SunnyD Now With Vodka, Teenage Mutant Ninja Panic 03.09.23

In episode 1437, Jack and guest co-host Sara Sabzi are joined by writer, comedian, and co-host of Stuff They Don't Want You To Know and Ridiculous History, Ben Bowlin, to discuss... Customer Rage And Revenge Hit a New 50 Year High, Joe Rogan Opened His Anti-Woke Comedy Club, SunnyD is Back... Now with Vodka--Zero F**ks, The Ninja Turtles Are Back in the Culture Wars and more!

1. Customer Rage And Revenge Hit a New 50 Year High
2. Joe Rogan Opened His Anti-Woke Comedy Club
3. Joe Rogan Addresses Carlos Mencia Feud: “I Don’t Have Any Hate for That Dude”
4. SunnyD is Back... Now with Vodka--Zero F**ks
5. SunnyD is releasing an alcoholic beverage: ‘Welcome to this fiasco’
6. Sunny D’s depression tweet is what happens when brands try too hard to relate
7. Whatever happened to Sunny Delight?
8. Sunny D Isn't Orange Juice—Here's What It Really Is
9. Regulators choke on Sunny D's spinach claim
10. The Ninja Turtles Are Back in the Culture Wars
11. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem | Official Movie Trailer
12. TMNT: Was April O'Neil's Original Appearance Whitewashed?
13. A Political History of the ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’
14. The Right Tried to Cancel the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

LISTEN: Cosmic Dawn/Eighth Dimension by Salami Rose Joe Louis

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello the Internet, and welcome to season two, seventy eight,
Episode three of Dirty at Least Guys Stay production by
Heart Radio. Our co host today is laughing at the
fact that I just screamed that in my father in
law study. Well, Jack's gone in to do his thing. Uh.

(00:28):
This is a podcast where we do important things dad,
like take a deep dive into America's share consciousness. It's
actually up, is what I call him. It's Thursday, March Night,
twenty twenty three. My name's Jack O'Brien. Ak. I love
it when you call my legs plump burns, call my
wife my wife while talking state strife. I love it

(00:50):
when you call my legs plump. First, get that TikTok
out of my face, and please don't shoot up the place.
Why because the American people don't have any health care. Ohcare.
That's just courtesy of LOCARONI in the discord, doing the
lord worse, just churning him out day after day. And
my father in law did hear me just saying that.

(01:11):
I'm very impressed. I could tell by the way he
rolled his eyes and just slammed swimmed the door. Anyway,
it's a lovely man. I'm just joking. I'm thrilled to
be joined by today's guest co host, a hilarious comedian, writer,
director viral sensation, in honor of International Women's Day. She's

(01:33):
going to be eating peanut butter pretzels all episode. It's
Sarah Joe, what up? Sorry, Juna, Sara SEPs A k A, yeah,
that's right, that's what you And you can't say anything.
You can't say International Women's Day. And if you say

(01:53):
something about here, Si, you're so fucking sexist. You're so funny,
and I'm going to report you to the International Women's Counsel, Yes,
and they're gonna beat your cool that I refer to
it as International Ladies Day? Is that cool? Yeah? Right, good?

(02:15):
It is funny that, like in America is kind of
a joke, but in the rest of the world it's
a legitimate holiday. Yeah, of course, Like yeah, yeah, it's
Salary month, it's International Women's Day. But like my cousin
like sincerely wished me a happy International Women's Day, and
I was like, thank you so much. Man, that's awesome. Well,
we're thrilled to be joined once again by a writer

(02:36):
who's one of the best podcast hosts, executive producers out
here doing it, you know, from stuff that don't want
you to know, ridiculous history, the new podcast. Let's start
a coup. Please welcome Ben Boeo. I should have brought snacks.
Thank you, Thank you, sir, thank you, thank you Jack
for having me back on. You know, every time that

(02:57):
I'm lucky enough to drop by this show, I say,
thank goodness. You all have such terrible taste in friends.
I don't know. Am I at the point where I
can write my own akas? Or you got something? You
got some locked in low? Yeah, you're you're at that
who the second you come on the show? Yeah? I
forget every time every time I come to the show.
Jag and Miles have some crazy aka's. But by the way,

(03:20):
at this point they outsourced them people on Twitter and
the Reddit in the discorder doing all this. But that's
the thing is you've got to get on like a
week ahead and be like, zite, fam I need a
ka's please please, And then they'll send you references to
songs you've never heard of. Yeah, amazing, Okay. Then I
am in full disclosure not freestyling these. I did think

(03:40):
about some of these, so if they're my fault. Some
of them I used in the past. Then heed both
hands aka Max Powers, asked ronaut with a secret aka
doctor Awkward. That's a balindrome. Uh and aka mister redacted.
If those work, damn will allow them? Yes, I like

(04:00):
mister redacted. That's mysterious. Yeah, and it'll it'll, it'll come
into play later. Sorry, I'll ask I'll ask you all
some questions. Oh shit, I don't know whose podcast do
you think you're on if you think it's your podcast,
but you're on the Daily Zeitgeist and it's International Women's Day,
So i'd ask you. I'll pump some brakes. Podcasting from

(04:24):
not his house. This is my house. This is my house. Yeah, exactly,
this is my house. Dad. All right, we're gonna get
to know you a little bit better in a moment. Ben. First,
we're gonna tell our listeners a few of the things
we're talking about. There's such a thing as a customer
rage index, and we're gonna check in with it. The
Wall Street Journal wrote an article those like American consumers

(04:47):
are mad, more mad, more angry, like more complaining than
they've ever been, and it's costing company's money. But I
think there were interesting things between the lines in this
article that, of course the Wall Street Journal left on
the said. But we'll talk about that. We'll talk about
Joe Rogan's new anti woke comedy club, which one Jack.

(05:10):
He just opened a new one, and people are like
snapping update in Austin. Of course, they're like, he's trying
to like make Austin a comedy city, like a cultural mecca,
and it's like Austin is a cool city with lots
of you know, cool comedians and cool culture. And the
fact that like we're now going to be like Joe Rogan,

(05:32):
it's the rogannaissance cookes he did it for all of
us is depressing. But anyways, we'll talk about it. Because
Opening Night had Roseanne Barr there. I think we all
saw highlights of her comedy special on Fox News. Was
she wearing Is she wearing the denim twenty four seven? Now?
I don't know, but she's uh, her pronouns are kiss

(05:57):
my ass. H very diplomatic choice of words. I'm sorry, Jack,
you mean kiss pronouns are kiss my ass. It's truly
the fact that that joke is still being used by
somebody un ironically is amazing and be careful with that joke.

(06:17):
It's an antique. And so yeah, that's right now with vodka.
So we'll talk about Sunny d We'll talk about the
teenage mutant ninja turtles. Uh, some of these things we
might talk about, but plenty moore. First, Ben, we do
like to ask our guests, what is something from your
search history? Oh? Okay, here it comes. We're we we

(06:41):
set it up with the AKA. So we'll get to
that in a sect. But first, did you all know
that there can be houses considered legally haunted? I didn't
know that. That seems who decides that in this case?
What I mean was who who books that? Because because

(07:02):
you got some you got some stuff to bring up?
Uh yeah, yeah yeah nyack New York, which sounds like
nayak Well geez, I'm not gonna go h's today. And
if it's not, that's how we're pronouncing it today. Okay, Ben,
all right? Got it? They uh the the there's a

(07:25):
house there called the Ackley House, and the New York
Supreme Court State of Appeals, First Division, which would be
a Manhattan legally ruled that this house was haunted because, uh,
somebody bought the house. And it's a very like pricy
like pinkies up victorian uptown New York house and and

(07:49):
uh and the person who sold it apparently didn't do
a good enough job telling the people who bought it
that the house was haunted. Uh and now and so
they went to court. And it's a whole hullabaloo. You
can learn all about ever knew such a hullabaloo. I'll
never knew such a hulla believe yes, Jack and so

(08:12):
um so it was very interesting to find this the uh,
the hulla baboo up. Yeah, I think we just ended
the podcast. That's why it's Women's Day. It is. And
there is a show I do call Ridiculous History as
an episode that probably like just came out as we're

(08:35):
all hearing this, s Zight Gang, which is guest toasted
by some female and female identifying co host because we
do respect International Women's Day. So if you the plot thickens,
so doth spot Uh sorry sorry, it was International Women's

(09:00):
Day on the eighth, right, so we're we're doing this
all the day after we're recording it on International Women's Wow.
Question is Jack, how much do you respect women? Yeah?
So only for twenty four hours of perspect I was
just we are trending yesterday was host by super producers

(09:23):
on Hosnie and Beck around moos so, so we got
in there as well. Last thing, do check that episode
episode out. Michael Alder June and Lord Vogelbaum go uh,
go into the nitty gritty of this and it's a
really interesting story. But for you all saw Jack, you

(09:44):
gotta know. I just found out the US Witness Protection
program lets you choose your own name, like when you're
starting life over, They're gonna go, oh, well, I mean,
what's your vibe? Right, what's your vibe? Check on that.
But they have to have there has to be some

(10:04):
editorial control because plate where you can't name yourself like
mister Dick and balls or whatever, right right, because they
but they also are trying to help you not draw
attention to yourself. Right. They recommend the guy who started
or played a big role in starting Witness Protection with

(10:26):
Robert Kennedy, he Gerald Trum. I want to say frum uh.
He wanted to give people some pointers and so do
to do to say? Usually we ask people to choose
something that starts with the same first letter and then
you know, something you can remember easily because if you

(10:47):
if you go out and you're like, hey, I'm Max Powers,
asked you not with a secret, They'll be first off,
that's not a name, that's like a weird that's your
weird comedy bit. So they will advise you, and I'm
sure they have veto Power. But for everybody looking to
burn down your old life if the heat got too close,

(11:08):
you can choose your own name. I don't know if
that's what witness protection. Yeah, I don't think it's like
an opped in program. By the way, you know what
else allows you to pick your own name? With reality?
You can just you can if you want to deal
with the bureaucratic bullshit of changing your name, We're just
not or just moved to a new city and start

(11:29):
telling everybody that your name is Max Power's astronaut with
a secret. You know they won't like you, but they
will probably call you that because they don't know anything
else to call you. I just I just change my
stage name. I've been going by Starry June for a
while and now I'm sorry Sebzy. And you know, I
think it's annoying when people change their names a lot
but also, who's going to stop me? Yeah, you know

(11:51):
me by not knowing that And sorry, June, when I
introduced you, that's fine because it's a you know, I'm
not like, it's not it's a dead name, you know.
Okay yea. But I also like, I really appreciate all
of the trans and non binary people into my life
who have changed their names and made it very cool
and normal for me to do. So. Yeah, absolutely, very

(12:13):
nice in them, that's what. Yeah, that's what. So some
of my friends were telling me. They were like, we're
doing this for Sarah. Yeah, we could do it all. Yeah.
And back to legally haunted. Who on the witness stand Like,
is the logic of that based just that people can

(12:35):
perceive something as haunted and therefore like affects the value
in a real way or were they like ghosts are
real and legally we recognize them. Well, they got out
of wija board at the New York State Supreme Court
of Appeals and they said, oh shit, these things work.
Fuck no. They they said that they counted it under

(12:58):
a material devaluation of the homes. So yeah, yeah, not quite.
But how did they how did they, like, what was
the evidence for it? Being material. So the homeowner, Helen
Actley wrote an article in Reader's Digest in the seventies

(13:19):
where she talked in very flowery language about how delightful
it was that her home was super haunted. And then
the people bought the house went back and said, hey,
this is kind of fucked up because now if we
have to sell this house we spend a lot of
money on, then what are we going to do when

(13:40):
people ask us about ghosts? As as the guest host
Michael Elder June and Lauren vocal Bomb put it so
beautifully in that episode of Ridiculous History, these folks didn't
believe in ghosts, but they believed in the market, you know.
So it's truly Reader's Digest that is to blame. Yes,
I mean number one arch village of American literature. Right,

(14:03):
They're just a bridge and shit left and right for decades.
You know. I don't jokes for the elderly. I know
it was Big Digest going to get us? Is this
the one that thinks us? I used to read the
Reader's Digest like Humor in Uniform section or whatever, because
we had we had them laying around and I was

(14:25):
just that there there weren't many like humor magazines laying
around and that explains every bell joke. Jack, everyone knows
you read. Yeah that I did think Readers Digest was
like when I when I was like, you know, nine
years old, I was like Readers Digest. I thought it
was like the New Yorker. Here. The subscription comes with

(14:48):
a molecule. You know, it does explain both your humor
and your uniform. Thank you. What is something then that
you think is overrated? All right now? Not everyone's going
to agree? And Jack, you know that I typically you
and Miles both know. I typically don't like saying things
are overrated. Everybody's got their own experiences. Big concerts, you know,

(15:14):
I mean Ticketmaster is a pain in the key star anyway,
thank you, Sorry, I'm agreeing. I'm agree with Yeah. Oh,
don't be silent. I'm raising my voice. Don't be silent anymore. So, uh,
big concerts, you know, everybody was excited to get back

(15:35):
to them after a shutdown in the US occurred. I
don't want to one. I'm not gonna say which one,
but I was like, okay, first off, fucking ticket Master,
and then secondly, there are lines everywhere, every every imaginable
drink is way more expensive than it should be. And
then you get in and there's this massive press of people,

(15:57):
and if you're in a paranoid position like I usually am,
you're thinking where are the exits? What if this goes wrong?
These thousands or several hundreds of people are very excited,
usually to hear maybe three four songs, and then uh,
it's just a bad look, you know what I mean.

(16:18):
Maybe maybe I'm getting old. I don't know, it's just
what do you guys think? Are big concerts overrated? Plus
your peepers can't see the damn artists on stage? You
know that? I don't know. I find concerts to be
things that I don't look forward to and always like

(16:39):
what they do to the like artists work like after
I've seen them is usually worth it to me, Like
I like it, I really like for whatever reason, like
just seeing someone perform live makes me really appreciate their
work a lot more and I love that creates some
value for me. But yeah, I mean, I'm not I'm

(17:01):
also not, Like I haven't been to a big concert
in many years, so I don't know if I've ever
been to what qualifies as a big concert like in
an amphitheater or something, you know, right, But as a
person with crowd anxiety, I am extremely on your side. Ben,
I don't like and you know, and it started. It
hasn't always been that way. It started. You know. I

(17:23):
used to be able to go to big music festivals
outside and not have a problem. And then I kept
going to them, and then I started feeling really crazy
and being like I need to leave. You know, so
many people, it's been so many people since COVID, it
has not improved. My cat is really upset that I'm
not paying attention to her, so she just knocked something

(17:43):
on my I was gonna, what's your cat's name, Mila,
shut shout out, shout out, Mila, International Women's Day Queen. Yes, yeah, no,
I can't do that anymore. Um. And I always kind
of thought sometimes they see video, you know, people go
see Beyonce or whatever and got those like nosebleed seats
and you know, there's big screens that show you the artist.

(18:06):
But I'm like, you might as well just be watching
a video of this concert, right, Yeah, it's I mean,
it's not for me. I was, but the fun part, sorry,
just the fun part of that is that you're watching
the screen and then taking a video of the screen,
so you're watching the screen through your screen. So there's
like four levels of things happening, but you are in
the same physical space. So yeah, yeah. It reminds me

(18:29):
of like one time I went to go see this
rapper and I was trying to I had like a
disposable like flash camera, and so I raised it up
to try and take a picture of the rapper on stage,
and what I ended up with because of the strength,
you know, the limited strength of the flash, was a
picture of a bunch of people raising their cell phones.
You can't see what's going on on stage at all,
but the only accurate picture of a concert ever taken.

(18:53):
That's how they know you were really there. Yeah. Yeah,
So like the thing that I will just say, there's
a brief backstory here in Atlanta, Georgia, an up and
coming musician named Taylor Swift had a concert and I
don't know if you all have heard of this person,
but I see big things for them in the future.

(19:13):
And everyone in the everyone in the places I would
go to walking around my usual sketchy reprobate cruise, they
were all very excited and we're all like, oh, Ben,
we're going to this Taylor Swift concert. And I would say, well,
you're the You're like the fortieth person I know who

(19:34):
is going now, and you might want to hurry up. Yeah,
I like, I think there's gonna be a line, dude,
And it just soured. Men. You know, no disrespect of
the artist, because touring is one of the primary ways
they make their money. Now that so many big studios
or production companies have become poisonous by time, But when

(19:56):
somebody does a residency in Las Vegas, I think that
it's the only way to truly see someone because then
the crowd is thin enough because everybody is kind. They're
doing the same show day after day. They have it
down by heart. You're getting to see a robotic version
of them. I don't know. This is all to say,
I really want to see Katy Perry in Las Vegas.

(20:17):
I've just come to that conclusion in the last twenty
four hours. Yeah, I'm going Carrot Top. But you know what,
Let's meet up for dinner. Okay, let's take a quick break,
we'll come back. We'll hear you're underrated and get into
some news and we're back and Ben bawling. What is

(20:43):
something you think is underrated? Mike Burnston bridges here, not
everybody agrees polyphasic sleep. It's where you sleep instead of
like the typical person sleep somewhere between six to ten
hours day. I think globally, I've always hated sleep. I
find it presumptuous u U. And when I was I

(21:05):
can't remember, we talked about this. I was. Circumstances found
me on the other side of the Pacific recording still
on US East Coast time, and so I couldn't sleep
in like a typical eight hour chunk. And I went
back to an old sleep experiment I did where polyphasic
sleep is. You break up and you find whatever your

(21:25):
average sleep for twenty four hours is, and you break
it up across those twenty four hours, and I dig it. Man.
You know, every culture that has a siesta is fucking right.
You know they've figured it out. I'm on board with cis. Yeah,
I'm don't board with siesta as long as I get
my ten hours the night before ten hours you're doing

(21:48):
ten hours, yeah, and then just like tack on an
extra two three in the afternoon. That's me. Yeah, I'm
a I'm a sleephead. I love a sleep ahead. I
love sleeping. To me, it's the best. I like woke
up from like I was very tired, hadn't hadn't gotten
my full thirteen hours the night before, and I like

(22:08):
how it keeps increasing. Yeah, well, you know on a
good day. And so you know that night, I like
just probably fell asleep like within twenty seconds of like
laying down in bed, and then like I something woke
me up like a couple minutes later, and you really

(22:28):
realize like that you there is like some powerful drugs
being dumped into your body by your body, like when
you fall asleep. It is like it's note like just
like the shit that was happening in my mind when
I just got like rocketed out of sleep, like is
is pretty crazy? Like sleep is is the best. But

(22:49):
as soon as you get that note a vacation on
your phone that there's a new Reader's digest out, yes
you know, you're like ten toes down, thank you gotta
see what is the well, what's the other? Humor? Section
is like that there's humoring uniform and then like something
some other shit. There's some like homespun wisdom section that's right,

(23:18):
very Marxist publication. Yeah, yeah, all right, let's talk about
the opposite of Marxism. The Wall Street Journal had this
article that Americans are encountering more problems with companies, products
and services than ever before, and a higher proportion of

(23:39):
them are actively seeking quote revenge for their troubles, a
new study has found, which is intense. So that what
do they mean by revenge? It's I think it's like
writing nasty comments, like sending letters, you know, doing reaching
out to the company and oh yes, just any sort

(24:04):
of follow up action that's taken. Yes, but they the
revenge is definitely what drew my attention. But it's also
I don't know, so it's up songe is getting back together.
But they're called customers want revenge. Yes, seventy four percent
of the one thousand customers surveyed said they had experienced

(24:26):
service problems in the last year, which is up sixty
six percent from twenty twenty. And you know, more and
more of them are seeking this vengeance, you know, a
kill bill style revenge saga against Southwest Airlines or you
know training that is the picture that used was a

(24:47):
you know, some Southwest Airlines consumer facing person at an
airport looking like they were twelve hours away from all
of their hair falling out from just having to deal
with just horrific toxicity. Well, shit, I wonder why, right exactly,
I hope nobody, nobody is actually yelling at the people

(25:12):
who are working because they're not in charge of the fuckery,
you know what I mean, Like every time, every time
you have a problem at the counter of someplace, yelling
at that person is not going to get back to
the person who is responsible, you know exactly that I
don't know. I think it's very convenient for corporations to
do that exactly. You know, there's like my immediate thought is,

(25:36):
of course, this has to do with all the supply
line bullshit, where like I know somebody who got their
catalytic converter stroling off. Their car needs a new catalytic converter,
and so they're having a problem where all of the
mechanics are like, we don't have any, and we don't
know when we're going to get any, so we don't
know when we can fix your car, and so it's

(25:56):
not a customer complaint towards the Hannock. The mechanic has
nothing to do with it, but there's definitely customer dissatisfaction.
So you know, if you were to survey and be like,
do you have problems being a consumer, we'd be like, yeah,
but it doesn't have to do. It's not because the
service is bad. It's because the shit's not there, yes,

(26:18):
and the I mean also I think the service is
bad in a lot of these cases, like with the
airlines or you know, even with car companies, Like the
car companies used to like prior to the pandemic were
like more cons it was like more of a buyer's market,
and now it's more of a fuck you, this is

(26:39):
what we have market like and they're understaffed, yes, because
they're wildly fucking understaffed. Everybody is so completely understaffed, like
the Southwest Airlines thing is like all of the benefits
of this current system fall to like the c suite
and the people who are making decisions like at the

(27:00):
higher levels and the companies who are the only thing
they have to pay attention to in order to do
their job and to feel like they're successful at the job.
Is like how wall Street, Like Wall Street is the
only incentive that they have to care about. And then
all of the customer facing employees and the customer the
consumers themselves are just like fighting a war between each

(27:24):
other and just like becoming more and more miserable, and
like this isn't I think this is invisible, Like this
is the sort of thing that we just kind of
It's like this is water type thing. It's like the
weather is getting slowly worse, but we are not noticing
it because we're just living in it day to day.
But you know, all of these consumer indices are have

(27:45):
gotten like way way worse since they started tragging them
in like the nineteen seventies. They just get worse and
worse and worse because everything has gotten less and less
and less regulated. And the only thing that these companies
have to pay any attention to is their stock prices,
so they cut employees. They you know, they just do

(28:07):
these things that make it impossible for the people at
the lowest levels who are dealing with the consumers and
make the consumers experience worse. And of course none of
this is mentioned in the Wall Street Journal article. The
only way, the only way that it registers to them
is they're like, you know, they every time an angry

(28:30):
consumer contacts a company that company's losing money, and that's
one way to view it, But of course I don't
think that even makes sense, just because it's a wasting
their time so you have to like spend resources on
dealing with it and also probably is like bad marketing,
so I guess. But if you deal with it, well,

(28:50):
then the customer will come back, and so then are
you making money? But you have to pay money to
deal with it. Well, like that's the damned thing about
this market, like the if you're going to let the
free market run your country, you have to acknowledge that
this essentially means your country doesn't work like this, this
system tell me more jack, Yeah, Like well, like they're

(29:12):
just they feel like that's wasted time and wasted money,
like spent dealing with angry customers, and if we all
just agree to treat customers like shit, then like they
don't really have another option. Well, this also kind of
feels like one of those things where it's like you
know that the fallacy that like the rate of left

(29:35):
handedness went up after left handedness stopped being categorized as
like a medical deficiency and started being categorized as just
an alternate way of fucking writing yes, and so then
the rate went up because people weren't being forced to
write with their non dominant hand anymore. And this feels

(29:56):
like that where it's like, you know, now that we
have the Internet and Yelp and every company has to
have a website, in a Twitter and an Instagram, there
are so many more ways for angry customers to tell
you how angry they are. So it's I don't know
if they're angrier or if they just have easier access
to you to tell you that they're upset. Because it
used to be when you were mad at an airline

(30:18):
that you could basically go fuck yourself, but now you
can tweet at them and they have to pay attention. Right.
But I mean they've been investing in like cute social media,
like Southwest Airlines is like h mondays am I right,
And then like so they have like somebody who they
you know, pay a lot of money to like give
their corporate brand a fucking like lovable personality, and at

(30:42):
the same time, like satisfaction west Southwest Airlines couldn't be
lower because that's like they don't fucking need to care
about the consumer, because that is how the system is
set up. It's just allowing them to focus on creating
shareholder value. Yeah, let's okay, this is something I want

(31:04):
to go back to here. So the American Customer Satisfaction Index,
in my experience on a couple of a couple of
different projects, innocuous names are sort of a flag and
I want to figure like, is it crooked? That's my question?

(31:25):
Is it like the American Consumer Satisfaction Index brought to
you by Raytheon or whatever, you know, like like is this?
I mean, it's very easy, through any number of proxies
and platforms to make something like that that appears to
be a nonprofit. And again, the people working there, the

(31:46):
people doing that research may actually not know the ultimate
arbiters of it, you know, like what is also I
don't trust the Wall Street Journal I'm sorry, no, I
don't either. But it's just I ney to see how
they I think they're taking a real like signal that
they're getting that the consumer experience across all these different

(32:09):
things is getting worse, and they're just treating it as
like a symptom that like corporate CEOs need to pay
attention to, like when crunching the numbers on their spreadsheets,
as opposed to like a very real, like broad scale
problem that is happening in the country where like they

(32:29):
just like don't have to give a shit about, like,
you know, the consumers of their products or the people
who work for them at the lower level, and they
keep firing people because it's like fashionable to do so.
And so it's just this world that is being run
by people who like have absolutely no connection to what

(32:51):
our lived experiences are like out in the world interacting
with their products less they to sorry point unless they
see the tweet, unless they see one of those other platforms,
or like it's probably not them who has TikTok. It
might be one of their kids, and their kid is
running up and telling the parent, oh, there's something bad.

(33:15):
You know, Like the president of Norfolk Southern lives here
in Atlanta, and you know before the yeah, right before
the heat hit, maybe one of that guy's kids came
up and said, oh, my god, dad, that looks like
people aren't super happy with everything. And he's like, well,
tell me more about this social media you know, Monty

(33:38):
Burn's hands and whatnot. I mean, it's I think it's
a beautiful point that first off, there's some nomenclature too,
to unpack. Calling people customers or consumers is a little
tricky because it makes them sound like they're not people. Yeah, right,
So it does though, even if with the problems that

(34:01):
you've pointed out here, it does still feel like things
are on the rise, but there's a dangerous disconnect and
trying to attribute the reasons for that. Like you made
the great point about understaffing, people aren't like, of course,
there's a longer line. I was in Amsterdam a while back,

(34:24):
and I like got to the airport early to get
a plane out because I knew, you know, there were
pending strikes. There were also very few people working at
the airport, and when people are in a terrible situation,
airports are often a terrible situation in general. They were
not thinking of looking at the systemic causes. There are people,

(34:49):
you know, with a family, and they're trying to get
their family to the fucking other airport where they've got
the layover because nobody can afford a direct flight for places,
you know, and and they want someone to blame. And
so a lot of people on the front lines of
any customer service thing, they're having to be the scapegoats

(35:09):
for the people at the top, and I think it's
just gross, you know, like I don't know. And then
those people are being like forced to work like that
understaffing leads to people who are you know, being forced
to work with the threat of like not having healthcare
or being able to feed their family. And then like

(35:33):
like the Wall Street Journal will publish an article being like,
why are Americans so unhappy? Is it their phones? Is
it because they have the language to describe unhappiness now
that they are going to therapy, And it's like, no, motherfucker,
you have like a brutal like that. Americans are discovering rage,

(35:54):
right they know, like they have the language to address
it now, and so they are there for are like
aware of their unhappiness and they're like, what is happening here?
Like how has it gotten worse since the seventies? And
it's because therapy is therapy? No right, jacket's mental health.
It's been a scam the whole time. All it does

(36:16):
is make people unsatisfied and make women unsatisfied with home life.
That but that is like a legitimate thesis that is
getting spread around out there instead of no, the overall
economic conditions are worse because you have just allowed Wall
Street to run the entire country. And that is what happens.

(36:36):
Like the market doesn't functional, doesn't functionally work, doesn't create
a functioning society, It creates this. I'm telling you the
problem within houses. Just the doors are too small, says
the Fox. You know what I mean, Like yeah, yeah,
like hey, hey, it's there's an older, excellent speech about that.
But but this this idea is kind of nuts too,

(37:01):
because we have to realize that there are there are
plenty of like younger generations. If I were a parent
right now, I would be a little concerned, which I
know sounds very Fox News, but I'm going somewhere good
with it. If I was a parent right now, I
would I would be concerned about a kid who one
day probably will get a job at some point and

(37:23):
has to deal with this like how understaffed can a
place be? How how long can align get? Who can
who can afford these things? Like if you are working
in at a call center, right in many cases your
job is to get yelled at for like eight hours,
not counting your mandatory overtime. And is that like when

(37:48):
your kid tells you about their dream job, when they're like, oh,
I want to be you know whatever. The first werewolf Aster,
not on the moon. And then you say, well, you
could have already had men anywhere, will faster knots on
the moon. Yes, you're you're a Comcast fit. I think
you should. You should be on the front lines of
the Comcast phones whatever they're calling truly. Yeah, yeah, I

(38:13):
am a parent. It's a nightmare. S. Yeah. They will
all be one company, and they're most because I mean,
that's the thing is that like we read about like
there are these characters who like get turned into the
main characters of the news, and they're all the CEOs.
They're like the Elon Musks and like the you know,
the people the Wall Street Journal like give names and

(38:34):
faces too. But the vast majority of the country is
the people who are on just like eating shit every
day because of the decisions made by those people. And
then the only way that that shit eating registers is
in like these vague fucking like surveys where they're like

(38:55):
consumers indicate that they're like less satisfied and more likely
to just quote go fucking berserk as a result of
the bad you know, It's just like if things was
so hard for the peasants. Why do they have so
much time to raise so much rabble about this? Exactly? Rowse,
damn it whatever, leave it. And that's the truth, is

(39:16):
that we don't have enough time to raise the rabble
because we are trying. We're being worked like end to end,
and like that's the thing that I think we saw
in twenty twenty when things like slowed down and everyone
like looked around was like fuck all of this, and
then the economy opened back up, and again people don't

(39:36):
have enough time to raise rabble as they as they
do in at least other countries around the around the globe. Anyways,
true nightmare shit from the Wall Street Jarnal. Let's take
a quick break, we'll be back to talk about sunny
D with vodka. And we're back, and so it's sunny

(40:09):
D what So you know, this is good news for
people who like to get drunk at breakfast or after
soccer practice with their friends. Uh, there's a new sunny
D vodka Seltzer hitting store shelves this weekend, which I
think is to compete with the Purple stuff vodka Seltzer. Yeah. Yeah,

(40:30):
but so apparently this has been a thing for a
while that like just in the screets, but like the
market research must have captured the sunny D market research.
There must be like some some sort of toxic chemical
like byproduct of making mon santo like off or you know,

(40:50):
like what you know, some sort of extremely lucrative product
like creates something. Because they've just been trying to find
ways to off load sunny D, like they just won't stop.
They're like, we gotta get rid of the sunny D.
They made a great lakes worth of sunny D in
the eighties and haven't been and here just like trying

(41:11):
to find ways to sell it ever since. But yeah,
apparently people have been like there are a lot of
people being like I've been mixing sunny D and liquors
since the late two thousands. I want to welcome everyone
to this fiasco, which I don't know. I can't think
of a worst mixer because like that much sugar is
just going to make you so hung over, isn't it. Yeah,

(41:35):
that's it. That's it. I know everything has a has
a Seltzer iteration. Now right at some point it seems logical,
but what if not ethical? But sunny D? So there
was somebody drinking a screwdriver at some point and they said,
you know, would really make this fucking pop, like like

(41:57):
like oh yeah, I see the eyebrows like opper, like
you would really really do this. Guys, we're wasting our
time drinking purple drink. Let's get back to the basics,
you know what I mean. Let's let's get some vodka
in our sunny D and you know, let's introduce our
kids to daytime alcoholism. Yeah, yes, love it. Yeah yeah.

(42:25):
So sunny D has been a garbage product from the beginning.
It's excuse me, whoa No, it tastes like it tastes
like pre vomit. It does. It's so it was a
big hit in the night. It really tastes like that
shit that I don't know if you guys are old
enough to remember what like the school lunches, like juice

(42:48):
boxes that would come or like but yeah, yeah, it
was like orange drink. Yeah yeah, I think it was
like the same thing, which again you had orange juice
and you boiled it and then you left it in
like a metal tank for five weeks and they could
put it in little cardies for children and you can't
call it. It's to the point where you can't legally

(43:10):
call it orange juice. That's orange drap. Yeah, yeah, it's
and it's so sweet that it like mad. It's spicy somehow,
like it makes the back of your throat hurt a
little bit, like it's incredibly acidic. But they also had
a lot of sugar, so you can't really taste it
until it's in the back of your throat and it's
like too late. Was originally marketed in the nineties as

(43:30):
like the healthier option to soft drinks. It contained four
to five percent juice, which, by the way, the fall
off of juice. Like I thought juice was the healthiest
ship when I was a kid, and now like it
because they told us it was healthy. They were like,
it's like eating a piece of fruit. It's not. Yes,
but so cy d wasn't even they couldn't even be

(43:54):
bothered to put more than four percent juice in their
in their product. And it's ninety five percent just watery
corn syrupe and a sweetener that is carcinogenic and not
allowed to be sold in many countries around Yeah, most
of Europe, most of the EU. It's like all right,

(44:14):
because it was a wild sensation over there, So they
introduced it. It became like skyrocketed to being one of
the top like twelve thirteen like grocery store items that
people were buying in grocery stores, like just the year
it was introduced. Suddenly that was they were just consuming

(44:35):
it like it was a fucking staple good, like it
was rice or something, and people were drinking it so
much that one four year old girl was drinking a
leader and a half a day and it turned her
skin yellow. And everyone was like, oh, this urban legend,
and this is just like one of those things where
an urban legend like hurts the marketing of a product,

(44:58):
except it totally did turn in a girl's skin yellow
due to the drink's beta karrote. So everybody reads that
story as, yeah, but if you drank that much carrot juice,
where you drank that much orange juice, you would also
have your skin turn yellow, ignoring the fact that nobody
would drink that much orange or carrot juice because it

(45:20):
doesn't have like addictive chemical. It wasn't like engineered in
a lab to be addictive like to four year olds,
you sick focks. But yeah, it's so it is interesting
that like one of the least problematic components of the
drink is what scared people off. But yeah, I don't know.
It just feels like we're on real nineties nostalgia kick.

(45:45):
Yeah in the worst way, you know what I mean,
Like the nineties, the nineteen nineties and the eighteen nineties,
seventeen nineties not great, not great objectively. So so what's next?
Because we saw this, we saw the icy ecto cooler, yeah, right,
that that had its its moment in the sunny, sunny

(46:06):
d whatever to keep it. Yeah, and then we see
also yeah, we also we see a lot of this
stuff coming back. I think, uh, gummy based school treats
made made a brief comeback, right, So I'm starting to
think we can get ahead of this if we want
to be unethical and lean in zeigay, what's the what's

(46:29):
the crazy nineties stuff that you would bring back? But
worse right, what's stuff from your childhood that you wish
also had vodka? I think it's also just a good
metaphor for where we are as you know, a society
run by corporations, so like you know, the market is
the society, and the corporations have seemingly like given up

(46:55):
on you know, like they were like so that there
was an attempt in two thousand and three to like
bring back sunny D but be like, it's actually more
healthy than it was before. And think of this as
you know, water with vitamins in it. And now they're
just like, I don't know, fuck it, just poor vodka
in there. They keep trying to bring it back. You're right, yeah,

(47:15):
there must be like okay, so you're picturing like a
Land of Lakes size surplus as sunny D. They're a
bunch of really powerful corporate types, like we got to
push this sunny D on the kids. What if there's
I'm picturing like Indiana Jones at the very end of
whichever one that was in the franchise where they have

(47:36):
the huge warehouse with all the dusty crates, but instead
of like secret Nazi artifacts, yeah okay, it was raiders. Yeah,
so instead of all the secret Nazi artifacts, they've got
sunny D. And somebody's like, one day history will remember
and we'll have our revenge. So they were health juice,

(47:56):
then they went vodka. What's next, Like, what's the next
iteration for sunny D? Actually, if you pour it in
your windshield wiper fluid. It actually makes a great It
gums up your windshield, but it like makes things look
kind of cool, kind of stained glass smearie, which was fun. Yeah,
Like Coca Cola. Coca Cola was like, uh, are we

(48:17):
the healthiest drink? No, But we can clean the shit
out of pennies, right, yeah, we can clean a car accident,
a fatal car accident, offer of the highway. That's that's
our thing. But yeah, I mean that this seems to
go along with, you know, the gambling being legal and
everything of it, just the fuck it mask off hyper

(48:41):
capitalism that we're all living through. So I don't know,
are you guys in. I guess that that was the
first question. Absolutely, Yeah, yeah, okay, definitely yeah, yeah, I
mean there was never a question, right, Like I think
all of us are in. Usually the Seltzers don't say
that their vodka though, because that like limits where you
can sell. Usually they're like a malt Seltzer beverage of

(49:05):
some sort. But this one they're just like, yeah, man,
we just dumped some vodka in it, because that's what
we do here at Sunny D Headquarters. We're just kind
of waiting out the end of the collapse of Western
civilization over here. So I don't know, Well, we'll see hopefully.
You know, Sunny d is our national drink again, Does

(49:28):
you still have them? Oh? Are you kidding me? It
has the vitamins you need on a daily basis, So
it's yeah, that's healthy. We were wrong. We started off
on the wrong foot here, you know. So another way
that nineties eighties nostalgia is comment is rearing its head

(49:48):
is one that I'm actually kind of into. Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles. They dropped the trailer for the new like
seth Rogen produced reboot of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles universe.
Like Michael Bay I think had had this for a
little while and like made the most recent Teenage Mutant

(50:08):
Ninja Turtles movies, and this seems more to have seems
to have more in common with like Spider Verse than
anything like there's just like a lot of cool animation
kind of mixing together. The trailer is fun. Of course,
that immediately became the subject of Fox News opinion pieces
where they're like, April of Meal is black and you know,

(50:32):
racist people were racist people who can accept giant reptiles
that do martial arts, but not a black TV news reporters. Yeah,
it just doesn't reflect the reality of our society in
which the news reporters are redheads that's right, right, who
never washed their clothes or change one costume. Yeah, all

(50:58):
news reporters are redheaded. Megan Foxes, I mean, let me
ask you something, Jack, when's the last time you saw
a white character in anything? Can't remember? Can you? Well?
I wow, little white children are growing up not thinking
they'll grow up to be black? Is that what you want?

(51:20):
Is that the future you want to get? Day drunk?
My child came home crying because somebody told them that
they were white. The original April and Neil, by the way,
from the comics was intended to be mixed race. Kevin
Eastman based it on his wife at the time, who's

(51:41):
named April, who was mixed race. And then the comic
books when they like released the because they were originally
like black and white comics, and then when they released
the color versions, they hit hedge, you know, whitewashed it
into a Caucasian woman with wow, yeah, wow, justice for April,

(52:04):
thank you. But yeah, they like when the Ninja Turtles
first came out, like the right, was like super pissed
off because they're just generally mad, and so anything that
comes across they're they're going to be mad at. But
they're in particular they were like the secret So they
got turned into turtles by toxic waste, okay, environmentalist dogma,

(52:29):
nice try, so they thought they were the I'll read
a quote from a nineteen ninety one syndicated column from
Stephen Chapman, the muscle bound little reptiles, I regret to
inform you have a political agenda, which is the same
color as their shells. Green. Oh no, we got them

(52:50):
open and shut case right there. The muscle bound little
reptiles also feels like horny to me. It's definitely horny. Yea, yeah,
I think there's there's a like anything, there's there's a
little bit of a personal backstory, I think. But this
was before the takeover a big therapy ruined ruined everybody, right,

(53:11):
So I don't know. I loved teenage mutant ninja turtles
because I didn't really think. I think, like a lot
of people, you don't really think about it. You know,
you as kids, we all love the we all love
unreasonable stuff. Phrased in a confident way. Some people don't

(53:33):
grow out of that, and they're called conservatives. But if
you look at if you look at the argument here,
it's a really cool not preaching thing about some guy
sort of pulling this mad lib game out. He's like, okay, turtles,

(53:53):
that's an animal, all right, teenage that's a blah blah
blah mutants too, you know what else is fucking coolin
Do I know much about them? No? And you can
tell by the way that the turtle, you know, you
can tell by their martial arts style. I'm probably talking
to too much about the turtles. But but so like, okay,
so this is animated, this is all? Is this like? Okay,

(54:17):
the main thing people are objecting to is that April
O'Neal is portrayed closer to the original version of April
that existed in the comics. And we haven't had people
come out objecting about the toxic waste thing yet. But
I didn't even know that was that was an issue,
is like, is well, they I guess there were also,

(54:38):
like everything in the early nineties, there was also a
like people were just discovering such thing as the environment,
and so you know, the Captain Planet of it all.
Like I think there were some episodes that had plots
that portrayed corporations like disposing of radioactive waste irresponsibly. You

(55:01):
know shit that actually happens. Isn't that how they became
mutant turtles. Yeah, that's how they became mutant turtles. And
then they they and then they like fought people who
like did irresponsible things with like farm like agricultural dunt
like it's all ship that's like ripped from the headlines.

(55:23):
But they were just like, well, that's not okay because
you're not allowed to criticize corporations. Also, there was a
UK panic over martial arts themed like anything that was
had the word ninja attached to it in the early
nineties in the UK, like the media was panicking about,
like the Daily Mail published a story of a four

(55:44):
year old who nearly bled to death after karate kicking
on glass door as he mimicked his television heroes in
the Ninja Turtles cartoon cult. I have to say, if
if you have been around children, I understand this point
of view. I understand this point of view of please
don't teach children about martial arts without actually teaching them

(56:08):
about martial arts. Sure, you know, because like if you
take a kid to a karate class, they learn a
lot of stuff about where you should and shouldn't do karate.
But man, kids that watch Teenage Mutan Ninitia Turtles, they're chopping.
They're chopping everything, but they're not everything. Even before they
have seen teenage Mud, they're gonna figure out the concept

(56:30):
of nunchucks. Yeah, they're gonna. Yeah, they know how to
pick up a big stick and spin it around a lot. Yeah,
and no, nobody's uh yeah, that's the idea. I think
like that kid was gonna kick some shit anyway, you know,
and maybe it get tagged to something. But but also
there's no objection here about the weird Asian caricatures like Shredder.

(56:56):
The if I recall Shredder, the main nemessies of the
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, his big power is that he's
an evil Asian guy. Yeah, and I think that just generally,
there's probably like this is sublimating some like racist parent
energy about like having to work alongside and see Asian

(57:19):
American people or like you know, Asian people for the
first time in the UK and like blaming them for
shit that their children are doing. Like I'm sure there's
some of that that. There was like just a wild
ninja moral panic in the early nineties. Base my dumbass
kid wouldn't have done anything wrong, right, it know about

(57:42):
those ninjas, damn ninjas. Wow, But like I don't know
that I would, like I wanted to jump through a
glass door since before my brain started making memories, Like
my first memory exists in a brain that wants to
jump through a glass door, like just because that's cool
as fuck. Like I Another part of the moral panic

(58:05):
was they were like children are playing in the sewers
now because of the Ninja Turtles. I played in the sewers. Yeah,
it was a kid, but it was because I wanted
to imitate. Like I wasn't into the Ninja Turtles. I
was into Pennywise. I thought Penny No. I was into
the goonies. I thought like the goonies were cool and
they crawled around on the turtles, but nobody cared about that. Well,

(58:26):
the sewers are like a secret passage us if you
don't know about toxic waste, or if you know about
dangerous things and hygiene, and that seems it seems kind
of dope. You know. Yeah, I'm becoming and exploring the
sewers apologist. My bad guys. Yeah, it's robably not good

(58:46):
for kids, but I did it and it was super
fun and mysterious down there. Highly recommend my eleven year
old self highly recommends it. My you know, eleven's probably
a little old. I was probably more like nine or ten.
But how did you even get down there? There was
like a creek that ran by my house that just
like went it way, uh like cement tunnel that went

(59:10):
under the street, but then it like branched off into
a bunch of sewers under the storm. I think it
was like I think it was mainly like storm drains,
but it was because I lived in Dayton, Ohio, and
that was what they just don't know famous, they're famous
for their are accessibility. You'd think that there would be

(59:31):
like some bars up, and there were in many of them.
I've been. I checked out many a underground creek and
storm drain, and the most like most of them had bars,
but the one by my house was just an open,
open passage into the underground bring back open storm drains. Yes,

(59:52):
just don't play outside anymore. Yeah, sorry, sorry, were you
not exploring storm trains. I don't tours. No, I was not.
I mean that's why I was. I'm so surprised as
to how you've been got in there because all of
the storm drains that I can remember were like in
a creek bed and the and the creek bed was

(01:00:14):
like you couldn't access the creek it was it was
like the La River. It was like lined with concrete. Yeah,
and yeah, I remember like in Chinatown there's a like
storm drain thing, but I think it has bars over it, right, Yeah,
that makes a lot of sense. But is that why
you're so good at karate now? It is I just
gained the power of Ninja two from being in the underground,

(01:00:39):
which is why you're not allowed around glass doors in
the studios. Like yeah, yeah, so it's wise policy, Ben Bolin,
Pleasure having you as always? Where can people find you?
Follow you all that good stuff? Oh yeah, pleasure to
be back as always. Thank you for have weird taste

(01:01:01):
in friends. I can be found in a burst of
creativity calling myself appen bulling on Instagram, appen bullin hsw
on Twitter. Do a couple of shows you can hear
Miles and Jack on a show I do called Ridiculous History.
Please check out our episodes of weird historical flexes. You
can also find me on a show called Stuff they

(01:01:23):
Don't Want You to Know, which is about this what
it sounds like. And then I have to hold up
this book. We've made a book. There it is. This
is an audio podcast. Why am I holding this up? Anyway?
We we we made a book. The book has a
UFO on it. It is red and black. It looks
really cool. Thank you. And you can also, most importantly

(01:01:48):
check me out on a new show that they've been
doing a limited series about a guy named Smedley Butler,
a really problematic son of a bitch who at one
point in time was all that stood between the United
States of America and a couple of very very wealthy
banking forces who almost overthrew the government and got away

(01:02:11):
with it, or got away with trying to. And they're
around today. It's called Let's Start a Coup Available wherever
you find your favorite shows, There you go. And is
there a work of media you've been enjoying? Yes, there is.
Will you all probably already know about this. It's from
New York Times Science. They reported something that's kind of heartwarming.

(01:02:34):
Some researchers in Germany found this bacteria that is amazing
at combating fungus, fungi, fungi, whatever your preferences, and they
loved it, and they also loved John Wick, so they
named this new bacterial compound after Keanu Reeves. He is
quoted in the tweet as saying, thanks scientists, people, scientists people. Yeah,

(01:03:02):
one of our greats an American treasure. Thank you for
humanizing scientists. Yes, Sara, where can people find you? And
is there a work of media you've been enjoying. Yeah,
you can find me on Instagram at Sara to bother you.
You can find me online at Sara June dot online.

(01:03:23):
That might change soon, but working media I've been enjoying.
I'm going to recommend this book that I just read
for my fellow Iranian Americans, called The Limits of Whiteness.
It is by an author called Neda Mapule, and it
was extremely cathartic for me to read. I highly recommend
it to anyone else who is confused about whether or

(01:03:45):
not they are legally classified as white. A tweet I've
been enjoying, Colen Crawford tweeted, what if Shakespeare was named Creamo,
and we all had to talk about the great works
of Creamo all the time. You can find me on
Twitter at Jack Underscore O'Brien. You can find us on
Twitter at Daily Zeitgeist. We're at the Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram.

(01:04:05):
We have a Facebook fan page and a website Daily
zeitgeist dot com, where we post our episodes and our
footnote link to the information that we talked about in
today's episode, as well as a song that we think
you might enjoy. Superproducer Justin is there a song that
you think people might enjoy? Yeah, Jack, you were speaking

(01:04:26):
before about how sleep is a powerful drug, and I
think the song captures that feeling. And it also happens
to be made by a very smart and highly educated woman.
H ladies, Yeah, ladies. But this song is actually from
a former climate scientist and researcher who's now signed a

(01:04:49):
flying Lodus his Brain Freeder Records. And this song is
short but super sweet, and it sounds like floating away
in a dreamscape. So this song is called Cosmic Dawn
Backslash Eighth Dimension by Salami Rose Joe Louis, and you
can find that song in the Footnotes Footnotes daily Zey guys,
the production of I Heart Radio from more podcast from

(01:05:09):
my Heart Radio is the I Heart Radio app, Apple
podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows, that
is going to do it for us this morning, back
this afternoon to tell you what's trending, and we'll talk
to y'all then bye. By