Weekly Zeitgeist 404 (Best of 10/20/25-10/24/25)

The weekly round-up of the best moments from DZ's season 411 (10/20/25-10/24/25)!

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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. We are joined today in our third seed.
Brilliant Guests. I consider this person one of the greats
of where of Los Angeles. Why because they come from
the San Fernando Valley, Because they know that the shit
I've learned about la from this person is unreal. I
didn't know that the fucking Laurel Canyonkinga Pass. I don't

(00:43):
know these are all Pony Express routes. But guess we
taught me that this guest and I still think of
that to this day. You know them from their work,
I don't know. Girls of Hoodies night Call. We've got
fuck a Heidi World and now the upcoming Jeno World
very close to my heart because I grew up steps
away from the Vivid Video headquarters in I guess we

(01:04):
call that studio Universal City, Los Angeles. Yeah, University. I
mean it's right across from from the wonderful Yeah, exactly
exactly right across from the Nissan dealership that is no
more near the in and out Burger Weregilane Maxwell was
photographed pre arrest. Let's just this is a very historical area.
Please welcome to the microphone. Molly Lambert.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Wait, Molly, how do you know all these la facts?

Speaker 3 (01:32):
I just can't stop. I can't stop.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Journalist. I think journalists probably I would wag that maybe
the journalism brought you to intersection with these facts. Maybe
are we just that kid who was just always like
spitting nerdy facts?

Speaker 3 (01:46):
I gut school and a trivia accumulator?

Speaker 1 (01:52):
How did you know about? When did you learn of
like the Laurel Canyon, Kowanga Pass, Coldwater Canyon thing being
the routes for the old horse.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (02:00):
I read like a thousand books about Laurel Canyon at
one point.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Okay, this makes sense.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
That's part of a larger reading a thousand books about
the Manson family just to know.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Just to learn still get their Christmas cards. It's crazy family.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
The Manson family just sent their card. Okay. So okay,
that's interesting. So these factors that you're talking about there
in books, Okay, I'm gonna.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Did AI make those?

Speaker 3 (02:29):
What is that?

Speaker 1 (02:30):
Some do? Sometimes most of these are tales. Yeah, exactly,
Molly Jenda World coming up, fantastic, fantastic series that I've
not really been able to hear. I'm only saying that
because I've lended my voice to it, and seeing all
the other amazing people that have lended their voice.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
To it, I'm like, I'm excited for you to hear
it because you are literally the first voice that is heard.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
No, yeah, it's oh no, that's pressure now.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
No, no, it's so funny. Miles place Kid rock.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Plase, Daniel day lewis ing that.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Channeling, channeling, channeling. Yeah, when's so? When's General World dropping?

Speaker 3 (03:13):
October twenty seventh, Monday.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
Monday, load up your fucking iPods? Okay for this podcast?
Producer Bay right there. Bay also work And everybody's everybody
giving a hand on the show.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
They worked on the show. She's in the show. Everybody's
in the show.

Speaker 4 (03:30):
There we go, Francesca. We do like to ask our guests,
what is something from your search history that is revealing
about who you are?

Speaker 5 (03:39):
This is so embarrassing. Uh oh, I I'm a big
Cardi B fan. I have tickets to her first show
back after giving birth in February, so we'll see how
that goes. I like the new album a lot. I
think it's great. I didn't love it the first listen through,
but the second listen I was like, this is a

(04:00):
still very good. Anyway, I've been watching a lot of
Cardi b interviews and she was on one interview with
Angie Martinez and I was just looking at her watch
and I was.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
Like, damn, that's a nice watch.

Speaker 5 (04:16):
And I was like trying to zoom in and I
couldn't find you know, like, what is this watch?

Speaker 1 (04:22):
You know?

Speaker 5 (04:23):
So I was really into the watch. It was like big,
chunky and white, and I realized, yes, I finally found it,
and it is a two point five million dollar watch.
That's some boys, some guy's name, some boys whatever.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
So then.

Speaker 5 (04:49):
Richard million dollar watch. Now, of course, this takes my
love of her down, because I'm like, nobody needs a
two and a half million dollar watch, you know, bah
blah blah. I'm you know, but I.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
Did, didn't it.

Speaker 5 (05:05):
I did search chunky white watch and realized that, you know,
for the rubes out there who just want to watch,
that looks like a nice watch.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
I just pointing to a chunky white watch on her
own wrist.

Speaker 5 (05:19):
There's a lot of dupes out there here, so I'm
a total dupe and I like. I like it. It's
it's white, it's light, and it's guess.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
Let me see that. Let me see that. Bring that close.
To bring that close to grandmother's eyes so I can.

Speaker 5 (05:34):
Look again if you can't focus on it. But it's
like I got.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
The clear guest branch. She's not asking you to guess.
Oh yeah, let me bring it close. Yeah, Richard mill
that was a joke.

Speaker 4 (05:46):
If anybody laughter that joke. That was a joke from
the Brady Bunch movie that I just stole there.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
So wow, where.

Speaker 4 (05:55):
Those and she says guess and she goes, okay, Lee
LEVI guessing.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
No it is.

Speaker 5 (06:02):
I haven't bought something from guests, I think since I
was like seventeen. So this is very like. I like
the watch. It's fine, it's cute. It is definitely a like.
I saw Cardi B on an interview and I don't
have two and a half million dollars.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
Funny, I did never clogged Cardi B to be one
of your style icons, because you don't dress like Cardi
B at all your energy on you.

Speaker 5 (06:24):
I need some ribs removed first and putting I don't
know where else some I guess inner thigh weight into
my ass. The point is, you know the.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
Ribs in your ass, your butt and just thing you know.

Speaker 5 (06:42):
No, I not my satellite on. But I was needing
a new watch, and I just you know, so I
was like chunky watch and I feel like Google or
Duck Duck go, which I use knew that I was
looking for a very dupe.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
Hey, don't go. I mean you can find Chonky so
many people do. Like you could have found one that
is pretty much like a just a direct ripoff of that.
Oh yeah, if you really wanted to have that, you
know what I mean, I could, I know.

Speaker 5 (07:08):
All, but that would have been like what like five
hundred thousand or something like.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
You get that shit on the gate for like fucking
like eighty bucks.

Speaker 5 (07:16):
Okay, anyway, the right I don't know what the Google's dh.

Speaker 1 (07:21):
Gate Okay, this is where the Chinese websites where you
get all the counterfeit merchandise.

Speaker 4 (07:25):
I feel like the world of reps has been under
publicized because it is really like the very foundation of
capitalism wobbles under its weight under replicas. The most expensive
pair of shoes like the my wife, for I think
our anniversary, bought me these shoes that were like my

(07:48):
Grail sneakers, the Union Guaba Ice Jordan Force, and I
was wearing them. Miles was there, he can attest to
this in Las Vegas and a teenager walked up to
me and goes and.

Speaker 1 (08:03):
Goes nice reps. No, like laughed.

Speaker 4 (08:07):
So not only not only like can you fool people
by getting the reps, but if you are stupid enough
to spend the money on the nice thing that you covet,
people are gonna think they're reps anyways, you might as
well just get the fucking reps.

Speaker 3 (08:22):
Okay.

Speaker 5 (08:23):
So he wasn't like he just clocked you with someone
who didn't wasn't able to get the rep. It was
to get the original.

Speaker 1 (08:30):
Yeah, he was just trying to because reps are so
pervasive and they look some of them are so good. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (08:37):
Yeah, And there was a sneaker convention in town, so
he was like, but like the fact that there was
a sneaker convention in town at the time means that
he was like he was really saying fuck you, because
he was like, look at this rube who just bought
some reps, like at the sneaker convention, you chase him out,

(08:57):
like no, not, they.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
Were actually real. I mean, like to your point, it's
really interesting, just like because as somebody who loves sneakers
but hates paying just like insane amounts of money, I'm like, yeah,
I'll buy fakes because I'm not about to pay fucking
five hundred dollars for personnager. I'll pay it a hundred
from somewhere else. Yeah, but like it it's it's it's

(09:20):
broken the brains of like hype beast brand focused people
who are like the whole point is like you don't
want to like why spend for the cheap thing, like
you want to spend like the twelve hundred dollars on
the other thing. That's the whole point of it. And
you're like it actually isn't and look how pressed you are.
Totally not because somebody just showed up with the thing
that looks like the thing that costs two thousand dollars
or whatever.

Speaker 5 (09:40):
It's it's always I mean I'm not into Like when
I did go to China, they did take us like
part of the tour when I visit. I can't remember
if I was outside of Beijing.

Speaker 3 (09:48):
They took us to a.

Speaker 5 (09:49):
Place that was like, you know, number one, First of all,
you ever tried to like not buy something, you know,
like just a place that's like nothing but dupes and
reps and like whatever, like fakes, knockoff shit. It's impossible.
You cannot make eye contact with any vendors because they'll.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
Be like, buy my glasses please.

Speaker 3 (10:05):
Oh you saw you looking.

Speaker 1 (10:07):
I saw you looking, and you're like, oh my god,
oh my god.

Speaker 5 (10:10):
But I will say, like I'm not someone who's ever
been into brands. I don't. I really don't care. Like
I understand occasionally occasionally be like, oh, like the logo whatever, whatever,
but it really is about like, no, the style is nice.
It's a nice style.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
It's a well the way it looks anyway, I just
put it in the chat. Look at that dupe that's
thirteen bucks off the gate.

Speaker 5 (10:29):
Shut up, Yes, this looks exactly like what I have there.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
You go, you know what I mean? Yeah, save your coins,
save your coins. Question for the revolution, what is something
you think is underrated?

Speaker 2 (10:47):
New York City public buses? Okay? Is it going to
take you forty five minutes to take a bus where
it could take you fifteen minutes in an uber? Absolutely?
Or you know, are you spending ten extra minutes taking
a bus instead of a subway? Yes, but like I
want to be above ground. Dare I want to see sunlight?

Speaker 3 (11:05):
You know?

Speaker 2 (11:06):
Do I do? I want to be on a bus
at three pm? When teens it's like after school and
there's teen drama, Like I want all of these things.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
Yeah, I thought you were going to say no, Hell, yeah,
that sounds amazing. What kind of drama? Like are you
like overhearing? Just like little.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
Headphones on it's paused, like I am listening, it's.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
On transparency mode. It's like I'm gonna actually turn up
on a hearing aid to magnify the sound.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
I'm just sitting closer and they're like, help, there's an
old woman Europe. But no, just like drama over texting
someone back and now chatting someone. It's very It's just
like it's nice to know it's listen. And also New
York teens are all very cool and so I'm very
interested in them. Like a couple of summers ago, a
New York team said something to me so cutting like

(11:53):
I was vaping sorry on a bench reading the Paris
review highs and lows.

Speaker 1 (11:59):
Damn, and these like teens.

Speaker 2 (12:01):
Like cool cargo shorts, crop tops walk by me without
even looking. They just imagine vaping in twenty twenty two,
which is wow.

Speaker 5 (12:10):
I like.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
Now it really it really hurt. Immediately threw my lost
Mary away and I was like, I can't. I can't
behave like this anymore. So it's just like they're cool.

Speaker 4 (12:23):
Were they smoking a pipe like Sherlock Holmes?

Speaker 1 (12:25):
Like what was there? They have like a year of
a batte? What's cool with the teens? I was only
vaping because I thought it made me look like a teenager.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
Literally, I was like, I wonder why these youths think
this is cool? So yeah, teen culture. It's like they're
just cooler than us. I'm very interested in what they're
up to, right man.

Speaker 1 (12:45):
So you're one of those sunlight sickos. You like the sunlight,
huh instead of underground with a just roller coaster grease
and terrible smells.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
It's like there's a time and a place for a subway,
and then there's really I'm in a place for the bus,
and I think the bus is underrated.

Speaker 1 (13:02):
GI mean, okay, so somebody I visit New York a lot.
I've never lived there. I'm pretty I'm pretty familiar with
the city. But just from your perspective, when is the
time for bus and when is the time for subway?
Cross town?

Speaker 6 (13:13):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (13:13):
Like, if I'm well, if I'm going to Manhattan, obviously
it's time for a subway, right, Like I'm going to
zip there? What am I really going to see? You know,
there's one subway that even goes over a bridge, and
I get this like experience that I'm looking towards cool.
But if I'm in Brooklyn and I'm trying to get
to different neighborhoods, I'm going to take a bus and
it's going to take me longer, and I'm going to
factor in an extra half an hour, but I just

(13:35):
know I'm going to get cool joy, Like there's something
more stimulating.

Speaker 4 (13:39):
Sure, yes, yes, you don't like riding the bus over
the Brooklyn Bridge with a look of whimsical awe on
your face with a piece of hay in the corner
of your mouth like in every movie.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
No, because like that's giving traffic And if I want
that overbridge vibe, I'm taking the J train. Yeah, taking
the J train.

Speaker 4 (13:57):
Yeah, there's also rumors that the socialist soon to be
mayor of New York wants to make buses free. Did
you see that, Like some right wing guy was like
riding the bus before it becomes like free and like
full of homeless people, And people are like, dude, you
first of all, you've never ridden there.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
But that's what I think. That's what it makes me
think of s rules. What is something tim you think
is underrated? Fireworks, guys, And I'm sick of hearing otherwise.
I like fireworks. I like them a lot.

Speaker 6 (14:33):
It's exciting, it's beautiful, and it's kind of one of
the few things that I feel like this citizen. I mean,
over there, you guys got guns, so you know, we
don't need to get into that this episode, un least
you want it. But over here in New Zealand, like
we don't get access to a whole bunch of, you know,
things that explode at the citizen level. And I feel
like there's this one time of the year, which is

(14:54):
around about now, because we've got a mandated legal period
where we can have fireworks over our vision of fourth July.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
As guy fawks.

Speaker 6 (15:01):
I don't know if you guys know much about that,
but a guy tries to blow up British Parliament and
I think the eighteenth century, and now we celebrate his
terrorist actions with a fireworks stay of our own. But
it roughly, roughly roughly coincides with D'wali, which is the
Indian festival of lights as well, and we've got a
huge diaspora from India here, so they go crazy on
the fireworks and.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
Everyone like this always.

Speaker 6 (15:22):
Every year, there has been a conversation for the last
twenty five years in New Zealand that this will be
the year they ban fireworks and it will just be
public displays, but you won't be able to buy them yourself.

Speaker 1 (15:32):
And I'm in the increasing minority.

Speaker 6 (15:35):
My little group of people go like, man, fuck the docs,
I don't care, fuck the little kids.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
I like fireworks. I like that they exist. I like
that we have them.

Speaker 4 (15:44):
Oh yeah, We've talked a lot of fireworks on the show,
basically going back and forth between my I think the
place I've landed is I really like catching a fireworks
show in the wild, Like right, if I'm like walking
and oh my god, there's fireworks, it's like atmospheric. But
going to a firework show and sitting there with my

(16:05):
kids and just watching it and being like, you know,
in many ways this has a three act structure like
it just it doesn't really where I prefer like. I
do love the fact that in Los Angeles you are
just like on Fourth of July or when the Dodgers
win a particularly big game, like you're driving down the
street and there's just ambient it looks like a boz

(16:28):
Lerman film, Like it's just like going wild. I do
love their use sporadically. Again, that's probably not that safe.
It's a good advice, I will say. Also, based on
what you just said, I didn't know that you could
do a firework show without also shooting your guns in
the air. I thought those I thought those two went

(16:49):
hand in hand.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
You believe in yourself, man, is it is possible? With
proven it? There's I mean, I don't you guys? Do
you are there people doing like rogue fire works in
New Zealand like in LA where people flying well not
making ship You are like, how did you well? What
is what did you just do?

Speaker 6 (17:08):
What we lack is a vision of I guess like
Mexico effectively, because we are an island nation, so everything
has to be brought in by boat and it's pretty
strictly controlled. Though when I was a teenager, I was
in you know again and the minority, but not the
only one. I was disassembling fireworks and making bombs out
of them and like.

Speaker 7 (17:27):
Make you go there you go getting ship done. Yeah, yeah,
a little tit Kazynski on it. There's because I remember
over the summer Jack and I were talking about fireworks.
I remember I sent you that one of it was
basically like a military munition that goes off in La. Look,
I'll let me just get this isn't this is what's

(17:47):
some ship people are setting off in La in the summer.
This guy, this was called the dodger rona grand slam.
Just the sound of this is going to be terrifying.
Please tell lessons.

Speaker 6 (17:59):
This is a large baseball firework watched out of a
parking cone on a bottle rocket.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
The guy is running like forty feet away from it's
running around. Holy shit, it's in the it's airborne. It
is screaming, like I said, ear missiles.

Speaker 3 (18:15):
Holy sh.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
It off every of every carlarm within a ten radius.
It's like a scud missile. Man. Yeah, yeah, not good,
not good for the environment, but when you watch anyby
go whoa, I don't know what. There's something so primal
about little bang bangs going off. It's the thing.

Speaker 6 (18:37):
And I I do like reattaching to that, you know,
childlike excitement of singo boom.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
Yeah. Yeah. For whatever reason, it's like yow wow, I
think I just think I just really harmed an animal.
But it was made the car alarms go. Yeah, I
felt powerful.

Speaker 4 (18:55):
All right, let's take a quick break. We'll be right
back here. You're overrated and get into some news. We'll
be right back.

Speaker 1 (19:12):
And we're back.

Speaker 4 (19:14):
We're back, and Nilo, your book is about so many things.
The revolution launched by women, oftentimes very young women and
girls to push back against the brutality and gender apartheid
that has been instituted by Iran's authoritarian government. It's also
about citizen journalism. Can you talk about the story of

(19:37):
the revolution first of all, like what happened three years ago,
and also the role of citizen journalism in reporting it?

Speaker 2 (19:44):
Yeah, absolutely so. In September twenty twenty two, a young
woman named Massage you know, Amani, was stopped by the
morality police allegedly for improperly wearing hijob she's Kurdish, she's
from the Kurdish province, and she was visiting the capital.
We don't know exactly what that interaction looked, like a
lot of women in Iran, like it's a daily thing
to be harassed by the morality police, Like when you

(20:05):
meet your friend at a cafe, the first question you
ask each other is kessy girdad, Like did anyone harass
you or stop you on your way? Just like daily life,
right yeah. And then the next thing that we see, like,
and this is really the image that incensed the world,
is that we saw Gina lying unconscious in a hospital bed.
This was after she was in the custody of the
morality police. Like it looked like she was beaten, you know,

(20:27):
within an inch of her life. Her face is puffy,
Like I can still see the image and feel it
when I think about it. Her face is puffy, there's
tubes coming out of her face, she has dried blood
on her ears. It was horrifying, and I think like
once that image was shared and this was again shared
by a source at the hospital, its spread everywhere because
this harassment is a future of daily life, Like so

(20:49):
many women and so many Iranians could see themselves in
what happened to Gina. She eventually succumbed to her injury.
She died and immediately there were protests outside the hospital,
protests at the funeral. Like from there, it's spread and
we really have everything to thank to reporters for this.
So there was a citizen journalist named Saja a cloudat

(21:09):
Katomi who is based outside of Iran, and he was
the first person on his Instagram story to alert the
world to what was happening. There were reporters there as well,
like two other reporters that we really owe, you know,
our knowledge of this too, our new Fahammadi and Alahei Mohammadi.
These are two Iranian reporters based in the country working
for major outlets. But they were under pressure while they

(21:30):
were at the hospital to not report, like the authority
said to them, if you start reporting on this, like
this could be a lot of trouble, right, So immediately
the pressure was there. But once that image was out,
the movement spread and this movement and yeah, it grew
and it went. It was it's the largest and most
widespread protest movement in the Islamic Republic's history and again,
like we the citizen journalists really helped us in understanding

(21:53):
what the protests looked like on the ground, because it's
so difficult to do reporting in the country, right, Like
The Washing Post hasn't had anyone based in Iran since
my colleague Jason Razaian was in prison there for over
two years. The New York Times didn't have a correspondent
there as well, and so, and if you're foreign media
going to report in Iran, it's very difficult. There's a

(22:13):
lot of restrictions, you're constantly minded, and then journalists who
are Iranian and based there, like every day is harassment
for them. And so when we're seeing stories about protests
and what it looks like, what it looked like when
authorities were very violent protesters on the streets, that was
because people who were on the ground in that moment
were filming it sending it to citizen journalists and it

(22:34):
was being spread. And so the way a lot of
video is shared in Iran is through the app Telegram,
and Telegram can be pretty safe for people because you
can make these like one time use accounts and send
them and you can send them to a citizen journalist channel,
which we'll have like five hundred thousand subscribers and it'll
spread from there and yeah, so essentially like this this
is the way that everything gets shared. So it's really

(22:56):
we have everything to thank to people who are brave
enough to document the cities that were happening to Iranian
people and taking the risk to send it to citizen
journalists who amplified it to the rest of the world.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
Yeah, those first acts of citizen journalism? Is it?

Speaker 4 (23:10):
You know, you said that these are citizen journalists who
were able to do that?

Speaker 1 (23:14):
Is it?

Speaker 4 (23:14):
Just like were they thinking of themselves as citizen journalists before?
Were they just people who happened to be there and
like shared the image? Like how whoa what were what
were those first acts of citizen journalism looking like?

Speaker 2 (23:30):
Yeah, so some of these accounts have been around for
a long time, and I've been able to make relationships
with some of these channel administrators and so these people
had been documenting, you know, protests in twenty nineteen, they'd
been documenting things like there was a port explosion in
one of your on southern ports this year. Like anything
that's shared people really share on social media. So it's

(23:50):
like this is a constant feature of the information ecosystem
in Iran, got it.

Speaker 4 (23:56):
And now some people say that the United States is
in the early stage of an authoritarian takeover of the
government and media, particularly people who've witnessed authority and takeover
authoritarian takeovers of governments before. Like we've talked before about
m Guessen from The New Yorker, who seems to be saying, Yeah,

(24:16):
this is all happening right on schedule. This is like
exactly what it felt like when Putin took over. Can
you talk about the role of citizen journalism in the
US today, Like, you know, it's somewhat nascent, but like
what role do you think citizen journalism could play and
should play going forward?

Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah, I mean people who are there on the ground,
are documenting events in real time, Like I cover Black
Lives Matter protests in the US in twenty twenty, and
you know, citizen journalists, which can even be as simple
as uploading videos to x Instagram. Just being able to
collect a record of what happened is incredibly important. So
like in twenty twenty, when we were covering BLM protests

(24:58):
in Philadelphia, we were able to prove using visual documentation
that the Philly Police violated their own rules for when
and how to use tear gas. So it can be
incredibly important because these pieces of video, like it's so precious,
Like any piece of video is a documentation, right, Like
if the government is saying ICE agents aren't doing any harm,
but you have people that are documenting this, right, and

(25:21):
we can verify that you know where it was filmed,
that it is of the current moment. Like, all of
these visuals can be incredibly incredibly important for future accountability
or even right in that moment.

Speaker 5 (25:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (25:33):
Yeah, even like up to ICE protests and like it
seems like they have gone not literally mask off, but
in terms of like organizationally just they're shooting people in
the face with you know, non lethal realms that are
cracking people's skulls, and like trying to think back at
the documentation of those things, it's all citizen journalism. It's

(25:57):
all just people who are there close by, recording on
their phone. And then eventually, you know, I was able
to watch a recreation of an act of ice abuse
that was completely reconstructed on the front page of the
New York Times, all from just like people who are
around recording on their phone, which it feels like more

(26:17):
and more. That's one of the last things that we have.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
Yeah, I mean, like what you're describing is something that
we call open source reporting, where we look at all
these pieces of information that are there, Like we use
satellite imagery to look at the level of destruction to
Gaza's agriculture, for example, and we did this in twenty
twenty three. It's like, all these pieces of information that
are there, and what can we do with it? So
it's like incredibly important because you can, you know, if

(26:44):
you go to a protest, a regular story might be
here the merits, here's someone who is here protesting this,
Here's what someone on the other side says. But once
you have visual evidence that shows, you know, police use
a force, yeah, if you're you know, using less lethal rounds,
but in a very in very close proximity, like those
often will go against the use guidelines of the specific

(27:05):
last lethal round. Right, So all of these pieces of
evidence are super important.

Speaker 1 (27:09):
Is there, I think? Yeah? To that end, right, open
source sort of material out there helps put like sort
of demystify or really bring out the truth in things
because you always get sort of like the state's version
of events and then the people on the ground, and
then you kind of have to have a reckoning based
on what you can gather. Is there a way like
people should be thinking because something all the time we

(27:31):
just have a reflex I think, especially in this age
of social media, to just get your phone out, especially
when there's buckery unfolding in front of you. Is there
a way for people to think, Okay, like, is it
this thing I took? What do I do with it now?
Rather than just maybe texted to other people like, yo,
this shit got crazy over here, like this is a
video I took. Is there a way that people should

(27:52):
be thinking about this and what their role is in
documenting these things? Because again, this is this is fairly
new for American people to having to be like, I'm
having to see all these sort of abuses unfold. But
in an era of cameras on every single cell phone,
how should you know, like, what's our role in thinking
about that as people who are trying to be people
of good faith in this country to try and document

(28:14):
the kinds of things that would potentially, you know, maybe
correct some wrongs, right.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
I mean, any visual documentation that you have, send it
to me on signal.

Speaker 3 (28:23):
I will take a.

Speaker 2 (28:24):
Look at it. No, But really it's about keeping the
material that you if there's an important moment in there,
being able to save it, archive it, keep it in
a place that's not just your phone. Something happens to
your phone, it gets, you know, crack the next day.
That's really important. Saving the metadata, that's something that we
always look for. So when you take an image or
video and you look in your camera role often it'll

(28:44):
say if you have location services enabled exactly where it
was filmed. That really helps open source investigators. We can
plot it on a map and be able to say, oh, okay,
this window that jackfilmed, you can see it in satellite imagery.
We feel very confident that it's at this moment and
if there's a day and time. That again is really
helpful to us because we can feel like this is
a piece of video that we can easily verify, so

(29:06):
keeping it, archiving it and then being able to get
it out to people like me who are open source
reporters looking at different stories in this world every day.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
Right, because I feel like that even happened with ice
agents like in Illinois, where they were basically lying about
some like an event where they threw a child down
on the ground and like that's like old and like no,
here's another video of that same agent basically, and you
can we can tell from the metadata this is very
much that day and like they had to suddenly, I

(29:36):
mean they just they did not necessarily own up to it,
but it was sort of one of those moments where
that sort of line of lying about the activity of
ICE agents was sort of just dispelled through.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
Yeah, it's super important because you know, regular police departments
will wear police cameras as reporters. Sometimes we can file
information requests from the department to try to get it.
They may not give it to us for certain reasons.
They may take a long time. When it's federal agents,
it becomes even more complicated to request that video. So
it makes it even more important for people to be

(30:07):
documenting whatever they're seeing in their communities.

Speaker 1 (30:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (30:11):
Yeah, Like I think, you know, there's a lot of
bad news and the authoritarian creep is real. I do
think that there's a story of like that all of
that citizen journalism, all of those things we've seen from
the streets is working, like is reaching people. Like Trump's
approval rating on immigration is down from a plus eleven,

(30:35):
like more eleven percent more people approve than disapproved to
minus three point two, and like, obviously that's not nearly
negative enough, but it is the thing that he's going
to be like kind of riding on coming into the
White House and like that it feels like people you know,
by because his policy is basically foregrounding the cruelty and

(31:00):
you know, also being terrible at execution and like you know,
finding the people that are looking for and instead just
like harmy, innocent people like people seem to be getting
off board. So I mean, it does seem like a
weapon that's being exercised, and that probably just needs to
be more and more foundational to how we interact with

(31:21):
this regime. I have a question, what's what are the
rules when you're trying to go off the record, you know,
do you what.

Speaker 1 (31:31):
Do you have? Like what is happening? No? No, no,
not me personally, because I'm just thinking this friend, I
have a friend, let's call him Donald t Okay, no,
that's too obvious. D Trump there you No, but you
sort of use this as a segue because we are
such like it's good to know obviously journalism is so

(31:53):
foundational to being able to counteract the sort of propaganda
that comes out of the government bad faith actors that
are in orbit of the administration. And just this story
that came up today about Lindsay Halligan, it just sort
of a lot of it revolves around this idea that
this person, also this woman, Lindsay Halligan, has no idea

(32:15):
what that means to go off the record, and that
was a very flippant way to segue into the next story.
But this there's just something very tragic and upsetting that
we are being having our rights trampled by the most inept,
ignorant people that this administration could possibly find potentially fortunate.

(32:37):
You know.

Speaker 4 (32:37):
Yeah, we've talked about the concept of designed and competence.
That he surrounds himself with fools because they will be
grateful for the appointment and also by consequence bad at
their jobs. Yeah, that's kind of nice.

Speaker 1 (32:51):
So, you know, unknown insurance lawyer turned US attorney Lindsay
Halligan has now she's like sort of the tip of
the spear in terms of Trump's legal retaliation against his ops.
She's never prosecuted a case before and has never held
a job like of this kind, so it makes sense
that she truly knows nothing about how anything works when
you're a federal prosecutor. But this story sort of centers

(33:14):
around this Lee reporter from law Fair and a Bauer
who reached out to Halligan to talk about this sham
indictment of Letitia James, and Halligan ended up blurting out
shit about grand jury materials, which sounds like a big
no no as a federal prosecutor, and you know, also
just generally complaining to Bauer about like her coverage, I

(33:35):
just want to read how like these conversations were unfolding again,
She's reaching out to a US attorney about a sham
indictment of another attorney general, or of the Attorney General
of New York, and she's taught. She apparently was complaining
to Bower about like, I think your facts are wrong.
I just want to help you out. I just want

(33:55):
to help you out, Like I just want to help
you out, give you a tip, a heads up. She said, quote,
I can't tell you grand jury stuff just written in
their chats. I can't tell you grand jury stuff. And
she's like, okay, that's fine. But she the reporter was
pushing back, essentially saying that like the reason they're prosecuting

(34:15):
Letitia James, is that like she was, she was charging
people rent for this property that she didn't even live in.
And you know, this journalist is like, based on the
materials that are out there, that doesn't seem to be
the case. Like, she only collected rents rent once and
it was in like one of the like you know,
sort of like the lower brackets of between one and
five thousand dollars. So once that happened, Halligan lost it.

(34:36):
Quote this is what she says to Annabauer. Quote, you're biased,
Your reporting isn't accurate. I'm the one handling the case,
and I'm telling you that if you want to twist,
in torture the facts to fit your narrative, that there's
nothing I can do. It's a waste to even give
you a heads up. So like I'm assuming as a journalist.
You then asked the Department of Justice, Hey, what do

(34:56):
you think about this conversation I had with this US attorney?
This was their response. They were so petulant that she
deigned to ask about this conversation. They said, quote, good
luck ever getting anyone to talk to you when you
publish their texts. Is what the DOJ's response in terms
of her conversation with Halligan, and then basically, this is

(35:17):
what happened. Quote this is from the New Republic. Later,
Halligan texted Bauer again to insist they had been speaking
off record. Quote You're not a journalist, so it's weird
saying that, but just letting you know. And this is
how they said. Good luck ever getting anyone to text
you again. And then like as she's reading that, her
bumb blows up with another text from the same one

(35:38):
from Halligan. It's weird, but just letting you know this
how Bout replied, quote, I'm sorry, but that's not how
this works. You don't get to say that in retrospect.
Halligan responded, yes, I do. Off record.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
Yeah, that was a tough exchange to read, because it's like,
if a journalist is coming to you and publicly identifying
themselves as a real or I'm reaching out to you
for this, the assumption is it's on the record. It's
off the record when you and I both agree and
I can sent to you before we start the off
the record portion. This is off the record, right, and
I'll have conversations with sources where we're chatting and he'll

(36:13):
they will say this is off the record, Okay, we'll
chat about it, and then I'll say I'd like to
go back on the record now great, like you just
it's all about being transparent so that everyone's aware. But yeah,
you can't coming after and saying well, that was on
off the record, like that's that's not typically how a
source interaction goes.

Speaker 1 (36:32):
Yes, why I the thing that you're putting in your
book that's already out for publishing was off the record.
I've just decided to do that retroactor. Yes, I can
off the record, off off record. I do, Yes, I
do off record? There what this is? Bowers are Plike? Well,

(36:53):
I'm really sorry. I would have been happy to speak
with you on an on an off the record basis
had you asked, but you didn't, and I still haven't
agreed to speak on that basis. Do you have any
further comment the story? And then this is what I responds. Quote,
it's obvious the whole combo is off record, there's disappearing messages,
and it's on signal. What is your story? You never

(37:13):
told me about a story?

Speaker 4 (37:15):
Why did you think I a journalist reached out to
you and asked you for comment on a story. Yeah, story, yeah, yeah,
so not that's all the story bullshit.

Speaker 1 (37:30):
You never told me about a story, it's it's the
subject matter we were discussing in our conversation.

Speaker 2 (37:36):
And like signal disappearing messages. It's like, I just use
you know a lot of people use signal for non
purposes or like you know, allegedly, allegedly they do.

Speaker 1 (37:50):
Record that is off the record, off the record go on.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
And like disappearing messages, like why would I you know,
I have a friend who will in her eye message.
This is when I'm like, you are unwell conversations that
have nothing to journalism. She'll finish a conversation with her
mom and she'll wipe it. I'm like, what what are
you doing? She's like, well, I just it's just like
good digital security, everything gets breached. And meanwhile I'm like, oh,
so I shouldn't have text change from twenty sixteen on

(38:18):
my phone? Like is this a bad idea? It's just
like people do these for all types of purposes. Yeah,
it's like, let's just be transparent.

Speaker 1 (38:26):
You have text change from twenty sixteen on your phone,
so I have mine goes back to twenty sixteen. Actually
that's when I started saving everything. I don't know why
I have like a I'm like a weird text hoarder.

Speaker 2 (38:37):
I am too, Like I'll be on a flight and
I'm like, oh, like what about this nostalgic time and
this year, Like I'm a nostalgic for a moment that
ended two minutes ago. I don't know why I like this.
So yeah, it's memories, memory nice.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
It's for posterity sake.

Speaker 4 (38:52):
Yeah, all right, let's let's get back to Trump's morality.
Please Ice who you know? They They've been making a
lot of headlines doing horrific shit, and the Trump administration
is doing everything they can to add more ICE officers,
including expanding the age eligibility, condensing training from thirteen weeks

(39:14):
to eight, reducing Spanish classes and firearms courses in classroom instruction.
That seems bad because they seem to not know how
to operate the firearms that they are being right now with.

Speaker 1 (39:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
Yeah, I saw this video too of the New York
Times reporter Hammed He went on a ride along with
Chicago with ICE in Chicago, and one of the ICE
agents said to him, like, yeah, like we like being
out here. Like, we're adrenaline junkies. So hearing that and
then hearing the training being scaled back, yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
Yeah, we got I mean we've had to even scale
back the Fourth Amendment stuff. We were trying to tell
him about about seizures and searches and stuff, but we
had to get that out of the way because none
of these people can do anything physical. Yeah, it seems
bad that they're motivated by being adrenaline junkies and also
a fifty thousand dollars signing bonus, and so it's just right.

(40:07):
It's if you make it right. It's like, right, you
get the fifty if you can make it out right, right. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (40:12):
Which, so even after scaling back the requirements, the agency
has one big problem, and that is that their new
officers aren't passing the mandatory fitness test. I was recently
reported that so many new recruits are out of shape
that more than a third of them have failed the
fitness test, in which they must do fifteen push ups,
thirty two sit ups, and run one point five miles

(40:36):
in fourteen minutes. Okay, okay, that's that seems low.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
Leave me.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
I actually can't do any of the activity just described, but.

Speaker 1 (40:45):
You're also not trying to brutalize people of color familiarly,
You're not an Antifa super soldier, I.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
Know, but I'm like, I should I be able to
run that amount? Like now I'm kind of questioning like
my own fitness because.

Speaker 1 (40:56):
I could do Like if I'm being like, at a
ten minute mile is pretty casual. So if you can
keep a ten minute mile pace, you should be able
to get through.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
The ale at this age. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
You got weekends, that's up? Yeah, I got week what
hap in ballet soccer? Ice exactly? Yeah, yeah, I've seen
it a hundred times. I've seen it a hundred times, Nelo.

Speaker 2 (41:18):
That's why we can't have you off license pt.

Speaker 1 (41:25):
Exactly allegedly. Okay, that was off the record. That was
off the record. He can give you some off the
record medical advice. Yes, yes, it's mostly about shrooms, but
really bad. It is wild though to think, because part
of me was like, damn, fifteen push ups and thirty
two setups. I'm like, maybe I am an Antifa super soldier.
You think you like that could be if I could

(41:45):
get fifth, If I can get fifteen push ups out,
I mean, that's that's my Max. Okay, so I know
I'm just making it probably, but like all of the
stories talk about how like in the I think The
Atlantic was the first one to report this. We're talking
to some of like these ICE officials and I've never
seen anything like this. Like there are people that ICE
were like, this is unreal, the riff raft that's blowing

(42:08):
into the academy right now, merely because they're trying to
meet these quotas. They're even trying to like put the
physical fitness test earlier in the academy training to immediately
root out these people, because what they end up doing
is like they waste all this energy getting people up
to speed and not know what the Fourth Amendment is.
Then they get to the physical test part and they're like,
what the fuck first step of the one point five

(42:29):
mile run? Yeah, no, they say them they keep getting.

Speaker 4 (42:33):
Compound fractures on the first step of their one point
five mile run.

Speaker 1 (42:37):
Apparently that run is like the great destroyer of a
lot of these candidates who want to play dress up
brown shirt. So you know, there's a lot of a
lot of tension happening at ICE because they're even now
they're like they're saying like well, we're even now inviting
retired law enforcement and they don't, but they're saying on

(42:57):
the condition that they can just self report at their
their physical fitness levels because they're just like, fuck man,
if we can awarding the physically, Yeah, yeah I did it.
It's good. I'm actually really fast.

Speaker 4 (43:08):
Yeah yeah, yeah, I tried that in like seven minutes. Yeah,
I'm sitting here laughing. I haven't tried to run that
uh mile and a half and fourteen minutes and years.

Speaker 1 (43:18):
Yeah. I would, however, be willing to self report that
I can do it easily. Right.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
Yeah, I'm having a meltdown, like I I'm modified in
plates today, do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (43:27):
Like I can't. I can't. Is the hardest I've ever done.
Like I pilates is so fucking hard. It's tough.

Speaker 2 (43:36):
It's like all in there suffering. Also a culture of silence,
because we're all suffering really silently, and like a man
will come and grunt outwardly and we're all just like please,
like keep that to yourself. Knees, it's to.

Speaker 1 (43:56):
Cramshell.

Speaker 6 (43:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:58):
The first time I gotten a reformer, I was like,
how the fuck am I this week? Like I that
thing and just like a unbroken line of sweat just
started like running off of my nose like it was
a foster. That's why I was doing it for a
minute because I was so humbled the first time I did.
I'm like, Oh, this is for real using your body

(44:19):
in ways you had it Like you're discovering that you
can actually strengthen parts of your body you didn't know existed.

Speaker 4 (44:25):
Yeah, sore in places on the inside of my body
that I did not know could be sore.

Speaker 1 (44:31):
Or this does track with I remember they were like,
remember Dean Kane was like, and I'm going to join ICE.

Speaker 4 (44:37):
And then they showed him like going through the what
appeared to be like a children's playground obstacle course, and
just like even during the ten seconds that they showed
the footage of him, he was like ducking thing like
a thing he was supposed to go over, He just
like kind of ducked under it.

Speaker 1 (44:56):
Right Like Yeah.

Speaker 4 (44:58):
There's also that great video brought to us by a
citizen journalist of a ten ICE agents who were trying
to catch a guy who was not on a butt
like he was off his bike, came over picked up
something that they didn't want him to pick up.

Speaker 1 (45:11):
He was like, I'm not a citizen phone. Yeah, was like,
I'm not a US citizen and then managed to like
as ten of them descended on him, just like looked
like Barry Sanders, like just like completely untouched through a
crowd of people.

Speaker 4 (45:26):
Nobody had any chance of catching him. As he like
went from walking to getting on a bike and riding away.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
They were like shit, it was, I mean, this is
I don't know. I mean, like I get again, like
with the the uh engineered incompetence and then just seeing
the kinds of people that are being attracted by the
possibility of brutalizing, you know, people who aren't from this country.

(45:56):
I'm glad that it's not our country's best. It's people
who or maybe not fully up to the task. But again,
when you look at the money they've spending seven increase
on like their weapons capabilities now like warheads, they're they're
like they have access to now, So who knows me,
I guess maybe they'll make up for it with like

(46:17):
some kind of killer robot ice agent or something that
Elon Musk can just design but it doesn't know how
to do kung fu. Well, I take heart in the
fact that that's their plan to like cut Elon will
fix it with his fake robot. Yeah, yeah, does kung
fu like a sixty five year old. All right, let's

(46:37):
take a quick break. We'll be right back and our back.
We're back, and real quick update that Kim Kardashian has
a new product or had a new product on the

(46:58):
market that was sold out, sold out in moments, a
few minutes, as she says, yeah, as the saying goes,
necessity is the mother of invention, and Kim k must
have needed a bunch of pubes recently, because last week
she dropped a line of what she calls faux hair
micro string thongs on the world aka fake pubes aka

(47:20):
a merkin. Okay. Vulture gave a brief history of the
murkin in their write up because I was like, yeah,
I don't know. I was always like, that's the thing
in a movie, so they can just have the pubes there,
but no. Murcans were first developed in fourteen fifty per
the Oxford Companion to the Body, and were created so
that women could shave off pubic lce without sacrificing that
fabulous bush, and then sex workers continued that for the

(47:44):
same reason through the seventeenth century. So well, I think
most people have been able to deal with pubic light
in our modern era. But I guess everything moves in cycles.
And Kim said she had a light bulb idea on
a set one day. She said, quote that was just
a fun idea that this is so funny. Let's talk
about a murket. That was just a fun idea that

(48:05):
I had. There was a shoot and someone wanted to
like have their down have hair down there once, and
I was like, couldn't this just be easy and have
it on a thong? And so we made that happen.
I had no idea it would get that reaction and
sell out in a few minutes. What a fun little idea.

Speaker 4 (48:21):
I was picturing like actual underwear with like hair stuffed
in the front. But it seems like it's actually like
the micro thong of it all. It's like invisible string.
That's yeah, holding it in, holding the market in place,
got it okay? Now, like using duct tape like the
old days, you know, like our ancestors had to.

Speaker 6 (48:40):
I'm taking a position to this of like why not, Yeah,
you know what Pilcano loosed dose shand or not porcano
loosed dose.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
You know, I have a two pay down there, you
know what I mean, if the mood strikes and you say,
you know what, maybe I'm ana weare this one backwards.
Today it was a little yeah, let me just on.
But I mean, I'm sure everybody's dying to look like
me and have a big bush of hair in the
back there. I call you Jackie cottontail Jackie Cott. What's right?

(49:10):
Which my little bunny yet? But I mean, unlike Elon
one of our other great inventors, she actually follows through.
When she mentioned something like the nipple bra, when she
was like, you know what, we're also gonna do. That's
pretty genius nipple giving you that that peak Rachel from
Friend's look, you know what I mean. Also in pierced
if you want pierced or unpierced nipple bra, she had that.

(49:34):
And then the other thing that she came up with,
this face bra that is truly part of me is like,
this is brilliant because this is probably made for fourteen
cents and you're selling it for like sixty dollars probably
so the margins are insane, but you're basically eye of
a pony or sorry, it's the thigh of pantyhose, like, yeah,

(49:54):
basically with ear holes cut out. For some it's a
knee it's like a like a knea pre knee brace
with a big face hole and some ear holes cut
into it. For sure, you're supposed to wear that out.

Speaker 4 (50:07):
I think it's supposed to train your face to stay
in that position, which I don't think is how faces
or physics works.

Speaker 1 (50:17):
Yeah, yeah, I don't know what that would do in
terms of improving your face of it. I'm trying to.

Speaker 6 (50:24):
I'm trying to, like I'm looking at the photo and
I'm supplanting on top of that the biology and physics,
and I'm going, what is the end result of wearing
painting hot thing?

Speaker 1 (50:36):
Okay? The yeah, yeah, Which it's got to tighten the
face and improve your facial contouring.

Speaker 2 (50:44):
You know.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
That's it. It's not easy works. Yeah, just chewing gum
and chewing gum would probably be more effective. Get your jaw, pope. Well,
remember who was it? There was that alpha male. There
was that fucking weird thing where they were doing that
to try and make their faces more caveman face. We're like,
dudes are too, like, just do this thing and get
your fucking jaw muscles off. Freaked out.

Speaker 4 (51:07):
I do twenty burpies every morning, and then I do
thirty eyebrow lifts where I just like do my eyebrows
up and down and it actually gives me that chromagnum
muscular forehead.

Speaker 1 (51:18):
Hell yeah, hell yeah. Oh yeah. It was the thing
of just moving your jaw out a little bit over
and over again.

Speaker 6 (51:25):
Oh yeah, I had seen some of those videos. I'm like,
that's crazy stuff. Ask you guys a quick question. We've
had this phenomenon in New Zealand when I was a
teenager at high school.

Speaker 1 (51:35):
So I'm thirty eight years old now.

Speaker 6 (51:36):
I was born in eighty seven, and when I was
in high school, like teenagers did not.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
Go to the gym.

Speaker 6 (51:42):
There would be like maybe two students in my high
school of one thousand students who would go to the gym,
and they were like kind of elite athletes trying to
get into some crazy team.

Speaker 1 (51:52):
They played football. If you're one of the gym, yeah day.

Speaker 6 (51:56):
But now it seems like pretty white, weirdly widespread that
the kids, the teens are going to the gym. Is
there an America as well? And also, did you guys
have the same thing back in the day where it
wasn't that common, but like now it is.

Speaker 4 (52:13):
I'd say, yeah, I'd say it's gone from being a
thing that like the various sports teams were like in
the gym lifting weights, and now it feels like everybody
like there there's a whole you know, subculture of people
who like are working out and like focusing on their

(52:33):
macros and like, you know, just figuring out like three
hundred grams of protein a.

Speaker 1 (52:39):
Day so that beef maxing.

Speaker 4 (52:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:41):
Yeah, you don't have to be on the football team.
You just have to listen to Joe Rogan. I don't
like it, man, we got I'm I hate to say it.

Speaker 6 (52:51):
I listened to a podcast yesterday where they're going through
like a dude who researches the social habits of teenagers essentially,
and he was like, you know, kids aren't partying anymore.

Speaker 1 (53:00):
Teens aren't partying anymore.

Speaker 6 (53:02):
And I'm like, fuck, man, I know it's good that
they're off booze this generation coming up, but we might
need to get them a little bit back on booze.

Speaker 1 (53:11):
A little wild cost something.

Speaker 6 (53:14):
The flip side is too much, like it's just this
generation that's riddled with anxiety that is struggling to socially
connect with each other because they were, you know, in
our country at least like big time lockdown during the
COVID period, during that really important time.

Speaker 1 (53:29):
That's the that's the double edged sort of you know
what social meat are not even double its that it
cuts one. It's fucking people up. I mean, it's the
amount of fitness influencers too that kids see from a
young age where they're like, oh, this is because I
remember like if you if you were a muscle bound,
like when I was ten years old, you were a wrestler,
or you were like a fucking football player. Even the

(53:49):
basketball players weren't like jacked like that, and anyone you
were like who was quote unquote like the cute men
of the era weren't ripped dudes. They were just kind
of like his little skinny fly be haired guys or whatever.
They were non threatening, effeminate dudes.

Speaker 6 (54:03):
Thank god, as a man who was five teen and
you know, sixty five kg so can wit, thank god
that was the case.

Speaker 1 (54:11):
Yeah. So I think a lot of it too is
just you know, the it's just the normalization of like
did Jim talk kind of content and just seeing all
these dudes starting to take fucking human growth hormone or
fucking testosterone.

Speaker 6 (54:24):
Like and that's yeah, it's crazy because I feel like
we vanquished some version of this. We had that incredibly
damaging celebrity magazine culture where it was like, you know,
heroin chic, we're being incredibly skin was put on the
front of every magazine cover. But we've sort of I
guess we'll just always have some version of this, like

(54:44):
horrible messaging to the kids, right, But I don't know, man,
I guess on the American from Kim K fine, whatever, Yeah,
that's right.

Speaker 1 (54:56):
I'm going to get one from my head. Yeah what
about that? Yeah that exists. Yeah, but if it looks
like Pubes, that's gotta be got three Merkins just like
striping your head kind of dude. Look like, if I
wore three Markins on my bald head, I can go
out one day or as eyebrows, two Merkans as eyebrows,

(55:21):
just playing staying alive as I walk down the street
like the fucking beginning of Saturday Night Fever, just with.

Speaker 4 (55:26):
My murking head waggling the eyebrows. That's why I was
doing those eyebrow lifts man gotta gotta power. Yeah, I
do think it's a good point. Like it also everyone
like we talked about this article and linked off to
it last year called everyone whose beautiful nobody is horny
or like nobody's having sex, and it's yeah, how like

(55:48):
these every movie star looks like they spend twenty hours
a week working out, like and it doesn't.

Speaker 1 (55:56):
It's not just action movies, it's every type of movie.
Like there used to be different body types and now
it's just like everyone you get famous for being Like
Chris Prack got famous for being like a sort of
everyman type. You know, he was like the pudgy dude
in Parks and rec and then he got shredded.

Speaker 6 (56:19):
And now he's like really ripped and like, which not
to throw shade, but considering the obesity statistics in America
of the general population, it's just becoming like increasingly it's
kind of like the wealth divide, right, Like there's just
an increasingly concentrated and divided gap between most people, like
you know, ninety percent of people and the point one

(56:41):
percent that are either in the movies or have all
the money.

Speaker 4 (56:45):
Right, right, we need to get to the Christmas Adventurers Club, guys,
because I do think it ties in really well with
what we've already been talking about here, which so the
movie One Battle after Another suggests there's a secret seems
like all male wait supremacyt organization controlling the government that's
called the Christmas Adventurers Club. And yeah, as we said,

(57:06):
no question as to whether or not there's a real
world Christmas adventures Club. The question is mainly which of
several groups inspired it it. So I assumed this is
like such a Thomas Pinchon idea based on like, you know,
the the amount of Gravity's Rainbow that I've been able
to get through about two hundred pages, you know, and

(57:28):
then crying of lot forty nine, thank you for doing
the one short one, Thomas Pinchon. It's but it's such
a Thomas Pinchon idea that it I assumed it was
from Vineland because like he loosely based on Violent but
this is a Paul Thomas Anderson original and it's but
like kind of inspired in spirit by the work of Pinchon.

(57:50):
The first one that jumped to my mind is John
Birch Society, which was this far right anti communist group
that people are generally like talk about more as an
antecedit to like QAnon these days, and not something that's
like actively out there, although people like at their peak,

(58:10):
I think they had one hundred thousand dues, paying members,
sixty full time staff, and you know, we're just focused
on it was they were basically like, we're here to
fight communists at a time when John.

Speaker 1 (58:25):
Burdall was a guy that was killed in China. Right,
It's like named after a guy who would like, I
think a missionary or someone who was killed over there.

Speaker 4 (58:32):
Yeah, And it was at a time when America was
hallucinating communists everywhere, and so they, you know, had a
nice little run there but seemed to have died out.
There's also Paul Thomas Anderson has been into Mason's. There's
like a bunch of Freemason's symbols in the movie Magnolia,
which you know it with specifically the talk show host.

(58:54):
I don't know if you guys are Magnolia fans. I
haven't seen it in a long time. When I saw it,
I loved it so much that I made my dad
go see it with me when he came and visited
me in college, and he immediately was like, are.

Speaker 1 (59:09):
You on drugs? Like, what the fuck is going on
with you? Why would you think?

Speaker 3 (59:12):
I liked that?

Speaker 1 (59:13):
But there's Mason Mason reash it all over like symbolism
all over the place. Which also there is a Freemason's
lodge on the corner of Vinland and Magnolia. There you go,
how about that by somebody whorew up in North Olliwod.
I'm like, yeah, there's a lodge right there.

Speaker 4 (59:31):
Freemasonry, I will say, oftentimes, when you like start digging
in doing research on that, it gets real anti semitic,
real quick, Like all free Mason conspiracies are like and
you know who runs the New World Order? When you
like dig deep enof it usually gets pretty anti semitic.
That Magnolia was I think one of the best movies

(59:51):
ever co written by Cocaine, Like and he seems like
he's like, yeah, I don't know, I just like heard
the idea, and I was kind of interested in. I'm
actually really looking forward to doing a deep dive into
the into Freemasonry. And it's like, as the movie is
coming out right right, the one that makes the most

(01:00:11):
sense is the mysterious elite all male gathering known as
Bohemian Grove started with like artists and journalists and was
immediately taken over as most things in America are by
like the powerful elite, like Burning Man, you know, yeah,

(01:00:32):
exactly exactly. We're witnessing this exact starts.

Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
Getting wild and now Peter Teal is doing deals with
some government. Yeah trailer there.

Speaker 4 (01:00:41):
Yeah, we just have to wait for Burning Man to
soon become invite only and Peter Tale you know, controls
the guest list. But yeah, between rituals that are you know,
very strange involved, like the burning of I think an owl.

Speaker 1 (01:00:57):
One Alex Jones like taped tape to that.

Speaker 4 (01:01:02):
Yeah, this was back when Alex Jones was not just
you know, a right wing reactionary and was just like
that's weird that all those people go out there and meet.
I'm gonna go and get some footage of it. But
it has the actual like pedigree. It's pretty much acknowledged
that they hatched the idea for the Manhattan Project there.

Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
Cool, all right, so they're getting shit done.

Speaker 2 (01:01:29):
Go on.

Speaker 4 (01:01:31):
Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon decided who was going to
run for president first there at a bohuming and Grove
like they they're just there planning the world, like dealing
out the presidency like it's a hand of cards. Basically,
they're like, all right, you first members have included every
Republican president since Calvin Coolidge. Current participants include George Bush,

(01:01:55):
Henry Kissinger, James Baker, David Rockefeller and not I think
some of those people are dead now, but the time
of the reporting.

Speaker 1 (01:02:02):
And let's not forget remember when the Clarence Thomas. Clarence
Thomas also almost likes to take because Harlan was like, there, hey,
Supreme Court justice, Yeah, why don't you come through to
just a group of like minded individuals.

Speaker 4 (01:02:15):
Yeah, journalists not allowed anymore, but people who own media companies,
sure are.

Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
You've got a type of journalists.

Speaker 4 (01:02:23):
Former CEO of Times Mirror Corporation William Randolph Hurst of course,
Jack Howard and Charles Scripps of the Scripts Howard newspaper chain,
Tom Johnson, president of CNN. Yeah, just a lot of
people who And they were also just sued by three
Bohemian Grove employees, which I of course they haven't played

(01:02:43):
like I never I always pictured it would just be
like them like blindfolding a pianist, you know, right, But
apparently there are people who like work on the grounds,
and they sued. Three of them sued Bohemian Grove for
violating California labor laws. One employee claimed that he was

(01:03:03):
mocked by club members for complying with the request from
famous billionaire will William Cooke to hand wash his underwear.
So that's the sort of vibes is you were mocking
the staff for following through with a humiliation request from
a billionaire.

Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
Part of me is like, it's obviously on brand to
exploit the people giving you their labor at your place.
I'm like, of course they would be, but also for
a secret society, like maybe you'd know, pay a better
wage to try and get some silence out of people.
Absolutely just be bitter at this, you know, I like
strong suit guys, never been the strong suit in any

(01:03:43):
respect ever. Pay anyone a living wage? Yeah, they're like, what,
We'll threaten them with death.

Speaker 4 (01:03:49):
They've specifically been responsible for hatching racist government policies, including
in eighteen seventy seven, when the club's president gave a
speech in which he argued that non assimilated races couldn't
live together in harmony unless one enslaved the other and
since slavery had recently become unconstitutional, the next best thing
was to keep Chinese people out, and that led directly

(01:04:11):
to the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
Like that's where they come up. That's where they like
design racismazy.

Speaker 6 (01:04:20):
That this information is just out in the world, Yeah
right right, yeah, yeah, I mean they do their very
best for it not to be.

Speaker 1 (01:04:29):
Well. I think it's because then people read it, they're like,
it can't be that. It's it's that these other people
are getting together and doing this, or there's no documentation
of it. It can't be the thing that's well documented.

Speaker 4 (01:04:40):
Right QAnon is essentially Yeah, like people like point at
like gesture at this with the conspiracies they come up with,
but they're having to invent facts when there's like documented
facts of all of these things.

Speaker 1 (01:04:52):
Yeah. Yeah. The I mean the John Birch thing too,
is I mean, like like to your point, their whole
thing was about conspiracy theories and like real whacky shit.
And when the Conservatives are like, well we can like
align with them a bit to get them on our side,
like that proximity just ended up is really like the
poisoning of the party too. Like that's again how that
thing evolves into the full blown qan on stuff because

(01:05:15):
you have enough of this John Birch society ethos just
swirling around the party. And yeah, the job society didn't
really go away, it just became the modern Republican Party.
And you can anyway, I think you.

Speaker 6 (01:05:28):
Can track that whole phenomenon through watching like Alex Jones
across the last three decades.

Speaker 1 (01:05:35):
Because he used to is never a good guy, but
he used to be a different guy.

Speaker 6 (01:05:40):
Yeah, he was like a very much like everyone can
get fucked, Like everyone in governments against you. Everyone associated
with both the Republican and Democratic Party is you know,
vuying for one wheel government. Like he was a real
epos on both their houses due right up until came
down the elevator. And it is kind of like a

(01:06:04):
very specific boiling down of like a lot of complex forces.
You can watch it, you know, a version of it
all happen and Alex Jones aligning with the Republican Party
and actually getting behind a politician and him getting in
and then like watching kind of both sides of that
wager fucked themselves and have to settle and sort of

(01:06:26):
sell themselves out, like both the Republican Party as it
sort of does the Faustian bargain to court conspiracy theorists
to become a voting block for them, and then the
conspiracy theorists who then.

Speaker 1 (01:06:37):
Have to be like, we're pro government now, kind of
we love the president. You know, the guys we told
you not to.

Speaker 6 (01:06:44):
Trust, you know, with your children forever, and that they
were like reptilian shape shifters who were trying to steal
your blood and take your guns off you. Well, you
also need to vote for them now and get all
your friends and neighbors to as well.

Speaker 4 (01:06:57):
It's an uncomfortable partnership that the Epstein thing, like that
is where the Epstein thing is like so dangerous to Trump,
and like his legacy is that, like it's the most
clear evidence that like he's exactly the type of person
you guys are talking about. Like, yeah, the documented evidence
that is being withheld that allegedly may or may not

(01:07:21):
implicate him in the very scheme that you guys have
read that implicate him.

Speaker 1 (01:07:28):
Yes, we're all trying to find the guy who did this.
That's right, Yeah, exactly, all right, that's gonna do it.

Speaker 4 (01:07:35):
For this week's Weekly Zeitgeist, please like and review the show.
If you like the show means the world to Miles.

Speaker 1 (01:07:44):
He he needs your validation, folks.

Speaker 4 (01:07:48):
I hope you're having a great weekend and I will
talk to him Monday. By