October 27, 2017 • 52 mins
In episode 15, Jack & Miles are joined by comedian Teresa Lee to discuss John Kelly being a monster, Fox New's weird claims about Radiohead stealing from Coldplay, Xi Jinping & China's new citizen rating system, plus Jack's JFK theories & more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello the Internet, and welcome to Season three, episode five
of The Daily Zeitgeist four October two thousand seventeen. It's
the season finale, another season. My name is Jack O'Brien
a k A Potatoes O'Brien, a K Young Jackfruit a
k Obi one play no d A k O Bi
coole J my A. I am screen name rest in Peace,
(00:22):
uh and I'm joined by my co host, Mr Miles Gray.
I just want to start off with a little fact
people may or may not know, and I want to
pose this guy's to you, true or false. Elton John
helped Eminem get clean. True? Okay, yes, but I didn't
know that, and that is crazy. Eminem called when he
(00:42):
was addicted to Viking and called Elton John and he
got him to his addiction recovering drug addict. Right, it
was crazy. I didn't think, Hey anyway, I just want
to throw facts out. That's my new thing. You should
have said, Billy Joel. That would have been like just
weird enough. Oh, I got a Billy Joel fact. How
about this? Did you know that he he buys up
the front row of every one of his shows gives
them to people who have cheap seats because he wants
real fans in the front room. Hell yeah is the man,
(01:07):
and we're thrilled to be joined in our third seat
by the hilarious stand up comedy writer, just all around
great person Teresa Lee a k Larisa t on Twitter?
What's up? How are you good? What's up? Do you know?
I've never I don't know what Billy Joel looks like
(01:27):
to this day because people have said that he's ugly,
and I like his music, and his music makes don't
I don't want to see Okay, that's no. I've like
actively gone out of my way to not look him
up because I don't want to see an ugly man.
Uh and connected to these songs, I like, have you
seen Star Wars? Yes? Have you seen Darth Vader with
(01:52):
his mask on? He's not really what yo? He's not that.
I'm not it's that bad. I'm just saying. There's a
Twitter A picture on Twitter recent went around surprisingly similar.
I don't want not to ugly shame. I think it's
fine if you're ugly. I just hear the music and
think of him as this, like handsome Harry Connick Jr.
(02:15):
Like I want to imagine this like piano Man. That's
just like, just picture a piano with arms. That that's
what we had. My favorite T shirt that we we
had a brief T shirt store cracked and uh. The
one T shirt that I was like adamant was going
to be a hit was the cover of Billy Joel
Piano Man. And it was just a transformer that was
(02:36):
like a piano and nobody bought it except for me.
I bought three people's tastes trashed. I would have bought
the piano Man shirt. That's fucking awesome. Uh, Teresa, what
is a search from the past few days that is
revealing about who you are as a human being? Oh? Um?
I search? How do you wake yourself up from a dream?
(03:01):
Because I had one of those like dreams within a dreams.
You know when you go to sleep in the morning,
like you go back to sleep, that's usually it happens,
and then you dream you woke up and had a day. Yeah,
so I had a dream like that, but it was
like so many layers and it didn't I didn't know
I was dreaming, and I tried to wake myself up
once I figured so in the dream, I woke up
and got ready. The only thing that was weird was
(03:23):
I had a wig on, but the night before I
was trying to wig on for this like show I
had to do, and in the dream, which I thought
was real, I woke up and looked at myself and thought,
oh great, I put my wig on to sleep so
I can get in character. That's more perfectly reasonable, keep
sleeping with a book under my sleeping wig. But then
(03:45):
I got ready in a dream and like started going
about my day and was on my way out the door,
and then I realized, like, wait a minute, I wouldn't
wear a wig to sleep, So you kind of had
a lucid dream like you kind of became where we're where.
But I couldn't get out of it. So then I
was in it for a while and I was like, okay,
I gotta wake up. I know I'm dreaming. I gotta
get ready, and I couldn't get out, and then I
(04:06):
think I eventually just like did that thing where you
blink hard enough and I woke up. But then I
looked it up because I was like, oh man, I
was hoping that the payoff to that story was going
to be that you searched it in the dream and
then you went and checked your searches and you still
had the wig on. And I'm still dreaming. I don't know.
Sometimes things like that like mess up my reality. So
(04:27):
for a few days, I'm like, wait a minute, do
you ever lucid dream? Do you know how to lose it?
I don't know how to louse it. That's crazy because
I try many times too, and I'm just I don't
have the discipline. You just have to wake up and
write shut down. Yeah, that's what they say, like every time.
If you can start building that memory, you'll start to
see the patterns in your dream and be like, oh, okay,
I'm seeing like I don't have my shoe on because
I'm in the dream. I used to keep a dream
(04:50):
journal when I was a kid, and I used to
lucid dream more. Yeah all right, well I'm gonna start
doing that, all right. What's something that you believe is overrated? Overrated?
I think adult birthdays are overrated. I just had a birthday,
and I think I'm over it. I don't think we
should celebrate birthday's past eighteen Wait? Why? They just feel
because as an adult, you have to tell people it's
(05:10):
your birthday to get them to celebrate and that feels weird,
and then also like but if you don't, which I
kind of tried to play off yesterday. I was like,
I don't know, like I don't want to tell people
in person it's my birthday. But then you start feeling
bad a little bit and you don't and I'm like,
I don't want to care, but then I do kind
of care when people are like rude to you and
you're like, bosh, my birthday. And so it's like this
thing where I'm like I gotta mention it to get
(05:31):
people to be nice to me or not mention it
and just feel bad for dumb things, right, and I
think they're dumb. Yeah. I don't like to tell people
about Mike. I know, we had a we were in
Atlanta together as a as a podcast team, just going
to the Coke Museum. We just go on a little
fun uh no, that's where the corporate headquarters are, and
(05:52):
we spent an entire day with Miles not knowing it
was his birthday. Yeah, that's real. I don't know if
it's like an Asian thing I just didn't want. Yeah, yeah, no,
that's true. Like all my no, actually, a lot of
my Virgal friends are kind of like, I mean, some
people like Virgal season Virgal season, I know, and some
of my other friends are just kind of like you
hit him up on their birthday and you're like, oh, cool, thanks,
(06:12):
what are you doing there? Like nothing? So anyway, I
get that, but also it is it is good to
have a birthday, Like I know what you mean. When
you start not getting the thing you're used to, people
be like, oh, hey, happy birthday. You kind of miss
it a little bit. So yeah, it's a double edged sword.
Well happy birthday, Happy birthday. Yeah, it's something that's underridden.
Um oh, weird out because I know that. I don't
(06:34):
think people don't like him, but I just he's back
in the news because he's going on tour to do
just original songs, and I was like thinking about him,
and uh kind of like just went on a rabbit
hole where I looked him up and everything. And I
remember like when I was a kid, I was like whatever,
I took him for granted, but that she really just
he was like the only guy who made like he
(06:57):
just made a forge a new thing like became him
is making parodies and I just think like, yeah, I
don't know I was like, we should have something for
like something like an air horn or like something that
shoots comfetti anytime somebody does the same thing in the
same week. Jamie Loftus, who also has a weird connection
to you. So Jamie was our guest on Tuesday's episode.
(07:20):
Uh and she said weird Al was overrated because she
said she's like dated too many dudes who are like
take his music seriously, or a lot of guys who
said that was the first concert they ever went to.
It was like a weird yeah. Uh No, I love Jamie. Yeah,
we do have a weird connection. What what's something that's underrated? Um?
(07:43):
I I was gonna say writing things down, but I'm
going to make it more specific, writing in a diary,
because I think people don't like we every day. We're
on our phones now and I kind of feel like
you nothing's last and I kind of Twitter yeah, but
even that, like you know, you used I'm hot, but
then it's really hard to go back and just see
(08:03):
where you were in a day. And I like, I
used to write in a journal all the time, and
I kind of stopped with social media because I felt
like I was expressing myself. But then I feel like
there's ears just lost, like I don't really have any
tracking and you can't look at some random tweet and
be like that's right, like Fox Street, ratcha caps Where
where was it? Yeah? Uh yeah, we exist now in
(08:27):
like a hyper reality that time it's I don't know
if it's lines up with me just moving to l
a where there are no seasons and so everything just
seems like time truly is a flat circle, you guys,
But I just I don't know. It seems now like yeah,
everything's kind of a blur um, including like apparently I
(08:48):
have a son now I don't. Yeah, I thought that
was just some baby you were face timing. All right,
we're gonna get into the show. Uh, you all know
Theresa Lee. Now you're very lucky. So what is the dailies? Like, guys,
we're trying to take sample of the ideas that are
out there today at this very moment change in the world,
(09:09):
whether we're looking or not, whether you're looking or not. Uh.
We talked about politics, the president, news, but we also
talked about movies in supermarket tabloids. We talked about Mohanna
yesterday because that movie is apparently taking over the minds
of children under the age of twelve. Uh So it's
not always like whatever is on the front page of
(09:32):
CNN that day. We're just trying to kind of help
you get to know the sort of national shared consciousness
a little better. That sounds more hippieish than we actually are, Like,
uh so we're gonna start out with a news story. Uh,
General Kelly, I think it's just been sort of a
(09:53):
sea change, at least in my mind, where for whatever reason,
just assumed that he wasn't a bad guy because he
was not Donald Trump, right, and people were like, oh,
he'll get things under control when he took over for rights. Uh,
there's no way to say that name. That doesn't sound
(10:14):
like an angry German Man. But apparently so. He he
had that press conference last week where you know, he
spoke about like what happens when a soldier dies, his
son died. It was all, Uh that stuff was very
emotional and touching. But then he also kind of put
(10:36):
forth this weird version of the world in which, uh,
he feels sorry for people who aren't military, and people
who are military are the highest type of people and
we should be obeying military generals. It was all very strange. Uh.
(10:57):
And apparently so when ICE was doing raids on illegal immigrants,
where we're now kind of more facts are trickling out,
or maybe we're just like actually looking into it because
we're like, oh, this guy might be a ship head.
Well yeah, some some law students, through a Freedom of
Information Act got some of these emails that were being
sent from from DHS at the time to kind of
(11:17):
look into what the internal communications were in those early raids,
like when Trump had just taken office. Right, So, when
ICE was doing raids on illegal immigrants, Uh, some of
them had no criminal record at all, but Kelly sent
a department wide email demanding that ICE agents sent him
the most violent, egregious cases to present to the media
(11:40):
in order to like portray them as criminals. Um. And
then there is in the New York Times yesterday a
story about a meeting in the White House where they
were talking about like setting a acceptable number of immigrants
to you know, to America. And it was like, you know,
(12:02):
General Kelly and Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and uh, what
was the story of miles that like the lowest possible
number was fifty thousand. I think they were debating whether
or not to take it from anywhere from like a
hundred thousand down to fifty thousand of the amount of
immigrants they would accept. And they were going around asking
people their opinions on what an acceptable level was, and
(12:26):
they got to Kelly and he said between zero and one,
So a half one child. That's the nicest possible interpretation
of that. Well, he didn't say zero. He could have
said zero. Could be that he's like cutting people in
half by saying between zero and one, but uh, yeah,
it's just some sinister ship that I don't know, guys, terrifying.
(12:51):
And he also used to run get moo, as we've
talked about on previous episodes. So I mean you could
see it in his eyes. He looks. He looks like
right before a supervillain gets their mutant powers, Like it's like, oh,
I can kind of see the darkness in his eyes,
like he just needs that magnetism or whatever to be
then become a full on superfellain. Maybe Yeah, historians of
the future are going to be like, wait, you didn't
(13:13):
see that this guy Zell immediately like fuck is wrong
with you? Guys? All right, let's move on to uh
the brilliant cultural commentators at Fox News, this is just
gonna be a quick one. Uh. Gentleman by the name
of Greg Guttfeld, who uh that sounds like a redditor
commented name, like yeah, I mean he's got He's got
(13:37):
a show called the Greg Gutfeld Show, as you imagine,
and it's like for anyone who watches Fox News, like
it's the most stupid panel show that they have, like
where people just have they know nothing and talk about everything.
I kind of like this show, but except he's got
some really interesting opinions on music, and one specifically really
stuck out to us that he made recently. I think
(13:59):
he was on tues A. Uh. He has a bone
to pick with with Radiohead, and you know he let
it be known, do you know? Cat The interesting thing
is just like, you know, Radiohead is a fine band,
but they stole everything from Coldplay. No what, shut up,
Greg Guttfeld, you don't know what you're talking about. Radiohead
(14:19):
and cold Play aren't the same band. Triggering um. And
we ended up like this caused us to research, you know,
it set us off in here, right. We were like
all right, like the like Yellow came out the same
year as kid A, which is like Radioheads once they
(14:40):
were done making listenable music and started making like really
challenging like art music. Uh so it was it's just
his time. His timeline is insane, and Coldplay might be
the most derivative thing of another thing in terms of
their relationship to radio Like they they steal their chord
(15:02):
progressions from Radiohead. Uh. I've witnessed Chris whatever, the lead singer.
It's human handsform human the human hands sandwich Chris Martin, uh,
perform and he actually like steals the way Tom York
plays the piano where his head is like vibrating back
(15:23):
and forth, like Chris Martin does that. Just like that's
it's down to that level that he watches their performances
and it's like, yes, that I am that thing. I
mean yeah, aside from sure maybe ticket sales or like
money made that argument. Aside, if you're talking about the
straight up art of the work that radio Head has
(15:43):
done and what cold plays, then they they're not even comparable.
I mean, okay, Computer and kid A are like two
of the greatest albums of all time. I can't even
tell you. I mean, what's a great cold Play album
of the time? One that yellow is on times. I
don't not even know. Yeah, I don't even know. I
(16:05):
don't think they're yeah, yeah that cold Play is derivative
of cold Play anyway. Yes, I look, guys, get with it.
Don't be on Greg Guttfeldt side. Know when someone is
pushing real false news at you. They did not steal
everything from cold Play. All right, we're gonna go to
a break right now, and when we come back, China
(16:36):
and we're back. So I wanted to talk about China.
U Shi Jinping had a had a big speech a
couple of days ago where he announced that he would
not be leaving office, and uh introduced something called Shi
jim Ping Thought, which is sort of a new form
(17:00):
of philosophy on what it means to be Chinese and
like how socialism works. And it just made me realize
how happy I am to not live there. The correspondent
on the show that I was listening to, like one
of the NPR air talk on the air or whatever,
(17:21):
asked what the philosophy entailed, and the expert on China
was like, that's for the graduate students of China to
study and pick apart over the coming centuries, and uh,
it just made me realize, like how awful that is
that like you just have to sort of start studying
whatever this guy just decides to throw off as like
(17:44):
the official national philosophy or whatever, uh, which sounds terrible.
You So to even formulate what this actual philosophy is,
the students have to then pass through like his own,
Like how do I think he wrote it down? I
just think the person was like, it's they're they're asking
how it differs from uh mau thought, which was a
(18:08):
previous leaders sort of philosophy, and uh she was just
like I wouldn't even pretend to begin because because he
also like he's in the pantheon of great Chinese leaders
right now, because the only people that are written in
the constitution are Mao and I think Dung Shaoping and
him right right, So he just added himself to that list.
(18:29):
It's just like a Pinterest board of quotes past Chinese writers.
I don't know it, like I don't care who it is.
Like no country should have all their sharpest minds occupied
thinking about like the ideas of one person, let alone
like just the head of state who didn't come to
(18:50):
power because he like was particularly like philosophically profound it's
just just seems like such a fucking waste of time.
Um well, weirdly, I mean I totally agree, but weirdly
in history, like even in Chinese dynasties, which I know,
ironically like the New China doesn't really want to teach
their history, but Chinese dynasties, a lot of these dynasties
(19:12):
leaders would just kind of introduce like new doctrines, and
then hundreds of years later we look back and we're like, Okay,
this is this makes sense, but I do think they
have a history of doing that. But those dynasties also
killed a bunch of people, and we're super shitty so so,
and you're saying they were like progressive philosophies sometimes yeah,
I know, like sometimes they uh well, Confucias was super misogynistic,
(19:34):
and then Empress Woo kind of just came in and
was like, the new thing is that we're just gonna
be a matriarchy, We're going to raise women. And so
hundreds of years later you look back, you're like, oh,
this actually put a lot of women in power. By
the time, she killed a bunch of men and just
like people, innocent people in order to push her thought Okay,
that's where this country is going, you guys pretty much men.
(19:56):
If nobody sticks up for men, I don't know what's
gonna Hey. Look, I didn't think we were going to
bring this up to later in the show because we
have our new segment called Talk Sick Masculinity, But uh, yeah, bro,
we got to think about our rights for real. We're
talking some sick masculine masculine. Oh yeah, Teresa, you've been
to China, didn't you, like she did? Yeah, I went
(20:19):
to I shot a commercial there last year. Um, and
it was very interesting going um because there's like so
many interesting layers of it. But I'll just kind of briefly, Um,
the weirdest part was just how like fake everything felt,
because I went to Shanghai, where they want you to
feel like it's doing very well, and there's a lot
of Westerners there and a lot of commerce, and a
(20:40):
lot of the locals they'll kind of who work there,
will live outside of the city and really really poor areas.
And what I noticed is like every block there's a mall,
and these are like not like you know, suburban middle
class malls. These are like fancy high end malls with
like really high end designers like Versaci, Gucci brought every
like every block there's one of these malls and they're
(21:01):
just empty. There's nobody buying stuff. It's very very dystopian feeling. Um.
A lot of people in there are just workers, uh
like cleaning the banisters, the floor, so it's very shiny
and uh. We we just hung out there on our
days off. My sister and I went to shoot it
um because there was air conditioned, but it felt so creepy. Yeah,
I don't know. And then you're always being watched, like truly,
(21:24):
the Internet is just monitored, like you can't send a
text without the government reading it. Yeah, it's like but
my argument is always, well, yeah, I mean sure Facebook
gives away our privacy, but it's not like anybody gives
a ship enough about me to like monitor what I'm
texting to somebody. But yeah, in China, they they are
(21:48):
very aware and on top of that ship. Uh, and
they have people whose job it is too to monitor
it and to care. It's like a really big Disneyland
where there's just people watching you, Right, That's what it
seems like to me. The I've seen all these different
architectural things that are just copies off of like American buildings,
(22:09):
Like they have a white house, they have an Eiffel Tower,
which you don't let the fake media tell you that
it's French, it's really American. Uh, but they Yeah, it
seems like and I think you were you were telling
me that at parties in China they will have like
(22:30):
white people who show you they just so this is
a job you can have in Uh. It's I feel
like there's probably some version of it here, but not
with race, but there is straight up if you're a
white like traditional white looking like blonde person, Um, you
can make money in China just attending events and they
just say your celebrity. And people don't have access to
information as much, so like you know, they can dress
(22:53):
a girl up in a really nice dress and just
say she's like miss USA, and you get paid to
go to these events, and it's like, uh, adds so
currency for these events if there's white people there, because
there's sort of like this, you know, they still sort
of glorify American celebrities, but there's just like there's people
know they're like nobody is just random people who live
(23:13):
in China get paid to go to party. It's like
the Soho House and be like, oh, almost celebrity. Who
are these people? Yeah? Um well yeah, because I guess
this all sort of all boils down to this new
thing of that apparently the idea of the social credit
system is about to become a reality in China by
(23:35):
like it will be a mandatory program where basically the
government will monitor things like where you shop, what your
online activity is, how much time you spend playing video games,
if you pay your bills on time, all this stuff
to basically create like a score to sort of dictate
whether or not you are trustworthy or upstanding person. Uh,
(23:56):
and that will like that will determine your access to
things like internet heed like how quickly you can check
into a hotel or a flight, how like how freely
you can travel abroad. Um so, these these whole kinds
of things are like basically we're now beginning to quantify
and rate human beings. Like that Black Mirror episode from
(24:17):
the season three episode one is basically about that. Um
so yeah, and then like also the kind of things
you post on social media will will also affect your score.
So like if you are obviously like being critical of
the government right now is like a no, no, but
if you even do something, if you're if you have
anything like remotely resembling like a criticism, that could affect
(24:38):
your score. Not only your score, but people within your
social network, Like your score is also tied to the
people that you associate with. Um And this sounds like
some you know, like just Orwellian ship, but this is
like one, this is actually in the process of happened.
They I think they already have some version of it,
but it's voluntary and it's yeah, and people are like
(24:59):
our a like bragging about how good their scores are,
and like because now like we're starting to feel like
they're they've gamified your obedience to the system. Essentially. The
creepiest thing about that articles they talk about the black
market that's gonna come out of that, and it's just
like people are gonna start selling reputations as different layers
to that, right, Yeah, because we already buy bots and followers,
like people do that on Twitter and Instagram, like so
(25:20):
that that could that's naturally an extension if you need
to up your credit state like they're and they're like
NBA players who have writing teams who write their twitters
and I'm sure lots of celebrities do. Yeah, And I
mean the economists just had this whole thing about facial
recognition technology, uh, which I know about because I read
the Economist, you guys, but they were saying that a
(25:43):
lot of the forward movement on this technology is happening
in China because they have every one of their citizens
faces in a database, so they're able to like run
all these algorithms that can basically both identify faces and
also like predict certain things about the people, uh that
you know, who knows how accurate it is. Uh, but
(26:06):
it's yeah, I don't know. I think people think of
China's like this huge economy and yeah, we're vaguely aware
that they're communist, but uh, you know, it's just this
huge successful economy. But I think more and more as
we go forward, we're going to be looking at them
as sort of this place that is showing us like
(26:28):
how badly some of this technology can go. And well,
I don't even feel like the borders are as clear
as we think, like we think, oh so far away,
but the Internet, a lot of Chinese developers are making
the apps that we use, and just even like I
don't think snapchest Chinese, but just using that as an example,
like how much time we spend looking at our faces
on a phone on a daily basis, And if Chinese
(26:52):
app launches here, which they totally can, and if it
gets popular, like we're now putting data, American data into
that app, they're collecting our faces. So I feel like, uh,
this kind of thing can blow up so much faster
than we think. But I also think it's important to
like a version of that is already happening just in
culture in general, right, like everything is we rate things
(27:14):
on Yelp or whatever, we get rated on Uber, and
think about even that, like and Jack, we've all talked
about this, like how we get our Uber score up.
We get all hurt when we're like Yo used to
be a five or like a four or nine. I'm
like now I'm before seven, Like, no, would be really
nice to these drivers to start getting so like passive
aggressively nice where I'm like but still like right, but see,
(27:36):
like even how but like we're even seeing how scores
these like scores are not even really meaningless and don't
even affect our ability to like get a bank loan.
How we're even subtly changed modifying our behaviors based off
this like number? Can I write every podcast I go on?
So you guys are going in a book? Do you
need more coffee? Do you need some more? Um? Yeah,
(27:59):
it can be really addictive, Like even checking your credit
score can be a little bit addictive checking your uber score.
I got real into that. It was unfortunate. Um do
you think people are going to start because in China,
what you're saying is you're going to have a totally
different living experience based on your score. Do you think
in a way people are going to start developing? Um,
like different, Like there's gonna be like communities of like
(28:22):
lower score, bigger or higher who knows? I mean like
because it's sometimes they're saying, like on some dating websites,
like if you have a higher score, like you'll be
ranked higher in a dating website. You're like to be like,
oh these are you know, do good or people or
like people within your score. So I think it's like
it'll even create a more defined cast system even just
based off of like what what the things the products
(28:43):
you buy, or who you talk to, the music you
listen to. I couldn't imagine what my social credit score
looks like right now, because like I play a lot
of video games and I have a lot of scumback friends. Yeah,
thank god, we don't have that here in a good place. Um,
it's like after they die, but they have you come
up points during your life, but you don't you don't
see them until you die. But it's sort of like this,
(29:04):
like based on if you're a good person. It is
another uh fictional reality where there is a central ranking system. Yeah,
so basically all these different shows are like predicting it
in one way or another. Um, and yeah, the I
mean in the Black Mirror episode, I won't spoil what
happens in the end, but just the thing that they
suggest is just everybody is doing these superficial interactions that
(29:26):
are sort of partially based on fear because you're where
you have to be outwardly pleasant because you're worried that
they so you're like giving them a high ranking, so
they'll give you a high ranking, and like that's how
you interact with people, which is also what I found
happening to me when my uber score started dipping and
I was like, hey man, so how you doing? What's
going on? I like that hat man? So how long
(29:49):
you have this car, He's just like, yo, you're sweating
all over my an't feel like it could be very liberating.
Early on you just decide you don't care. But I
don't know, and if it sucks you up, like you're
ability to access things like the internet, like how you
if it's like if you go low enough, you're gonna
come out on the other side. Maybe I like that theory,
y know. I think there's different. Yeah, there's kind of
(30:11):
plane into a system and then there's kind of like breaking.
But the thing is that but the reason why you
wouldn't is because this score actually determines your access to
things that like you need in your day to day life.
So you couldn't just be like folk. The system will
be like okay, fan, well then you can get slow
internet speed, you don't have to go anywhere, you don't
have to get alone. Yeah maybe, but that's what privilege is, right,
and people that's invisible and people live with different levels
(30:31):
of privilege and you can either just like feel bad
about it or you can kind of try to like
get woke or whatever. I don't know, this is a
little different, but I just mean, like I think there's
gonna be. It's not it's not going to be a
two way street. There's gonna be all these other layers.
I mean when you think about it too, like people
will find a way like people always do to gain
the system no matter what it is, Like we do
(30:53):
that all over the planet. So yeah, black market score
inflating will will be another thing that they'll probably have
to deal with. Or like, honestly, if it's all about
the books I buy or whatever what I'm buying, like
then fine, I'll buy whatever books I need to. My
score will help crazy out my mouth when you see
me in the street or Okay, here's a crazy But
now it is very fictional. But I feel like because
(31:14):
I'm you know, people who are uh more educated and
trying to like combat the system will probably not have
as high of score because I'll probably be like questioning authority.
So maybe the secret code will develop where like if
you have a certain low score, you like try to
get to a number, like I don't know what's out
and let's say it's out of a hundred and you're like, okay,
thirty three. If you have a thirty three, that's like
you're in this club of like we're resisting, so maybe
(31:37):
they're a secret code will come out of this. Yeah,
and then you like it's kind of like the you know, yeah,
a little like code. I feel like stuff like that
comes out of crazy. We'll see, I mean it starts.
I'm sure within a few years of that. Yeah, that's
what I would hope, because people used to be anti establishment,
and I feel like a lot of that has gone
(31:58):
away with social media. Feel like people just are now
bought in, like to the system to to a large degree. Like, uh,
like nobody's punk rock about their credit score, you know,
because credit score really determines what you have access to
and so like it's nobody's like I didn't bother establishing
credit and people are like, man, that's cool because it
(32:21):
just affects your ability to have a life. I wonder
how much how possible that's gonna be. Hopefully possible, because
it's the carrot and the stick. But then there will
be lenders who are down who will like, you know,
I don't know, not like their score. They'll be like, hey,
you're like commerce is halting or is it gonna be? Yeah,
(32:41):
I think that would be a maybe. I don't know.
I mean, I'm not there so I don't know it
look come back with it will probably season two and
we'll see where we're at. All Right, We're gonna take
a quick break and we'll be right back after these
messages and we're back. Uh So, yesterday a bunch of
(33:10):
JFK assassination records were dumped uh into the National Archives.
But I did wanna since the JFK assassination is in
the news and this is one of my favorite things
to talk about. Uh, I wanted to talk about the
theory that I read that I think is most convincing
(33:30):
as to as to what happened. Is well, to start off,
is there a theory that is like most popular? First,
because I've first, I've not really heard the one that
you talked about a lot. But is there one that
most people tend to believe in a lot of people
believe the CIA was involved. A lot of people believe
that Cuba and Russia colluded to like do it because
Oswald had defected too uh Russia and lived in Russia
(33:53):
for like a year or so. Um, but he like
tried to sort of it involved with the Soviets and
they were like, yeo, man, you're like clearly a maniac like,
we're not we're not interested. Were even like yo, yeah,
yeah exactly. So he like did not have did not
gain access to the higher levels of power. Um, there
(34:15):
are some weird meetings supposedly with the CIA or weird
coincidences where he was like in the same building as
the CIA office. Um. But so I did an episode
of podcast, I did three episodes of called good Question,
uh where I looked into this. And so there's this guy,
(34:36):
Bill James who invented, uh moneyball. He invented basically baseball
saver metrics, which I don't care that much about baseball,
but it's interesting in the in the sense that he's
this sort of poly math, self taught guy who was
a night security guard at some factory and just sat
there and read and read and read and like, uh
(35:00):
watched baseball and like just analyzed statistics. And so this guy,
in the middle of nowhere, just with not much going on,
starts sending out this baseball prospectus where he's like, hey,
all the assumptions about baseball are wrong everyone, and it
like slowly catches on with a bunch of different people
and eventually catches on with Billy Bean, who is the
(35:21):
GM with the Oakland A s which is where the
whole Moneyball story kicks off. But that whole theory is
started by a guy named Bill James, who is just
at the time was a night guard in the middle
of nowhere. And he's not even in the movie Moneyball. Uh.
He now is in the front office for the Boston
(35:42):
Red Sox. But Uh, the other thing that he is
obsessive about besides baseball is true crime. And he wrote
a book called Popular Crime I think a few years ago,
where he went through his theories on what happened in
all these different crimes. He basically he doesn't have any
(36:02):
like special access. He's just read every single document that
has been released and has read like every single book
that puts forth the theory on what happened. Uh, And
basically he thinks this is what happened. He has He's like,
either Oswald acted alone or this theory is the only
one that I've heard that was plausible. First off, to
(36:25):
set up what we do know is that jfk with
two bullets. Yes, so he he was hit with two shots.
There was a shot from Oswald that struck the curb
next to the car, and some Cement jumped up, and
that's where you see, Uh JFK kind of touched the
side of his neck because I think Cement like hit
(36:45):
him in the side of his neck. Uh. Then there
is a second shot that goes directly through his like
sort of upper back, lower neck and comes out the
other side. You see JFK's arms kind of go up,
which is this standard human response when your spinal cord
(37:06):
is severed, which is what happened. The bullet went right
through a spinal cord um, so he would have actually
been paralyzed and potentially a vegetable even if this third
shot hadn't happened. But the one there's a third shot
that is the gruesome one that makes like the Zapruder film,
the footage of the assassination that we've all seen almost unwatchable.
(37:28):
That it's a shot that takes off the right half
of his skull, basically in his brains like go everywhere.
And so this theory comes from a guy named Howard
Donahue who was a gun store owner in Texas who
was like sort of an expert on ballistics and guns,
and he first got involved in just the JFK assassination
(37:50):
coverage because CBS News was investigating the theory that you
couldn't get three shots off with the gun Oswald was
using in like as quickly as he did. And I
think that's even in like the movie JFK that like
you can't get those shots off quickly enough. Um. And
this guy Donahue, who's like a gun expert and just
(38:12):
bad asset with guns, Uh, both gets three shots off
quickly enough with the exact gun and also hits a
target that is moving in the same place that JFKs would.
So he proves, no, you could get those shots off. Uh.
The thing that he can't figure out though, is that
so JF so Oswald was using, uh this rifle that
(38:34):
shoots a heavy, slow like relative to other bullets, a
full metal jacket bullet UM that tends to stay intact. Uh.
And for instance, when the second shot that he shot
hit JFK, it went through him and like went all
over the place. It's the magic quote magic bullet that
(38:57):
Oliver Stone talks about, because uh that that whole theory
is based on just miss aligning, like the two people
in the car. It's not a magic bullet. It's if
you just like move the people to where they were.
The guy sitting in the front seat who it also struck,
was just sitting below JFK. But um, so it's a
straight line. This bullet just is very heavy and it
goes all the way through him, goes through another guy,
(39:19):
and ends up somewhere in the car. Um. But that's
how that bullet behaves as it stays together. And the
third shot that takes off half of Kennedy's head is
the way of bullet would behave if it was one
of those disintegrating bullets from an assault weapon that is
spinning so fast that the bullet actually comes apart when
(39:40):
it strikes something. And that's how you get like this
just Rusalem is devastating and devastating, huge uh wound, like
a clean shot, like just through and through. It's just
as a ballistics expert and as a you know, expert
on guns, he's like, those are two separate bullets that
are behaving in completely separate ways. So he started looking
(40:01):
into it and he's like, the third shot that takes
off half his head doesn't seem like it's even coming
from the same place that Oswald was shooting from. It
seems like it's coming from like an a R type rifle, like,
which are these assault rifles that are not full metal
jacket bullets. They're spinning so fast that when they strike something,
they come apart um and that's how the bullet behaves
(40:26):
when it hits JFK. He is like, but I mean,
obviously somebody would have seen a person who's standing right
behind JFK, which is where it seems like the bullet
is coming from, and carrying an A R like that. Like,
so he was like confused, but he, you know, put
this out there and was like it it just doesn't
make sense, like from a ballistics perspective. And then two
(40:48):
years after he realizes this, he sees a photograph taken
from in front of the motor kid and right where
he thinks the third shot should have been coming from.
There's a secret Service agent holding an A R fifteen
um and he's like standing up in the car trailing
JFK's car. So he comes up with this theory that basically,
(41:13):
when JFK is hit with the second Oswald shot with
the bullet, that this full metal jacket stays intact and
goes through him and all over the car. That the
cars slowed down because they realized that everybody's being shot,
and the Secret Service agents in the car behind JFK
are like freaking out, and one of them stands up
(41:34):
to turn around to you know, look at where Oswald
is shooting from, and because the car slowed down, he
falls forward that the guy who's standing up with the
a r and accidentally lets off a shot and that's
the third shot that takes off half of JFK's head.
(41:54):
You heard it here, folks. So that music up, oh,
is this different one? It's the music they play to
mock me when I when I actually that wasn't That
is very very interesting. So the idea would be there
are some pretty suspicious things about the aftermath of the assassination.
(42:19):
Um Kennedy's body is immediately whisked away onto a plane,
and his brother, uh Robert, who is the Attorney General
I think at the time Attorney General is is like
adamant that they get the body back to him, and
the Secret Service like basically steals his body from where
(42:39):
it was pronounced dead, and the doctors are like, what
are you doing, Like that's this is not how autopsies happen,
and they basically like push past him, get it on
a plane back to Washington. Eventually his brain disappears. That's
like a weird thing that nobody has ever really been
able to explain. And so so and he was buried there.
(43:01):
He had no there was no brain. I think that's right. Um,
And so the the idea would be that this is
why there's a cover up, because they're trying to protect
the Secret Service agent from you know, and also trying
to protect JFK's uh sort of legacy, because it's it's
less strange if like if you if you die by
(43:22):
a gruesome accident, it's less sort of I don't know,
noble mythic quality. And then like dude accidentally shooting you. Yeah,
And there are a couple other things that happened at
the hospital, something like a witness who was there remembers
distinctly hearing a Secret Service agent on the phone with
(43:45):
RFK saying there's been a terrible accident. Um. So the
theories that that's where the cover up is coming from,
just protecting the Secret Service agent, and um, that's where
a lot of the weird, sort of mysterious, confound thing
details come from. Is there there is a cover up,
but it's just to protect the reputation of this guy
(44:06):
who was just trying to do his job and had
basically the worst day of work that anyone has ever
had history of the universe. But you wouldn't. So when
you first said that, I was like, Oh, does that
mean there's some inside like secret service? But it's straight
up just an accident. It just seems like it would
be too because it wouldn't make sense if they already
had Lee Harvey Oswald shooting. Why would they wouldn't have
(44:28):
set it up that one right exactly? And it also
seems like, if you're going to hire an assassin to
like shoot from the window, why would you then have
a secret Service agent like in the car right behind
him be like I'm shooting him too U. And so
one of the questions I had is like, why didn't
anybody see this gun go on? Like wouldn't there be
a muzzle flash? And apparently there wouldn't be a muzzle flash.
(44:51):
And also a weird thing that happened on the ground
is that people smelled gun smoke and the place that
they were, they were on a bridge that the cars
were going under when they smelled gun smoke, and the
they would never have been able to smell gun smoke
from all the way up where osriad was if the
gun smoke was coming from the cars driving under them,
(45:14):
then it makes more sense. Um, So I did this.
I did. I did this conversation with I interviewed both
the author who wrote the book with Donahue about this theory,
and I also interviewed one of the leading JFK conspiracy theorists,
and I said, you know, I've looked at all a
(45:35):
lot of different theories and this is the only one
that makes sense. And it was so interesting how this
conspiracy theorist responded. He just got so mad at me
for bringing up this theory. And I was like, but like,
so what's wrong with it? He's like, Jack, it's been disproven.
It's a ridiculous theory, and frankly, I just want to
(45:56):
move on. And I'm like, okay, but like, so, do
you have some reason that you just believe it. He
would not give me a reason. He would just say
that it's been disproven and then move on. And I
was like, all right, so what do you think happened?
And he was like, I can't say what happened, but
there's a lot of mysterious stuff that points to some
connection between Oswald and the CIA. It was just like
so strange, and I think I think it's probably that
(46:20):
it's not fun, it's not sexy. Yeah, I think like
some guy arrantly shot him, right, and also that generation
like wanted there to be like a government like conspiracy.
I feel like I'm sure this go around, they'll find
a way to put this on Hillary Clinton. Right. Yeah,
that's what you're saying that eventually they're going to reveal
the documents and yeah, they're gonna be like, oh, what's this?
(46:41):
I mean, because yeah, that's the other thing too, is
this these documents, like long awaited documents that that are
like linked to one of them, like the country's greatest
mysteries is coming out that Trump was like, yeah, let's
let's put these out. Let's do a little distraction. I
mean hopefully it's not a distraction. It's five million pages,
So if anyone has some really good reading skills, let
us know, come through there. Teresa, you're saying that we're
(47:03):
gonna like look up from the archive and oh yeah,
he's totally distracting something. I mean, we're gonna look up
and our flag's gonna be the Russian fire just we've
but we now know, but we know that nothing. It
was five million pages of just yeah, the most dry ship. Yeah,
So I don't know, maybe by the time people are
(47:24):
listening to this episode, there the documents have been dropped
and it was secretly. I don't know. I mean, that
would be the craziest ship if these documents actually had
some like, you know, game changing information. I doubt there
would be. If they're going to release that that could
like fundamentally father that would be told. My bet is
(47:45):
still that there will be something in there like Hillary
Clinton has someone who's this Rodom Fellow is involved. Um oh,
another weird detail and then we'll end the show is that, uh.
Immediately after LBJ took over office, he seemed terrified that
(48:05):
the Secret Service was going to accidentally shoot him and
kept saying that, kept being like, these guys are gonna
shoot me one day. Like there's a story from the
night of the assassination where he's like walking around and
the Secret Service like thinks he's an intruder and like
turn their gun on him. But and he's like I
could just see that being a thing that because he
(48:25):
knows they just accidentally shot Kennedy like seemed more terrifying
him than like they might have just been like, oh
thank god, it's it's just you. Um. But yeah, he
specifically there is a quote from him saying, I swear
to God, the sec Res service agents are gonna shoot
me accidentally. Wow. When you guys can download all this
from Jack's manifesto that he's been writing, we'll have that
(48:48):
in the footnotes. I'm so glad I just got that off.
My cha. None of that is true, by the way,
I just like all of that up, you know. Uh. Yeah,
it's from a book called More at All Error by
Bonner Manager written with I want to say Phil Donahue
because obviously not very different don Yes. Earlier Miles is
(49:09):
playing the audio of that, and I thought it was
like an official video. But the video some guy mad
I was just looked over and it's just like images
of like Illuminati. Like it's like this really throws me
in with like some people. No, No, I'm sure the
documents will will confirm all of this. Well, it's a
(49:29):
fun thing to believe until it's completely disproven by this
document dump. Uh, that's gonna do it for today, Teresa,
thank you so much for joining us. This was super
fun finale of all of all of all options with
the what was your favorite what was your favorite memory
of season three? Is it really a finale? Guy? Yeah? This,
(49:50):
and then we take a mid season well we have
to take a we're on a hiatus for so this
is the finale of season three. We take a two
day hiatus revamp, and then we have our Hawaii was great.
I'm thinking of going to Tibet or something. Just get
my mind right. Yeah, just meditate for a little while.
My dog is a Tibetan spaniel, so nice shout out
(50:12):
to your dog. Okay, but yeah to your dog. Where
can people find you? We can find me on Twitter
at Larissa t and when oh come to my stand
up shot? Can I plug it? Yeah? November five at
the Friend Good Show Free show in Los Angeles and
l A. Yeah, if you live in l A. You
follow me on Twitter. You can find the info awesome miles.
(50:32):
Where can people follow you? You can follow me on
Twitter and Instagram at Miles of Gray. You can follow
me on Twitter at Jack Underscore O'Brien very private about
my Instagram. You can follow us on Twitter at Daily
Zeitgeist on Instagram at the daily Zeitgeist, or we have
a Facebook page called the Daily Zeitgeist and you can
(50:54):
check out our footnotes on daily zeitgeist dot com. Uh.
Super producer Anna is putting them up as we speak.
There's links to all all the different articles that we're
pulling facts from in this episode of and yeah, oh
and the Daily Zeigeist is produced and engineered by Nick
(51:18):
Stump you heard on yesterday's podcast, but we don't do
credits usually. And you know then to season three which
probably mentioned Nick is the man that makes it happen,
and the dailiesis is also edited by Lawrence Stump. It
is a Stump family affair, Stump production. Uh, and that's
(51:39):
gonna do it. We will be back on Monday. Talk
to you guys then,
Hello the Internet, and welcome to Season three, episode five
of The Daily Zeitgeist four October two thousand seventeen. It's
the season finale, another season. My name is Jack O'Brien
a k A Potatoes O'Brien, a K Young Jackfruit a
k Obi one play no d A k O Bi
coole J my A. I am screen name rest in Peace,
(00:22):
uh and I'm joined by my co host, Mr Miles Gray.
I just want to start off with a little fact
people may or may not know, and I want to
pose this guy's to you, true or false. Elton John
helped Eminem get clean. True? Okay, yes, but I didn't
know that, and that is crazy. Eminem called when he
(00:42):
was addicted to Viking and called Elton John and he
got him to his addiction recovering drug addict. Right, it
was crazy. I didn't think, Hey anyway, I just want
to throw facts out. That's my new thing. You should
have said, Billy Joel. That would have been like just
weird enough. Oh, I got a Billy Joel fact. How
about this? Did you know that he he buys up
the front row of every one of his shows gives
them to people who have cheap seats because he wants
real fans in the front room. Hell yeah is the man,
(01:07):
and we're thrilled to be joined in our third seat
by the hilarious stand up comedy writer, just all around
great person Teresa Lee a k Larisa t on Twitter?
What's up? How are you good? What's up? Do you know?
I've never I don't know what Billy Joel looks like
(01:27):
to this day because people have said that he's ugly,
and I like his music, and his music makes don't
I don't want to see Okay, that's no. I've like
actively gone out of my way to not look him
up because I don't want to see an ugly man.
Uh and connected to these songs, I like, have you
seen Star Wars? Yes? Have you seen Darth Vader with
(01:52):
his mask on? He's not really what yo? He's not that.
I'm not it's that bad. I'm just saying. There's a
Twitter A picture on Twitter recent went around surprisingly similar.
I don't want not to ugly shame. I think it's
fine if you're ugly. I just hear the music and
think of him as this, like handsome Harry Connick Jr.
(02:15):
Like I want to imagine this like piano Man. That's
just like, just picture a piano with arms. That that's
what we had. My favorite T shirt that we we
had a brief T shirt store cracked and uh. The
one T shirt that I was like adamant was going
to be a hit was the cover of Billy Joel
Piano Man. And it was just a transformer that was
(02:36):
like a piano and nobody bought it except for me.
I bought three people's tastes trashed. I would have bought
the piano Man shirt. That's fucking awesome. Uh, Teresa, what
is a search from the past few days that is
revealing about who you are as a human being? Oh? Um?
I search? How do you wake yourself up from a dream?
(03:01):
Because I had one of those like dreams within a dreams.
You know when you go to sleep in the morning,
like you go back to sleep, that's usually it happens,
and then you dream you woke up and had a day. Yeah,
so I had a dream like that, but it was
like so many layers and it didn't I didn't know
I was dreaming, and I tried to wake myself up
once I figured so in the dream, I woke up
and got ready. The only thing that was weird was
(03:23):
I had a wig on, but the night before I
was trying to wig on for this like show I
had to do, and in the dream, which I thought
was real, I woke up and looked at myself and thought,
oh great, I put my wig on to sleep so
I can get in character. That's more perfectly reasonable, keep
sleeping with a book under my sleeping wig. But then
(03:45):
I got ready in a dream and like started going
about my day and was on my way out the door,
and then I realized, like, wait a minute, I wouldn't
wear a wig to sleep, So you kind of had
a lucid dream like you kind of became where we're where.
But I couldn't get out of it. So then I
was in it for a while and I was like, okay,
I gotta wake up. I know I'm dreaming. I gotta
get ready, and I couldn't get out, and then I
(04:06):
think I eventually just like did that thing where you
blink hard enough and I woke up. But then I
looked it up because I was like, oh man, I
was hoping that the payoff to that story was going
to be that you searched it in the dream and
then you went and checked your searches and you still
had the wig on. And I'm still dreaming. I don't know.
Sometimes things like that like mess up my reality. So
(04:27):
for a few days, I'm like, wait a minute, do
you ever lucid dream? Do you know how to lose it?
I don't know how to louse it. That's crazy because
I try many times too, and I'm just I don't
have the discipline. You just have to wake up and
write shut down. Yeah, that's what they say, like every time.
If you can start building that memory, you'll start to
see the patterns in your dream and be like, oh, okay,
I'm seeing like I don't have my shoe on because
I'm in the dream. I used to keep a dream
(04:50):
journal when I was a kid, and I used to
lucid dream more. Yeah all right, well I'm gonna start
doing that, all right. What's something that you believe is overrated? Overrated?
I think adult birthdays are overrated. I just had a birthday,
and I think I'm over it. I don't think we
should celebrate birthday's past eighteen Wait? Why? They just feel
because as an adult, you have to tell people it's
(05:10):
your birthday to get them to celebrate and that feels weird,
and then also like but if you don't, which I
kind of tried to play off yesterday. I was like,
I don't know, like I don't want to tell people
in person it's my birthday. But then you start feeling
bad a little bit and you don't and I'm like,
I don't want to care, but then I do kind
of care when people are like rude to you and
you're like, bosh, my birthday. And so it's like this
thing where I'm like I gotta mention it to get
(05:31):
people to be nice to me or not mention it
and just feel bad for dumb things, right, and I
think they're dumb. Yeah. I don't like to tell people
about Mike. I know, we had a we were in
Atlanta together as a as a podcast team, just going
to the Coke Museum. We just go on a little
fun uh no, that's where the corporate headquarters are, and
(05:52):
we spent an entire day with Miles not knowing it
was his birthday. Yeah, that's real. I don't know if
it's like an Asian thing I just didn't want. Yeah, yeah, no,
that's true. Like all my no, actually, a lot of
my Virgal friends are kind of like, I mean, some
people like Virgal season Virgal season, I know, and some
of my other friends are just kind of like you
hit him up on their birthday and you're like, oh, cool, thanks,
(06:12):
what are you doing there? Like nothing? So anyway, I
get that, but also it is it is good to
have a birthday, Like I know what you mean. When
you start not getting the thing you're used to, people
be like, oh, hey, happy birthday. You kind of miss
it a little bit. So yeah, it's a double edged sword.
Well happy birthday, Happy birthday. Yeah, it's something that's underridden.
Um oh, weird out because I know that. I don't
(06:34):
think people don't like him, but I just he's back
in the news because he's going on tour to do
just original songs, and I was like thinking about him,
and uh kind of like just went on a rabbit
hole where I looked him up and everything. And I
remember like when I was a kid, I was like whatever,
I took him for granted, but that she really just
he was like the only guy who made like he
(06:57):
just made a forge a new thing like became him
is making parodies and I just think like, yeah, I
don't know I was like, we should have something for
like something like an air horn or like something that
shoots comfetti anytime somebody does the same thing in the
same week. Jamie Loftus, who also has a weird connection
to you. So Jamie was our guest on Tuesday's episode.
(07:20):
Uh and she said weird Al was overrated because she
said she's like dated too many dudes who are like
take his music seriously, or a lot of guys who
said that was the first concert they ever went to.
It was like a weird yeah. Uh No, I love Jamie. Yeah,
we do have a weird connection. What what's something that's underrated? Um?
(07:43):
I I was gonna say writing things down, but I'm
going to make it more specific, writing in a diary,
because I think people don't like we every day. We're
on our phones now and I kind of feel like
you nothing's last and I kind of Twitter yeah, but
even that, like you know, you used I'm hot, but
then it's really hard to go back and just see
(08:03):
where you were in a day. And I like, I
used to write in a journal all the time, and
I kind of stopped with social media because I felt
like I was expressing myself. But then I feel like
there's ears just lost, like I don't really have any
tracking and you can't look at some random tweet and
be like that's right, like Fox Street, ratcha caps Where
where was it? Yeah? Uh yeah, we exist now in
(08:27):
like a hyper reality that time it's I don't know
if it's lines up with me just moving to l
a where there are no seasons and so everything just
seems like time truly is a flat circle, you guys,
But I just I don't know. It seems now like yeah,
everything's kind of a blur um, including like apparently I
(08:48):
have a son now I don't. Yeah, I thought that
was just some baby you were face timing. All right,
we're gonna get into the show. Uh, you all know
Theresa Lee. Now you're very lucky. So what is the dailies? Like, guys,
we're trying to take sample of the ideas that are
out there today at this very moment change in the world,
(09:09):
whether we're looking or not, whether you're looking or not. Uh.
We talked about politics, the president, news, but we also
talked about movies in supermarket tabloids. We talked about Mohanna
yesterday because that movie is apparently taking over the minds
of children under the age of twelve. Uh So it's
not always like whatever is on the front page of
(09:32):
CNN that day. We're just trying to kind of help
you get to know the sort of national shared consciousness
a little better. That sounds more hippieish than we actually are, Like,
uh so we're gonna start out with a news story. Uh,
General Kelly, I think it's just been sort of a
(09:53):
sea change, at least in my mind, where for whatever reason,
just assumed that he wasn't a bad guy because he
was not Donald Trump, right, and people were like, oh,
he'll get things under control when he took over for rights. Uh,
there's no way to say that name. That doesn't sound
(10:14):
like an angry German Man. But apparently so. He he
had that press conference last week where you know, he
spoke about like what happens when a soldier dies, his
son died. It was all, Uh that stuff was very
emotional and touching. But then he also kind of put
(10:36):
forth this weird version of the world in which, uh,
he feels sorry for people who aren't military, and people
who are military are the highest type of people and
we should be obeying military generals. It was all very strange. Uh.
(10:57):
And apparently so when ICE was doing raids on illegal immigrants,
where we're now kind of more facts are trickling out,
or maybe we're just like actually looking into it because
we're like, oh, this guy might be a ship head.
Well yeah, some some law students, through a Freedom of
Information Act got some of these emails that were being
sent from from DHS at the time to kind of
(11:17):
look into what the internal communications were in those early raids,
like when Trump had just taken office. Right, So, when
ICE was doing raids on illegal immigrants, Uh, some of
them had no criminal record at all, but Kelly sent
a department wide email demanding that ICE agents sent him
the most violent, egregious cases to present to the media
(11:40):
in order to like portray them as criminals. Um. And
then there is in the New York Times yesterday a
story about a meeting in the White House where they
were talking about like setting a acceptable number of immigrants
to you know, to America. And it was like, you know,
(12:02):
General Kelly and Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and uh, what
was the story of miles that like the lowest possible
number was fifty thousand. I think they were debating whether
or not to take it from anywhere from like a
hundred thousand down to fifty thousand of the amount of
immigrants they would accept. And they were going around asking
people their opinions on what an acceptable level was, and
(12:26):
they got to Kelly and he said between zero and one,
So a half one child. That's the nicest possible interpretation
of that. Well, he didn't say zero. He could have
said zero. Could be that he's like cutting people in
half by saying between zero and one, but uh, yeah,
it's just some sinister ship that I don't know, guys, terrifying.
(12:51):
And he also used to run get moo, as we've
talked about on previous episodes. So I mean you could
see it in his eyes. He looks. He looks like
right before a supervillain gets their mutant powers, Like it's like, oh,
I can kind of see the darkness in his eyes,
like he just needs that magnetism or whatever to be
then become a full on superfellain. Maybe Yeah, historians of
the future are going to be like, wait, you didn't
(13:13):
see that this guy Zell immediately like fuck is wrong
with you? Guys? All right, let's move on to uh
the brilliant cultural commentators at Fox News, this is just
gonna be a quick one. Uh. Gentleman by the name
of Greg Guttfeld, who uh that sounds like a redditor
commented name, like yeah, I mean he's got He's got
(13:37):
a show called the Greg Gutfeld Show, as you imagine,
and it's like for anyone who watches Fox News, like
it's the most stupid panel show that they have, like
where people just have they know nothing and talk about everything.
I kind of like this show, but except he's got
some really interesting opinions on music, and one specifically really
stuck out to us that he made recently. I think
(13:59):
he was on tues A. Uh. He has a bone
to pick with with Radiohead, and you know he let
it be known, do you know? Cat The interesting thing
is just like, you know, Radiohead is a fine band,
but they stole everything from Coldplay. No what, shut up,
Greg Guttfeld, you don't know what you're talking about. Radiohead
(14:19):
and cold Play aren't the same band. Triggering um. And
we ended up like this caused us to research, you know,
it set us off in here, right. We were like
all right, like the like Yellow came out the same
year as kid A, which is like Radioheads once they
(14:40):
were done making listenable music and started making like really
challenging like art music. Uh so it was it's just
his time. His timeline is insane, and Coldplay might be
the most derivative thing of another thing in terms of
their relationship to radio Like they they steal their chord
(15:02):
progressions from Radiohead. Uh. I've witnessed Chris whatever, the lead singer.
It's human handsform human the human hands sandwich Chris Martin, uh,
perform and he actually like steals the way Tom York
plays the piano where his head is like vibrating back
(15:23):
and forth, like Chris Martin does that. Just like that's
it's down to that level that he watches their performances
and it's like, yes, that I am that thing. I
mean yeah, aside from sure maybe ticket sales or like
money made that argument. Aside, if you're talking about the
straight up art of the work that radio Head has
(15:43):
done and what cold plays, then they they're not even comparable.
I mean, okay, Computer and kid A are like two
of the greatest albums of all time. I can't even
tell you. I mean, what's a great cold Play album
of the time? One that yellow is on times. I
don't not even know. Yeah, I don't even know. I
(16:05):
don't think they're yeah, yeah that cold Play is derivative
of cold Play anyway. Yes, I look, guys, get with it.
Don't be on Greg Guttfeldt side. Know when someone is
pushing real false news at you. They did not steal
everything from cold Play. All right, we're gonna go to
a break right now, and when we come back, China
(16:36):
and we're back. So I wanted to talk about China.
U Shi Jinping had a had a big speech a
couple of days ago where he announced that he would
not be leaving office, and uh introduced something called Shi
jim Ping Thought, which is sort of a new form
(17:00):
of philosophy on what it means to be Chinese and
like how socialism works. And it just made me realize
how happy I am to not live there. The correspondent
on the show that I was listening to, like one
of the NPR air talk on the air or whatever,
(17:21):
asked what the philosophy entailed, and the expert on China
was like, that's for the graduate students of China to
study and pick apart over the coming centuries, and uh,
it just made me realize, like how awful that is
that like you just have to sort of start studying
whatever this guy just decides to throw off as like
(17:44):
the official national philosophy or whatever, uh, which sounds terrible.
You So to even formulate what this actual philosophy is,
the students have to then pass through like his own,
Like how do I think he wrote it down? I
just think the person was like, it's they're they're asking
how it differs from uh mau thought, which was a
(18:08):
previous leaders sort of philosophy, and uh she was just
like I wouldn't even pretend to begin because because he
also like he's in the pantheon of great Chinese leaders
right now, because the only people that are written in
the constitution are Mao and I think Dung Shaoping and
him right right, So he just added himself to that list.
(18:29):
It's just like a Pinterest board of quotes past Chinese writers.
I don't know it, like I don't care who it is.
Like no country should have all their sharpest minds occupied
thinking about like the ideas of one person, let alone
like just the head of state who didn't come to
(18:50):
power because he like was particularly like philosophically profound it's
just just seems like such a fucking waste of time.
Um well, weirdly, I mean I totally agree, but weirdly
in history, like even in Chinese dynasties, which I know,
ironically like the New China doesn't really want to teach
their history, but Chinese dynasties, a lot of these dynasties
(19:12):
leaders would just kind of introduce like new doctrines, and
then hundreds of years later we look back and we're like, Okay,
this is this makes sense, but I do think they
have a history of doing that. But those dynasties also
killed a bunch of people, and we're super shitty so so,
and you're saying they were like progressive philosophies sometimes yeah,
I know, like sometimes they uh well, Confucias was super misogynistic,
(19:34):
and then Empress Woo kind of just came in and
was like, the new thing is that we're just gonna
be a matriarchy, We're going to raise women. And so
hundreds of years later you look back, you're like, oh,
this actually put a lot of women in power. By
the time, she killed a bunch of men and just
like people, innocent people in order to push her thought Okay,
that's where this country is going, you guys pretty much men.
(19:56):
If nobody sticks up for men, I don't know what's
gonna Hey. Look, I didn't think we were going to
bring this up to later in the show because we
have our new segment called Talk Sick Masculinity, But uh, yeah, bro,
we got to think about our rights for real. We're
talking some sick masculine masculine. Oh yeah, Teresa, you've been
to China, didn't you, like she did? Yeah, I went
(20:19):
to I shot a commercial there last year. Um, and
it was very interesting going um because there's like so
many interesting layers of it. But I'll just kind of briefly, Um,
the weirdest part was just how like fake everything felt,
because I went to Shanghai, where they want you to
feel like it's doing very well, and there's a lot
of Westerners there and a lot of commerce, and a
(20:40):
lot of the locals they'll kind of who work there,
will live outside of the city and really really poor areas.
And what I noticed is like every block there's a mall,
and these are like not like you know, suburban middle
class malls. These are like fancy high end malls with
like really high end designers like Versaci, Gucci brought every
like every block there's one of these malls and they're
(21:01):
just empty. There's nobody buying stuff. It's very very dystopian feeling. Um.
A lot of people in there are just workers, uh
like cleaning the banisters, the floor, so it's very shiny
and uh. We we just hung out there on our
days off. My sister and I went to shoot it
um because there was air conditioned, but it felt so creepy. Yeah,
I don't know. And then you're always being watched, like truly,
(21:24):
the Internet is just monitored, like you can't send a
text without the government reading it. Yeah, it's like but
my argument is always, well, yeah, I mean sure Facebook
gives away our privacy, but it's not like anybody gives
a ship enough about me to like monitor what I'm
texting to somebody. But yeah, in China, they they are
(21:48):
very aware and on top of that ship. Uh, and
they have people whose job it is too to monitor
it and to care. It's like a really big Disneyland
where there's just people watching you, Right, That's what it
seems like to me. The I've seen all these different
architectural things that are just copies off of like American buildings,
(22:09):
Like they have a white house, they have an Eiffel Tower,
which you don't let the fake media tell you that
it's French, it's really American. Uh, but they Yeah, it
seems like and I think you were you were telling
me that at parties in China they will have like
(22:30):
white people who show you they just so this is
a job you can have in Uh. It's I feel
like there's probably some version of it here, but not
with race, but there is straight up if you're a
white like traditional white looking like blonde person, Um, you
can make money in China just attending events and they
just say your celebrity. And people don't have access to
information as much, so like you know, they can dress
(22:53):
a girl up in a really nice dress and just
say she's like miss USA, and you get paid to
go to these events, and it's like, uh, adds so
currency for these events if there's white people there, because
there's sort of like this, you know, they still sort
of glorify American celebrities, but there's just like there's people
know they're like nobody is just random people who live
(23:13):
in China get paid to go to party. It's like
the Soho House and be like, oh, almost celebrity. Who
are these people? Yeah? Um well yeah, because I guess
this all sort of all boils down to this new
thing of that apparently the idea of the social credit
system is about to become a reality in China by
(23:35):
like it will be a mandatory program where basically the
government will monitor things like where you shop, what your
online activity is, how much time you spend playing video games,
if you pay your bills on time, all this stuff
to basically create like a score to sort of dictate
whether or not you are trustworthy or upstanding person. Uh,
(23:56):
and that will like that will determine your access to
things like internet heed like how quickly you can check
into a hotel or a flight, how like how freely
you can travel abroad. Um so, these these whole kinds
of things are like basically we're now beginning to quantify
and rate human beings. Like that Black Mirror episode from
(24:17):
the season three episode one is basically about that. Um
so yeah, and then like also the kind of things
you post on social media will will also affect your score.
So like if you are obviously like being critical of
the government right now is like a no, no, but
if you even do something, if you're if you have
anything like remotely resembling like a criticism, that could affect
(24:38):
your score. Not only your score, but people within your
social network, Like your score is also tied to the
people that you associate with. Um And this sounds like
some you know, like just Orwellian ship, but this is
like one, this is actually in the process of happened.
They I think they already have some version of it,
but it's voluntary and it's yeah, and people are like
(24:59):
our a like bragging about how good their scores are,
and like because now like we're starting to feel like
they're they've gamified your obedience to the system. Essentially. The
creepiest thing about that articles they talk about the black
market that's gonna come out of that, and it's just
like people are gonna start selling reputations as different layers
to that, right, Yeah, because we already buy bots and followers,
like people do that on Twitter and Instagram, like so
(25:20):
that that could that's naturally an extension if you need
to up your credit state like they're and they're like
NBA players who have writing teams who write their twitters
and I'm sure lots of celebrities do. Yeah, And I
mean the economists just had this whole thing about facial
recognition technology, uh, which I know about because I read
the Economist, you guys, but they were saying that a
(25:43):
lot of the forward movement on this technology is happening
in China because they have every one of their citizens
faces in a database, so they're able to like run
all these algorithms that can basically both identify faces and
also like predict certain things about the people, uh that
you know, who knows how accurate it is. Uh, but
(26:06):
it's yeah, I don't know. I think people think of
China's like this huge economy and yeah, we're vaguely aware
that they're communist, but uh, you know, it's just this
huge successful economy. But I think more and more as
we go forward, we're going to be looking at them
as sort of this place that is showing us like
(26:28):
how badly some of this technology can go. And well,
I don't even feel like the borders are as clear
as we think, like we think, oh so far away,
but the Internet, a lot of Chinese developers are making
the apps that we use, and just even like I
don't think snapchest Chinese, but just using that as an example,
like how much time we spend looking at our faces
on a phone on a daily basis, And if Chinese
(26:52):
app launches here, which they totally can, and if it
gets popular, like we're now putting data, American data into
that app, they're collecting our faces. So I feel like, uh,
this kind of thing can blow up so much faster
than we think. But I also think it's important to
like a version of that is already happening just in
culture in general, right, like everything is we rate things
(27:14):
on Yelp or whatever, we get rated on Uber, and
think about even that, like and Jack, we've all talked
about this, like how we get our Uber score up.
We get all hurt when we're like Yo used to
be a five or like a four or nine. I'm
like now I'm before seven, Like, no, would be really
nice to these drivers to start getting so like passive
aggressively nice where I'm like but still like right, but see,
(27:36):
like even how but like we're even seeing how scores
these like scores are not even really meaningless and don't
even affect our ability to like get a bank loan.
How we're even subtly changed modifying our behaviors based off
this like number? Can I write every podcast I go on?
So you guys are going in a book? Do you
need more coffee? Do you need some more? Um? Yeah,
(27:59):
it can be really addictive, Like even checking your credit
score can be a little bit addictive checking your uber score.
I got real into that. It was unfortunate. Um do
you think people are going to start because in China,
what you're saying is you're going to have a totally
different living experience based on your score. Do you think
in a way people are going to start developing? Um,
like different, Like there's gonna be like communities of like
(28:22):
lower score, bigger or higher who knows? I mean like
because it's sometimes they're saying, like on some dating websites,
like if you have a higher score, like you'll be
ranked higher in a dating website. You're like to be like,
oh these are you know, do good or people or
like people within your score. So I think it's like
it'll even create a more defined cast system even just
based off of like what what the things the products
(28:43):
you buy, or who you talk to, the music you
listen to. I couldn't imagine what my social credit score
looks like right now, because like I play a lot
of video games and I have a lot of scumback friends. Yeah,
thank god, we don't have that here in a good place. Um,
it's like after they die, but they have you come
up points during your life, but you don't you don't
see them until you die. But it's sort of like this,
(29:04):
like based on if you're a good person. It is
another uh fictional reality where there is a central ranking system. Yeah,
so basically all these different shows are like predicting it
in one way or another. Um, and yeah, the I
mean in the Black Mirror episode, I won't spoil what
happens in the end, but just the thing that they
suggest is just everybody is doing these superficial interactions that
(29:26):
are sort of partially based on fear because you're where
you have to be outwardly pleasant because you're worried that
they so you're like giving them a high ranking, so
they'll give you a high ranking, and like that's how
you interact with people, which is also what I found
happening to me when my uber score started dipping and
I was like, hey man, so how you doing? What's
going on? I like that hat man? So how long
(29:49):
you have this car, He's just like, yo, you're sweating
all over my an't feel like it could be very liberating.
Early on you just decide you don't care. But I
don't know, and if it sucks you up, like you're
ability to access things like the internet, like how you
if it's like if you go low enough, you're gonna
come out on the other side. Maybe I like that theory,
y know. I think there's different. Yeah, there's kind of
(30:11):
plane into a system and then there's kind of like breaking.
But the thing is that but the reason why you
wouldn't is because this score actually determines your access to
things that like you need in your day to day life.
So you couldn't just be like folk. The system will
be like okay, fan, well then you can get slow
internet speed, you don't have to go anywhere, you don't
have to get alone. Yeah maybe, but that's what privilege is, right,
and people that's invisible and people live with different levels
(30:31):
of privilege and you can either just like feel bad
about it or you can kind of try to like
get woke or whatever. I don't know, this is a
little different, but I just mean, like I think there's
gonna be. It's not it's not going to be a
two way street. There's gonna be all these other layers.
I mean when you think about it too, like people
will find a way like people always do to gain
the system no matter what it is, Like we do
(30:53):
that all over the planet. So yeah, black market score
inflating will will be another thing that they'll probably have
to deal with. Or like, honestly, if it's all about
the books I buy or whatever what I'm buying, like
then fine, I'll buy whatever books I need to. My
score will help crazy out my mouth when you see
me in the street or Okay, here's a crazy But
now it is very fictional. But I feel like because
(31:14):
I'm you know, people who are uh more educated and
trying to like combat the system will probably not have
as high of score because I'll probably be like questioning authority.
So maybe the secret code will develop where like if
you have a certain low score, you like try to
get to a number, like I don't know what's out
and let's say it's out of a hundred and you're like, okay,
thirty three. If you have a thirty three, that's like
you're in this club of like we're resisting, so maybe
(31:37):
they're a secret code will come out of this. Yeah,
and then you like it's kind of like the you know, yeah,
a little like code. I feel like stuff like that
comes out of crazy. We'll see, I mean it starts.
I'm sure within a few years of that. Yeah, that's
what I would hope, because people used to be anti establishment,
and I feel like a lot of that has gone
(31:58):
away with social media. Feel like people just are now
bought in, like to the system to to a large degree. Like, uh,
like nobody's punk rock about their credit score, you know,
because credit score really determines what you have access to
and so like it's nobody's like I didn't bother establishing
credit and people are like, man, that's cool because it
(32:21):
just affects your ability to have a life. I wonder
how much how possible that's gonna be. Hopefully possible, because
it's the carrot and the stick. But then there will
be lenders who are down who will like, you know,
I don't know, not like their score. They'll be like, hey,
you're like commerce is halting or is it gonna be? Yeah,
(32:41):
I think that would be a maybe. I don't know.
I mean, I'm not there so I don't know it
look come back with it will probably season two and
we'll see where we're at. All Right, We're gonna take
a quick break and we'll be right back after these
messages and we're back. Uh So, yesterday a bunch of
(33:10):
JFK assassination records were dumped uh into the National Archives.
But I did wanna since the JFK assassination is in
the news and this is one of my favorite things
to talk about. Uh, I wanted to talk about the
theory that I read that I think is most convincing
(33:30):
as to as to what happened. Is well, to start off,
is there a theory that is like most popular? First,
because I've first, I've not really heard the one that
you talked about a lot. But is there one that
most people tend to believe in a lot of people
believe the CIA was involved. A lot of people believe
that Cuba and Russia colluded to like do it because
Oswald had defected too uh Russia and lived in Russia
(33:53):
for like a year or so. Um, but he like
tried to sort of it involved with the Soviets and
they were like, yeo, man, you're like clearly a maniac like,
we're not we're not interested. Were even like yo, yeah,
yeah exactly. So he like did not have did not
gain access to the higher levels of power. Um, there
(34:15):
are some weird meetings supposedly with the CIA or weird
coincidences where he was like in the same building as
the CIA office. Um. But so I did an episode
of podcast, I did three episodes of called good Question,
uh where I looked into this. And so there's this guy,
(34:36):
Bill James who invented, uh moneyball. He invented basically baseball
saver metrics, which I don't care that much about baseball,
but it's interesting in the in the sense that he's
this sort of poly math, self taught guy who was
a night security guard at some factory and just sat
there and read and read and read and like, uh
(35:00):
watched baseball and like just analyzed statistics. And so this guy,
in the middle of nowhere, just with not much going on,
starts sending out this baseball prospectus where he's like, hey,
all the assumptions about baseball are wrong everyone, and it
like slowly catches on with a bunch of different people
and eventually catches on with Billy Bean, who is the
(35:21):
GM with the Oakland A s which is where the
whole Moneyball story kicks off. But that whole theory is
started by a guy named Bill James, who is just
at the time was a night guard in the middle
of nowhere. And he's not even in the movie Moneyball. Uh.
He now is in the front office for the Boston
(35:42):
Red Sox. But Uh, the other thing that he is
obsessive about besides baseball is true crime. And he wrote
a book called Popular Crime I think a few years ago,
where he went through his theories on what happened in
all these different crimes. He basically he doesn't have any
(36:02):
like special access. He's just read every single document that
has been released and has read like every single book
that puts forth the theory on what happened. Uh, And
basically he thinks this is what happened. He has He's like,
either Oswald acted alone or this theory is the only
one that I've heard that was plausible. First off, to
(36:25):
set up what we do know is that jfk with
two bullets. Yes, so he he was hit with two shots.
There was a shot from Oswald that struck the curb
next to the car, and some Cement jumped up, and
that's where you see, Uh JFK kind of touched the
side of his neck because I think Cement like hit
(36:45):
him in the side of his neck. Uh. Then there
is a second shot that goes directly through his like
sort of upper back, lower neck and comes out the
other side. You see JFK's arms kind of go up,
which is this standard human response when your spinal cord
(37:06):
is severed, which is what happened. The bullet went right
through a spinal cord um, so he would have actually
been paralyzed and potentially a vegetable even if this third
shot hadn't happened. But the one there's a third shot
that is the gruesome one that makes like the Zapruder film,
the footage of the assassination that we've all seen almost unwatchable.
(37:28):
That it's a shot that takes off the right half
of his skull, basically in his brains like go everywhere.
And so this theory comes from a guy named Howard
Donahue who was a gun store owner in Texas who
was like sort of an expert on ballistics and guns,
and he first got involved in just the JFK assassination
(37:50):
coverage because CBS News was investigating the theory that you
couldn't get three shots off with the gun Oswald was
using in like as quickly as he did. And I
think that's even in like the movie JFK that like
you can't get those shots off quickly enough. Um. And
this guy Donahue, who's like a gun expert and just
(38:12):
bad asset with guns, Uh, both gets three shots off
quickly enough with the exact gun and also hits a
target that is moving in the same place that JFKs would.
So he proves, no, you could get those shots off. Uh.
The thing that he can't figure out though, is that
so JF so Oswald was using, uh this rifle that
(38:34):
shoots a heavy, slow like relative to other bullets, a
full metal jacket bullet UM that tends to stay intact. Uh.
And for instance, when the second shot that he shot
hit JFK, it went through him and like went all
over the place. It's the magic quote magic bullet that
(38:57):
Oliver Stone talks about, because uh that that whole theory
is based on just miss aligning, like the two people
in the car. It's not a magic bullet. It's if
you just like move the people to where they were.
The guy sitting in the front seat who it also struck,
was just sitting below JFK. But um, so it's a
straight line. This bullet just is very heavy and it
goes all the way through him, goes through another guy,
(39:19):
and ends up somewhere in the car. Um. But that's
how that bullet behaves as it stays together. And the
third shot that takes off half of Kennedy's head is
the way of bullet would behave if it was one
of those disintegrating bullets from an assault weapon that is
spinning so fast that the bullet actually comes apart when
(39:40):
it strikes something. And that's how you get like this
just Rusalem is devastating and devastating, huge uh wound, like
a clean shot, like just through and through. It's just
as a ballistics expert and as a you know, expert
on guns, he's like, those are two separate bullets that
are behaving in completely separate ways. So he started looking
(40:01):
into it and he's like, the third shot that takes
off half his head doesn't seem like it's even coming
from the same place that Oswald was shooting from. It
seems like it's coming from like an a R type rifle, like,
which are these assault rifles that are not full metal
jacket bullets. They're spinning so fast that when they strike something,
they come apart um and that's how the bullet behaves
(40:26):
when it hits JFK. He is like, but I mean,
obviously somebody would have seen a person who's standing right
behind JFK, which is where it seems like the bullet
is coming from, and carrying an A R like that. Like,
so he was like confused, but he, you know, put
this out there and was like it it just doesn't
make sense, like from a ballistics perspective. And then two
(40:48):
years after he realizes this, he sees a photograph taken
from in front of the motor kid and right where
he thinks the third shot should have been coming from.
There's a secret Service agent holding an A R fifteen
um and he's like standing up in the car trailing
JFK's car. So he comes up with this theory that basically,
(41:13):
when JFK is hit with the second Oswald shot with
the bullet, that this full metal jacket stays intact and
goes through him and all over the car. That the
cars slowed down because they realized that everybody's being shot,
and the Secret Service agents in the car behind JFK
are like freaking out, and one of them stands up
(41:34):
to turn around to you know, look at where Oswald
is shooting from, and because the car slowed down, he
falls forward that the guy who's standing up with the
a r and accidentally lets off a shot and that's
the third shot that takes off half of JFK's head.
(41:54):
You heard it here, folks. So that music up, oh,
is this different one? It's the music they play to
mock me when I when I actually that wasn't That
is very very interesting. So the idea would be there
are some pretty suspicious things about the aftermath of the assassination.
(42:19):
Um Kennedy's body is immediately whisked away onto a plane,
and his brother, uh Robert, who is the Attorney General
I think at the time Attorney General is is like
adamant that they get the body back to him, and
the Secret Service like basically steals his body from where
(42:39):
it was pronounced dead, and the doctors are like, what
are you doing, Like that's this is not how autopsies happen,
and they basically like push past him, get it on
a plane back to Washington. Eventually his brain disappears. That's
like a weird thing that nobody has ever really been
able to explain. And so so and he was buried there.
(43:01):
He had no there was no brain. I think that's right. Um,
And so the the idea would be that this is
why there's a cover up, because they're trying to protect
the Secret Service agent from you know, and also trying
to protect JFK's uh sort of legacy, because it's it's
less strange if like if you if you die by
(43:22):
a gruesome accident, it's less sort of I don't know,
noble mythic quality. And then like dude accidentally shooting you. Yeah,
And there are a couple other things that happened at
the hospital, something like a witness who was there remembers
distinctly hearing a Secret Service agent on the phone with
(43:45):
RFK saying there's been a terrible accident. Um. So the
theories that that's where the cover up is coming from,
just protecting the Secret Service agent, and um, that's where
a lot of the weird, sort of mysterious, confound thing
details come from. Is there there is a cover up,
but it's just to protect the reputation of this guy
(44:06):
who was just trying to do his job and had
basically the worst day of work that anyone has ever
had history of the universe. But you wouldn't. So when
you first said that, I was like, Oh, does that
mean there's some inside like secret service? But it's straight
up just an accident. It just seems like it would
be too because it wouldn't make sense if they already
had Lee Harvey Oswald shooting. Why would they wouldn't have
(44:28):
set it up that one right exactly? And it also
seems like, if you're going to hire an assassin to
like shoot from the window, why would you then have
a secret Service agent like in the car right behind
him be like I'm shooting him too U. And so
one of the questions I had is like, why didn't
anybody see this gun go on? Like wouldn't there be
a muzzle flash? And apparently there wouldn't be a muzzle flash.
(44:51):
And also a weird thing that happened on the ground
is that people smelled gun smoke and the place that
they were, they were on a bridge that the cars
were going under when they smelled gun smoke, and the
they would never have been able to smell gun smoke
from all the way up where osriad was if the
gun smoke was coming from the cars driving under them,
(45:14):
then it makes more sense. Um, So I did this.
I did. I did this conversation with I interviewed both
the author who wrote the book with Donahue about this theory,
and I also interviewed one of the leading JFK conspiracy theorists,
and I said, you know, I've looked at all a
(45:35):
lot of different theories and this is the only one
that makes sense. And it was so interesting how this
conspiracy theorist responded. He just got so mad at me
for bringing up this theory. And I was like, but like,
so what's wrong with it? He's like, Jack, it's been disproven.
It's a ridiculous theory, and frankly, I just want to
(45:56):
move on. And I'm like, okay, but like, so, do
you have some reason that you just believe it. He
would not give me a reason. He would just say
that it's been disproven and then move on. And I
was like, all right, so what do you think happened?
And he was like, I can't say what happened, but
there's a lot of mysterious stuff that points to some
connection between Oswald and the CIA. It was just like
so strange, and I think I think it's probably that
(46:20):
it's not fun, it's not sexy. Yeah, I think like
some guy arrantly shot him, right, and also that generation
like wanted there to be like a government like conspiracy.
I feel like I'm sure this go around, they'll find
a way to put this on Hillary Clinton. Right. Yeah,
that's what you're saying that eventually they're going to reveal
the documents and yeah, they're gonna be like, oh, what's this?
(46:41):
I mean, because yeah, that's the other thing too, is
this these documents, like long awaited documents that that are
like linked to one of them, like the country's greatest
mysteries is coming out that Trump was like, yeah, let's
let's put these out. Let's do a little distraction. I
mean hopefully it's not a distraction. It's five million pages,
So if anyone has some really good reading skills, let
us know, come through there. Teresa, you're saying that we're
(47:03):
gonna like look up from the archive and oh yeah,
he's totally distracting something. I mean, we're gonna look up
and our flag's gonna be the Russian fire just we've
but we now know, but we know that nothing. It
was five million pages of just yeah, the most dry ship. Yeah,
So I don't know, maybe by the time people are
(47:24):
listening to this episode, there the documents have been dropped
and it was secretly. I don't know. I mean, that
would be the craziest ship if these documents actually had
some like, you know, game changing information. I doubt there
would be. If they're going to release that that could
like fundamentally father that would be told. My bet is
(47:45):
still that there will be something in there like Hillary
Clinton has someone who's this Rodom Fellow is involved. Um oh,
another weird detail and then we'll end the show is that, uh.
Immediately after LBJ took over office, he seemed terrified that
(48:05):
the Secret Service was going to accidentally shoot him and
kept saying that, kept being like, these guys are gonna
shoot me one day. Like there's a story from the
night of the assassination where he's like walking around and
the Secret Service like thinks he's an intruder and like
turn their gun on him. But and he's like I
could just see that being a thing that because he
(48:25):
knows they just accidentally shot Kennedy like seemed more terrifying
him than like they might have just been like, oh
thank god, it's it's just you. Um. But yeah, he
specifically there is a quote from him saying, I swear
to God, the sec Res service agents are gonna shoot
me accidentally. Wow. When you guys can download all this
from Jack's manifesto that he's been writing, we'll have that
(48:48):
in the footnotes. I'm so glad I just got that off.
My cha. None of that is true, by the way,
I just like all of that up, you know. Uh. Yeah,
it's from a book called More at All Error by
Bonner Manager written with I want to say Phil Donahue
because obviously not very different don Yes. Earlier Miles is
(49:09):
playing the audio of that, and I thought it was
like an official video. But the video some guy mad
I was just looked over and it's just like images
of like Illuminati. Like it's like this really throws me
in with like some people. No, No, I'm sure the
documents will will confirm all of this. Well, it's a
(49:29):
fun thing to believe until it's completely disproven by this
document dump. Uh, that's gonna do it for today, Teresa,
thank you so much for joining us. This was super
fun finale of all of all of all options with
the what was your favorite what was your favorite memory
of season three? Is it really a finale? Guy? Yeah? This,
(49:50):
and then we take a mid season well we have
to take a we're on a hiatus for so this
is the finale of season three. We take a two
day hiatus revamp, and then we have our Hawaii was great.
I'm thinking of going to Tibet or something. Just get
my mind right. Yeah, just meditate for a little while.
My dog is a Tibetan spaniel, so nice shout out
(50:12):
to your dog. Okay, but yeah to your dog. Where
can people find you? We can find me on Twitter
at Larissa t and when oh come to my stand
up shot? Can I plug it? Yeah? November five at
the Friend Good Show Free show in Los Angeles and
l A. Yeah, if you live in l A. You
follow me on Twitter. You can find the info awesome miles.
(50:32):
Where can people follow you? You can follow me on
Twitter and Instagram at Miles of Gray. You can follow
me on Twitter at Jack Underscore O'Brien very private about
my Instagram. You can follow us on Twitter at Daily
Zeitgeist on Instagram at the daily Zeitgeist, or we have
a Facebook page called the Daily Zeitgeist and you can
(50:54):
check out our footnotes on daily zeitgeist dot com. Uh.
Super producer Anna is putting them up as we speak.
There's links to all all the different articles that we're
pulling facts from in this episode of and yeah, oh
and the Daily Zeigeist is produced and engineered by Nick
(51:18):
Stump you heard on yesterday's podcast, but we don't do
credits usually. And you know then to season three which
probably mentioned Nick is the man that makes it happen,
and the dailiesis is also edited by Lawrence Stump. It
is a Stump family affair, Stump production. Uh, and that's
(51:39):
gonna do it. We will be back on Monday. Talk
to you guys then,
The Daily Zeitgeist News
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Jack O'Brien
Miles Gray
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