Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello the Internet, and welcome to season one, episode four
of J Daly's Like Guys to production of I Heart Radio.
This is a podcast where we take a deep dive
into America's shared consciousness and say, officially, off the top,
fuck the Koch Brothers, fuck Fox News, fuck Rush Limbaugh,
fuck Buck Sexton, fuck Ben Shapiro, and fuck Tucker Carlson.
(00:23):
Because I'm brave, Jamie, I'm brave. Uh Thursday, I know?
Can he say? That? Is the question on everyone's mind?
Is allowed time? I just did? Okay? Um, so it's Thursday,
September three. My name's Jack O'Brien a k. Hey there,
(00:43):
Miles of gray. What's it like not being sweaty? I've
changed shirts five times already. Somehow still I smell like
a yeddie. Yes, I do. My clothes more wet than
mountain dew. I swear it's true. Hey there, Miles up grade.
Don't you worry about my short shorts, muscled thighs for
(01:04):
all to enjoy with pale skin and sweat. That glistened
shield your eyes looking directly is unwise at my blinding thighs.
That is courtesy of official Dickhead and I and thrilled
to be joined by my special guest co host, Jamie Left.
(01:27):
I'd like to make myself believe that COVID will end
in twenty twiney. But the second wave is coming and
we never left the first. We're never gonna and quarantine.
But I'm Jamie. That's really depressing from Will at Ultra Lantern.
(01:53):
I just really wanted to go into the nasal register
as early in the episode is possible. So thank you.
Get that vocal warm up in sound, Thank you, thank you.
How are you doing. It's been a while since I've
been on a podcast with you. The Latest in your World? Yeah,
so we were in Wisconsin for several weeks, uh, seeing
(02:18):
my boyfriend's family, well like self quarantine and then seeing
my boyfriend's family. Then now we have to self quarantine again.
But we were in Wisconsin when the shooting of Jacob
Blake happened, um in Kenosha, and then the wave of
protests that sprung up because of that, and then the
murder of the protesters. So we were fairly are a
(02:39):
few hours away when when all that happened. But um,
we went to the town over shortly after because that
is where my boyfriend's mom lives and I don't know,
it was it was. I mean, it's a horrifying thing
for that community to process. And at the Swing States,
so there, you know, it's having a conversation with my
(03:01):
boyfriend's mom, who is liberal but needs to have difficult
conversations had. And then there's the difference of several streets
over there's a Q and on house. So um, I
don't know. I felt like I had a lot of
my having grown up in blue state privilege examined of
(03:22):
I mean, there's certainly horrific things happening everywhere, but but
the way that this community processed it is different because
the politics are so polarized. And so that was a
complete mind fuck. And then on the way home we
learned about the murder of Dijon Kizzie Um in South
l A, who was just twenty nine. I know we're
(03:43):
going to talk about him later by the l A
Sheriff's department. So uh yeah, just a wild, horrible time.
And and fuck Trump for showing up in Kenosha to
see him, because I was like, oh, well we should
hang around, see what happens. We got to hang we
(04:04):
weren't in we weren't like next to Kenosha. Um when
the original uh when when when the shootings happened? But
we were there a couple of days later. Yeah. Unfortunately,
when the shootings happened, it could mean many different things
in Kenosha. Shout out to everyone who's like holding it
down in swing states because it just I mean it
(04:29):
made yeah, it made me feel extremely naive because it's like, yeah,
you like liberal state privileges a whole thing, like you
really have to stand your ground. Yeah, and even in
non swing states like Portland. Uh. Um, Well, we are
thrilled to be joined by the eloquent, the brilliant, the
(04:53):
talented Chelsea Weber Smith. Well, I am thrilled. I am
super thrilled, And I know have like a satirical song
to start with, but come on, could I pop in
with a quick fuck Ronald Reagan? Yeah? All right that
I like to come out of the gate hot. So yeah, controversy, right,
(05:13):
I mean a lot of people are going to disagree that.
Listen to this show. Just kidding, right, I know. Yeah,
we were just talking about how we need to get
Ronald Reagan on the five dollar bill. Yeah, oh my god, Reagan. Um, Chelsea,
(05:35):
how are you doing? And then where where are you
joining us from? I am in Seattle, so definitely uh,
liberal mecca, but also, like you said, a big battleground
for for Black lives matter and everything that's been going on.
And yeah, so that's where I'm at. Play Sportland, toot
of friends there. Man, it is it's nuts and you
(05:57):
are a poet, a musician, um, a podcast or a
student of American hysteria. That's right, Yeah, it's I had
no idea how relevant the show was going to become.
(06:17):
We started it, you know, a little over two years ago,
and we we talk moral panics, conspiracy theories, fantastical American
thinking and uh, it's basically like uh long form essays
that we do each uh, each episode. But they're funny,
they're terrifying, they're sad, lots of oddities of history, but
we try to break down these fantasies through like a
(06:40):
sociological lens, like why does this happen? Not is this true?
But what's the moment in history, what's the moment in
American psychology that sort of facilitates these things spreading? And
how they've always been kind of ingrained in us and
come back in all these new ways, and the show
is called American Hysteria. That's right, appropriately enough, Right, all right, Chelsea,
(07:01):
We're gonna get to know you a little bit better
in a moment. First, we are going to tell our
listeners a few of the things we're talking about. We're
going to talk about the red Mirage scenario, which is
a scenario being put out there by some data firm
called like fish Hawk or some ship, but they are
(07:22):
funded by Michael Bloomberg, and they think what is going
to happen is it's going to look like Trump won
in a landslide on election night, and then as the
mail and votes are tallied, if they're tallied, it would
switch to a bide victory. But we'll talk about that.
We'll talk about the Department of Homeland Security nixing a
(07:43):
Russian interference warning that was supposed to be sent out.
We'll talk about l A County sheriffs murdering a man,
shooting him over twenty times according to eyewitnesses, for committing
a bike violation and running away from them and allegedly
punching one of the officers in the face. We don't
(08:04):
know if that's true. Yeah, we really eyewitnesses don't seem
to corroborate that. We're going to talk about a prominent
opponent of Vladimir Putin being poisoned. Uh, we're going to
talk about a guy in a jet pack casually flying
around near l a X. Uh. It's a person in
(08:28):
a jet pack. I don't know, we don't know who
it was. Uh. All of that plenty more. But first, Chelsea,
we like to ask our guests, what is something from
your search history that is revealing about who you are? Well?
I uh, a few days ago searched cotton Mother, dinosaur bones,
American nationalism. Um, so go on, great, beautiful right, Um,
(08:53):
it's a really interesting story. We're working on an episode
about fake news, and uh so we go all we
always go all the way back to the Puritans and
sort of like what started these these stories and cotton
Mother found dinosaur or no, not Cotton Mother. A man
was just walking down the street and a mammoth to
throll down the hill hit him in the foot. He
(09:13):
traded it to a politician for a cup of rum.
And then Cotton Mather, Who's who I call witch trial
bitch Cotton Mather. We know him the Puritan minister who
facilitated the witch trials. He took this on and decided
that to reinforce his like scientific biblical ship that he did,
he said that they were giant bones and then just
(09:35):
mocked England like mercilessly saying, we have biblical giants and
you don't. Um. And then it turned out that and
then enslaved people were like, no, dude, that's an elephant,
Like that looks like an African elephant, you know. So
and they were like, that's insane. It's giant bones. So
(09:56):
that's ah, that's the kind of you know stuff. You
can expect hysteria now. So the thing that actually happened
was a mammoth tooth rolled down the hill. That's right,
That's right, that's that's as the story goes, hit a
dude in the foot and he was like, this seems
like something important, but I just want some roma. This
(10:19):
seems like yeah, reasonable, yeah, absolutely reasonable. But and then
and then they yeah, and then they used it to
like reinforce American nationalism by saying, you know, we're so
exceptional that we have biblical giants buried under our soil
in England has nothing. So it was great, great, little
(10:41):
oddities like that. I just love. Yeah, and then I
got a whole book about it, because if there's some
weird thing that happened, some academics spent their entire life
figuring out how to, uh, how to encapsulate it for
people that can read academic texts, which is five people
on earth. Yeah, yeah, a lot of I've noticed. Philosophy
(11:03):
was my major, and it's seems like it's a prerequisite. Yeah,
that's right. Uh, I don't know about you, yeah, but
it seems like it's a prerequisite for it to almost
seem like it's written in a different language a lot
of the time. To for uh, somebody to write philosophy,
(11:23):
rather than like make it approachable, it's they make it
as inscrutable as possible. The philosophy classes I took in
college were just like a nightmare. And I consider myself
like somewhat able to discuss the philosophy, but it was
like so deeply inaccessible that that's kind of what our
show is is. I'll read all these like deeply boring
(11:45):
texts and try to make it so that just anyone
could interact with the content, right, And uh, I don't know,
I don't know why academia is so out of reach
it seems really detrimental to cause that it wants to
sort of touch, right gate keeping going on? Maybe, but
(12:07):
I wish I had taken a philosophy course at any point.
I mean, it sounds like a fucking nightmare. But the
classes I took word so profoundly pointless that I'm like, oh,
maybe philosophy. I mean why not? Really? I took a
whole class on the television show Lost, so I mean
that's basically a philosophy course because that show is like,
(12:28):
because it's like, actually really makes you think. But what
if they were in purgatory. I did not watch that
show or that class. She took the whole class, the
whole class, and I gotta be that is college. That's college. Yeah,
(12:49):
that's what I was like with philosophy. I started like
actually being interested in it. Like the day I graduated,
I was like, huh, I'm gonna start reading some of
this stuff as opposed to just doing it as a
means to it. I took Philosophy and staid of English
because the reading was quicker. It was like three page
reading assignments as opposed to novel link reading assignments so
(13:10):
it was pure laziness. Yeah, Chelsea, what is something you
think is overrated? Oh, this one's fun. So our next
season three premieres on true crime and how true crimes
informed our society, which you know is going to be
really fun. But something I really am annoyed by is
the idea that serial killers possess some sort of genius
(13:31):
or intelligence. And if you don't mind, I would love
to share a Zodiac quote that sort of proves my point. So, yes,
thank you, I appreciate that. So one of the big
Zodiac letters that came to police in the media, uh,
was actually not about like a cipher or anything like that.
(13:52):
It came on a card that said, sorry, your ass
is a dragon and it had two prospectors writing a
dragon with a donkey. I don't know, it's it's ridiculous.
And then he wrote quote, ready, if you don't want
me to have this blast, meaning he was going to
blow up a school bus, you must do two things.
(14:12):
Tell everybody about the bus bomb with all the details.
I would like to see some nice Zodiac buttons wandering
around town. Everyone else has buttons like black power. Well,
it would cheer me up considerably if I saw a
lot of people wearing my button. Thank you, And then
after he didn't see any buttons, he said, this is
(14:33):
the Zodiac speaking. I have become very upset with the
people of San fran Bay area. They have not complied
with my wishes for them to wear some nice Zodiac buttons.
He was just like, this sounds like a podcast I
(14:54):
don't I don't like. And they're like, wait a second, fam,
why would you could you please are some nice buttons? Fam?
I sent you a freeze like a Simpson's T shirt.
Why aren't you wearing it? Yeah, it's it's just like
embarrassing when you read serial killer like actual quotes, you know,
because zodiacts like this mastermind and he alluded police, but
(15:16):
really he was just like a serious douche bag down
in his heart, which of course we know, but like
it's just the genius thing. And then there's like Ted Bundy.
He was just like ridiculous in court, defending himself and
ranting and raving and just being you know, an idiot.
But then he gets this like charming. I don't know.
The way we reduce serial killers, I think is is
(15:37):
a frustration to me. And I think and it's like
genuinely harmful, you I mean to like glorify it, and
also just because it's you would think, you know, maybe
perhaps that people would be less fascinated by them if
they realized, you know, kind of how they're losers. They're
truly profoundly losing, true, true losers. It's not cool to
(16:01):
be And you know, also the whole serial killer panic,
which of course is like such a panic because it's
so rare to be killed by a serial killer, but
it also really reinforced law and order, war on crime rhetoric,
and a lot like the man Like the Mother of
Sharon Tate was a huge, huge influence in the victims
(16:22):
rights movement, which on its surface is awesome and underneath
also supports like very Republican policies. So it's just such
a complicated genre that we don't really truly dissect. And
I'm not like anti true crime or anything like that.
I mean, I was definitely reading Manson stuff about twelve,
(16:44):
you know, so, but it's interesting, it's super interesting stuff
I didn't know at all. Yeah, yeah, I totally feel
conflicted about my uh interest in that stuff. I have
this loose theory that the police basically talked Jeffrey Dahmer
in to claiming he was a cannibal, like because that
(17:04):
he was arrested as Silence of the Lambs was becoming
very popular. It was almost like the culture manifested the
because he was just keeping victims body parts around, which
is very gross, but also you know, he was just
it was like a he didn't know what to do
with the bodies of all these people he was killing,
(17:27):
and so it is more of a disposal thing than anything.
But then he realized how much attention it got him
and how It's just so interesting to me that Silence
of the Lambs and happened and it was a national,
global phenomenon, and then he was arrested and suddenly there's
(17:48):
this famous um serial killer who's also a cannibal. Wow,
that's that's a theory that I can get down with.
I mean, you know, like John Wayne Gacy, right, all
the media showed of him was him and his clown outfit.
And we talk a lot about like the phantom clown
panic that that happened in twenty steen and also happened
in the eighties of you know, all these kids seeing
(18:09):
clowns and uh them being horrifying. You know, stranger danger murderers. Um,
and it kind of single handedly changed the way that
we think about clowns, you know. I mean, serial killers
have such an enormous And then there's like Ted Bundy
that all these fundamentalist Christians came to like at the
end of his life, right before he was going to
be executed, and they basically had a conversation blaming pornography
(18:32):
for everything that Ted did. So serial killers are used
like so much more than we really consciously notice for
like nefarious means. I think, I mean, I think where
my the first time I felt my relationship with true crime,
Because originally I was just kind of like in I'm like, yeah,
this is like whatever fun and there's all the examinations
(18:53):
of why is it appealing and all that stuff. But um,
I think it was I was having a conversation with
someone about I don't know, one of the bajillion true
crime docuseries there are, and they were like talking about
it in spoilers terms, and they're like, I've only watched
after episode two, don't spoil I was like, but someone
was murder like but that. But because that's how the
(19:14):
stories are like treated and formatted, you're like, oh, yeah,
it's just being treated like it's fiction basically, like, yeah,
somebody's making a bunch of money. Yeah, somebody those development
meetings where they're getting like giddy about the twists and
turns of a real life you know, serial killing and yeah,
like you're using all the same manipulations that you would
(19:36):
in a fictional text. And yet I watched so much
of it, right, I'm like, have I stopped? No, No,
I just feel worse about it. Yeah, yeah, yea. Sometimes
that's the least we can do, absolutely, Chelsea. What is
something you think is underrated? Oh, I'm gonna say horror movies,
(19:58):
because I think horror movie these are like I mean
you've already kind of talked about it, but they say
so much about cultural anxiety and like where we're at
in the moment that they're coming out, and like the
different genres, like the Satanism genre coming out with like
the Exorcist was like right at the rise of fundamentalism
is like a force in politics, right, and then kind
(20:21):
of was the kick off to some of the Satanic
panic where people were convinced that there were Satanic cults
all over, um, you know, harming children in all of
these sensational ways, and then there's like hillbilly horror. I'm
really very interested in. The show is interested in sort
of like the maligning of white trash, and you know,
the poor white person is like this kind of psychic
(20:42):
dumping ground for um racism and people to blame. Right,
and uh So there's like the hillbilly horror genre with
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Deliverance, UM, and all of those different ones.
And I think that it says a lot about our
relationship to the poor UM and how how middle class
people like right, like Deliverance, you have these basically hipsters
(21:04):
coming in and canoeing down the river for adventure, and
then it's like, oh, it's the poor white people that
are like hiding in the hills, which is a compelling
and terrifying thing, don't get me wrong. But then you know,
like I think Pennywise, uh, the original Pennywise in the
book and Tim Curry uh in it uh really encapsulated
(21:27):
the dangerous stranger coming after children, UM with stranger danger
and really the satanic panic are our panic that our
children are being constantly taken um. And then even Frankenstein,
this is like we did a whole episode called Monsters
about basically how the language of the monstrous has been
used against like people of color, but especially black people,
(21:49):
and how Mary Shelley's book came out, Um there's which
one King Kong. Yeah, yeah, hell yeah, that's that's like
so over. Um. But then like Mary Shelley's book about
Frankenstein was reprinted the same year that, um, the slave
Rebellion led by Nat Turner, which is one of the
(22:10):
most famous of all time, happened, and all of the
language of Frankenstein was used to talk about him like
he's broken from his change, that the change. They used
the actual language of Frankenstein. And then when the movie
came out in the thirties, there was all this racial
anxiety from the twenties with jazz clubs and white women,
(22:30):
you know, being influenced by black men and the whole
black men steal white women trope that's been around since
the very beginning. And the movie had like these two
interesting parts where it was like again like the dangerous
black man coming after women, white women and children, because
you've got that scene where he doesn't understand and throws
(22:52):
the child in the water. And then there's also though
this like other line kind of like of liberal do
good or right, where Frankenstein meets this blind man who
could be like color blind, right, and he teaches this
like hopeless helpless monster like the morals of of good society.
And so it's like this really interesting. I don't know,
(23:15):
I just think we write horror movies awful lot is trash,
But now we have like Get Out and we have Parasite,
and we have these incredible horror movies that that are
addressing social issues. And now our villains are you know,
elite cults or um and even horror and trauma with
like Hereditary and the Baba Duke and and you know,
it just it really tells something about where we're at.
(23:37):
And they're like our urban legends are fairy tales, you know,
they're they're so vital to understanding culture, but we just
like to think that they're they're trash and you know,
but really, yeah, it's pretty fascinating too because even with
I mean, even when a horror movie gets it wrong
in terms of the cultural anxiety they're expressing, which they
often do, it's still like you're saying, it does of
(24:00):
contextualized at very least the filmmaker's perspective, but often whatever
a prominent line of thinking during that time where I
don't know. On the Bechtel Cast, we've been talking about
this a lot lately because we're recording our Halloween Month
episodes of how often, like you said, hereditary? And I
think ari Astor is a huge perpetrator of this issue
(24:21):
of like, uh, he just cannot write any anything in
relation to mental illness intelligently or well, um, he just
fumbles at every single time. And the opening scene of
Midsummer is like the most horrific misinterpretation of bipolar disorder
maybe in all the film ever, but it does it
(24:42):
is very revealing about who he is and how he
views people I don't know like and it's also a
very common stereotype that he's perpetuating there, and there's a
million examples of it. That's one that like, in the
past couple of years has just like stuck with me.
But it it is like revealing of like, well, in
twenty nineteen, this was still a pretty popular, flawed way
(25:06):
of thinking and the way that like so often like
monsters are differently able than just there's so many I mean,
it's fascinating and fucked up and yeah, horror, it's like
they've they really that genre really like lays it out
for you, for better and for worse. Man, I love
what you said about him because he gets so like
people love those movies and I just cannot. I cannot.
(25:29):
And I read a quote from him because I did.
I used to blog about horror stuff, and I read
an interview from him that basically says he just tries
to do the most transgressive, fucked up thing. It's not
a direct quote, but you know that that's his goal,
is to make the most fucked up thing he can.
And I think that that is such a weird yeah
things to do? Yeah, you know, like I don't know,
(25:49):
when you're writing from somebody else's perspective, you can get
in trouble real fast that you don't understand, you know.
So I appreciate that. Chelsea. You said something about the
down uh craze or the clown panic of a few
years ago. So I had seen a bunch of YouTube
(26:11):
videos of clowns doing or like clown sightings and stuff.
Was that all was that all made up? Is it
kept me awake? Yeah? Dude, I mean like, so I
don't know, did you watch the Wrinkles the Clown documentary
on Hulu. I just watched it. I'm actually, dude, you
know the podcast you're wrong about. I don't know if
you it's a crazy podcast. But we're doing a crossover.
(26:34):
I'm going on their show to do a clown episode,
which is like so much fun. It's one of my
favorite topics to talk about. But there was a guy,
uh if you watch this documentary, that he made a
sticker that said call Wrinkles uh and then a phone
number and the whole he created, this whole lord that
parents were calling in to discipline their children with him,
so I think, and it was all bullshit, like it
(26:56):
was just sort of like an avant garde you know,
whatever you want to call it art thing um. But
then you know it's it's a hysteria and that like
if you think of satanic panic like children like most
of these sightings, and it happened in the eighties too, um,
very similar, but of course it moved much slower because
of the internet didn't exist. But it was all over
(27:16):
the country, which is more interesting to me because it's
so hard to spread those you know, those ideas and
those urban legends. But Um, yeah, he he did that.
And then I think that what I was saying is is,
you know they all come from about seven year old kids,
and when you're a seven year old, you know, you
can make up anything. Like in the Satanic Panic. It
(27:37):
was like their teachers were flying around the room and
you know, they were being flown to Mexico and put
in kittie pools full of sharks. And everybody took this
really really seriously because you know, it was a time
when when assaults and sexual abuse of children was finally
kind of coming to the forefront. But then it went
too far and everybody believed everything that a seven year
(27:58):
old said. Um, and as you know, I can remember
being a kid, and there was this whole controversy where
these two girls were chased by a man with a
scar on his face, and you know, all these letters
went home saying that this was true. It was on
the local news. It turned out that they just were
going to be late getting home, and they made a
story and it just got like madly out of control.
(28:19):
I mean, can you imagine the stress of that. And then, um,
you know, and then I just remember being like, oh yeah,
I saw him. Oh absolutely, he was doing this and this,
and you know, I saw him in the woods, and
that's just what happens as kids like one up each
other and then the parents find out or they tell
the parents, and then the parents take it seriously, like men,
we're shooting their guns just into the woods, just straight
(28:43):
up into the woods because they thought they heard a
weird sound and their kids had said that a clown
lived in a shack in the woods. So there's a
metaphor for it. Sounds like a metaphor for something. I
don't know. It sounds like Q and On shipped to me.
You know, that's really interesting. The point about it was
a time when you know, it was being acknowledged that
(29:05):
children were being abused, and you know, after the seventies
where it was just such a creepy decade in terms
of uh, you know, like pedophilia was like a mainstream
like thing. Um and but like it just reminds me
of the two prongs of the Q and On thing, where, yes,
(29:26):
there's a massive problem with human trafficking and sexual abuse
of minors that is being uncovered with the Epstein thing,
and it is in the upper echelons of society, but
it's not But could there be anything more counterproductive into
addressing that than yeah, exactly, well, and then you can
(29:50):
just like what better villain is there? Right that Q
And you can't create a better villain than a satanic pedophile,
Like there is no thing at society could more loath
and collectively loathe together. So it's such it's such evocative
thing to build a movement around because it's so hard
to say, oh, well, that's not happening, and so it's
(30:12):
just this very it's just a terrible thing. And the
upper echelons, of course, are just as guilty of crimes
against children as any other sect of society. Like we
act like this is you know, like n of childhood
sexual abuses happening by people that they know that the
child knows. And so it's this other sensational thing that's like,
(30:32):
here's where abuse is happening, so we don't have to
deal with where most abuse is happening. And so it's yeah,
it's bombed. Alright, let's take a quick break and we'll
come back and talk about your myth. And we're back,
(30:57):
and Chelsea, we like to ask our guess what is
a myth? What's something people think is true? You know
to be false or vice versa. Well, you know, and
I don't know if you guys have talked about this.
I think you might have. But just memory and what
we think of as memory is so interesting to me
because it couldn't be a more fallible thing. Uh, And
(31:20):
I think we were. We think of our memories as
as set in stone, like they're filed away in a cabinet,
and you recall them at any moment as if they
are perfect and unchanging. But really you can. You can
implant false memories. We know about that from the Satanic
panic and and Christian psychotherapists, that we're really leading people
into having these memories that turned out to be completely false.
(31:43):
But I don't know about you guys, but I have
memories that I know didn't happen, and they are so
like clear and vivid. I have this memory of being
shot at by my crazy neighbor, which is absolutely untrue,
but I remember down to like the bullets hitting the tree,
and all it was was my friends saying that it
happened and me being like, oh yeah, yeah, totally totally.
(32:04):
And now I have this visceral memory and it's a
problem in like eyewitness testimony it's you can make things
up with any suggestion. If someone said, oh, I think
he was wearing a blue shirt, You're like, yeah, I
think he was. And it's it's just such a dangerous
thing to trust our memories the way we do, and
then we get like the Mandela effect, you know where
it's like, you know about the Mandela effect. Yeah, we
(32:25):
have talked about. Yeah, I'm sure you know where an
entire group of people wants to like rewrite history to
prove that our memories are right, or they'll create a
whole story like like you know that there's two universes,
which means there but um, you know, and and so
it's like, yeah, we're just so scared of our memories
(32:46):
being being incorrect that will will kind of like write
a whole mythos too. For the handful of listeners who
don't listen to every single episode. What what is the
Mandela effecture, It's it's the idea that um, at some point, well,
the Mandela effect to start is basically a group false memory.
(33:07):
And uh it came from uh Nelson Mandela's apparent funeral
procession that everybody remembered that didn't happen because it was
a mixture of things, like they remembered when he got
out of prison and sort of like the celebration around that,
but really like it's more about stupid ship from the nineties,
like Berenstein Bears is the most famous that most many
people remember it being spelled Stein s T e I N. Right, yeah,
(33:31):
and uh, but then it's actually s T A I
N and it's drawing. I'll tell you. It jarred me.
It shook me because it's like I remember I remember
it being the other way. And then there's like that
that uh what like the the peanut Mr Peanut wears
a monocle. Oh no, no, it's all just all these
dumb things, little things that that people remember differently. Um,
(33:54):
there's a great list of them. They're all escaping me
right now. But uh. And then the idea that there
was a separate universe and some of us came into
the other parallel universe where it's different. Yeah, we switched over.
So it's it's silly, but it's also weird because we
do have masses of people remembering the same thing that
didn't happen, and that's just super weird and interesting to me.
(34:16):
There's also been there's been some real I I don't
know how current it is, but there was research at
one time that indicated, like the memories that you visit
very frequently are like become less reliable over time the
more you visit them. Of like, every time you revisit
a memory, you're kind of opening to slight alteration depending
(34:37):
on you know, what was your perception of the event,
how are you feeling, how do you feel about it now?
Like memories are are changeable in some to some degree,
which I thought was interesting. There's a psychologist named Elizabeth
Loftis that I think I asked you when we first
met if you were related to her or if you
(34:58):
were secretly her um but has done a bunch of
work on, uh, implanting benign memories in people's minds, like
that they had been in hot air balloons, and memories
of seeing bugs Bunny at Disney World, and just various
things that are just by mere suggestion, the people are
(35:22):
able to really like put themselves like put a concrete
memory in their in their brain that never happened. But yeah,
there's also a study where people we're basically asked about
a memory immediately after the event happened and then further
down the line, and the more they told the story,
(35:45):
the further it got. And like basically if they added
a detail or something that was incorrect about I think
it was the challenger explosion that then became part of
the memory because every time you remember some thing, you're
essentially retelling the story to yourself and you're adding all
these different details. Um, it's like a memory of a memory,
(36:09):
a memory of a memory of a copy of a copy.
Family have done a lot of work on this. So
the loft is uh yeah, yeah, well ship, this has
been one of the most interesting, uh getting to know
you sections of the show. Now we're going to have
to rush through the news, but that is fine because
(36:33):
everything we just talked about relates to the news in
many very interesting ways. Sorry, I talk a lot. No,
it's it's the you are. You are at the very
heart of the things that I'm so interested in, Uh
that we do this show every day. Well that's why
I loved Cracked. I mean, you guys were such an
(36:53):
early influence on the show. I try to work for Cracked.
Did you really? But it's fine that I didn't know. Yeah,
it's a long con but it's cool to be here,
you know, Yeah, that's it. At first. Honestly, Jack, when
(37:17):
you put the red mirrage scenario in the dock, I'm like,
is this a way of saying that Joe Kennedy lost?
So that is the first story, and also the mirage scenario. Yeah,
it's like the Pelican brief, the red mirrage scenario. Um.
(37:37):
But yeah, there, it's just a data firm that is
kind of solidifying a description of what's going to happen
on election night that we've sort of talked around. Um.
But it's basically that pep Trump's votes on election night,
Like the note, the votes that will be tallied on
election night will reflect a shocking, supp rising, huge Trump
(38:01):
landslide victory, and then as more votes come in over
the course of the next four days I think they're
estimating is going to take to tally up all the
mail in ballots, it will switch to a pretty definitive
Biden victory. And I am unfortunately certain that the mainstream
(38:23):
media is incapable of dealing with that sort of volatility
in any sort of measured or disciplined. Well, yeah, they
will flip the fuck out the moment it seems like
Trump has won and then Trump will use that momentum
to declare victory, uh, and then we'll have a toe
(38:46):
hold to delegitimize the mail in ballots. So this is
a very scary scenario that they said they based on,
you know, a bunch of pulling that was done, you
know together. It wasn't just like their individual poll I
think they based on some five thirty eight uh, composite polling,
(39:09):
which is scary sum. So I don't know what to
do about that other than just prepare and acknowledge that,
you know, keep preparing the public for this possibility, because
otherwise it's just gonna you know, we we saw it
in a very kind of minor way with the two
(39:33):
thousand eighteen mid terms, where it was like, there's gonna
be a blue wave. Has like the blue wave never happened,
and then over the course of a week, as more
votes came in, they were like, the blue wave did happen.
We just needed to count the votes. Yeah, it turns
out right, Yeah, this is one of those many scenarios
(39:55):
that are coming up that it's it is much like
the postal service just feel so helpless in terms of
like what is a direct actionable thing you can do
about this. But I do think that there's definitely is
some value in just kind of bracing yourself and understanding
what the possibilities are in Yeah, I mean passing the
info along because this I don't know what we can
(40:17):
do to really stop this from happening other than understand
and not panic when it does. Right, But there will
be an attempt by the Republican Party to use those
early results to just sweep everything else under the rug,
like no doubt. Yeah, that possibility is being underrated by
(40:42):
the mainstream media's reception of this kind of study. They're
just kind of being like, Wow, that would be wild
because there would be four days in which we're wrong.
But then everything will you know, come out in the
wash and it's like, no, that's not going to happen.
They will try to invalidate any results that are different
(41:04):
from what they have On election night, Trump will be
declaring victory, uh for three straight days. There will be
a large victory celebration as the other results are trickling in.
Assuming this scenario happens, there's a DHS warning that Russia
(41:26):
is basically saying the same thing the Trump administration is
saying about Joe Biden's mental health and mental capacity. Uh.
And when this warning was going to go out to
law enforcement officials and more local officials, it was basically
withheld by Chad Wolf, Acting Secretary of Homeland Security. Chad Wolf. God,
(41:54):
these names, Chad Wolf, these names? You got Wolf? He
define only answers his phone, is you got the Wolf?
Chad sounds like like a character that like would be
on one of my mom's shows. You know, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, okay,
(42:18):
Chad Wolf. We've talked before about the l A County
Sheriff's office being implicated in just a number of white
supremacist gangs, and you know, for killing killing people like
just all sorts, all sorts of ship. It's yeah, they
(42:40):
were two l A County Sheriff's officers. I don't even
know the wording for that shot a man who they
had stopped for a bicycle violation, which, first of all,
what the funk is a bicycle viola top to bottom?
This is just absolute horseship. It makes me so angry.
(43:03):
There's no who gets the like, It's just it couldn't
be more mask off like targeting right. According to eyewitnesses,
they continued to shoot him while he was on the ground,
shot him in the back, kept shooting, they say over
twenty times. The sheriff's officers account is that he had
(43:25):
dropped a gun and was going to pick it up.
But even they aren't saying that he had the gun
like when they shot him twenty times. And they also
left his body on the street for hours after handcuffing
his dead body. Um. So this is also we we've
talked about how we're really seeing, like the cases that
(43:53):
are breaking through are only the ones that happened on
a video that somebody is like taking direct foot age
of of the thing happening. Um, And otherwise it's just
like this, this is basically as close as we've seen
two uh something breaking through without a direct video of it.
(44:13):
But I feel like the videos we've seen tell us
a lot about you know who, who's telling the truth
in these scenarios. So the name of the man who
has murdered is di gen Kizzy, and it just like
it couldn't be more I don't know. I mean, like
the l A County Sheriffs are a gang. They operate
(44:35):
exactly like a gang. Um, and it's it just is
sanctioned by the law. I knew a number of people
who went down to protest before they had even removed
the man they murdered body off the ground, and it's
it's there. There's a lot that's already been written about it,
but basically there's an overlap between some of the l
(44:59):
A County sheriff involved in this murder and other murders
of people, including an eighteen year old just a couple
of months ago. And and and so it's just it's not
just the same department. It's literally the same people that
are perpetrating this over and over and over and then
are just staring protesters in the face and you know,
(45:20):
just blocking anything they were shining. I mean, it's kind
of reminds me of a lot of the tactics being
used in Portland. They're shining lights into the crowd so
that protesters cannot get video of what they're doing, so
you don't know what's happening at all. It's unconscionable that this.
It just makes me so I don't know, I mean,
(45:43):
a bike violation like fuck you, it's it's yeah, so
like you said, there's video, like we only see what
there's video of. And we also when we talk about
police violence. I think people immediately think of murder, which
is a very important thing, but there's so much violence
that doesn't result in murder, right, There's so much violence
that the police officers commit against you know, black men
(46:05):
and women that is never going to you know, because
you can complain, but a copy we've seen him have
like twenty complaints against him before he kills somebody, and
and then you know, and even even mass incarceration and
all of these things that are included in policing that
we also aren't fully talking about in the mainstream. I
(46:25):
know that people on the left are are really interested
in dissecting this police state and all the things that
that go with our justice system, but like you said,
it's like we're only getting like the tip of this iceberg,
this horrifying iceberg, right, yeah, yeah, exactly, And and one
(46:45):
of the and this happens in most scenarios that are
similar to this, and unfortunately there's so many of them.
But what what is the outcome of the situation this
This murder is being investigated I the Los Angeles County
Sheriff's Department, So you're just having murderers investigate their own murder,
(47:07):
and so what the fund do you think they're going
to turn up? I mean, it's we've we've seen it
happen so many times at this point, but that, yeah,
this was just a fucking he was on a fucking bike.
Like it's just I don't know. Yeah, Um, let's take
another quick break and we'll be right back. And we're back. Uh.
(47:40):
And there's a prominent opponent to Vladimir Putin, Alexey Navalny,
who has been poisoned. And uh. One of the details
that's getting kind of underlined in this story is that
they used uh nova choke, which is a deadly nerve
(48:03):
agent that like it's sort of Putin's calling card. I guess,
mm hmm. I feel like it's fairly common knowledge that
Putent has people murdered who are publicly in opposition to him.
I found there there's at least direct evidence that he's
had twenty one journalists murdered since he took power twenty
(48:25):
years ago. And that's just subcategory journalists. So Alexei Novalny,
as far as I know, was not even a journalist.
He was a campaigner who made something called the Anti
Corruption Foundation, who was publicly basically investigating the wealth of
Putin and his inner circle. This is information of getting
(48:48):
from the Guardian. How where does the money? You know,
follow the money? But so yeah, navalni was pway isn't
uh in his t I guess um, And yeah, it
was just kind of revealed that it was this specific poison.
(49:10):
And I have a quote from one of his associates,
Landed Volkov, who said, choosing Nova Chuck to poison navalny
In is basically the same thing as leaving an autograph
at the scene of the crime. So this has just
been such a popular use of getting rid of the opposition.
(49:30):
It's yeah, it's I mean, as we were talking about
serial killers earlier, and this is kind of was like,
oh this is his signature move. Um that I think
is you know, used as a warning to other people
who are doing similar work. So um, yeah, just scary
Putin news r I P. Navalny that I mean, yeah,
(49:54):
this is this is a name that it's like, you
know who an advance ants is going to be poisoned
or killed by Putin. I knew this name ahead of
time as the person who is probably going to be
poisoned by Vladimir Putin soon. Like that's it's just so shameless.
(50:19):
Did he die or I think he's being treated or yeah,
I don't think he is confirmed dev as of this recording. Um,
so he was, Yeah, he was hospitalized in Siberia after
drinking some tea. Then he was flown to Germany. He
is not. Yeah, but there's no quotes from him, so
(50:43):
we don't really know what state he's in, right, Yeah,
and Putin has complained that there aren't any cool buttons
with his face on it. Well, I'm sure, right, Yeah,
we are actually just tower than he would prefer. Yeah,
button adoption is what he's striving for. Let's talk about
(51:05):
jet packs. So over the weekend, two pilots who are
coming in for a landing at l a X uh
spotted a guy flying or a human flying three thousand
feet up in the sky. Uh. To put that in perspective,
that's over twice as high as the Empire State Building. Um,
(51:29):
it's higher than I think the tallest building in the world. Uh.
And so they both saw this person and then uh,
you know radioed in. You can listen to the radio
report where it's just uh, they're like, there's a some
somebody with a jet pack about three thousand feet off
(51:51):
up in the sky. You know, a couple of feet
man calling himself Jimmy neutron is call is claim and responsibility.
Oh I thought, I have never seen Jimmy neutron, so
I did not get that. But I apologize. Um, But
(52:13):
this is one of those things where it didn't make
sense to me until I really thought about how high
that is and how you wouldn't like, you wouldn't be
able to see that from the ground. You wouldn't be
able to see a person three thousand feet up in
the sky from the ground. It would just be like
(52:34):
a tiny little speck in the sky. That's one of
the things that I keep wondering is like, why are
pilots the only ones who are seeing these UFOs when
they're flying around? Um, and they're so high up and
so comparatively small, or can be so comparatively small that
I guess you just would have to be You would
(52:57):
have to be in a plane and happen to be
passing by somebody flying a jet pack to the This
is a good old fashioned weird ass story. Like what
what he could he breathe up there? Yeah, okay, you
(53:19):
can breathe with so he was just like, was he
wearing a mask, like what he was wearing a clown mask? No? Ye, Nixon,
Nixon clown mask. Oh my god, I don't Yeah, I don't.
I don't even know what to say. Sure, okay, that's
(53:41):
that's what he says. Then it happened. Yeah, yeah. I mean,
so the ocean is unexplored and point three billion cubic
miles of ocean. The air is one billion cubic miles,
so we basically have no concept of what is ing
around through the air because it's just like so far away.
(54:03):
We wouldn't be able to see it unless you're you
happen to be passing through that portion of the air.
I guess is what this story made me think about
is like, so it's just my skepticism at UFOs has
been like, yeah, but we would have seen them, And
it's this story made me think more about like not
(54:24):
necessarily because you're so far away from them and you
only have like a line of sight on a very
small patch of the sky and only like something that's
very close to you. If they're that's smart, they probably
don't want everybody to see them, you know. It's like
the story of the Illuminati where they're hiding in plain
sight and like putting all these secret things in justin
(54:45):
Bieber videos, and it's like, yes, they would want to
be a secret. You probably want to be a secret. Yeah. Yeah,
I'm stumped. I'm stumpumped. In regards to the jet packs,
there's so earlier this year, a jetman, a jet Dubai
pilot Jetman Dubai which I think is a company, flew
(55:10):
thousand feet of his name was Jetman. Of course he
has to be of the Dubai Jetman's but flew nearly
six thousand feet up using a jet pack. But the
flight lasted three minutes. So basically the problem with jet
packs has been that you can't have enough fuel on
(55:32):
you to stay up in the sky for very long.
I think there was jet Pack Aviation, which is based
in the San Fernando Valley, so I'm looking at looking
at them around this story, but they claim to have
invented what they call the world's only jet pack, which
can reach up to fifteen thousand feet in altitude and
(55:55):
can be operated for about ten minutes. But I don't know.
It's weird. There was I remember the story back in
two thousand ten where somebody was like, yeah, we've done
basically those same or similar statistics where they claimed they
could fly around for thirty minutes and then people actually
went and looked at them. It was an Australian company
(56:18):
and they could only fly six ft near six fight
right exactly, otherwise known as a trampoint. Yeah, yeah, sorry,
I'm interrupting with my excitement over moon shoes. Remember no,
they weren't. The thing is that the commercial made it
(56:41):
seem like you were going to jump like ten ft
in the air, but you jumped like it was Yeah,
you jumped a less side than you are. Ultimately a burden, right,
they wading down to Earth a reminder of gravity. It
was for something. Yeah, I like that. That's nice a
(57:04):
Nickelodeon metaphor. Oh Jack, you gotta watch Jimmy Neutron. I know,
I feel like your kids would really enjoy it. Okay,
is it p G r G? That is actually a
distinction of matters. That's a good question. I think it
is G. Yeah, and it's all the parents go away,
(57:24):
so look out. But then it turns out they need
their parents. Spoilers, good propaganda, big parents. Jet Pack Aviation
has their founder U quote in this New York Times article.
The New York Times, by the way, this wasn't like
from the Daily Mail or whatever they said. Honestly, we
(57:47):
don't know who's working on a machine that would be
foolish enough or reckless enough to do that. Um, so
they are claiming it's not that. Um, no one knows
what to do with the jet pack. Does it's a
death wish man go with that high chicken with a seven?
(58:08):
It seems unlikely, But I don't know. I'm no expert.
Oh boy, well, Chelsea, it has been such a pleasure
having you on the Daily Zekegeist. Where can people find
you and follow you? You guys can find American Hysteria
on any podcast platform. Uh, and then we have Instagram
(58:29):
at American Histeria podcast and Twitter at a mayor Hysteria.
So that's that's where you can find me, Chelsea Webersmith
dot com. Mostly we do podcasting. Music has has fallen
away because all I do is read about Cotton Mother
and uh Ted Bundy all day every day. So yeah,
I'd love I'd love for you guys. Yeah, our show
(58:50):
is different because it's scripted, um, but I hope that
it's it's funny and terrifying and interesting. That's what we hope.
So it's different than the show, but I think it's
got the same kind of heart and core. Yeah, And
is there a tweet or some other work of social
media you've been enjoying? Man, I know this is cheating
(59:11):
because it happened a bit ago, But I was in
the woods, uh for a little bit on the camping trip,
and I came back and my partner was like reading
the news while I drove, and you know, uh, someone
had tweeted. Former pool boy describes years long sexual relationship
with Jerry Folwell Jr. And wife And I came out
of the woods and like, I was so overjoyed at
(59:35):
this news, Like it filled me with such just absolute
pure bliss um because of course yuck um too, not
to not to this unorthodox type of relationship. That's great,
do what you want, but you know, while while maintaining
this ridiculous facade, and you know, Jerry Folwell Senior has
(59:55):
always been on the top of our ship list um
on our shows. Just killed me to experience joy that
kind of reminds me. The way you describe that reminds
me of Jared leto be like being in his cult
for two months and then coming out and being like
Covid whom like best I mean, terrifying that he has
(01:00:17):
a cult. But that news item was really funny. God,
I want to do an undercover into that cold What
a dream? Now more than ever, Now, more than ever, Jamie,
where can people find you? Ons tweet you've been enjoying. Oh,
you can find me in all the usual places at
Jamie loftus help on Twitter, at Jamie christ Superstar on Instagram.
(01:00:42):
I'm going to shout out one of my bff, Julia
Claire's tweets at Oh Julia Tweets. It's referencing um, the
Joe Kennedy defeat and Massachusetts this week. So she says,
this is easily one of the funniest things I've ever read.
And she's quote tweeting a politico some really powerful political
spin going on. So it has a picture of sad
(01:01:04):
Joe Kennedy and then it says, in losing his Senate race,
Joe Kennedy the third has freed his family from a
political burden it has struggled to congratulations. Was like, oh, right,
that was that he was trying to escape It wasn't
that Kennedy has never lost in Massachusetts before this week
(01:01:25):
and people can't deal with it. It's actually he was
trying to escape. And then Hayes Davenport replied with a
gift of the Genies cuffs coming off. It's just funny. Um, yeah,
that's all I have to say. Uh. Poor Nancy Pelosi
(01:01:47):
that she was hoping that her friend Joe would come
on the floor and they could clap together for press
so well. A couple of tweets have been enjoying. People
were tweeting this image of Jamal Murray and Donovan Mitchell
like hugging after this amazing series where they combined to
score the most points by a pair of players in
(01:02:09):
a playoff series in NBA history. Uh, And they're hugging
because Jamal Murray's team, the Nuggets just beat the Jazz
and and Donovan Mitchell's crying. Uh. And Joseph Flynn tweeted
Mitchell sobbing, I hate living in Utah so much, man, Uh,
Which I think it's funny if that's what he is
(01:02:29):
trying about. Uh. And then bar Mellow's Anthony Uh just tweeted,
I don't know why, but this ship is that funny
and it's uh. Somebody put a Al Green photograph like
the shirt list like doing the fingergun al Green photograph
over the w and Walt Green's uh. So it just
says al Green's uh. And that is one of the
(01:02:53):
great pieces of public art I've seen. So well done.
God bless Uh. You can find me on Twitter at
Jack Underscore Obrien. You can find us on Twitter at
Daily Zycheys for at the Daily zy Guys on Instagram.
We have a Facebook fan page on a website, Daily
si guys dot com where we post our episodes and
our footnotes were linking to the information we talked about
(01:03:17):
in today's episode, as well as the song we ride
out on and super producer Anna Hosnia is recommending Della
Move by Chronics have to keep that reggae vibe going.
The Daily Zeke is a production by Her Radio. For
more podcast from my he Radio, visit the Heart Radio app,
(01:03:38):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen your favorite shows. That
is going to do it for this morning. We'll be
back this afternoon to tell you what's trending and we'll
talk to you then by Full Up Crop Crop crack
(01:03:59):
on Crowned at the Barner Reach at the time. Well
in the show I said to Milan in the burn
my show in Buffler Shell on the water, Lever said
you on again in a can. Who could I say for?
Come share whether what I'm a Branton, I'm jifty fifth
doing in jee one of the Yeah that's fresh, Yeah
you clean a shot rest of the sun from onto
(01:04:21):
the jun play yourself. I'm pick up my benefit, tell
and sh