening. I forget if I said this up top in an interview with doctor Phil for some fucking reason, And shockingly, doctor Phil did not.
Push back on this.
Tatro really hit what about gun regulation? Right?
Even getting the home runs with the pop culture interviews. Man, just I think he also people. I think he doubled down on the uh like just vote for me once and you want to have to vote again?
Shit too. In that interview it had all kinds of There's one part where I'm pretty like doctor Phil was like, hey, man, after that shit, like, do you hug your kids extra like hard?
Now?
And like Donald Trump doesn't even say yes to that. He just like goes on and talks about some other shit. I just want to play this because it's so trumpy, where like Donald like doctor Phil's trying to underhand him, like be like, hey, here's your shot to also sayd like a dad like remember that because remember what Tim Walls did.
Uh?
This is him talking just being asked do you hug your kids extra hard?
After that?
Did you hug your kids extra hard?
I mean, as it changed, a lot of people ask me and a lot of people say, like, have you developed any fear of you know, doing this, Like because you look big. President is a dangerous job. It's much more dangerous than a race car driver.
Statistically false, but okay, go on, absolutely not bro dangerous.
But yes, if you think about it, just go up and down the list. So yeah, forty six and numerous left early or got hit. It's a very dangerous job. It's a I never realized how dangerous anyway.
Oh my god, I'm like, you hug your kids not basically a hard driver rule. Hey sick, I'm doing it, dude, do you love your kids.
I've got a more dangerous job than a guy who goes in volcanoes when they're erupted, because you know how to was the question about my kids. I don't give a fuck because it's.
Probably one of the most right. Like when you think about the number, there's only been forty how many.
Forty six forty six total?
But there they were in the forty seventh and four of them have been.
Shot three three to death in office. Yeah, four have been killed. Yeah, for Abe, Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and JFK.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, oh JFK got killed.
He showed up in close last week. We saw him. He's fine, he's fine, he's fires.
Yeah, I get I can agree with the statistics, but it's just funny that he's I'm.
Like, drivers don't have armed security for life, bro, Like, just let's just start there. What's the secret service for race car drivers?
And could I just get you to like give me a moment of vulnerability where you've seem human right now? I'm actually fucking rocks.
Did you hear how kind of like discombobulated he was with that? And she's like, you know, dude, it's like he was saying like.
It was almost like he was thinking the question was gonna be something else. So he was like, I just wanted to get these bars off, and I was trying to find a question that was gonna get these bars off, And can I make this question about that?
Yeah?
He legitimately like doctor Phil asked about his kids, and he asked himself a different question.
Yeah.
Other people ask me, am I scared? Guess what?
Yeah?
I don't feel fear, because that's what you're asking me. You're asking me about my children. But what you mean is am I afraid to die? That's what you really asking right exactly? No, sorry, I'm asking you if it gave you perspective about how life was precious, and.
Yeah, I got a lot of perspective.
Enjoy the family that you have, now, that's what I'm asking.
Yeah, And to answer your question, yeah, I'm pretty tough. Met what All right?
Bro?
Look at this card right here?
Look at me.
I'm dancing in an iron Man suit. I look fucking red.
I'm I'm doing my little two step, you know what I mean. They call that the Trump shuffle.
Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back, and we're back. We're back, all right. So that you may have seen this story that AI police reports are here to save the police from doing police work. Basically, it's only a matter of time, you know. It was only a matter of time until the two of the shittier things on the planet, AI and policing joined forces. In this case, the AI helps them churn out recaps of incidents using bodycam footage, thus sparing the officers from having
to pen lengthy reports. And the cops like in talking about it, the ones that they're like interviewing for these puff pieces on the technology are like, I can't write for shit, I'm basically an idiot, and this thing made me like it. This is a quote from one of the stories. It was a better report than I could have ever written, and it was one hundred percent accurate. It flowed better, better than I could have ever written.
That's first of all, it's supposed to be a rough draft, Like it's not supposed to replace the reports that you're writing the post. They give you a rough draft that you then like work backwards on.
Nah, n I gotta cut corners and how like.
It's called draft one, by the way, that's the name of the technology as draft one. And he's like, this is the goddamn best thing, best version of a report I've ever seen.
And how important are these like police reports in terms of, you know, like when people intersect with the justice system, Like is it how vital are these and how much like how much room is there for you know, dubious shit to pop into these kinds of police reports?
All right, to be clear, they're already largely made of dubious shit. Like let's let's start from there, Okay. The things, these things vary really really wildly from place to place. So when I started out as a public Defender. I was in Santa Clara County, California, in which the police
are trained to write reports. So when a thing happens and the police are there, they'll like write down what they saw, and then the second cop there will write down what he saw, and then they talked to a witness and they write down with the witness set and all and all you get this packet, which is really really helpful if we are going to believe that the legal system is in any way about finding truth right, Like, you want to have detailed accounts from the people who
were there about what they what they heard, and what they saw. I then went out to New York to work at Bronx Defenders, and that's when I learned that the NYPD is essentially like really really really good at not writing stuff down. When you get an NYPD discovery packet, it's like a whole bunch of pages, but all of the pages have the same one line copy pasted on them. It's like, at the time and place of occurrence the incident did occur, yell.
Anything, and that is when the suspected perpetrator did occur onto the occurrence and it happened that at that moment in the geographical location in question. Heretofore, it's just like, yeah, we could have a.
Whole conversation about like the police attraction to big words. They don't quite use it. You want to have a great time. They've got the defense attorney ask a cop on the stand what furtive means? They love saying everything a furtive movements, But like, what what is what is furtive to you?
Now?
Indeed, this whole situation is furtive. So when you get to a place where essentially nothing is written down you, you create a systemic problem, which is, in order for me to get any information to protect an accused person and protect their US constitutional rights, I'm going to need to create a legal process to find out more about what this CoP's claims actually are, which means I may have to demand hearings that I don't actually need, Like
I might have to file suppression hearings that I don't actually need, just to get the cop on the witness stand just so I can cross examine them about what the heck they're saying they saw and did. So it's really really really inefficient, and it's bad for truth and it's bad for justice. Like it's very very bad for any semblance of accuracy in the system, and it causes
massive delays. So all of this is to say bad discovery is a huge driver of our system being inept at creating any semblance of truth.
Right.
It's also like you have to remember that police writing reports. There's kind of a double edged sword here because police get a ton of overtime out of writing reports if they make an arrest at the end of their shift and they get to sit at their desk for the next three hours like carefully inscribing documents with at the time and place of occurrence the event and again very incursive. Yeah, they make a ton of overtime doing that. So I think I mean when I say a ton, I mean
like millions and millions. Wherever you are in the country. You should google who the highest paid public employee in your jurisdiction was, and there's like a decent chance it was a cop who made a lot of overtime a few years ago. It was like a port authority cop in New York City.
Wow.
Yeah, just like over a million bucks in overtime. And so when I think about what AI would do to this process, I think of a couple of things. One, it's less accurate because it's not giving you the police officers impressions of what happened. It's giving you the AIS impressions of what happened. And this is even assuming the AI doesn't hallucinate, which, as we know, like AIS make stuff up all the time.
Yeah.
So yeah, Like, if you're going to totally hand over your faith to a robot to tell you what happened in a video and abandon the idea that human perception is necessary to interpret what happened in a video, you're also leaving by the side of the road things that I might need to know about the cops ability to
perceive about what the cop was focused on. What like, For example, in a police report, let's say the whole report is written about I don't know somebody's way of driving a car in a DUI case, and none of it's about the fact that when the person got totally furtively furtively across you know, when they get out of the car, maybe everything they did at that point was fine. Maybe they're talking, fine, walking fine, don't have any sort
of symptoms of intoxication. If the entire report is about the driving, then I get to cross examine the cop on, like why why didn't you talk about what happened after that?
What?
Like their omissions can be really really important to a jury to decide who's lying, who's telling the truth. You take the human perception out of that, and you take away this fundamental thing. Our system is designed to have twelve people tell you if another person is lying, right, twelve people can't tell you if an ai is lying or hallucinating. I mean, it's just it takes us even farther from the system having utility. And I get that in the system we are going to consistently prioritize the
efficiency of punishment over the semblance of truth. But especially with the involvement of Axon, which has a grotesque history, I'd be more than happy to Yeah, this is like five alarm fire.
Wait, you're saying a company that used to be called Taser.
I like that they went from Taser obviously like trying to cover up the fact that they're the company that invented the taser that for some reason as a negative connotation with it to Axon is like so fucking aggressive.
Well it's also you know, that's a nerve. Axon is what the electrical current runs down that stimulates the next nerve cell. So it's still like we're gonna zapia. It's just we're gonna zapA for people who took ap bio.
That's right exactly. It's like the version of using furtive.
They're like, what if we just classed it up, I would just throw in the additional thing and this might be like not this might be a controversial statement, but I personally don't want to get like it. So the CEO of Axon, who is a company behind this AI technology, we'll talk about other stuff there behind brag that the AI spares cops from the tedious work of spending half
their day doing data entry. I don't want police to be like out roaming the streets more with their guns, like ready to get like suspicious about whatever comes across their plate while they're sufficiently bored, Like I feel like this is a job that we want to have a healthy amount of like downtime where they're reflecting on what they've done and like having to think about that and account for it. And this technology seems to be designed to like what if the police were like even more
gas and less breaks like built into it. What if it was just more they don't really even have to think about it because the machine's there to like just document what they did out you know, yeah, you know exactly liss policing aka just like out there fucking shit up more of the time.
I think the other thing that's really interesting too is like to your point, Emily, you know, the overtime is where a lot of budgets go and a lot of people they make their they make that money. We're like, how does that cop have that fucking car and like a boat and all this other stuff. It's like, yeah, dude, the overtime's wacky that they're never like this will actually
help cut down on costs. They're more just like, dude, it's gonna help the cops, dude, so they don't have to be bored at work, you know, and like you think the way to sell it to people who might be more progressive, like guess what, man, this could actually save a lot of money because now they don't have the time to do, you know, claim as much overtime. But again, that's that's part of the appeal. So they'll just be like, no, man, it just makes their job
easier so they can keep you the citizen safe. All right, next question.
You're right, though, it's also sort of exposing this terrible choice.
Right.
We have set up policing policy so that the vast majority of police time is spent on things most people don't actually care about. So when you ask the people what are they like scared of, it's like burglary, robbery,
sexual assault, murder. And when you look at how police spend their time, the vast majority of it is on like noise complaints and unfounded calls and like somebody was peeing outside and trespassing, and sometimes on what I sort of think of as like police manufactured crime, which is like convincing someone with a substance use problem to score some drugs and also score for the undercover who will then arrest them for a felony.
R Right.
And the reason we don't want them on the street more is because they are out there on the street, armed, dangerous, and not investigating the things that people really care about. If you look at clearance rates, a lot of people don't know what clearance rates are, but it's the rate at which police are able to close cases. And in any jurisdiction, you can search for your local clearance rates, you be like, all right, how many rape cases are my local police even closing.
Got the most places.
Thirteen to twenty percent. This is a whole other feminist soapahow.
Is totally across the entire country. There's like at least ninety that they've closed in the past decade.
Seriously, and that's because it's a policy choice. It's a choice from police leadership about what they're going to dedicate resources to. And if, yeah, if the answer was, okay, they're not going to spend their time writing trespassing reports, but instead we're going to dedicate real efforts to how about wage theft or large scale pollution of poisoning entire towns.
We're going to set the cops on that. If they were going to investigate crimes of the powerful against the citizenry instead of writing reports, I might feel differently about it, But I don't think that's the plan.
Yeah, never has been. Yeah, But I do just want to get a little bit more into the history of acxllon. So they were taser. They made their initial money with selling tasers, and then body cams. When that became the solution to police brutality corruption, they went with body cams, and they basically have a monopoly for which they've been sued. They made four hundred and sixty one million dollars in
the first quarter of twenty twenty four alone. They're also the same company that made headlines for endeavoring to solve school shootings with Taser equipped drones. That plan was paused when the majority of Axon's ethics board resigned in protests. But I think probably the most relevant and also, like I mentioned, their CEO gives speeches via remote iPad. I use an avatar man glued to the front of a motorcycle helmet.
They also created excited delirium in parts all the bos that are due to.
That, Yes, so I wanted to talk about that because I also think like that feels very relevant to this, because this is them getting involved in police narrative and how police justify what they're doing, and they were involved.
You actually have a great video on this on your Twitter, Emily, where you talk talk about how about their role in the creation of and the proliferation of the term excited delirium, which is something we covered a while back, but I think it's always worth kind of refreshing people's memory of what is excited delirium.
So excited delirium is a made up medical diagnosis that was originally invented in a sort of predictably racist way in Miami many decades ago, where a doctor claimed that people were dying of excited delirium, the sort of state of mania that caused them to behave really erradically and aggressively and dangerously and then they perish, They just expire. And it turned out that many of the women who are originally alleged to have excited delirium had actually been
killed by a serial killer. But this idea that people could become so worked up that they are dangerous and then they die was seized upon by police because in police encounters where there is a need to justify use of force, it is very useful for them to claim that the person they used force against was dangerously worked up and had this medical thing where they became a risk to everybody's safety and they had to be taste and then oh, when they died from a heart attack,
it wasn't because they got a massive vault of electricity. It was because they died of excited delirium. So excited delirium, which is not accepted by the way by doctors, Like medical associations are like, that's totally not a thing. Psychiatrical associations the same deal, not a thing.
But there was that one panel that feel like we're good here. No need to look into the panel or who funded that I think we're good.
No need to look at how many doctors on the panel were put there by Axon to no need to connect this to no need to also think about how much this reduces Axon's liability, right, because if deaths are caused by excited delirium and not caused by a taser, they're not going to have they're not going to be
able to be successfully sued. But it's actually become a serious epidemic in this country of police using excited delirium to justify it not only taser use of force, but the use of paramedics as a weapon, like we said on the Elijah McLain case, where the police had paramedics inject Elijah McLain with a lethal dose of sedatives under
this false diagnosis of excited delirium. So that seed that Axon planted in eight in legitimizing this diagnosis has now caused many many deaths and is continuing to cause deaths around the country.
Right because like they'll hit people like ketamine and stuff, and then like they like I was reading a statistic that a lot of those people end up having to be intubated because it's so severe, and they're like, I don't know, man, wait, the guy was excited. I mean then they also said the same thing about George Floyd too. Yeah, that was like very early on, like it's excited. I don't know what you want to saying, man, let's let's
just move on. So then like so axin for them, it's just more because they're sort of like, hey, we love what you guys do. Let's help out because this also helps justify the use of our products. Like is that sort of like their main motivation and like sort of pushing the excited delirium sort of craze along.
I think it's also a legal shield. I mean, if I'm going to let's say I lose a loved one who was taste and I want a sue Taser for marketing a product as non lethal that was in fact lethal to my loved one. And they say, the medical examiner certificate doesn't say that your loved one died of an electric shock. The medical examiner certificate says excited delirium, So you can't actually get money from us in a civil suit or settlement. So it's it's covering them from
being financially responsible for deaths they cause. And the same thing for police. I mean, if the police are getting the police could be sued in the same case, right, the sue Taser for the device to the police for the action. But either way, if the emmy's certificate says this person died of excited delirium, it's a liability.
Shield, right, yeah, and disproportionately applied to Black men. Yes a lot of the time.
Yes, right, it's a way for the police to justify that they why they're scared.
It's really reliant on racist tropes right on the adultification of black children. First of all, this this child is a risk to me because I'm perceiving this child as older because of racial bias, but also the racist myth of dangerousness of black men in an excited state. I mean, this is totally playing on long term American racist tropes and sanitizing them with a fake medical diagnosis.
Right, yeah, Yeah, it sounds like something you'd get at, like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory excited delirium for.
You and you're like, right, ooh yeah, and that's why, and that's why we had to drown him in the chocolate river.
Yes, exactly.
Just a couple more details about is it Axin Axon. I'm gonna call them Axon because that feels sufficiently violent and sinister. Their CEO is like founding story. I just like founding stories for companies and CEOs because they are like the most full of shit things in America and like most widely believed people, like it was founded in the like everything was founded in a garage. No, it wasn't founded in like their rich dad's second home that
was behind you his first mansion. But anyways, the CEO repeatedly told the story that he started the company because his two high school friends were shot and killed. He played high school football with them. It's just like two guys that he knew about who were like four or five years older than him.
Yeah, they weren't even he never went to high school with him.
Yeah, but like it's just you know, for him, he's like and man like, that's the closest that I like kids who were at your high school before you, is like such a stretch to be like that's also they the workplace culture includes group tasings and tattooing sessions in which employees are inked with corporate insignia. And by the way, the drone thing. While they were like all right fine when their entire ethics board resigned, they did by a
drone company recently. So there it seems like what well their mouth says, all right, fine, god, their their money is saying that they're full, full steam ahead on the taser drones front. Yeah, so just all sorts of wild shit there, like truly the most dystopian, like a bunch of tattoo branded like corporate people, guy with motorcycle helmet, iPad face, like.
Right, like knowing murder victims. Yeah, it's all I mean, they're in a way, it all does feel very appropriate. That then it's like and now that's what I like to do is help other people lie about stuff and I get to make money. And the institutional investment in this company is wild too. Oh yeah, it's like because they know they're like wait, how much they make in Q one? Okay? Yeah, yeah, but just generally I just.
Want to like kind of get your take, Emily. There was recently this New York Times article about a The headline is what a group opposed to police blow the whistle on its founder, And it was like this AI app that was like, we're gonna re like create an alternative to the police by taking people's you know, complaints and routing them to like some of these other police alternatives.
It turned out to be like the founder just like didn't have the ability to pull it off and was spending some of the money on like clothing and vacations that you know, like that I'm drifting. Sure you can find scams in any nonprofit like category, but the way the New York Times writes about it and like frames this article is that whole argument of like, oh, you think the police are bad at their jobs, Let's see what you say when you're being robbed, is like basically
the whole thesis of the argument. And what it comes down to if you read the article is like one person on the team is like, I didn't want to turn him over to the police because I, like he's a black man and I fear it would happen to him. And then another person is like, yeah, but I did turn him over to the attorney general because I know that, like you don't usually call the police on white collar crime because they won't do shit. So anyways, like the
attorney general is working on investigation. It might be civil, it might be criminal, but the way they framed it is so much like based on this bad faith reading of any criticism of the police. And it just feels generally like the tone of the mainstream media and the Democratic Party recently is like, boy, those protests in twenty twenty were you know, unpopular. Let's never fight again, babe to the police, and it's like, I don't know, it's
just so fucking frustrating. Like and meanwhile, police killings haven't have just like stayed the same or gone up, so like where where are we with this? Like what you know, there were some programs that were funded that like worked really well, Like Denver had a controlled trial of a program that provides housing subsidies to people at risk of
homelessness and found a forty percent reduction and arrest. Like there's all these cool examples they get like dashed off really quickly in a New York Times article that has a counterpoint for everything that might suggest that, like there could be alternatives to our fucking terrible idea of a system that if you've been to any other country in the world, you're like, oh, wow, why do we do
it the way we do it? But yeah, I'm just curious to hear your thoughts on like where we're at in our conversation in the mainstream.
So first of all, we're really lucky in this one way, which is that we are overrun with cool solutions. Like I'm writing a book right now, Like my book it's coming out in twenty twenty six. It's going to be a layperson's guide to the criminal legal system in all of its horribleness, and also solutions, Like I'm going to two thirds of the book on problems, and then I'm going to present a whole bunch of solutions. I had
originally intended to write one chapter on solutions. I'm now at like page eighty eight of one hundred of all of these solutions because there are just so many fantastic things happening that have better data than the status quo, Like we don't have data strongly suggesting that police are
a feasible preventative mechanism police can disappear problems. They can take people and put them in spaces where they are no longer visible to the general public, and where they may be then violently harmed in ways that make them more likely to engage in crime in the future. So police may be sort of like temporarily making a problem disappear in a way that long term makes it worse.
We have that data. You have a ton of data on the Star program in Denver, or Cahoots in Oregon, or you know, other alternatives to police popping up around the country. Massive public support for this. Most voters would love to have mental health first responders, and actually most cops, if you ask them, are like, yes, I would like to also no longer be treated like I'm a trained social worker, because I'm not one, and I would like
that to not be part of my job. What's really what bugs me about the perspective you just described right, which is like, Oh, these people who don't want to use the police, what happens when they need the police? Well, okay, when we on election day hear from voters that they are scared to go to their local polling place because there are proud boys outside the polling place intimidating potential voters.
No one is saying, well, it's your problem. If you don't like the Proud Boys, don't you just have a way to work at No. We say, okay, this is a problem because people have a legitimate fear. It is a legitimate fear of an organized effort which is intimidating and threatening harm to the general public. And because the general public is afraid, we the government should probably take
action to protect the general public. The blind spot with regard to when that organized harmful force is a governmental body is obscene. So by blaming people who are like, hey, I have I'm nervous about calling the police on my black boss, because black men get killed by police at ignordinate rates, and also not to mention that subject to illegitimate prosecutions and overcharging and charge stacking and longer sentences
and the incredible damage even of a pretop process. And by the way, I'm saying this with great care because here's a person who's accused and has not been found guilty of anything. So really weighing, hey, do I want to subject this person to all of these risks or is there a better way for me to seek accountability?
And truth without those risks of lethality, injustice, ruinousness. That's a fantastic thing for an ordinary citizen to be considering in any government that doesn't say, you know what, I'm going to consider that with you, and I'm going to acknowledge that your fears are real and the problems you highlight are real and work on these problems to come up with something better. Is abrogating its duty to the public in favor of the optics of being pro cop.
Right, Yeah, yeah, the pro cop turn that's happened in
like the Democratic Party. I mean it's not that they were anti but like, just I saw you retweet an article or a thread about how the platform changed, because I was like, I was definitely looking at a lot of the I was really interested in the foreign policy stuff that was in the platform, and I was like, oh, wow, like you just a ton of one eighties here compared to twenty twenty, and then reading sort of the excerpts on what was happening with policing was also very like, oh,
we're really embracing this thing about being like, let's not talk about the death penalty anymore. Let's I know, we were talking about choke holds. Let's like really tamp that down.
And it really is wild how much it's become because I think obviously this whole election is set up to be we have a prosecutor and a felon, and so because of that framing, we're going to really lean into a lot of this, like the like the prosecutorial aspects of this and also be make it feel like yeah, man, like the we're the cops again and that's it's okay.
That was just kind of like, I mean, I was very cynical in twenty twenty when I saw this sort of like uptaking me, like, yeah, we really need to do something, and that's the most that will happen. I will say that we need to do something. But now to see it like really formally stripped out, you're like, oh, right,
right right, this was never a real concern. But I'm how do you sort of perceive that sort of like shift now or at least that now that you know, even in their written platforms, it's just sort of like, yeah, those are those are those are problems, but you know we can address them at some point later.
I mean, the death penalty thing, I really don't get because Harris has been against the death penalty for a lot of her career, was criticized as ag for upholding the law instead of acting on a moral objection that she has to death penalty which is super expensive and has resulted in the death of a lot of innocent people because our system gets it wrong a lot, because of things like junk science and bad Eyewinness IDAs and
insufficient funding of public defense. So let's just like cabin This is like, I don't I really don't get the Democratic Party stepping away. I'm opposing the death penalty. I think polling on it has not changed dramatically, Like Americans are not like rabidly pro death penalty now, So I really don't get it. But here's what I'll say about the prosecutor versus pellent thing. It's being treated as a sort of vicious backing a violent force against crime. But
it doesn't have to be. Prosecutors are unique among lawyers. Rarely will you hear me say nice things about prosecutors. I'm going to now say some nice things about prosecutors. They have an ethical duty to do justice. That is a unique ethical duty. No other kind of lawyer has that duty. Now, I just got done teaching a course to some really talented law students, and in one of my exercises, I made half of them be defense layers
and half of them be prosecutors. And I told the prosecutors in a bail argument, you had this unique ethical duty. You have to do justice, and not just justice for the people who were harmed in a crime or who you think of as part of the community. You have to do justice for every That includes the accused person and their family and their kids and their loved ones, that includes everybody. When you talk for the people, you
represent everybody. And when I told them that their assignment would be graded on how well they were able to consider everyone's needs safety and justice, they got up there on the record and did radically different things than I've ever seen a prosecutor do in real life. And largely we're thinking of restorative solutions and root causes and like how they could heal a community instead of just punishing
and disappearing a person. If what prosecutor means is somebody who is enshrined with governmental authority to do justice for everyone in the community, including people who might be opposed to that very prosecutor, I think it could actually be a very powerful encapsulation of the best version of a leader, right, a person who's going to take this seriously and care for all of our well being and yes, stand up to abuses of people with less power, which is really
what we would want prosecutors to stand up to the most. I think certainly it's not being done that way. I think the rhetoric sucks. I think half of Americans have had a loved one locked up. I just think that the rhetoric doesn't have to change. If it was made smarter. In order to be smarter, though, the policy would not
have to shift towards tough on crime. It would have to shift towards evidence based, root cause thinking and solutions that shift us towards something better than our shitty status quo.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And now it just feels like, now let's embrace the status quo and bring it closer and closer and closer. But yeah, that's a yeah, such a the whole time, I'm like, wow, it Like the thing that really makes you think a lot too, is like, we have so many people who are prosecutors that ascended politics, and that's why, Like when Kantazi Brown Jackson was like the first public defender who had sat on the Supreme Court. I was like, is that true? Oh my god, oh writ.
Large the federal bench is largely I actually read. I wrote a really mean email today, guys like my local representative, who I love, is like moving to run for the state a different state office, and he endorsed. It's a two candidate race. I live in a place with major housing issues. There's just not enough housing for people, cost of housing or too high. And one of the candidates is a housing organizer, a local housing organizer, and the
other candidate is a prosecutor. Guess who've got the addressment the prosecutor? And I wrote them a note being like, like, come on, this housing is the issue of our region. If you are going to make prosecution once again a blind path to power, you at least have to justify why you are overlooking someone whose life work is in the zone we most need. And the thing that bugs me about it the most is that it tells young people.
I mean, in my work, I work with public defenders all over the country, and I help them expand the practic their practice and expand what they can offer their clients. And I place a lot of new professionals, usually young people, into jobs in public defense, and as they start out their careers, I'm looking at how they think of their
career trajectory. They're doing great things, like I'm going to learn all about how fucked up America's public systems are, and I'm going to carry that knowledge into my own change making career.
Right.
But to everybody else, the vast majority of young people, future lawyers, who are not like these dedicated, brilliant advocates, they think, Okay, I'll be a prosecutor for like two years and then I'll get my elected office. If I just incarcerate young black men and separate families and crush people's dreams and lives and maybe cause a few deaths, then I could be a state senter.
Right. I've been vetted right, and I've done.
The work right, and it's we shouldn't. We shouldn't make change making power reliant on willingness to her mothers.
Yeah, 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 needs your validation.
Folks. I hope, hope you're having a great weekend and I will talk to you Monday. Bye.