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 in our third seat, the creator of red dot Comics. You can go to Patreon right now to gain access to her tastefully and appropriate work. Please welcome back to the show.
It's camp winda a aka the carpet matches the drapes because a guy both.
That's how it's done.
I asked for help for an aka this morning. That was the best to go.
That was good. Well, welcome to whoever helped you? Did I say, who helps me? Online? That was on salad shut out to housy on salad in the aka Scord doing the Lord's work, The Lord's work. This is a podcast about Christ and his good works and the fires.
If we didn't shift hard praising the Lord.
I keep trying to do a joke in stand up about how it's the fires happened because I'm just like so gay and nobody likes it.
Nobody wants to hear that. Nobody wants to hear how except that one guy in a cool way, so that one guy who is on the local news being like, why is there those fires? Though I think it's because people are gay anyways, that that guy a true hero. The Howy Mandel podcast is he has Bill Burro on. Seems like it's very standard, you know, comedian interviewing comedian podcast, and then Billy Corgan shows up and suddenly Bill Burr's like, uh,
I knew you were gonna fucking do this. Like, rather than being like, oh, Billy Corgan, lead singer of the Passion Pumpkins, that's cool, he's like, oh Jesus Christ, I'm like, oh, okay. They have history, and do they ever? It's revealed over the course of the interview that there's a suspicion that they have the same father that like, Bill Burr's father was a traveling salesmill and they pumpkins across the Great Nation,
and Bill are so funny and mean about it. He's just like, do you ever think that maybe, like I had, I don't talk about this all the time because I don't want to. But Howie Mandel is a complete He's just like, what what's wrong? I'm just you know, playing dumb Billy Corgan seems very uncomfortable. But yeah, it's they like they're like, yeah, we think he named us both Bill, so he wouldn't like get us mixed up and wouldn't Wow.
Yeah, wait is that like a legit?
That's the question that everybody asks right away. I've found both sid I've found people being like, well, you can see on Twitter or you can see on Wikipedia that like Billy Corgan's dad is a different name or something like that. But it just the way it's played like it it feels like a weird if it's a bit. It's like Bill the first Bill Burr bit that I've ever been like, huh, you.
Know, like like didn't get that it was a bit.
Yeah.
Yeah, Well Billy Corgan is one year older than Bill Burr, so that's his big.
Broa dude, hey, big brother. He just immediately started Billy Billy Corgan's a big Cubs fan, and he just immediately starts shitting on the Cubs, which again, Bill Burr is on a roll. I cannot do any wrong in my book or are you gonna say, kim.
Oh, they just need to take a twenty three and me just do it.
I was like, why didn't how we like. I know he's like a germaphobe, but just like grab one of the mugs they drank out of.
Come on, man, exactly, do the detective work man. This is what you do. You should Okay, you set that situation up. Yes, it's uncomfortable. If you were a true showman who had learned the lesson of deal or no deal and the importance of a big reveal. You have a model standing with a briefcase nearby. You say, actually, the last time you were both on, I did snag your coffee cups and some them to twenty three and meter, and in that briefcase I have the answer are you
or are you not? Brothers? And then you know that that's entertainment, baby, that's prestige casting. To quote Anna Josy in a way that she's gonna be very mad about.
But it's that that would have been something. So my overall takeaway, I don't know if it's like been factually proven, if it's just a suspicion that Bill Burr would just rather not like look into her talk about main My main takeaway is Howie Mandel is a bigger asshole When I was giving him credit for for doing that, But that was so funny.
And it's also like, who has the balls to piss off Bill Burr?
Right, there's no taking it back. I know, there's no what taking it back? If you're recording with Bill Burr, that's there forever.
Yeah, everybody, A lot of people are going to watch this, and he knew that and that's probably why he did it to launch the Howie Cast or whatever the fuck his podcast is called. Anyways, Kim, we do like to ask our guest, what is something from your search history that's revealing about who you are?
Uh? Bath pillows? I like taking bubble baths and my neck hurts and I want a pillow, okay.
And how are we achieving this? Is it with a giant sponge?
Right now?
It's just to fold it up towel that gets really wet and then it's just annoying to deal with afterwards, and I just want to relax. So I looked up just like bath pillows, but they suck.
So I'm going with.
A pool toy and I'm just gonna have that one. Yeah, keep it whimsical, keep it fun.
Just like a rolled up That's what said, keep it keep it fun, keep it fun. To keep it whimsical, keep it fun, keep it that's right. Yeah, I was gonna say, like a pool noodle just rolled up cinnabond style, you know, it was.
Oh my gosh, I would be so worried about it just bursting out.
Yeah, I feel like you can just get like a baby floaty, you know, like a kid's.
Exactly like, yeah, tub things, You're.
Still my president, Jack, thank you, And see I'm the type of president who can listen to conflicting opinions, but then I will send censure you later and cut off fun day for you.
Yeah, cold bath great, Kim. I can't do baths.
I can't.
I can't do because I'm like the tub needs to be it's always like not clean enough for me, so that I'm thinking about laying in, you know what i mean. And then I'm like, you can watch it before, you can watch it after. But now that's more prep you know, so that I'm like not relaxed getting into it. I prefer getting into like a shower that's so hot your boyfriend thinks something's wrong with you, and then just falling asleep standing up right like that is my version of relaxing in.
You had a shower beer.
A shower what beer?
A shower beer.
So if you don't have regular beers, but that sounds amazing.
Oh my god, extra relaxation right there. You don't do in a bathtub because you'll drown and die, But if you drink in a shower, you'll just let it all go down the dream.
You sound such like such a wealthy woman right now. Shower to bees.
That's what they don't watch you to have.
This is my shower champagne, honey, that that we don't serve.
Yes, you have a specific shower champagne cup. Yeah. I I've definitely partaken in shower beers in the past, and you know, it doesn't need to be beer. You can have a nice shower bev. I think I've found that the thing that I enjoy about the shower beverage is like the contrast between the cold and the heat of the shower is kind of thing we discussed a while back a reddit. There's a i think an entire subreddit about shower oranges.
Oranges, Yeah, just.
People who eat oranges in the shower.
And specifically oranges.
Yeah, And like at the time, it kind of made sense to me because you just peel. Let the peel fall on the ground. But peels are like easy to like ap peels for Yeah, they like make it smell good. And then you also get that contrast of like cool juiciness mixed with hot shower vibes hot shower energy.
This is what we're coming up with while China is doing AI.
Yeah, we need more shower food options.
Soup not working soup?
No, Yeah, I think I think it needs to be cold on hot personally, Like, that's that's what I'm looking for. Like you don't you would want definitely want a like cold Italian sub and not like a hot meatball sub in the.
Spot shoe.
Too wide of an opening, you're gonna end up getting soap.
And yeah in the shower.
Like hair water is going to be in your gaspot. Yeah, there's like something it's like hermitically, like the orange is like sealed off and so you know it's not it's not like a open open top. You know, there's something cool about an orange. Yeahybe we should throw this one to AI to see what.
Try a blue moon and an orange next time I showered?
Oh wow, yeah orange, Yeah, I'll try.
It warm and flow well as cold.
Slurpy, a big blue raspberry slurpy.
But see those have the dome top, so you're you're actually not going to get as much hair water risk rewarding. I truly think shower slurpy is the answer. Like, that is something that I do need to try now. It's the cups are a problem. You would need to get the hard plastic ones because the paper ones, I feel like,
are always on the verge of rotting out a little bit. Yeah, if I like, find an old slurpy from earlier that day, the paper is starting to feel a little soft and old slur like in a car, I leave it in the car because I don't want to bring it in and let my wife and children see that I've like. Yeah, But anyways, I really think shower slurpee is going to be a thing. Yes, all right, Andrew. This is the episode where we tell people what was trending over the weekend.
But first we let them get to know us a little bit better by telling them something we think is overrated, something we think is underrated. Why don't I start us off with something I think is overrated. I just heard that. I hadn't heard this in a while, but I heard somebody say it's best thing since sliced bread this morning, and in the context of our recent discussion on processed food, Yeah,
that one hits different. I'm gonna say because I don't know, it's it's just the go to, you know, exhibit for greatest invention. Why did people not have not? I have so many knives now, not to brag, but like I got sore, I can. I can slice the fuck out of bread, and you know, I try to buy loaves of bread that are whole. Yeah, like whole ass loaves of bread, like a fucking g And I don't know, like, so the efficiency not it's not that much more efficient.
My number of knives, I have my knife drawers overwhelming. In many cases. The only way it's scientifically possible to have sliced bread that's not like hardened into a series of like monoliths is.
With loads of ultra processed I was gonna say that that is probably the the actual innovation of slice bread has to be like preservatives.
Yes, exactly, they didn't. It's not just somebody thought of cutting the bread. It's like somebody invented a chemical that you could put on the bread to make it. Yeah, It's like being like best invention since pre rolled cigarettes started taking us to flavor town. All right, I mean I get.
If you don't have the preservatives, you get a feastables just mold hold all the way up and down. That's right, Dale is the best case scenario, right exactly.
So I don't know. I I do love a nice whole loaf of bread, take it home, put it in a a big bag, and usually stays potash for like a few days.
This is crazy.
My my overrated is eating healthy because I bought myself a loaf of wonderbread this last week. Can I just tell you, as a grown ass man who is mostly spent his recent year and a half, try to eat well, wonderbread.
Is so good.
It's so fucking good. It's incredible. It's so wild. Yeah, I was, I was talking you. I tried. I had a crustable for the first time the other day, and it's basically like wonderbread turned into a hot pocket.
Crusta ball is It's like a peanut butter jelly inside of of like a white bread, a white.
Bread like strudle, you know, like maybe, yeah, just a giant white wonderbread ravioli and I was like, holy shit, this is the texture of the bread is so pillowy, so.
So yeah, I mean I guess it's just like white people bow or like right, yeah, yeah.
Because it's that it's all the stuff. It's like bleached flour.
It's a little sweet or a lot sweet in case of across the balls, and it's just like a like a thing you can kind of hold your hand that is like, oh my god. Can I just say I did probably see this on a cooking YouTube somewhere, but my pro tip for making a sandwich with wonderbread.
You can't toast in the toaster.
I mean you can't.
You can't do this by toasting the toaster, but use a skillet to toast only one side of it.
Okay, just one side in butter, or you're just like putting it raw side.
I was.
I was not like wiping out my cast iron super efficiently, so there was kind of just the residual seasoning of.
Whatever the fuck. But I didn't add extra fat.
But basically having one crispy side of the bread and one like wonderful hill side so fucking good, my god crust outside, which so like it's basically like God inside crusty side goes inside crusty. You use that as the basis for like your mayonnaise or your you know, mustards or whatever normal sandwich, and then so outside you get like super super pillowy. But then when your teeth go in, you find a crunch in the middle.
People probably didn't know they were getting one of like a point counterpoint crossfire style show today. But my overrated as sliced bread, You're underrated is wonderbread? Yeah yeah, and we solved it. I think I think you're right and I'm wrong, But maybe I just feel like we need a better like Exhibit A for great innovations.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's more your part.
Also all silling to Marcella, what is something you think is underrated?
Underrated? Physical media? We are we need to bring that shit back. You got these streamers as we're going to just hopefully discuss later. These streamers are going south pretty quickly.
Yeah.
I think it's time. If you guys have like a favorite DVD, I mean a favorite movie, it's time to get it on DVD. It's time to buy a little DVD player. Start supporting your second hand thrift stores, buy some DVDs, get off of the You can create, first of all, two b's free, but you can create your own two B in your household. So I want to encourage everyone to get behind the physical media. Go to a local show, Go buy someone's CD, Go buy someone's DVD. Come on, y'all, what are we doing.
Go buy some streams, Go buy.
Some physical ship and support local art or or like the Witch. You know the movie The Witches. I don't know if it's not it's I haven't been able to find it on streaming, and I was like, I think I'm going to try to look for this on DVD. The old one, the Angelica Houston one.
Yeah, where they turned the kids into mic It's creepy kids. I forget. Exactly is a creepy yes me out, Yeah exactly.
You're thinking of trauma, your nightmares? Yeah, all we all are memories of the Witches. Is just a nightmare. I think that's not how the movie went, but scare the funk out of me. But I was like, it's hard to find it on streamer. It's only available sometimes. And I was like, I want to get I'm I'm been so I've been trying to without buying it brand new. But that's I think that might be impossible at this point, but they're not.
They're churning them out. Yeah, so film just that film.
Yeah, physical media, that's what's underrated to me.
It just remade that movie. I think it was somebody just remade that movie and it apparently suck.
Ship.
It wasn't good. Yeah, it was with Anne Hathaway. It wasn't it wasn't bad, like it wasn't my nieces. My nieces enjoyed it, you know, but it's definitely not the terror that we experienced in the eighties.
Yeah, but we were so because.
There was no regulating back then. You know, children's movies and the and the rating system were so different. I know, never will.
Never bad original Witches is like this is too much like that. That was the the response that you wanted from.
We got to regulate these witches.
That's how it started in Salem, and that's how it started in the DVD Blu Ray that's collections.
Marcella. What is something you think is what? Oh my god, yeah, something you think is over rated?
Well, I think I think I think what I'm sure you've talked about this with that people, but the national news. MM have you ever talked about that as an overrated national news Yeah?
Ever heard of it? This podcast are big fans. We just kind of go to CNN dot com, We go to the New York Times, We tell you what's on the front page, and say, how do you do?
Yeah, it's going to be talk about oils and shell gift cards and.
VP is investing in the future.
I just want I love that people do that. This podcast is such a great example of supporting like small news sources, but also like guys again, local news your your little Samsung or Apple Tea every Actually I don't know about Apple, but they have a lot of local news station streaming, and I wish more people were more interacted with their local news, just similar to physical media, you know, like get your stop taking your news and large doses from social media and national news take it
in smaller doses like first thing in the morning, like when you turn on the news and Mike Kaplan giving you the weather and he's so charming, and then you fucking get some of those terrible bad news.
You know, I feel like also bad, I'm going to differ. I'm it's different though, and yeah, it's a different bad but it's like that here's another here's just a fucking feed feedbag of crimes that are gonna make you scared of the people around you.
Sure that's true, But at what I'm specifically encouraging is finding the local news station that has a good rapport with each other and really support local shit going on and not just local crime and local.
Bad news, local papers and ship Yeah.
Yeah, shit, that's like that is actually uplifting. So I agree with you on to a point, because some local news is like really just like nobody likes each other. You can tell they all hate working with each other.
It's not fun to watch. There's like one here that I really enjoy watching in Chicago, and it's like they really they have like Orange Friday during the football season, you know, and they like show pictures of people and their little orange gear and it's really cute and I like it because it's like it's a cute way to start the day. This morning was the fucking god awful news, but whatever. I was like, oh, not starting my day with this, I'm gonna I do national lose a little
later in the morning. Yeah, Like, local news is like nice to get the weather without having like why am I checking my app every morning for the weather? Like, let me have like a sweet pie, old.
Man, give me the weather pie. You know. Yeah, it is like that is one of the nice things about the national news. Before it was like, you know, bought
by fucking sink media. Yeah, one copy, but like there is still a feeling when you tune into some of it that like you're tuning into just like a small work like a small business workplace and they have their own like weird fun work culture, and like some of the people who work there who you're seeing are like the quirky guy and yeah, you know, like they just have to like these little poles.
They do like little poles and it's really cute. And then they all like have banter with the weather guy on the on the traffic girl and the the person doing this little segment and they all banter back and forth, and I'm just like, I like that they're reminding people that it's okay to have these conversations naturally at work
or with whoever. And they're just certain news like and I think because it's Chicago, because they are everybody here is so accustomed to supporting local shit that it really has taken that particular news station like just made it it, taken it up a notch and made it more fun and sweet to watch. And also, like the local news, they want their community on there, you know, and they want people to reach out and I like that.
You know, it's just about what's orange Fridays. That's so funny as hell? That is you as hell? Yeah, all right, your mouth. I'm sorry, and I apologize. Let's take a quick break, we'll come back. We'll talk about some news, and we're back. And so, Emily, you are a lawyer who understands how all of these various things that you know understood when Project twenty twenty five was released, like
what the implications of all these various things mean. And now the executive orders have been issued, the pens have been thrown into a cheering crowd like their fucking Lebron's armbands. But just to like start not to go again, like you're gonna have to work with me here and just pretend this is gonna be hard for you. Pretend that I'm an idiot who doesn't know exactly what executive orders are,
how they work. Just for one hundred miles up, what what are these executive orders that and like we've been told there are limits, and like that's why Biden and you know other Democrats weren't using them. And yet Trump came and like just dropped, flooded the zone with bullshit, flooded the zone with executive orders. And now it seems like there's a lot of action happening as a result of the executive orders. So just like trying to find the answer in all that madness.
Yeah, so I think first of all, we can start off with one thing that I think you're not an idiot if you don't know this. A lot of people don't know this, that an executive order is not the same as a law passed by Congress.
Right.
An executive order does have some legal force, but it's basically a thing that the President said the executive branch is going to do. And the president only has the ability to direct certain people in agencies. So anything that's under the executive branch of our government, that's a lot of stuff because all those big administrative agencies that you hear about, or the Department of Justice, the Department of Health,
the Department of the Department of Transportation. He can direct all of those agencies about how they're going to function, what policies they're going to use, how they're going to hire and fire. Like he can do a lot of that direction through these executive orders. He cannot, though, do
a lot of the stuff that he's trying. Me he's kind of treating executive orders like a magic wand or a genie in a bottle, like trying to who erase the fourteenth Amendment on Martin Luther King Junior day, Like that's what he's trying to do with some of these orders, and you can't. There's a reason that order got stopped in its tracks about fifteen minutes after it left his desk, because there are limits to what executive orders can do. That being said, there's also a lot of avenues which
agencies have a ton of power. So how he directs ICE to perform immigration enforcement, for example, or how he directs other agencies to address drug prices, or how he you know, directs environmental policy, all of that can be impacted by executive orders.
Got it.
And so the idea that like Biden could be because like so that there's looking at the past presidential terms that have used executive orders. I think in late December Biden had issued about one hundred and sixty. Trump during his first full term did two hundred and twenty. FDR did three thousand, seven hundred and twenty one, which I guess he was president for a number of years, but
that's still it's still a lot. So it seems like, I don't know, I had just always heard, yeah, well, we're not gonna like use executive orders because of it's set a bad, bad precedent and ultimately, like you know,
could be overturned. But it feels, you know, as as somebody who's not a fan of these particular executive orders, like they're I don't know, like when when you're a sports fan and the other team does the thing you don't want them to do, that's usually the right thing, you know, it's like, oh, that that makes me uncomfortable.
Therefore that's probably the the they're thing. They're doing the thing that like we're everybody like wishes they weren't doing, which the way that the government currently runs seems like is the correct way for them to do all the authoritarianism that they have in mind. So I guess I'm just curious to hear, like, what what do you think of this? Strategy like throwing a bunch of these at the wall and some of them being outside the purview of like a normal executive order and some of them
being just like making a statement essentially. Do you think that that is going to work? Do you think that do you wish that more progressive presidential if you can imagine a more progressive presidential administration than this one, that more progressive presidential administrations like we should be wanting them to do.
So we're at this really difficult crossroads, right, which is that, first of all, the idea that Donald Trump would not do something because Biden refrained from doing it is hilarious to me, like, oh, we wouldn't want to set a bad president because clearly if we don't do the bad thing, Donald Trump will also not do the bad thing.
He's gonna do.
He's gonna if you put a button in front of me, he's gonna push it. He's gonna push the button until the button breaks.
But also not just Donald Trump, like Mitch McConnell, Nut Gingrich, Yes, every Republican leader since I've been alive and I'm pretty old, right, it is just the weird that it's it's to me, it's so weirdly willful. It's like, oh, we wouldn't want this, wouldn't want to break this norm against the team that only breaks norms.
Yeah, that has absolutely no compunction about breaking norms and in fact seems to do it for fun.
Well, they've also realized something, which is that whether something works has nothing to do with whether it is supposed to work or legally structured to work. It has everything to do with whether you can get people to change their behavior based on what you're doing. Like if an executive order is issued that's not supposed to work at all, but people take action based on it, nobody stops them,
Like then it worked. So I think there's a certain amount of like just try and stuff that we see now and we're going to see continually for the next several years. I think Democrats could absolutely benefit for more just try and stuff. I mean, obviously I don't condone trying to erase a constitutional amendment by FIAT. It's very silly and no one should do that. But at the same time, I think there is a certain amount of creativity and a certain amount of precedent breaking activity that
is appropriate. I think we were not designed to live in a you know this, This government was not designed to be fully static and frozen in the past. Don't tell Clarence Thomas, he would absolutely tell you it's frozen in the past. But in general, like evolution and trying new stuff is good and probably Democrats could do more of it.
Yeah, yeah, I mean FDR like there is some stuff going on in his during the time that he was president, I think, right, I have that, right, he yeah, he had, there is some stuff and he you know, he was willing to just up there working things out, trying things out. You know, it's like, is this something?
Is it?
Well?
What about there? And twenty one?
Not to be a completely left wing lunatic, but I will just point out that it does a little bit at this point seem like the Democrats did govern the way they wanted to. And it's not a matter of not trying stuff, it's that they didn't want to try that stuff, right, the big d Democrats are not interested in those good things. Yeah, it seems to me as an idiot, me a complete idiot, it would seem that.
Yeah, I mean these ideas were raised, they did not happen over the past four years. At times when a lot of unprecedented ship was happening. That bad stuff, not unprecedentedly fun good stuff. Let's talk about just the the you know, the executive actions that are jumping out to you, Emily as somebody who's kind of following this. I actually don't know if all of these are executive orders, but these are the ones that have kind of popped, have really.
Popped for me.
I don't know why I'm getting Hollywood executive here, but so we have the mass raids on undocumented people in the US and their families, which that that is an executive order, right.
Yeah, directing ICE, directing ICE enforcement.
Yes.
Scrapping cancer research is that.
That had to do a lot with freezing the NIH and freezing funding, hiring, firing, the purchasing of supplies for research, which resulted in a lot of labs having to let people go stop their research they don't have personnel or supplies, Like you can't do major medical research without money.
Sure.
And what's really terrible is that by interrupting a lot of the work of these labs, we're setting that research back. It's not like a lot of this work can just be sort of like picked right back up where you left off. Six months from now, and it's not just cancer, it's Alzheimer's research. It's like a huge quantity of research that makes the United States a valuable place to be because of its medical advancement capacity. Yeah, we just threw that in the trash and lit it on fire.
What is the not that I think there's great reasoning behind any of this shit, but I am confused how that even ties into any agenda or like any set of you know, politics, like any political posturing is like we actually think we should.
See we hang out with any mega people lately, because I mean, what I hear a lot of is that they believe that all of these researchers are like it all comes back to Fauci and it's all corrupt and it's training the swamp, and we're like, I don't think anybody's given a lot of critical thought to what if what if the researchers are not secretly corrupt oligarchs, but what if they actually are people who are poised to save lives, perhaps lives within your family sometime in the
next few years, if we let them. I think there's just this huge perception of corruption in the medical community, and I'm not sure where that comes from. Certainly I could talk about it in context related to medicine and health insurance, but yeah, when it comes to like hating on cancer researchers, I don't get it. But it's a thing that the MAGA folks seem to do.
Yeah, yeah, okay, honestly, And that's the kind of toughest thing is like all this data is going to be so entangled with our shitty healthcare system that it's not even even going to be clear that as a direct outcome of this, like life expectancy or health outcomes are worse in the United States because they're already so much worse than the rest of the like you know, equivalently rich world, that like we're never going to be able to prove prove until, like I said this yesterday, until
Polio's back, but like even then, with.
Any of this shit, I feel like we're in a really bad position to make those cases because of how the.
Media general healthcare system, how.
Bad a general healthcare is. But just all of like them very disappointed in the New York Times.
I mean, it's it's hard to prove a negative, but if the New York Times wanted to and I'm with you that they don't want to at all, Right, I mean, you could look at over the next few years, how many new pharmaceuticals are patented, how many new treatments medical devices, like. You could look at patents. You could look at drugs hitting the market. You could look at requests for FDA approval, you could look at all you could look at new
techniques being published in medical journals. You could look at the rate at which US researchers are publishing generally. I mean, there's all of these metrics that we expect to see slow down when you defund medical research.
Right, Yeah, the other ones I have pulling the US out of the World Health Organization recognizing only two genders, turning DEI into like not not just removing funding for DEI, but like, you know, saying that people need to report anyone they see doing a DEI. I guess is the idea. By the way, I did hear somebody pointed out that roy Cone came from McCarthyism, So like that like roy
Cone was worked and like learned under McCarthy. So it does make sense that there's this like direct line from McCarthyism too.
Trump, Well, it's not just in the federal government. There are a lot of people are talking about that EO, Like it's just amongst federal employees, right, like, if the guy at the cubicle nextsu is seeming a little too diverse, you better report. But it's also giving these agencies a directive to select up to nine entities in the private sector that they would like to investigate for compliance. So
it's also poising the federal government to engage in. And we're already seeing the impact in like cowardly big companies scrubbing any mention of diversity and ending any diversity programs, and less cowardly companies refusing to do so, which is kind of cool to see, but it's McCarthyism writ large in the DEI context.
I think.
Also we're going to see that in the immigration context, with like pressure to turn people over and compliance pressures of all kinds. So yeah, they're absolutely trying to create a society in which people are afraid of their neighbors and afraid to be snitched on by their colleagues.
For being too diverse. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a person's way too into diversity.
It's like, actually, like I'm I am curious this speed for which this will have repercussions. I mean, the immigration thing is like if that actually happened, would actually tank the agricultural industry. So like, you know, if the Trump people were mad at the price of eggs, then like what the fuck is I'm just like curious, like if anything will ever.
I'm in California. There's We're on our local news. We're seeing like fruit sitting in the fields. It's orange season, like nothing, like. Yeah, it's understandable. It's especially understandable because when you're not inside a building, you don't have the
same Fourth Amendment protections. It's actually a huge issue. We see, for example, unhoused people don't have the same rights against search and seizure because they don't have a home which someone would need a warrant to enter, so they don't get this particular constitutional protection. If you're in a field, again, ice can come up and go after anybody they want. There's no structure that they would need a judge to
give them permission to enter. So agricultural jobs are particularly vulnerable, and we as a country are particularly vulnerable to like not having food we can afford as a result.
Yeah, yeah, but yeah, I mean it's just the unintended or yeah, well the food like disaster would be an unintended even for them consequence of like you know, enforcing immigration in the way they want to enforce it. I'm just curious, like, what the fuck will actually happen?
How could it be unintended? I mean that's a question I have, is like, it's the most foreseeable possible, the.
Very first thing everybody is like, hey, so I know you only understand profitability, just a quick FYI hear on that.
I mean, I guess might the speculation would be it just creates an even more scared or like oppressed class of undocumented worker.
Yeah, I mean the idea of that they talk about a lot that like, yeah, you know, people criticize how expensive this is going to be, but it's gonna lead to like a lot of like self deportation, and you know that what that usually means is that people just don't can't work because when you like show up to work, then like you're you know, putting yourself in a position
to be taken in. But so that's yeah, it just it feels like that is going to be a first like it's not going to be a down the road thing. It's like a thing that is going like based on the things that we're already seeing of you know, these like raids. The doctor Phil is live streaming. We're going to see the results immediately, because nobody's gonna want to fucking put themselves in a position to be arrested and like,
you know, treated cruelly. Yeah, so I don't know, like I others reversing climate change, bringing back the death penalty, not reversing climate change, reversing climate change actions and declaring and the emergency is actually how little gas we're pulling out of the ground. These are all things that I had identified as like, man, the executive orders seem to
work in this case in the worst way possible. Like what is there Are there any of these that you're like that that one is actually going to be challenged and easy to overturn before it does too much damage? Or is this all just kind of fore alarm fire territory?
So I'm really interested to see what happens because a lot of people like to act like the law is a real thing and you know, the law will save us. The law doesn't support this, and the law, Yeah, but the law is just a bunch of humans in rooms like some of the humans get to wear a special
dress and sit up higher. But which human these cases are broad in front of will matter a great deal because Trump worked very hard during his last term to put a lot of judges in place who are heavily aligned with the ideology we see in Project twenty twenty five. In the past, we saw a judiciary which took their responsibility as neutral arbiters way more seriously, and they would have been like, really embarrassed to do something nakedly partisan.
That cultural safeguard is gone, and I don't think we realized the degree to which it was a cultural norm, a cultural safeguard holding the judiciary in a neutral position. It's toast. So some of these I will point out, you know, the death penalty one is terrible for innumerable reasons. One, Generally Americans don't support the death penalty anymore, So this isn't really beating any voters that are demanding this.
Two, we get it.
Wrong a lot.
It's her reversible. Three this EO contains all of these eos contain ways for the government to reach more deeply into the lives and actions of private actors and the state. So here this EO is directing the federal government to try to exert more control over state and local prosecutors and ags. Here's why that's a big deal in the federal system. Joe Biden, to his credit, commuted the sentences
of everyone who's on federal death row. So Donald Trump doesn't have anybody he can kill right now, as much as he would like to.
Oh no, and.
Good on President Biden for doing that. Eighty seven percent, roughly, that's excess, probably an old stad, but over eighty five percent of people in prison are there on state and local cases, so you can see that, like, the federal government only comprises a very small minority of people who are impacted by criminal justice decisions generally. So what does
this executive order do. It pushes the federal government to start going after the folks who actually control use of the death penalty, who are state ags and state and local prosecutors. And that bothers me for many reasons, one of which is it's completely contrary to the omnipresent states rights argument that we hear all the time that like,
local people should decide what's right in their locality. Oh, unless in your locality you don't want the government to kill people, in which case you don't get to decide what's right for your locality. Your judgment is subsumed by a huge and empowered federal government. I thought we did like big government. No, no, no, we like big government when it's making the government kill people. So's that's where we are on this.
Yes, not great, And your point about it being unpopular, like that, that was the thing. Just alec Herricktsanas had a thread on Twitter this weekend just about this New York Times article from last week titled support for Trump's
policies exceeds support for Trump. And this feels like it's the way I'm seeing a lot of people in the New York Times and like in that world respond where they're like people might not like the man but approve, you know, they might think his methods are too harsh, but he's getting things done, and it's like in line with their And I think what they're referring to is like a very specifically worded question that suggests that they
want people who are undocumented deport it. But there's also like three questions they're just worded slightly differently that suggests that there's actually a super majority of people who don't who don't want that, but they I don't know, there just seems to be that an urge to like be like what he's doing is like not that out of line with like what people want, and I don't think it's true, And like, why again, they're only focusing on like two of these executive orders, two of these policies.
They're like really having to work hard with the polling and the wording of the polling to like make it seem like people are in support of these policies. And then they're also ignoring like the huge swaths of these executive orders that are wildly unpopular for their cruelty.
And so this is so I'm so glad you brought this up, because so when we look at Project twenty twenty five, there's a couple of like big themes that emerge. One is that they're very terrified of boyfriends, and they think there's nothing more terrible than a mom, a single mom, having a boyfriend. There's a whole fun passage I beg you to read with just just like control f boyfriend.
Yeah.
In Project twenty twenty five, it's a ride. But beyond their fear of boyfriends, they really don't like information. They don't like people having any information, and they would rather the government not gather any information because if you gather any information, people might get a hold of it, because governments do have to have a certain level of transparency. This goes totally to what you're talking about. The way you can create false informational worlds is by limiting the
amount of information people actually have. Like here you have a poll which doesn't reveal to the reader that, oh, in like the next three questions, it turns out people don't actually like this policy. They just only liked it when it was worded a very specific way. And that's really the thing about polling, right, is that like the answer you get from people depends enormously on how you ask them a given question. But in the in the EOS,
we're seeing a ton of these clauses. In the EOS are getting rid of forms of tracking information in government so that people will no longer have access to, for example, what the demographic makeup of our government even is, or of our armed forces, or of you know what. The impact of various policies and programs is. Health tracking in particular, like how much are we at danger from bird flu
versus something else. They would really prefer not to collect any data, because when you don't collect data, you can control people's opinion on policy a lot more through things like the framing of the question, because people don't have
a real informational basis for making decisions. In addition to that, there's a whole separate EEO on restricting the government's ability to go after misinformation and disinformation because to stop to stop misinformation and disinformation would impinge on the free speech rights of the people who would like to distribute misinformation, Like lest the government stop people from lying to you. It's all this theme of like the government no longer wants you to have good information underdown.
Yeah, I mean that seemed like the whole Mark Zuckerberg like statement was all about, like the way in which he used like that's like people's opinions and like free speech, but he was only talking about like people who support Donald Trump's free speech very specific definition of that. It's it's very strange, but it's like it's not just the
tech eos. It feels like the these you know, journalistic institutions are just like currently really not up to the task of like dealing with what's happening right now there.
I can't tell if they're into it or scared. I can't tell which it is.
I think they're into it. I think they've had decades to not be into it, and they have never showed themselves to not be into it. Yeah, I mean, I will say again, I know I keep beating this drum, but we are. It feels ever nearer to an actual like facts don't care about your feelings, reckoning on just like the nature of reality. And I'm just like, I know I keep saying it, but it's like, you know, the things they believe are largely not true. So like, what is it going to be? Just like Made in
the USA starts to not become the gold standard? Is it going to be like you know, fucking like Beijing University is where you go instead of Harvard, Like it will be something like the rest of the world doesn't have to play by these rules and they eventually won't. Like what is it going to be? I'm just like, I guess, I'm hoped. I hope I'll be alive when the fucking other shoe drops on this whole shit.
So I don't know, Sorry, Yeah, I feel like it might be sooner than I was expecting prior to a couple of weeks ago. But yeah, I don't know. It's it's it's Is there anything Emily that is making you hope full besides teachers, which I think is a great example, like teachers being willing to fight for their kids, for their students, any other places you're seeing hope.
One thing I would say is that so much of this is local, right, Like I've been watching online as like finding videos of a local neighborhood watch like scaring off ice agents from their neighborhood and schools not letting them in, and you know, ordinary people protecting each other. I also think that this has the potential for a huge informational awakening for Americans in a certain sense. I mean,
I'm thinking, actually, this is so dumb. But do you remember when like TikTok was gone for five minutes and everybody got on red note Yeah, and suddenly Americans were like, wait a minute, you get fresh groceries for how much in China? Amazed like the fantastic Chinese grocery halls Americans have managed to become even without a Trump branded isolationism, Americans have for decades been deprived of opportunities to really get to know the international community, to travel, to learn
about the world, to expand their horizons. And I think that in that moment you describe Andrew of like watching China surpass us in renewable energy and get to a clean and low cost energy solution while we're still like shoveling coal into furnaces. I think that's going to be,
I hope, a really healthy awakening for Americans. I'm terrified on the healthcare front of the number of lives it could cost us to learn this particular lesson, But I guess I'm placing a lot of my hope in great organizations that are willing to put up a fight, in ordinary people who are not naturally compliant and steel themselves to say no, even agrins. It's really hard to say no to somebody who says, look, I have this piece
of paper that let's be coming to your home. It's really hard to say, nah, judge, didn't sign that paper. I'm not opening the door. It's hard to do. But I have faith in the stubbornness of ordinary Americans, and I hope, I hope that if we are able to emerge from this without falling prey to the informational lockdown. If we're able to retain our ability to get information, we're going to come out of this a much better society.
That is the question, right. That's where like it feels like things must be like the way I was talking about, like it being a sporting thing where you're like, oh, this is the thing that I don't want my opponent to do, and they're doing it and that is probably smart on their part. Like, that's my question thinking through for them is like that's going to be the next frontier is like, okay, so how do we stop the information?
Like and it sounds like they're working on that with regards to the studies, but just in terms of the day to day social media, I'm sure that you know, beyond the TikTok band, I'm sure that's coming too, right.
Wouldn't this be great? I mean zccer bless Zuckerberg's little heart is my college classmate.
Wow, cool guy, cool guy.
Actually Facebook is old, like old Facebook's old. Like I also think there's a real chance that like we might disconnect from our social media addictions in a really different way during these next few years.
That could be really.
I mean, once you realize that something you've been using as a resource to learn about people around you and like what's happening in your community is actually just full of junk. Yeah yeah, I go on Twitter so much less now because it's just like so full of like click baity, angerly just coorse. Yeah yeah, exactly. And if this disconnects us from that and we go back to other forms of informational engagement and information sharing, or we create new forms, that'd be great too.
Yeah yeah, I did want to also say a thing about the local, like to sort of tag what you were sayingly, like even you know, just like doing a small amount of mutual aid carding shit around during the fires and I mean the fires are still ongoing, but it and just thinking about California. I know I've said this on the show closer to when the election was, but like, you know, liberal ass California couldn't even outlass slavery.
So like, there's still plenty of work that you can do in your community that will materially move things forward and make things better that, however feudal like, and however much damage is done, and we're watching the repercussions of
federal government. You can still fix things, repair stuff, help people in a way that is material in your community, and you should fucking do it because to do it, even though you're helping people, you're doing it for yourself because you're going to need all this stuff too.
There's a really good lever for that that nobody thinks about, and I want to put it out there for people to consider. All of these culture war things. The way they get enforced is through prosecution. That's why Donald Trump wants to exert so much control over local prosecutors is because a lot of this enactment will have to take place in the form of criminal prosecution. Public defenders man public defenders are so under considered as a sort of
last bulwark against totalitarianism. They are the people who are fighting against you know, the types of detainers that can lead to deportation. They are the people that are often first to find out when an individual is in jeopardy from their government. They are the people best equipped to legally intervene. For many people, a public defender is the only lawyer they're going to have in their life. They're going to have one lawyer, and it's probably the free lawyer.
Provided them paid by the government to fight the government, and they there's five nine hundred public defender agencies in this country. Most of them are like not particularly funded or attended to, but ordinary people can go to their county Board of Supervisors meeting say hey, how are you resourcing my public defender if my family needs a lawyer,
Like who is that lawyer? And what support are they getting and how well are they being paid, and like what experts do they have access to and what labs are you going to let them use in a serious case. I think that it's a moment now for people to recognize that public defenders are their counsel and they should demand better.
Yeah, and that's you work on that, like that executive you're the executive director of Partners for Justice, which sounds like that's kind of a focus for you guys, right.
Yeah.
Most of what we do is we help public defenders do more stuff beyond the legal matter, so like recognizing that a court case can completely upend a person's life, cost them their housing, their job, like access to their kids, access to medicine. We basically create really strong interdisciplinary services inside public defense. A little bit of mutual aid, a little bit of services, you know, a lot of community networking so that people can walk away from a case
with their life as intact as possible. It's very very pro safety stuff. A lot of the stuff we address our underlying drivers of crime. It's also very decarsoral. We've eliminated over five thousand years of incarceration in just a few years because it turns out what somebody's doing really well in the community, a judge is less likely to send them to prison. But I'm talking about more than that, like more than just what we do, like the daily litigation.
Public Defenders is going to protect a lot of people who are being prosecuted for putting the wrong book on the library shelf, or seeking an abortion or being trans I mean the lawyer they're going to have is probably a public defender. So even beyond my work, it's a great place for people to dedicate their focus.
Yeah. Yeah, And if you're just a citizen talking to your government, a great place to find that money is in the insane police budget. Just thrown it out there. Maybe some of those funds should be taken from the police.
I don't know, but you know, there's a great study helicopter. I don't know a tank.
There's a great study on what really well, there's a lot of great studies and what really creates safety. And actually, if anybody cares. On the Partners for Justice website, we have a little tab that says evidence, and I gathered a ton of these studies there if anybody wants data on safety. But there's a wonderful overview we did on how environmental design creates safety. And it turns out that if you want to lower the homicide rate, you are better on off planting trees than hiring more cops.
I mean some.
Street lighting trees. And that's not only on homicides. Like buildings with more greenery, like more beautifully greened buildings are not only less likely to be burglarized, they also have less domestic violence inside the building. So all these things we could spend money on that might work better, and more more subway cops playing candy crush.
Yeah, I know this is not the way the directionality window or arrow goes, but also less domestic violence if there's fewer cops.
Right, let's just throw it out. There could be I don't I actually don't know if that's the direction that the cause.
Out guys are bad guys.
Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. And we're back. And the Pentagon has decided that Black History Months isn't a thing anymore.
There they that's the joke. It's also I feel like some of you need to hear me say that. Good.
But yeah, their intelligence agencies reportedly paused observances of Pride Month, Black History Months, Martin Luther King Junior's Birthday, Holocaust Days of Remembrance, Juneteenth, and other annual cultural events due to Pete Hagseth's war on wokeness.
That's terrible.
Valentine's Day they still have off. They still for Valentine's Day to make.
More babies get their rape on?
Right?
Do they think we love their holidays?
Like?
Do they think we love Thanksgiving? And Fourth of July? Like do they think that we are getting together at Thanksgiving dinner? And like what are they doing? I don't it's so insane. How like the do you guys not want a paid day off?
Like?
What the fuck are you fucking talking about?
Yeah, they're they are only comfortable when celebrating emotionally distant straight white diisgender men. That's that's what we do in this country and sometimes they'll allow you know, Santa Claus is about as emotionally available as they'll allow.
Well, that's because that's celebrating capitalism, so right, they can understand that.
Yeah.
It's also I'm very like DEI is being conflated with diversity and values that like they're taking this like corporatization of the idea of diversity and trying to lump like the legacy of Martin Luther King Junior like under that.
In a way that's like very, very frustrating, and I feel like the mainstream media is just going along with that and being like, yeah, the war the right is winning the war on DBI, like and everything goes under that, including people like non white people and not straight people like that.
You know.
Pride Month is like they're they're lumping the under like DEI, which was like the corporate world's attempt to be like and we're listening, you know.
Right, It truly doesn't change their lives at all at all, at all. It's like Pride Month, it's so fucking loud. Yeah, it's just so loud all the time. I can't hear myself.
Think racist, homophobic thoughts when aphobia so has to cancel his big plans for prior to drowned out by me thinking about all these men's dicks.
Right, have you guys heard of Netflix? Do you remember? Yeah? So Netflix is that company that used to like mail people DVDs. Now so they're now a streamer. And they just held their twenty twenty five programming preview, which.
Aka Project twenty twenty five.
That's that. That is weird that they called it that, right, Like.
Yeah, they could have called it anything. They could have called it nothing.
Yeah, they could have just kept their prices where they should be a stop giving certain people lots of lots of money, right.
The Hollywood Reporter said that it felt like a defense of like that they were like trying to defend themselves in a weird way and just being like we're number one because they just raise prices and everybody's like kind of annoyed.
Oh oh, I'm canceling my shit. I was like eighteen dollars for fucking nothing because that now they don't have exclusive shit you see like HBO shit on there, everything's on there. We do not need to be on there, guys, take a break, give them, give them.
Give them nothing. Sorry, I think you're gonna want to listen to this story.
Okay.
Now, these sorts of events are like in general for me, the thing about streaming is just like there's this like fire hose of expendable content generally, and then they're like, oh, if you thought that was a lot of stuff you won't ultimately remember, check out this, and then just like you know, blast you with like even more. There is stuff in here that I thought seems interesting. First of all, I did love John Mulaney's Everybody's in La, and they're
bringing that back. Seems expensive, seems expensive, which should be that it does seem expensive, But what's fun about the show?
Yeah?
I want something that seems expensive.
Yeah, that should be the name. Turn that on.
I go, look at that stage, look at that set, Look at these guys. That is money.
Is that an oak desk? That is some hardwood?
Okay, God damn. They announce Stayed, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon movie called Rip.
I'm waiting for that, Oh for that them to come back together together. When j Lo broke up, I knew Matt and Andy we're gonna get back together. Yeah, they had to. They always do what every time a woman does one of them dirty. They go, you know what it's about us? I need you, I need you, broke.
The need each other, I need them.
Ben Affleck called it a mix, this movie a mix of Heat meets Narc meets Training Day, and I was like, one of those is not, like those are two classic movies. And then Nark, a movie that I didn't even realize was a movie necessarily. I thought it wasn't there like a video game in the eighties called Narc.
I don't know, but I just know that a movie is going to be bad when the main actor is using the log line as a way to convince you to watch it, and it's like, honey, that's not how you convince me. That's for the pitch. That's for the deck.
Out to that log line.
Actually, I just read it over and over again and I do push ups.
By the way, The reason is because it's direct that that is a movie that was directed by the same guy who directed this, so he just like trying to throw it in like it.
Was a bunch of fucking losers. Oh my god, get on each other dicks. Yeah, just try to challenge each other to be better. For the love of fucking God.
Yeah, I will say, all right, So here are the ones that jumped out to me that I'm like, I feel like people are going to be talking about.
Tell us why you're going to keep subscribing to eighteen dollars a month Netflix, Jack.
So I'm here to tell you that's what it sounds like. I'm just saying, I feel like we these will be coming up in this year on the daily es. I guess like, I feel like they'll crossover. Sponsored by BP SA and this is sponsored by VP.
Yes as squid Game sponsored by PETE season three okay, sorry, as.
The climate change adventure increasingly gets more exciting in the coming year thanks to our friends at BP. These are some of the things that you can entertain yourself with. Inside So there's a new Knives out, which I don't know how you guys feel about the first Knives out.
First one great, second one semi great. This one can't possibly be great.
This one's guns out the Annie guns out.
Ever bring a knife to a gun party. The only detail that I have on this one because they like had a picture of so Dane Craig have.
Have long he was jerking off to you were jerking on.
They had one picture they had one picture, but it was delicious.
You got to hear. Sometimes you hear what he's really saying.
When you hear, you just got to read between the lines.
Yeah, it's not wife. There's just no way she's happy.
H No, No, you suld be correct.
Neither is mine. I want to say that.
The unhappy wives clothes. Yes, that's what this podcast.
That's what it is. God, she's pissed.
I thought that's what Tom's the girls his wife.
Okay, so the mousie guy from Challengers is playing someone named d Judd do Plentissy, do plan Tissy?
Who was playing this?
You know the mouse he guy from Challengers. He's like hot mouse. He got the dark haired MOUSEI guy. Anyways, it's just do plan Tissy. I was ready to be out on this, and then I was like, oh, Daniel Craig saying calling someone mister duplantissy is I'm back in. Although he does have shaggy hair. Dang o Craig in this one.
Which are you going to read that line? I'm waiting for you to read that line.
I wonder if he will be do planticitous? Is that the line that you were I wonder if he will be duplenticitous perfect. Thank you Marcella for encouraging me across the finish line of my own joke. Thank you, Thank you to BP as well. Full Stop Happy Gilmore Too is coming? What Yeah, I had no idea. It's from Kyle from Alcoholics Sister podcast. This is important. That's gonna be interesting. I do love a good Sandler and Happy
Gilmore one a classic. Then all right, so this is the one, the two that I think we're really going to hear about. Uh, there's a retrospective like Eddie Murphy documentary that I feel like could be like a you know, last dance moment for like Eddie Murray, where like people like go back and realize like, oh shit, like he was fucking awesome. You know.
But if Michael Jordan hated basketball, right, but he could still be doing it if he wanted to. He just doesn't like it. He hates stand up.
Well a thing or two about why.
I mean, I do think that what he said to or maybe the conversation to him and Jerry Jerry Seinfeld had on to whatever the two cars and cups getting you about. He was like, once you're I don't know one of them said it and they but they both agreed, and I appreciate it where they're both like, you know, once you're rich, you're not funny anymore. And I love that because I'm like, I wish Elon Musk could hear that, because this motherfucker is striving to be funny and it's like, dude,
rich people cannot have a sense of humor. It's just it doesn't exist in their brains.
He's gonna try to be funny until the world is over, until it chills us all.
Yeah, sponsored by BP.
And then there's a docu series about the titans that, uh, those people trying to go down to the Titanic and imploding.
Which fucking losers? More losers, give me some this loser after loser.
Yeah, Eddie Murphy and the guy who went down.
I'm gonna say it not Eddie Murphy. I'm not gonna call Eddie Murphy a loser.
But anyways, remember little Heights that I think are coming coming for all our asses, coming for the Zeitgeist. Oh and Guiermo del Toro is making a Frankenstein movie.
Enough no more monsters. Lo can my little freaks? That's Germo del Toro. What can all these little freaks. I little fucking weird weird mummy. I think I think he keeps him, hiding him, and it's tummy.
He pulls him out of his belly button.
Wait, he dreams one up, he pulls it out his belly button.
This one all right, that's gonna do it for this week's weekly Zeitgeist. Please like and review the show. If you like the show, Uh 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. By