Weekly Zeitgeist 396 (8/25/25-8/29/25)

The weekly round-up of the best moments from DZ's season 403 (8/18/25-8/22/25)

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Episode Transcript

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

(00:26):
are thrilled to be joined in our third and fourth
seats by two of the creators behind my very favorite podcast,
one of the best podcasts. Podcasts is doing It Anywhere
on a fucking heater right now, you guys with the
fucking Coen Brothers, please welcome from blank Check. It's producer

(00:47):
Ben Hosley and Griffin Newban.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Thank you for the very kind of words. Oh, you've
been unbelievably supportive of us over the years.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Yeah, anyways, it's been hard. I'm just I'm a hugey
It came to you late and it is. I absolutely
love it. I love rediscovering, discovering Like I hadn't really
watched a lot of Miyazaki before I heard you guys
series on Miyazaki. It's been so cool to like have
the knowledge that comes from your podcast and like introduce

(01:17):
my kids to Miyazaki, like when they're at the you know,
age is my seven year old's favorite movie. So that's
been it's just been a very cool thing. And and
I love movies, and it's it's a total blast. You guys,
are you had seth Rogen on the Big Lebowski episode

(01:38):
just dropped yesterday? Yes, Zach Kraiger on the Fargo episode
the week the weapons like was destroying the box office.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
And made an every dollar there's no money left. No, Yeah,
it's sad kind of but we're all happy for support.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Couldn't gone to a nicer guy. Yeah, yeah, he seems
to nice.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
I had forgotten that he came from the Wise Kids.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
You know, people keep asking us because we have had
quite a sounding run of guests in short order, and
they're like, oh, you guys are really leveling up. What changed?
And we're like, literally, it's just we're doing the con Brothers. Yeah,
and that a lot of these people are folks that
we've been like messaging with for a couple of years.
We found at some point listen to the podcast and
they're like, I don't know, I don't know, I don't

(02:24):
do that many podcasts, or I don't know if I
should talk about someone else's right, or I you know,
I'm waiting for a film that's really one of my favorites.
And we like we do a March Madness thing every
year where once a year we let our listeners vote
on which director we're going to cover next, and we
do a whole career we go through every film one
episode at a time. Yea, And they voted for Coen

(02:45):
Brothers and they're infinite wisdom this year, and like suddenly
five of our dream guests were like, oh, sure, it
just opened all the doors.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
I mean at a time where it's like can be
a little bit challenging to be real proud of America,
it's like, you know, the Helen Brothers make us feel
good about living.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
They're also in a weird state right now where like
Ethan just released a movie that he directed with his wife, right,
and Joel is about to start directing a new film.
I think that he's that Francis is starring in or
at least producing. So they're in this sabbatical of working separately,
of both becoming a wife guys right, which has made

(03:24):
their core filmography of the like twenty one movies they
made together, I think feel like a little bit more
of a potemic fixed work. We're all hoping they will
eventually make things together again. Yeah, but I think it
puts them in an interesting place to talk about all
those films.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
Your reader or your listeners nailed it in terms of
the timing of this is like so perfect. And to
your point, getting back to Fargo and Big Lebowski, the
past two weeks has just been not like those are
so foundation like more foundational than I realized. Like obviously
they're movies I've seen a hundred times, but like just
rewatching them, I'm like, oh, I think about this line

(04:02):
five times a day, Like I think about like this
is like my brain is made out of these two movies,
like in a way that I hadn't fully appreciated it was.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
It was crazy, like I'm learning in real time trying
to remind myself. You can't say I to say Seth
and not Rogan, because if you talk about podcasting with Rogan,
people jump to a different assumption. Yea, yeah, because even
those saying Seth feels overly from all year. But he
was talking about how many things in his career and
all the movies he's gotten to make are pulled directly
from Lebowski, super open about not even in homage ways,

(04:34):
but like that's so effective. I want something like this
and using that and talking to different compartments.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
Scene to the person who being like, this is what
we're doing.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
And he had like twenty examples of that, and then
it also felt like there were twenty examples he in
real time realized Yeah, oh I didn't even figure out that, right, Yeah,
the Super Bad Trifecta is kind of similar to the
Donnie Waltz right mclove and trifecta, you know that, Like.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
Yeah, man, I saw Big Lebowski nine times in the theater.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
That's wild. Yeah, it flopped, Yeah, I know.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
And me we were at like my sister I had
seen Blood Simple my sister or whatever.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
She was cool. She showed me these like cool indie.

Speaker 3 (05:14):
Films, you know, and then just a sad little high
school nerd and my friend Paul went and we're like
are we and sayers this is the greatest movie of
all time? Like what we thought we were. Yeah, so
I'm very proud of being ahead of the car.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
That's a real bragging right there, because people were not
with it.

Speaker 3 (05:29):
But yeah, and seeing that it was it's so beautiful
and hilariously Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
Yeah, they weren't on too. I want to talk about
that because it definitely is a movie that has like
pervaded the culture in a way that's crazy, even though
it was like a box office flop. So I want
to talk about the concept that you guys talk about about,
like whether a movie exists or not. What is something
from your search history that's revealing about who you are?

Speaker 4 (05:53):
Well to keep talking about the Star Wars prequels because
I need to just plug this as much as possible.
But I did search for this, and I'll tell you why.
I searched for Palpatines lightsaber color because I have been
brainstorming a list of possible like drinks beverages for the

(06:18):
venues that we're performing at to like kind of create
a special drinks menu for our show. And so I
was like, oh, a Palpatini and it should be read
because of Palpatines lightsaber color being red. And then here,
let me just pull up the list of other drinks

(06:41):
I've crafted. You know, listeners and Jack and Moore, you're
welcome to riff on this as well. Let's see the
qui gon gin and tonic, I.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
Mean, unbeautiful, obvious, that's beautiful.

Speaker 4 (06:58):
A Darth vodka and cranberry or any vodka.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
Bas dark father. So that actually worked, does it really?
Okays Vader? That's a like apocryphal thing people were like
and actually everybody would have known that his name, that
he was actually father if you knew the German translated
to dark father. And then you actually look it up
and it like doesn't mean shit, it doesn't translate.

Speaker 4 (07:25):
It just like, yeah, that just I think that's a
joke from like Pitch Perfect, where Anna Kendrick is like
Vader means father in German. So obviously, but the important
thing here also is that the vodka that should be
used should be anakin sky Walker vodka.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
Fun.

Speaker 4 (07:45):
Now we're having fun. And then of course there's also
and then this is where things get a little bad
obi wan Cano beer and.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
I'm sorry, did you say this is where things get brilliant?

Speaker 5 (07:58):
Sorry?

Speaker 4 (07:58):
Sorry, I bespoke And then finally, mace.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
Wine Do wine do? Sounds like it's I'm gonna get
some mountain dew in there? Do? I is a mixture
of wine and mountain.

Speaker 4 (08:09):
Wine plus hole a Cabernet sevignon plus mountain dew. Actually
that sounds kind of good.

Speaker 3 (08:16):
I'm in I have seventeen years sober. I will relapse
on that if you make it please.

Speaker 1 (08:22):
Yeah, sorry, but is it relapsing if you just injected
directly into my veins? But it doesn't like I don't
have to drink it. It just goes right into my veins.
That's probably fine, right, Yeah, yeah, those are great? And
are do you? Do you think that you're gonna get
cooperation from the venues? I hope.

Speaker 4 (08:44):
So I emailed all of them and said, like, here's
my brilliant menu. Do with it what you will, and
if they don't do it, that's their loss. They're they're
they're losing out on millions of dollars that they would
have generated at our show.

Speaker 3 (08:59):
Yeah, I told millions, part of my ignorance. But I
did have to look up Palpatine. I can't believe his
name's not.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
Jiz He he looks.

Speaker 3 (09:11):
Yeah, all right, he's not doing you know, I'm not
doing great.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
He seems bad. All the people, all the forced people
seem bad, like you would think that all the power
they're like, this is the best feeling. It feels so good,
and they're just like dying like the whole time. They
just look like absolute shit, which does seem to also
be what happens to people who just embrace conservative politics,

(09:36):
Like they look like shit, but they also live forever.
They also have force lightning powers. They have fingers lightning
that comes out of their fingers.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
Yeah, they should call they should call whatever disease band.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
And Steve Bannon has the Palpatine. Yeah, he's got some.
He's Palpatine in big time.

Speaker 6 (09:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:55):
Well, your skin melts and you never die. M guy's
been drinking a couple of Palpatine to look at his
You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 4 (10:02):
Yeah, I know what you're saying.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
What is something from your search history that's revealing about
who you are?

Speaker 6 (10:08):
Sperm, whale, phonetic alphabet?

Speaker 1 (10:12):
Uh huh? I like you just you stopped listening. You
you're listening, but you stopped after sperm based on your right,
based on the noise you made you creep?

Speaker 6 (10:28):
Yeah yeah yeah. So do you guys have pets? Do
you like animals or are you monsters? Or what's going on?

Speaker 1 (10:35):
Like you're coming at us like like you're introducing the
concept of the animals to us. You've seen pet? Yeah? Yeah,
you can own an animal if you like that sucks? Yeah, well,
I love whales specifically, and I'm becoming more interested in

(10:57):
animals and what's going on there? What was it with them?
As I get older?

Speaker 6 (11:04):
Okay, all right, guys, this is the thing working on
a couple of recent recent episodes about the question of
can people talk with animals? You know, we know humans
are animals. They're just kind of stuck up, right, But
instead of talking at or two your pooch, your dogg o,

(11:28):
your furred, feathered or scaly friends, can you speak with them?
Can there be an equal peer to peer conversation or discourse?
This turns out to be pretty crazy because a lot
of the research is under fire, right, Like Coco the
gorilla is a famous example, or Alex the African gray parrot.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yeah, I thought we're like having conversations about coc with
Coco the gorilla.

Speaker 6 (11:56):
Right this podcast Roger r Right, Yeah, because you guys
bumped to Robin Williams, I think, and mister.

Speaker 1 (12:06):
Rogers Williams covid agrilla finding out Robin Williams.

Speaker 6 (12:12):
Dot Yeah, that's apparently a bit of a confirmation bias
on the behalf of the very well intentioned scientists. No, honestly, however,
I'm waving my hand like I can just sort of say,
these are not the droids you're looking for. Whatever. What

(12:34):
we did find was that in recent quite recent years,
researchers have leveraged large language models algorithms AI per Will
Smith uh to analyze the communication of different types of cetaceans,

(12:55):
specifically sperm whales, and it turns out that they might
have a language. So my search history is fucking rocked
and ruined because I had to put the word sperm
into all these research to things. And our buddy somewhere
at the n essay is like, okay, sperm whale, sure, man,

(13:17):
all right, but whales might be able, might have a
language that humans can translate and maybe maybe talk with them.

Speaker 7 (13:29):
Yeah, sperm whales must be even harder to study because
there they live so deep in the ocean, right, Like,
it must be hard to listen to them. I'm saying
that as if I'm concerned, God, this is gonna be
so much work going into this.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
Well, they got to come up sometime. That's what I
always say. I'm a whaler, I should say that I whales,
And so I just sit there at the surface with
a harpoon saying the sometime.

Speaker 6 (13:52):
Brother Melville of podcasts, Yeah, they call you.

Speaker 8 (13:56):
That's so, that's wild that the so when the apes
were doing sign language, was it like the uh like
sign language interpreters who will go behind a speech and like,
actually not no sign language and just be doing like

(14:17):
and we just assume they're actually doing it when just
because we don't speak sign language.

Speaker 6 (14:23):
First of those folks who are on the forefront of comedy, yes,
they could never.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (14:32):
Secondly, you are absolutely correct. The controversy goes into the
concept of interpretation, right like Clever Haun's the world's most
famous math horse.

Speaker 1 (14:46):
Right, the math horse, I've heard is purely just like
they were looking at their owner or like the human
that they knew, and like interpreting their faith as that's
what they want me to say.

Speaker 9 (14:59):
Clop clop clop whatever. Clever, I've never heard of this thing.
You never heard all of my favorite things, Clever Hans.
The math horse is like a drug, Like you just
gave me a hallucinogenic drug by saying those words. Sorry, Clevers,
the math horts all right, yeah, I gotta tap out

(15:20):
of this one.

Speaker 6 (15:21):
No, you got it, you got it.

Speaker 1 (15:22):
It's too much for me. That'd be a great nickname
that like for a boxer. Yes, Hans, Clever Hans the
math Horse. It can be Clever Hans or math Horse.

Speaker 7 (15:38):
You can't be so greedy that you have Clever Hans
the math hoarts.

Speaker 6 (15:42):
I mean you would have to be very good at
boxing to support that Moniker.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
Sting, the Man of Iron, Clever Hans the math.

Speaker 7 (15:53):
Yes, this boxer keeps kicking us with his hind legs.

Speaker 6 (15:58):
Guys, do you think he knows that he's boxing or
is he just looking at his trainer for ques? So yeah.
The controversy, as we learned with Coco in particular and
with other primate experiments, was that people thought she could
understand something like two thousand spoken words in English and

(16:21):
communicate them through some version of sign language that I'm
making up here. And the idea then became that she
was able to connect words to make concepts, which is
a very human type of communication. So she might know
the word for trash and then the word for cat,
and then you'd show her a raccoon and she would say, oh,

(16:43):
trash cat, and people are like, that's you're fucking amazing.

Speaker 1 (16:47):
That's so smart. She's basically a poet, that's actually what
we should call raccoons. And well.

Speaker 6 (16:55):
That's the search history. It's ruined sperm alphabet. It's it's
over for me, you guys.

Speaker 1 (17:02):
Sperm moulphabet done. Yeah, I've heard, I've read like studies Okay,
I listen to them on the podcast about like prairie
voles being or prairie dogs, one of the prairie animals
having pretty complex or like easy to decode languages and
like that they were able to like figure out that
one of them was like for color, so like somebody

(17:25):
they'd be like, okay, yellow guy coming and red guy coming,
and it's all, yeah, it's little chirps. But they they
were able to record enough of them and get a
sense of like they had words for like attack from
above and you know, red shirt got attack from red
shirt guys.

Speaker 2 (17:44):
From red shirt guy attacked a shirt guy.

Speaker 1 (17:46):
Yeah, the scientists maybe should have stopped attacking them. I
feel like, not good science. What is something you think
is overrated? Kyle? Uh?

Speaker 10 (17:58):
Those I could right?

Speaker 1 (18:01):
Oh? Hell yes, those fucking jubilie videos not that one.

Speaker 10 (18:05):
I hate you believe videos so much?

Speaker 5 (18:08):
Did you?

Speaker 6 (18:08):
I hate them?

Speaker 1 (18:09):
I hate them.

Speaker 10 (18:10):
I can't tell when they're satire or not. I don't
think they're helpful. Maybe I'm wrong and too closed off
and too like, uh pessimistic about it, but ultimately I'm
just like, who's the who's It's just to me, it's
it's like, uh.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
Musical chairs for a bigot.

Speaker 10 (18:25):
Who's the fastest bigot? Not even fastest quickest And then
they come in and there every one of them is like, hey,
will you ever change your mind? And that person goes no,
and then they're like, all right, we should talk over
each other for a minute, right, which is pretty fun.

Speaker 11 (18:38):
Have you seen Yaser Lester's thing that he photoshopped him
in the surrounded background and he was like one light
skinned n word versus a bunch of white conservatives.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
But they don't know.

Speaker 12 (18:49):
I got a gun on me.

Speaker 1 (18:51):
See I would watch that.

Speaker 10 (18:54):
I get so I really and it's it's something that
I'm not happy to admit I find unhelped because maybe
it is just me closing myself off and it feels
like a very sort of like, I don't know, I
feel very pessimistic to be like, I find these wildly unhelpful,
and I'm sure I'm very open to being incorrect about it,
But god, I have never seen a clip of them
and thought this helped anyone at all, except everyone could

(19:16):
sit at home and be like, uh huh.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
Yeah he told you. Both sides are getting like our
being like yeah, exactly.

Speaker 10 (19:24):
Yeah, it's another launch where everyone feels right.

Speaker 11 (19:26):
I think, like I watch a lot of the like
political commentators online, and I think they helped me with
talking points. So in terms of like understanding talking points
or history, then I'm like, okay, like I didn't know
about that or like this other argument or whatever. But
I also think that the people involved are like very
happy to debate, and I'm like unhappy to debate in that.

(19:49):
I think in that I think we shouldn't have to
fucking debate human rights, you know what I mean. So
I think that that's the part where I'm like, Okay,
this is a bit self indulgent in that, yeah, like
maybe it'll help more people like understand like the history
of the talking points, like the politics of it all,
but also like we're not super changing any minds on there,

(20:10):
and it does give these fascists a platform, Like now
I know some of the faces of these fascists, but people.

Speaker 10 (20:17):
Are submitting to being fascist and I find it to
be like you were saying the what we have normalized.
I hate saying stuff like normalized. I hate you know
what I mean, you feel crazy using what we have
allowed to be the normal debate is so far outside
of what is like reasonable or or.

Speaker 12 (20:34):
Or anything like Hitler debates.

Speaker 10 (20:37):
Right, We're not debating like an allocation of taxes in
a community versus near a city or something where you're like,
I could you know, We're we're allowing equal footing to
such there is an objectively correct and incorrect answer that
we're allowing people to talk about like there isn't and
it involves people being alive, and then someone's monetizing it,
of course, But it's just I am maybe I just

(21:01):
want to get booked on one. I don't know, I'm tired.
What's overrated? This YouTube show that won't book me.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
They on the clip of this and they're like, Kyle
has been we had to restraint get a restraining order
against always want.

Speaker 11 (21:19):
We're like, wow, we were really unsure of which side
Kyle it was on this whole time.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
He said, please don't do the work.

Speaker 10 (21:31):
It's one of the it was one of the things
I felt a little bit guilty about feeling is overrated,
if that makes sense. But I'm just sort of like
it makes me I don't think we are. It doesn't
feel healthy. It doesn't feel healthy, and it feels like
you you make you think something is equal if you
are giving it a platform like that.

Speaker 1 (21:48):
Yeah, like it's it feels like it comes from the
same place as people being like, what, we don't need
moderators on Reddit because like this is free speech and
then you just like get shouted down by like thirty
fascists and it's it does. I think it helps my
visual imagination for like what fascists can look like.

Speaker 12 (22:12):
Yeah, I was gonna say that, Okay.

Speaker 1 (22:14):
They do have glasses like that.

Speaker 12 (22:16):
I'm like, it's your local NB barista.

Speaker 1 (22:19):
Yes, it certainly is.

Speaker 10 (22:21):
That has been a jarring discovery is on mute, not
knowing who would believe what has been a tough thing
to come to right where it used to be, you know,
on mute, I know who's got a tiki torch right exactly.

Speaker 1 (22:34):
They all kind of all those tiki torch guys looked
like I would expect people caring tiki torches to look like,
and now they look like Hawaiian.

Speaker 11 (22:44):
Yeah, exactly, they wouldn't appropriate, right.

Speaker 1 (22:48):
They look they look like the stars of sitcoms that
had like special we go to Hawaii episodes from like
the nineteen fifty Yeah, you know, some producer wanted to
go on vacation. They're like, we're actually having a nice
store arch here. But yeah, they hipsters can be fascist
too frequently they are, according to Jubilee videos. That's that's
what I've learned.

Speaker 12 (23:09):
I also, I.

Speaker 11 (23:11):
Also can't tell like I understand what you mean by
like not normalizing it or like wanting people to have shame,
but also like as a brown person, like I would
rather know what people actually believe in their hearts. And
I've had interpersonal experiences where I where somebody's fully switched
up on me and I'm like, okay, so that's in
my neighborhood. That's good. Like I would rather fucking know

(23:33):
you know, yeah, sure do you like hate watch them?

Speaker 10 (23:37):
I have really really tried to cut out of my
life doing that with things, but it's sometimes they really
you know, a certain back and like the one that
was just the guy going, yeah I'm a fascist, Yeah, I'm.

Speaker 1 (23:48):
A one nationalist.

Speaker 10 (23:49):
You can't avoid that and so I saw, yes, I
saw a lot of clip from his clips from his
of the various people.

Speaker 12 (23:54):
But especially him to go leave like, yeah.

Speaker 10 (23:58):
You just sort like I don't know, maybe I just
but I mean he.

Speaker 11 (24:03):
Kind of has a similar view because he was saying
like when one of them was like, yeah, I'm a
fashionst he's like stopped. K He's like, I don't have
conversations fascist.

Speaker 1 (24:11):
Oh you just like.

Speaker 10 (24:13):
Appreciated that I I have. So I commend the people
who can sit there and do that. And I just
I think rationing, Oh, ultimately, I feel guilt about the
amount of consumption you do and what you cut out
and what you're aware of and things like that all
the time. And then I'm also trying to like take
care of myself in a physical and manner and you're

(24:35):
just like it's crazy to small picture and big picture
yourself through all of this. It's very difficult thing to
to balance.

Speaker 12 (24:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
I did like and this is probably a bad thing
that this is what gave me like hope was that
the guy who he was like, oh, I don't debate
with fascist fascists. Are you a fascist? And he was like, yeah,
I'm a fascist, and like started like ugly laughing they are. Yeah,
he got fired from his job, and like I was like, oh,

(25:01):
so there's like still some institutions.

Speaker 11 (25:03):
But then he started to go fund me where he
raised like a fuck ton of money for being a
fascist that's true, which is like that isn't That's the
thing where I'm like, this is encouraging people to like
try to become like influencers and like make politics content.
And that's that's the part that I'm like, if you
don't fucking know or hear a bad person, just stay out.

Speaker 10 (25:24):
Like there is something it seems like you that is
a new It's like a quick quicker than going on
our dating reality show or The Bachelor or something, is
to go and go viral in a jubilee moment and
launch yourself into something that's right.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
I do want to like see what the process is
for like putting those rooms together, like to where are
they going? Like is it what pool are they fishing from?

Speaker 10 (25:45):
You know, they're going to these They're going to these
cities that uh, fascists and Republicans love to live in
that they say they hate.

Speaker 11 (25:51):
Right, they also like they're also influencers before like a
lot of them.

Speaker 10 (25:57):
Are like to get the other people who sit.

Speaker 11 (25:59):
Yeah, a lot of them have either been like worked
for Jubilee, Like some of the people are like picked
by Jubilee multiple times. Some of them are like podcast
hosts or something like. Some of them are already like
they'll take Dale Kyle.

Speaker 1 (26:13):
There might be a chance.

Speaker 12 (26:15):
Yeah, yeah, burned up.

Speaker 10 (26:16):
He was one guy keeps trying to do movie puns.
He keeps saying the Wolf of Wally Street in the
Jubilee video about order cultural I do appreciate all it is,
just it's such an odd feeling for me, and I

(26:37):
don't know what it is about them that feels bad
and weird and he's terrible. Yeah you do, but there
is something to like it's just like jarring. You just
never thought you would see people be like, yeah, dude,
I'm a fascist. You never think you'd see someone say that.
But then it's like it's so normal now. I guess
I don't know.

Speaker 11 (26:55):
Yeah, I'm like, honestly, I think the moment of political
shock I had was the twenty sixteen and like I
had an experience just like that SNL moment where like
Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle were like, yeah, this is
what America is. And all the white people were like
what because I was with like my white friends and
we were all freaked out. And then I like later
in the night, I was like out of mic where
it was like a lot of black people and they
were like laughing and they were like, yeah, this is

(27:16):
just normal for America. So since then, I haven't been shocked. Yeah,
I haven't been shocked at anything, honestly since then.

Speaker 10 (27:24):
Yeah, shock is hard to have. Yeah, you just it's
weird that I let myself continually have disappointment.

Speaker 12 (27:31):
I think that's beautiful though.

Speaker 1 (27:32):
Let's disappointed. Yeah, it proves that there's like some hope inside. Yeah,
all right, let's take a quick break. We'll come back.
We got to get to the big story. Travis and
Taylor are married. Well, we'll be right back.

Speaker 5 (27:45):
Geez, and we're back.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
I still that still goes. It started. It does start
a zoom call with a friend or maybe a new
acquaintance or they always it still still works. The great
podcaster Matt Appadaka, who we now work with, has really

(28:21):
shown me the he's gonna I'm making it sound like
he was the first person to do I think I
started doing it, but he approved it, and that's that's huge.
I don't want to just smirch his good name.

Speaker 6 (28:32):
That guy's name sounds like a spell.

Speaker 1 (28:34):
It is it is actually, yeah, he is a it's
a it's a Harry Potter. I don't know Harry Potter
well enough to make a reference, so I just said
it's a Harry Potter. Then maybe shut your mouth. Maybe
shut your your muggle mouth. Waters you don't swim well

(28:56):
enough to tread or somebody, uh ben, what's something he
thinks underrated for right now?

Speaker 6 (29:03):
Mustaches? We we scooped ourselves a bit in the beginning,
but we spent some time pissing off our producer off
air because I have a mustache that my girlfriend is
clowning me so hard about. I did the grown thing,
you know. I shaved and went through, as you said, Jack,

(29:24):
the permutations, and I got a oh, I got I
got told that I look I got roasted heart. So
I got told I look so Belgian that I might
do with Belgium. I have specific opinions about chocolate, French
fries and King Leopold.

Speaker 7 (29:47):
Uh yeah, and worst of all, yeah, and it's kind
of a wide mustache.

Speaker 1 (29:54):
It does. You could be wearing a like old timey
one piece bathing costume and that must I feel like
and lifting like a bar barbell then has round weights
on the edg end of it. Yeah, or triangle, you
know what I mean. Like it's that's that's kind of
what I'm picturing. It does. It does like kind of

(30:14):
change your vibe in a fun way. I do like it.
I like non mustache, Ben, also, you know I don't.

Speaker 6 (30:21):
That's very kind, you know, next time I'll go whatever
the old Old Testament thing is where it's the beard
without the mustache and it's just like the what's that
what's that called the chin strap thing? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (30:33):
Yeah, chin strap neck beard, old chin strap neck beard.

Speaker 6 (30:37):
I feel like there's a specific Amish or Mormon name
for it. Yeah, that sounds fancier.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
You've come to the right place if you want the
Mormon name for the Yeah, your side general, Yeah, yeah,
it does feel it feels civil worry and that one
what is something, Ben? Do you think is overrated?

Speaker 6 (31:00):
La boo boo? Are you guys familiar with this boo boo?

Speaker 1 (31:06):
They're making the greatest leboo boo? Yeah, we're we're familiar
as people who have a podcast about the zeitgeist. Yeah,
we've been aware of this one.

Speaker 6 (31:19):
So I was. I was overseas recently, and uh, the
the lea boo boo thing was again like, you know,
let's be honest with this mustache. I look at the guy.
I look like the guy who is a cop at
the protest trying to be cool, you know, like, hey, guys,

(31:39):
you will be You would be really kick ass if
we all exchange names, addresses and you know, like places
we go routinely.

Speaker 1 (31:48):
Yeah. Yeah, and so with that know the tricks.

Speaker 6 (31:53):
So he's he's uh, he's real plugged in. Uh, I
am very plugged out. I learned about La boolo like
anybody else who was uncool, by getting yelled at about
it by people cooler than me. And I realized there
is this global conspiracy of people carrying around the boulos

(32:18):
and they're like fucking Freemasons.

Speaker 1 (32:20):
Man.

Speaker 6 (32:20):
They just nodded at each other. They have a hang
in from like their bags or their backpacks, and then
and I don't know if they have a secret handshake,
Like I don't know how deep this goes, but I
do think it's overrated.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
And you said the pronunciation of it in particular.

Speaker 6 (32:39):
Oh, no, I added pronunciation as overrated because you said
you one time pronounced.

Speaker 1 (32:45):
On wei oh.

Speaker 6 (32:47):
Yeah, so that's another thing I think is overrated. Pronunciation
is yeah, pronunciations, pronunciation in general over it.

Speaker 1 (32:56):
Yeah. By the way, we have learned from super was
her Catherine that the beard no mustache is called the
whaler appropriately.

Speaker 6 (33:05):
Enough Whaler Melville.

Speaker 1 (33:09):
So I guess I gotta see what that looks like.
That was a type of facial hair that I experimented
with a young No. Yeah, really, big god, big Mike. Yeah,
it was it was. It was more. It was like
pre when I could grow a full beard. So it's
just like sha shaggy with whiskers. Shaggy Whispers is what I.

Speaker 6 (33:32):
Wanted to Shaggy Whispers versus the math Horse.

Speaker 1 (33:37):
Okay, yeah, Shaggy Whispers is my h slash fiction about
the Scooby Doo universe.

Speaker 7 (33:45):
Yeah, hotel all book, Shaggy Whispers.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
That's all right. Let's should we get into the the
old Well that's not good update of the day. Well
that's not what I h but what you want to
hear from a doctor. And also, you know the opening
line of a news story written by a Canadian about
your country. Well that's not goodive. Yes, So, just weeks

(34:15):
after being confirmed CDC Haad, Susan Miniaz has been fired.
She was initially asked to resign but refused and was
fired by HHS, which I guess. She was like, I
can't really be fired by them. I would need to
be fired by the president and he was like, okay,
I don't know if you remember who the president is.

(34:37):
It's kind of my thing. It's my favorite thing now. Yeah.

Speaker 10 (34:43):
Ye.

Speaker 1 (34:45):
So she was fired because Susan Monias is not aligned
with the president's agenda of making America healthy again. And
this was because she wouldn't quote rubber stamp vaccine recommendations.
That quote flew in the face of science, which is bad.
Like we had a CENTERI it might be coming, it's

(35:05):
it's just going in a real worst case scenario direction
with RFK junior As that we had a sense maybe
I don't know, putting this, putting a guy who was
a vaccine skeptic kind of famously that was what he
was famous for, putting him in charge of health care
for the entire country, that that could go badly. But
it seems like things are going very badly. Several other

(35:29):
CDC senior officials have resigned as a result this. I'm
somewhere between can't these fucking idiots do a single thing right?
And can't these fucking idiots do a single thing that
isn't exactly the wrongest thing you could possibly do at
that moment? You know, Like it's like I'm not even
asking that they do it right. It's like just that

(35:50):
they not be fucking like just exactly wrong seeking missiles.

Speaker 6 (35:56):
That's the issue, right, How at what threshold? What threshold
does incompetence become intentional malevolence?

Speaker 5 (36:07):
Right?

Speaker 2 (36:08):
Like?

Speaker 6 (36:08):
Yeah, how randomly can one random?

Speaker 1 (36:12):
That's my reaction to this. This is so random? Oh
my god, you guys, this is random.

Speaker 6 (36:20):
We are winning the lotteries of bad choices, you know
those in college.

Speaker 1 (36:26):
A lot of the girls I do would like to
refer to things as random, and I think that is
the funniest way to possibly just refer to this. Oh
my god, this presidency is so random. Randy rand one
of them, would say, and that person is a gene
whoever came up with Randy Randos? Is this genie?

Speaker 5 (36:50):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (36:50):
A g But yeah, I don't know that. We also
learned this week that they're scaling back food safety monitors
finally for food born disease. And you've been pushing for
this for a.

Speaker 7 (37:01):
While then, ye.

Speaker 6 (37:05):
You up in Sinclair. Yeah, you know how it is.
You walk through a grocery store. Why shouldn't it be
a casino? You know what I mean. I'm an Aisle twelve.
I'm in Aisle eleven. We got some canned stuff?

Speaker 1 (37:20):
Is it beatens?

Speaker 6 (37:21):
Let's roll the goddamn dice.

Speaker 5 (37:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (37:24):
Splash guards are fucking constricting.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
I want the food sitting out.

Speaker 7 (37:29):
I want nothing to stop my spit, my clean American
spit from getting on this food that I don't know
how long it's been out for.

Speaker 1 (37:36):
It's none of my business.

Speaker 6 (37:38):
Yeah, right, If we needed to guard the food, yes,
let's put the National Guard there.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
We've got the garden, this clear plastic. Yes, more national Guard,
More national Guard, the only, uh, the only protection against
the salad with a bad with some cough on.

Speaker 6 (38:03):
It's a National Guard member.

Speaker 1 (38:06):
Sounds good? Sound good?

Speaker 6 (38:11):
Justin please fix that and post.

Speaker 1 (38:14):
Right, that's easily fixable, right.

Speaker 5 (38:19):
Post.

Speaker 1 (38:19):
Could you make me sound smart insane? Thanks very much?
Could you sound like less like I'm on the verge
of just buckling under the pressure of our collapsing society.
Thanks Justin, seein, thanks Justin.

Speaker 6 (38:33):
CDC is in Atlanta, So this is uh, this is
a matter of local import right with with I would argue,
of course national but indeed global consequences, right.

Speaker 1 (38:49):
Ripples replacing it with a bass pro shop. Yeah, I
not feeling they could like redesign the CDC to like
have more of a pro shop vibe there. Now, ye.

Speaker 6 (39:06):
When you guys have him on the show, he'll be like,
fun fact about me my house used to be. Do
you guys remember the Center for Disease Control of Prevention,
remember back then.

Speaker 1 (39:17):
So just a little bit more on the food, the
food stuff, because this is one of those things that
is like fairly invisible. Like a lot a lot of
the jobs that are being taken away and like you know,
the government spending that's being cut. Are these things that
are like just don't get any attention, and like Donald
Trump is only cares about things that get ratings, and
so these are the invisible you know, scaffolding behind the

(39:42):
scenes that like saves people's lives. And it just under
a Trump administration where you know, as we talked about
in the run up to the election. Like the scary
thing about this second administration. The first administration he like
you remember that first meeting with Obama where he was like,
what the fuck just happened? And he seems scared, and

(40:03):
he was like, I'm gonna let the professionals handle this one.
Like I kind of did this as a joke, and
it took him a while to like ramp up his
indignation about not being able to like, you know, do
whatever he wanted. And now he is doing whatever he wants,
and it's he's not meant to lead eat a complicated

(40:25):
government that is saving many people's lives in very boring ways.
He's just like he doesn't have the attention span for it. So,
you know, the doctor Jay Glenn Morris, whose name I
don't know, never wanted to know, the director of Emerging
Pathogen Institute at the University of Florida, is you know,
making sense of this and has said that he helped

(40:48):
create food Net in nineteen ninety five, and we've been
benefiting from it unknowingly for the past however many years
it's been since nineteen ninety five, I've got to think
at least anyways, he said essentially CDC is backing off
one of their best surveillance systems. And this article that
is in I think it's like on CBS dot com.

(41:11):
But it just keeps adding there like, which is bad
because in April, Reuters reported that the Food and Drug
Administration was suspending a quality control program for testing dairy products.
A week before that, Reuters reported that the Trump administration
was suspending a quality control program for its food testing
laboratories as a result of staff cuts. That news came

(41:32):
two weeks after, and it just keeps going with the
Department of Health and Human Services announced wide ranging cutbacks
at federal health agencies, including scientists who tested food and
drugs for contamination of or deadly bacteria. That news came
two weeks after The Times reported the FDA delayed by
nearly three years implementation of a requirement. And this is

(41:56):
kind of a harsh requirement, Like this is anti bitiness,
all right, when when I explain it, you'll understand why
they had to cut a requirement that food companies and
grossers rapidly trace contaminated food through the supply chain and
pull it off the shelves. Okay, guys, brother, let's not
go crazy here.

Speaker 6 (42:16):
Wow, all right or well yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:18):
The day before that, The Times published the newspaper ran
a related article that at the FDA freeze on government
credit card spending. They were just like they froze the
FDA's credit cards that they used to like fund their research.
They froze that so they could no longer staff. It
impeded staff members from buying food to perform routine tests

(42:41):
for deadly bacteria.

Speaker 7 (42:42):
So like they were they my wife freezing credit cards.
I know, the hell right, let me spend that's my
draft King's credit card.

Speaker 6 (42:51):
Baby, Yeah, did you not think about the cash back?

Speaker 1 (42:57):
The list keeps going. The Times also reported that the
administration a slow stopped some food testing of grocery adams
for hazardous bacteria, monitoring monitoring of shellfish. So so far,
the specific ones that they've stopped monitoring our dairy and shellfish.

Speaker 6 (43:11):
You got to keep an eye on them.

Speaker 1 (43:13):
Yeah, those are the two. Those are two of the
ones that I want somebody to keep an eye on.
I feel like, you know.

Speaker 6 (43:18):
Yeah. Also, just to be clear, we are doing gallows humor.
There is no whistle like a graveyard whistle, So I
think it's safe to say that we are fans of
this kind of infrastructure. It's kind of like how if
you're a human, you don't notice that your heart is
beating all the time right until it's not, and that's

(43:41):
when you run into a problem.

Speaker 1 (43:43):
This kind of stuff is, man, you just thinking about
it your head.

Speaker 6 (43:48):
Don't get in your head about it's happening.

Speaker 1 (43:52):
I don't like it. I don't like it anytime. If
you want to know what it was like to smoke
weed with me, the answer we do. And we think
it's going too fast. I think it's going to fast.

Speaker 10 (44:08):
I see everything.

Speaker 1 (44:09):
I can't tell you can deep enough breath? Do?

Speaker 6 (44:15):
My hands? Are? They are?

Speaker 1 (44:17):
They are? They are? They are? My heads?

Speaker 6 (44:21):
But this is this is pretty uh, pretty concerning, and
I don't I obviously I don't think any of us
want to feel like a baton death march or whatever.
But the the stuff that is getting cut, I think
really speaks to you, guys idea about incompetence versus malevolence,

(44:43):
Like how can you be that specifically bad at innocuous
things that often?

Speaker 1 (44:53):
I think I yesterday we were talking about this thing
that Trump's doing with the with environmental policy, where he's
like keeps saying well, windmills like don't work when the
wind stops blowing, and the you know, you can't have
energy proofs by windmill, and like really and like the
windmills are killing whales, and like these things that seem

(45:15):
really dumb and like have no scientific backing, but they
come from a bunch of research, like millions of dollars
of research being done by the smartest people, Like the
smartest Ivy League graduates all come out, and the jobs
that pay the most are like going to work for
oil companies and doing research on like how to counter

(45:39):
program like messaging about climate change, how to react right,
how to redact research. I'm a professional redactor. I make
nine hundred thousand dollars a year. So like there's all
this energy and money being put into whatever is going
to make the most money in that case, like getting

(45:59):
rid of any any environmental policies that stand in the
way of oil companies making as much money as they
possibly can. And I think with ship like this, where
like these policies get in the way of food companies
being able to make as much money as they want to,
and they're like annoying to food companies to have to
like pay attention to this ship. So all this stuff

(46:21):
that seems like malevolence is just them doing the you know,
taking away of any policies that get in the way
of companies, you know, get in the way of money
like flowing as quickly and you know, frictionlessly as possible
to the biggest corporations. Like I think that's where all

(46:41):
of this is coming.

Speaker 6 (46:42):
From regulation to re capture.

Speaker 1 (46:44):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 7 (46:46):
And another scary thing too, like getting back to is
it manaras Is that how you pronounced Susan's Yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:51):
That's what I heard a newscasters say it that way,
and that's what we're going with.

Speaker 7 (46:55):
That's what we're that's what that's what Wolfe said. So
that's that's the same who you can't stop watching. But
my favorite, that's the scariest thing is that she is
someone who's fucked up enough for Trump to be okay
to appoint to that position to begin with, and this
person E won't even this is a bridge too far.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
And what they're asking her to do a Trump appointee.
She's like, well, that's gonna like be so bad, right, Like,
obviously I can't do that, And they're like, well, then
you're fired.

Speaker 7 (47:25):
If this is not a holdover from like the Jimmy Carter, No,
this is fresh, this is a fresh hire. I take
a D plus at this point, like you said, like
like a heat seeking missile for like being wrong. It's
not even like we're asking for an A plus, you know,
because that's impossible. It's like anything but an F minus,

(47:47):
Like if you can get a deeper it's possible.

Speaker 1 (47:51):
Yeah, But well, I think we're inside a system that
has been fucked by unregulated capitalism for decades and decades,
and so anything that is just worsening that is going
to seem like it's exactly the wrong thing, because it is.
It's exactly the worst possible thing that could happen to

(48:12):
the country at this point. But because our options are
either the existing market driven thing that everybody we now
have like three decades where people are like no more
of that, and you know, there's no opportunity for socialism
or like they'll find a way to like try and
fight that away. So there's no like official version of

(48:34):
like a left wing opposition. The only other option is fascism,
and so that's what we now.

Speaker 6 (48:40):
Have, yes, yeah, yeah, the final resort, right of fear
I think also, DearS, I gained how how the US
slipped from descriptions of civilians to consumers. You hear that right?
What happened to the pension? It became a four oh
one k, which comprises no less than forty percent of

(49:04):
the stock market. Let me look, sorry, guys, I stumbled
on this soapbox. Let me step off this.

Speaker 1 (49:09):
Yeah, get up there.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
Careful, careful, careful, careful.

Speaker 6 (49:14):
Oh jeez, Well, we're speaking to the choir while those
are still allowed right in modern day America.

Speaker 1 (49:22):
And how weird is.

Speaker 7 (49:23):
The only choir that's actually the music We're going to
have its choirs.

Speaker 6 (49:29):
That's a good point.

Speaker 1 (49:31):
Your universal basic income, you will have to go sing
in the choir.

Speaker 6 (49:35):
Oh gosh, yeah, full handmaide's tail. But how could this,
how could this be a thing? We cut like who
learns about the idea of food born illness and says.

Speaker 1 (49:51):
I don't know, man kind of corporations whose jobs for
whom it is expensive to not do food born illnesses?
I think those are the people. And yeah, but that
would be my that would be my assumption, because yeah,
it does. It does seem almost like when you're just
viewing it out of context, is like it seems weird
that they keep doing exactly the wrong thing, like on purpose.

(50:14):
But yeah, the the vaccine thing, I don't like that.
That one's just like ideologically driven incorrect. Is going to
kill a lot of people in a way that like
seems like it's pretty going to be pretty transparently their fault.
But this that's not going to help.

Speaker 7 (50:33):
It seems to me where this is always to your point,
it's either business and money or quote unquote traditional values.
And I'm going to push actually back against you, Jack,
where I think this is a traditional values thing where
they want to get back to the era of getting
so sick whenever you eat, you know, like yeah, pray
and then like have a doctor travel by foot from.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (50:56):
Yeah, blood lighting, like we need to bring back blood
letting make them out America again.

Speaker 1 (51:01):
Make America die from diarrhea again exactly. Yeah, diarrhea death
by diarrhea.

Speaker 7 (51:08):
Yeah, MySpace dot com slash diarrhea Death's happened.

Speaker 6 (51:13):
I love it, my Space diary. But this is how it.
This is how it happens. It's never gonna be a
full frontal thing. It's gonna be some information management on
you know, whatever your local favorite Fox News is where
someone uh, someone says, hey, uh this just in toilet
paper prices are through the roof, which has a lot

(51:36):
of people talking about whether diarrhea is good for you.
We're going now to the last doctor.

Speaker 1 (51:46):
Or just the last doctor, final, the last doctor. Way.
Many people die of diarrhea every year, I should say,
especially young children. Right, Yeah, well, there's gonna be more Yeah,
it should be more common. It should be a thing
that we're all talking about. You know, that's the issue,
because it's funny, and that'll be funny. That'll make things funnier,
make them and unavoidable. Can we avoid this? We're making

(52:10):
We're making comedy legal again.

Speaker 6 (52:12):
Folks, make America goufaugh again.

Speaker 7 (52:15):
You can't say anything anymore. We'll be right back. You're
listening to the Daily zeitchece on the iHeartMedia Network.

Speaker 1 (52:20):
I was waiting for it.

Speaker 7 (52:22):
Ninety three point three WMMR. That's the Philadelphia radio station,
who which I do get money every time I promote them.

Speaker 1 (52:29):
Money here and we're back, And I feel like World
War two probably the most like depicted movie or war

(52:50):
in the history of film, maybe the most depicted event
in the history possibly film Vietnam is probably doesn't have
as many movies, but I feel like it's so iconic,
like it's so like it exists because of these like
classic movies that depicted Vietnam. We were talking about how

(53:12):
the song Fortunate Son, like if you hear that, you
picture yourself descending in a helicopter above like Rice Patties,
like I think from Forrest Gump. Maybe, but the current
wars that are like being fought by America like don't
exist in the same way. I feel like I'm just
curious to like hear you guys thoughts on like why

(53:34):
that might be the case or might not, Like why,
you know, I think Vietnam ended. I sound like Walter
from Big Lebowski Now, it like had a fairly definitive end,
and then people started making movies about it, like after
the fact a little bit, like you know, while Viennam
was happening, they made mash but it was like about

(53:56):
the Korean War because they didn't want to like actually
touch that. And so maybe it's just that like we're
still doing this like in the Middle East, and so
people can't deal.

Speaker 2 (54:06):
I think I think, yeah, I think the forever war
part of it is really big because there's no ability
to get closure or distance. And I you know, there
was the spat of like very ambitious prestigee war movies
that I feel like really started up around the second
Bush term that the audience just went like, no fucking

(54:29):
way to all of this, right, Like movies like Rendition
and like Stop Loss and things that were very earnest
and like we're really we need to dig into this,
and people were just like, don't don't want to talk
about any of this, no thing, we got no distance,
We're stuck in it. I don't want to be reminded
of it. Yeah, you know, I think there was a
very similar thing of people trying to make things about

(54:50):
the lockdown during the lockdown exactly. You know, where the
studios were like, oh, it's great, we'll do a sitcom
over Zoom and it's about friends hanging out over Zoom
and it's like, I don't want to fucking watch this. Yeah,
And I don't want to watch it five years later anymore.
I don't want to relive that.

Speaker 1 (55:04):
You know, it took ice Cubes the War of the
World's for us to finally come to terms with it
and want to watch it. Finally, finally we under theres
something too.

Speaker 2 (55:13):
There was such confusion around Vietnam, and I really think
that is a war that the movies processed for the
public in a way even more than anything else. There
was so much kind of like corruption and confusion and
smoke screening, even with journalism and government and everything at
the time that I think there was just something with

(55:35):
that timing out with the new Hollywood movement and studios
getting less controlling and artists coming in who are willing
to like touch the nerve where we all had to
kind of I say this, we all none of us
were fucking alive, but you know, the culture used movies
to work through this shit. And I think partially because
of Vietnam, not that all the reporting the government communication

(55:57):
was better in the forever wars has been at any point,
but there's been more of a collective conversation. And obviously
the growth of the Internet, the ability to not just
need to rely on what like one person is telling
us then makes it so that like, I don't need
a movie to fucking tell me about this, especially if
we don't yet have an endpoint that we can look

(56:17):
back on and step away and go what was this
all about, right, And I feel very similarly about like
last year, last two years in particular, there's a wave
of movies that feel very lockdown inspired to me that
I think are very pointedly not about the pandemic at
all explicitly, but like I weirdly think Oppenheimer very much

(56:38):
comes out of that, not just in the fear of
like a thing that can change the world forever, but
even in like the building of Los Alamos and everyone
needing to like create this bubble, and Barbie that same
year is like about this kind of bubbled living, you know,
and like relationship to culture. I think there were these
movies Asteroid Cities another one where like a lot of
our biggest commercial artists were making these moves that exist

(57:00):
in these small, like hypercharged bubbles of a brief moment.

Speaker 1 (57:04):
Los Almos in that is the NBA bubble, like that
in the metaphor.

Speaker 2 (57:09):
And like I love Eddington and it's a masterpiece, but
the public very much went no, thank you because it
was explicitly.

Speaker 1 (57:16):
About the Yeah.

Speaker 3 (57:17):
Well, and Superman also has a fairly clear metaphor floor
Palestine in Israel, which is like kind of incredible that
they got away with that especially in you know, something
like this.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
And James Gunn in interviews has been like, look, I
wrote this movie three years ago, Like you're all astounded
by how directly it maps onto Palestine and Israel. But
we've been in some version of this for decades. Hey,
the Palestine and Israel thing has been going on for decades.
But be there like seven other analogs. You can look
at Russian and Ukraine, you know. And I think it's
like we're more willing to process these types of things

(57:50):
as an element of Superman rather than making the whole
movie out of that.

Speaker 3 (57:55):
Totally, because it's too terrifying to look at it directly.
And also we're getting it directly aimed into our phones
as well, which changes every did like a response to it.

Speaker 2 (58:03):
And I mean, I think purt Locker is the only
war film to win Best Picture in the last twenty years.
I'd say, like explicitly war film. Uh, And that's a
movie that is a character study, right. It was the
only one that was well received in that run of films, right,
because it's not a political but it's about what it
is like to be a soldier in a war rather
than the war.

Speaker 1 (58:23):
Yeah, the other two that I think exists are American
Sniper and Zero Dark thirty. Yeah, and those are the
two where they can make America the hero, like you
know what I mean, Like they can find a way
one because they're just basing on a memoir of a
guy who's like making shit off kind of, and then
Zero Dark thirty is like, well, we're fucking killing Den Latton.

(58:43):
And obviously it's like, you know, more morally complex than that.
But I think that might but those two being the
only two that like broke through. An American Sniper broke
through in like a major wa like he was huge.

Speaker 2 (58:55):
But Zero Dark thirty was also like a very big
hit and was seen as the best Picture front runner
until many centers spoke out against it and kind of
like made it too much of a hot potato.

Speaker 1 (59:06):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I think those two breaking through
b makes it that Like that's where I get the
idea that it's like because we don't want to be complicit,
we don't like the fact that it's still happening. We
feel we feel guilty that it's still happening, and so
we just like need to just leave it over there
unless you can tell us the story where we're like,
oh hell yeah, We're like we're doing a thing that matters.

Speaker 2 (59:28):
I think also, like killing bin Laden closed a loop.
Oh yeah, you could break off a story. Yeah, exactly.
A movie I found very fascinating. But one of the
things I like about is the ending of the movie
is this kind of like Dustin Hawkins sitting in the
bus at the end of the graduate being like, fuck,
what do I do now?

Speaker 1 (59:46):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (59:47):
It has this very like striking ending of Jessica Chastain
having completed the thing clearly with this expression on her
face of like what now. I don't feel good. We
haven't solved this right, yeah, Like we're stuck in the
aftermath of this. We got the guy, but it doesn't
like vindicate anything.

Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
That's why I love Thin Red Line.

Speaker 3 (01:00:05):
The entire movie is mostly like beauty and confusion. You're
never there. It's like it's truly an anti war film
because at no point you're like, hey, that's pretty badass.
Actually yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
I Also it was like, right after hurt Locker, she's like,
I want to do the Bin Laden movie, and she
sets it up before they got him, she had written
it and cast it. Rooney Marrow was going to play
the Jessica Chestain part. They had like half of the
supporting cast set, they were prepping it, and then the
Seal Team six rate happened and she was like, I

(01:00:37):
got to rebuild the movie.

Speaker 1 (01:00:38):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
And the first version of movie I think would have
not worked at all beyond the fact of like imagining
it coming out in the world where there was an
ending that the movie wasn't acknowledging. I don't think anyone
in that moment would have wanted to see that, Whereas
the actual movie came out like two years after with
enough distance, and I think it was speaking to a
desire of like, if we're stuck in Forever Wars, is

(01:01:01):
there at least a way to break this into volumes
where we can start to process one thing as complete.

Speaker 3 (01:01:07):
This a new hope, Yeah, we'll store. A huge aspect
of storytelling is conclusion.

Speaker 1 (01:01:13):
We need, we need things.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
Resolved, and American Sniper has like a very dark resolution. Yes,
you know, by framing it around one guy and being
like and.

Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
He died right, oh yeah, tragically, and therefore you don't
have to like feel weird and like think about too
much what he was doing over there, because what he
was doing at the end was undoubtedly good. So we're
all good here, right, good?

Speaker 3 (01:01:35):
Yeah, yeah, right, have to ask a question, how do
we actually feel about sniping?

Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
We really love sniping?

Speaker 13 (01:01:41):
You know, two movies that come together are I'm thinking
of as we're talking through this is like where it's
like it doesn't really.

Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
Come to a conclusion, is a Cecario?

Speaker 13 (01:01:51):
Yeah, you know that that it's like this secret war,
just the shady side of how we're conducting ourselves as
a country and these other countries. And it's kind of
at the end like a shrug of just like hey, yeah,
this is fucked up.

Speaker 3 (01:02:08):
Yeah, which is like the opposite of propaganda basically, right right,
you know, But it connects to one of my favorite
Vietnam era movies, or sure of the Rambo films, which
start with a morally complex one about like the you know,
moral weight of like what we made soldiers do over there.

Speaker 2 (01:02:25):
This is the business end of the psychological trauma we
put people through.

Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
And then the second one he just goes back and
wins Vietnam. Yeah, and then Sacario has it to a
lesser degree, but it has a sequel that's just like fuck,
this is fun. This is like an amazing action movie
version of the first one without all the nasty guilt
and like ambiguity, ambiguity, and then like Predator I think
is a fascinating almost like response film too Rambo of sure.

Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
Oh so you guys just want to see the biggest
guy go in and solve the jungle, right right, like yeah,
fucking he's gonna get eat my monster. Right, we're like
walking into things we don't understand. Yeah, yeah, the ultimate ratifications.
If we're talking about war films with cultural staying power.
By the way, we should acknowledge the Infinity War and
the many heroes we lost in the blip. Okay, we

(01:03:16):
got them back, thankful.

Speaker 3 (01:03:17):
Yeah, well I'm still grieving. I mean, you know, I'm
sure we got him back. Never forget you never forget?

Speaker 1 (01:03:22):
Should we? Actually just a moment silence for the Yeah,
I think twenty minutes on the podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
But that's a war we got closure to.

Speaker 1 (01:03:32):
That's right, that's right.

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
Yeah, the good guy did the snap and everything's good now.

Speaker 6 (01:03:37):
I really my hope.

Speaker 3 (01:03:38):
Is that one day we'll be able to make movies so.

Speaker 1 (01:03:40):
Well we won't have to do war anymore. It'd be great,
that'd be pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (01:03:44):
I've always said the only solution to a bad guy
with a snap is a good guy with us.

Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
Speaking of the Avengers real quick, we'll do speed round
of a couple ideas I wanted to hit. Do you
guys buy into the idea that like sex has gone
away from movies and that like there's a great essay
everybody's beautiful, nobody's horny, or something along those lines that
talks about how like our blockbuster movies are full of
like attractive people who like don't even have like sexual energy.

(01:04:13):
Really they're not, like you don't think of them as
sexual beings, and that you like, we had a whole
genre of movies that was just like Michael Douglas fux
and like his Horny that's a whole type of movie.

Speaker 2 (01:04:27):
And those movies are like explicit in every sense. They
are like sexually visually explicit, but they are also like
textually explicit. Yes, I think the thing that we've lost
more is like movies that have sexual energy, right right,
Like one I think of all the time is Pelican
Brief where they cast Denzel Washington.

Speaker 6 (01:04:46):
The character in the book was white.

Speaker 2 (01:04:47):
Yes, everyone freaked out, even in fucking nineties America, they
were like people might revolt of Denzel Washington Julia Roberts kiss.
And so that is a movie that is loaded with
sexual chemistry that never actually like comes to a pass.
They were too worried about showing them visually do anything,
and yet the movie feels horny as right, right, And

(01:05:08):
I think almost all Hollywood movies used to have that, right, Like,
there is this innate voyeurism to films where it's like
we want to watch hot people beat together, yea, and
either they're doing stuff or we're like charging the space
in between them, like they do stuff?

Speaker 12 (01:05:24):
What if they did stuff?

Speaker 1 (01:05:25):
And it's also like.

Speaker 2 (01:05:27):
You know, a lot of this is I'm guilty of
this as well. A lot of this is blamed on
like is there a younger generation that is like more
skittich and like sort of anxious, you know, neurotic about
ideas of sex right and power dynamics and all this?
And is that why movies don't want to touch them?
But you're also like shipping culture has only increased for
the last twenty five years, you know, and like to

(01:05:47):
an extent where people are just like I like to
imagine that these two side characters that don't even talk
are dating and draw them in this kind of way.
I think a lot of it is like this, that
that the two thousands, especially the twenty tens, were really
defined by this obsession with the global box office and
like Hollywood films as being this exported product where for

(01:06:10):
a couple of years the international grosses of movies were
overtaking the domestic grosses. And you read about in different
countries and different territories they just have like entirely different
cultural standards in some cases like very extreme censorship boards.
But also the Hollywood got really in their head about learning,
like you know, in China, you can't release a movie
with ghosts.

Speaker 1 (01:06:31):
Right, you know Star Wars tanks over there. Yeah, they're all.

Speaker 2 (01:06:34):
These metrics they have to process that I think just
kind of blanded a lot of things out.

Speaker 1 (01:06:39):
They just don't want to offend anyone absolutely.

Speaker 3 (01:06:42):
I also want to want to say that we should
also consider the fact that sex is.

Speaker 2 (01:06:46):
Icky's right, gross and bad.

Speaker 1 (01:06:49):
There is like an undert yeah yeah, yeah. I feel
like a lot of young people are like, don't show
me that that's gross, Like stop putting that in my movies.
But then like I wonder how much of it so
like I'm of two minds about this one. I think
there's like something weird and interesting happening with you know
how Starship Troopers is like has sex, but it like

(01:07:10):
doesn't really have like sexual energy. It's just like it's
like nudity that's just like completely cut off. And it's
a movie about fascism. Like I think that that's an
important part of fascism, is like beautiful people without like
sexual energy, and like.

Speaker 2 (01:07:24):
It's a beat that for Whoven repeats twice he doesn't
RoboCop and Starship Troopers where he's like, this is a
culture where men and women can shower together and there's
no sense of sexual danger. Like in both of those
films you have like locker rooms like cops and like
soldiers who are just fully naked in a mass space

(01:07:45):
and they can.

Speaker 1 (01:07:45):
Like slaping asses.

Speaker 2 (01:07:47):
Left Football and Starship Troopers there's like kind of like
well they won't they jousting banter and even still there's
no threat of actual physical things happening. Right, We've almost
become a post sexual society.

Speaker 3 (01:08:00):
Incredible proliferation of pornography, which is always right, So that's
what so part of me thinks, like it's interesting that
like this, uh, you know, everybody is like in great shape,
hot and like not horny for one another is happening
as we're like descending into fascism in our country, Like
maybe those two are related.

Speaker 1 (01:08:18):
The other part of me is just like, oh, it's
because like porns everywhere and everyone's like, no, I see
that over there. Get this the fuck out of my movies.

Speaker 3 (01:08:24):
Like, and I think the shipping thing is also about romance,
it is, right, So I think that's an interesting place
for movies to.

Speaker 2 (01:08:30):
ConfL once again. It's like that's about tension, Like it
doesn't need to escalate to nude scenes, to physicality, you know,
but a lot of that energy is dissipated where I
feel like sometimes the shipping is like my head canon is,
and you're like imagining a dynamic that is not actually
depicted in the film because in a way, they're almost

(01:08:51):
long for any sense of that tension existing. Yeah, even
if it doesn't have to be the center. I also
think perhaps a culprit that is not discussed much is
the rise of like pay cable television, which got very sexual.

Speaker 6 (01:09:07):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:09:07):
I don't say this in like a.

Speaker 10 (01:09:10):
Pejorative way of.

Speaker 2 (01:09:11):
They got so sexual but like you know, suddenly HBO
and then Showtime and then like all these things we're
making Christie's shows, not like skin Amax softcore films for
Pristie shows that started leaning really hard into nudity and
sex scenes where it was almost like a prerequisite. And
then you're starting to see shows where you're like, did

(01:09:32):
that Greenlight Californiication solely because it's a perfect format to
have twelve boobs an episodes you know, were Masters of
Sex or whatever, Like it felt like things were skewing
that way, and I think a lot of that was
a pushing of these are things you thought you could
never see on television. Sure, TV's getting serious, it's growing up, right,

(01:09:54):
We're showing you the most forbidden things that you're not
used to seeing at home. And did that kind of
swap the paw our dynamic where then sex scenes and
movies started to feel like a TV thing.

Speaker 3 (01:10:05):
Yeah, because even like Game of Thrones, I remember seeing
it was like there was nudity, but I feel like
the weirdest like softcore porn nudity with like this is
Dragon time, but also these it's clear these women at
fake breasts, Like it was just all this.

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
Spartacus shows are very horny, like all those things. I
do think something shifted there.

Speaker 1 (01:10:23):
Yeah yeah, and you did refer to Game of Thrones
as Dragon time. I remember, Yeah, I believe that's cannon.
Let's put it on this Dragon time. That's two thousand
and dragon the year. All right, I feel like we
can keep this conversation going for three hours, but we
have to stop. All right. That's gonna do it. For
this week's Weekly Zeitgeist. Please like and review the show

(01:10:46):
if you like. The show means the world to Miles.
He he needs your validation, folks. I hope you're having
a great weekend and I will talk to him Monday.
By nothing,