Hello the Internet, and welcome to this episode of The Weekly Zeitgeist. Uh These are some of our favorite segments from this week, all edited together into one NonStop infotainment laugh stravaganza. Uh yeah. So, without further ado, here is the Weekly Zeitgeist Miles. We're thrilled to be joined in our third seat by the creator of red dot Comics. You can go to Patreon right now to support and gain access to her tastefully inappropriate work.
Please welcome.
It's Kim Winda.
AKA it's a small plug.
After all.
That's all I got was.
How was Gary?
He's working?
Yeah, we're working, Yeah, working hard, working for a living.
It's funny.
On Reddit, there's a stub reddit called what is this where people are just like, find something like I found there some of my kids backpack and it's like it's it's a fucking weed baggy you fuck okay, handed handgun. So often people don't know what butt plugs are. They're like, I found this in my Airbnb under the bed, and everyone's like Usually it just be like wash your hands immediately they have.
It right up to their faces.
Fine here my nose for scale A terrible use texture to it, know, it could be so many different sizes. All right, fine here in my mouth.
Can get all the way back to my youth. Yeah, tongue for scale. Oh man. Anyway, there's just thinking about plugs because Kim's here. Sorry, you don't know that.
Hey, I'm just glad when you say it you think of me.
Yeah, hey, I mean, look, I think even it's Gary even you know what I mean, It's not even just a butt plug.
Yeah, he's a.
Whole personality, an inner moral compass. Thank you, thank you.
Yeah, what is his moral compass? Like? Was it is?
He like points south?
Yeah?
Okay, yeah, so interesting gives me the worst best ideas, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, it's funny when you start Gary butt plug. There's someone made, uh a Gary Bucy butt plug where it's a plug but the handle and.
This picture I was gonna say, teeth like are so teeth are so prominent in my image of Gary Busey and teeth are not something I necessarily wanted my butt plug.
Well, you can have it both. You can have the you can have the feeling the image of teeth without the sensation. In my mind, that would be a wonderful surprise, just first time going at it bent over.
Gary by screaming, Gary, I don't know what I would just want to show you this before.
Uh, very specific, friend.
Yeah, what is something from your search history that's revealing about who you are?
Well? I saw Doctor Faustus at the Griffith Park Shakespeare Free Shakespeare outside and then I was just reading about doctor Faustus and people selling their soul to the devil, and uh, yeah, I don't know, I'm just learning a lot about.
Is that the first deal with the devil in fine art we get?
Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, it's based on a on a German legend, but it's the first. And then the coin Misery Loves Company.
Oh.
Then I was just reading about Christopher Marlow who wrote it, and he's a fascinating dude. He was maybe a gay, he was maybe a spy.
He was a party animal.
You your soul to the double you have a lot of party energy. Hell yeah, and yeah, I mean I was also definitely reading all the Trump conspiracies and people thought he was dead for like a day. Yeah, that was an exciting day. We were all really excited.
What was it?
What was the thing that got you though? You kept going Maybe maybe.
I'll stay a little bit more invested in this.
Someone someone convinced me in real life. They were like, here's why, it's definitely true. And I was like, I really want to believe you, but I just feel like he's going to pop out at a press conference and be all normally's talking. And that's what happened.
And then it was like, I meanause, you know what did they tell you?
What was?
What was like sort of the.
It was like.
Power he.
Uh, just like that he hadn't been seen in a couple of days. I think my the main thing that was convincing me was like that man loves a patriotic holiday. If there's somewhere he can be on like a you know, boat parade with an American flag, he's not. He's not there, Like, yeah, something must be wrong. But I was also like, maybe he's getting that like Lindsay Lohan face.
I feel like you can't as a president get a face lift because it requires you to be out of the limelight.
For two long.
I don't know, man, Biden was showing up high and tied a lot of different times.
That's true. Yeah, it's just it's like, yo, man, when'd your eyes go?
Yeah, here's what I'm alert.
Oh cool, Jack Nicholson in personation you're doing yeah.
And I was like, it would be kind of funny if Trump showed up like, you know, nothing, nothing's going on, and he just looks like nineteen eighty five, all of a sudden.
His body is melting underneath his face.
Well, yeah, of course his body, his body's obviously melting underneath his face.
Yeah.
Well she gets some Morgan transplants.
And doctor Faustus. I'm actually not familiar. Is do they go to a crossroad, like how much of the sold sold to the devil stuff that we know today? Original They don't.
They don't go to the crossroads. But the devil just kind of pops up and it's like, hey, let me give you. I got this amazing deal for you. You'll get to do whatever you want. You can do necromancy for twenty four years, and then at the end of the twenty four years, the Devil's going to drag your soul down to hell, right, and you'll be in hell for eternity. But the play is really good and funny, and a lot.
Of twenty four years.
I don't know, but it's very I was like, everybody would do that because it's like Klarna, everyone would.
Be like okay, illay that off later exactly.
This is just a metaphor for all of Americas. Yea more years a sick man now, and they know you won't be able to pay it back, just like the Clarina knows you won't be able to pay it back. They just own you now.
I mean, it's just kind of like, Wow, it's so fun to do, and then at the end it's like, oh no.
I see so many people wrecking their credit with that shit like online who are like, yo, you don't have to pay that ship back, and they're like what are they going to do? They're not even based in the US, Like they sell your debt to a US based company you.
Just heard one time on social media. Yeah, they actually can't do anything. They're not based in the US.
In Ireland, okay, more about global capital.
You could roll the dice though, and be like things might get fall apart more and they won't know where to find you.
Yeah, yeah, of course.
I mean there's a lot of people who definitely, I know people who think like that.
Twenty four years is so weirdly specific, and also it's the same amount of time that I did my deal with a guy who just popped out of nowhere and offered to give me the life of my dreams.
He explains a lot about you, Jack.
He sold me on something called a Faustian bargain.
Bargain I just hear.
I always stopped listening at bargain.
Like you cast.
Okay, go a podcast. I didn't know that there were I didn't. It was like a real monkeys plot thing where back when I did the deal there were only like a handful of podcasts. I didn't know everybody was gonna.
Have a podcast. Yeah, it's kind of a bum deal.
Now, Fuck, I should not have sold my soul for this.
Well, you're gonna have a good twenty four years and then, yeah.
What you say your own?
Don't worry about it, all right, we might have a really cool family this year. Come up on twenty three sweating blood.
Nope, and that is one of.
Those I thought I filed him down last night.
What is something Miles you think is overrated? Overrated? Bro? A fucking overly juicy sandwich?
Okay, Like, I know, when you eat like a burger or something, you're like, oh, look at all the moisture in that Patty or whatever. And you see there's so many info the like cut a sandwich. It happened like squeezing, like oh little the juice come out. Yeah fine, Like in certain context that is indicative of like, oh this is looking It's not like a dried up beef brick or something.
I'm talking about a fucking sandwich. Okay. I was at Jersey mics. Uh oh, this man in front of me.
Bro asked for an inordinate amount of like vinegar, going yes, sack, not even like keep going okay. So I thought I was on a fucking prank show because he kept going, and I'm like, I'm looking around for like the other straight character in this sketch to be like, this is a fucking lot.
Of liquid now, right? Are we even eat? Is this even a sandwich now? And he kept saying can I get Can I get a little more?
Yeah? Can I sorry? Sorry? Can I get a little more?
And I at least four times by the time he hit the fourth one, the sandwich artist basically did a fuck.
You amount of trying to be like oh yeah. They were even like, broh are you fine?
Squeazed like emptied the full clip out on it, and he was like amazing, thank you h and like the guy like then trying to wrap it, there was like liquid pulling in the fucking in the fucking paper and they wrapped the bread even holding I From.
What I understand, some people just like it to be not even a sandwich, just like a goopy mess with sandwich innerds that they eat.
And the bread becomes part of the sauce that's on top of it.
Exactly exactly.
Uh. And so anyway, he fucking just like he just sauntered out of there like it was normal. And I was like, we had this moment and I was up next. I was like, what the he's like, bro, I've never seen it.
Think. I was like like that you guys, both guys both knew you would witness something.
We were like, oh.
Shit, okay, man, anyway, let me let me get a club supreme bro.
Uh.
And you don't don't fucking overdo it with the.
Juice because I hate a fucking like a sandwich and Jersey Mike's is wet, okay, like that's how they do shit there. But most I know that, so I eat it the second I get it. I'm not to be like, yo, let that shit cook in the fridge. No, but other sandwiches generally, like a nice sandwich, you think it can last a few hours without getting completely sobbed out.
And I understand again, it sounded like it was sogged out on.
Oh.
This was like a by deree.
It was like a French dip with oil and vinegar pre soaked basically.
But anyway, so y'all, I not for me, and I can't believe.
I think it was just more of this situation I was in where the guy was like, oh, amazing thing.
Like I thought he was gonna be like, okay, buddy. I didn't say that much, right, you know.
Yeah, but after the fourth one, because it got a little passive, he's.
Like, sorry, can I let me just get just can I get just a little bit more? I really like, I really like a lot of the juice on there.
And then just that like it was like hissing at the bottom because it's right, yeah, yeah, like it was there was no more liquid in the bottle. Yeah, just anyway, don't do that, folks. And if you do, tell is that a fork and knife job? I guess, in which case it feels different.
I don't know. This ship was so soggy. I'm not joking.
There's probably oil drips like a fucking like like a trail of.
Clues all the way back to walked.
Outside, threw that sandwich in the away in the garbage, and then just jacked off in his car from.
Just making somebody do that. That was what he was there for. What's your king, man?
I don't like I'm not a Nickelson, but I like to go to restaurants. It's specific, but I like just making really specific orders and making the person uncomfortable with how.
Wicky my order is. And I just kind of take that in.
That's why we're these metaglasses, so I can record the whole thing.
For metaglasses. My overrated, Uh just great.
We had a great metaphor for capitalism this weekend with a trade in the NFL. I overrated is like NFL owners for a thousand reasons. But even if you're a fan of an NFL team, having an owner, I think is bad for you. There there's a trade in the NFL that was like not quite Luca level, Like when Luca got traded to the Lakers last year and everyone was like, how how does anyone think that was a good idea, this is a practice. So Dallas traded the
best defensive player. It was Dallas. Again, the city of Dallas is just getting fucked over. Traded the best defensive player in the NFL to Green Bay for like a couple first round picks and like another you know, replacement level defensive player. And it's it's apparently like, you know, Dallas has this famous owner who's like got a big ego and is like he thought he had made some sort of handshake agreement with his person and he like went back on it, but.
He had like just tried to cut the guy's.
Agent out of the negotiation process and then so just based on his like personality issues with him, right he made he just like gave him away because he was like, yeah, that's not how we do things around here.
Great, great team they got there, Yeah, great team. They suck.
I was going to say, like I feel like every Cowboys fan I meet in this era is like.
Fuck, dude, they were expected to suck before this trade happened.
Oh and now it's like double suck. Yeah yeah.
And he's so he's like this strong arm owner who like does everything on his terms. He's older than Joe Biden, and I just want to racist.
Yeah, I want.
To contrast that with the Packers are owned by fans, right right, right, and they're run as a nonprofit, so every all the money they make goes back into the team, and they are like, this trade was pulled off by I guess it's either their president or CEO, but like, you know, normal non profit company shit. But the guy who pulled it off just took over in July after the previous leader of the team reached the mandatory age of seventy Wow.
Yeah, what is this a sci fi utopia? I fucking hate Brett Farv So I don't know if I could ever get behind the.
Packers just as a kid, like I just don't don't like but I love this, But I love this for them. That's how a team, or like capitalism should work. Is like it's owned by the fans and the workers. I don't think it's like I don't think it is a perfect utopia. I'm sure there's all sorts of fuckery.
Yeah, let us know what, despite our outward view of it, is it all fucked up?
Now? Is it all? My favorite philosopher Didy, what the fuck is?
So?
Are the Packers. Do they look like a contender? Now? Yeah?
They do?
Oh so they really just that was like a huge swing for them to be like, oh we just picked him, Okay, good good.
They've gone from they're like the only team that consistently, you know, any anytime, like I'm a sadly a Patriots fan, and anytime you have like a run, you're lucky enough to have a good quarterback, Like you can guarantee there's gonna be some years where you like have a shitty quarterback and like your team is bad, because it's just like that's not a thing that anybody can predict except Green Bay.
For some reason.
They've gone from Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers to Jordan Love is now their quarterback, and like they've just all been awesome, and they've all been like a situation where like the next guy was just like waiting in the wings and they're like, okay, he's ready trade away the previous guy. The next guy is awes like right away, yeah, yeah, And that doesn't have like, for whatever reason, it's just impossible to predict if a quarterback is actually going to
be good in the NFL, except in Green Bay. They've like got it figured out anyways, you know, having having a powerful, one powerful, charismatic in quotes leader at the head of any organization, I feel like does not work. As we're seeing over and over and over again.
You don't want a decrepit monkey skeleton running anything, as mister Burns even showed us.
You know what I mean, You don't want that.
I was watching the Netflix Cheerleader, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader show that they put out, like I haven't watched a couple episodes of it, and you get glimpses of Jerry but more, you see his wife more.
But Jerry Jones, God damn. Every time something like what the fuck are you guys doing over there? Just so old? Yeah, yeah yeah.
And I feel like every time I hear about him, he's always in some shit being racist or old or whatever the fuck. But yeah, hey man, great great matchup, great matchup.
Love that for everybody.
All right, quickly, We'll move on to the next thing. What's something you underrated?
Something I think is underrated is I just finished watching this show called dragon Age Absolution, and it's based on a video game, and it is so good and so gay, and I don't know anyone who's watched it, And I was actually really surprised that it was gay.
Uh No, I don't know.
I just I watched a lot of animation, and to get main characters that are gay and don't like die immediately after they kiss is so rare, especially in fantasy like. It's this phenomenon. If there are gay men in any like genre, they will be like star cross lovers and probably won't even get to kiss, but you'll just know that they are lovers and it's implied, and then one of them will die, and that happens every single time.
It's crazy. So this one was great. There's actually like half of the main cast is gay and they're out here sucking and fucking and you know, finding dragons. Oh yeah, I loved it, and I don't know of anyone who's watched it. And there's only one season in six episodes, and I'm pretty sure it's canceled, but in the way that Netflix doesn't cancel stuff, they just never renew it, right right, right, Yeah, So I think people should watch that.
It's Oh, it.
Does a voice on there too, Mort Burke's wife, Yeah, Ashley Birch, Yeah, Quitian.
Oh yeah, such a fun character dragons are really you know, I have a nine and a seven year old, and like the most popular book series right now with kids that age is Wings of Fire, which is just a book series where everyone's dragons, like like the characters themselves. Yeah yeah dragon yeah yeah, just dragging it all. Yeah
and there, Yeah, everybody seems obsessed with that. Like I am searching on a fairly regular basis wings of Fire adaptation, Like there was a project that was in development that like went away, but it's a so when daddy is there, like are we going to get a wings Fire? Do you think it'll be like when I'm in high school? And so I think.
That's that's what I kept asking my parents about an X Men movie as a kid.
Yeah, when are they going to make the movie? Or this when's the movie?
Like you gotta wait, gotta wait, have a potential recommendation for your kids, and well dragon ages yeah great.
And then also.
There is another show called The Dragon Prince, and I'm sorry, like my hyperfixation is animation. I watch it all the time, so I could go on and on and on. Yeah, The Dragon Prince is amazing and it's a lot of TV I think it's like seven seasons, maybe even more. But it's pretty dragon heavy and they talk and they have personalities not all here too. Yeah, it's really great. It's actually one of the producers, I think of Avatar, the Last Airbender made this.
Okay, I see the parallel might have been one.
Of the creators too, But the voice of Sokka is the main character in this show and it's great. It's also I think like not enough people watched it, but that's how I feel about, Like all of my underrated things are just animated shows that no one's heard of. Like Infinity Train, Oh my god, is the best show ever. I just found out a mutual friend of mine wrote on it. I had no idea and it's so good, but you can't find it anywhere because it was lost in the merger of like Warm, one.
Of those Yeah, fucking there's so many fucking shows.
Like that, and it's so many animations too. Like a couple of my favorite shows are just nowhere to be found now, right Infinity Train, Summer Camp Island, and I would literally I'm saying, don't torrent, No, no one torrent ever except for maybe if.
You do want to watch these shows, then you should, except.
For mental you really shouldn't because of like that's really bad to do.
But yeah, or find or find maybe some people from the crew and vemo them some money out of guilt.
You know you should. Yeah, actually that's the sweet thought.
I'll yeah, sorry, I just bit torrented the whole series. Here's like thirteen bucks. Can you slip that amongst everyone?
Sorry?
Would you steal from the oil industry?
Yes?
Then why would you steal from the film indo? I said, yes, all right, the first.
Flocks in the oil industry. That's the worst example. Let's from the cops. Let's take a quick break. We'll come back, talk overrated and get into some news, and we're back. So is Congress. Yeah, summer break. Adults who get summer break and aren't T shirts. Yeah, remember they t shirts? They cut out early, remember in July in a panic, like that's it. You guys are talking too much about Jeffrey Efstein.
We're done.
We're going to fucking summer camp now and then come back in September. Because they wanted to avoid just making this a thing and having to vote on it. Well, now they're back from like you're saying up top, plugging their ears and not trying to come to grips with reality.
And Democrats are also included in that, and they have some major business to tend to, like first, averting another government shut down, They'll need sixty votes in the Senate, so that means they'll need help from Democrats to get their you know, get their spending in order to avert a shutdown. We'll see how that goes. That'll be an ongoing story for the next few weeks. I'm sure.
I mean, the Democrats are tough as nails, so I feel like to hold them, hold their feet to the FOT.
Okay, you guys promise not to do that stuff. Okay, I'm really gonna trust you now, I'm really gonnateresting now and anyway, So then the other thing that's on most people's minds, despite Trump wanting everyone to forget about it, is the Epstein files. So here's just a quick roundup of everything that's just happened, even in the last week. So, first, Republicans released a huge fucking tranch of documents to be like, look.
See these are we got these from the DJ and even some Republicans like Thomas Master were like, we've seen ninety seven percent of this stuff already, so nice, try to pretend to be like, see, okay, can we move on to like racism yet?
No?
So then, also the Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee have subpoenaed the Epstein estate for documents like a client list or if there's anything resembling a client list, the birthday book that had the Trump drawing on.
It, and those should all be but.
They're supposed to be delivered to Capitol Hill by next Monday.
It was like a weirdest eight saleh those items are of much interesting to me.
Who's a perfect how much do you want for this golfing polo? Okay, I'll take that. I'll take that. This is actually this is my size. And then also the panel is going to interview Alex Acosta, the former US Attorney of South Florida, who is the one who cut that strange deal non prosecution deal after you know, his arrest for child sex crimes in two thousand and six. The committee has also subpoena the Clinton the Clinton's but no Donald Trump quite yet, so we'll see what is there.
Thomas Massey and Roe Kanna are still pursuing the release of the documents in that like searchable format for the public to see. So Massive filed what's called a discharged petition for the quote Epstein Files Transparency Act on Tuesday, which would basically force a vote on the on the floor if two hundred and eighteen representatives signed on to this discharge petition. Roe Kanna has said all two hundred
and twelve Democrats will sign. Massey has said he's got twelve Republicans, so that sounds like theyve got the numbers. To date, it has one hundred and thirty four signatures, including Massey and three other Republicans, which are believed to be Nancy Mace, Marjorie Taylor Green, and Lauren Bobert.
Okay, so I'm like.
Oh, we mean, but knowing MTG and Bobert and Mace, I'm like a little bit like, what do you You're probably gonna use this as a bargaining ship, right to be like, let me put some pressure on.
But I don't know.
This is something Marjorie Taylor Green has been pretty like loud about the whole time. You're gonna lose the mega base. You can't tell us about elite pedophile couples and give us nothing. But then on Tuesday, the House Oversight Committee met with a group of Epstein survivors in a closed door session. Nancy Mace left early and was like walking out of the conference like committee meeting, visibly upset, like
in tears. And she's mentioned like the you know a few years ago that she was drugged and assaulted by an ex she posted on x quotes since it's already being reported. Yes, I left the oversight briefing with Epstein victims early as a recent survivor, not two years in. I had a very difficult time listening to their stories full blown panic attack, sweating, hyperventilating, shaking, I can't breathe.
I feel the immense pain of how hard all victims are fighting for themselves because we know absolutely no one will fight for us. God bless all survivors. A's how she signed off on that. Some people are like, Oh, I wonder what this means if like she's seen the light.
I mean, I don't know.
I'm sure on some level it's difficult to probably hear the testimony of these people and then maybe you yourself be like and I'm kind of made my faustian bargain to not do anything about it, so I can just be on the news and scream about transgender people. And it's eating up my insights right now, and I think I have to leave.
My ankles are melting. Also, yeah, the fuck, what the fuck is going on? It's bad for our health. That turns out this Epstein scrutiny.
Yeah, and Trump is dealing with this by just doing everything he can to make like.
The thing that like all of these are just things that seem transparently, like you can't be like, I'm against the revelation of like that information, Like it just seems so impossible to push back against publicly, you know, And yet.
Yeah, here they are.
Trump has said from his office, they have said supporting the release of the documents would be seen as a quote.
Act of war, that's so.
Wild, quote helping Thomas Massey and liberal Democrats with their attention seeking, while the DOJ is fully supporting a more comprehensive fire release effort from the Oversight Committee would be viewed as a very hostile act to the administration.
What could be more comprehensive than just releasing the documents and letting people look at them, right, exactly, and that's true though.
This is what Thomas Massey has said basically about that, being like, well, look, man, like, maybe here's a thought that would absolve Trump or clear his name, if at all possible.
He's been given.
I think the best way to clear President Trump's name is to release all the files. I actually don't think he's done anything criminal. I think he may be covering for some rich and powerful people that are friends of his. And in fact, some of those billionaires are running ads against me in Kentucky right now.
One of them is in Epstein's Black Book.
So we're, you know, we're getting close to the center of power here. And I think, you know, embarrassment is not a reason to conceal all of this stuff. We've got to get it out in the open, regardless of whose friends might be incriminated.
Emarrassment, Yeah, that's what this is about. Let's not rich fellows who are criminals.
Right, He's giving them like this sort of rhetorical out that like on the news that they're I've seen on conservative news being like, well, you know, he might just be mixed up with the wrong p and you know, he's just trying to make sure these guys don't catch any strays while everything's brought to light. And he's like, you know what, I think that's He's like, I don't think he did anything bad. I think he's just he's just helping out some friends right now.
Although like he just happened to be there and he's innocent, all right.
He's a good boy.
He's like a rich kid who gets caught doing something bad and like the parents' attorneys are like, you're on a he's a good boy.
He was at the trap house, but just as a friend, Yeah.
Supporting his friend, trying to pull his friend out of the trap house.
M h m hmmmm.
Yeah.
So it's all not stopping Mike Johnson. He's trying. He's been like, well, we're gonna have a we'll have some kind of vote on that on Friday. Well, we will look to bring more transparency to the Epstein documents. I don't know what he's doing, and he's just he's saying the things that make him sound like a normal person. He's like, I believe transparency is absolutely important for all the for all the victims of Jeffrey Epstein's crimes. But he's not. He's doing fuck all in terms of practice.
And I think that's the hard bit, is like it's gonna slow up the business of especially the House of Representatives until they resolve this on some level. I just don't know what in what capacity.
They're just gonna make it go away. I think they're gonna be like, well, we saw it the end.
I don't know what.
But there's too many people who are like I've already seen these documents that are Republicans, right, and I'm curious. Yeah, there's a version of.
Right, just gonna they're gonna swallow it and just you know, like like what's her name, Nancy Mace, Like, yeah, she's all upset because she had to confront that she's a demon. Yeah, you know, like and be a human being for a second, But like by tomorrow she's gonna be like, yeah, I don't care, Yeah, it's fine.
I think the most craven thing would be for all of them. And that's why I believe it's possible, is that they this is just a way to extract something from the White House to be like, no, I'm all in on this unless you give me this right now or down the road, and then for sure.
And I've said it before on this show. But it's like the third rail of this thing is that Epstein was CIA and they were the government is who was letting him do this for reasons that I still find
very strange. It's like, why why would you have to run a full scale pedophile honey trap operation, Like like just do the catch a predator, Just get people to come to the room where you said there'd be a twelve year old, and then when they get there, they're like, there's no twelve year old, you fucking idiot, mm hmm right, but they had the twelve year olds, which is insane.
The Alexander Acosta interview is very interesting to me, not that like they'll ever ask the important questions or but like I am curious to like one of the quotes
from him at the time. So you know at the time that he because Trump, you know, after he let Epstein off with like a historically lenient deal for what he had done, then you know, Trump appointed him to a cabinet position, and an anonymous sort of claim that when it cost was vetted for his cabinet post and the Trump administration, he stated, I was told Epstein belonged
to intelligence and to leave it alone. You know when people were like, well, why did you let him get away with this like minor minor prosecution and a and a stipulation that anybody that was touched at all by you know, those implicated and his actions like could not be prosecuted. Like just a that's that's one of the most suspicious aspects of this entire thing. And the fact that they're interviewing him is very, very compelling.
No, it's the third rail. And like Gillen Reileen's sisters married to a guy developed some kind of like Israeli spying program that steals all your data.
And when Gillen's father died, like the people at his funeral was like a who's who of the intelligence community.
Yeah, it's all massad.
They play golf together, go home if I can put my Tim Dillon hat on.
Like they're all friends. All right, I'm friends with NBS.
They're goofy guys, these guys, you know they mean, that's all true.
Like that picture of Gilan at you know, Chelsea Clinton's wedding or whatever. It's like, yeah, rich people protect each other. That's the big reveal.
Yeah, right, exactly, It's like what I think people I say, it's like we can learn from the class solidarity.
Of the elite.
Yeah, totally.
They have each other's back.
No, great if they revealed about the Clintons, like, you know, whatever their roll in this one, like that would be great to like fuck this version of the Democratic Party and bring it all revealed. Yeah, just bring it all out.
I mean, I don't think the Democrats will clean house no matter how the obviousns they should do that.
They're fighting tooth and nail to not talk about Zorin Mumdani right now.
Yeah, concerned about that. They're they're more mad at Mizorin than that Bill Clinton was on the Lolita Express one hundred times.
Just goofy.
You know, they're goofy guys.
Goofy guys who like to fly private.
And with Clinton, they're always just like, you know, he's a he's a charismatic.
He's a ladies man, charismatic predator.
You know, like what they're a Trump too.
They're just like, you can't he's just he loves the ladies.
It's okay, that's a that's like a dated term from the fifties for serial predator. Yeah, you know, he's a ladies man. Parenthetical prolific predator.
All right, an apex predator.
Hey, speaking of apex predator, let's talk about Ladmir Putin. You know, during the pandemic. I remember this being a story that like he was officially freaking out, like would would not allow people around him, was not seen for like the entirety of the pandemic was very like germ phobic. And uh, you know, it seems like he might have some of the same fears, fear of his own mortality and inability to grapple with his own mortality that a
lot of the Trump seems to have. That a lot of these kind of strong men, people who are so desperate to dominate the planet seemed to have.
I mean, let's also not forget he he famously has his poopoo collected whenever he leaves Russia.
You know, yeah, the poop. That's a security concern, man, The thing, the stuff I would do with that, guys, poo poo.
Yeah, don't even get me started. Yeah.
So, uh, Putin and Kim Jong un went down to China for jig. President Jijiping had like a fucking military dick measuring contest where he unveiled all kinds of nasty scary killing machines for his two buddies, and Putin and g were caught on a hot mic like while like these guys were talking, and this is what they were saying to each other.
Quote.
As Putin and She walked toward the Tinman Rostroum, where they viewed the parade with Kim, Putin's translator could be heard saying in Chinese, biotechnology is continuously developing. The translator added, after an inaudible passage, human organs can be continuously transplanted. The longer you live, the younger you become, and you
can't even achieve immortality. In response, she who was off camera, can be heard responding in Chinese quote, some predict that in this century humans may live to one hundred and fifty years old. Now I don't know what she is thinking here. Is he being polite because some maniac just said he could do like the ship of theseus to his insides? Or is he also on the same page. Maybe I think it's the latter, probably because if anything, these people are so starved for power, Like the only
thing worse than death is to not have power. So it's like, well, if I can, if I can live forever then I'll never lose power. But if I die, I'll lose power. You see how that works.
It's also like they get they've have so much. They're like, what's next? Living forever? Like all the tech guys get into that too. It's just like, who wants to live forever? Especially when the things are not going to get more wood?
What fucking vampires like? Man, it's been a blast to be honest and not dying for centuries. It's been watching many loved ones pass away.
I mean, now you're talking that's what vampires say. Yeah, right, I have seen ages passing.
Maybe that's all my castle? Do you think Putin and she like see vampire was.
Like, dude, that sounds fucking sick, so sick?
Yeah for sure, Yes, I want to like Faustian bargain, sign me up.
Yeah, just change my insides out man, and I become younger.
Hey, could you like, could I stop him for a quick pit stop so you could change my insides out?
Yeah? What do you want?
They've all got blood boys for sure.
Oh yeah, oh god.
The blood boys as far as the eye can.
Oh yeah, we talked on an episode. I think it was The Weekly you were out Maybe miles about this multi billion dollar industry that's like largely spurred by the guy who created the X Prize for like space travel, and his next thing is like an X Prize for immortality essentially, and he's this big you know, he's super focused and like invested in all of these like life extension, immortality, like the cutting edge of science, and like basically what
they've found is that like you could like maybe get up to close to one hundred, but all of the all the rich people are essentially like maxed out already, Like all the rich people are already like doing like cellular ts.
It's like death becomes her. It's like you're good and then one day your skin falls off.
Yeah, right, oh, great movie.
You should a great movie. And also just it's so crazy too. You're just like all this money and all this power these people have. They could be solving climate change, homelessness, poverty, hunger. Yes, they're like, no, I gotta live longer, extract more capital from poor people.
Yeah.
There's a quote like one of the doctors who works with them, that's like they spent their health getting rich and now they're riches getting health again.
No, it's like, you know guy, do you guys know Elizabeth Bathory. She's like the vampire countess. So it's like she killed killed young women and bathed in their blood to stay young.
Right, Oh, it's like that.
It's just that it's literally it's like, I mean, who knows is she Gillane? She walk among us film?
You know.
The historical images Like that's that's.
Why they can't show us the Epstein files because it'll be like they're vampires.
Yeah, fully, yeah, they're like Henry Kissinger off himself, but he was a vampire. That's why he lived so long.
He definitely would. I don't know why these evil people live so long.
Vampires, you know what I mean.
They're willing to do whatever it takes.
Yeah, that is well, man, Yeah you don't.
They don't lie awake at night feeling bad about doing that is.
Kind of a comfort though to think of, like a fucking billionaire who has everything and could do whatever the fuck they want whenever, that they'll never actually achieve the thing they're most afraid of or like want to obtain most, which is immortality. And like, I'm sure when they're spending all that money, if they're fucking me hurts what the.
Fuck the fuck is going on in my stomach can hurt some of the concierge. Doctor must be a fucking night. I'm sure it's okay because you're getting paid like a million dollars a year to be like Jeff Bezos's doctor be like, yeah, you just need more steroids.
Man calls you in the middle of the night at all times being like, what the fuck, dude, I've got I've got a hangnail?
What is it a ship?
But yeah, I was gonna say, like the addendum to that, like spent their health getting wealthy and are spending their wealth getting healthy again is like, you know, the way that they got wealthy was like destroying the fucking planet and so they're like killing other people and then being like all right, and now it's time to like make it so that we can live longer in a tiny bubble of survivability on this planet that we've completely fucking destroyed.
Classic villain activities.
Yeah, yeah, it's like not, I don't know, like all the villains are kind of the same. We were talking about how like a lot of the movie villains and like Superman and like from Superman to Naked Gun, the movie villains this summer. We're all like Elon Musk coded and it's just because yeah, well like we have actual, actual villains.
We got real life super villains.
Yeah, like how do you beat Jeff Bezos?
Yeah, we got all the villains and none of the superheroes.
Right, Yeah, it kind of is a shitty deal.
Oh, Alex Luthor's no Superman.
Yeah, but I've been told on this guy I just met that I can if I just like make a little deal with him, I'd be able to get like some superpowers.
But well, I think how long he would before?
Would it be four years?
That's a good deal. I think that's the number keeps coming up.
Yeah, I think that's a great deal. Actually, you should.
Definitely do it to Thanos snap the oligarchs.
Yeah, it's the power I get is lucid dreaming. Sure, I could like turn that into something cool dreaming and yeah, vaguely the gift of gab.
Here's the deal, devil, I want to fart less? Is there anything you can do for me? Here?
That was you know, that was like a big hitler thing. He was. He was extremely flatulent and like his a lot of the drug like hard drugs that were prescribed to him were purportedly to treat his like extreme hyper flatulence, and I need meth to treat my hyper flatulence.
That's wild because from what I understand that taking those kinds of uppers is bad for your gi.
Because the uppers that you're referring to were cut with a baby laxative.
I think, Oh, okay, okay, you're not fucking smoking pure ass by like bayer Labs Nazis. Do you think you think you had like bayer Labs making his meth and ship like who was making.
Who was Hitler?
I know they had, like they were making massive quantities of myth, like there are a lot of their soldiers were on myth.
Who made the myth for the Nazis? I mean it feels like because I'd be like, you can trust it's a it's an industrial so.
It was probably it was gonna be like IBM.
Right, it was the Burbon made by the Temblor Pharmaceutical Company.
Great, great, great, you can trust us again?
Yea Temblor Hitler's first choice. Ah, that's a good fun fuck hook for the brand.
Yeah, an endorsement.
Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.
Ed or back and just.
Two slightly related stories about things bad things smartphone doing to our brain and bad things smartphone doing to our assholes. Okay, so apparently it significantly raises the risk of getting hemorrhoids, according.
To a study.
Those described in a CNN article that presumably a lot of people read while sitting on the toilet.
Oh so not just using a smartphone will give you hemorrhoids. It's it's sitting on the toilet with it, Yeah, using it?
Wow? Okay.
Is it sitting on the toilet specifically or is it just like sitting anywhere?
I think they're saying specific sitting on the TOI reportedly quote, regular smartphone use on the toilet was associated with a forty six percent greater risk of having hemorrhoids because apps are designed to distract us and people are losing track of time. And sitting on the toilet for a long time is especially bad because the open toilet seat compresses the rectal area.
There's nothing underneath there just to support your rectal so it's just for a light to push.
Your rectal floor. Is getting a get to use? Yeah, And this is related to this other story I saw recently about the growth of executive function coaches to fix Basically, you know, they're like, well, all of a sudden, we're seeing people who have worse ability to follow through on tasks, and like, basically, executive function is this new term for
our brain's ability. It's like they consider it like our brain's air traffic controller that can like kind of juggle tasks and allows you to do a job where there's like multiple important tasks and you have to like choose which one to do.
Yeah, like impulse control and just keeping track of shit, right.
Yeah, keeping track of things like navigating friendships on top of your job on time. People are like feeling very overwhelmed. And in the past, so this was usually used to describe like a deficiency in people with ADHD and people like on the spectrum, and they found that these executive function coaches could help people, like when you would give them an executive fund, a coach that focused on executive function,
it would like help them improve. But now like everyone is having these same problems, and it seems pretty obvious to me that it's because everyone is working all the time and on call in the middle of the night. Like it's like that used to be the thing that you would see it in movies where like it was a cop would get a call in the middle of the night.
Like a CIA officer, yeah, or the president or just Robin Williams and any of his characters.
Robin Williams would have just a red phone. It was like, we've got to get Robin Williams on the phone. But now we all have that like red phone on them, you know, on the desk that like and it can ring at any time and you're like, oh, there's an emergency. And now it's funny. The article that's writing about this, I think was in like Business Insider, and so they keep kind of going back and forth. The description is like, you know, we have more distractions today than ever, like
kind of fault is partially our fault. You know, we're digitally We're just a digitally distracted bunch of silly billies.
Yeah, you guys, just since everyone wanted to design algorithms that keep people stuck to their phones god.
And cut off your IV drip of tiktoks to do your job.
They got me good.
So I was kind of like very anti smartphone before twenty twenty, and then lockdown happened and I was just lonely. So I got an iPhone, and I have not been the same since.
Oh when you were off the iPhone prior to lockdowns.
I well, yeah, but it wasn't like I did have an iPhone at like before then. And then I switched to like a dumbfo dumb phone. Wow, and that was
great and I actually loved it. And I haven't been able to justify going back to it though, because like this article is saying, like the scaffolding of workplace environments that I'll designate start and end times is like gone now yea, So I feel this pressure, and I think everyone does to feel like available for work stuff, oh twenty four to seven, or even for like friendships too.
Like it was really nice having this stupid phone because it was so hard to text, and I would just call people and I would make plans and then I would meet at that place at a certain time, and it just there wasn't a lot of changing of plan or if someone canceled, then I just be alonesomewhere for a bit.
And that was actually nice too.
That's okay, you get a little bit of alone time. We were just talking about this trend that I was listening to another podcast where they were talking about people like sharing their location so that friends can like track the location of other friends, and it was like they were they were At first, I was like, Oh, they're going to talk about how weird that is. And then the two hosts of the show were like, yeah, and we do that and that's like normal, but you just
like can't be a weird stalker about it. I'm just like even that like feels like extra being on all the time, Like just always having everybody like have access to you anytime you want feels like, yeah, like rough environment for a human brain to exist in.
I don't we already live in like a metaphorical panopticon, so to make it the real thing to be like no, and they know where I am at all, I'm all always being watched is a little whatever. I mean, I do that. Her majesty is always like can you share your location with me? And I'm like yeah, yeah yeah. But then she's like you didn't leave the house at all, And I'm like.
What the fuck is this?
Like I'm on trial here, by the fucking I'm cooking spaghetti for the baby. I had to do working things sorvy.
I mean, they do talk about how COVID really like they're like, COVID happened. It taxed adults executive functioning because like now we no longer have like a at work division. It's like we're always kind of at work. But then after COVID they say that, you know a quote, modern
life is stretching everyone's mental capacity to the brink. The experts I spoke with point to the endless interruptions and cheap dopamine hits of our digital devices as one obvious culprit, like in addition to research suggests that the digital world can warp our perception of time, which would logically affect how well we manage time, which, yeah, that makes sense.
These are like the apps are designed by people who like in the past used to do psychological experiments on like rats and shit, Like now they're designing apps to make it so that we can't tell how much time has passed. Like the the weirdest experience I've ever had, I think it was the angry like playing angry Birds when that was the thing and like the late aughts and like just being like, oh my god, like forty minutes just disappeared and I didn't notice it at all.
Like it's just like it was like time traveling TikTok.
I definitely time travel on TikTok, which, yeah, I'm not I'm not proud of how many times I've gotten the Hey, motherfucker, you've been scrolling an awful lot. Maybe put this shit down. Like even the fucking dope dealer was like, Hey, come on, man, give it the TikTok apps say that.
Yeah.
Like one of the next videos that would come up was like from the TikTok community thing where someone was like, hey, just remember when you're scrolling a lot to take a break or whatever, and I'm like, what the fuck an hour, fifteen minutes has gone by.
You've got a beard? Yeah, the yeah, but I don't know.
Yeah, it's in addition to you know, this thing that used to be reserved for like the hardest job in the world of like being president, like the red phone on your desk, like you also have a casino in your pocket with like apps for work and like media consumption and like all these things like those are all designed to addict you and just like get you lost, like lose you in time and space.
So it's it's.
Funny when they got like modern life. It's like you're talking about late stage capitalism. Yeah, yeah, fucking assholes, that's what, don't that's thanks for the euphemism, but like people are being ground to dust for nothing, and like in other times and maybe your wages were actually substantial, then at least you could like do something because you had some kind of excess income to like blow your off. But now people have to have multiple jobs just to fucking
get by, and you're on call all the time. Like maybe talk about that rather than your company being like and we're giving out yoga mats on Monday, so.
Come, yeah, exactly, we love it.
We love a wellness program.
They do talk about the wellness programs in this article.
It spooks me how these apps too are Like like TikTok, I didn't use until when they were when it was like going to be banned. Yeah, I downloaded it because I was like, I want to see what this is like everyone loves it, and I won't have the risk of being addicted to it because it's about to say to be banned, right, But obviously that didn't happen, and I
downloaded it, and now I'm addicted to TikTok. But it's wild to me, how every third TikTok is an ad and yeah, yeah there's a shop within the app, Like I mean, Instagram is addictive too, but it's it's not a little market selling to me, like the way TikTok is like put your credit card in this app, oh right now, press the button and you can buy a new hair brush, which I did, you.
Know, like Instagram will be like your hair looks so good. Yeah, Instagram now go to their website to go by the thing where it's still a buffer.
Yeah, and even now like people.
Are live with their TikTok shops like where you can just go on your own like handheld QVC show where you're watching somebody sell fucking candy or whatever. I'm luckily every third video. Yeah, I've I've definitely weaned myself off of the tiktoks as at least when I was like peak tiktoking, like at twenty twenty two.
That was a bad run.
That was a bad run for me.
Yeah, but it's uh yeah, so I don't know. It just feels like a thing that I always like, my my most hopeful self is like we're going to look back on this the way we did smoking and be like, man,
I can't believe we did that to ourselves. But I also like, I don't know, like I could also see it just being like worse and worse, and like we look back on this and be like, oh, those are the good old days before everything was so seamless that we just like lived in Wally universe where it was just like we were constantly in a slipstream of like consumption.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's slowing down because I mean, when you think about it, it's replacing so many quote unquote normal human things we used to do, like socialize or like fucking even like read books. Like there was a new thing about how Americans are falling off like with reading so quickly it's like wild, Like I think there's a study it was twenty eight percent of people
who've read for pleasure in two thousand and four. It's at sixteen percent in twenty twenty three, and it's just like, yeah, it just keeps falling off. It keeps falling off, Like people don't even read for pleasure in.
The UK eighteen percent of people read for pleasure in the twenty three in the United States.
Jeez, that's bleak. Yeah, Twitter counts, right, I can read.
Yeah, that was that was a veryble because it's like many it's because it's not just like the technology, it's also like our education system, like it's multifaceted. It's purely not that. But like I also see now people like are they just find pleasure from their phones? Yeah, and that's such a fucking grim reality.
We're saying something earlier about like how it's replacing normal daily activities, like the availability through smartphone, and I definitely found that, Like when I stopped, I did try to go back to a dumb phone, but it's almost impossible. Like the way that work, it works for people, and like social life works for people, you really are removing yourself from the way everyone's functioning now and right right, it is a pretty isolating thing, is what I discover it.
And it can work if you're okay with that. But also it's like everyone else is assuming that you're on the same wavelength as them, like you're able to be in an I message group chat, or you're going to hit them back on Instagram if they you to something like there, it's really hard to maintain a social life without a smartphone. It's just you have to do it so differently and the world isn't built for.
That anymore, or I don't like how or how I did it, like pre smartphone in high school, like there was that one friend who always knew what was going on, so that Hey, what's going on because I'm not on Instagram? Can you tell what's happening this weekend? Okay, Okay, thank you, thank you.
I used to laugh at Jenine Garoffalo because she was like I remember in the aughts, she was like the last person I had heard of who was like, yeah, I don't really go online, I don't mess with like digital anything. I was like, okay, okay, Tom Hanks from Castaway sounds good. And now I'm I am that person where I'm just like, I mean I'm not, but like I envy that and like, oh that is like that sounds right to me. That's like that is the ideal. I mean it's not possible, but.
Well, I think we're so much of the digital era has allowed people to lose their teather to like the real simple things that keep us present as human beings. Yeah, you know where people are experiencing like moments of nature
through a phone screen. When I get like when you live in a city or something, it's not as readily available to you, but there are just certain sensations that you get from your body from just being present that are so fulfilling in a way that I feel like we lose track of shit like that, and it's so easy to get swept up in well that the nonsense I'm seeing on my phone is my entire reality, when like, if you just look up and around you, that's not
what's unfolding in front of your eyes. It's something completely different, And I think reminding ourselves of that is so fucking important.
We talked last week about how there's these AI kitten videos that are just like a series of images of this really chubby, adorable orange cat, not always like they don't always look exactly the same, but like it's something that the AI is iterating and like you just like see horrible things happen to the cat, like really sad things, like people are feeling like this outpourn people, like a lot of the reposting of it, These are going like hugely viral, and a lot of the reposting of it
as people being like oh not me, like crying at this video of this chubby cat that's clearly AI, And I was like, I had this really like bleak vision of like outside of if you like completely looking at this from the outside, it's like we're cut off from each other and from like interaction with nature, and so we have robots making videos that are just like milking
us of our normal human interactions like that. It's like a fucking like mechanical like calf's mouth that is like milking a cow and like a milking factory, and like we're just sitting there being like I feel the emotion and like moving forward with that ship and it's just like that, and they're doing it to extract like our feelings but also like extract time from us so that we stay we're expressing this natural human emotion and we're like, okay,
that is where I get that emotion now and stay there.
Yeah, exactly, buy things.
Okay, Yeah, slippery fucking slope, I think, I think, yeah, yeah, oh no, we're mid uh, We're right in the middle of the slippery you know when you see somebody like slipping on ice, and like the first because they haven't quite gone down, we're like maybe on that third step where you still think you got it.
Man, We're we are parallel to the ground. We are on face.
We actually hit our head terribly five years ago, and now we still.
Were slipping the bump bump the size of a grapefruit on our forehead.
Yeah. Yeah, screaming down the hill.
There's a there are two birds flying around our flying around our heads.
Uh. Yeah.
I think we need to bring back being bored, sitting sitting outside staring at nothing.
Oh yeah, I'm still I'm always impressed when I don't have my phone and I'm just not even like being like high or anything like I can just purely be like, Okay, I've been staring at this thing for like five minutes and it's just like a tree.
Great, let's move on.
Let's move on because that Oh god, it's time to feel bad for these kids, man, Jack. We got to protect these kids.
Man.
I mean, I'm trying, but it does feel like you're just like, I don't know, it's like a losing battle, right, not a losing battle necessarily, but yeah, Like I think about that. There's this Onion headline that's like a quote unquote cool dad exposing his kids to like a bunch of cultural references that will have them completely cut off from their generation. It's like a dad showing his kids,
like stop making sense with the talking heads. And I think about that all the time because I'm like, am I doing that because I'm not letting them like play roadblocks and shit like that. But like I kind of don't give a fuck, Like I don't know, Yeah.
I think, don't give a fuck about that. Yeah, yeah, I mean not making sense? Yeah, yea be trippy.
I because, like I said, my mom took me to see a fucking Italian art film about a famous Castrado singer. Okay, my dad showed me David like you know, fucking Naked Lunch and eraser Head.
When I was way too young.
I was, and but they also like didn't I wasn't fucking with video games still like late in the game because they weren't buying me that shit. But the things I still think about, like with like great admiration and love and appreciation was just all this different shit that I was exposed to, because that completely expands what you think, like that the the deck of possibilities you know in your mind, like especially with art and things like that.
I don't think anyone's there, like I can't believe I was exposed to this, these kinds of human human artistic expression as a child, Like it really fucking kept me on the wrong foot my entire life. I think, you know, I think showing your kids stop making sense is totally good. You start showing the Max Headroom clips.
Just ship that even I don't think it is 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 de Miles. He he needs your.
Validation, folks.
I hope you're having a great weekend and I will talk to him Monday. By