Dems Vibez R Off, Vampire Tips For Celebs 05.03.22

In episode 1239, Jack and Miles are joined by podcasters and hosts of What Could Go Right? Zachary Karabell and Emma Varvaloucas to discuss... Democrats Find Themselves Faced With A Strange Conundrum for MidTerms / 2024: The Vibes Are All F---ed Up, Since we stan vampire culture… and more!

1. Democrats Find Themselves Faced With A Strange Conundrum for MidTerms / 2024: The Vibes Are All F---ed Up
2. Since we stan vampire culture…

The Progress Network: @progressntwrk

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello the Internet, and welcome to Season to thirty five,
Episode two of Day Nice. It's a production of I
Heart Radio, and this is a podcast where we take
a deep dive into America's shared consciousness. It is Tuesday,
May third, two, which of course means is National Teacher
Appreciation Day. Yeah, do you have a teacher that you

(00:22):
want to show? I feel like we've talked about this
a lot, but I always say my history teacher, Mr. Woolery,
because he gave me the appreciation for history and I
ended up studying that in college. But also I got
to shout out one of my first music teachers, Judy Clawson,
who was like really made me like feel good about

(00:42):
being good at an instrument, Like was made it like
a connected the pathways in my brain if you're like
like it was very encouraging. And you know, I would
say that I'm not into music as much as I
would be today with I heard shout on this class day,
you go, I think I shout out Ms McDonald last time,
my seventh greg writing teacher. I'll go with Professor Wexel,

(01:04):
the first philosophy professor who was really in the star
truck and got me and made you insufferable. That made
me the worst guys. You know, I can believe what
I heard my philosophy class. Uh well, my name is
Jack O'Brien, a K. Potatoes O'Brien, and I'm thrilled to
be joined as always by my co host, Mr Miles

(01:27):
Grag out the window. I'm gonna crawl, even though always
way too small out this bust a fall. Okay, shout
out to Fighter of the ninth Man on Discord, because yes,
the last time we were racking our brains over who
closes the school bus door? You know when the drivers done?

(01:49):
Because are we crawling out the window? Are we just
reaching our arm? And are we releasing the hydraulics? There's
so much simpler answer, but again it inspired a great
yin Yang twins. Yeah, one of the best and it
and the answer was just like that, you can just
open and close those doors. Yeah, just turn off when
the hydraulics are turned off, you can release the hydraulic
pressure in the door and then just close it manually

(02:12):
when you get it. It wasn't some you know, magic
trick or new fingled instrumental. Yeah. My theory that all
bus drivers are shape shifters turned out not to be true.
I think we edited out of the episode, but one
on for like twenty five minutes. Yeah, when you're like,
how did they get that thin like paper a little
the little schism in between? Well, Miles, We are thrilled

(02:34):
to be joined in our third and fourth seats by
the hosts of the podcast What Could Go Right from
the Progress Network is Zachary, Carabelle and Emma Arba Luca Emma, Wow,
I think we're gonna have to learn, Emma, to amp
up the energy level on our usually sedate and measured

(02:57):
set of interviews. Clearly we've we've lost um descible level
that we need to incorporate. So if nothing else, we've
learned that from the conversation so far. My last name
was made for that. That was that was perfect. Yeah,
it's got like good syllables. It's musical, four syllables in there. Yeah.

(03:18):
It gives you some time to like get REVVD up
a little bit. The you know, the Barba gets you
gets you ready for Lucas. Thanks guys, It's a change
from middle school. I'm into it. I know, all right,
you're getting teased. You're getting teased, Barbara Mucus. That was
the one that kind of issue you could go back
like as an adult and be like, guys, these are

(03:38):
the worst insults I've ever heard, Like like, and I
know they're cutting at my at this age, but y'all, like, really,
this was not this is not a great showing you
could do better. Yeah, well, going through the eighties and
early nineties with the name Jack was and like not
a lot of Jack's out there, so there was a

(03:59):
lot out of a lot of fun stuff going on.
I feel your pain. We all have our cross Yeah.
Also not the highest quality material, believe it or not.
But how are you guys doing? Where are you coming
to us from? I'm in New York City, I've heard
of it. Um, I'm in Athens, Greece. Okay, now I
have not heard of that, you know. I How how

(04:22):
are things in Athens, Greece? What time is it there?
It's almost ten o'clock at night. Yeah, you're just starting
to think about dinner and that is the Greek schedule.
I ate it like nine you're not okay? Yeah? Nice?
Al right, Well, well, thank you guys so much for
joining us. We're going to get to know you a
little bit better in a moment. First, We're gonna tell

(04:44):
our listeners a couple of the things we're talking about today.
We're going to talk about this New York Times article.
There's basically like the Democrats have found themselves with a
conundrum for the mid terms, and which is that the
vibes all fucked up. It seems to be. I mean,
we we've like run into this before in the history

(05:06):
of the Democratic Party where that seemed to be the
like what what people diagnosed the late seventies with was
like America's just like sad or and I think it
was malaise. General malaise was one of the descriptors. But
that seems to be kind of what they are what

(05:27):
Democrats are asking themselves heading into this midterm election. So
we want to dig into that. We wanna look at
the Great Resignation as it's demographics are shifting. We are
going to talk vampire culture, all of that plenty more.
But first we like to ask our guests what is
something from your search histories? So one thing from my

(05:50):
search history recently was are there any female Greek rappers? Okay,
the answer was there's exactly one. I couldn't find any
her music, just her name because I really like Greek rap,
but it's like have be misogynistic, And I was like,
come on, there's got to be like a badass Greek
lady out there that wraps just one. I can't find

(06:12):
her music, so that's where we're at. What's her MC name?
I think it's a sent dosignia or something like that.
Didn't get her name down directly. That's how Barbara Lucas Yeah, right, yeah,
coming through another lifetime? Yeah, is that are you? Are you? Like?
Do you did you listen to a lot of hip
hop in general and and like when you're like living

(06:33):
in Greece or like let me check on Greek hip
hop or did you suddenly been like I'm suddenly into
Greek hip hop and now you're looking for the female mcs.
What's what's your relationship to? You know what? If my
friends could hear that question, they would laugh really really hard.
I love her friends read to hip hop and wrap
in New York And I was living in New York
for ten years and I was always the one that's
like not up on the culture, like at all at all.

(06:56):
But for some reason, when I moved here, when you
go to the clubs or bars here, they just they
just play Greek music like they don't play American music
at all. So I had to get into the Greek thing,
and I was learning Greek, and I don't know, I
just started to vibe with Greek rap for some odd reason,
maybe parly because they tend to be from the United States.
They tend to be Greek Americans to wrap here, interesting,

(07:19):
which really answers a lot of unasked questions. How rap
paime degrees in the first place? Right? Right? Yeah? What
about you, Zachary, what what's something from your search history? Well,
I did a piece last week for Time on billionaires
owning media properties for the past hundred years in light
of everybody's favorite billionaire maybe buying Twitter. I'm not going

(07:42):
to mention the name just because I feel like, you know,
if you don't know it, then So there's a lot
of in my search history about about billionaires and media
ownership for the past hundred and twenty years of American media.
Mm hmm. And how what are your what are your
feelings about that trend and the continuance? You know, I

(08:04):
knew that, I knew that lots of billionaires have bought
contemporary media properties like Mark Benny Off and Time, like
Jeff Bezos in the Washington Post, like Glori and Pal
Jobs in The Atlantic, I wasn't as acutely aware of
just how completely all media for most of American history,

(08:25):
well most of American history from the late nineteenth century
through the present, has been owned by wealthy individuals and
usually wealthy men. Right. It's pretty hard to find any
media newspaper, TV station, magazine that has not been owned
by wealthy private individuals, which makes Musk's bid for Twitter

(08:47):
seem much less of a new thing, even if it's
a big deal. M that, Yeah, that our current media
has been under billionaire control for quite some time and
for we're at where we're at now, including my heart
just saying no, I mean people I heard his own

(09:09):
people were like, we're like the Green Bay Packers of
media outlets. No, it's definitely true. I mean everything is. Yeah,
I mean it was Clear Channel before. And you're like,
that's true of like every everything, like the everything in
American culture, maybe with the exception exception of the Green
Bay Packers. Right, Like, there's not much that is not

(09:30):
owned by extremely wealthy people. I mean there's I mean,
there is independent media but not to the levels of
what we're talking about, I guess, you know, in terms
of pervasiveness, right, like you know that, but even even
even what what people like to think of as the
countercultural or alt media, like The Nation and Harper's, you know,

(09:51):
also owned by very wealthy individuals whose politics com police
skew left. Yeah, I wouldn't. I don't know if I
would love them in there, but yeah, like I mean
like more like at the extremely local and like where
we have like weeklies and things that were at some
point felt like they embodied something of like oh no, this,
this is this is ran by like human beings that
you can identify, rather than where is the c suite

(10:14):
that makes all the decisions for this entity kind of thing?
What what's something you guys think is overrated? Oh? Other
than the Green Bay Packers? Um well, I mean on
that line, I'm sort of repeating myself. I think the
concern that wealthy individual's owning media platforms is a threat

(10:35):
to three speech. It's either we've never had it or
we've always had it, and it has been neither here
nor there to the ownership structure of these organizations. Mhm.
So are you less concerned about Elon Musk doing it
because I think I'm assuming like part of the concern

(10:55):
that a lot of people, including myself for feeling is
like how how brazen and also like popular he seems
to be, Like I it's the first time I could
see like a billionaire coming through and being like, no,
you can't write that about me, and like a bunch
of people being like, yeah, you can't write that about
Elon Musk. Whereas the zos like tried to kill a

(11:15):
story about Amazon publicly in the Washington Post that would
probably be very unpopular. That said, I just feel like
those stories never get to the front page of the
Washington Post, right And you certainly have to wonder if
there had, if there were multiple ongoing instances of criticism,

(11:38):
you know, of Musk himself or anything that Tesla did
or anything that Twitter did being routinely shut down, and
then that having other reverberations. You know, one can set
up a new social media platform of information, Yeah, that
doesn't have the network effect. But Trump was able to
set up truth social and now the fact that he's
running it really badly is neither here nor there in

(11:59):
terms of the ease of actually creating one. So even there,
it's not as if Twitter as like the soul and
only public sphere of very sharp and often pungent commentary. Yeah,
I mean you guys, general thesis on the podcast and
on like it seems to be that like not enough

(12:23):
and I agree with this, and in a lot of
ways that like a lot of the good news doesn't
get reported, and so it's like kind of goes into
this like we we just hear the problems in the media,
but then like this feels like one of the problems overall,
like overarching that like we don't hear about, which is

(12:43):
that things are generally being vetted by a billionaire class
that like goings all these things that are supposed to
be talking to us, Like would you agree with that
or you think that like this is just a kind
of a misreading of the current I think, I think
and and Emma has a kind of aversion to the

(13:04):
idea of good news as opposed to news that points
in a more constructive direction. But for profit news demands
attention that can be measured in real time compared to
other people getting the same eyeballs. And that's the same
incentives for Netflix as it is for a newspaper. So
the issue I think is less who owns then the

(13:27):
structure of these things have to generate a profit, and
what generates a profit is what is most immediately emotional
and intense and outrageous and fearful and hot emotions rather
than cool emotions. And that is as much the issue
irrespective of the ownership structure. Yeah, do you feel like

(13:47):
something's changed with social media and like as compared to
you know, some of these legacy media's that, like the
New York Times was not running the sorts of headline
that now make a tweak go viral, right like they
there there was some sort of difference or diminished heat,

(14:11):
like for through the editorial process, right, I mean, Emma
does a lot more of our you know, a lot
of the progress social media she kind of manages. And
so the flip side of that is it's also been
an amazing tool to have people find information and perspectives,
right Ema, that are but they were they have a
hard time finding otherwise, you know, the connective tissue that
these platforms still provide. I think that the difference between

(14:34):
social media and legacy media is just that the rules
haven't been figured out yet, Like the rules of journalism
have been around with legacy media for a really long time.
So what's considered, you know, good editorial practice and bad
editorial practice. What the rules are in relationship to ownership
for instance, those are pretty set. And if you know

(14:55):
the mary and public doesn't know what they are, they
should know what they are. Social media is still quite
new verse STI figure out the rules are trying to
figure out, like what does the space look like where
it's kind of a public square, so issues a free
speech or there, but it is also a privately owned company,
so what does that mean? Who's responsible legally for the
stuff is published on the platform. It's just I think

(15:15):
we're going to work ourselves into a better place with that.
Is just that we're in the messy middle at the moment.
Mm hmm. Yeah. What is something you think is overrated? Him?
I was gonna say the five day work week overrated?
Overrate in the sense that we're all doing it right
that what do you what's what's ideal? You think? What's
the balance here? I would love to see us move

(15:38):
towards four. I think that would be better. I mean,
there's there are a few countries that are piloting that right,
it seems like it's that so far, it doesn't seem
to be throwing economies into like a downward spiral. Yeah,
I mean, I guess I would say that. The only
thing I would say to that is like it's a
really small amount. Is like, of course I can't remember
which countries now exactly, but it's like the government of

(16:01):
Iceland I don't know, or like this one company here there.
But but that's not to to damper the enthusiasm about
the pilot projects super into it. I hope it goes well.
I hope there's absolutely no economic downturn and that productivity
stays high so that it'll just can the four day
work we creep will continue to creep. Mm hmm. I
thought the rub on Mediterranean countries was that they had

(16:23):
essentially been piloting the four day work week generations between
May and September, even if nominally it was a five
day work week. Okay, this is a sad thing about
Mediterranean culture is, or at least about Greece in particular.
When I was younger, my grandparents would always have a siesta,
you know, after lunch. That has disappeared, So the Mediterranean
culture is getting infected by the five day work week,

(16:43):
causing cultural situation in my view, right right, that back
on track, Yeah, I love that. I'll bring that culture
back into it. What's something you guys think is underrated?
So I have a serious one and a not so
serious one, my honest answer. The first thing that came
to mind with the what's underrated was Bridgert in season two,
a discussion topic that I'm not sure it is gonna

(17:05):
hit with this particular I know, but it's been we know,
we know, it's been taking people by storm. I haven't seen.
I saw the first season and I was like, it's
better than the season on. It's way better than the
season one, although it was I think I just found
myself waiting to see what the Duke would do in
the bedroom all of season one. But now we've had
a little more texture to this season. Now it's the Vicount.

(17:27):
Where where do you see what the Viscount is going
to do? Oh? Okay, right right right, big big difference.
I don't know. Everyone I talked to you said they
didn't like it, and I'm like, listen, this is trash
TV at its finest. Let's appreciative for what it is.
What's your serious one? My serious one was community. I
think community is underrated, especially in the United States. I think,
you know, the decline in religion in the United States,

(17:49):
decline of various civic institutions has meant that people haven't
formed new communities yet in the way that they should
to replace some things that have been lost. And I
think that that's uh causing a lot of loneliness. It's
causing a lot of anui on a on a societal level. So, yeah, community,
what do you see is the most like promising like

(18:12):
way to progress towards a solution to that? Because yeah,
we talked about that a lot on the show. I
think honestly, it's it's people making hyper local communities and
things that they totally dig. My friends and I New York.
We're putting on a pole dancing show every month. That
became a pretty big event in the pole dancing world
in New York, and it's like this tiny, little niche,

(18:33):
underground community, but it did a lot for people. So
I think that people just follow in the direction of
things that they like to do and create community or
on that that that will work. That we don't need
a bigger idea than m zach What, Zachary, what is
something you think is under it? Zacher? Zacher is fine.
Anything with the Z will do. I think the vitality

(18:55):
of cities is being underrated, kind of o proposed on
Emma's point, and the glee of reporting on the demise
of cities both during COVID and now. I think the excessive,
sort of strange, rubber necking, obsessive look at crime in cities.

(19:17):
It's also it's very selective. I mean, crimes rising in
Miami just as it is in New York, but you
don't hear about it because people feel differently about Miami
than they do about New York crimes rising in London.
I mean crimes rising in every big set of post
COVID as things sort of you know, fitfully return or
resume or pick up a thread. And I think hope
is underrated as a as a thing that is vital

(19:41):
to the human experience about being able to shape our future.
And the very fact that you can't say that without
a certain internal cringiness like oh, you know, that's gonna
land like a thud and a cynical forest is part
of the problem. But that doesn't mean that it's not
absolutely essential and vital to all of us, to our futures,
the relationships we want to build, to the world we

(20:01):
want to live in. Yeah, for sure. Like I I
we've talked a lot about the over reporting of crime.
Like I've had to like mute various like promoted tweets
in the past couple of weeks that are just like
watching police tackle criminals essentially, Like I don't know where

(20:22):
they got the idea that, like that's what I wanted
to see, But it seems like there's like a resurgence
of that agenda item being pushed and maybe like that's
based on people being receptive to it. But what would
you say, are like the like positive sort of ignored
aspects of like what's going on in in cities when

(20:45):
you talk about the vitality and we're all somewhat product
of the lens and where we are. But in the
past few weeks, I've been in Los Angeles, have been
in Paris, I've been in New York. I've also been
in Miami, you know, in the past couple of months,
and there is a real sense and palpable sense of
people kind of being out and living their lives. Now. Yes,
there remains an unspecified and ever morphing threat of COVID

(21:09):
and what that means. But it's also clear that people have,
as human beings have from time immemorial, recognized that the
needs of the living have to be met right and
and some of that unfortunately carries with it x risk
of harm as it always has, disease being one of
the more primary ones, but so as crime, and so
are accidents, and how you navigate that is both individually

(21:32):
and collectively incredibly variable over time, but it, you know,
it does matter of like what what do you see
in the picture when you walk out? What is your
eye focus on? And I'm not saying you should ignore
real human suffering. I'm saying that laser like focusing only
on that and not on the life around it is
as imbalance is only focusing on Hey, things are great.

(21:54):
It's like only focusing on Miami being a a tech
pro crypto haven and not looking at the fact that
its infrastructure is strained and you know it too has
rising crime. Like that's just part of the mix. Yeah,
I mean, I think the other thing, especially with the
crime stuff as it relates, there's you know a lot
of people have pointed to that they not all violent
crime has increased and a lot of the crimes have

(22:15):
gone down, but a lot of there there has been
an increase in the gun violence and things like that
that have sort of that these more sensational aspects of
it that helped feed this narrative. While we've also seen
that there's a huge push from like, you know, lobbyists,
whether that's like you know, the Chamber of Commerce and
things who are very much focused on like turning this
into like a local thing about district attorneys and like

(22:37):
how new sentencing guidelines are brought out. But yeah, it's
I think there is there. There's so many ways to
look at an issue, whether it's yeah, there are very
some specific crimes are going up as a whole, though
we're not looking at something like two that's arriving quite
at the level of like certain articles we see, especially
like in the like l a magazine or the New

(22:58):
York Times or like the sources are just the police
and then there's like no other source of like any
information and it's merely like yeah, and that's sort of
what's going on. Take it away. But we lose some
of that because we're not able to like because we're
so focused on that, we're not able to actually acknowledge
the one thing, which is a lot of crime has
gone down. But for you know, for whatever reason, the

(23:20):
focus is on everything. It's a it's like a runaway
crime spree at the moment. And it's also it's lous
the use of statistics. I mean in New Art there
was a ABC News I mean this is actually put
out by multiple news sources saying transit crime is up
fifty or sixty year over a year. And I don't
know if it's fifty or sixty or sixty five. It
was something a lot, it was a big percentage number,

(23:41):
without recognizing the ridership is up a year over a
year because a year ago people were sold. I mean,
they're not fully fully back at work and there's kind
of an informal three day work week. But you know,
if your ridership doubles and your absolute number of crime
goes up, your way of looking at that should actually
look at it as a per capita reality, not just

(24:03):
as an absolute one. I mean, ten crimes out of
a million riders and you know, twenty two crimes out
of three million riders riders is still a hundred and
increase in crime. But it sure is it's a completely
different reality if you looked at it in context. But
nobody does that, right, I mean, the media does that
a lot, where the attract things a year by year

(24:23):
where it's like it's almost meaningless. You know, you have
to look I feel like five years in either direction
to really understand I've tried is going up or down?
And yeah, yeah, crime just broadly is down, right, like
where as compared to the nineties and yeah, or the
early two thousand's right. I mean I try to talk
to people about this thing. Oh my god, I'm you know,

(24:44):
New York used to be so safe or l A.
You know, Downtown l A, like Downtown l A. You know,
it was safe for like a nano second between twenty
eight and you know for the thirty years before that,
it was the place you dared not go. I mean,
like I'm being hyperbolic, I get it. But but the
fact is, you know, yes, human beings, we all live

(25:06):
at our our highest set point, right. We always remember
the most amount of money we have, the most we're earning,
in the least we were paying. And that's just kind
of human nature. And we don't deal well with our
set point going down. We're great when our set point
goes up, right, Like, no problem, I'm doing I got
more money tomorrow than I did today, or you know,
I feel better today, or I lost weight. We have

(25:28):
a much harder time. Arthur Brooks talks a lot about this.
We did a great podcast with him, and he's got
this wonderful new book he has out. But you know,
we don't. We don't do well with with one step back.
We're we're fine with the two steps forward. And and look,
that has always been human nature. I don't think that's
a social media phenomenon, but it certainly gets amplified and
echoed in a way that doesn't do any of us

(25:50):
much good. Yeah, well, I think yeah. I think the
hard part is that people who want to influence policy
realize that and sort of employ that tech dick pretty
cynically because we see, I mean we see it constantly.
Whether that relates to seating this idea that like crime
is completely out of control every single place you go,
or that the pandemic is over, you know, there's like

(26:11):
so many versions of this, and the prime thing is,
you know, it's a it's a swat of a pernicious
boomerang from the Black Lives Matter summer, and it's you know,
it is a way for some people politically to use
this as a cudgel of you know, the four people
who actually did want to defund the police, saying well,
it's all because of that that we now have this right,

(26:34):
when there's also no evidence that they were actually defunded too,
because every time there was a little bit of talk
for a little bit of time. Yeah, but just talking
about it was enough to the criminals and make them
right and armed the police that they're really nice talking
for and they're like, we're sorry, We're just sorry. There's

(26:57):
there's an actual robbery happening, but all right, let's take
a quick break. We'll be right back. And we're back.
And so Democrats find themselves in the like the New

(27:19):
York Times called it democrats Mystery how to brighten up
presidency and a national mood. It basically seems like, you know,
just the moods down, and the article also seems to
you know, take them at sort of face value when

(27:39):
it comes to like what the mystery is here, Like
they're like, I don't know, like should we emphasize the
small gains we've made or try to make larger gains,
and it just feels, I don't know, it feels weird
and disingenuous to treat people's feelings about this administration like

(28:02):
it is a mystery illness that like they they don't
know the cause of, and they're just trying to figure out,
you know, they're floating some weather balloons up to see
how this works and how that works. But I don't know.
We talk a lot about like sort of a disconnect
between the reality is people live it and experience it,

(28:23):
including on like social media versus the reality that I
feel like the mainstream media and the mainstream Democratic Party
seem to exist inside of or at least like sort
of message from the planet of But I don't know,
I think it like comes back to sort of an

(28:44):
unacknowledged like I think two thousand eight like probably and
the financial collapse like kind of ties a lot into this,
and just the fact that that there hasn't been like
sort of a reckoning in the mainstream video or with
the Democratic Party with what happened there, and you know,

(29:06):
you had like Bernie Sanders as an insurgent candidate who
wanted to address that, and Trump addressed it in his way,
and the Democratic Party was kind of still in the middle.
And I don't know, it just feels it feels very
much like, well, there there are concrete things people are
asking for. You kind of said you were going to

(29:29):
do something with that or around that, and have not
done those things. But like, so, why is it be
being treated as like are they depressed? Like what's what
are you so upset about? What? Why is everyone sad?
How do we make them happy? I was just curious
that what would be the you know, top three list
of things that they said that they were going to

(29:50):
do that they haven't done. I think voting rights is
a huge one. Yeah, I think I'm honestly like looking
at things like the unemploye an insurance uh, like the
weird math that happened around things being like two thousand
dollars and like, well, if you add this from over here,
you carry the two that adds to two thousand, the
child tax credit, lapsing student debt, like you know, student

(30:14):
loan debt. There's a I mean there's a lot talking
about like law enforcement reform, not necessarily about defunding the police,
but looking at that with a real clear eye and
thinking things, looking at things like qualified immunity, like these
are things that we're talked about. I never in a
million years would think Joe Biden would ever touch anything
with the qualified immunity, but a lot of gestures were

(30:35):
made in that direction. And I think especially for you know,
black people, well, we look at something like voting rights
as being completely at threatened, being threatened, and we see
countless laws like in places like Georgia, Florida, Texas, where
it's becoming increasingly difficult to vote even for fucking you know,
the people that they want to vote for. So I

(30:56):
think those are like big things that feel very existential
for people. I think, like one, if we're if we're
meant to believe that if this sort of equation here
is to vote the representatives into Congress that represent you know,
the values that we have. That if we can't even
do that, what what is the point here, Like we're
not even looking at like that should even I'm surprised

(31:18):
that wasn't the big one of the biggest things democrats
even so, just like in the cynical game of staying
in power, which is like, hey, they're trying to take
away the their ability to vote for us. But that's
been you know that we've seen, We've seemed to let
the obstruction happen like within the party and just kind
of keep it moving. I mean, look, part of it
is that Biden was unpopular by the fall of last year,

(31:39):
within six months of being in office, when it wasn't
even clear that those things weren't going to be passed.
And there was some effort. There was a you know,
a voting rights bill that the House had passed that
was at the Senate, and there was also the Build
Back Better omnibus, you know, was going to retain the
child tax credit, was going to provide universal pre k

(32:00):
and and more time off for working women. But he
was on popular even before those things didn't pass amongst
a wider swath of the public than one would have thought.
And what's odd is the lesson that government, including Republicans,
learned from two thousand and eight two thousand nine, was
that if you don't bail out people who are actually working,

(32:21):
and you just bail out institutions, you're gonna create a
lot of ill will. So there was you know, four
trillion dollars of money during COVID, both in and then
in February, a lot of which did go toward It
was the first time in forty years that the lower
quintile people saw some income growth larger because of transfer

(32:42):
payments from government. And you know, that did not engender like, oh,
we're doing well. You know, I mean there is a
degree of you mentioned malaise at the beginning, Jack, that
there is that aspect of what's going on that that
isn't purely about I think something one can point to
specifically that doesn't an undiagnosed illness. It just means, first

(33:03):
of all, it's almost impossible to do anything right now
other than those two stimulus bills during COVID that has
anything resembling bipartisan support, and there are actually things that
have bipartisan support, like weirdly enough, criminal Justice Reform was
the one bill passed that had genuine bipartisan support during
the Trump years in December that actually for the first

(33:25):
time moved away from like a lot of the draconian
sentenc saying that have become commonplace in federal courts. Right
doesn't do anything for state systems, which are which are different,
but it you know, it does speak to and part
of why M and I are trying to do this
our own, our own show of getting people to look
at what what people are trying to do to solve
things is the United States definitely is in a culturally

(33:52):
massive question mark, verging on kind of despair and cynicism
in a way that would have been really familiar in
the mid seventies. You know, It's not like we haven't
been here before and would have been really familiar in
the mid nineteen thirties. You know, it would have been
really familiar in the mid eighteen seventies. At best, these
are like cyclical things where we we we snap out

(34:13):
of our somewhat illusionary view of us of being the
greatest of all nations that has solved everything right, as
a comforting narrative that's never been true, but which we
buy into really easily for long periods of time. And
then it's like something happens and we wake up and
we're like, wait a minute, right, no, we're not all

(34:34):
those wonderful, hyperbolic Hosanna things that we said that we were.
We've got real problems and we've got real issues, and
the challenge, of course is to is to have that
clear gimlet eye to awareness of what's going on without
sinking into despair and cynicism, you know, without that then
trending into the other direction. And we're we're clearly whether

(34:54):
you're on the left or the right, easily heading in
those directions. And I think that it's partly reflective of
the fact that, you know, no political leader has anything
resembling a majority approval, let alone much of a plurality.
I just add really quickly, Miles, I agree he like

(35:15):
about the child tax credit. I think that was a
really you know, that was terrible that that lapsed. One
interesting thing about voting rights is that it is a
very serious issue. There are several states where they're they're
rolling back, you know, they're making it harder to vote.
But it was interesting is that the Brennan Center also
put out a report about all of the new pathways

(35:35):
of voting that we're open during the pandemic with mail
and voting, and what with all the hup of about
mail and voting during the last election, there's actually like
states that made it easier to vote. They took the
new pandemic pathways that had put into place about voting,
particularly around around mail and voting and they kept them.
So this is just this is just aside to it

(35:57):
that is not often discussed. And you know, it's think
what Zachary is saying that we're not we're not trying
to paint like you know, let's look at everything through
rose colored glasses. It's just a balance question. Yeah, I
mean I do think too that you know, there are
some things that Biden is at fault for, like the
massive cash transfers that went into place during the pandemic,
like Sachary mentioned, were massively beneficial for people. It also

(36:20):
seemed to have kicked up inflation. I'm not sure how
much we can blame Biden for, you know, gas and
gas places coming up and up and up with the
war right now. So I think some of them malaised
does have to do with like the Democrats are not delivering,
and I think that they're particularly not paying attention to
votos concerns about working and wages and worker power compared

(36:43):
to corporate power. But some of it too, I do
think it is kind of like there's a bad vibe
right now, and I'm not sure that the Democrats are
all are all to blame for that. I don't think
that they are all to blame because this is this
is censure. He's built up where now like the lived
experience of an American US and as such, where the
American dream is you know, not very accessible to most

(37:06):
people anymore, and that the feeling that people have is like,
oh my god, all that like post World War two
glow is completely faded away and we're looking at like
crumbling infrastructure, stagnant wages, and like really massive societal issues
where it looks like the leadership in the country can't
really like really address the elephant in the room, which

(37:29):
I think for voting people is equal inequality and like
broadly tackling that issue to say, we absolutely hear you
that being able to live in a city has become
it's prohibitively expensive, even if you're just trying to if
you're a single parent, like good luck like trying to
do that. We hear you, We understand that that is

(37:49):
something that societally feels like we need a realignment to say,
what is the minimum that an American deserves, you know,
like many other countries have that defined where it's like
will not go broke because you you know, because you've
got into medical debt or things like that, if you
want an education, here go at it. Here you go.
We could we were there's a there's a place for
you to attain that, and I think we're by by

(38:12):
not really getting into that part. I think it's probably
messy for both parties because at some point they have
to acknowledge their connection to it. And I think that's
what makes it a little bit difficult is that the
you know, the both parties in this country have been
so entangled in that inequality that it's like they're finding
it very difficult to a acknowledge that they're the policies
that they were supporting. And with the hopes of thinking like, yeah,

(38:36):
this is this is the way too, like have all
of the abundance flow to many people isn't working And
to really acknowledge that, to really say that that is
completely failed and we actually need to think about I
think that's what some people are waiting for, is like,
can we just acknowledge that this has failed? Because it's
failed so many people at this point, it's hard to
say that this is us moving in a beneficial direction. Yes,

(39:01):
I mean I have too pushbacks on that one is
I think it's not about inequality as much as it's
about what you just talked about. I mean, you could
reduce inequality the amount of inequality, and still have people
not be able to afford living in cities and going
bankrupt for medical debt. It's the abundance part. It's the
non proliferation of sufficient abundance to enough people in it

(39:22):
in an otherwise highly affluent society, and inequality per se
is not reducing an equality doesn't solve those issues. Just
like you know, as we see with inflation, right, expanding
incomes doesn't do you much good if the cost of
things is rising more quickly than your incomes are expanding.
If costs went down, which was somewhat happening with the

(39:44):
declationary effects of technology, then you wouldn't necessarily need more income,
right because net net would be the same thing. Your
dollar would be buying more if the costs were going down.
If costs you're going up, your dollars buying less. So
I think it's more about the non sharing of that abundance.
And one of the real opts was for the United
States is the set point of the mid twentieth century,

(40:04):
which we look at as some sort of normative moment
where everything worked, but so many stars aligned in that
moment that we're both of our own doing and also
global right, World War two ends the United States is
more than that, Actually, all global industrial capacity, the entire world. Right,
We were this engine because we hadn't been bombed, you know,

(40:27):
we were the one bombing. We weren't the ones getting bombed.
We had emerged victorious. There was some degree of collective
unity that that had to do with white America, right,
And the g I Bill was great, but it didn't
extend to African Americans, that certainly didn't extent to women.
And yet we hold that up as the validation of
a system that worked. And I'm really of the mind

(40:47):
that we we hamper ourselves more by thinking that we
had a formula that worked that we are now failing,
rather than recognizing that we never really had the formula
we think we had and it never worked the way
we idealized it having worked. You know that we were
always much more flawed than we like to tell ourselves.
We're always more just like a group of humans who
had an interesting formula for social organization that did allow

(41:11):
for things a lot of other societies didn't, and still don't.
But I think the fact that we looked to that
moment in the nineties, forties, and fifties and sixties as
this is when it worked and now we failed, I
think that's a false story of who we were. I mean,
who looks to that though? Who who are you talking
about when we talk about looking to the forties, fifties, sixties,
and seventies. I don't think that's who we're talking about. Well,

(41:33):
when I even say that post war glow, I think
that's that that I'm not. That's not to say that's
I don't. I don't idealize any moment in American industry. No,
I'm not atting you guys are, But I think are
a lot of our public debate speaks of a kind
of something worked and then we got off track. Yeah,
the Republican Party and Fox News certainly do, right, but
the Democrats do as well. This is a time when

(41:54):
there was more democracy, or more egalitarian nous, or more
rights that are being you know, I don't. I don't
think it's just one side here. What I see is
that the media, like when I say this post war glow,
is that that that's those that that is like you're
saying that is looked at is like something you know
that like we were doing okay or whatever. But again

(42:15):
you look at even as you as you lay out,
not all those benefits were distributed equally. In fact, you know,
most people, especially if you are not in like the
white mainstream, there really hasn't been a great time for
for those people in this country. And to say that,
like whether it's thinking that something worked and then failed
or just saying that like nothing is going right, I

(42:37):
think what we're saying is that the same thing is
that we're not We're not we're not actually arriving at
a moment we're trying to actually reckon with what's going on.
We have ways to kind of shroud the discussion and
something else then just silo it off into like a
separate thing and just make it about Okay, well, let's
look at uh, let's look at how we can help

(42:57):
out student loan like people with student loan debt, or
maybe we can look at how pell grants are distributed
and how that's working. But again, all of these issues
are sort of part of this larger problem that we
have is that most American people on some level have
these like feelings of like, I don't know if I'm
going to have enough to make it or to be

(43:17):
have a level of financial stability. I look at that
with my friends who are in their mid thirties who
work at grocery stores so and talk about the stress
they have from doing like smaller jobs because it was
harder for them to go to college. They didn't they
weren't taking out student loans and things like that. And
there's I I see firsthand a lot about how ground

(43:38):
down people get. And that's my concern is that I think,
you know, even in a past episode, you talk about
this idea of nostalgia that we have this idea of
the return of the king and someone will come to
right all the wrongs, and it's really not that simple.
And I know people still think that's like possible, But
we we have to sort of on a put all
of that ship out of our mind and say that

(44:00):
there has to be this basic reshifting or really looking
at the things that we're saying what is the minimum?
And I think that's I think that's an easier place
a conversation to start for in general, to talk about,
this is what's the minimum an American deserves by being
a citizen. What is that? What is that? How does
that enable you to live a prosperous life? Yeah, that

(44:21):
I totally agree with. You know that there should be
some baseline understanding of what is an affluent society provide
as its contract to itself, because it's the basics of
you know, healthcare, education, shelter, food, you know, not not
not a particularly high bar or shouldn't be a particularly

(44:43):
high bar of security that once we've established that, then
everybody's lives can go and all the different directions that
everybody's lives go. And one concern I have with the
malaise like storyline is, you know, the last time the
Democrats got like blamed for a nation with malaise, like

(45:08):
you know that that ended with or that led to
eight years of Reaganism and Republicans like just sort of
staying hyper focused on like the wealthy and like, you know,
America is great because of this small part of what
is happening in America. And I just I feel like
that tends to be I don't know, I don't I

(45:31):
don't want to see that dynamic again. But if the
Democrats continue to be just like the holding the holding
bag for like everything that's negative, and the Republicans can
just you know, invent new versions of themselves, Like are
we going to just be like yo yoing back and
forth between you know, just insufferable like Republican leaders who

(45:56):
are saying wild shit about what they're going to do
and you know, threatening horrible things and you know, being
horrible leaders back to like a you know, sane democratic
alternative that then everyone's like yeah, but like this problem
is still there. Like I feel like that's the dynamic

(46:18):
we're currently at, is that whatever you diagnose the problem being.
And I think that there's a a huge unacknowledged like
wound from two thousand eight that like the end from
like you know, corporate you know what when we talk
about like Biden not getting things done in office and

(46:41):
like it's stopping with like mansion and cinema like that
was they are like heavily influenced by like dark money
and corporate interests, and you know, it just feels like
we're like the Democratic Party and like that mainstream has
chosen to be the sort of holding bag for like

(47:04):
all of this malaise, but like they don't have like
some alternative that they're they're they're not choosing to offer
an alternative. I guess I definitely hear you about like
the wound from two thousand and eight. I talked about
this with my friends. A lot some ammennial and a
lot of us got really screwed going into college, during
college and coming out of college, and it did lead

(47:24):
to a lot of us, you know, sort of getting
behind as far as not being able to settle a
life for ourselves with enough money to buy a house,
particularly in a city that's rehatively expensive. But I also
just think like the Democrats are not working with the
things that they should be working with. Like Miles brought
up the child tax credit, they were that also is

(47:44):
something that has biperasion support. There are Republicans who support
various versions of that. They should be going straightforward towards that.
Why aren't they The whole discussion around student loan debt
I find really odd because once you cance allow everyone's
student loan debt, you're still left with the undiscussed problem.
Like you guys are pointing out that it's prohibitly expensive
to attend a lot of practic colleges, So you might

(48:07):
have solved that, you know, in a moment in time. Okay, great,
everyone who has you know, a lot of debt is
free from that, but a lot of the students leaned
it that's being hold held in the United States from
from for profit colleges, and like I said, it's not
going to solve the situation of people entering into college
just going to graduate with him with more debt. And
again the you know, the Democrats are also not focusing

(48:28):
on healthcare. So techo that, Yeah, there were things that
the Democrats could have done in that because of the
party's sort of maximums position about a lot of these
things didn't happen. You know. Even Jim mentioned had a
voting rights bill that he had helped craft that he
would have supported that was far less than the voting

(48:51):
rights bill that was passed in Congress, but was far
more than no voting rights bill and would have given
the federal government much more teeth to take on some
of these restrictions some of these states. There was also
a series of social spendings that could have passed through
through the Senate. Emma talked about the child Task Credit,
but there was a kind of a maximums position and
I think in many ways, you know, a lot of

(49:12):
what is disparaging about the Democrats is the degree to
which by trying to govern as if there was this
huge mandate without recognizing that. Look, I mean, there's a
whole series of Democrats in swing districts, in non urban
areas of the country. You know, people like Alyssa Slakin
in Michigan and Tom Malinowski in New Jersey who's an

(49:32):
old friend, and Abigail Spansburger and Virginia and Cindy Asney
and in Iowa who support all these things, you know,
and and and feel like they have a constituency that
would support them, but not at the most. You know,
we're gonna remake society allow what more urban you know,

(49:52):
younger educated voters want. And by not taking the half loaf,
you know, the proverbial like not taking the deal that
was the table and going for the wish list, I
think that's I mean, it is almost impossible to overstate
what a mistake that is. And it changes the narrative
in a way that didn't have to be. You know,
there's more support for a lot of these things because

(50:14):
they affect a lot of humans lives, irrespective of what
party they affiliate themselves. With and uh, you know, I
think that's going to be part of the real challenge
for the Democrats, other than the fact they've done a
really effective job counter Gerryandering well. And I think the
issue though two is right like they'll come out with
these maximalist solutions on the campaign trail to court the voters,

(50:38):
and then when it's time for the rubber to hit
the road, the lobbyists step in and completely derail everything.
And I think that's a huge part. I think that's
why for me, I'm not sure how the current set
up is equipped to actually take on these issues because
they're so systemic. I used to be a lobbyist for

(50:59):
a four offit education institution, and the work I did
had nothing to do with education and had everything to
do with exerting pressure on, you know, politicians, to convince
voters that this politician was using X policy to benefit
them when they weren't. And my whole existence was predicated

(51:20):
on a wealthy donor wanting to make sure that his
business was doing well. And I think that's a huge,
huge blind spot in the discussion, is that it's it's
it's not just Joe Manchin sat down and looked at
the Build Back Better Infrastructure bill and said, you know,
cutting it back at trillion dollars every couple of months,
which coincides with I think why Biden's numbers by the

(51:41):
fall hit hit such a weird point because we started,
we started off the spring thinking this, this bill is
gonna work. Then slowly you got to see that a
lot of the like sort of more corporative elements of
the party, but you could see where their interests were.
People suddenly are now voting to block bills that we're
going to bring prescription costs lower and lo and behold,
it's coming from people whose biggest donors are from the

(52:03):
pharmaceutical industry. And I think, yeah, like well and all
of that is pretty disheartening. But I think if when
that's completely absent from the conversation, we're gonna keep we're
gonna keep getting stuck in this like abstract version like
what's really going on without again reckoning with what this
how the system is actually operating and who who actually

(52:25):
can you know, pull those levers that a certain points
when they want to Yeah, I'm with you about healthcalth
health care for sure, Miles, I mean coming to Greece
and and living in uh that's probably one of the
worst European countries as far as health insurance goes. The
dramatic difference between here in the United States is like

(52:47):
it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. I feel like I should recommend
everyone if they can, like go live in Europe, if
you can, for sometimes see what the health care is like,
then come back. You'll have a crystal clear idea of
how much better it could be in the United States. Yeah,
And unfortunately, too many people just living the version where
they're experiencing the worst kind ever without any idea of
how much how good it can be, and we're just

(53:09):
grinding people down to like nothing. I feel like that's it.
It's like meant, it's like I've gone through periods where
I ignore my mental health and just like grind myself
and then like you know, there there are negative consequences,
but if you just like don't take that as a
as a factor into consideration. But like the the reality

(53:30):
of like living in America in a place where like
getting sick or hurt can like bankrupt you is so
fucked up, like so dark, and the fact that like
you know, you would have to like that you feel
like you need to suggest to people like you guys
have to see this ship. It's crazy like over there
you can get hurt and not be bankrupted. Is like

(53:53):
that that feels? I don't know. I think there are
a lot of things that we kind of lose track
of because we're so used to them, as you guys
have kind of talked about, but that need to be
improved and are the thing that is like grinding people down,
like you were saying, well, I mean I will say
to you that there's pros and content everywhere, So I

(54:14):
would be remiss to say that if you're on public
health insurance here in Greece, part of your medical experience
is not going to be bankruptcy, but it is going
to be bribing the doctors in the hospitals that they'll
actually take care of you. So yeah, I mean health
insurance is hard. Let's just say that. Yeah, because again,
like I think it speaks to the this perversion of
like certain industries where we're not taking certain things saying

(54:37):
that's not a thing where you need to go and
you know, exploit and extract trillions of dollars out of
Like that's that's that's that's at a minimum, a thing
to keep people healthy and alive. Like, don't don't begin
to to mix that up with growth and shareholder value
and those kinds of ideas, because yeah, we've we come.

(54:58):
When we do that, we complete reduced people to just
shoot on a spreadsheet abstract numbers, and at a certain point,
one person being like I need to crank this up
by half a percent means tens of thousands of people
going to bankruptcy. And we're like, we're completely I think,
divorced from like the humanity of it all, which I

(55:19):
think is just unfortunately that happens a lot of the
people who are the most vulnerable. We forget about it
because it's not necessarily maybe presents the greatest threat to
the most people all the time, but it's simmers and
it ends up, you know where eventually that that rot
touches all of us. Although I had to say one
of the things that really startled me in pandemic time,

(55:40):
the heart of it was like a fair number of
us I looked to Western European national health systems with
a degree of admiration of some sense that this is
a public good right it should be channeled through private industry.
It should be a product of a profit motive per se.
It should be about Look, every person in a society

(56:02):
should be able to get the health care they need
for the lives they want to live. But those national
systems were no more able to cope with the demands
of of a pandemic for the most part, and showed
in many of the same fissures between sort of haves.
Have not that the United States did hardly because their
own budgets had been investrated over the prior years, because

(56:24):
people didn't want to really pay taxes to support that
collective good, and they were susceptible to the same mantras
of efficiency. And efficiency means you know, you don't have
spare beds, it means when a crisis hits, there's no slack.
Slack costs money. All I'm saying is like, it is
true that we have massive structural impediments to delivering some

(56:45):
of the goods that you talk about, But it is
eye opening to see the degree to which it's very
hard to find a human assemblage on the planet that
does this particularly well, other than some you know, smaller
homogeneous societies. You can say, look and Mark does this
pretty well, but Denmark's like, you know, Manhattan plus queens.
And I mean, and that's not said with any pejorative, right,

(57:08):
It's just I think it's easier when there's fewer people
and they're all somewhat related. I do have to say.
I bribe all my doctors just to get better reports,
better like which put from my height there, doctor dropped
like twenty pounds from the weight and that cholesterol needs
to come way down. Bro. You can bribe people here

(57:30):
to get a driver's license to which is why it's
really scary to drive here. Wow, all right, let's take
a quick break. We'll come back and talk for like
five minutes about vampires and then we'll let you guys
go and we're back, and yeah, let's talk vampires. Vampires

(57:56):
are back. I mean, I guess we should. We should
start off with the most important question, him rights most
important question for our guests, Emma and Zachary. Our vampire
fangs hollow like straws, so they can drink the blood
through the fangs or are they sharp pokers to create
a wound to drink from. Okay, I feel like there's
only one answer to this question, is the right answer,

(58:18):
and that they must be like straws. Otherwise the drinking
doesn't make any sense to It doesn't work. You basically
have to like rip open a massive wound. You couldn't
have just like two pincers and then what lap up
the blood? It would be like a little trickle. It
doesn't make sense. It's like an artery though, you know

(58:39):
what I mean. They're going for the jug deler maybe
so you get good, good pressure, good good blood pressure
coming out of there. But I do. But okay, I
like that. Now I agree. I'm going with them here.
This is huge because so we Miles and I like
came up in the vampire game thinking that was how
things worked, but like then and were made to feel

(59:01):
stupid and like up until you guys just said that
I had felt stupid. But maybe not. Maybe this is
the truth. Maybe we were right all along, Miles. I
guess the thing the Devil's Advocate is that, like capri Son,
you know, you can just punch a puncture hole and
then just suck that thing dry, like you don't need

(59:23):
your teeth to uh. But there's one of the problem.
There's one of the problem with that picture, which is,
you know, if you ever see a vampire, and of
course we've all seen real vampires, not just the movies.
If they were just two puncture wounds, you'd have to
first puncture and then you'd have to move your mouth
because you have to move your mouth up to the
puncture for suction. And that would be a totally different

(59:46):
That would be a two steps process on the neck
and right. And you don't. That's not how it works.
It's one and then it's a latch. And the latch
doesn't work if if the puncture is like significantly towards
your nose right and it's like plus, it's blocking the
hole in which the blood would be flowing from if
the fangs are still in there. Yeah. So I'm just

(01:00:08):
saying thank you, Okay, I mean, I guess we have
a We also have a less important update from the
world of vampires and Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly
have talked about liken to occasionally drink each other's blood.
Apparently m g K will cut his chest open with
broken shards of glass so that Fox can drink the blood.

(01:00:28):
And the vampire community was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,
whoa Sorry, what did you say? Yeah? Yeah, real quotes
from vampire one man bel Fazzar Ashen Tuissan, the co
founder of the New Orleans Vampire Association. It wasn't sucking around,

(01:00:50):
he's saying most vampires again, it's just saying, you can't
just drink somebody's blood. What are you sick? You gotta
if you gotta know whose blood you're drinking. He says,
vampires to extend of research on their blood donors before
using even the slightest drop. And it says it took
him six months to get to know his blood donor
and feel comfortable before he would ingest the blood. Another

(01:01:11):
and then so and to the shards of glassing. Another
vampire father Sebastian, the founder of the Endless Night Vampire ball,
said you gotta be careful, You gotta you you. You
gotta use like medical procedures to perfect have the blood
withdrawn properly. Otherwise it's you're you're looking at a terrible,
terrible mistake or you know, potential harmful issues. So I

(01:01:33):
just like that the vampires came out to them and
we're saying, this ain't some fucking movie where you just
starts sluck sucking on a bloody wound get real. You
need to have the You need to have someone like
maybe phlebotomist on standby to properly do that. I love
the fact that there is a sufficient sub community that
has created and delineated a set of really strict and

(01:01:54):
and clear rules of engagement when it comes to how
you drink, what you drink, and from whom you drink
that It never really occurred to me to spend time
and energy mapping out the parameters of And that's the
really cool thing about subcommunities, right. You we go about
our lives thinking at such a point as you decide
that you want to actually drink someone's blood, it's a

(01:02:16):
pretty simple, basic transaction, kind of like Angelina Jolie and
Billy Bob Thornton. You know, you just you put a
little bit of a viol and your show up with
the oscars and and there you have it. But indeed,
you know there's some real serious expertise and complexity there.
Maybe we can talk about cannibalism and the next the
next time we talked, because I'm sure there too. You

(01:02:36):
know thermometers, temperature, you know minimum which cuts are better
storage seculents? Right? How do you how do you make
sure they don't reach for the wrong thing and the
cooler you know whatever. I'm sure it's all out there. Yeah,
it's all about community, you know what I mean saying
about building community is very important one New Orleans hit

(01:02:58):
up nova let Balfazzar, No, you're here for his safe
technocratic form of vampire ing. The is there like a
vampire name generator? Because like is bel Fazzar Ashton? Is
that his? Is that this person's legal name? Or do
you when you fall into vampiresm you're like holding now
this is my like confirmation saint name belfaz goan Rice

(01:03:24):
Corpus and try to find you know your spirit, your
spirit vampire name. It might be his legal name if
he changed it, but it's certainly not his given name.
There's no one unless he comes from a line of
New Orleans Vampire Association. True, true, Well, guys, it's been
a pleasure having you on t d Z. Where can

(01:03:45):
people find you? Follow you all that good stuff? So
you can listen to our podcast called What Could Go Right?
We're on you know, any podcast platform you can think of.
We're at progress and t w r K on Instagram, Facebook,
Twitter and linked and if you're a linked in person. UM.
You can also sign up for a newsletter which is
also called what Could Go Right, and that's on the

(01:04:06):
Progress network website, which is the Progress Network dot org. Yeah,
you know, and think about it as kind of a
yen to this yang. Yeah right, balance in the force.
And is there a tweet or some of the work
of social media you've been enjoying? Um, so, not quite
a tweet, but a tweet to an article which was um.

(01:04:26):
Kevin Kelly, he was one of the founding editors of
wire ad magazine. He turned seventy last week and he
put out this list called hundred and three Bits of
Advice I wish I knew. It's really great. It's completely random,
there's absolutely no order and just like gems throughout. So
I recommend that it's on his website called SECNOI UM,
I think, okay, how about you use Degrey so just

(01:04:52):
for for funny tweet land. Yeah, there's a woman named
Eden Dranger who as a hilarious set of ever new
Twitter feeds. One of our recent ones is whenever I
feel ugly, I just remember that I'm a terrible person too.
There you go. Uh, and the others we should have

(01:05:17):
to answer like five security questions before making any late
night online purchases. Yeah, wise words. I gotta identify which
square has the boat in it before you make it,
and I'll leave you. I'll leave you with the final
one of hers. If I was a marriage counselor, I
just let the couple log onto any dating app for

(01:05:37):
two minutes. There you go. Miles, where can people find
you with the tweet you've been enjoying? Uh? Find me
on Twitter and Instagram at Miles of Gray. If you
like basketball, check out Miles and Jack Got Mad Boost.
These are basketball podcasts. Since we're you know again, we
talked about the world here. We celebrate the NBA over

(01:05:57):
there and if you like, check out four twenty day
Fiance with your Boy and Sophia Alexandra. A tweet I like.
First one is from Natasha Leone because I've been watching
a little bit of Russian Doll the new season, and
so whenever I see her tweets, I can't help but
hear it in her voice at and Leone tweeted, holcome,
no one talks about WAP anymore? You guys used to

(01:06:19):
love whap Random Natasha leon And tweeting uh, and then
another one from a Sante's in Fronto tweeted, I love
that when British people sing they cut out all that bullshit.
That was like when I heard like like an interview,

(01:06:41):
like like led Zeppelin the first time ever as a kid,
I was like, wait, what what? But sometimes you know,
Green Day adds back in from our from our end
Sudden we were British again tweet I've been enjoying jin
Marco SORESI tweeted, Oh you don't like cargo shorts, let
me check my forty six pockets for a funk to give.

(01:07:07):
That's good. You can find us on Twitter at daily Zeitgeist.
We're at the Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram. We have a
Facebook fan page on a website daily zeitgeis dot com,
where we post our episodes on our footnotes where we
like the information that we talked about in today's episode,
as well as a song that we think you might enjoy. Miles,
what song do we think people might enjoy it? We're

(01:07:27):
gonna do an instrumental version a cover by this group
Soul Supreme of the track by most Stuff called Umi
says a lot of people know that song, and he
said s I that I don't know world, but this
is a great instrumental cover of it, even more soul.
So this is souls some dreams, the version of whom
he said, alright well. The Daily Zeitgeist is a production

(01:07:50):
by Heart Radio. For more podcast for my heart Radio,
visit the heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. That's gonna do it for
us this morning, over back this afternoon to tell you
was trending more Tarkia than by eight