Speaker 1: Hello the Internet, and welcome to this episode of the
Speaker 1: Weekly Zeitgeist.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: These are some of our favorite segments from this week,
Speaker 1: all edited together into one NonStop infotainment laugh stravaganza. Uh yeah, So,
Speaker 1: without further ado, here is the Weekly Zeitgeist. I gotta
Speaker 1: give a shout out to a zeit gang Geist listener,
Speaker 1: Smooth Lou I believe is the name Smooth Lou, who
Speaker 1: solved the mystery? Did you see this on Twitter?
Speaker 3: Wait?
Speaker 4: What was it?
Speaker 1: Grand Puba? It's a Grand Puba track from nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 4: I guess. And did you go back and you checked
Speaker 4: it out?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's definitely that's the song.
Speaker 4: Oh wait, wasn't it was just a check on two thousand?
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I don't know why it took us so long. I
Speaker 4: guess it like didn't didn't really hit that.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 4: Wow wow Yeah, check out that song. It's okay, kind
Speaker 4: of it's kind of good. I wow. Stand to buy
Speaker 4: my reference two.
Speaker 6: Thousand Yeah, I still love Okay, the energy is still there.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 6: Shout out hiking. Honestly, you guys, fucking between all of y'all,
Speaker 6: we don't need Google and we could have googled it,
Speaker 6: but it was hard to just google two thousand song lyric.
Speaker 1: Really so Smooth Lou great, great Twitter handle even better
Speaker 1: at saving my ass from making it seem like I
Speaker 1: was referencing a Billy Joel's song.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Smooth Lou, we owe you a hamburger.
Speaker 1: Yes, Smooth Lou came through with that said, I got you, fan,
Speaker 1: thanks for all you do. And then somebody else came
Speaker 1: through and vouch for Smooth Lou. Was like, pretty cool, dude,
Speaker 1: I miss you Smooth Lou like no forever, so much
Speaker 1: love to Smooth Lou. Wow, this one goes out to you.
Speaker 1: All right, Miles, it's a special episode. We're talking labor,
Speaker 1: I'm talking.
Speaker 4: I'm still blown away that smooth loop. I mean, did
Speaker 4: you hear it? You know?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 6: I started playing a little a second ago and I'm
Speaker 6: like this speaks Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, big poopa head over here.
Speaker 6: Yeah damn all right, anyway, sorry, anyway, Back to you,
Speaker 6: Jack and back to you, Miles.
Speaker 4: Yep, No, back to you, to you fam this episode
Speaker 4: we are no and I'm still gonna go back to you. Pal.
Speaker 4: Shoulders are loose, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Shoulders loose, head on a swivel. Yeah, the Hipscott Honey,
Speaker 1: so it's time. You know what that means, It's time
Speaker 1: to be thrilled to be joining our third See professor
Speaker 1: of Alaska Native Languages at the University of Alaska Southeast,
Speaker 1: the host of the podcast The Tongue Unbroken from Next
Speaker 1: the Next Up Initiative.
Speaker 4: Please welcome doctor who Lance Twitch. Hi, It's me.
Speaker 7: I'm the problem. I'm colonization. How's it going. It's so
Speaker 7: good to do you good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, good to have you back.
Speaker 7: You know, someone tried AI with our thing it language.
Speaker 7: There was no there's a reporter here in Juno for
Speaker 7: the Juno Empire, and so she had entered a short
Speaker 7: she wrote a short story and then she entered it
Speaker 7: into this thing that that had the Clinket language as
Speaker 7: an option, and then she sent it to me. She said,
Speaker 7: could you just take a look at this? And I said, well,
Speaker 7: those are words, but it's just grabbing words and just
Speaker 7: putting them at random, including my name, like my name
Speaker 7: was in the story like ten times. And so I said, wow,
Speaker 7: it's just complete gibberish. It makes no sense.
Speaker 6: So the computer like from it, from it trying to
Speaker 6: glean information about cling it that it found your name
Speaker 6: and it's like Okay, so this must also be part
Speaker 6: of the mix. Yeah, yeah, and here we go, here's
Speaker 6: your story. Wait, I didn't you read what It was
Speaker 6: truly out of order? Just like yeah, yeah, there's a
Speaker 6: couple of words. But like one of the big problems
Speaker 6: is when you change a urb in our language is
Speaker 6: it changes a lot. And so to be able to
Speaker 6: man you could you could develop something that could manufacture
Speaker 6: stuff in our language, but you would have to spend
Speaker 6: a lot of hours. And so what it seems like
Speaker 6: it did is found a dictionary and just sort of
Speaker 6: grab words but never really looked at what they mean,
Speaker 6: I guess. And so it's just like here's a bunch
Speaker 6: of words, here's a word salad, and that's your story.
Speaker 4: So you know, task complete. Yeah, I mean that's good.
Speaker 6: Get to know that AI is still right now, it's
Speaker 6: only fucking up like English.
Speaker 7: Yeah right, and so but it's probably coming for everything eventually.
Speaker 7: And so but maybe maybe there's a world where you
Speaker 7: have someone to talk to because with our with our language,
Speaker 7: we have about forty people left who could speak, so
Speaker 7: it does get pretty scary. And we have a language
Speaker 7: north of us that's called Ea that lost its last
Speaker 7: living bird speaker, and when she was the only speaker
Speaker 7: for quite a while, she would say, I talked to
Speaker 7: my TV, I talked to the walls. I talked to God,
Speaker 7: and nobody talks to me. So like, what we're trying
Speaker 7: to do is like keep that from happening. So I
Speaker 7: started with a Taylor Swift take on a Taylor Swift
Speaker 7: song because I thought, maybe if we can get the
Speaker 7: Swifties and the Beehive on board with decolonization, right like
Speaker 7: they they've got so much energy and commitment, and so
Speaker 7: I think maybe we'll get somewhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it definitely makes sense for Taylor Swift.
Speaker 1: I feel like she her career has gone from being
Speaker 1: just like ah shucks.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I guess I'm just kind of a good songwriter to
Speaker 1: like she We've like witnessed her waking up a little
Speaker 1: bit to the complexities of the modern world. So I
Speaker 1: don't know at least, Yeah, you know, which isn't isn't
Speaker 1: that her?
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's why I got those new albums Private equities,
Speaker 6: because version Baby, private equity, All lines go back.
Speaker 1: There, even a bro clock, you know. Yeah, what is
Speaker 1: something from your search history that is.
Speaker 4: Who you are?
Speaker 8: My search history is chaotic and just like so I
Speaker 8: looked at it and was like, oh, this screams helped me.
Speaker 8: I was looking up asexuality, the difference between attraction and desire,
Speaker 8: but I was also looking at STI rates in America
Speaker 8: and non toxic condoms.
Speaker 6: Okay, so asexuality SDI rates non Wait, so wait, what
Speaker 6: are toxic condoms?
Speaker 8: Most condoms are owned by the most condom companies are
Speaker 8: owned by the same five companies, And if you get
Speaker 8: a box, you'll notice that it doesn't have ingredients listed
Speaker 8: on them, but they do have ingredients that're just not
Speaker 8: required to which is really crazy, and a lot of
Speaker 8: the ingredients are harmful, irritating, or in some cases toxic.
Speaker 4: I didn't know that, Like I do all this.
Speaker 8: Research for the show that I have, and I just
Speaker 8: interviewed these ladies who have a non toxic condom company,
Speaker 8: and I had the same reaction. I said, I'm sorry,
Speaker 8: right right right, I've, like, you know, been with a
Speaker 8: toxic dood or two.
Speaker 5: But I didn't realize.
Speaker 8: I was, yeah, that seems like something I can control.
Speaker 8: So yeah, things like parabins or preservatives, Like why would
Speaker 8: a condom have preservatives for.
Speaker 4: The flavor, keep it fresh.
Speaker 8: You're not wrong, Yeah, you're not wrong. But if it's
Speaker 8: just if you just have like just latex and just silicone,
Speaker 8: right right, don't need those other.
Speaker 4: Things, right, So what is it preserving? Exactly? The patriarchy?
Speaker 8: I didn't no, no, no, bad ass, Like that's really
Speaker 8: what it is.
Speaker 4: It's like, it's like, I don't know, it doesn't fuck
Speaker 4: the guy up.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Basically, it's just like all those memes about like is
Speaker 8: he worth risking your pH over this? It's like, no,
Speaker 8: that's really accurate, right truly, I know. So anyway, that's
Speaker 8: how I spend my time.
Speaker 4: There you go, Jango. What's something you think is overrated?
Speaker 9: Oh my god, Well this is going to kind of
Speaker 9: fly in the face of my whole summer tomatoes love.
Speaker 9: But I am coming to the conclusion these last couple
Speaker 9: of years that I think the season of summer is overrated.
Speaker 9: I think, no shit, yeah, well there you go. It's
Speaker 9: a consensus. I think it's just too hot. People are
Speaker 9: a little too weird and angry. In New York City especially.
Speaker 9: It just kind of like bucks the brain chemistry a little.
Speaker 9: So I think as I get older, I'm quickly transitioning
Speaker 9: to a fall man. I think falls where it's at
Speaker 9: falls where all the dreams come true.
Speaker 5: Summer is just sticky, repetitive, day in day out. Yeah,
Speaker 5: rain falling apart. Can't sleep at night, three showers a day,
Speaker 5: I just can't take anymore. Guys, you're a fall guy,
Speaker 5: the fall guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it is like we it gets
Speaker 1: really positive media. Like we were talking about how heat
Speaker 1: waves the deadliest weather event in the United States year
Speaker 1: and year out, and the photographs that get like posted
Speaker 1: next to that story and the news is like children
Speaker 1: playing in a sprinkler, like drinking out of a fire hoser, right, not.
Speaker 4: People at the beach.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like going to the beach or just somebody sweating
Speaker 1: while pouring water on their head. So it's like, but yeah, summer,
Speaker 1: I mean, in addition to just like the straight up
Speaker 1: heat deaths, like violence always rises during the summer bedtime.
Speaker 5: They should show the beer.
Speaker 9: Ll should be like a guy freaking out of the subway,
Speaker 9: like my car's not working, my car's not working, my
Speaker 9: car's not working, Like yeah, losing his mind.
Speaker 5: That's what summer kind of vokes for me.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's interesting too, how climate change is just completely
Speaker 6: souring people now on seasons that used to be like
Speaker 6: the cool one, like like it used to be like
Speaker 6: no one would ever. I think summer is overrated unless
Speaker 6: you're like someone was, like I get burned easily. But
Speaker 6: now it's truly it's like it's fucking unbearable at times
Speaker 6: outside and that isn't a good feeling. But I wonder
Speaker 6: if then that swings with like winter, when we get
Speaker 6: like more intense winters and we're like, yeah, fuck the
Speaker 6: Arctic freezes that we have every six months too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, got a lot in store. It seems like what's
Speaker 4: what's something you think is underrated?
Speaker 5: Oh? Boys, strap in for this one.
Speaker 9: I've become all about room temperature water. Okay, I think
Speaker 9: I think I want my water the same temperature as
Speaker 9: my bi I don't want it hurting my teeth. I
Speaker 9: don't want space and my refrigerator, my tiny New York
Speaker 9: refrigerator filled. So lately it's been a pitcher.
Speaker 2: Of water on the counter, you know, a nice eighty
Speaker 2: degrees pound it easy.
Speaker 5: That's that's my approach going forward.
Speaker 4: So it's a sipping thing.
Speaker 6: It's more like you're doing like an F one pit
Speaker 6: stop just to get the hydration quickly.
Speaker 9: Yeah, purely, efficient, efficiently, and also like I think like
Speaker 9: this in this in the same way the media hypes
Speaker 9: up summer, the media will hype up glistening cold glasses
Speaker 9: of water with perfect, perfect cubic ice cube.
Speaker 5: But I don't think that's about it. I think waters
Speaker 5: be nice, nice and mild, so it's not to offend
Speaker 5: my delicate sensibilities.
Speaker 6: I can I feel like I can only drink ice water.
Speaker 6: I don't know why. I just like it feels. I
Speaker 6: think that's how in my mind I elevate ice like
Speaker 6: water to like a fun thing. It's cold and nice
Speaker 6: and crisp. But now I can just drink jugs of it.
Speaker 6: But yeah, yeah, body temp water, all right, I'll try it.
Speaker 6: I'll think of it in the way of like, it's
Speaker 6: more about how can I get it down quickly?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 9: Yeah, I'm alos like neurotic drink a shill out of
Speaker 9: water every day, guys, So I think it just makes
Speaker 9: it easier for me. So maybe if you have more
Speaker 9: like pleasurable relationship with water, it would be different, But
Speaker 9: for me, it's all about the function.
Speaker 1: Right right, Yeah, Why do I think room temp water
Speaker 1: is like drinks slower than cold water. Is that just
Speaker 1: because that my preference is cold water? I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I think I can like just hammer back
Speaker 1: a lot of cold water, and room temp water is
Speaker 1: like harder to get down.
Speaker 5: Don't you ever get the shivers?
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 5: A little bit. You're like, I'm a delicate little flour.
Speaker 5: I think it's the lesson we're learning here, is I really?
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's like, don't the water can't be too hot
Speaker 6: or too cold now, it has to be just around
Speaker 6: the temperature of his internal organs.
Speaker 1: Something related to what you said about tooth pain that
Speaker 1: I've just discovered is underrated for me is sensitive toothpaste.
Speaker 1: I was I wasn't for some reason. I was just
Speaker 1: not not paying attention to that as an option. I've
Speaker 1: started using it lately, and my teeth don't hurt anymore
Speaker 1: when I when I eat stuff that's cold or so.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I thought I picture, I like I limped lumped sensitive
Speaker 1: toothpaste in with elderly toothpaste for some reason.
Speaker 4: Yeah, people with dentures, Yeah, that's how it started, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean.
Speaker 6: But we all, we all got those little sensitive spots
Speaker 6: you know, sometimes it's better to do it like that.
Speaker 4: You got a G T A five poster behind you.
Speaker 2: I was just me, oh Jesus, now this is south
Speaker 2: South Vietnam, North Vietnam, A great, great.
Speaker 5: Place for the g T A franchise to go far
Speaker 5: jacking people.
Speaker 6: Yeah right, exactly the fall of Saigon. Okay, because there's
Speaker 6: a there's like that little peninsul at the bottom. Because
Speaker 6: I'm so yeah, game brained, I'm a GT.
Speaker 5: Five mat bro totally yeah. Yeah yeah. It does have
Speaker 5: a little icons like banks and safe houses.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, cool, cool, cool.
Speaker 1: All right, let's take a quick break and we'll come
Speaker 1: back and talk about and imploding presidential campaign. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back, and we're back, and we are thrilled to
Speaker 1: be joined in air third Seed by a very friend
Speaker 1: of comedian, writer, executive producer, TV host and labor organizer
Speaker 1: who you know from Adam Ruins everything his podcast factually
Speaker 1: and being out in these streets picketing, acting as member
Speaker 1: of the negotiating committee, serving on the w.
Speaker 4: GA West Board of Directors. It's Adam Connor, and.
Speaker 10: That that was all my credits. I have a lot
Speaker 10: of time them have those things. I'm not doing now
Speaker 10: because I'm on strike. I'm not a TV host right now.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean things nascent.
Speaker 3: When it's all over, I'll be back on your screens,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 4: There you go, yes, yes, yes, Well thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine this is a busy time for you
Speaker 1: at all.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I was just sounds like I got nothing going on.
Speaker 10: I was just out on the street nel for for
Speaker 10: three four hours. Ninety degree he with a sign, talking
Speaker 10: to people. It's a blast, man, It's I'm having so
Speaker 10: much fun out there. The solidarity feels so good. It's
Speaker 10: just it's great.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, I mean people are making sacrifices, you know.
Speaker 10: But there's our political directors, a wonderful woman, Rachel Torres.
Speaker 3: She's brilliant.
Speaker 10: She told me, you know, if you're smiling while you're sacrificing,
Speaker 10: if you're having a good time while you're making the sacrifice,
Speaker 10: then they can't beat you. And I think that that
Speaker 10: is really true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, big cheerleader smiles out there on the Yeah, great, people,
Speaker 1: it's it's a party.
Speaker 10: A guy brought a sound system to Netflix and now
Speaker 10: he's playing like sort of mid tempo like dance music.
Speaker 10: You know, it feels like kind of that outdoor day
Speaker 10: club like pool club kind of people almost feel like
Speaker 10: they should be having frozen cocktails walking around like it's
Speaker 10: just the vibes are good. And then he's like remixed
Speaker 10: like people giving speeches like fran Dresser's speech. Someone told
Speaker 10: me he like remixed one of my tiktoks into a song.
Speaker 3: Of like you know, so you want to pick a line,
Speaker 3: lil lil, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And you sent them a takedown notice immediately.
Speaker 4: I'm yeah, better who signed off?
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean we were talking with this feels
Speaker 1: like a huge moment for labor. These are you know,
Speaker 1: with the w g A some of the most influential
Speaker 1: like unionized union protected workers on the planet. But with
Speaker 1: with actors, with the Screen Actors Guild, you know, the.
Speaker 10: Faces, the beauty, beauty and brains coming.
Speaker 3: Together, you know.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I don't know, just kind of thinking about this,
Speaker 1: think about the history of labor and unions in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: It feels like Hollywood to this point. The fact that
Speaker 1: unions have been a presence in Hollywood for as long
Speaker 1: as they have. It's a great learning moment for why
Speaker 1: capitalism doesn't work without unions basically.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, well.
Speaker 3: It's an open question where the capitalism works at all,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 11: And I think you're arguing, yeah, like unions are the
Speaker 11: thing that keep people from being like, oh, Marx was
Speaker 11: definitely right, yeah, yeah, right right.
Speaker 10: I mean, look, I sort of don't get into Marxism socialism.
Speaker 10: I don't do isms. I just know that the union
Speaker 10: and the union structure is the only way to fight back, right,
Speaker 10: and so so I you know, the union is a
Speaker 10: hammer and I grabbed the hammer and I start smashing
Speaker 10: ship and it's it's really fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 10: So, I mean the only reason people even think of writing, acting,
Speaker 10: directing as.
Speaker 3: Being lucrative jobs.
Speaker 10: You know, like if you say, oh, my cousin's a
Speaker 10: actor in LA, you might be, oh, he's if he's working,
Speaker 10: he's making good money.
Speaker 3: Right, That's what the assumption is.
Speaker 10: That's only because we've got strong unions in this town
Speaker 10: for ninety years. The Writer School was founded ninety years ago,
Speaker 10: and it's only because those unions went on strung. The
Speaker 10: last time the writers and actors went on strike together
Speaker 10: was nineteen sixty and in that negotiation, we won our
Speaker 10: health and pension plans, and we won the existence of
Speaker 10: residual payments, which are the payments we get every time
Speaker 10: the product is aired. Right, and that's why I have
Speaker 10: a health and pension today is because they went on strike.
Speaker 10: Then that's why I've gotten residuals to help tide me
Speaker 10: through the slow periods of my career. Is because of
Speaker 10: those actors and writers going on strike. And so now
Speaker 10: it's our turn to do the same thing, and that's
Speaker 10: why we're out there.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: As a thought experiment, I was trying to think of, like,
Speaker 1: what do we think the last ninety years of movies
Speaker 1: and TV look like if the industries were never unionized.
Speaker 10: YouTube looks like YouTube, you know, people barely scraping by,
Speaker 10: or it looks like I mean, look at Korea for instance,
Speaker 10: there was or the anime industry, right, those are two
Speaker 10: extremely popular. You know, they make a lot of media
Speaker 10: that's consumed by a lot of people, and the people
Speaker 10: who make the media aren't able to make a living.
Speaker 10: There was a great piece in La Times a couple
Speaker 10: of weeks ago about how the guy who created squid Game,
Speaker 10: you know, they and Netflix trotted this guy's story out
Speaker 10: as a hero story. You know, Oh, he tried to
Speaker 10: make the show for ten years and he couldn't make
Speaker 10: it until Netflix gave him a chance.
Speaker 3: They became a worldwide hit.
Speaker 10: Right that guy made from the first season, which was
Speaker 10: a again worldwide smash like Game of Thrones level, you know,
Speaker 10: people watching it, he made two hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's you know, that's a good living. Right.
Speaker 10: That's not what you should get if you made the
Speaker 10: most popular show ever, right, And that's the guy who
Speaker 10: created the show, the people who worked on the shows,
Speaker 10: and the people who create you know, your more average
Speaker 10: K dramas, right that. You know, you know, I hear
Speaker 10: about one or two K K dramas or K comedies
Speaker 10: a year, but you know the ones that are a
Speaker 10: little further down the down the pipe, that that the
Speaker 10: the real fans watch. Those people are literally not making
Speaker 10: a living making television. They are writing those shows in
Speaker 10: between their day jobs or they're working eighteen hour days,
Speaker 10: and then when the show ends, they're just like, well,
Speaker 10: back to my day job.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 10: And this this article, you can look up La Times,
Speaker 10: you know, squid Game Korean Google that and you'll find
Speaker 10: the article goes into really long detail on that. And
Speaker 10: the reason is there's no unions and Netflix is exploiting that.
Speaker 10: I mean they talk about Netflix came into that market
Speaker 10: and said, oh, we want to you know, spread Korean
Speaker 10: content around the world, and they created a lot of work.
Speaker 10: They created a lot of shows, but no one's being
Speaker 10: paid because the stand the work standards are so abysmal.
Speaker 10: It's sweatshop media unfortunately.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I had no idea that that was the thing.
Speaker 6: I mean again, obviously because a lot of Korean media
Speaker 6: is so good that I was like, oh, yeah, is
Speaker 6: a natural progression of things. And then I remember, oh,
Speaker 6: Netflix is going in like but there was a moment
Speaker 6: I was like, oh, they're going in like to the
Speaker 6: point where I was like, oh, they might. They're really
Speaker 6: trying to put their foot down in Korea. I had
Speaker 6: no ideas because they're like, yeah, man.
Speaker 4: You can get away with anything over here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 10: I mean, it's just like it's a car company, you know,
Speaker 10: moving to Mexico, right, or to any other or you
Speaker 10: know Nike in Bangladesh, right, it's uh there they are
Speaker 10: taking advantage of poor work standards to get the product
Speaker 10: a lot cheaper.
Speaker 3: And you know, why do the companies love anime?
Speaker 10: You know, it's awesome as an American you know, someone
Speaker 10: who grew up you know, trading VHS tapes of anime
Speaker 10: that it's like popular in the US now it's popular
Speaker 10: around the world.
Speaker 3: That's great. But I mean, you guys know that.
Speaker 10: Horrible conditions that anime has made in I mean people,
Speaker 10: people die in that industry.
Speaker 6: Make jokes about it. I remember, and I was like,
Speaker 6: is that a joke or is that one of those
Speaker 6: Simpsons jokes? So they're like, no, no, no, that's real.
Speaker 3: It's awful. It's awful.
Speaker 10: And that's one of the reasons they're pumping it out,
Speaker 10: is they is they feel that they can, you know,
Speaker 10: get more content for less dollars.
Speaker 3: Now. The thing about that, though, is that.
Speaker 10: American American media is still the most popular valuable media
Speaker 10: in the world.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 10: It's still what people want to watch, like from a
Speaker 10: big budget thing like Avatar to right to you know,
Speaker 10: even you know, reruns of old sitcoms. Right, people are
Speaker 10: still watching Friends in Australia, you know, yeah, and Ireland.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and new shows as well.
Speaker 10: Right, that is what people want to watch more than
Speaker 10: anything else, both in America and around the world. And
Speaker 10: one of the reasons for that is because the entertainment
Speaker 10: industry has been the only place that paid creators fairly
Speaker 10: for the last hundred years. You know, if you are
Speaker 10: a great writer and you want to make if you
Speaker 10: want to if you want to buy a big house
Speaker 10: of your writing, you know, where are you gonna go.
Speaker 10: Are you gonna work in journalism? Are you going to
Speaker 10: work in novels? No, You're going to go try to
Speaker 10: sell a big movie script.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 10: That's been the pattern in Hollywood up until basically the
Speaker 10: early two thousands, where you had the best writer literally
Speaker 10: Faulkner and Fitzgerald came to Hollywood right to write movies.
Speaker 10: And you know, to think about, well they both drank
Speaker 10: themselves to death, but too much money.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you know that was that was the way
Speaker 3: it worked.
Speaker 10: And the companies have broke in that compact, and as
Speaker 10: a result, the content is getting worse. Unfortunately, you know,
Speaker 10: we're entering this Marvel period where they're trying to you know,
Speaker 10: they're saying, oh, the actor doesn't matter, the writing doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: All that matters is Spider Man.
Speaker 10: People will go to see Spider Man no matter what,
Speaker 10: you know, no matter who's in the suit, no matter
Speaker 10: what he's saying, right, and it's not actually true because
Speaker 10: you know, look at what happened with The Flash, right,
Speaker 10: they realize they can't just cram in superheroes and expect
Speaker 10: people to show up. But you know, all that that
Speaker 10: makes the CEOs think is they need to pump harder.
Speaker 10: They need to you know, get more blood out of
Speaker 10: that stone. But so these companies are destroying the compact.
Speaker 10: And why did the compact work because the unions. We
Speaker 10: had strong unions here that that you know, meant we
Speaker 10: had good working nditions, meant people wanted to move here
Speaker 10: to Los Angeles or to New York to make the content.
Speaker 10: And we're fighting to change that to make it the
Speaker 10: way it should be.
Speaker 1: I feel like The Flash is a good example of
Speaker 1: you know, the Flash recently came out. Indiana Jones recently
Speaker 1: came out and the primary complaint that you heard from
Speaker 1: them is creepy CGI, like terrible, weird CGI that take
Speaker 1: takes you out of it, and like effects are a
Speaker 1: frequent complaint and you hear people like wonder why, like
Speaker 1: how this happens on some of these movies. They spent
Speaker 1: three hundred million dollars in effects and it's at least
Speaker 1: partially because the effects houses are not unionized. If that
Speaker 1: is not a part of the industry that is protected,
Speaker 1: and so you have situations where the effects house that
Speaker 1: won the Oscar for Life of Pie is out of
Speaker 1: business by the time they get the award.
Speaker 4: You know, you know if you.
Speaker 10: Talk to I've talked to people who work at effects
Speaker 10: houses for Marvel, and they're treated terribly. You know, they're
Speaker 10: they're asked to do impossible things on impossible turnarounds that
Speaker 10: you know, well, we want we want to like this. No,
Speaker 10: we want to like this. You have to change everything,
Speaker 10: but we're not going to pay you more, and you
Speaker 10: have so much time to do it. You know that
Speaker 10: kind of request. The people who work at these companies,
Speaker 10: you know that their careers last five years and then
Speaker 10: they burn out because they can't do it anymore. It's
Speaker 10: like video games, and you know, the proof is in
Speaker 10: the pudding. But also you know, we're we're in a
Speaker 10: new era of the special effects. Right, it used to
Speaker 10: be the special effects the CGI was there to impress
Speaker 10: and delight the audience. Right, Oh my god, look at
Speaker 10: the terminator and terminator too, right, he's melting. He's the
Speaker 10: Melting Man, it's look how cool or toy story right,
Speaker 10: Look how great it looks.
Speaker 3: Now they use it as a cost cutting device.
Speaker 10: They use it in order to they're like, oh, if
Speaker 10: we just like send it all to a VFX house
Speaker 10: that's not Union and make them do all the work,
Speaker 10: it's a lot cheaper. You know, if you look at
Speaker 10: the difference between Look the New Mission Impossible, Right, I
Speaker 10: saw it.
Speaker 3: Look it's not a good movie, but.
Speaker 1: You don't think it's an accurate depiction of AI.
Speaker 10: It is interesting that the villain is AI. Right, but
Speaker 10: the script is I don't want to get into it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 10: But the action scenes, right, It's got these two incredible
Speaker 10: action sequences that are totally worth seeing in a theater.
Speaker 10: Had people hooting and hollering great time. And why did
Speaker 10: they work so well? Because they fucking happened in real life,
Speaker 10: because they put in the effort and the craft and
Speaker 10: the time to you know, go to the place and
Speaker 10: do the stunt and shoot the thing, or to build
Speaker 10: the set, or to buy the car, or to put
Speaker 10: the person in the place right.
Speaker 3: And uh, for movies like The.
Speaker 10: Flash, they're like, just have the guy stand in front
Speaker 10: of a green screen and we'll make some underpaid couple bozos. Yeah,
Speaker 10: you know, sorry, they're not bozos. They're great artists, but
Speaker 10: they're underpaid. They don't have enough time.
Speaker 4: In terrible conditions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's cut rate. It's sweatshop content, you know.
Speaker 1: And about another lightning portal in the sky, what if
Speaker 1: we did.
Speaker 4: It was coming out of portals?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, there's portals, flashy stuff.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Adam, I gotta ask though, right, like these costs
Speaker 6: they got to the studios got to cut costs because
Speaker 6: I've heard it.
Speaker 4: Straight from their mouths. Times are tough. Oh yeah for studios.
Speaker 6: I heard Bobby Jay I'll say I grew in a
Speaker 6: very fancy way. Uh, you know, really be out here
Speaker 6: being like you know, their their demands are unrealistic or
Speaker 6: other people.
Speaker 4: I've heard that.
Speaker 6: I've heard the thing over and over that times are
Speaker 6: hard for studios. And we've talked a lot about this
Speaker 6: where you know, Iiger's pay was what approaching twenty seven
Speaker 6: million for the year, and like people like what David
Speaker 6: Zaslov almost be like a quarter of a billion dollars
Speaker 6: in twenty twenty one. Yeah, what how would you define
Speaker 6: from their perspective, it's it's that they're trying to inaccurately
Speaker 6: describe a problem that they maybe they have created through
Speaker 6: their own business decisions.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 10: I mean, that's a wonderful answer to your own question.
Speaker 10: That's a great way to put it. I mean, look,
Speaker 10: these guys are raking it in. And let's be really clear.
Speaker 10: So writer producer pay has fallen by twenty three percent
Speaker 10: at the median over the last ten years. That's the
Speaker 10: Writer's Guild's own figures. That's total pay. Over the same time,
Speaker 10: show budgets have gone up by fifty percent. Revenue has
Speaker 10: gone up, profits have gone up for these companies, just
Speaker 10: their entertainment divisions. I'm not even talking about you know,
Speaker 10: Disney's got they've got theme parks. We're not talking about that.
Speaker 10: We're just talking about literally the entertainment divisions of the companies. Revenue, profits,
Speaker 10: budgets all up while our salaries go down. At the
Speaker 10: same time, they're paying these companies, these CEOs, massive, massive
Speaker 10: amounts of money. I mean, Bob I here, when he
Speaker 10: made those comments, he had just negotiated for himself an
Speaker 10: additional two years and he's making an extra fifty million
Speaker 10: bucks a year.
Speaker 3: That guy doesn't fucking need that money.
Speaker 10: He's already incredibly wealthy if you look at the aggregate
Speaker 10: he's made over the last ten years. How dare he
Speaker 10: go on television and plead poverty while the rest of
Speaker 10: us are not able to make a living while his
Speaker 10: workforce is not able to make health insurance or you know,
Speaker 10: make a living anymore.
Speaker 1: It's revolting, but its line goes up shit right, it's
Speaker 1: their answering to the Wall Street And for Wall Street,
Speaker 1: it's never enough, like when you have a good year,
Speaker 1: that that is an indication that you should keep being
Speaker 1: better years. Like that's what we want to consistently see
Speaker 1: that line.
Speaker 10: Also these but it's not just that because growth is
Speaker 10: growth is possible, right if you do you can do
Speaker 10: it the right way. You can pay everybody properly and
Speaker 10: make good shit that people actually like and make more money.
Speaker 10: That's my belief in life. And there's companies that fucking
Speaker 10: do it right. And also it's what the entertainment industry
Speaker 10: did for a long time, Like a lot of people
Speaker 10: were paid shitty in the entertainment industry, you know, like
Speaker 10: the unions are the ones that you know that protected
Speaker 10: us PA's We have always been paid shittily. There's a
Speaker 10: lot of bad shit in Hollywood. But like you know,
Speaker 10: from the eighties through the two thousands, everybody liked the product. Right,
Speaker 10: we had peak TV, Right, everyone had cable, We were
Speaker 10: watching ads. We were fine with it. We could watch
Speaker 10: on demand or use DVR if we needed to.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean.
Speaker 10: Everything was people were making so much money. People are
Speaker 10: going to the movie theater. The content was good, you know,
Speaker 10: and the people who made it were paid. And now
Speaker 10: what's happening. People don't like the product anymore.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 10: The Netflix revolution was a lie that they you know,
Speaker 10: the idea that you could pay fifteen dollars a month
Speaker 10: and never have to pay another penny and never watch
Speaker 10: an ad, and watch every show ever made. They were
Speaker 10: lying to the public that that was possible. They destroyed
Speaker 10: a profitable business model in order to find a new one.
Speaker 10: But at the same time, they kept enough of the
Speaker 10: money for themselves that the people at top at the
Speaker 10: top are doing better.
Speaker 3: Well, everyone else does.
Speaker 10: Worse, But the companies would grow more if they if
Speaker 10: they did it the right way.
Speaker 3: Period.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Golden Age of TV is a great example
Speaker 1: of the WGA working because you know, like you mentioned
Speaker 1: like the WGA, and like the things that the WGA
Speaker 1: has provided, like writers with like the ability to make
Speaker 1: a living during dry periods or whatever, like helps writers,
Speaker 1: you know, remain writers. And a lot of the best
Speaker 1: TV is created by people with the long time experience
Speaker 1: in like past successful and unsuccessful TV shows like Breaking
Speaker 1: Bad is created by a former X Files writer, Like
Speaker 1: there's a big break between the Sopranos comes from a
Speaker 1: writer on Northern Exposure, like Matthew Weiner cut his teeth
Speaker 1: on Becker and in Laws before.
Speaker 4: He got on Sopranos, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but like the you know on your episode where
Speaker 1: like where you were talking about the strike, you were
Speaker 1: talking to I think David Goodman, Yeah who and you
Speaker 1: know his family guy writer who all told a story
Speaker 1: about how he almost quit the industry, but like a
Speaker 1: residual check for a show he wrote on in the
Speaker 1: past that he said like wasn't very good, but him
Speaker 1: it got him through so that he could keep being
Speaker 1: a writer. And there's just all this all this information
Speaker 1: that gets passed down, Like I forget where I heard it,
Speaker 1: but somebody was saying that, like the family tree of
Speaker 1: all of the Golden Age TV shows it all like
Speaker 1: traces back to Colombo and like that show then like
Speaker 1: created all like all the writers on that became showrunners
Speaker 1: on other shows and it just like branched down. So
Speaker 1: we magically have this period of Golden era TV. But
Speaker 1: like that doesn't happen if the television industry works the
Speaker 1: way like the industry that I think all three of
Speaker 1: us have a background in is like creating content for
Speaker 1: the Internet. Yeah, like just the way that we've seen
Speaker 1: that devolve over the past fifteen years.
Speaker 3: It doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 4: It doesn't exist like.
Speaker 6: There are no guardrails and there were no ways to
Speaker 6: you know, like ensure good outcomes for the people that
Speaker 6: were contributing to that environment.
Speaker 10: Yeah, because they the company has decided to pull them,
Speaker 10: sell them for parts.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 10: I mean look at look I like I play video games, right,
Speaker 10: so I like reading video game websites. There's no such
Speaker 10: thing as video game websites anymore. I mean there's sites
Speaker 10: where people upload it for free, like YouTube right right,
Speaker 10: where people put in all the work and all the
Speaker 10: risk themselves of putting up work and then you know,
Speaker 10: if you're lucky, you get paid by YouTube if you
Speaker 10: happen to hit, right, But in terms of being somebody
Speaker 10: who is like a journalist who covers video games, goes
Speaker 10: to E three interviews, people break stories right. There literally
Speaker 10: are not outlets left that pay people to do this
Speaker 10: because they've been stripping them for parts. One of them
Speaker 10: that I read is Kotaku. I've read it for years.
Speaker 10: They're trying to replace those writers with AI. They're trying to,
Speaker 10: like and like, what's what's the fucking point of that?
Speaker 3: Do they do?
Speaker 10: They think I'm gonna go to kotaku dot com to
Speaker 10: read AI generated articles.
Speaker 3: I also have chat GPT. I can just ask chat
Speaker 3: GPT if I want an AI answer.
Speaker 10: Why are you hiring someone to copy paste from chat GPT?
Speaker 10: What the fuck is the point of that? Why destroy
Speaker 10: your own industry? People go because they like the people right.
Speaker 6: Right, And I guess there's like that that's just like
Speaker 6: that disconnect we see like in every industry where again
Speaker 6: there's like a motive to make sure that like you
Speaker 6: provide value to shareholders while completely like missing sight of
Speaker 6: like the actual products that are being made and like
Speaker 6: if consumers are going to be savy enough, because look,
Speaker 6: I love bullshit reality TV, but I like, like actually
Speaker 6: well written television also, and I can already see like
Speaker 6: you like just that that shift to Max was like
Speaker 6: sort of like a preview of like the worlds we're
Speaker 6: looking at. It was like, well, remember HBO, there's that,
Speaker 6: and then there's just all this other unscripted nonsense that
Speaker 6: fucking is really cheap to make, and like.
Speaker 4: You know, kind of maybe where things should be.
Speaker 6: Going if writers and actors don't get off their shit.
Speaker 10: Max is such an antithesis of the last you know
Speaker 10: of how you build a successful media company, right, like HBO.
Speaker 10: There's a wonderful book about HBO. I read it this
Speaker 10: year called It's not TV, It's It's a History of HBO.
Speaker 10: From the beginning, what you realize HBO is like this,
Speaker 10: you know, starts out as just a cable company that
Speaker 10: you know, you pay extra and you can watch fights
Speaker 10: and stuff like that, right, right, And then they find
Speaker 10: this niche of oh, we can make content that doesn't
Speaker 10: exist on broadcast, right, we can make science edgy, we
Speaker 10: can da da da da, Right, and they build it
Speaker 10: on exactly dreamond this show with a pride to watch
Speaker 10: that because there was boobs in it, right, but you
Speaker 10: know they did the Larry Sanders show. They did the
Speaker 10: Sopranos right, and they sort of create prestige. TV is
Speaker 10: created by HBO to the point where you know, by
Speaker 10: by up to you know, three or four years ago,
Speaker 10: you know, if a show comes out on HBO, you're like,
Speaker 10: I'm going to assume this show is good, right, because
Speaker 10: you know that their creative culture is like, if HBO
Speaker 10: is putting their muscle behind that, it's got to be good.
Speaker 10: There's exceptions, there's stinkers, of course, yes, like like you know,
Speaker 10: the Idol or whatever. But that's the it's the cathedral
Speaker 10: of television and people know that, right. And so when
Speaker 10: Netflix comes along and all these other channels starting their streamers,
Speaker 10: what would have been the easiest thing in the world.
Speaker 3: Call the streamer HBO.
Speaker 10: Yes, people are already subscribed to HBO for fifteen bucks
Speaker 10: a month.
Speaker 3: There's a streaming service called HBO.
Speaker 10: Have HBO make more shows, keep the brand that people know,
Speaker 10: the thing people care about. They actually like HBO. It's
Speaker 10: for adults. It means something to people. It's not TV,
Speaker 10: it's HBO instead. Now HBO is a vertical underneath this
Speaker 10: mystery meat thing Max that no one's ever heard. That's
Speaker 10: not a brand that was literally what they called it
Speaker 10: instead of Plus. They're like, should we call it HBO plus? No,
Speaker 10: too small, We'll call it HBO Max. Right, it's extreme HBO.
Speaker 10: And then like but then they got rid of the
Speaker 10: part that people fucking knew and just called it Max.
Speaker 3: That's like if Disney Plus just called itself plus. Right.
Speaker 3: People are there for the Disney, they're not there for
Speaker 3: the Plus.
Speaker 4: I'm so mouse and then the Max ads.
Speaker 1: We're all trading on these like icons of film, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: the things that like are completely outside of the model
Speaker 1: that they're trying to force things in the direction.
Speaker 3: Or called it fucking Warner Brothers. People know Warner Brothers.
Speaker 3: Call it Warner Max. People love the people. People have
Speaker 3: been watching Warner Brothers in this country for one hundred years.
Speaker 3: Like just call it that.
Speaker 10: But instead, you know, Zoslav treats this company it's like
Speaker 10: a stock portfolio to him, Right, He's like, oh, I
Speaker 10: put this in, I put that in, I put that,
Speaker 10: and that's my tranch of content.
Speaker 3: That's my big batch of content.
Speaker 10: I don't give a shit what it's called, right, because
Speaker 10: his plan is to sell it or whatever he wants
Speaker 10: to do. He's financialized it. But that's not that's not
Speaker 10: how you build a media brand. And you know, it's
Speaker 10: it's a shame. Like it often feels stupid to say,
Speaker 10: why don't these companies like respect these old time values
Speaker 10: of having like a good media brand that people actually
Speaker 10: care about, you know, that means something to people. But
Speaker 10: like I feel stupid saying that because they don't care.
Speaker 10: They only care about money. But like they lose money
Speaker 10: by doing this, you know, like people, how have we
Speaker 10: forgotten the lessons of the last hundred years of capitalism?
Speaker 10: Did these people go to fucking marketing school? Like it's
Speaker 10: just basic brand shit? Sorry no, but.
Speaker 6: It's I mean, it's it's so reactionary, and it's everything
Speaker 6: about like whatever is good in the short term with
Speaker 6: no long term thinking. Like everybody he's getting into streaming.
Speaker 6: I guess we're getting into streaming too. Wait what does
Speaker 6: it take to do that? And now we see like
Speaker 6: I mean, like with HBO Max, we saw half of
Speaker 6: the ship that was like interesting to people get absolutely vaporized.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, let's take a quick break and we'll
Speaker 1: be right back to talk more about this and AI.
Speaker 4: And we're back and so do I just repeat that question?
Speaker 6: Yeah, but like I was saying, no, like, and I
Speaker 6: think if you didn't just skip ahead, the point being
Speaker 6: is I think there's there's a lot of like you've
Speaker 6: you've spent a lot of facts every time you've come on,
Speaker 6: but have really made me think about how much the
Speaker 6: way that we this like our societies were built in
Speaker 6: this country was built, how much it affects us now,
Speaker 6: how much it poisons us now to the point that
Speaker 6: we have no connection to each other, community, to land,
Speaker 6: and things like that. I'm do you see this as
Speaker 6: part and parcel of that disconnect or is there is
Speaker 6: there another way you're looking at it?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 7: So, I guess I think of a couple of things.
Speaker 7: One is, when I was going to school in Hawaii,
Speaker 7: I was living with one of my teachers named Larry Kimura,
Speaker 7: who we call him the godfather of the Hawaiian language movement.
Speaker 7: He's just he's an amazing person, and at one point
Speaker 7: he was just he kind of started going off about
Speaker 7: these people wearing these shirts that say Aloha Aina, which
Speaker 7: is like love the land, and he says, you love
Speaker 7: the land, show me your fingers, you got you got dirt?
Speaker 7: Underneath your fingernails. Have you been out working in the land,
Speaker 7: You've been digging, you've been planting stuff, You've been doing stuff.
Speaker 7: And so for me, I think, if the world starts
Speaker 7: glitching out, go out on the land, right, just go
Speaker 7: go see what's out there, and and go get your
Speaker 7: hands dirty. And then I also sometimes I have theories
Speaker 7: that maybe people don't want to hear. So I was
Speaker 7: in a class on American literature and the theme of
Speaker 7: the class was paranoia. And at this sort of culminating
Speaker 7: moment in the class, this was for an MFA and
Speaker 7: creative writing, and the teachers who was really he was
Speaker 7: a great guy, and he said, well, why do you
Speaker 7: guys think there's so much paranoia in American literature? And
Speaker 7: this person had an answer, and that person had an answer,
Speaker 7: and that person had an answer, and I raised my
Speaker 7: hand I said, well, I think it's because America stole
Speaker 7: everything from Native American people's and they're just kind of
Speaker 7: waiting for their comeup ins.
Speaker 3: And I also think that it's you can.
Speaker 7: Really geek out on sci fi theories and stuff, so
Speaker 7: you don't have to assume that your ancestors did something
Speaker 7: really horrible. And so I think if people say, no,
Speaker 7: this is all part of this larger program that we
Speaker 7: have no control of. I think it's another system to
Speaker 7: avoid doing the work that it's going to take to
Speaker 7: sort of start moving towards a sense of equity which
Speaker 7: is totally attainable, which is totally possible. But I think
Speaker 7: colonization sets up all of these mechanisms like either like
Speaker 7: it's already in place, it's too late to do anything,
Speaker 7: it's this thing or that thing, or the limitlessness of
Speaker 7: resource extraction and the absolute limit of budgets and time
Speaker 7: and energy, right, and so it just sort of gets
Speaker 7: you trapped into these systems. So for me, I'm always,
Speaker 7: you know, I'm always paranoid that something is racism, and
Speaker 7: I'm always paranoid that something is colonization. And I'm usually right,
Speaker 7: but I'll also say, you know, so that's my matrix
Speaker 7: that I'm stuck in, you know. So sometimes I'll be
Speaker 7: dealing with something I was like, is this a colonization
Speaker 7: thing or is this a race? Like am I getting
Speaker 7: Am I getting treated different because of you know, my
Speaker 7: name or because of who I am or how I look?
Speaker 7: Are my kids being treated different? And so I'm always
Speaker 7: sort of I'm paranoid myself, right, but I'm also I
Speaker 7: have it, you know, I don't have TikTok channel for it,
Speaker 7: but I've been right quite a few times with this
Speaker 7: kind of stuff too. So for me, I think it's
Speaker 7: fascinating and it's neat to look at, and like I
Speaker 7: have friends who've seen UFOs and I have friends who've
Speaker 7: seen We have our own monsters here that live in
Speaker 7: the woods. We went camping last weekend and it's fun.
Speaker 7: It's it's a blast. We're like, we're in Alaska. You
Speaker 7: can just walk out your door and you're in the wilderness.
Speaker 7: But that means, you know, the dog starts barking. You're
Speaker 7: cooking some delicious dinner out in the middle of nowhere
Speaker 7: in the dark. Well it's not in the mill of Nore,
Speaker 7: but far from you know, a hospital, and the dog's
Speaker 7: barking and looking down the trail, and you're like, grab
Speaker 7: all the food, get in the cabin, you know, because
Speaker 7: there's probably you know, like, we respect the grizzly bear
Speaker 7: so much that we got two names. Like, so Hoots
Speaker 7: is what we would call it. So it means brown bear,
Speaker 7: and we say it's Eke for black bear. But the
Speaker 7: brown bear is the one that's it owns the forest
Speaker 7: and we know that. But when we're out in the forest,
Speaker 7: we say yet see neat, which means a living thing.
Speaker 7: So we don't even say its name when we're out there,
Speaker 7: because we're like, you say its name, it's going to
Speaker 7: be like you talk, you call me.
Speaker 4: Wait, you're in my house. And so we talk to them.
Speaker 7: Before we go into the woods, and we sort of
Speaker 7: live this life that's pretty connected to the natural world.
Speaker 7: So I think the other thing too, is there's a
Speaker 7: fascination with an artificial world because there's a prescribed disconnect
Speaker 7: with the natural world in order to maintain a sense
Speaker 7: of colonization and economics the way that it's required today,
Speaker 7: like you have to be separate from it to say, yeah,
Speaker 7: cut all the trees down, yeah, like kill off all
Speaker 7: those buffalo you know, like this, these mountain lions scare me,
Speaker 7: so just murder them, right and so, but in order
Speaker 7: to do that, you have to remove yourself, which you know,
Speaker 7: Christianity kind of did that already. It's like man has
Speaker 7: domain of everything, including women, right, and it just creates
Speaker 7: tons and tons of problems because I think human beings,
Speaker 7: and especially if we just narrow it down to one gender,
Speaker 7: don't have enough skills and ability to like men, and
Speaker 7: it's the universe. It's sort of like, actually, you should
Speaker 7: just be in the universe and figure out how you're
Speaker 7: part of that, because you're not You're in the food chain,
Speaker 7: you're you're in You're in all these circles, you're in
Speaker 7: all these cycles, and what you do affect all of
Speaker 7: these things, and so I like the conversations. I think
Speaker 7: it's fun. I think it's fun to watch this stuff.
Speaker 7: You're like, oh, yeah, that is weird and that's pretty cool.
Speaker 7: But you can also zoom in on your iPhone. It
Speaker 7: starts to get pretty grainy, and then it's probably pretty
Speaker 7: easy when you got.
Speaker 4: To share his camragns in my house, what the fun
Speaker 4: I think?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that kind of ties nicely into just,
Speaker 1: you know, if you have any additional thoughts on Avatar.
Speaker 1: But like the reality of you know, what we're doing
Speaker 1: to the world and other humans and the history of
Speaker 1: what you know, white people have done to the world
Speaker 1: and other human beings is maybe too uncomfortable for some
Speaker 1: people to take in, and they want to create an
Speaker 1: artificial reality. In the case of the Matrix, it's like
Speaker 1: just coming up with a system of belief that like
Speaker 1: we are in an unofficial reality. But in the case
Speaker 1: of Avatar, it's like creating an unofficial like an artificial
Speaker 1: reality that you can go live in for a couple
Speaker 1: hours that also like rewrites that history where you get
Speaker 1: to like be on the good guy side, on the
Speaker 1: on the side of the victimize the people being victimized
Speaker 1: by colonialism. Like I do think Avatar is really interesting
Speaker 1: just as a phenomenon, because I don't, like, I can't
Speaker 1: think of another cultural, pop cultural thing that that is
Speaker 1: as successful as that those movies when they're happening, and
Speaker 1: then as completely embarrassing the second they stop happening, Like
Speaker 1: like it happened once with the first Avatar and everyone's like, man,
Speaker 1: that was weird, and like Avatar was like a punchline.
Speaker 1: But then they did again like you brought you brought
Speaker 1: Avatar too out and every everyone went to fucking see
Speaker 1: that one too, and like they are the two of
Speaker 1: the three most top grossing movies of all time, but
Speaker 1: like nobody would put a movie poster of that movie
Speaker 1: up except ironically, And so I don't know, I think
Speaker 1: there's like a weird disconnect. And then we also have
Speaker 1: the thing where like people were experiencing depression after they
Speaker 1: came out of the movie because they couldn't just like
Speaker 1: experience that reality.
Speaker 4: Around the clock.
Speaker 1: So it's definitely filling a need that people have, but
Speaker 1: one that is disconnected from their mind in a way
Speaker 1: that makes it unique where they can't like kind of
Speaker 1: incorporate it into their lives the way they can a
Speaker 1: Star Wars or something like that, where they make it
Speaker 1: part of their personality. Like, it just feels like Avatar
Speaker 1: is the thing that is an experience that then you
Speaker 1: like try not to think about when when you're not
Speaker 1: at an Avatar movie or something. But yeah, I'm curious
Speaker 1: to hear your thoughts on Avatar.
Speaker 7: Well, you know, I think largely there's this fascination with
Speaker 7: white savior films, you know, and so dances with wolves.
Speaker 7: What was the one dangerous something where there's like a
Speaker 7: white school teacher who goes into dangerous yeah, a black neighborhood,
Speaker 7: and you know, and and like there are certainly stories
Speaker 7: of people who come in and embrace community and become
Speaker 7: part of it and become something different and do fight
Speaker 7: racism and fight colonization, you know, but it's it's very rare,
Speaker 7: especially when they like they win or something. And so
Speaker 7: I started to think about this stuff quite a bit.
Speaker 7: And then there's a film called Real Engines, which is
Speaker 7: spelled r E E l I n j u n s,
Speaker 7: which is a documentary on the history of Native Americans
Speaker 7: and film, and it kind of goes through a number
Speaker 7: of different sort of scenarios and at one point it
Speaker 7: talks about all these different white actors who have played
Speaker 7: Native Americans, and so there's a growing list of you know, well,
Speaker 7: you know, there's quite a few of them who have
Speaker 7: played Native Americans. And then you also just get really
Speaker 7: interesting things like there's a guy I think his name
Speaker 7: was Ironized Cody or Cody ironized, I can never remember
Speaker 7: which way it goes, but he played so many Native
Speaker 7: Americans and films that he full on believed he was
Speaker 7: Native American when he died, and to some extent, I
Speaker 7: think his children do as well, and so like he
Speaker 7: can assume this entire identity, and so I think there's
Speaker 7: a fascination with that to think about what if there
Speaker 7: was something different.
Speaker 4: But then.
Speaker 7: There's a disconnect as well, because you don't really see
Speaker 7: that embraced in people's reality because if they come out
Speaker 7: of like, let's say they came out of Avatar and said,
Speaker 7: whoa like, I should learn an indigenous language, and I
Speaker 7: should go contribute to a land back initiative, and I
Speaker 7: should actually do something that's embracing decolonization. Because the film,
Speaker 7: you could argue, is about decolonization, right, it's a totally
Speaker 7: fictionalized decolonization, and so you could, like, if it translated
Speaker 7: into real action, that would be more interesting to me
Speaker 7: than just sort of saying, well, you know, it's a
Speaker 7: nice fantasy to say, oh, yeah, well, what if we
Speaker 7: had actually done something a lot more humane instead of
Speaker 7: taking everything from everybody? Because if you look at some things,
Speaker 7: like we talked a bit about the Supreme Court, who
Speaker 7: is all kinds of fucked up, like just the types
Speaker 7: of things that they're doing, these decisions are horrible and
Speaker 7: they're just destructive for movements towards equity. But the one
Speaker 7: thing they couldn't do is dismantle the Indian Child Welfare Act,
Speaker 7: you know. And so the reason why the Indian Child
Speaker 7: Welfare Act exists is because in the mid to late
Speaker 7: nineteen seventies, one out of every four Native American children
Speaker 7: were removed from their homes and placed with white families.
Speaker 7: In addition, one out of of every four Native American
Speaker 7: women were sterilized without their full consents. Like this kind
Speaker 7: of stuff was still happening, and so the removal of people,
Speaker 7: and so like the other thing, I think there's a
Speaker 7: fascination with the idea that colonization had an endpoint or
Speaker 7: it had like we're in this post colonial sort of world,
Speaker 7: which we're not and we could be, but it requires
Speaker 7: a consciousness that's going to move you beyond going to
Speaker 7: a movie for two or three hours and completely immersing
Speaker 7: yourself in this other idea and just saying, actually, we
Speaker 7: can have a reality that is kind of close to
Speaker 7: the Avatar universe, which you know, I'm not opposed to
Speaker 7: that reality, but what I'm opposed to is the idea
Speaker 7: that it exists, or that going to the movie is
Speaker 7: somehow enough.
Speaker 6: Right right, Yeah, it's funny too, because like to your point,
Speaker 6: if you're not coming out of the movie being like, wow,
Speaker 6: we got work to do, then really, then I don't
Speaker 6: know how good it's doing. Because most people come out
Speaker 6: of that movie and be like why is it Pandora Real?
Speaker 3: Why can't I go?
Speaker 6: So the message was maybe like secondary or tertiary to
Speaker 6: like the Wow, isn't this shit fucking cool?
Speaker 5: Anyway?
Speaker 4: Like then there's like some other shit happens to these
Speaker 4: blue people whatever. I came out and inspired to be
Speaker 4: seven foot six.
Speaker 1: Because that does help with balance, it turns out, Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: who knows, such a pleasure having you back on the show?
Speaker 1: Where can people find you? Follow you all that good stuff?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Well, I have a podcast called The Tongue Unbroken, and
Speaker 7: season two is launching in November, so we're going to
Speaker 7: launch during the start of the Native American Heritage Month.
Speaker 7: And the Next Up Initiative is fabulous and I really
Speaker 7: encourage you to just go check it out. It's the
Speaker 7: Next Up Initiative with the iHeart Radio and look at
Speaker 7: the current this whole new generation of Next Up Initiative
Speaker 7: folks who are coming out, and I'm really excited to
Speaker 7: hear their podcasts and to be a part of this
Speaker 7: movement where we're trying to find voices in the margins
Speaker 7: and pull them closer to the center so you can
Speaker 7: find me. I'm sometimes on Facebook, sometimes on Twitter, although
Speaker 7: Twitter has gotten a lot less interesting as.
Speaker 4: They would have to be. Oh, you know, this.
Speaker 7: Billionaire bought it and like uh, and now his tweets
Speaker 7: just keep popping up, like you know, and so I
Speaker 7: tried to mute one of his tweets and says, this
Speaker 7: will make Twitter a better experience for you, and I
Speaker 7: was like, it will actually make Twitter a better experience
Speaker 7: for everybody if we saw a lot less of that voice.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've been getting a lot.
Speaker 1: Of AI ads that are just like really insulted, Like
Speaker 1: here I just screenshok. One crazy thing happened with Asdata
Speaker 1: dot Co today, still in shock. I was troubleshooting with
Speaker 1: a customer on Zoom and he had just gotten his
Speaker 1: person and it's like keep reading meat days to get
Speaker 1: it done. And it's like a promoted post for fucking
Speaker 1: some bullshit. They're all over the place. Anyways, I'm glad
Speaker 1: I interrupted for that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: The other thing I really want to promote is just
Speaker 7: indigenous language revitalization. So if you're not familiar with what
Speaker 7: the Hawaiian Language movement is, or a Jibwe or Mohawk
Speaker 7: or the sale is of Spokane, go look at what
Speaker 7: they're doing. Like it's very possible. So on the Tongue Unbroken,
Speaker 7: we like to talk about how do you do it?
Speaker 7: How do you take these steps? If you have a
Speaker 7: thousand speakers left, if you have ten speakers left, if
Speaker 7: you have no speakers left of your indigenous language? What
Speaker 7: kind of steps could you possibly take?
Speaker 4: And we like to.
Speaker 7: Envision a world where we dream the impossible dream and
Speaker 7: we get back to a place of strength, which takes action,
Speaker 7: which takes courage, which takes determination, and also takes a
Speaker 7: ton of self analysis. Like colonization isn't just about people
Speaker 7: creating a bunch of harm to people. It's like also
Speaker 7: the indigenous people internalizing that harm and then hurting each other,
Speaker 7: which we got a lot of work to do with
Speaker 7: that as well.
Speaker 1: All Right, that's gonna do it for this week's weekly Zeitgeist.
Speaker 1: Please like and review the show If you like, the
Speaker 1: show means the world de Miles.
Speaker 4: He needs your validation, folks.
Speaker 1: I hope you're having a great weekend and I will
Speaker 1: talk to you Monday. By st