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 Yeah.
We are thrilled to be joined once again in air third seat by a writer, one of the best podcast hosts and EPs doing it. You know him from stuff they don't want you to know, ridiculous history news series Missing in Arizona. Please welcome back to the show.
It's Ben Bower.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, feels so good to be back. A little bit off kilter here, I was coming in at an eight point three out of ten. I thought I had a good Aka. I was gonna go with soup Gode because I thought that was like a nice things. Yeah, I thought was a cool but then I got I got soup.
Cooked, nothing cooked, and I made you watch me do it. Yeah too' ak it's all slow down, soup cold. I wasn't doing a super big steakcake.
Are you?
What's your favorite soup band? For the record, because we are pro soup on the show. Despite what Jesse Waters has to say about eight out of ten things he says most of the time. But yeah, yeah, no, I've heard it. I've heard it.
Uh yeah, I gotta be honest. I like a fuck, I'm a sucker for being a dirt bag too. I'm a sucker for that that canned denty moore beef stew.
Whoa you really fun legend?
Yo.
Whenever I see that, I'm like, Yo, this is for somebody who's like a Civil War reenactor, but you're.
You.
Really. Every time I see that label, it's like hunt because it's so it's I feel like that label has not changed and decades that whatever I see and I'm like, that has to be the same can I saw when I was like ten years old.
Yeah, that's the thing. The secret to Dancymore beef stew is it never goes bad because it never starts off good, you know what I mean.
Because it never was beef stew. It's not.
I mean, yeah, it's weird that they don't have air quotes around. Yeah yeah, yeah, but uh but yeah, maybe it's nostallgia. But I'll tell you, I loving if I actually made some I make a lot of like soup with the leftovers because I'm too cheap to you know, throw stuff out if.
If it's all in salt water and make a soup. Baby, Yeah yeah, yeah.
But man, I was listening to the recent episode with some strong opinions about soup. That's kind of been an ongoing theme and now in honor if you guys and Blake and your buddy from earlier, I'm not drinking with a straw.
Okay, good, My buddy from earlier being Jesse Waters.
Yeah, your little friend.
Yeah yeah, your boy, yo, Come get your boy, Jesse Waters.
What I do want.
To So on the last episode, we talked about how Jesse Water says it's not mainly to eat soup because you purs your lips when you blow on it.
Not the way and not the way that I do.
Miles pointed out that I just pour it onto a plate and then slide it back and.
Burn myself with it like a real.
But I was talking about how my mother in law who is now living with us as well as my father in law, and it's been wonderful, but she she's always complimented me for liking soup, and then the other but the other day was like, because it's very rare for a man.
To like soup. Yeah, did you get to the bottom of that?
So I mentioned it. She was like, oh yeah, I saw it on the ground. Nice and she was like, I saw you want to keep my name out of your mouth. She was very touch that we were talking about that, and she hit me over the weekend jack Korean proverb A man who likes soup will get a fortune and blessings from his wife.
So whoa, Okay that's gonna be that's pretty good news. Yeah yeah. Oh so for her, it's just like, oh, you a good man, You a good soup eating man. Yeah, you're a good basic ass soupy. You're a family, You're a family.
You know what. I think the way it started is that it's like easy to make and so like by taking the pressure off and just letting put a soup on and let it boil, and you know.
It's so gender normal. Yeah, yeah, exactly. The husband who cares not how much his wife hath toiled in kitchen shall receive blessings.
Really, this is why I'm a fucking hero. I've been saying it for a long time.
Everybody, you know, so lucky, My beautiful, brilliant wife is so oh you to have me because I like soup.
I would also not to get too conspiratorial, but is it possible that your mother in law may have manufactured Korean proverb just to give you a win?
She just sees me sadly eating soup, and she's like, this guy needs a fucking win. The way you eat soup is really good, and then like, it's so it's so sad that like the compliment she gives me completely made up. I talk about it on my podcast, God So Sad. Yeah, that's entirely possible. Sometimes sometimes your boy needs a win. And I'm not talking about Jesse Waters. So we do like to ask our guests what is something from your search history that's revealing about who you are? Okay?
I asked my search history. If one piece of cheese and a pack of slices Mazza relative cheeses has mold on it, does that make them all bad?
Great question that has come up in my mind many times and that I have never I've never bothered to google it.
I will tell you that much.
I depending on how much I want the cheese, I will either throw the one piece away or throw the whole thing away. But it's totally dependent on like how bad I need cheese in that mine.
I know I was going to say, it's dependent on like how much money is in your bank account at that ye. Yeah, it's like what I am able to throw a whole pack of cheese away. It's like you don't care about your bank account, your neighbor's bank accounts. No one cares. But like if you're like, oh, I can just eat around it on this slice, like I can just cut out the bad part of this slice, then you're like, you're down bad. I'm so sorry.
So you're taking just the mold off the one slice?
Yeah, I mean, I mean gets to that point, you know what I mean.
I mean smell test obviously, right, we're using the smell test. If all the cheese smell bad, were.
Probably victors asking if they're individually wrapped, And I'm sorry, Victory, that's a different tax bracket than what we're talking about. If your chesus individually wrapped.
Talking about craft singles, Victor, So now I understand what craft.
We're talking about. If it's hot, it's melting together into one big.
Right.
I mean, typically I do the partner test where I give it to my husband and watch him eat it and just stare.
At him for a while, just put him under a round the clock observation for a couple of minutes.
That's what husbands are for. My dad would always eat the leftover bad stuff.
Up.
We'd be like I don't want it. I don't want it, mom, and he'd be like, Okay, give it to me, fine, baby. So I had to be like super for sure, for sure, Yeah, no, we can take it.
We can take a little bit of I will.
Say I haven't told especially for like bread, the spores spread and you should toss it. But I'm also a big fan of like eating questionable stuff and then wondering if I have IBS for the rest of my life. So I'm a huge fan of that.
Then you have something to blame your IBS on besides just your anxiety.
Hot girl, And that's why I have IBS and not. I just like, don't pay attention to the mold in my bread.
That's right.
I like that.
We just rushed past, Like did Google have a satisfying answer of on this question?
It actually said everything that you guys just said. It said you can either discard the moldy slice.
It was thanks Google. I didn't know.
Yeah, it is.
I wasted gallons of water.
You're throwing away gallons of water to figure out if you should throw away a slice of cheese.
You definitely don't need to throw away craft, Like if one gets moldy, you don't have to throw away.
The We're not talking about craft singles here. We're talking about whole foods.
Organic.
Singles.
Oh okay, sorry, sorry, I'm aware.
Of You're like, I don't understand what's other cheese?
What is something you think is underrated? Alison?
I think I think hats as a show of femininity is underrated. I think fems wearing hats is underrated. Why did I immediately go to like church lady hats? I feel like that is very Yeah.
Yeah no, I mean like like I.
Have like bucket, like these buckets, but just like like a camp cap.
Yeah what do you call that? Justin a six panel ave and we call it a camp hat? I think, yeah, yeah yeah, wait, So what about uh what about the trend of like big brown felt hats, that that was a trend?
I was grown felt hats. I don't even know that people.
No, no, no, not like the Pharrell Vivian Westwood gigantic hat but like, you know, how like you see those like pumpkin spice latte type fall white women photos and everybody got like the big felt brown like you know, the big brown brimmed hat.
Yeah, cowboy hat yeah yeah yeah.
Coast Christian Yeah, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yeah exactly base dope. Did you ever wear backwards?
Yeah?
But I like to wear to consider it, I was like, how far are we going?
I've never Yeah.
The lesbian in me was like, it's not practical to wear it backwards, because then how am I getting the shade?
You know? That's not what?
Yeah?
Yeah, but yeah I would wear it backwards.
Okay, all right, just for the record, just want to get everything her miles.
Yeah here agenda.
Rock like this to sh like I would do Fresh Prince.
It's like, I'm gay, but I'm not gay.
I'm gay, but I'm not nineties derogatory gay.
Yeah you.
Gay?
What mcley is something that you think is overrated?
Matching socks? Nobody sees them. You don't have to match your socks. It's all good. Just pick any sock from the sock drawer and go on with your day. I like, I never match I never matched my socks.
How different are we talking? Like different colors, just different different of socks. Like do you have one dress sock one sweat sock?
Sure?
Yeah, but what you don't match is like or what you like. Even if the colors and styles don't match, the lengths have to match. So it'll annoy me if it's like one really short sock one longer sock, So I have to match the lengths. But that's it.
There's still something, there's still something you can't You're not you're not full chaos.
Well, yeah, I was thinking of like an ankle sock and like.
A big dress sock. That might be, that might be tough.
I did that the other day, and I gotta tell you, it may be so uncomfortable.
You have unmatched and genuinely.
Because so many, such a high percentage of my socks are just Costco socks. So it was medium gray and light gray, and I was like, everyone can tell, everybody knows.
Everyone knows about the secret shame happening under my shoe, right, so stupid.
I understand I'm deeply stupid, and you are correct, but wow, it really I could barely handle it the whole time, just white knuckling it through my day, like, no one's looking at my ankles.
Right, So is your sock drawer like are at the laundry stage? Are you not even trying to match? Is it just like a salad of different individual socks.
It's it's a it's a salad, it's a soupo pourri, it's a it's.
All of the above.
Yeah, no, no, there's nothing nothing, there's no effort goes into matching it.
It sounds liberating.
Yeah, this really will shave. This is a good like life hack. This will shave so much time to save your grind.
Yeah.
Yeah, I have socks that like half of my children's sock drawer is just like unmatched socks that I've like kind of given up on. Those are so little, though, children's socks are so small, and they I'm pretty sure they get sucked into. And I think I've said this before on the show and Miles was like, what are you talking about? You sound crazy, man, this idea that socks get like sucked into like an intake in the
washing machine. But then I've had people like kind of back me up that that can happen, and that like there's especially small children's socks we'll just get inhaled by laundry machines.
There was this episode of The Family Guy that I saw, probably like I don't know, twenty years ago, where the back of the laundry machine is Narnia with like a half fond half you know, human creature taking single socks into the abyss. And so anyway, with the children's socks about really little ones, I completely agree, like there's just there's no way, Like I buy socks like every other week because where did they all go? So I don't match them for myself, but I do match them for my child.
Yeah, well you're I'm the opposite because I'm a narcissistant and I don't care what they look like.
My children are.
Very sensitive about their socks. They're like they don't first of all, they don't like to wear them if they're even like if they've been wearing them for like an hour and then come back in the house, they want them off immediately because they're like they're dirty, now get them off of me. So very so the sock regimen has to be disciplined in my household with these little fuckers.
Now, how often have I said that?
Under my back? All Right, let's uh, let's take a quick break and we'll come back and we'll keep talking about the debate on Tuesday night?
Was that already Tuesday? All right, we'll be right.
And we're back. My voice just want a little Chewbacca there, like, yeah, little little which is kind of interesting because it a little wooky, a little wacky, a little chewbaccay, a little cisquatch.
All right, So I.
Just want to get this the way, okay, me outside the I have generally so you cover conspiracy theories on your podcast stuff they don't want you to know. A type of conspiracy theory that has generally turned my brain into the off position, into the not listening mute position, has been anything involving cryptozoology, the study of like mythical animals that people wish existed or like are really convinced exists, such as sasquatch. I still remember there was a live
episode of the Cracked podcast around Halloween. We were doing like tell us your Spookyest Story, and friend of the show, Ryan Singer, who is a very funny comedian and also like into all manners of like trippy shit, came on and he like had my ass. He was telling me this story about like people disappearing in state parks, and he was like plotting it out on maps, and he
was like, you know, telling the story. And then he got to the like what was clearly the climax, and I was like, where is this going to go?
How do I not know about this?
And he was like, and before the people disappeared, everyone in the area reported smelling ammonia, which is often associated with bigfoots. And I was immediately like a fucking balloon deflating. I was just like, come on. But then he like talked about it. I kind of was on board, but it takes a lot for me to like get the whole sasquatch thing. But it's definitely like it's not going anywhere.
There's a new indie film, Sasquatch Sunset that's getting a lot of attention with Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keo, who are like indie darlings, you know, Like it's it's entered the culture from like reality TV and you know, mainstream silliness like Harry and the Henderson's. But like now it's like getting into like the like this is hip and cool and interesting because like you know, I'm like let's give it another look.
Well, there's even today right, like there's like news because some janky coin like making company has just launched the Bigfoot Discovery coin, Like that's still a thing today. They're like, yeah, launch it now on Monday. So on Monday, September ninth, twenty twenty four, on over the weekend, there was Louisiana
had their very first Louisiana Bigfoot Festival. Because now it seems like rather than it being mostly like a Northwestern phenomenon, like it's we're seeing it in the Bayou and in the South bast there's a swampy oh yeah, and that is James combed out there when he forgot laundry. That's that's a real that's a real Bigfoot. And you know, like Expedition Bigfoot had a new season just dropped like this like in this last month. It does not go away.
And I too, like Jack, because I see it a lot on like the internet, even like on Reddit, there's always like some new Bigfoot thing. I'm like, come on, y'all, like really, come on, what is it? What? What the why? Why? Where is the poop?
Just critically, where is like for an animal of that size or primate of that size, Where where is the poop? The uh? We know for a fact, Just to back this up, we know for a fact. Cryptozoology often considered
a pseudoscience. But part of the reason things considered cryptids do later enter into the scientific record is because Western scientists got stuff wrong and they rocked up, you know, just hey, stranger in town, like we said, and they said, ooh the celia long thought to be extinct for millions of years. Look at you tear in the heart of the jungle and then and.
Do appreciate you now speaking in your regular voice, stopping the yea from our modern era and from America.
Yeah, I'm merely a British observer of your American Civil War, the chaotic. Oh you're a British Civil War Okay, got it, you.
Didn't Yeah, yeah, yeah, small demographic.
The steal secrets came from England to be oh, I'm watching this this is you know.
They did used to watch it as a spectator sport, the civil nicks and like just watch the battlefield.
So maybe mass media has saved us from society.
Ship.
But uh, but yes, like the like the Ceilcanth is a great example thought extinct by Western science, and then when it was quote unquote rediscovered, everybody living in that fucking area of the world was like, yeah, this is the ugly fish. It's been there forever. It's just we don't eat it. It doesn't taste good either. I don't know why you guys are making a big deal.
How would what do you call it?
The ceiling, the ceiling can, ceiling fan ceiling. I did write ceiling fan in and I was like, what's he talking about? Ceiling fans?
Fish? It's a code phrase se c e l C O E l A c A n t H.
And you know, no judgment, it's just not the prettiest fish.
Yeah, it looks like it looks like like like an old dog that's got like you know, skin tags and stuff. You know. Yeah, but that's like the fish, Like this is this thing exactly.
And so that kind of stuff informs what people think about with crypto zoology, Like everybody everybody wants to have some sort of encounter with the wild, right, everybody wants to be Promethean. Like I found the thing. It was rumor, uh, And I think to the question about why bigfoot is so fascinating to people, it's really we're talking about this ancient preoccupation that a lot of civilizations had with the idea of something that is almost but not quite us.
We don't know if human beings ever met at actual Gigantapithecus was the largest primate. It's ten feet tall, weighed over five hundred pounds projected. So it's maybe I don't know, it's very controversial, but it's like maybe possible that some version of humans ran into that and that made the game of telephone. But I would suggest to you guys that the reason people are so invested in this bigfoot thing is because it's one a way to explain things right.
Two it is tantalizing because the way that the argument is constructed, just like UFO arguments, never really delivers, right, Or like what's that show? The Oak Island money Pit, the brand like five thousand seasons. They always found something that could be something.
So I think the longer it doesn't deliver, the more strength and the more intrigue it gets because you never get a satisfying resolution, and so it just builds and builds. It's like a JJ Abrams show, you know.
Right, So like I talked to extensively talk to people who are in that community, and they're very for the most part, very kind, you know, and they're not they're not getting mad at me if I ask what I feel are logical questions like, Okay, if there's a primate this size, and assuming it's a primate, right, then where if it is if a good comp is like a gorilla, then where's the bigfoot nest? Where do they sleep? What's their territory, what's their range?
Subscriber?
Yeah, what are their subscriptions? What are their Star Wars names?
Right?
Well, I like the Sasquatch Sunset I read like a brief plot synopsis, and it feels like the Sasquatch in that film are like fairly like. They don't seem very advanced in their like reasoning, which I feel like any version of Bigfoot would have to be for it to have like stayed off grid this lines would have to have at least invented poop bags, real sleeper poof Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's I mean, that's a great point because also, all right, so I did ask people about the poop right, and admittedly I was a little overly diplomatic about it. I was saying, well, you know, a lot of our listeners in the crowd tonight are probably gonna wonder. And every time I asked this, I would get really good energy back that people would say, like one guy who started a museum here in l a j, Georgia, well it doesn't matter, just believe me. It's a real
place and the Yeah. I asked him about the poop and he said, yeah, that's a great question. Ben. Here's what I think. M what if they're extra dimensional?
Oh wow, yeah, immediately that's the way where it goes.
Change the goalposts. Yeah, yeah, they don't poop, bro, they poop in another dimension.
They do that poop in their dimension, in a pocket poop dimension.
Yeah, I love that, just so quickly, just reflexively. They might be interdimensional. I always thought the reason why Americans had an obsession with Bigfoot was the decline of the white working class. Now is there is there anything to that?
Uh?
No?
That was like I was reading this article about this guy who wrote a book, and like, apparently it comes up a lot, but in a way where people are like, what the fuck is this guy talking about it? Like is it They're saying, it's a lot of dudes who like just sort of like yearn for the past and being out and like camping and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, like it sounds like people who have enough money to go camping for long periods with infrared gear probably aren't the kind of working
class people that they might be yearning for. But that is interesting.
It started in like the Pacific Northwest around the same time that like grunge was being created because of the like collapse of the middle class there, and now it's like moving down to the rust belt. There's that's an interesting theory. I don't know exactly how this.
Author was not articulating it in that kind of way. It felt very like maga adjacent like coment, like yeah, because like white working men are just like the villain. Now that's why we like okay okay. I feel like it could have been maybe a little bit more nuanced, but the take felt a little bit all over it.
There is a sociological aspect, right, because we're talking about communities of people who believe in or are somehow taken with a certain idea. And it's interesting too. You see
it sometimes in recent UFO discourse. Right, there is an underlying sociological factor like a lot of this stuff kind of trends to the right wing, to the political spectrum, and so I think there's a validity to the idea that people are looking back with the rose colored glasses on maybe in America that didn't exist, you know, just sort of this rock wallized version of days past, and they're thinking, yeah, back then, you could just go out in the wild, you know, just right can of soup
in a dream, see some wild animals.
That like John Muorish version of conservation where it's like, don't let native people sully the view. This is just for our white gaze to cast them on untouched beauty, and that's the old times we yearned for. I'm you know, I would love to see a big foot. But they're the least of all the cryptids. I think they're the least that's the least interesting.
Yeah, they kind of like the vanilla ice cream, I guess, yeah, sure. But the the interesting thing here for anybody who is hoping, you know, like I would assume, like all of us hoping to one day see something cool. How awesome would it be for a large animal to be discovered in our lifetime? This is one of the moments in history where it's more likely than it has been at most times in the past, just because human beings are encroaching so much in the places that human beings didn't used to go.
So even you sound like a guy who's like starting off to like sell me on a bigfoot tours. Like, but here's the thing, if we were ever gonna see one, the time is now, because we'd now look, yeah, how much money you got like three hundred dollars, Well, that's exactly what my tour costs. Man, you're in, let's load up.
Yeah, I mean, I think so. In doing additional research to the like state parks mystery, the answer seems to be that state parks and just generally the world is much larger than people can possibly like realize, and so people just wander off a trail and get way more loss than they thought possible in a really short amount of time because the state parks are just like endless and very untamed, and we as modern people are not used to that sort of thing, and so they just
wander off and never find their way back.
There's no federal uh, there's no single federal compilation federal level agency counting disappearances, which which means, yeah, it can be quite a few people year over year, But it also means since that kind of agency doesn't exist, there's no one counting the reappearances. Sure, the guy's like, oh shit, I got kind of stoned. It was my first time camping. Yeah, I'm two days late, but I'm back, you know, now, it's just a disappearance.
I had a one hundred milligram edible like at the trailhead, and I was just actually asleep about four hundred yards in.
But I do think that's the That is one of the good arguments for how something like this could happen is how little of like how massive the world is, yes, and also how little of that we've actually officially like documented and explored. Right, there's obviously the ocean. There's like famous quotes about how little of the ocean is known, and but I mean it's true of a lot of wilderness, like it weren't wasn't the platypus thought to be a crypto a cryptid for a long time.
All right, said with great affection, you guys, I love animals. The platypus looks so funny. Not to be rude, but I see it.
And I'm like, you still don't believe it.
How the fuck did you get here, buddy? You know what I mean?
Like I hacked this thing together?
Yeah, exactly. I mean I think that's another part of it too. A lot of times now that people live in increasingly in conturbations, we're not around the natural world. A lot of times, we're less familiar with the other things living out there. So you're already in an unfamiliar situation. You hear a in the trees, and then you hear some noise you've never heard before, and it's like, what you're not going to know? You're not going to be like, ah, yes, that's clearly that was me.
Actually my bad. I mean.
And also that is like when you think about the things that nature has invented that seemed completely made up, I guess that's the thing that fails to grab me about the sasquatches, Like, oh we have those right, Like we have big giant apes who can like speak in sign language, Like we have things that seem like they
were made up by a child. We have giant squid. Yes, for a long time people were fascinated by that as like one of the main you know, cryptids and then once we discovered it was real, we were like, all right, fuck off, moving on.
I mean, think about how how weird? I mean, you're right, the natural world is full of all these crazy evolutionary mixtapes that attempt to solve problems the past that may not be as applicable today. Like a giraffe, that's a very specific thing. You know, a lot of insects in
the relationship with plants. I feel like, if you are looking at crypto cryptid type biology, if you are frightened for some reason the idea of a large undiscovered animal, you should be much more frightened of fungus because that stuff is. That stuff's amazing and scary. That's the HBO Lovecraft stuff.
Bro, you don't got to tell me, Bro, I saw Last of Us right right, cordisps.
I apologize if this feels like it's old hat, but every time, so, like, what do you guys think about zoos? Do you think they're important for conversation conservation? Do you think it's more like an animal jail? What's where on the spectrumrim.
Guys, I think they're fun, and I won't admit that because I don't want people to yell at me.
I think they're animal jails, and I think animal jails are cool. How about that? I I'll stand on that. I mean I think as I got old, I think the thing is like there's some like you know, like in San Diego there's like way more space and like there's sort of safari area. But like when I've been to like urban zoos, like there's a zoo in Tokyo where like these fuckers look so sad. I'm like, yes,
this is not a zoo. This motherfucker is rotting in a concrete cell for for babies to just smear their hands all over the plexiglass and then move on like that. I definitely like so in a way, I like that there is a place to observe animals, but the way that it's done, it's like, uh yeah that is there is there a more humane way, like a way that doesn't bum me the fuck out, like just so on its face. Like when I go there, I think you know I'm talking about I'm talking about the one in uh Weno Park.
Don't love it. I was excited to go and I walked out thinking.
Yeah, so yeah.
Yeah, it's it's a rough, But I bring up the zoo question, because you know, one of the great conspiracies about cryptis you run into, especially with the bigfoot stuff, is people saying insert cabal here is covering up the knowledge. You know, what's the Smithsonian doing with all the bones? I assure you, folks, if the Smithsonian had a ghost of a chance having any real thing like proof of a contemporaneous Bigfoot, it would be fucking all over the
place with it. You couldn't get away from it. It would be like the it would tour the nation in the world. They would sequence the DNA and try to make a big foot shot her community, and we would be some of the first people there.
Yeah. Well, I mean, have you met someone who has like a specialized interest like that, like an archaeology or zoology or something. Those people love to share. Like their whole thing is wanting more people to be interested in what they do. They're not going to keep secrets. Yeah, I'm just about the thing that could really bring a lot of interests. To shut the funk up with you, you're not doing that ship.
All right, Let's take a quick break and then I do want to check in with you real quick about the aliens.
Will be right back, and we're back. Paula. It's time for you to do battle with your arch nemesis. Rachel. Got so much akay Gun, ray Gun.
You can't believe you're you're platforming someone so problematic.
How I love the platform break dances. I just I think it's a great ote.
I think I should take a walk about.
Yeah, take a walk about. Went to Ularu, I went, I breaked. I broke dance all the way to Ularu.
Wait, you're too good at that. I'm scared a big rock.
I've never been to Australia, but I always hear people talk about Ulu take a big rock or some ship Ausie's Gang. Please correct me, but anyway, the breakout star of the Paris Olympics, ray Gun the breakdance, as we remember, failed to score a single point in the breaking competition, but she's currently the highest ranked breakdancer in the world. That's because she won the quote Quote won the gold medal at the twenty twenty three w d SF Oceania Championships.
It's like a regional So the wd SF is the World Dance Sport Federation, which is the governing body. Game.
It was everyone else sick, like when I.
Know I'm always I mean, this this story was always like odd because I remember at the time people were like how dare she And other times I'm like, how dare them putting her up there? Like she's pretty out of sorts to be like, I didn't. I didn't see it necessarily, like as nefarious of a plot in terms of just seeing how you know, like white people are able to fail upward quite easily. But I didn't necessarily see her as like trying to be like and I'm
representing break. I mean, her life is terrible. It sounds like now. But all that to say because she won like this qualifying competition. She got one thousand ranking points and that's secured her spot in Paris. But other qualifying events and the Paris Games themselves do not factor into these rankings apparently, and that is by design so that athletes can focus solely on the Olympic qualification without stressing
out over rankings. So basically what's happened was like within because she won this qualifier within the last year, and there weren't other like sort of measurable or like ranked events that happened since then. Even the people who won gold, they weren't in events that would actually count towards this ranking. So all that to say is this is only because like of the timing of her last win, it just has she just has more points on the board. That's all going to change in October.
Did she do that intentionally?
No, then it's just the timing of the rank, like that's just when that event.
No, but I mean was she like, oh, like, no, I'm gonna go if I win. Is that why she entered?
Oh no, no, No.
Do we know what Allison Stoner thinks of all this?
Oh my goodness, Yeah, I would Elliot videos Yeah yeah, or like.
Was it you got you Got Served?
That series of movies she was in the later on maybe she was was she was like she was she was a little sister. She was in the steps Up, That's what it is. Yeah, yeah, you got served.
Yeah, there's like a whole dance Yeah yeah.
I watched all of them, all the step ups. I watched all the dance because I was I used to dance, and I was.
Like, did you ever get Darren's dance grooves? I did not get grooves.
This was and took me back my.
Sister loved like in Sync and Backstreet poison, like knew all the dances and stuff, and she the oldest, so like the rest of us kind of like fell in line behind her. Yeah, brother got Darren's dance grooves and he was the choreographer for all of those like big pop.
Yeah, like Bye Bye Bye. I remember that was like the way they were selling it. They're like, you want to be able to do the bye Bye Bye choreography, we'll get checked out dance group. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. But anyway, so like again, it's just the it's like it's merely like that's why like this the organization's coming out. They're like, look, it's just because these other people's qualifiers. It's been over a year, so those points don't count. The clock is going to reset come October when we
have another official event. But you know, we'll see. Who knows. She might come out. She might come out with some new moves, you know what I mean. She might do she might do push ups up there.
She like actually a bad dancer. You were saying she's a performance artist, and I keep hearing different things.
No, I say that flippantly. She is a performance I'm sorry. My dead pant sometimes sounds like I'm being serious, but no, she she's just like she's.
Like she's just like she's an academic like studied it. Like yeah, she was like some sort of like professor or something, and she's like thirty six and she she like has studied it academically.
But you're in the Department of Media Communications, Creative Arts, Language and Literature at Jesus Macquarie University, a faculty of.
Arts, and smart people can be dumb. So that gives me hope. I don't know what that means.
It's like anybody, look, smart people can be dumb. Smart people can be.
Dumb people to be smart exactly, Okay, loopholes O was gonna say, I'm so silly. I was gonna say, like her her husband was like her coach or something, right, yeah, or there was some like he also break dances and I saw like a super clip of him break dancing and they were like, uh, they played is somebody to match my freak over it? And he was just also awful. Maybe it was I don't know. They were like maybe he was having like these moments and they just captured those.
I mean, I will if you read this story right. Her husband is the one who encouraged her to get into break dancing and must be awful. It's always away. They can't even dance. They can't even dance.
I would like to see them battle a toddler like dance battle, because I feels all have the same like they're just they're just even at the knees.
There are some like actual like not toddlers, but like like five year olds that are actually like insanely good at break dancing because they're so their cetera of gravity is so low, so they can do like a lot more stuff than like if they were in their adults.
Physics behind your.
Makes perfect specimen to commit your life to this. That's how you must be a breakdancer. But yeah, I like, you know she like apparently she did though pause her breakdancing career to complete her PhD, so she'd do like, look, let's let's not I guess we should call her doctor ray Gun at this point. But yeah, she will probably be completely wiped off the rankings once they have another event where you actually have to be a breakdancer to win, because my god, what we saw was not great. So look,
worry not be boys, b girls, It's okay. You know, ray Gun is not out here actually being number one ranked. Okay, anyway, now, I guess we should talk about sick days because I don't have what's your polity? I know you're younger than I think is everybody you am? I the oldest one. You just want to check everyone's work habits. Were you were you sick day users or sick days? Like, I think they're gonna think I'm lazy and they're gonna fire me.
When I was in science, I would be like I would sleep in the lab and they would think it was cool if you smell bad and wore the same clothes as the day before, because it meant you were working harder.
But if you were a.
Lady who wore makeup, well that's just weird because why do you have time to do makeup and look nice. Shouldn't you be working?
Shouldn't you be looking at this microscope?
No one's got fired for taking a sick day?
What the fuck?
Isn't that literally illegal?
It's literally illegal. I was a temp so I think it was like they had a way around it, you know.
But I like and that legally you don't have a sick day, and that legally.
You don't have a sick day.
But like I was saying, I was like living in Chicago and it was also like one of the like coldest winters at the time, and I was like, I'm sick. It's horrifyingly cold. I need to stay home. And they were like, you're we're done, You're fired.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, apparently sick leave in the United States has gone up fifty five percent in twenty twenty three, and it's only been going up compared to twenty nineteen. And the people under the age of thirty five are just driving this trend. And it's not because there's an affliction that only affects young people, where the older people are are left free to work constantly. But there are a few reasons.
So the pandemic a obviously changed the way everyone feels about motherfuckers showing up at work sick, because I remember back in the day be like, oh, you're sick, all right, Well that sucks for you, and then be like working shoulder to shoulder with somebody, and then as time goes like, Yo, you're sick, You'll get the fuck out of here, Like what the fuck are you trying to do? Yeah, like you're trying to get everybody sick. No, no, no, no, we're not doing this today.
I gave ten feet of space between me and this lady at Walgreens because she was sniffling. Yeah yeah, oh, and she was buying a pregnancy test and I was like, did you confuse that with like a COVID to I didn't even like it.
Yeah, yeah, don't dig too deep on that story. Who knows.
Sometimes you're just you just are allergic to your baby, you know.
Oh my god, that's going to be used. That one quote will be used by their right wing like do you hear how they talk about it?
Do you hear they talk about it?
Do you hear how they talk about this?
These people, they are going to blow them out, like snot through my nose?
I jump. So the pandemic also led states to create or modify paid sickly laws, so there was basically so during the pandemic, there was more allowance for sick days, especially relating to like mental health and obviously depression has plagued gen Z younger younger people at higher rates than older generations, probably because they are learning in real time more about how bad the world is.
Probably because they're willing to get diagnosed.
Mom yeah, mother, right, and it's I was diagnosed with laziness and not trying hard enough. That's why you feel bad because you're too lazy. That's why your dreams didn't come true.
That's why you're sniffling.
Oh, it's because you got your free fever.
Get the fuck out of bed.
You know, the fever are only going to get worse if you stay in bed.
You gotta burn that.
You not not that it'll get worse, but it's like you should get around and move a little bit.
Yeah, you gotta move around. You gotta go run a mile.
You know.
One time my brother told me, he was like, yeah, when I start feeling like I'm sick, I just get on the treadmill.
And I'm like, we are not. I don't know how we were raised in the same household.
Use that.
I use that to take like liberties to become like a living mummy. You just start wrapping yourself. Get exactly my quick discovery plus on. Please, I have reality to
watch as I recuperate my body recover. So anyway, Uh, the thing is, as we were saying, like when you as a tempt probably got fired because you weren't offered paid sick leaves because the United States is again we have the We hold the crown of being the only wealthy nation in the world that does not guarantee workers paid time off when they are sick, and almost a quarter of private sector workers don't have access to even
one day of paid sick leave. So obviously, the lack of a federal paid sick leave guarantee has left it up to states to implement their own laws, and that weird implementation has just basically enabled experts to study the effects of guaranteed paid sick leave. And it turns out everyone wins when you have paid sick leave. It's not like they're just going to stay home sick forever. And then my widgets don't get made, no, apparently, And I
think this makes sense. Paid sickleave helps workers as well as communities as a whole by quote significantly reducing the spread of infectious diseases. And even then, if you're like some asshole who's worried about your widgets getting made, look, it's actually good for your business too. It increases worker productivity, it reduces turnover, thus boosting your beloved economy. So come on,
lay off of it. And a recent poll showed that what eighty five percent of Americans support federal paid sick leave requirements, and that was before the pandemic, So that number is probably a lot higher given the realities that people are living in. So, you know, while I think people have tried to implement this into like law, like in Congress, they have been apparently they've they've been met
with heavy resistance from corporate lobbyists. They're the cause of and solution to all of their problems.
Miles. I have a question, yes about this topic. What do you think widgets are.
Widgets? I'm saying widgets as like a business class term for.
Fake okay product mine, in my mind, it's a fidget toy, like fidget toys came to my mind.
And like oh okay, I was thinking about like the apps and like yeah, yeah yeah. Like the way you're saying it, it's like they're they're little fingering on a line.
I'm so old.
There's like a record Ralph where they're just building it.
In the phone.
I'm not mad at because you're checking me like this, motherfuckering what a widget is?
Just like you know what a widget is?
You know, sobody doesn't make those ships that you put on your home screen that tell you when the weather is the widget mind back to go make you making your widgets me lord paid, No, No, that was just remember yeah yeah, oh yo, yeah, the International Brotherhood of Widget Workers. You know what I mean? Round here Local
two twenty three. No, that's again, that's like from the one business class I overheard and I was here that in terms of on your way to drink bro exactly, dude, you know how it is, you know how?
Yeah, suckers.
But yeah, I mean again, like this is also just I feel like there's just a cultural issue, like I think we've all experienced where like especially in this country, we've normalized the idea. It's like, yo, dying here is actually the dopest thing you could do. Like just oh my god, your body on the line. Who died? Oh my god?
I did.
This woman died in her cubicle and her body was there for four days, because checked her for four days. Her body was there.
Yeah, gave a ship.
Yeah how and it didn't smell to anybody, that's what it smell like.
That's not I can't someone. I think they only know like at first when they smelled it, they thought something was off and they didn't realize they were smelling like a like a decomposing body. God, yeah, that's happened in Tempe, Arizona.
That's where I'm from.
Yeah, so what did you do? What you have to do with this?
It's my fault.
I should have.
Spelled the body.
Yeah.
Oh my god, I thought she was I thought she's playing heads up seven up.
She was winning. Yeah, she was just doing really good at heads up seven up.
Yeah. But I think, Yeah, I think because a lot of people worked remotely and it was like, you know, part of the building where people weren't there.
And I don't blame remote work for this.
I'm just saying that's why nobody's in there. I'm not saying if someone would have noticed, she didn't die. No, I'm not saying that at all.
If they if they worked, if they all worked remote, she would have been at home and her cats would have not noticed she died. And that's how she would have wanted it.
Yeah, exactly exactly that That story is really grim and also just how like adamized like workplaces are too where you're like, oh no, the like I'm over here, if people don't even know, like who works for me?
Haven't.
I don't even know. We work for Wells Fargo Bank.
That's just how like in general, it feels like the answer to a lot of our problems are like community and community based solutions because like if people if the if people gave a ship at work, or if people gave a shit at home or whatever, we would like shit like that would not happen if we were like checking up on each other more and have the ability and the time off to do so.
Right. Yeah, like everything you know, even with like housing and stuff like this, everything, if if we just get corporations out of it, like if they didn't buy up all the homes and we had again community based solutions to policing and like social safety nets and all these other things. Yeah, that would be that. I agree, I agree you, and hey, take those sick days.
I've been shitting on my mom a lot. But she really was like the first mutual aid person that I know of, like growing up, because she would like make food for like the old people in our community and like go to their homes and help them and like clean their like places, just like as a friend. Like all of that shit that is mutually. Yeah, immigrant parents taught us about like.
Yeah, they're like, oh, so and so's you know, like aunt died. I'm gonna go bring some food over there, Like you know, you should have raised in a thing where at least, like you know, culturally, if there's food is such a love language that Yeah, just like the first instincts, like I don't even have words. I can make food.
I can bring that like child care, like people like caring for each other's kids when stuff happens, or you know that sort of stuff. I wish that was just like I.
Don't think I don't think anyone got the impression that your mother was a monster. I don't think that you would turn out of such a good person if you're thank you So I didn't. I don't. I don't want you to think, and I don't want the listeners to think that.
The clip from the episode.
That I'm such a.
Good person, they'll mash them onto one omni take. But yeah, wow, it's like we help each other. That seems to be the solution.
Yeah.
I wish that was so separate from like church culture too, like a lot, but so much of like community is like outside of like gay culture to me, is framed in like church. You know, and like, I feel like this generation, my generation is not not like church going, but wants community and it's searching for that everywhere to find it online, which is cool, but that's not the same as in person.
Yeah, exactly, And I think that's why you start. You're starting to see just like what that yearning for a community is, like how it's manifesting with like running clubs. I feel like that's a huge thing that's happening. More and more people are like, I don't know, like it's just it. You don't have to be a good runner, but like a bunch of people get together and I can just talk to a bunch of people over a shared interest and then afterwards people hang out and I'm that's great.
Or that's why jay Z joined his walking club because Beyonce doesn't do interviews. Okay, she's working, so she cannot talk to him. He's lonely and he needs to go on walking.
But just take a little stroll. Yeah, that's happens. It's not gonna happen. 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 him Monday. Bye Stutt