Weekly Zeitgeist 224 (Best of 5/2/22-5/6/22)

The weekly round-up of the best moments from DZ's season 235 (5/2/22-5/6/22)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello the Internet, and welcome to this episode of the
Weekly Zeitgeist. Uh. These are some of our favorite segments
from this week, all edited together into one NonStop infotainment
laugh stravaganza. Uh yeah, So, without further ado, here is

(00:22):
the Weekly Zeitgeist. Well, Miles, we are thrilled to be
joined in our third seat by a writer, director, comedian,
podcaster father who's written comedy, horror comics, and parenting books,
and who hosts the podcast What Are You Watching with
Chris Mancini, which is an appropriate title because he is
Chris Mancini. Hey, great to be here, guys, Thanks for

(00:46):
having me. Thanks. Thanks. I was thinking of that song
in a Gotta David. It was like the first one
that everyone got the name wrong, right right. Yeah, Mike
could then realize what it doesn't matter, nobody cares enough
to correct it. So that's just what we're gonna call
it for that one, because it's in the Garden of
eva Eden that it just came out and yeah, and

(01:10):
I got yeah that That also was another one I
also thought was and I got a Davida for a
long time. Yeah, Well, I think I think if you
look at the lyrics, that's how they have it listed.
I might I might be wrong the one so like
in other news of looking up the lyrics to be

(01:32):
like this must mean something and I just had it
wrong or like jumbled it into something. That part where
he's aren't saying oh bosh, you won't, it's saying you
love but you don't. You give your love but you
won't wish. That doesn't really make sense either, man, Like,
if you're gonna put something that's like mumbled over, it

(01:52):
should have it should repay people when they go try
and figure out what the funk you were saying. Sometimes
people just go for the rhyme. Yeah exactly, and won't
and don't. I mean, that's that's rhyme. Smith and Chris,
what what's good? Where are you coming to us from?
I'm coming from Los Angeles, and I don't know if

(02:12):
for some reason, I live in a neighborhood that there's
always a tree being cut down, so you might hear
a little bit of buzz sawing periodically. Yeah, shout out
the arborists. Yeah, I was getting those checks. Shout out nurses.
I do. I feel like I pushed past nurses a
little bit, but nurses are truly the best and do
some of the most thankless difficult work in the American

(02:35):
Come on, the pandemics over. They're not heroes, my dad,
my best that's not. Let's not. Let's not. I'm sure
for National Nurses Day they just went the day off. Yeah,
how about listen when we were begging people to stay
safe in the pandemic so we didn't have to see
untold horror in the yers for months on end. But yeah,
shout out all the nurses, Shout all the nurses in

(02:56):
my life, you know who you are. And arborists, who
are the hours of trees. I guess in many ways,
I didn't realize how important tree maintenance was. So I
moved somewhere windy, and like a dude was like, hey man,
you should really trim your tree. Like the wind is
it's going to be like it's gonna just suck your
ship up. The city came by, said it was a

(03:17):
year and a half waiting list to get a tree trimmed.
You know, so I think we're gonna need to hire
a private contractor to do it exactly Like I don't
know if I l A has like super tall palm
trees that like almost seemed like I I don't know.
It's weird how tawsome of the palm trees are. But
then like a a chik of them will just fall

(03:39):
off in the wind. We have tall trees and high winds.
It's great. Yeah, well it's because we have like there's
a you know, all of our palm trees, so a
lot of them are dying because of like a fungus.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah that's why I like, you see
a lot they're just lopped off, like lopped off at
the top and stuff like these, like sick dying palm trees. Man. Yeah,

(04:01):
it's the whole thing. Shout out to Arborus night gang.
This is this is your palm tree. Palm tree fungus
is a hoax. So yeah, that's what I did hear.
That's a hoax. Okay, drink your own palm tree oil,
palm oil, you'll be good. What what is something from

(04:22):
your search histories? So one thing from my search history
recently was are there any female Greek rappers? Okay? The
answer was there's exactly one. I couldn't find any of
her music, just her name because I really like Greek rap.
But it's like, have be misogynistic and I was like,

(04:44):
come on, there's got to be like a badass Greek
lady out there that wraps. Just one can't find her music,
So that's where we're at. What's her MC name? I
think it's a sent Doesignia or something like that. Okay,
didn't even get her name down correctly. That's how see
Barbara Lucas. Yeah right, yeah, coming through another lifetime? Yeah

(05:04):
is that are you? Are you? Like? Do you did
you listen to a lot of hip hop in general?
And and like when you're like living in Greece, you're like,
let me check on Greek hip hop or did you
suddenly even like I'm suddenly into Greek hip hop and
now you're looking for the female mcs. What's what's your
relationship to? You know what, if my friends could hear
that question, they would laugh really really hard. I lowed
our friends had to hip hop and wrap in New

(05:25):
York And I was living in New York for ten
years and I was always the one that's like not
up on the culture like at all at all. But
for some reason, when I moved here, when you go
to the clubs or bars here, they just they just
play Greek music like they don't play American music at all,
So I had to get into the Greek thing, and
I was learning Greek, and I don't know, I just
started vibe with Greek Wrap for some odd reason, maybe

(05:47):
partly because they tend to be from the United States.
They tend to be Greek Americans to wrap here interesting,
which really answers a lot of unasked questions. How rap
same degrees in the first place? Right? Right? Yeah? What
about you, Zachary, what what's something from your search history? Well?

(06:07):
I did a piece last week for Time on billionaires
owning media properties for the past hundred years in light
of everybody's favorite billionaire maybe buying Twitter. I'm not going
to mention the name just because I feel like, you know,
if you don't know it then So there's a lot
of in my search history about about billionaires and and
media ownership for the past hundred and twenty years of

(06:31):
American media. Mm hmm. And how what are your what
are your feelings about that trend and the continuance? You know,
I knew that, I knew that lots of billionaires have
bought contemporary media properties like Mark Benny Off and Time,
like Jeff Bezos in the Washington Post. Like Glare and
pal Jobs in the Atlantic, I wasn't as acutely aware

(06:56):
of just how completely all media for most of America history,
well most of American history from the late nineteenth century
through the present, has been owned by wealthy individuals and
usually wealthy men. Right. It's pretty hard to find any
media newspaper, TV station, magazine that has not been owned

(07:19):
by wealthy private individuals, which makes musks bid for Twitter
seem much less of a new thing, even if it's
a big deal. M that. Yeah, that our media has
been under billionaire control for quite some time and we're
at where we're at now, including my heart just saying

(07:40):
no people, I heard his own people. We're like the
Green Bay Packers of media outlets. No, it's definitely true.
I mean everything is. Yeah, I mean it was clear
Channel before and they're liker. That's true of like every everything,
like the everything an American culture, maybe with the acceptance

(08:03):
exception of the Green Bay Packers, right, Like, there's not
much that is not owned by extremely wealthy people. Well,
I mean there's, I mean there is independent media, but
not to the levels of what we're talking about. I guess,
you know, in terms of pervasiveness, right, like you you
know that even even even what what people like to
think of as the countercultural or alt media, like The

(08:25):
Nation and Harper's, you know, also owned by very wealthy
individuals whose politics simplice skew left. Yeah, I wouldn't. I
don't know if I would love them in there, but yeah,
like I mean like more like at the extremely local
and like where we have like weeklies and things that
were at some point felt like they embodied something of
like oh no, this, this is this is ran by

(08:46):
like human beings that you can identify, rather than where
is the c suite that makes all the decisions for
this entity kind of thing? What what's something you guys
think is overrated? Oh? Other than the Green Bay Packers?
Um well, I mean on that light, I'm sort of
repeating myself. I think the concern that wealthy individual's owning

(09:09):
media platforms is a threat to free speech. It's either
we've never had it or we've always had it, and
it has been neither here nor there to the ownership
structure of these organizations. M hm. So are you less
concerned about Elon Musk doing it? Because I think I'm
assuming like part of the concern that a lot of people,

(09:32):
including myself for feeling is like how how brazen and
also like popular he seems to be, Like I it's
the first time I could see like a billionaire coming
through and being like, no, you can't write that about me,
and like a bunch of people being like, yeah, you
can't write that about Elon Musk. Whereas the zos like
tried to kill a story about Amazon publicly in the

(09:55):
Washington Post that would probably be very unpopular. That's it
just feel like those stories never get to the front
page of the Washington Post, right, And you certainly have
to wonder if there had, if there were multiple ongoing
instances of criticism, you know, of Musk himself or anything

(10:16):
that Tesla did, or anything that Twitter did being routinely
shut down, and then that having other reverberations. You know,
one can set up a new social media platform of information. Yeah,
that doesn't have the network effect. But Trump was able
to set up truth social and now the fact that
he's running it really badly is neither here nor there
in terms of the ease of actually creating one. So

(10:38):
even there, it's not as if Twitter is like the
soul and only public sphere of very sharp and often
pungent commentary. Yeah, I mean you guys, general thesis on
the podcast and on like it seems to be the
like not enough, And I agree with this in in

(11:00):
a lot of ways that like a lot of the
good news doesn't get reported, and so it's like kind
of goes into this like we we just hear the
problems in the media, but then like this feels like
one of the problems overall, like overarching that like we
don't hear about, which is that things are generally being

(11:22):
vetted by a billionaire class that like gowns all these
things that are supposed to be talking to us. Like,
would you agree with that or you think that like
this is just a kind of a misreading of the current.
I think, I think and and Emma has a kind
of aversion to the idea of good news as opposed
to news that points in a more constructive direction. But

(11:46):
for profit news demands attention that can be measured in
real time compared to other people getting the same eyeballs.
And that's the same incentives for Netflix as it is
for a newspaper. So the issue I think is less
who owns then the structure of these things have to
generate a profit, and what generates a profit is what

(12:09):
is most immediately emotional and intense and outrageous and fearful
and hot emotions rather than cool emotions. And that is
as much the issue irrespective of the ownership structure. Yeah,
do you feel like something's changed with social media and
like as compared to you know, some of these legacy

(12:30):
medias that, like the New York Times was not running
the sorts of headlines that now make a tweak go viral,
right like they there there was some sort of difference
or diminished heat, like for through the editorial process, right,
I mean, Emma does a lot more of our you know,

(12:52):
a lot of the progress social media she kind of manages.
And so the flip side of that is it's also
been an amazing tool to have people find inform asian
and perspectives right that are but they were they have
a hard time finding otherwise, you know, the connective tissue
that these platforms still provide. I think that the difference
between social media and legacy media is just that the

(13:13):
rules haven't been figured out yet, Like the rules of
journalism have been around with legacy media for a really
long time. So what's considered you know, good editorial practice
and bad editorial practice. What the rules are in relationship
to ownership, for instance, those are pretty set. And if
you know the mary and public doesn't know what they are,
they should know what they are. Social media is still

(13:35):
quite new. We're still figuring out the rules, are trying
to figure out, like what does the space look like
where it's kind of a public square, so issues of
free speech or there. But it is also a privately
owned company, so what does that mean who is responsible
legally for the stuff is published on the platform. It's
just I think we're going to work ourselves into a
better place with that. Is just that we're in the

(13:55):
messy middle at the moment. M hmm. Yeah. What is
something you think is overrated? Him? I was gonna say
the five day work week overrated? Overrated in the sense
that we're all doing it right that what do you
what's what's ideal? You think? What's the balance here? I
would love to see us move towards four. I think

(14:15):
that would be better. I mean, there's there are a
few countries that are piloting that, right. It seems like
it's that so far, it doesn't seem to be throwing
economies into like a downward spiral. Yeah, I mean, I
guess I would say that. The only thing I would
say to that is like it's a really small amount.
Is like, of course I can't remember which countries now exactly,
but it's like the government of Iceland I don't know,

(14:39):
or like this one company here there. But but that's
not too to damper the enthusiasm about the pilot projects. Superanted,
I hope it goes well. I hope there's absolutely no
economic downturn and that productivity stays high so that it'll
just can the four day work we creep will continue
to creep. Mm hmm. I thought the rub on Mediterranean
countries was that they had essentially been pilot in the

(15:00):
four day work weeks generations between May and September, even
if nominally it was a five day work week. Okay,
this is a sad thing about Mediterranean culture is, or
at least about Greece in particular. When I was younger,
my grandparents would always have a siesta, you know, after lunch.
That has disappeared. So the Mediterranean culture is getting infected
by the five day work week, causing cultural situation in

(15:21):
my view, right right, right, that back on track, Yeah,
I love that. I'll bring nap culture back into it.
What is something do you think is overrated? As a
person who really like loves fashion, I love reading a
Vogue magazine, Harper's Bizarre if you will love the fashion
world and their goofiness and their eccentric nous. The Met

(15:41):
Gala is really overrated to me. And here's why no
one follows theme. Okay, I know we say it every
year the Met Gala fans go on to the twitters
and we're like, what they went through the whole effort
of making a theme. They brought in specific art pieces.
A lot of times the meal goes along with the theme.
Why would you come dressed? Not as the theme? What
is the point? And this year they did the Gilded Age.

(16:03):
One of the fancy is most like extreme time. You
could have done giant parasols, huge hats, I mean, hoop
skirts four days. It's literally the era of coursets. And
everyone was like ongoing in black, which first of all,
it's the Guilded Age is all about color too much black,
lots of like lace, underwear things. Some people got it.

(16:26):
Some people were about it Gigi hadid you know, at
first I was like, I don't understand the entire like
latex red leather corset hant thing. But then with the coach,
she was like, oh no, I'm gonna really, I'm gonna
with this silhouette and give you, you know, give you
perfect time period, which works. Sara Jessica Parker was working
out of three separate centuries, but it came together. It

(16:46):
was mostly in line with theme. And then who's the
director of something like forty year some Netflix? So hold
on find her because she knocked it out of the park,
doing the sort of like oh too, black women of

(17:07):
the era, highlighting the seamstresses who were behind a lot
of the classic designs. Rhonda Blank. Rhonda Blanc is an
incredible director. She directed this movie called the forty year
Old Version, about a woman who's interested in getting into
like hip hop and reconnecting with her writing roots. It
is a setting performance. But her outfit for the gala

(17:31):
was like giant white head wrap, like knife billowing skirt.
It was incredible and I really appreciated was she brought
to the theme. I think my favorite outfit was Pete
Davison with his his Tanner his self tanding spray. Oh god,
his new tattoos. You cannot look. Did you not look

(17:52):
a little tan to you? Yeah? I mean, listen, that's
what happens when you get with a Kardashian. Your your
beauty up routine begins immediately because breaking on more cameras
than you ever thought existed in your whole life. So
he's got it's literally keeping up with the Kardashians. He's
got work. Also, I love how point, like, just how
odd the theme of the Gilded Age. You know, it's on.

(18:17):
It's frightening, you know what I mean, massive inequality and
child labor. But hey, you know this ball out and
nothing but Hillary's dresses dedicated to Harriet Tubman, So you know,
problems resolved. Let's see it giveth and it taketh truly.
I also think the met gal is overrated because I

(18:38):
don't know who any of these designers are. For the
most part, people are like, oh and they're wearing Louis
I mean I know Louuia Louis Dry. Yeah, okay, Carolina Herrara,
I know that one. But like they's there were some

(19:01):
probable I don't know Jean Louis Yeah, you're like, where
my favorite designers Gilding. Hey, what what is something you
think is underrated? Yeah? This this one is just cool.

(19:21):
Willie Nelson. Willie Nelson is doing great. Yeah. He turned
eighty nine last week and he put out a new
album on his birthday and it's great. It's called a
Beautiful Life. It's very good. And he's just generally always
been on the right side of most things as far
as I know. He's great, really into it. He is
one of the like musicians that my parents listened to

(19:42):
all the time that still holds up for me. And there,
you know, there's a lot that probably the fact that
my parents listened to them all the time make me
associate with like being nerds like Billy Joel. Maybe that's
not fair. And you know, Anita Baker at the time,
I did not of a fair shake because I was
just like, come on, this is so slow. Put on

(20:05):
AXL Rose, he will be cool forever. And that wasn't
the case. But Willie Nelson, I always liked his voice
even back then. And he stays stays cool. What a
what a voice? Guy stays cool? Huh? And he's to
joint in the White House. He did yeah with Jimmy
Carter's son. It's great, So that's fun. I and I
missed country music completely when I was a kid. Like

(20:27):
I've only started getting into it in the last couple
of years, so I have no associations with it. Really,
I'm just like fresh and it feels great. He's very cool.
He has like the way he sings. He'll do interesting phrasing,
kind of like Sinatra. If that helps people on board,
I don't know. He's great, Yeah, yeah, really good. I
used to as a kid. I used to think him
and George Carling were the same person. Oh that's carl yeah,

(20:51):
because I was like, these are white guys with long hair, yeah,
and like white beards and like yeah, and I was again,
this was me not even hearing this thing. Like my
visual thing was like, oh he's wearing a headman today.
Oh he's not right. And then I'm like, as I
got older, I'm like, they are not safer, bad fuck
at all. But I remember that very early on. I

(21:11):
was confused when I saw the do with them. Yeah,
they have kind of the same head shape, like kind
of a square head to me, and I'm kind of
the same facial hair and I think it's just a
little bit of gleaming long hair in the back. That
was enough to say as a four year old, be like,
and that is the same person, and I know everything
about popular culture. Yeah, I mean Willie Nelson's hair I
always associate with, like being in the pigtail braids. The

(21:34):
fact that he was able to pull that off and
still just be a complete icon is is pretty cool.
He got Texas on board with that, the state of Texas,
you know, but they did for him. Yeah, Like I
guess we're doing this now. Yeah, like with yeah, reminds

(21:57):
of like this is a very specific reference. But Jack
Peter and on the Braves was wearing like pearls like
when he plays baseball, and I was like, look at
all these braves fans and men coming out with their pearls,
and I'm like, okay, the power of sports. It's okay
because he does it. Yeah him straight, him hit home run.
I'm now where pearl also, man, he should he should

(22:20):
push it like this year when he's in the postseason,
he should just like have more accessories, just keep accessorizing
until the breaking point right to like every man in
George is weighed down by an insurmountable amount of jewelry.
I've been thinking a lot about the Carter White House.
I think we talked about it a little bit on

(22:42):
yesterday's episode, which I have mostly blacked out, but the um,
we can't go back, we can't go back. The like
the fact that The New York Times is addressing, you know,
centrist democrat in power as being like, Wow, there's just
a mood issue that nobody can quite pinpoint. And the

(23:05):
fact that that was followed by like just twelve years
of like hardcore republicanism in the mainstream worries me a
little bit that we're like back back at that point
where they're like, I don't know, we're we're out of
answers here, folks. I guess we turned it over to them.
Hot potato. There you go that up there, take it.

(23:29):
And and I feel like that whole thing is sort
of like the response to inflation going up or something else,
like people are like, oh, I guess this is just
how people feel. And I don't know, look at the context. Man,
like he's exclusively been president during a global pandemic like
that will impact people's mood a little. That's not his
fault necessarily, yeah, And I think the other part just

(23:50):
sort of like what could it be? Do we we
point at the little breadcrumbs that fell out of his
jacket pocket that were legislative winds and hope that's enough?
Or do we dangle a bunch of existential threats in
front of them to get them to fucking vote? And
it looks like the ladder right now? Yeah, so well,
I guess what we'll be talking about that in a moment.

(24:13):
So let's take a break, gird yourself, and we'll be
right back. And we're back. And so Democrats find themselves
in the like the New York Times called it democrats Mystery,

(24:35):
how to brighten up presidency and a national mood. It
basically seems like, you know, just the mood down. And
the article also seems to, you know, take them at
sort of face value when it comes to like what
the mystery is here, Like they're like, I don't know,

(24:56):
like should we emphasize the small games we've made aid
or try to make larger gains? And it just feels,
I don't know, it feels weird and disingenuous to treat
people's feelings about this administration like it is a mystery

(25:16):
illness that like they don't know the cause of, and
they're just trying to figure out, you know, they're floating
some weather balloons up to see how this works and
how that works. But I don't know. We talk a
lot about like sort of a disconnect between the reality
is people live it and experience it, including on like
social media versus the reality that I feel like the

(25:41):
mainstream media and the mainstream Democratic Party seem to exist
inside of or at least like sort of message from
the planet of But I don't know, I think it
like comes back to sort of an unacknowledged like I
think too that Nate like probably and the financial collapse

(26:02):
like kind of ties a lot into this, and just
the fact that that there hasn't been like sort of
a reckoning in the mainstream media or with the Democratic
Party with what happened there, and you know, you had
like Bernie Sanders as an insurgent candidate who wanted to

(26:23):
address that, and Trump addressed it in his way, and
the Democratic Party was kind of still in the middle.
And I don't know, it just feels feels very much like, well,
there there are concrete things people are asking for you
kind of said you were going to do something with
that or around that, and have not done those things.

(26:47):
But like, so why is it be being treated as
like are they depressed? Like what's what? What am I
said about? Why is everyone sad? How do we make
them happy? I was just curious that what would be
the know, top three lists of things that they said
that they were going to do that they haven't done.
I think voting rights is a huge one. Yeah, I
think I'm honestly like looking at things like the unemployment

(27:12):
insurance uh, like the weird math that happened around things
being like two thousand dollars and like, well, if you
add this from over here, you carry the two that
adds to two thousand, the child tax credit, lapsing student debt,
like you know, student loan debt. There's a I mean
there's a lot talking about like law enforcement reform, not

(27:33):
necessarily about defunding the police, but looking at that with
a real clear eye and thinking things looking at things
like qualified immunity, like these are things that we're talked about.
I never in a million years or think Joe Biden
would ever touch anything with the qualified immunity, but a
lot of gestures were made in that direction, and I
think especially for you know, black people, well, we look
at something like voting rights as being completely at threatened,

(27:58):
being threatened, and we see countless as like in places
like Georgia, Florida, Texas, where it's becoming increasingly difficult to
vote even for fucking you know, the people that they
want to vote for. So I think those are like
big things that feel very existential for people. I think,
like one, if we're if we're meant to believe that
if this sort of equation here is to vote the

(28:20):
representatives into Congress that represent you know, the values that
we have, that if we can't even do that, what
what is the point here, Like we're not even looking
at like that should even I'm surprised that wasn't the
big one of the biggest things democrats even so, just
like in the cynical game of staying in power, which
is like, hey, they're trying to take away the their
ability to vote for us. But that's been you know

(28:42):
that we've seen. We've seemed to let the obstruction happen
like within the party and just kind of keep it moving.
I mean, look, part of it is that Biden was
unpopular by the fall of last year, within six months
of being in office, when it wasn't even clear that
those things weren't going to be passed, and there was
some effort. There was a you know, a voting rights
bill that the House had passed that was at the Senate,

(29:02):
and there was also the Build Back Better omnibus, you know,
was going to retain the child tax credit, was going
to provide universal pre k and and more time off
for working women. But he was on popular even before.
Those things didn't pass amongst a wider swath of the

(29:22):
public than one would have thought. And what's odd is
the lesson that government, including Republicans, learned from two thousand
and eight two thousand nine, was that if you don't
bail out people who are actually working, and you just
bail out institutions, you're gonna create a lot of ill will.
So there was you know, four trillion dollars of money
during COVID, both in and then in February, a lot

(29:46):
of which did go toward It was the first time
in forty years that the lower quintile people saw some
income growth larger because of transfer payments from government, and
you know, that did not engender like oh, we're doing well,
you know, I mean there is a degree of you
mentioned malaise at the beginning, Jack, that there is that

(30:06):
aspect of what's going on that that isn't purely about
I think something one can point to specifically that doesn't
make an undiagnosed illness. It just means, first of all,
it's almost impossible to do anything right now other than
those two stimulus bills during COVID that has anything resembling
bipartisan support. I mean, there are actually things that have
bipartisan support. Like, weirdly enough, Criminal Justice Reform was the

(30:30):
one bill passed that had genuine bipartisan support during the
Trump years in December that actually, for the first time
moved away from like a lot of the draconian sentencing
that have become commonplace in federal courts. Right doesn't do
anything for state systems, which are which are different, but it,
you know, it does speak to and part of why
M and I are trying to do this our own,

(30:52):
our own show of getting people to look at what
what people are trying to do to solve things is
in the United States definitely is in a culturally massive
question mark, verging on kind of despair. And cynicism in
a way that would have been really familiar in the
mid seventies. You know, it's not like we haven't been

(31:14):
here before and would have been really familiar in the
mid nineteen thirties, you know, it would have been really
familiar in the mid eighteen seventies. At best. These are
like cyclical things where we we we snap out of
our somewhat illusionary view of us of being the greatest
of all nations that has solved everything right, as a

(31:34):
comforting narrative that's never been true, but which we buy
into really easily for long periods of time, and then
it's like something happens and we wake up and we're like,
wait a minute, right, No, we're not all those wonderful,
hyperbolic Hosanna things that we said that we were. We've
got real problems and we've got real issues, and the challenge,

(31:55):
of course is to is to have that clear gimlet
eye to awareness of what's going on without sinking into
despair and cynicism, you know, without that then trending into
the other direction and we're we're clearly whether you're on
the left or the right, easily heading in those directions
and I think that's partly reflective of the fact that
you know, no political leader has anything resembling a majority approval,

(32:20):
let alone much of a plurality. I just add really quickly, Miles,
I agree he like about the child tax credit. I
think that was a really you know, that was terrible
that that lapsed. One interesting thing about voting rights is
that it is a very serious issue. There are several
states where they're they're rolling back, you know, they're making

(32:41):
it harder to vote. But it was interesting is that
the Brennan Center also put out a report about all
of the new pathways of voting that we're open during
the pandemic with mail and voting, and what with all
the hop of about mail and voting during the last election,
there's actually states that made it easier to vote. They
took the new pandemic pathways that had put into place

(33:02):
about voting, particularly around around mailing voting, and they kept them.
So this is just this is just aside to it
that is not often discussed. And you know, it's the
same thing about Zachary is saying that we're not we're
not trying to paint like you know, let's look at
everything through rose colored glasses. It's just a balance question. Yeah,
I mean I do think too that, you know, there

(33:24):
are some things that Biden is at vault for, like
the massive cash transfers that went into place during the pandemic,
like Zachary mentioned, were massively beneficial for people. It also
seemed to have kicked up inflation. I'm not sure how
much we can blame Biden for, you know, gas and
gas places going up and up and up with the
war right now. So I think some of them malaised

(33:46):
does have to do with like the Democrats are not delivering,
and I think they're particularly not paying attention to voters
concerns about working and wages and worker power compared to
corporate power. But some of it too, I do think
it is kind of like there's a bad vibe right now,
and I'm not sure that the Democrats are all are
all to blame for that. I don't think that they

(34:06):
are all to blame because this is this is century
He's built up where now like the lived experience of
an American person is such where the American dream is
you know, not very accessible to most people anymore, and
that the feeling that people have is like, oh my God,
all that like post World War two glow is completely

(34:27):
faded away, and we're looking at like crumbling infrastructure, stagnant wages,
and like really massive societal issues where it looks like
the leadership in the country can't really like really address
the elephant in the room, which I think for voting
people is equal inequality and like broadly tackling that issue

(34:48):
to say, we absolutely hear you that being able to
live in a city has become it's prohibitively expensive, even
if you're just trying to if you're a single parent,
like good luck, like trying to do that. We hear you,
We understand that that is something that societally feels like
we need a realignment to say, what is the minimum
that an American deserves, you know, like many other countries

(35:11):
have that defined where it's like you will not go
broke because you you know, because you've got into medical
debt or things like that. If you want an education,
here go at it. Here you go. We could we
were there's a there's a place for you to attain that,
and I think we're by by not really getting into
that part. I think it's probably messy for both parties
because at some point they have to acknowledge their connection

(35:31):
to it. And I think that's what makes it a
little bit difficult is that the you know, the both
parties in this country have been so entangled in that
inequality that it's like if they're finding it very difficult
to a acknowledge that they're the policies that they were
supporting and with the hopes of thinking like, yeah, this
is this is the way too, like have all of

(35:52):
the abundance flow to many people isn't working And to
really acknowledge that, to really say that that is completely
failed and we actually need to think about I think
that's what some people are waiting for, is like, can
we just acknowledge that this has failed? Because it's failed
so many people at this point, it's hard to say
that this is us moving in a beneficial direction. Yes,

(36:13):
I mean I have too pushbacks on that one is
I think it's not about inequality as much as it's
about what you just talked about. I mean, you could
reduce inequality the amount of inequality and still have people
not be able to afford living in cities and going
bankrupt for medical debt. It's the abundance part. It's the
non proliferation of sufficient abundance to enough people in a

(36:35):
in an otherwise highly affluent society, and inequality per se
is not reducing an equality doesn't solve those issues. Just
like you know, as we see with inflation, right, expanding
incomes doesn't do you much good if the cost of
things is rising more quickly than your incomes are expanding.
If costs went down, which was somewhat happening with the

(36:56):
declationary effects of technology, then you wouldn't necessarily need more
more income, right, because net net would be the same thing.
Your dollar would be buying more if the costs were
going down. If costs you're going up, your dollars buying less.
So I think it's more about the non sharing of
that abundance. And one of the real obstacles for the
United States is the set point of the mid twentieth century,

(37:17):
which we look at as some sort of normative moment
where everything worked, but so many stars aligned in that
moment that we're both of our own doing and also
global right World War two ends the United States is
more than that. Actually, all global industrial capacity the entire world. Right,
we were this engine because we hadn't been bombed you know,

(37:39):
we were the one bombing. We weren't the ones getting bombed.
We had emerged victorious. There was some degree of collective
unity that that had to do with white America, right,
And the g I Bill was great, but it didn't
extend to African Americans, that certainly didn't extent to women.
And yet we hold that up as the validation of
a system that worked. And I'm really of the mind

(38:00):
that we we hamper ourselves more by thinking that we
had a formula that worked that we are now failing,
rather than recognizing that we never really had the formula
we think we had and it never worked the way
we idealized it having worked. You know that we were
always much more flawed than we like to tell ourselves.
We're always more just like a group of humans who
had an interesting formula for social organization that did allow

(38:23):
for things a lot of other societies didn't and still don't.
But I think the fact that we look to that
moment in the forties and fifties and sixties as this
is when it worked and now we failed, I think
that's a false story of who we were. I mean,
who looks to that though? Who who are you talking
about when we talk about looking to the forties, fifties, sixties,
and seventies, I don't think that's who we're talking about. Well,

(38:46):
when I even say that post war glow, I think
that's that that I'm not. That's not to say that's
I don't. I don't idealize any moment in American istry. No,
I'm not getting you guys are, But I think are
a lot of our public debate speaks of a kind
of something worked, and then we out off track. Yeah.
The Republican Party and Fox News certainly do, right, Yeah,
but the Democrats do as well. This is a time

(39:06):
when there was more democracy, or more egalitarian nous, or
more rights that are being you know, I don't. I
don't think it's just one side here. What I see
is that the media, like when I say this post
war glow, is that that that's those that that is
like you're saying, that is looked at is like something
you know, that like we were doing okay or whatever.

(39:27):
But again you look at even as you as you
lay out, not all those benefits were distributed equally. In fact,
you know, most people, especially if you are not in
like the white mainstream, there really hasn't been a great
time for for those people in this country. And to
say that, like whether it's thinking that something worked and
then failed or just saying that like nothing is going right,

(39:49):
I think what we're saying is that the same thing
is that we're not We're not we're not actually arriving
at a moment we're trying to actually reckon with what's
going on. We have ways to kind of shroud the
discussion and something else then just silo it off into
like a separate thing and just make it about, Okay, well,
let's look at uh, let's look at how we can

(40:09):
help out student loan like people with student loan debt,
or maybe we can look at how PELL grants are
distributed and how that's working. But again, all of these
issues are sort of part of this larger problem that
we have is that most American people on some level
have these like feelings of like I don't know if
I'm going to have enough to make it or to
be have a level of financial stability. I look at

(40:32):
that with my friends who are in their mid thirties
who work at grocery stores still and talk about the
stress they have from doing like smaller jobs because it
was harder for them to go to college. They didn't
they weren't taking out student loans and things like that.
And there's I I see firsthand a lot about how
ground down people get. And that's my concern is that

(40:53):
I think, you know, even in in the past episode
you talk about this idea of nostalgia that we have,
of this idea of the return of the king and
someone will come to right all the wrongs, and it's
really not that simple. And I know people still think
that's like possible, but we we have to sort of
on a put all of that ship out of our
mind and say that there has to be this basic

(41:15):
reshifting or really looking at the things that we're saying
what is the minimum? And I think that's I think
that's an easier place a conversation to start for in general,
to talk about, this is what's the minimum an American
deserves by being a citizen? What is that? What is that? What?
How does that enable you to live a prosperous life. Yeah,
that I totally agree with. You know that there should

(41:36):
be some baseline understanding of what is an affluent society
provide as its contract to itself Because the basics of
you know, healthcare, education, shelter, food, you know, not not
not a particularly high bar or shouldn't be a particularly
high bar of security. That once we established that, then

(42:02):
everybody's lives can go and all the different directions that
everybody's lives go. And one concern I have with the
malaise like storyline is, you know, the last time the
Democrats got like blamed for a nation with malaise, like
you know that that ended with or that led to

(42:25):
eight years of Reaganism and Republicans like just sort of
staying hyper focused on like the wealthy and like, you know,
America is great because of this small part of what
is happening in America. And I just I feel like
that tends to be I don't know, I don't I
don't want to see that dynamic again. But if the

(42:46):
Democrats continue to be just like the holding the holding
bag for like everything that's negative and the Republicans can
just you know, invent new versions of themselves, like are
we going to just be like yo yoing back and
forth between you know, just insufferable like Republican leaders who

(43:08):
are saying wild ship about what they're going to do,
and you know, threatening horrible things and you know, being
horrible leaders back to like a you know, sane democratic
alternative that then everyone's like yeah, but like this problem
is still there. Like I feel like that's the dynamic

(43:30):
we're currently at, is that whatever you diagnose the problem being.
And I think that there's a a huge unacknowledged like
wound from two thousand eight that like the end from
like you know, corporate you know what when we talk
about like Biden not getting things done in office and

(43:53):
like it's stopping with like mansion and cinema, like that
was they are like have influenced by like dark money
and corporate interests, and you know, it just feels like
we're like the Democratic Party and like that mainstream has
chosen to be the sort of holding bag for like

(44:16):
all of this malaise. But like they don't have like
some alternative that they're they're they're not choosing to offer
an alternative. I guess I definitely hear you about like
the wound from two thousand and eight. I talked about
this with my friends a lot some mimennial and a
lot of us got really screwed going into college, during
college and coming out of college and it did lead

(44:36):
to a lot of us, you know, sort of getting
behind as far as not being able to settle a
life for ourselves with enough money to buy a house,
particularly in a city that's relatively expensive. But I also
just think like the Democrats are not working with the
things that they should be working with. Like Miles brought
at the child tax credit, they were that also is

(44:57):
something that has bipersion support. There are Republicans who support
various versions of that. They should be going straightforward towards that.
Why aren't they The whole discussion around student loan debt
I find really odd because once you cancel out everyone's
student loan debt, you're still left with the undiscussed problem.
Like you guys are pointing out that it's prohibitly expensive
to attend a lot of private colleges. So you might

(45:20):
have solved that, you know, in a moment in time. Okay, great,
everyone who has you know, a lot of debt is
free from that. But a lot of the student loaned
it that's being hold held in the United States is
from from for profit colleges. And like I said, it's
not going to solve the situation of people entering into
college just going to graduate with him with more debt.
And again the you know, the Democrats are also not

(45:40):
focusing on healthcare, so techo that, Yeah, there were things
that the Democrats could have done in that because of
the party's sort of maximums position about a lot of
these things didn't happen. You know. Even Jim mentioned had
a voting rights bill that he had helped craft, that
he have supported that was far less than the voting

(46:03):
rights bill that was passed in Congress, but was far
more than no voting rights bill and would have given
the federal government much more teeth to take on some
of these restrictions in some of these states. There was
also a series of social spendings that could have passed
through through the Senate. Emma talked about the child task Credit.
But there was a kind of a maximum position, and
I think in many ways, you know, a lot of

(46:24):
what is disparaging about the Democrats is the degree to
which by trying to govern as if there was this
huge mandate without recognizing that. Look, I mean there's a
whole series of Democrats in swing districts, in non urban
areas of the country. You know, people like Alyssa Slankin
in Michigan and Tom Malinowski New Jersey, who's an old friend,

(46:46):
and Abigail Spansburger and Virginia and Cindy Asney and in
Iowa who support all these things, you know, and and
and feel like they have a constituency that would support them,
but but not at the most you we're gonna remake
society allow what more urban you know, younger educated voters won.

(47:07):
And by not taking the half loaf, you know, the
proverbial like not taking the deal that was on the
table and going for the wish list, I think that's
I mean, it is almost impossible to overstate what a
mistake that is. And it changes the narrative in a
way that didn't have to be. You know, there's more
support for a lot of these things because they affect

(47:27):
a lot of humans lives, irrespective of what party they
affiliate themselves with. And uh, you know, I think that's
going to be part of the real challenge for the Democrats,
other than the fact they've done a really effective job
counter Jerryandering well. And I think the issue though two
is right, like they'll come out with these maximalist solutions
on the campaign trail to court the voters, and then

(47:51):
when it's time for the rubber to hit the road,
the lobbyists step in and completely derail everything. And I
think that's a huge right. I think that's why for me,
I'm not sure how the current set up is equipped
to actually take on these issues because they're so systemic.
I used to be a lobbyist for a for profit

(48:13):
education institution, and the work I did had nothing to
do with education and had everything to do with exerting
pressure on, you know, politicians, to convince voters that this
politician was using X policy to benefit them when they weren't.
And my whole existence was predicated on a wealthy donor

(48:34):
wanting to make sure that his business was doing well.
And I think that's a huge, huge blind spot in
the discussion, is that it's it's it's not just Joe
Manchin sat down and looked at the Build Back Better
Infrastructure bill and said, you know, cutting it back at
trillion dollars every couple of months, which coincides with I
think why Biden's numbers by the fall hit hit such

(48:54):
a weird point because we started we started off the
spring thinking this this bill is gonna work. Then slowly,
you got to see that a lot of the like
sort of more corporatist elements of the party, but you
could see where their interests were. People suddenly are now
voting to block bills that we're going to bring prescription
costs lower and low and behold, it's coming from people
whose biggest donors are from the pharmaceutical industry. And I think, yeah, like, well,

(49:19):
and all of that is pretty disheartening. But I think
if when that's completely absent from the conversation, we're gonna
keep we're gonna keep getting stuck in this like abstract
version like what's really going on without again reckoning with
what this how the system is actually operating and who
who actually can you know, pull those levers at that

(49:40):
certain points when they want to, Yeah, I'm with you
about healthcalth health care for sure, Miles. I mean, coming
to Greece and and living in uh that's probably one
of the worst European countries as far as health insurance goes.
The dramatic difference between here in the United States is
like it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. I feel like I should

(50:03):
recommend everyone if they can, like go live in Europe,
if you can, for sometimes see what the health care
is like, then come back you'll have a crystal clear
idea of how much better it could be In the
United States. Yeah, and unfortunately, too many people just living
the version where they're experiencing the worst kind ever without
any idea of how much how good it can be,
and we're just grinding people down to like nothing. I

(50:24):
feel like that's it. It's like meant, it's like I've
gone through periods where I ignore my mental health and
just like grind myself and then like, you know, there
there are negative consequences, but if you just like don't
take that as a as a factor into consideration. But like,
the the reality of like living in America in a

(50:45):
place where like getting sick or hurt can like bankrupt
you is so fucked up, like so dark. And the
fact that like you know, you would have to like
that you feel like you need to suggest to people
like you guys have to see this ship. It's crazy
like over there you can get hurt and not be bankrupted.

(51:05):
Is like that that feels. I don't know. I think
there are a lot of things that we kind of
lose track of because we're so used to them, as
you guys have kind of talked about, but that need
to be improved and are the thing that is like
grinding people down, like you were saying, well, I mean
I will say to you that there's pros and content everywhere.

(51:26):
So I would be remiss to say that if you're
on public health insurance here in Greece, part of your
medical experience is not going to be bankruptcy, but it
is going to be bribing the doctors in the hospitals
that they'll actually take care of you. So yeah, I
mean health insurance is hard. Let's just say that. Yeah,
because again, like I think it speaks to the this
perversion of like certain industries where we're not taking certain

(51:49):
things saying that's not a thing where you need to
go and you know, exploit and extract trillions of dollars
out of Like that's that's that that's at a minimum,
a thing to keep people healthy and alive. Like, don't
don't begin to to mix that up with growth and
shareholder value and those kinds of ideas, because yeah, we've

(52:10):
we come. When we do that, we completely reduce people
to just shoot on the spreadsheet abstract numbers and at
a certain point, one person being like, I need to
crank this up by half a percent means tens of
thousands of people going to bankruptcy. And we're like, we're
completely i think, divorced from like the humanity of it all,

(52:31):
which I think is just unfortunately that happens a lot
of the people who are the most vulnerable. We forget
about it because it's not necessarily maybe presents the greatest
threat to the most people all the time, but it's
simmers and it ends up, you know where eventually that
that rot touches all of us. So I had to
say one of the things that really startled me in
pandemic time, the heart of it was, like a fair

(52:56):
number of us, I looked to Western European national health
systems with a degree of admiration of some sense that
this is a public good right. It should be channeled
through private industry. It should be a product of a
profit motive, per se. It should be about Look, every
person in a society should be able to get the

(53:17):
health care they need for the lives they want to live.
But those national systems were no more able to cope
with the demands of of a pandemic for the most
part and showed in many the same fissures between sort
of haves have nots that the United States did, partly
because their own budgets had been investrated over the prior years,

(53:37):
because people didn't want to really pay taxes to support
that collective good, and they were susceptible to the same
mantras of efficiency. And efficiency means you know, you don't
have spare beds, it means when a crisis hits, there's
no slack. Slack costs money. All I'm saying is like,
it is true that we have massive structural impediments to

(53:57):
delivering some of the goods that you talk about, but
it is eye opening to see the degree to which
it's very hard to find a human assemblage on the
planet that does this particularly well other than some, you know,
smaller homogeneous societies. You can say, look, Denmark does this
pretty well, but Denmark's like you know, Manhattan plus Queens.
I mean, and that's not said with any pejorative right,

(54:21):
It's just I think it's easier when there's fewer people
and they're all somewhat related. I do have to say
I bribe all my doctors just to get better reports better,
like which put from my height there, doctor dropped like
twenty pounds from the weight and that cholesterol needs to
come way down. Bro. You can bribe people here to

(54:43):
get a driver's license to which is why it's really
scary to drive here. Wow, all right, let's take a
quick break. We'll come back and talk for like five
minutes about vampires and then we'll let you guys go
and we're back. Um, and this is this is kind

(55:06):
of a weird one. This is just like, uh, you know,
something I noticed, but I'm curious to get you guys thoughts.
But I just like head and listen to MPR. And
probably a year, Um, something happened with the way my
phone was connected to my car, so I started popping
on every once in a while around the time of
the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And it's like I was

(55:29):
hearing it again like with fresh years, and it just
felt insane to me, Like it's like it's so gentle
and like it's explaining the death of a of a
pet to a child, but they're explaining the news of
the world to an entire generation of adults. Um. And yeah,

(55:52):
So I mean that's basically my thesis. That if we
weren't used to it from like decades of MPR being
like a one of the primary neoliberal sources of information,
we'd all be like this is so fucking weird. Um.
And then I do wonder if there's you know, a
a larger point about the amount of cognitive dissonance that's

(56:14):
required for the type of people who listen to NPR,
sort of that gentry class of liberals, like where there's
just a lot of calories, a lot of mental calorie,
Like you could mint a bitcoin with the amount of
mental work that's required too, you know, both be aware
of all the inequality in the world, uh, and also

(56:37):
believe that like the mainstream d NC is the answer
and you know, buying into mainstream corporate media narratives and
like still feeling like you're the good guy. Like it's
just it all feels very um, Like it's a it's
a lot of work, it's a it's a weird position
to be in as a neoliberal. And so I feel

(57:00):
like there's something something about this aesthetic that like helps
just be like, no, it's okay, this is all happening.
So you are right, you are You're good because you're
listening to stuff about the bad stuff happening enough to
get like a cursory understanding of of the details. Um,
but don't worry. We're gonna make it down, go down

(57:21):
very smooth, and we're going to talk to you in
the way that uh, you know, you're you're snobby friends
talk to you and you know it's we're just doing
this over a glass of like pinot grig. Don't worry,
like it's all cool. Um, I don't know what do
you what do you guys? I know I totally feel
that because and we talked, We talked about this all
the time. Because then no mainstream media outlet, like it's

(57:45):
always meant to sort of frame all these conversations in
a very tidy thing where it's it's not going to
bring too much, it's not gonna bring the reader or
listener or viewer to ask really tough questions about like
US foreign policy or domestic economic policy. It'll describe a
problem you know, somewhat you know in a balanced way,

(58:06):
but also not really confront the problem or offer solutions
to the listener, which would actually spur the next first thing,
like the next thought on. Because if it's just like
and it's all bad, but it's being contained there. And
due to that, like the people do have a more
optimistic outlook on the chances of Russia being successful in
their invasion of Ukraine. And you're like, Okay, I don't

(58:28):
really I know that's happening. I don't need to fucking
think deeper about this. I don't even need to think
of like what does this mean for the military industrial
complex in the United States? Why some factions of the U. S.
Government like all in on this, others aren't. What's the
deal there? Why there's like you know, it's it's again. Yeah,
like you're saying, it sells like an illusion of being

(58:48):
tapped in and that you're you're on top of it
all without challenging you enough to really kind of begins.
Doesn't have anything to do you think with that um
that annoying thing, what does it? Ally fatigue how people
are just they're like, oh, man, I cared about this cause,
but can't we take the black squares off our Instagram? Yet?
You know that kind of thing where it's like it's

(59:08):
like you want to be there and you want to
support and fight, but like you also wanted to be
kind of easy and simple and short, and like maybe
there's something to that, like if you if it goes
down with a little bit of sugar and a smooth,
you know, airy voice, then it's easier to handle. But yeah,
then you're not necessarily hearing it all or understanding how
big it could be because you're just like, this is

(59:30):
just it's like neatly contained, right, Yeah, and it's the
emotion is removed. Um. It's very much like hearing a
professor talk about a thing that like an event from
history more so than it's like hearing somebody at that
this thing is actually happening, to that there's a you
exist in the world where this is happening. Um. But yeah,

(59:53):
I think like the ally fatigue syndrome and like NPR,
which has been doing this for you know, decades now,
but I think they both come from the same place
of you know, wanting to feel like you are on
the right side while also wanting to stay at a
safe distance from the like what what is actually happening? Um?

(01:00:19):
I have this clip that I pulled and I literally
just like I was like, it would be helpful if
we had a clip, uh, this morning, and I went
to the NBR website and was like, let's find them.
The thing that made me notice it was a story
about Russia's invasion of Ukraine. So I just went and

(01:00:40):
looked for a story where they were talking about that,
and I've like four minutes in. I thought, this is
you know, this isn't like that I'm catching them saying
something wild or anything. This is just an example of
what I'm talking about. Um, I don't know, Miles, do
you wanna like, I have the link there, I could

(01:01:01):
just pull it up. Yeah, so for for ten, is
this a podcast? No, well this is on the NPR.
They so they serve everything as a podcast. And I
should say, like in relation to the podcast. Um, when
we started like our little shingle of like how stuff Works,
which became my heart, Like, one of our stated goals

(01:01:23):
was to create shows that did were not influenced by
the nprs that because it felt like so many shows
were just like you know, this American Life and then
This American Life Descendants and like everybody was just like, hey,
so this is a you know, um, but yeah, the

(01:01:43):
NPR is wild influential to the point that like this
might not even sound that crazy to people who listen
to a lot of podcasts eligence capabilities, including So this
is just the end of the support of how the
US is helping to investigate work runs NPR Justice correspondent
Ryan Lucas, Thank you, Ryan than you. Isn't that soothing?
I guess nice Susan boys, there some nice soothing music.

(01:02:09):
The first step in confirming that comes in next door
to look for themselves. Days ago our colleagues got detro
how to look around Boora Yanka. That's one of the
cities near Kiev from which Russian forces recently withdrew. And
today we hear Scott's stories of two people who survived
the Russian occupation. Natasha and her daughter's family spent a

(01:02:30):
month hiding in a cramp key. What did we eat?
Mostly potatoes. I had some spare oil and then I
have a cow, so I had milk, and I went
to my neighbor. I gave her some milk. She gave
me some other things, some cheese. So this is how
we survived. So that's all right. That was the main

(01:02:51):
like kind of pieces I wanted to play because you know,
so Scott, Scott and Skip comes in very calm, just
like you know, this is the story we're we're going
to give you some stuff from the ground, and then
they bring in somebody who is, you know, very emotional
and like you know, breaks down a little later in
the interview, but then they like overlay her with someone

(01:03:14):
who sounds like they're recounting a meal they prepared over
a glass of wine. Like ever, yeah, yeah, just when
you're talking military operation. Yeah, yeah, for context that that
woman uh was hiding in her basement, um, starving with children,

(01:03:37):
trying to hide from Russia who was trying to murder her,
and like like what do we eat? Well, we had
a nice little like potato saute, and like it's like
this kind of feel is disingenuous because like they are
giving people information that people need. I just want to
take a moment to acknowledge the aesthetic and uh make

(01:04:00):
fun of it because it is fucking weird. Will say that.
I remember I was watching CNN and like watching the
election results come in, and I was getting so stressed
out and had such anxiety, so I had to turn
it to CBC Canadian TV because they were just they're
just talking. They were just they're presenting the facts and
not going crazy, and there weren't like air horns and

(01:04:21):
loud noises every five minutes, and it was like the
only way I could handle it. So it's like I
know that you know that that's working. You know, it
gives them, you know, more listeners, and people are drawn
to that for that reason, I think, But yeah, what
does that say necessarily about people, Like that's how they
have to handle work crimes and things. Well, yeah, and

(01:04:42):
it's just how It's just like the messaging, right, Like
it's one thing if someone's like, oh, hey, that house
is on fire, that house is on fire. Ye in
human it's it's it's the humanity out of it was strange,
and so your respond to it is going to be
completely different too. It's like it gives you the news

(01:05:05):
with a like little like anti anxiety medication, Like so yeah, yeah,
I don't need Yeah, people don't need to be listening
to like the death Metal of News podcast. You're like,
it's all fucking over. But at the same time, you
do do people a disservice because like you're saying, but this,
even this is even how I saw it, especially the

(01:05:26):
summer covering all the police Fucori. They were like then
some have seen it as potentially being racially motivated behavior,
and you're like, hold on, yeah, we're we're all looking
at this in real time, and you can't even come
out and properly sort of catch people up. I think
is the energy should be there's there's a serious issue

(01:05:47):
with law enforcement. I think that's just there. And I
get that. I think people see like we're auditorializing by
saying something like that, But you also need to convey
the severity of something to people, because if you say
it all monotone, you're gonna think, oh, yeah, just a
few bad apples. Meanwhile, you look at the people who
are in the streets and the way they speak about it.
They're not like, oh, it's this or that. We're talking
about existential threats, and I think to take that out

(01:06:09):
of the way you're telling the news allows people to think, oh,
I mean, yeah, the the invasion might be fucked up
in Ukraine, but that woman seemed so, she had a cow,
she had some oil. Yeah, yeah, this is yeah. I mean,
this is the whole NPR aesthetic, is itself a reaction
to the like you know, Dan rather Peter what's his

(01:06:32):
name from ABC, Tom Broke, Peter Jennings, like that whole
like and like it's unnatural like that that is, it's
the weird, unnatural trying to play the center type thing UM,
and NPR is like, no, we'll talk to you UM
in this other way that feels less like artificial. But

(01:06:55):
now it's like so uniform across so many channels, and
it just doesn't like it's now its own weird artificial
thing that seems to be aiming to just like make
everybody feel calm about uh and like feel like they're
the good guy and you know, get well can wear

(01:07:18):
their tote bag with pride um and yeah, so I
asked uh super producers Becca and Tricia to you know,
Becca looked into just like a history of like what
what are other people pointing this out? And she pulled
some very funny tweets and also like I think a
really smart one where somebody, um how Alex safe Cummings tweeted, Uh,

(01:07:44):
the system has every reason to want to revert back
to the norm, to the even keeled MPR tone of voice,
and it will probably try. But Trump, to his credit,
in a weird way, has blown up all duplicitous civility
to the ruling class. The pretty West wing illusions are
mostly gone, and like, I think that's interesting to think
of Trump as, uh, what one of the things he

(01:08:07):
is reacting to is like this insufferable neo liberal class
of just you know that tone, like he Trump's rude, conversational,
like kind of weird speaking style as a breaking out
of the like quiet politeness that MPR embodies. Um is

(01:08:31):
kind of an interesting way to think about that. UM.
And then and then there is apparently like straight up
gate keeping UM, Like we don't have them in a
room telling people to like be more zand out, which
was the assignment. I was like, can you find out
if they have like a candy bowl full of like
xan x at the office or like conditioning? What do

(01:08:55):
they tell the people before they go on the air?
Is my question? Like I I still like, well, we
won't find this out, but if if zy gang, if
any of our listeners have experience with this, like I
I'm dying to know, like what are there is there
a process where they're like nope, okay, just calmer, all right? Now?

(01:09:15):
Can you take it down just a little bit more?
You're at like a three. I need you at like
a one minus. UM, Like I would love to just
hear what that's like. Maybe when they're in person, the
hosts talk super quietly, they're like, so you compare, so
then the other person that's talking to them feels like
they need to talk quietly to like maybe it's just
this weird like mirroring thing. Feel bad for the people

(01:09:39):
of color who work in there. And they're like, let
me tell you what I did. They're like, what, thank you,
I'm sorry, yeah, I mean so. Uh. Producer Tricia pulled
a story about, you know, somebody who an MPR contributor
who was preparing a story for air when he became
aware that he was altering his speaking style to fit
would he believe to be the MPR voice? Um? And

(01:09:59):
then you know there there's another story where somebody was
basically told, uh that they couldn't come on the air
on NPR because their accent seemed to or their voice
seemed to accent at Giselle Regatto road an essay and
the Columbia Journalism Review in which she recounted her attempt

(01:10:20):
to pitch a story to NPR, only to be told
by an editor that her piece would not air out
of concern for her accent. Um So you know there's
that too, like there's obviously a crazy bias there, um,
and its yeah, go ahead, no, just do you think
about what you're talking about Trump, right, And like the

(01:10:41):
I get you know, I get that it's soothing, right,
that it makes it easier, But at the same time,
it deep down we know it's disingenuous because we're only
listening to it because we feel that we need to
know about it, but don't want to get freaked out
by the sort of the scale of the issue that
we're trying to learn about. And I think that's another

(01:11:01):
reason why a lot of people just you know, like
people responded to Trump because if you're hearing on the news,
it's like, yeah, you know, medical dad or blah blah blah,
and this guy's been like the pharmaceutical costs are out
of control and like that energy people like exactly, that's
that that actually connects energetically with what I'm feeling about

(01:11:21):
this whole situation. It's not the way it was presented
to me. It's that I'm living in a very grim reality.
So to present my grim reality with you know this
like you know, this paint of Cote or this quote
or code of paint that makes it really shiny doesn't
help me anyway in any way. So yeah, people are
gonna gravitate towards the people who at least are speaking
with a level of emotion to it or acknowledging this verity,

(01:11:44):
even if it's disingenuous, because that feels more real. Yeah,
all right, that's gonna do it for this week's weekly Zeite. Guys,
please like and review the show. If you like, the
show means the world of Miles. He needs your validation. Folks,

(01:12:04):
I hope you're having a great weekend and I will
talk to you Monday. By