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. We have somebody with us today, Miles, who I think will help us shed a little bit of light on this subject. A writer, cartoonist, podcaster, a former roboticist who has written books like We Have No Idea Guide to the Unknown Universe.
His new podcast Science Stuff. Answer is answering fascinating questions every episode, like is hypnotism real?
Do our pets lie to us? I've been saying this for years, I know. And a bird is a liar? That bird is having fun up there? That's fun.
Do you really have to wait thirty minutes to go swimming? Which is going to be my first question for him. Our dear death experience is real. It's a great listen. We're thrilled to have him back. Please welcome back to the show.
Or hey, hello, hello friends, Hello dailies, or what do you call your audience.
Hikes? Yikes? They call them the status quis actually all right? All right?
Yeah, don't try to slip that by him, just because he's a scientist, Miles, just to wait, he's Miles. Try to pluralize status quo as status quhi and then status's status.
Whoa yeah stati quotes.
Yeah, oh wait that is you're I'm going to no, no, sorry, I was just making statusy yeah, it's it's status is quot So I wasn't. Yeah, I want attorney's general. Yeah, it was attorney in general. So that's the other ones. I love things like that. Yep, yeah, yeah, well great, or hey, we're thrilled to have you back.
Okay, can you just do you really have to wait thirty minutes to go swimming? Because I have a multiple times in my life not waited and then you're dying, I think, but maybe I'll die in my fifties from it, from like stocking up, it's like stop, like a sleep debt that you've built up. It's like too much time swimming after with just fifteen minutes after eating.
No, yeah, we've all been there.
You know.
You're a kid.
You want to go back in the pool, it's hot, you want to play with your friends, but some adults to tell you you can't do it. Yeah, you have to wait thirty minutes. And and for me this was kind of personal because my aunt was a doctor and she would take of swimming all the time. She'd be like, no, you have to wait thirty minutes after eating, and so in this episode, I really wanted to know the answer. Yeah, which is apparently you don't have to wait thirty minutes
after eating to go swimming, but you probably should. Okay, yeah, probably should, but you don't, Like, yeah, you're not gonna die, You're not gonna get cramps. Cramps are not related to what you actually cramps are related to what you don't eat, Like if you don't eat enough electrolytes or sugars, they think maybe that's one cause for cramps, which is super interesting to me that scientists don't know what causes cram Yeah, it's like they're one of those taking it up.
We don't know. Yeah, seem real.
It seems like it's one of those a public health policy question like where it's like, I mean, you could probably get away with it on your own, but like as a public pool policy, if you don't want people throwing up in your pool or you know, cramping in a giant pool, then like it's probably good policy to have for a whole ass public pool, you know.
Yeah, yeah, it's probably just recommended just because you know, you're you're kind of flat when you're swimming, so your stomach kind of gets turned around.
Oh it's like the zero gravity stuff that space. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And also like your body time to digest, you know.
Right, right right hard disagree on that one where I don't know. Yeah, I've taken a bite of pizza and then immediately done a cannonball with the pizza in your mouth. I probably have done that. Yeah, I come up still chewing it. It comes a little soggy, but you know the sacrifices. When I was exhaling as I dove in the water, a lot of Marinera came out of my nose. What kind of pizza was that? And it's a tomato pie? Yeah?
What is something from your search history that is revealing?
Last night I was in katamine therapy and so I'm in the recliner and I'm on the high dose now, like sadly, the way I calm myself down when when when the drug is first coming on as I fucking look at my phone, which is so sad It's like it's like holding my little mommy.
You know.
I look at Instagram and I'm like, I must still be alive.
Yes, it's fucking horrific for people. For listeners who haven't listened to the last episode. Keademine therapy is this is actual kedemine therapy, like with medical staff delivering it to you at a clinic.
Yeah, not sitting on a pile of old tires like in a yard.
Yeah. So I have chronic depression. I've had I've had chronic depression, you know, ever since my ceramics teacher said I looked like fifty year old character actor when I was in eighth grade, and I've I started well, I started taking zoll Off at some point in the nineties and then I was still drinking, so I don't know what it was doing, but I was trying to have it both ways.
You know.
I was like I could drink and also I'm like the doctor's are always like you can't do both, and I was like, watch me, I'm a special you know.
Oh yeah, you haven't met ye old character actor. That's all I'm gonna say for the rest of the show, only joke.
So anyway, like zol off sucks, and as I've gotten older, like it really. I mean, the biggest thing it does is it cuts your sex drive down, which is not a big deal when you're twenty eight, but when you're fifty six, it starts to be pretty annoying. And it might explain why I've been writing all these poems, because I'm like, are you a poet or do you need supplements?
Right?
So, I think you know, whoever that guy was hung around the pond all the time had low te.
Helpful? Who is it?
I always get them because throw, yeah, you can't make any money being obsessed with ponds these days, I'll tell you that.
Yeah. Yeah.
So I started talking to a therapist again about trying to get off Zoloft, and I just they all kind of have the same You either kind of can take them and you don't have serious side effects, even though I've never met anybody who didn't have have side effects. But they allege that there are some people who don't. I don't know. I hope I'm glad for them. But I always get side effects, whether it's nerves, like if
I take well Buttrin, I go completely. They always recommend well Buttrin, like when I say, I want to get off soft and I think I've used this, you guys, I've been talking about on my own podcast, so I might overlap. But you know, the time I took well Buttrick in l A, and I was like feeling like every time I take well buttra in the weird energy I get from it, which is actually anxiety and kind of mania. I start to think I'm like getting better
for the first month. But I was in the car, like driving on the two, and I was like, I realized that I was listening to Pink Floyd the final cut really loud and drinking of Vanila latte, neither of things I do.
Yes, And I was like, I.
Do not listen to the Pink Floyd sound possible so possible path on a sunny day in La normally.
And you may find yourself sipping a Vanilla lay on the tube and.
That's when you finally say enough well buttre and you go back on Zoloft sadly. So anyway, I started taking ketemine. I mean, you know, go, I went through a whole bunch of stuff. The brand of the drug is Bravado, which I don't know if I told you guys, last time, which I think is so funny and I think is what is called bravado in the in the Nasal spray
forum that I'm doing it. I do it Mondays and Wednesdays, and I've done about probably about fifteen, no, maybe twelve or fifteen of them at this point, and I do think it's helping. So I'm gonna make fun of it because I think I talked about it last show where it's just like kind of like doing ketemine a Jiffy Loube or something like. It's like the people who help you, you know, like they're just low paid people. Like it's a venture capital model for every business, including Ketemine treatments.
So you're not gonna have shuffle through. Yeah, yeah, you just have these.
Sort of like well intentioned, low paid people trying to help you, you know, and they also shuffle everybody through.
They shuffle people through every job there. So at this point I've held hands with like just about everybody in the building while I thought I was dying, you know, like, and they're like, you know, I saw you know, like you see the guy in the parking lot blowing leaves and he's like, you're doing better, man, to remember when you told me about your childhood for while you were peaking. So it's kind of like tripping with strangers and which is odd, but I have gotten to be able to
get through it. But Okay, so I'm in this office park and you're kind of stoned on Kennemine, so like you have the same kind of thoughts, like like office park. I started thinking about that term, you know, for a while, and I was just like, what the fuck?
Like even that, I was like, I think you're having a bad trip of only kind of parks America, you know, like yes, you know what I mean.
Like office park was enough for me to.
Like the top three parks number one, amusing the park, number two.
Water Park number three. This is only three good parts.
So yeah, so I was like I was already like because it's like they give you the nasal spray, you take three of them one and then wait five minutes and then you have another. And that was the dose I did the first couple of times, and I still freaked out, but I have managed to calm myself down and let myself get through it. And it's not easy, and I think that's helping helping because I realized how wound up I am? And did I tell you I
found a Johns Hopkins ketamine playlist? Did I tell you that time last time?
No? But that makes sense.
I mean Johns Hopkins is like at the forefront of medical research, and I think they do a lot of stuff now for now.
Yeah, so that's what I said to the Like. Also, I talk politics when I get like high, so it's like everybody in there.
Is like, oh God, this guy, like here you go about here you go.
Yeah, he's gonna talk about the fucking darkest ship. When we go in there, it's not go in there. I pressed the panic button and they're like, I'm not going in. I don't want to hear.
About Irish history. Yeah.
From a guy says he's dying because I did that one time. I talked about Irish history for a really long time. I was the guy and he was like, Okay, I gotta I gotta go check on other patients. Are you I don't think you're dying, probably because you're talking a lot. So I don't even remember what I'm talking about.
What did you just you just googled office Park?
No, So I was like, this is what happened. I'm looking at my Instagram on Keademy, and I'm taking the full dose now and I'm managing it and I'm feeling pretty good about it. But it does help me to look at my phone to just kick me from freaking out. And then I listened to music too, and I did look up some one of the doctors did say, hey, do you listen to anything while you're doing this, And
I said no, I think it'll freak me out. But I was imagining listening to like Bob Dylan or something, and so I was like, no, there are Spravado playlists. There are Ketemy playlists on Spotify. So that made it feel like I wasn't gonna die because I was like, they can't be making playlists for something that kills you. I don't think, yeah, right, right right, And and Johns Hopkins, even though Johns Hopkins is probably completely defunded and run
by you know, Kelly M Conway. Now, it still made me feel better that it was a Johns Hopkins playlist. I was like, they can't be making playlists for people to get killed by. So but then that made me think of a million That made me think of all kinds of jokes, like I actually, I accidentally listened to the Wells Fargo playlist.
What is the What's is there anything here? We go?
Oh no, no, it's just a bunch of flute music, you know, like wood flutes and stuff, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, you remember Sam Fear, the magic flute guy.
Nope, they used to.
Advertises his stuff on TV in the eighties nineties nineties. Zam Fear was a guy who was a big celebrity on nineties late night TV because they sold his wooden flute music before you could get like, you know, mood music on your phone. So my friend sends me this on Instagram while I'm on Kenemy, and it's a tweet. This is that vanishingly rare occasion when someone says fun fact and then tells you something that is just insanely fun. And what he sent me was this WhatsApp that someone
retweeted and it says fun fact for the day. Carl Marx's great great grandson has a park poor YouTube channel called exclamation Marks.
Wow and that's real.
Yeah, So I was, well, I wanted to find out if it was real, so I wrote Here's exactly what I wrote to my friend. I'm on ketamine. I'm already like pretty upset about the term office park. To show you where I'm at, like really upset, like this is unacceptable, like that kind of upset. And then I said, no fucking way, please hold, and then I went looked. I said, the world is bonkers. I'm in a recliner on ketamine right now in a quote office park. And I just
watched Carl Marx's great grandson do park cool. And someone commented, the floor is capitalism. Oh this cannot be real, and then I wrote, and yet dot dot dot.
Yeah, So that's it. That's my that's my social media.
I mean, that's that was absolutely the fact that I watched Karl Marx's great grandson duparkour means that.
If we don't live in a simulation, were absolutely fun. I don't think the simulation could come up with that. That's too that's too weird, that's too much.
That's what is something you think is underrated?
Oh, non lucrative hobbies.
Love it?
Yeah, hugely underrated.
I am.
There was an injured baby hummingbird in my backyard last week and this I texted this woman who like runs a hummingbird sanctuary, and she happened to have a woman who volunteers for her that was near my apartment, and it was like, I go to her place and it's her hot. She has a full time job, but she just like rehabilitates little hummingbirds in her house. And it's not like she's doing it on the gram. She's not doing it. She just really enjoys it.
It was awesome.
How is she coming across the all right?
Sorry, my brand just went to like a dark place where it's like she's injuring those fucking hummingbirds. Yeah, yeah, how do you find so many injured hummingbirds?
Can I tell you? I mean the little guy is a little barreling through the air like a.
Snitch, like you know, like I just like I love hummingbirds. I notice hummingbirds, and I've never seen an injured one, but I mean you found one, So there you go.
My mind went straight to like like the hummingbird version of like a World War One like battle hospital. So like a little like hummingbird crush under one arm and a teeny tiny hummingbird cigarette out of the end of the of course.
Yeah, flashbacks so many.
I love hummingbirds so much.
They're so they just seem to be little like droplets of like something operating at a different like time space continuum than the rest of us. It's just like that thing is moving like a fucking ufo. There's no way remarkable.
And then you look at the weight of their little barrel chests and you go, hell, yeah.
Why are you so proud.
This little one? Can I talk about pride? This little one? It was like a baby it had fallen from its nest. And the way it looked at me when I was like holding it was like, hey, let me down. This is humiliating, and it was like they're so proud.
It was crazy. On't so tall? Oh you think you're so cool?
It really was how there's a baby humming bird like.
Fingertips like bizarrely, it was like about this big like like maybe an.
Instagram Yeah, inter wow, I love this. That is amazing.
And I do think we need to bury ourselves in non lucrative hobbies. I've been talking about the trends in mundane like people doing mundane shit just for the sake of doing mundane stuff on like TikTok, and like the video I keep coming back to is like these people who made chocolate chip cookies with but like without using their hands. They just used the trash grabber things.
And see, this is the ill school ship that rules exactly.
It's just like that.
I feel like we need that right now, just like it cut off from any ideological content and just like the stuff that people used to do, and like when they stuffed themselves into fucking pham booths and like sat on flag poles for days.
My friends and I, it was before the garage door opener sensor was that we'd try and roll under it like Indiana jo and yeah, so dangerous, but we spent hours to try and roll.
Under its garage door that way when I was five.
You're sort of talking about what you want is like if there was a way to make a fraternity that was not wildly misogynist exactly.
Yeah, I just think there are like some things that we can take from them, like just pick around the misogyny, you know, and there's like a delicious little bites in there that you get.
Those bites are sixteen goldfish. They make you eat on fresh.
Still that don't still mean to cold fish. But I bet there's like some non mean stuff real quick. Just speaking of chocolate chip cookies.
I just want to tell you, guys about a product that I had recently. I visited my sister in Atlanta and she had cinnamon chips, which was I mean that's ultimately it was cocoa, butter, sugar and cinnamon. But they were the best thing I've ever had in a pancake.
Holy fuck? Oh pancake? Yeah good.
Can I tell you I am actually a chip huge on a cinnamon chip because to me, it is the epitome of a nineties coffee house.
Is a cinnamon chips?
Gone?
Yeah? I had never heard of it? Is this the thing that you knew about? I was shocked to see.
It's been forgotten. It's like all a butterscotch. It's it's been But it was like, I think all the Barnes and Nobles Starbucks hats still have some.
Okay, but it's.
It's not popular and it's good.
It's really good. It is mostly cocoa oil or palm oil or whatever.
But oh yeah, whatever, no problem.
What is something more that you think is overrated?
Keeping in touch.
Your mouth? This is I am so mad at this. I hate it too.
It's also so overrated because to me, like texting, keeping in touch with this certain like there isn't depth to it, and so it kind of feels like a performance, like.
What's up, you're doing good? Okay, well, was get in chuch? But I go.
I love Yeah, you love me. I'll see you when I see you. If you need me reach out, I'll reach out if I need you. Yeah, the whole keeping it. No, I'm not gonna do it. I'm not gonna do it like.
A good you know, leave leave it for like an annual nice conversation to a Hey, just checking in a right good, like you already know what you want the answer to be as you're checking in, and you want it to be short.
And it's specific.
It's not like emotional check it's it's specifically the check in because you feel like you should because you care about that person.
So you're giving that signal and it's like, no, cut them out. They know you love them.
They should know if they love you, they would know.
Okay, I love for getting a little toxic.
I love it.
Actually it's your fault that I don't check in on you.
My my core group of friends from high school, at least four of us have like birthdays a week apart, and by the time it's time to text the fourth person. It's very tiresome because I am out of shit to say, and we have already talked three times.
He's been dealing with this since he was fourteen. That's so funny.
Yeah, the last last dude on the block.
It's like I already said happy birthday to early twice to get the right.
All right, let's take a quick break. We'll come back.
We'll talk about real IDs.
And we're back. We're back. We're back. God, we're sober. We're back at ninety. We're back to nineteen fifty five. The Birdman Alcatraz is there. The biggest creeps in America are locked up on the rock. But yeah, Trump made just another ASONI announcement that probably won't happen because it's so stupid and unrealistic, But anyway, here it goes. He wants to reopen Alcatraz, the federal penitentiary that closed in nineteen sixty three. On Sunday Night on Truth, he announced quote,
rebuild and open Alcatraz. For too long, America has been plagued by vicious, violent, and repeat criminal offenders, the dregs of society who will never contribute anything other than misery and suffering. When we were more when we were more serious nation, in times past, we did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals and keep them far away from anyone they could harm. That's the way it's supposed to be.
No longer will we tolerate right outside of San Francisco, Yeah.
Exactly, No longer will we tolerate these serial offenders who spread filth, bloodshed and mayhem. Now he's like, I am now ordering the Department of Justice Bureau of Prisons to reopen and substantially enlarge and rebuild Alcatraz to how's America's most ruthless and violent offenders enlarge in island? Mm hmm, yeah, okay.
I feel I feel like there's some Freudian context there.
Make it bigger.
I think I feel like it's a lot bigger, bigger, and like like the girth of the island should be big and it should go higher, it should.
Be longer than it should be girthy. Yes, that's the hands of just this need to be bigger right xact? Yeah truly, And everyone's like, what the fuck is he talking about? Large and large? Why are you looking, sir? Have you all ever been to Alcatraz. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, fourth grade.
Yeah, but it's it's like it's not in good shape, right, No.
It's fucking chrump. I remember we were I remember being bummed out as a kid because it was so fucked up looking like I thought you'd be like, oh ship bro a because this I went before the rock came out, and you know, you just had all these like ideas of your like, oh, man, like do people get eaten by sharks who try and get off? It's like it's all fun and then it's just like the most run down federal concrete prison you've ever seen. Yeah, it's like stuff dripping graffiti on the wall.
That's how we'll show them that they may Yeah.
I was gonna say it's gonna cost a lot of money to upgrade, but maybe maybe the point is not too upgrade it.
I have a lot of money now that nobody is spending any money on toys because we can't at them and.
We're not living in a thirty dollars economy anymore. But I mean again, you're like, what prompted this? Just from reading that text, it sounds like a mix of frustration at judges for enforcing the Constitution and being like, yeah, due process is at a minimum here or what the fuck are you thinking? And like you can't just you do. I'm not going to do the process you do press Okay, that's fine, and you can say that, sir, but the
my order still stands. You cannot just disappear people to El Salvador, Like this is some kind of fucking like realbe you heard about.
The like terrifying prisons in El Salvador, is like we need one of those, one of those going up here.
Well, by comparison, it makes acca dress look good. I think maybe right, yeah, maybe, I mean, but I think, you know, like the other part is like the polls are shifting in all the wrong directions still, like there's another pole, like the holes came out, Yeah, like it's all going down. It's he's losing his grip on reality and his bass. And I think, especially with the economy
immigration being like he's scoring particularly low marks. I think reminding people that they live in some kind of fucked up combination between Thunderdome and the rock like he's hoping to like get people back in their back in touch with their cruel side again because he was like when we were more serious, we didn't hesitate to lock up the most Like, you know, he's he's clearly trying to evoke that, and I guess using the thought of Alcatraz
to get people excited. But again, this is like something that most people don't even remember operating, and more people remember The Rock the movie. Yeah, like he's aware of like the average of what everybody thinks, you know.
Like I just feel like he's tapped into like whatever version of reality was on television in the nineteen seventies, and like that's what he's drawing on. And so like the Rock is most famous prison, and he's like, and it's they say it's impossible to escape because the water is full of sharks. And it's like, meanwhile, if you're like paying attention now, like they people they do like recreational swims out to the Rock and bag.
It's a thing that people do for fun.
Maybe he's gonna propose Nicholas Cage be our next national agree.
I think we Later on he said, and now I am calling on Brigadier General Francis X Hummel to be in charge. And someone told him that was Ed Harris's character in The Rock. And had a harrow, violent outburst when he said I want general humble now. But yeah, and like to your point, Jack, it does feel like someone left TNT on the TV on all weekend near Trump, and he may be caught an hour of the rock.
But it turns out someone on Blue Sky may have an even more accurate prediction here as to what happened. Someone said last night on WPBT and Palm Beach, they broadcast the nineteen seventy nine Clint Eastwood film Escaped from Alcatraz. Oh my god. Trump was in Palm Beach that night.
Oh and that's that's like he's never far into television any time.
So that's definitely what happens. Definitely, this is a good one. They say, no one could escape.
Well, he's really good at distractions, right, like, uh, you know the pull, like you said, the pultar shifting in the right direction for him. People are starting to get all this bad news, so he's like, what can I say that we'll get people to talk about something else.
Yeah. Yeah, it's like funny because it's like that's his instinct and he doesn't even like, oh, that's actually pretty good. Now they're not talking about all the ways the economy is falling apart, and how shipments have declined and all these other myriad of problems. But also he gets to say a pretend thing that feels really nice in his brain.
I mean, like everything he like thinks up has some direct connection to pop culture or film because a he can't read, so no new ideas are entering his brain like that. But then also, like you you couple that up with the fact that like you know, remember he's like obsessed with the gold in Fort Knox too.
Yeah, he just it's truly like a just icon based view of the world where there's like, yeah, one famous prison, one famous like bank, or like gold vault, and it's like, you know it also the stuff that was around and popular in the seventies when he was like coming of age, you know, wasn't there a Nicholas Cage will be about Fort Knox maybe, uh the Constitution. Also he loves to talk about the Constitution, that Nicholas Cage did steal the Constitution.
I mean also then and at the end of the rock that you know, they claim to see how JFK was killed if you remember on that micro he is obsessed with.
Some could argue that he became president just so you could find out that.
Get me to say, maybe that's why he has because I think he has the copy of the Constitution or maybe it's the Declaration of He has one of those seminole founding documents in.
His behind him yeah, behind his death. Yeah, and he's like, baby's like pretty cool.
Nicolas Cage won't be able to get his little fucking Coppola hands on it. You know, he's an baby Relas Cage. His whole career is just him saying he's obsessed with him being a Coppola too, just like a weird fact.
He's like, he's not.
That's not his real last name. It's Francis Ford Coppola's nephew RFK Junior. How are we going to approach the face off question? I want to take his face and put it on mine.
Which is funny. Maybe Trump could ask his friend Secretary Brainworm why his daddy shut the place down in nineteen sixty two when RFK was the attorney general. Big mistake because again for people don't realize, like why Alcatraz shut down. It cost way too much to operate since it was on a fucking island and everything there wasn't even fresh water, like yeah, yeah, they had to bring tankers of like million gallons of time just to like replenish the fresh
water supply on Alcatraz. It was also falling apart to the point, and they're like it's just going to get easier to escape, like people are literally just like scraping away at the wall and swimming away like this isn't this isn't going to work. And also it can only it could only hold three hundred and thirty six inmates. Is that real?
Yes, definitely worth whatever a billion dollar project that he's going to be putting together to try.
Yeah, yeah, they're saying, like a half billion will probably do. And you can only put people who don't know how to swim because otherwise right right.
Exactly, yeah exactly, I mean, and it's basically like shark infested water, which like we now know like sharks don't want to eat us, so like you just don't just don't get eaten by a Shark's pretty easy to just swim across the thing and not get eaten by sure.
Plus, or you could just keep the prisoners fed and then they can't swim until after thirty minutes exactly.
You don't want to swim after that, you just date you don't want Yeah, you can't get any We feed them every thirty minutes to prevent them from swimming away. Oh okay, just coming all kinds of myths.
Now it feels like the next thing he's going to attack is quicksand he's going to be like, we need to end quicksand in the United States. Like it feels like it's on the same level of like what a child in the nineteen seventies thought was like.
Cool and scary and a big deal. I was wrong. Yeah, I was wrong about the border wall. We actually need to have a border of quicksand there we go. No one will be able to pass. That's my new idea. I'm again like he's at this rate, he should be talking about storming Area fifty one pretty soon. Oh yeah, unless that's the key. Doesn't he have a doesn't he have the keys to it? I think he just hasn't seen a movie. I think he needs somebody's to show him Independence Day so he can realize what kind of
treasures they got locked up in there. Just checked out this new movie Independence Day. All right, let's talk. Let's talk.
Ai real quick, because this is something that I think ties into some of the hypnotism stuff that you covering your hypnotism episode. But basically I always remark on like how our modern technology seems designed to rob us of free will, and like how it's so much depressing when you like look around and just everybody's glued to their phone in just like on a college campus or in a cafeteria, just nobody's like looking at each other or interacting.
Everybody's just a feeling table every night.
Yeah, like fifteen oh, no, like fifteen years ago. If you just like transported somebody to this point, they'd be like, well, this looks like a fucking dystopia. Like everybody's just glued to their phone.
And it's like the beginning of Sean of the Dead, right, Yeah, it kind of likening our phones used to zombiism. Yeah. So when on last week's episode with doctor Carrie mcnernie, you you had asked, like, is this AI going to be used to fuck with us and more specifically like market to us? Right, because we're giving it all kinds of information about like what we like, what we want, how we want it, how to get there, how we even problem solve. It's so much more specific than like
I spent ten minutes on this website. It's more like this person wants to figure out how they can increase their vertical jump at the age of forty. And now you know a lot about me and what my beliefs are around my physical reality, and I could probably be marketed supplements or something like that.
And it knows how you talk, and therefore it knows how to talk back to you, which I guess is actually very successful or very important factor when it comes to like teaching people, like how to manipulate people is basically like if you can talk to them using some of the same kind of language and like it's like mirror field of ideas that they have, then yeah, like that these are the things that they're excited about.
That a lot of the people who work in AI.
Like so doctor Carrie like reached back out and was like, hey, you should check these articles out. Like that was a really good question. And the art articles are terrifying. One is like a MIT like long academic paper that Jorge, You'd probably be better at deciphering than I would. But it's this Forbes article is interesting because it kind of presents it as like here's an exciting wing. Yeah yeah, yeah, as they put it, doing their best to hide their boner.
AI assistance could start manipulating you into making decisions and then selling your plans to the highest bidder before you've even consciously made your mind up. AI agents, from chatbot assistants to digital tutors and girlfriends, could exploit the access that they have to our psychological and behavioral data and manipulate our responses by mimicking personalities and anticipating desired responses. The fact that they even have the word manipulate, it's
like the fusing. Like all of these technologies that I think the social media like feeds and like the algorith that they use, I think people just like took them at face value of like it's going to show me pictures that I want to see, and people weren't like And they're working with the people who designed addictive gambling games to like figure out how to make it so that you never want to stop and like can't stop
looking or interacting with the thing. So it's troubling, and it's like there's all sorts of really sophisticated ways that they're you know, manipulating or convincing or doing all these things. And I'm just curious Orge kind of as a former roboticist and somebody who's you know, recently done deep dives into things like hypnotism and stuff like that, Like, how do you think about this sort of thing?
Yeah, well, I think it kind of goes back to even the nineteen nineties. You know, what made Google so revolutionary and special was that it was a good search engine, but it was good at giving you ads that it thought that you wanted to see, right, And so I think part of this human humans kind of want that, you know, like we don't want to be shown as for things we don't would never buy or never want to see, right, We want to be shown as it
kind of help us. And in fact, if you look at research into like happiness, like what makes people happy at some point, like having too many choices in your life makes you unhappy, right, Yeah, in a way, like we kind of need help a little bit just helping us make decisions, and something that maybe helps you narrow your choices down can make you a little bit happier. But as you said, you know, humans have a long history of manipulating others using whatever tools are available to
manipulate others. And so yeah, you can definitely imagine that being used to like influence what you buy, what you what you're into. And what I learned from hypnotism looking into hypnotism for one of our episodes was and I actually got hypnotized in the episodes. We can talk a little bit about that if you like.
Are you still under by the way, right? Yeah, yeah, I'm still hopping. That's why I do the show. I'm still hopping on one leg.
Is that you know, at the end of the day, you have a subconscious you know, then people can mess with, people can try to influence, but at the end of the day, it's still your choice on things. You know, you're the one who's still give on things. You're the one who's making all of these options. And so yeah, there's totally the potential to influence people in a bad way, in a good way, but hopefully people still exercise their free will, yeah.
Or understand I think very least people need to understand that their free will is under attack. I think that's the difference is that there's a lot of these passive ways that seemingly are like well, that's crazy Instagram knows like what I want to buy, like every time, like I'm just buying stuff off there and I agree. Like there's sometimes I'm like, oh shit, this is actually something I'm really interested in and I'm glad I found out about other times like who do you think I am?
And why would I want this? But I think understanding how I think, really understanding how the people like From this MIT paper, like this is really chilling right from this MIT paper says quote, we survey recent efforts by tech executives to position the capture, manipulation, and commodification of human intentionality as a lucrative parallel to and viable extension of the now dominant attention economy, which has bent consumer, civic,
and media norms around users finite attention span since the nineteen nineties. We call this follow on the intention economy of like to understand it's like, yes, we have our free will, but also know that there are people that are at these levers that can absolutely have an effect on what we perceive to be like the decisions we're
making independently. And I think that's the part I think to get in touch with a little more because I think as long as you know that that that's better than like talking to like one of my older parents who has known dude. My mom showed me this AI slop video and she's like, why would this giraffe do this? And I was like, Mom, no, like if it felt like I was watching her turn into like a smith or something like with her red.
I say why, I'm like.
It's bullshit, let it go. Yeah. But the second I told her like all these things just start up, She's like, oh shit, I didn't. She's like, it's the first time I saw anything like this. But now this makes sense because other people I know will talk about things like this. I think we have to at least have that attention on it to help safeguard.
There's definitely like a line right where you know, if you're paying for an AI to help you and it actually has your best interests in mind and really wants to give you something that you might like, then I think that can be helpful. But if you or if they don't tell you that they're also taking money from an advertiser to try to feed you these things, and that's where it gets really sketched.
Yeah, or a political campaign or candidate or party. I mean, it's all like that's the thing is like, as these two get developed, like very quickly, a fork is in the road where it's like do you do the thing that you do right by human beings or do you do the thing that you have a very lucrative party trick you can sell companies.
There's a there's a metaphor that a lot of people use that has I've always used because I think, without realizing it, it gives me hope and like comfort, which is like in a few years, like people are going to look back on everybody having like kids all having screens and like everybody just like being on their screens at all times of the day, the way we look back on like the nineteen fifties and sixties and everybody smoking, and that I think gives me comfort because it's like, yeah,
but then we got over that. You know, we've realized that that was bad for us and we stopped doing it.
But like in order to make smoking illegal, like that was a multi decade like battle where we were like no, the like look at these charts, like it's the science inarguable, Like it is literally like there's a smoking gun here, Like this is you are being killed by these cigarettes, and like even then, just the forces of like capital that we're behind smoking we're just like we're still wait, we're still holding a wait and see position on Errand I just I don't think we're going to get that
smoking gun with phones, like I think because it's more of a like spiritual thing, you know, it's more of a phenomenological like I don't know, like if you asked yourself ten years ago, if you showed yourself a video of like what your family dinner looks like today, like where everybody's just on their phones and not looking at each other, and like there are ads that like make fun of the idea of like trying to have a
family dinner without phones like that. That's one of the ads that keeps running in the NBA playoffs is like people being like, let's just put our phones away real quick and then have a conversation.
And then somebody says.
Something really boring and they're like, Okay, back to phones, back to phone, Like it's a fucking bummer. Like, but I don't think that that's gonna be enough to make it like a smoking gun where we like get rid of the technology.
That's a great analogy though with smoking. Maybe maybe need to start with restaurants. You know, my restaurants need to have like a no phone.
I mean I feel like that would be trendy, but it would never like take over, like the Surgeon General is never going to.
Be like you must. Maybe it happened where they're like there was a this guy, the sushi chef Nozawa, who if you've heard of the sugarfish like restaurant chain, it's comes from this guy in Nozawa. And when he like he started off with a small sushi shop on Ventura Blevard in the valley, and when cell phones became a thing because a ton of studio people would go in there, he had a no cell phone pot Like he would throw fucking people out mid meal for picking up a
phone call. And he became legendary. But then it was like then very quickly he I gave up. He's like, I can't, I can't battle every he gave up. Oh no, yeah, yeah, I mean because I think once you throw out a few studio executives, probably it becomes bad for business exactly.
And like I mean think about like this is phones are going to be or you know ai assistants are going to be how like all business is conducted, so I'm assuming also will be seen as bad for business to institute laws Like I just think it's going to be on us to make these decisions to like, you know, live with free will or not. And I think like to the you know, one of the key takeaways from your hypnotism episode is like, you can't be hypnotized into
doing something you don't want to do. But I also to the to the point that you just raised, like, I think a lot of people will want the AI assistant to just like be like, I don't know, man, I got a lot going on, Like you just take it from here.
Whatever, show me something that I'm gonna it's gonna relax me. But I think where it gets tricky is kind of the same sho economical part, right, Yeah, people people who can afford it will pay for the like the clean, neutral, nice version of AI. But people who can afford it will have to you.
Know, add supported version and add.
Hypnotize you know, add subliminal messages version. But because that's what they can afford.
Yeah, yeah, it's yeah, it's very I mean, like I'm also like from a scientific perspective, do you ever worry about like you you hear a lot about like language hegemony and research and how like the English language dominates a lot of scientific research and as a result, it causes research and other language to languages to not get
as much attention as maybe it could be. Or also other people have pointed out that it's like if everyone thinks in the same language, certain mistakes can happen because you're using everyone's sort of using the same language linguistic pathways to arrive at a solution, whereas like varied forms of languages have different sort of pathways to solve a
problem just based on how the language is structured. I wonder too, if, like with the proliferation of people using AI more and more, if that is just now another layer of vulnerability where there's like a version where people aren't giving it the same kind of vetting or analysis as they would because they're presuming it to be completely correct. And then does that lead to some kind of science What is this going to do for?
Yeah, what is this going to do for like outside the box thinking? When you have a thing doing your thinking for you that is just drawing on all previous thoughts yeah, and remixing it. It's like, yes, we're not going to have a lot of cool new ideas coming through.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
And you know, for sure like scientists definitely talk about, you know, having a common language. You know, you kind of need that in order to exchange ideas about science. Kind of hard to do it through translator, so that a little bit of that is inevitable. But you know, I always take comfort in the fact that if you ever talk to a scientists or any scientists, their dream is to be like the one person who's contrariant who turns.
Out to be right, you know, to be the person who's revolutionary big of science, the scientific Yeah.
Yeah, everyone wants to be the person who up ends the field or everyone wants to be the person who proves everyone. So my feeling is like hopefully and this will continue, is that science is kind of set up so that, you know, people are always questioning the assumptions that aren't being made and the results that are being that come out. Uh So that's my hope in the parents that that continues.
They're doing that from China, they will not be doing it from the United States.
Well, yeah, and I think that also I definitely agree with that because I feel like the people that have been most vocal about questioning AI have been scientists and researchers because they're also just sort of like, well, it does these things, fine, let's really talk about everything, and yeah, I guess I never think about like, yeah much in the same Yeah, people want like that's that's the hw
you would chase as a researcher or a scientist. It's like they fucking overlook this, yeah right right right, So yeah, maybe we do have something in built there and the sciences that will help. How annoying scientists are?
Yeah, people say there's three kinds of scientists, the scientist who uh first poses a question, and the scientist who answers the question, and then everyone in between, who nobody ever remembers.
Right, damn damn. Now watch we peel this banana from the tip end. Have you seen somebody open a banana from the tip end? Yeah? Yeah, I've been the person who thought that was that's the way to do it, the better way to do it, that's the way to do it.
It's actually easier. Yeah, well there's a trade. There is a trade about we can't get into it.
Wait, hold on no, and I need to know because we're just talking about contrarians. And I saw somebody's like, yeah, let me open this banana for your kid. I said, what the fuck are you doing it? From that in front? There's there's answer banana. Right, there's a point that stems that connects to the rest of the planet. That that's not the tail, right that you would call the other end the tail where it ends. Oh wait, I'm calling it from the stem. I open it from the stem end.
Ye right, Yeah, that's how I've always done it, But recently I got shown that trick too of opening it from the tip end, and it is easier, especially if the banana is not quite ripe, like if it's a little green and it's it's kind of hard to open it from the step in. Then it's a lot easier to just squeeze the tip, uh, and then then it just kind of opens up.
Oh So it changed me when I saw and we're about to bring us to our next subject after the break, we're seeing a gorilla open a banana where they just break it, snap it in half, and then just like kind of shoot it out.
That might be easier. Yeah, you'll they just half. Yeah, you break it, and they break pretty easy. I highly recommend it. It's a great feeling. I broke. I nearly broke my hands trying to break it. Oh no, I'm telling you, theserillas, you're not one.
Hundred banana like Miles roped the banana.
We need that in a distract him. Let's take a quick break.
We'll come back and talk about the most important scientific question of the day. We'll be right back, and we're back, and it's shot in Freud a week on. He's like Geist every day.
Every day.
We like to just take a quick look at how things are going for some of the people who jump on jumped on the Trump train and expected that it was gonna go well for them, despite all evidence that everybody who sides with him ends up getting sucked over.
And yeah, at every level, even the grifters most of the time, unless your last name is Trump, because they're they're Donald Trump. I think Doju is opening up a new social club that's like half a million ahead to get in, because again, everything's about access. And so the first one hundred days was like this thing. Everyone on the right was talking about, how epic to first hundred days this ministration would be despite every metric indicating that it was a total shit show at the fuck Factory.
And this was a moment for Trump sycophants to lie to his face, as we saw in that cabinet meeting, about his greatness, and also a great opportunity for outsiders to grift.
And I would be that cabinet meeting, Chris, did you see the cabinet meeting where everybody just sat there trying to be like President here the finest human specimen of president.
All right.
I just thought that was what that was like the moment for me for whatever reason, where you just like entered a new level of surreal fucking you know, dystopia shit, that's just like, oh we're we are in a movie now like this. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's quite difficult to live, uh and keep your head on straight, especially with trying to raise kids. But I think everybody you know who's doing it is it's a damn hero because I do think that if you're if you're and I know people who are taking care of their kids and stuff and in the face of all this, because it will pass. I don't know if it'll pass. With an ice age. I have to wait that long.
But I mean, this will go away. You know, these people will pass away, they will blow away, whatever happens, and and then you know, and it's worth hanging in there. But it is right now. And there was that New Yorker piece, which I wasn't crazy about it, but that one did you read? It came out today or yesterday, just about like how my brain's finally broken.
Okay, it was just written.
It's it's it's it's great. I'm just mad. I'm jealous of anybody whos in the New Yorker. But you know, it's probably fine. I'm like, she's a pretty good writer.
It's not that good.
Oh there's no advice king, but anyway, so I'm mad at everybody. But but it's a good article. It's about just a list of like a laundry list of what people deal with on a regular basis, of deep fakes and and just politics and just the endless, endless barrage of bad news. And so you don't even remember what the bad news was, or what day it is, or what time it is or anything. You just are lost
in your fucking phone and in the internet. And everybody is this is probably peak disorientation for any human beings ever on Earth. I honestly I think that's true. You know what I mean, There's never been. I mean, you were dealing with one dinosaur, one guy trying to throw a fucking a caveman, you know what I mean, Like one guy's trying to hit you with a club, and.
The maybe is there's no dinosaurs.
I mean, I guess they didn't co exist. I don't know a cheetah whatever. You had two things, but you knew they were real.
There wasn't like a deep faked.
Up in a tree, not a world where like half of what you see as fake.
The yeah that says by.
A caveman, a fucking deep fag he jump in a damn waterfall. I like that.
You're like this damn Gia Tolentino. Great thing so far? Ohick Marrows?
All right, Oh well you're probably not as upset as me, who doesn't work for the New Yorker, Right right.
Right, Well, at least you can articulate both of those that that that's already sets you apart from ninety nine percent of the people out there. But anyway, so this grift right because everyone is now everyone is susceptible, like you're saying. Two fucking hacks on the right, one guy who works for a daily caller, another one who calls herself an activist. They decided to team up and really
cash in on the excitement. The two quote planned to host what they described on the event's now deleted website as the official Celebration of President Trump's first one hundred days at the newly trumpefied Kennedy Center. Tickets for this event went from between one hundred dollars and twenty five hundred dollars. Keep that in mind. Invitations promised an unforgettable evening where quote where quote, luxury meets excitement and I
don't know what that means. There was also a promise of access to individual guests, members of the Trump administration, and members of Congress. Set Eight's AI generator Right, Luxury meets excitement. I feel it feels. This whole thing feels that I generated when you do that, Luxury meets excitement.
I don't even know what cocaine is. What it is, yeah, I guess, yeah, Like you wear a ball gown while screaming racial slurs at full volume and do a little blow and you're like, this is the height of love and we're a luxury exciting wow, and you can get away with it. Isn't that luxurious?
Unbelievable?
So the problems began immediately once Trump announced that a rally in Michigan would be the event that marked the first hundred days. And once that potential big draw just went poof, the Kennedy Center canceled the contract with the organizers, and it forced the event to move to the equally glamorous Arlington, Virginia. Okay and okay, yeah, I mean things still good, still pretty good. It's not like geographically not that far from Washington, d C. So it's basically the
president's approving the envy. Yeah, you're there, you're there, you're selling access things get This is where things, This is where the details get real fucking spicy. So problems multiplied from there. McMillan, who's one of the organizers, acknowledged that she asked attendees with comped tickets to bring bottles of alcohol to fill out the bar, even though the website promised quote premium drinks. Another organizer himself asked the husband of a photographer who had been hired to shoot the
event to bring some alcohol as well. Then bring alcohol. The man then warned the organizer to call off the party before a fire festival style debacle ensued. Quote you're charging big money for this thing, and people won't be getting what they paid for, the man wrote, according to messages. Later, when the photographer realized she wouldn't be paid to shoot the party, she canceled the Instagram. The Instagram account under one of the organizer's names subsequently sent a message to
the photographer with the line fuck you whore. Both organizers deny that he sent the message, but they won't say who did.
Well, it wasn't us, and so who did it? Ah, we're not at liberty to say. We're just as bothered by it as you are, but we can't say who did twenty twenty from our account in.
Twenty twenty five. Denying something means you did it.
Yeah, yeah, truly.
It's it is actually just kind of noteworthy that they went through the effort of denying it.
Oh yeah, you know, and that's when like shit gets so but then their defenses of it or what so, Okay, the event, the event finally comes and it was I mean, was it a success? I guess if you consider the fact that it looked like total shit and people call the cops on them for not delivering what was promised. Yeah, one guess said, quote, there was no VIP, there was no red carpet like they promised, Like when I bought my ticket, we also said we would be quote in
the company of high profile guests. I have no idea who those would have been, because I didn't see anybody high profile. When asked if she had a different explanation for the ticket packages right, because tickets were between like two hundred and two thousand dollars, Like, what explanation for different ticket packages not being what they were advertised, the organizer just said no. The website also mimiced the official White House website. This is where this is where the
grift really comes in. And one of the organizers, again this woman was asked, isn't that deceptive to like have this sort of font, color scheme, everything mimic the official White House website where you're calling it the official hundred Days party. She says, this is her defense. Quote, if a color scheme and font needs somebody to believe although there are words on the website, they'd say exactly who the host is that this must be the White House
putting this on. I don't know what to tell that person. Wow. So yeah, real, real, real awesome grifters. And can you just explain, like what was the different? No? No, okay, I.
Mean it looked cool, it looked fun. Man, I don't know, like you got to kind of be there. It's one of those things where you got to be there. Oh, I'm sorry.
Or it looked tight. I'm sorry. Yeah. This one clip from the dance floor is humili This is from so the local GOP like outfit in Arlington, Virginia. They started posting shit because they're like, this is a grift. Beware of these fucking people, Chris, have you ever been to a party that looked this fucking sick? I'm just gonna play from the top. There's like literally eight people on the dance floor. There's a guy with a puppet on the ground. There's a US dancing he's not This guy's
a MAGA hat he's waving around. Looks like a total dipshit this I don't know this guy on There's a guy on the ground I think doing like a triumph type bit. Mm hmmm. Because he's like just holding a puppet, but laying down in front of a woman.
It's all that's the worst looking party you ever saw in my life. Yeah really, and you can't party with he can't party with a bunch of I mean, that's the thing is nobody. It's hard to say, but you know, it's like they've reinvented. They wanted to be the popular kids, you know, so they're like, the only way they can do it is with violence. So that's what they're doing. So they've they've gotten to the top of the power structure. So now they're the popular brands as far as they're concerned.
But forced popular kiddom.
But the kind of trash that they are makes it so nobody. They're still not gonna have fun because they don't understand that charmless people have to get their shit together and become like, I don't know what, you know, do some work on themselves. You know. I know it's a popular thing to say, but someone like Donald Trump Junior, if he wants to have friends that are fun, he's gonna have to become a whole different person.
You know.
The kind of people who are gonna come to Donald Trump's party are guaranteed to make him sad because he's expecting it to be, like he really, you know, he hates Robert de Niro, but he would love.
It if Robert de Niro would come.
Like, these people are never gonna get what they want, which is actually approval from celebrities, like liberal celebrities, and they're never gonna get it, so they're stuck with just like another guy who thought violence was a way to popular.
Yeah, I mean they all share the thing where every person who like rises up on the like conservative side of things, I mean and either side, but like really it's really pronounced with the right ring right wingers especially who just go, no, it can't be that I'm the problem here, right, it's everything else. It's not me, and everything else needs.
To change, Like, yeah, I'm gonna rearrange the world so I have a good time, instead of realizing the reason I'm not having a good time is because.
I probably have a ton of trauma. Yeah, yeah, a lot I'm working with.
Yeah, these motherfuckers were not loved. I'm not saying that that excuse is anything, because it doesn't because there's lots of unloved people who who.
Oh fucking love.
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 demiles he he needs your validation, folks. I hope you're having a great weekend and I will talk to you Monday.
Bye.