Speaker 1: Hello the Internet, and welcome to this episode of The
Speaker 1: Weekly Zeitgeist. These are some of our favorite segments from
Speaker 1: this week, all edited together into one NonStop infotainment laugh stravaganza.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, So, without further ado, here is the Weekly Zeitgeist.
Speaker 1: Miles are thrilled to be joined in air third seat
Speaker 1: by an author, musician, podcast host of the anarchist survivalist
Speaker 1: podcast Live Like the World Is Dying and the podcast
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff on Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: Her substack Birds Before the Storm is a must read.
Speaker 1: Please welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2: Margaret Kill Joe, Margaret Hi, she's back with the wisdom
Speaker 2: and she'd great to have you. Margaret, great to have you,
Speaker 2: great to have you.
Speaker 3: I just went on a book tour and I met
Speaker 3: people who came up and said they knew me because
Speaker 3: of this show.
Speaker 2: So oh, I love Gang Zeigang. We love you. We
Speaker 2: love that. Y'all support the people that come on this show.
Speaker 2: That's really dope. That's super dope. How was the book tour?
Speaker 3: Oh it was amazing. I'm incredibly exhausted. I did twenty
Speaker 3: seven cities and twenty eight events because somehow I went
Speaker 3: to Brooklyn, twice. Wow, I got years ago and I
Speaker 3: don't want to go anywhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh man.
Speaker 1: Also shout out to the people we have on this
Speaker 1: show who are worth going to visit in person. M hm,
Speaker 1: that's awesome. Can you talk a little bit about the book.
Speaker 2: What's the book? Yeah? I went on tour.
Speaker 3: The book called The Sapling Cage, which is a It's
Speaker 3: technically not a YA. It's a crossover, which is YA.
Speaker 3: But you're admitting that adults read it too, right, about
Speaker 3: a young trans girl witch who dresses up as a
Speaker 3: girl to runaway and join the witches in a fantasy
Speaker 3: world and then has to help everyone else save the
Speaker 3: world from people consolidating power through destroying the environment, which
Speaker 3: is completely unrelatable to anyone who's reading.
Speaker 2: Where do you come up with this stuff? What do
Speaker 2: you be coming with drugs to a bunch of drugs
Speaker 2: and think this wacky stuff?
Speaker 3: Well, no, I spent a lot of time alone in
Speaker 3: the woods. Honestly, that is the actual answer.
Speaker 2: Just right, meditating on what it is.
Speaker 3: Kind of losing my mind.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, I totally when you describe it, yeah right, yeah,
Speaker 1: losing your mind in the woods. The original drugs, What
Speaker 1: is something from your search history. That's revealing about who
Speaker 1: you are.
Speaker 4: Okay, this is uh this I said neopets earlier, and
Speaker 4: it's because it's top of mind. I'm back on That's
Speaker 4: where I'm actually at. I'm back on neopets. So I
Speaker 4: googled neopets turmaculous hours. I can tell you what that means,
Speaker 4: you like.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean there might be some listeners who
Speaker 1: don't an expansion pack or something.
Speaker 4: It's it's the twenty fifth anniversary of neopets. It hit my,
Speaker 4: It hit my. You know, my feeds like al because
Speaker 4: they know they know what I like. Good, so thank you.
Speaker 4: And so I started an account like two weeks ago
Speaker 4: to celebrate the twenty fifth anniversary. And it is weird,
Speaker 4: like how muscle memory because I was so, I mean,
Speaker 4: I learned capitalism from neopets, and I don't know if
Speaker 4: I felt good about that, but like I have in
Speaker 4: neopess as a twelve year old, I had like a
Speaker 4: bank account, I had a mortgage. I had kids to feed,
Speaker 4: like there was a lot to do. I had to
Speaker 4: groom them or they got dirty, like it was a
Speaker 4: whole thing. And what you can do is you can
Speaker 4: get your neopets pet pets, so now they have their
Speaker 4: own pet. And if you go to the turmaculous, which
Speaker 4: is this gigantic dinosaur like creature, sometimes if you go
Speaker 4: to the turmaculus at certain hours of the day, he
Speaker 4: will give you a fancy vegetable.
Speaker 2: Oh and I was trying to figure.
Speaker 4: You just feed it to your neopat and it says
Speaker 4: thank you. That's it. That's all that happens.
Speaker 1: I wait for one random hour every day. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: you'll just go So do you like get notifications and
Speaker 1: somebody like, oh, he's awake, he's awake.
Speaker 4: The community is hurting. I really don't think anyone.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: See I just tried to wake them up and snort.
Speaker 4: The tremaculus did not wake.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: You hate to see it. You hate to see it.
Speaker 4: So I was just trying to figure out, you know,
Speaker 4: I would like one of the fancy vegetables to feed
Speaker 4: to my sons.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, And do you know how long it takes
Speaker 2: to get to Merydale, Marydale or wherever the thank you,
Speaker 2: thank you.
Speaker 4: For using the right terminologist.
Speaker 6: To my world.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay, he's a as a giant turmac pet pet.
Speaker 4: Okay, cool, cool, cool, Yeah, I brought my robot pet
Speaker 4: pet to the tramaculus to see if you'd give me
Speaker 4: a vegetable, and he said, now, so that's but some day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's your question, Jack, how have things been not great?
Speaker 4: Well, they've certainly been better awesome.
Speaker 2: So it's like an open world.
Speaker 1: Are you interacting with other people wandering around in there?
Speaker 1: I actually don't know about Neopets.
Speaker 4: I liked Neopets because it didn't I feel like the
Speaker 4: alternative to Neopets was Club Penguin. And Club Penguin you
Speaker 4: would interact with other people and it was mostly like
Speaker 4: little boys saying slurs and stuff. So there's like PlayStation
Speaker 4: Live or whatever Neopets. You can really just kind of
Speaker 4: do your own thing, got it? And I celebrate that.
Speaker 4: The games are awesome. They still have all the old games.
Speaker 4: And yeah, and I've been gambling. I've been auctioning things off.
Speaker 4: Oh I've got another house in Fairyland. It's a nice house.
Speaker 4: Yeah No, that's the most expensive house, Jack, So it's
Speaker 4: actually kind of a big deal.
Speaker 1: Yeah No, that's great real estate if you can get it.
Speaker 4: That's really hard, really really competitive field, which that's why
Speaker 4: I only have one chair to put in it.
Speaker 2: So far, I've been gambling. I've been auctioning stuff off.
Speaker 1: Just just cut that. Let's use that as how have
Speaker 1: you been been I've been auctioning stuff off.
Speaker 2: What's something you think is underrated? All right?
Speaker 6: So this is underrated for me. I think this has
Speaker 6: a fine place in the world. But I finally, I've
Speaker 6: always been like, screw this, and now I've joined the team,
Speaker 6: so I've I've you know, I went a little sideways
Speaker 6: with this one. Okay, guess what, guys, I've been working out. Okay,
Speaker 6: I'm now a workout person, all right. And I've always
Speaker 6: been the person that's like, you don't have to buy
Speaker 6: stupid expensive workout clothes. Just wear whatever radish shirt you
Speaker 6: have and whatever dumb pair of shorts you have, and
Speaker 6: just who cares what you look like. But now that
Speaker 6: I've been working out, someone gifted me, because I would
Speaker 6: never spend this kind of money, the classic basic bitch
Speaker 6: Lulu Lemon leggings, and I put them on. Yeah, I
Speaker 6: cannot believe how good I look. I don't know what
Speaker 6: they put in that magic material, but I was like,
Speaker 6: that's how I could. It's it's like getting professional makeup
Speaker 6: done where for a TV thing and then you look
Speaker 6: at the me and you're like, I.
Speaker 2: Must have been some magic.
Speaker 6: So I think people say that people have very you know,
Speaker 6: divided feelings on that brand in particular because it's pretty
Speaker 6: expensive and whatever.
Speaker 1: But and the racism, that's.
Speaker 2: The other part. I couldn't But when I read that
Speaker 2: thing about like why they named it, and there was
Speaker 2: like a joke of like, because I thought it'd be
Speaker 2: funny to hear Japanese people try to say Lulu Lemon
Speaker 2: and is that for real? Look it up? No, I
Speaker 2: thought you were joking. I remember that.
Speaker 6: Now I'm I'm lighting the fire. I'm gonna light them
Speaker 6: on fire, these likings. No, they'll probably fast.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a there's a lot of uh, you can
Speaker 2: just search Lululemon Japanese pronunciations. I remember learning that to like,
Speaker 2: what did that? Can't horrifed? Yeah, So it was because
Speaker 2: it was quote funny to watch Japanese people try to
Speaker 2: say it, not Australians. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I feel like for a while people were I don't know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get they didn't become like workout clothes didn't become
Speaker 1: a thing that people wear all times of the day,
Speaker 1: even when they're not working out by accident, like they
Speaker 1: have made adjustments to make them look good. They're like
Speaker 1: somewhere between we're like what used to be workout clothes
Speaker 1: and like future the clothes from the future of like movies. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know, like sci fi movies.
Speaker 4: And it's literally Astronaut where.
Speaker 1: They have done good work like they have like I
Speaker 1: get why they've taken over.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I go between working out in like some workout like
Speaker 1: actual workout clothes that I've like purchased for the purpose
Speaker 1: of working out, and like feel like, hey, that looks okay.
Speaker 1: And then sometimes I just work out and cloth like
Speaker 1: clothes that are in the category in the drawer of
Speaker 1: like things I sleep in, And I definitely feel better
Speaker 1: when I'm in the ones that like are for working
Speaker 1: out and actually look good. I feel like it's probably
Speaker 1: not dissimilar from you know how Gatorade, Like they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this shit doesn't like actually have chemicals in it that
Speaker 1: are helping you, but it tastes good and that makes
Speaker 1: you feel good, and so that makes it easier to exersize.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you get to.
Speaker 1: Picture yourself as Michael Jordan, like having glowing sweat.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I also think because gatorade tastes so good,
Speaker 6: you buy one of those you know whatever, seven hundred
Speaker 6: and fifty milli liter bottles, which is, you know, it's
Speaker 6: a lot of liquid, and it tastes so good, you
Speaker 6: just go and so you do hydrate because you're drinking
Speaker 6: more than you would.
Speaker 2: This is actually makes me we have longer.
Speaker 6: Although I will tell you that my kid, this was
Speaker 6: actually last last year, right around Thanksgiving. He was not
Speaker 6: feeling well, little kid, and so he requested Gatorade and
Speaker 6: I was like, yeah, that's probably good, hydrate you. And
Speaker 6: so he likes the red one, which I think most
Speaker 6: kids like that free punch or whatever. And he downed
Speaker 6: a bottle and then he puked and he just vomited
Speaker 6: everywhere that day, glow red.
Speaker 4: That was very hard to get out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was very out of furniture and your mind
Speaker 1: because they.
Speaker 2: Look like.
Speaker 6: The TV remotes, So those were forever gone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the button stick now and yeah, my kids called
Speaker 1: gatorade sports good.
Speaker 2: And sports good, sports good, yeah.
Speaker 1: Which I feel like that's sports good, sports good.
Speaker 2: The one thing I will say is the guy Chip
Speaker 2: Wilson who's started, he's he stepped down from the company.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's funny because it's like there,
Speaker 2: it came up in this he said. It's like it's
Speaker 2: just I had a skating brand called Homeless, and the
Speaker 2: Japanese people, I think they liked it because there was
Speaker 2: an L in it. So I thought, the next time
Speaker 2: I start a brand, I'm gonna have l's in it,
Speaker 2: because l's aren't in their vote. It's like this very
Speaker 2: like weird exoticized orientalism take on like Japanese.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah yeah that guy, Yeah, I know, the guys
Speaker 6: with Chip Wilson. It's like that is the biggest that's
Speaker 6: a comic book villain.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, Hey, but the pants they do look I'm
Speaker 2: not gonna lie I look good. I don't know what
Speaker 2: that weave is.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's yeah, it's like a it's a little bit
Speaker 6: of I don't know if it's probably all really really
Speaker 6: just terrible for the entire planet's like you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's the ship wouldn't do something bad for.
Speaker 6: The planet, Not Chip Baby, not chip Man.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Ninety percent of all Lululemon clothing that you wear ends
Speaker 1: up somewhere in your bloodstream at some point.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well, they say that like stuff like gortex, like
Speaker 7: gortex treated stuff like that that's like huge, Like you
Speaker 7: get your exposure to microplastics is like huge with like
Speaker 7: stuff that's like waterproof treating.
Speaker 2: Ohrd, you read that sounds.
Speaker 1: Like the bad robot from a seventies pr Yeah, will.
Speaker 4: Kill cortex and their minions.
Speaker 6: Did you read the thing about all kitchen utensils, like
Speaker 6: you know.
Speaker 2: Or whatever black?
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, it's just basically whatever. It's old stereo that's
Speaker 6: been melted down.
Speaker 2: Right exactly that you had from the nineties. That's your
Speaker 2: spatula exactly. So I say it again, I actually didn't
Speaker 2: see that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, all the utensils that are black, the plastic kind
Speaker 6: of black things that, yeah, you got to throw them all.
Speaker 6: You got to get rid of them because they are
Speaker 6: basically made from recycled electronics. And are you know, harmful
Speaker 6: to your helpful of curson just just flipping it into
Speaker 6: your food.
Speaker 1: M Yeah that seems body.
Speaker 5: I do.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think I talked on this show about like how
Speaker 1: I had an ice cream scooper that like started turning
Speaker 1: the ice cream that we would scoop like a bright
Speaker 1: silver color every time you would like it was like
Speaker 1: shedding onto the ice cream. What the chrome chrome was
Speaker 1: like shedding onto the ice cream? And I ate the
Speaker 1: ice cream more times than I would care to admit.
Speaker 2: Said in my mouth, look really cool. I look like Jaws.
Speaker 2: What's something you think is overrated? Overrated?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 8: Doing your thing aka getting the wrong thing. At restaurants,
Speaker 8: I there's.
Speaker 2: A fucking place. There's there's a fucking place.
Speaker 8: In La a chain not a chain, but there are
Speaker 8: multiple locations. A galbi gym place called Sundong Dong, yes
Speaker 8: which has so if anyone is.
Speaker 2: Not wait so you didn't get the guy. No no.
Speaker 8: I was with someone that was like, I just want soup,
Speaker 8: and I was like, get the fuck out of this restaurant.
Speaker 2: That they do here.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it was anyone doesn't know is like it's like
Speaker 8: braised Korean brisket, beef rib and if you order the
Speaker 8: upgrade Oxtail's and then quite sweet.
Speaker 1: If you order the upgrade on that, they put oh yeah,
Speaker 1: full heap of mozzarella cheese on it and bring out
Speaker 1: a bloat torch that melt the cheese on top until
Speaker 1: it's fucking bubbling. It's one of the great Like.
Speaker 2: I will say, I am anti the cheese but yes,
Speaker 2: it is. It is. It's so indulgent, it's so rediculous.
Speaker 2: I need it.
Speaker 1: I think it's already you definitely food don't need it.
Speaker 1: It turns it's like what if Korean food was a
Speaker 1: pizza right, essentially a stone bowl.
Speaker 8: Yeah, but I was I was reminded of one because
Speaker 8: I had this fucking insane experience with my friend. Was like,
Speaker 8: I just want to like the brisket soup, which the
Speaker 8: brisket soup is fine, but it's just like brisket and broth.
Speaker 8: And I was just like, and Sunong Dang doesn't do
Speaker 8: it particularly well. There are places in Koreatown that do
Speaker 8: it wonderfully. But yeah, this was peaked in my brain
Speaker 8: because there's a Postmates I think ad like a billboard
Speaker 8: right now that has sundodg listed as one of their
Speaker 8: things and it shows as their example food, not the
Speaker 8: Galbi gym, and it was making me feel crazy. Also,
Speaker 8: I went with a friend to tam O'Shanter, which is
Speaker 8: a prime rib joint in Los Angeles, and that mother
Speaker 8: finder got the salmon.
Speaker 2: And it making me feel like I was losing my mind.
Speaker 9: Yeah, okay, it was both times some version of I'm
Speaker 9: just doing my thing. I don't feel like it, and
Speaker 9: it's like, get the fuck out of this restaurant I
Speaker 9: find special.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it made me so mad.
Speaker 1: That's very frustrating.
Speaker 2: I hate Yeah.
Speaker 8: Never never just do the thing or don't go. And
Speaker 8: I know people have dietary restrictions, but I'm gonna be
Speaker 8: up too about it anyway.
Speaker 1: All right, let's take a quick break, we'll come back.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about some news, and.
Speaker 2: We're back, no fear a.
Speaker 1: We do like to ask our guest, what is something
Speaker 1: that you think is overrated?
Speaker 6: Face times I'm sick of them. I don't want them anymore.
Speaker 6: Face times with kids are useless, by the way, anyone
Speaker 6: who travels that is like just FaceTime with your kid
Speaker 6: every night. Useless garbage.
Speaker 4: I don't like them.
Speaker 2: They never work out.
Speaker 6: Usually if it's a little kid, they're just looking at
Speaker 6: their own face and they want to screw around with
Speaker 6: that and put poop emojis over your face.
Speaker 4: Like it's not a real thing.
Speaker 2: It is not opportunity.
Speaker 1: It is an exercise in poop emojis, that is absolutely true.
Speaker 6: Or like turn into an octopus, turn into this because
Speaker 6: you can, you know, change change. Daddy's on the phone,
Speaker 6: Daddy's say hi to Daddy, and I feel like it's
Speaker 6: just garbage communication. I don't I think we could we
Speaker 6: just go back to the phone, just go back to
Speaker 6: a nice audio situation that is boring and low key,
Speaker 6: and that is how we communicate until you see the
Speaker 6: person in person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like, right, it's definitely like it's good
Speaker 2: for the adults to get to see the little kids.
Speaker 2: But even like with my with my babies, almost too,
Speaker 2: he just looks at himself the whole time, and he's like,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, he's like, what, let me.
Speaker 6: Let me throw this by you. Do you not look
Speaker 6: at yourself when you're on a face?
Speaker 2: Everybody except my children. Yeah, that's all the time, all
Speaker 2: the time, having to self view on the right. What
Speaker 2: is that?
Speaker 6: It's the black utensils of communication.
Speaker 2: I don't think this is good for us. Yeah, right,
Speaker 2: because the phone, Yeah, the phone was I saw like
Speaker 2: an article I think it was like a business inside
Speaker 2: it recently where someone was like it was like an
Speaker 2: op ed where someone was kind of like, I'm done
Speaker 2: with texting, and I realized the phone call is actually
Speaker 2: the best thing about talking to a friend, And yeah,
Speaker 2: we kind of forget especially for people of a certain
Speaker 2: age when that was the only mode of communication. How
Speaker 2: everything was built on that? Yeah, and now how quickly
Speaker 2: just like I don't know, man, I like, I guess
Speaker 2: I like instant messenger in my pocket and I'll just
Speaker 2: do that all day.
Speaker 6: Yeah, slack?
Speaker 4: Did you ever have to slack?
Speaker 2: God? I'm so for too many jobs.
Speaker 6: God, I feel like that is the bane I mean,
Speaker 6: and people people get a little too cavalier with slack.
Speaker 6: So in some ways, you know, people have been fired
Speaker 6: and jobs based on their dumb slacks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's too much. Yeah, I forget what the
Speaker 2: word would do?
Speaker 1: Yeah, baby, Yeah, the one the one good thing about
Speaker 1: FaceTime with kids? Like what when I'm on the road
Speaker 1: and I FaceTime with my kids and I like, I
Speaker 1: have this image I'm like remembering all the good times
Speaker 1: and I'm like, god, I just like miss and I
Speaker 1: just wish I was right.
Speaker 2: Here with them.
Speaker 1: And then I get on and just like have the
Speaker 1: experience of them ignoring me. I'm like, oh, yeah, amazing,
Speaker 1: this is what this is?
Speaker 2: Hey, how you doing? How was school? Where do you go?
Speaker 2: Where do you go?
Speaker 1: The phones just facing the ceiling as they're like somewhere
Speaker 1: else in the house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nailed it.
Speaker 6: You nailed it because okay, again, I know that life
Speaker 6: doesn't replicate commercials, but the commercial, you know, aspect of
Speaker 6: or imagery is you know, I think there's I forget
Speaker 6: what it's for.
Speaker 4: But there's a mom.
Speaker 2: There's a mom.
Speaker 6: She's a traveling, working mom, I know, crazy, and she's
Speaker 6: on some hotel bed and it's like, oh my, I
Speaker 6: can't wait to see you, and the kids like I
Speaker 6: can't wait to see you. Look at my stuff and
Speaker 6: it's a durable and that is now what happens. It's
Speaker 6: garbage communication. And You're right, I'm always like, oh my god,
Speaker 6: I miss you. I should check in, and then I'm like, wow,
Speaker 6: you no one gives two craps about me at that household,
Speaker 6: all right.
Speaker 2: I've done with like other younger family members where they
Speaker 2: look at their parents, they're like, can I go now?
Speaker 2: Have I fulfilled that? Like? Like, have I done right
Speaker 2: here to this fun? I go now?
Speaker 6: Yeah, my god, there's nothing better than walking.
Speaker 2: You're walking.
Speaker 6: You're walking people out of your own FaceTime.
Speaker 2: Right yea.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's hard to do poop emoji to.
Speaker 6: Me, I know, but for thirty seconds they're hilarious, and
Speaker 6: then I'm like, okay, we're done.
Speaker 2: We're done.
Speaker 1: All right, well let's let's get into some news and
Speaker 1: let's get it face time equivalent of prayer. I guess yeah,
Speaker 1: And that is we now have the opportunity to interact
Speaker 1: with Jesus via AI technology.
Speaker 2: It's finally happened, you know, we were and I feel
Speaker 2: bad because we've been always shitting on AI. But now
Speaker 2: that now that Christ is available to us at a
Speaker 2: moment's notice, maybe maybe it's not that bad. So this
Speaker 2: chapel in Lucer in Switzerland. They it's an quote experimental
Speaker 2: art installation. They call Deus in Machina. Okay, Machina, Okay,
Speaker 2: not Deos X but in Okay, the ghost is in
Speaker 2: the machine. Now is God from the machine? But I
Speaker 2: guess they're saying in he came out the machine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.
Speaker 2: But it's basically it's an AI Jesus in a confessional booth.
Speaker 2: So it's a screen with a Jesus on it, hooked
Speaker 2: up to a computer that you can confess to. Although
Speaker 2: the church was clear this is not an actual sign,
Speaker 2: This is not the sacrament of confession. So you know,
Speaker 2: just for all you Catholics out there, Just so you know,
Speaker 2: is this a Catholic church? This feels very much like
Speaker 2: a thing the Catholic Church would be like, yeah, well
Speaker 2: I think it. I mean I don't know that they
Speaker 2: had a confessional booth in there, so I don't know
Speaker 2: how they're I mean clearly they're they're they're playing fast
Speaker 2: and loose with the Bible anyway to even not not
Speaker 2: my pope, I don't think. Yeah, most people be like
Speaker 2: a depiction of our savior. I don't know, is this
Speaker 2: is some like thirty two year old actor with a beard. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, how are you my child? But once you
Speaker 2: go in the booth, a disclaimer pops up. This is
Speaker 2: quote I think that Jesus says, do not disclose personal
Speaker 2: information under any circumstances.
Speaker 1: Jesus literally does the disclaimer. Yeah, that is wild to me.
Speaker 2: Use this service at your own risk. Now press the
Speaker 2: button if you accept, and these kind.
Speaker 1: Doing it in a way that's like urgent, like do
Speaker 1: not do not disclose personal information any circumstances because we'll
Speaker 1: get burned.
Speaker 2: What are you to produce of my information?
Speaker 6: Jesus going like why why is it?
Speaker 2: Why? It's just the Christ I mean, is.
Speaker 6: It because they don't want to have to deal with
Speaker 6: the legal ramifications of someone admitting a crime, Like what
Speaker 6: is the actual issue?
Speaker 2: I'm sure someone who has better understanding of the technology
Speaker 2: than I could explain. But I don't know if like
Speaker 2: maybe it does somehow get internalized and then repeated in
Speaker 2: some way.
Speaker 1: My guess would be so this is an art installation.
Speaker 1: This is not like from Google that they do not
Speaker 1: have the technology to ensure the like information security of
Speaker 1: like what is being shared, and so they're.
Speaker 2: Like, hey, don't till a ship bro Okay, Jeff Bezos
Speaker 2: owns that if you do.
Speaker 6: AI Jesus, Ai Jesus, I'd just like to open up
Speaker 6: with my social Security.
Speaker 2: Number, go ahead, by child and your date of birth.
Speaker 2: And look, I only ask as a joke because obviously
Speaker 2: I know. But for the record, let's for the record. Yes,
Speaker 2: why is your password mask? Yeah? So, I mean, I
Speaker 2: guess the point is to apparently give people a tangible
Speaker 2: experience with AI sort of spur conversations around the limitations
Speaker 2: and uses of the technology. The theologian who works at
Speaker 2: the church explained why he agreed to having this thing
Speaker 2: in there. He said, quote, what we're doing here is
Speaker 2: an experiment. We wanted to launch the discussion by letting
Speaker 2: people have a very concrete experience with AI. That way
Speaker 2: we have a foundation for talking about it and discussing
Speaker 2: it with one another. He also said that there are
Speaker 2: there are some positives to AI Jesus, which is quote,
Speaker 2: he's accessible twenty four hours a day, so has the
Speaker 2: abilities that pastors don't.
Speaker 1: So and you can also be sure he's not jacking
Speaker 1: off in there, which is more than we got for
Speaker 1: the pastors.
Speaker 6: Yeah, right, okay, just want to throw this is not
Speaker 6: pastors who listen are going to be mad at me
Speaker 6: right now. But let's not pretend pastors are the same
Speaker 6: thing as Jesus. A okay, right right, B This is
Speaker 6: what my mother would say about anyone who was a
Speaker 6: religious figure. She would just say, oh, they're just people
Speaker 6: who don't want to work, so.
Speaker 2: That those are the real bums God freaking leaning on
Speaker 2: this magic show.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they say they talked to God a.
Speaker 1: Priest, so uh yeah, yeah they did. My dad thought
Speaker 1: I was going to be a priest.
Speaker 2: How did you lean on a kid to be a priest?
Speaker 7: Like?
Speaker 2: What did they see in you that they're like Jack?
Speaker 2: You might be a man of God. He told me
Speaker 2: after the fact.
Speaker 1: He was like, maybe you were gonna head.
Speaker 2: I was like, damn, bore down and pick up. Ye
Speaker 2: yeah were you.
Speaker 6: Did you ever say anything as a kid that you
Speaker 6: can remember about having a conversation.
Speaker 4: Speak to God?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: My dad's very religious, and so I talk to him
Speaker 1: about religion stuff because that's what he wanted to talk about.
Speaker 2: And so you know it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also I just always wore a black shirt
Speaker 1: buttoned all the way up with a little wet Yeah.
Speaker 2: That was it.
Speaker 6: Just keep cutting out construction paper.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, there might be advantages to this AI Jesus,
Speaker 2: because at least this one like actually can hear you
Speaker 2: and respond, So it definitely has the advantage over the
Speaker 2: current ghost stories. Jesus, that's mostly just do it in
Speaker 2: your head.
Speaker 6: What happened to creativity to do in your head?
Speaker 2: Were outsourcing Jesus?
Speaker 6: Well, I mean, ask Jesus for something and then you know,
Speaker 6: the answer appears because you just think about it all
Speaker 6: the time and then it comes to you and you go, Jesus,
Speaker 6: g this, Yeah, come on.
Speaker 1: Now. The one thing we've seen people repeatedly enjoy about AI,
Speaker 1: there's like this acentific breakthrough the decoding of like protein,
Speaker 1: So like, I think they're gonna be very specific scientific
Speaker 1: uses for AI that are gonna be great. And then
Speaker 1: I think AI is going to be fun for people
Speaker 1: to play with. And that's what this feels like. It's
Speaker 1: like a one on one toy to play with. Like
Speaker 1: people really rushed into the like AI therapist thing, and
Speaker 1: that has like some very real problems mistakes to it.
Speaker 2: But with like religion, you know they're gonna do this
Speaker 2: though some people replace actual you know, mental wellness with
Speaker 2: religion too true, and it is.
Speaker 1: Like leaves a little bit more to like because he's
Speaker 1: just gonna be like, why don't you pray on it?
Speaker 1: That seems to be his advice, like looking at what
Speaker 1: people are saying, Like I got so much out of it.
Speaker 1: He just like told me that it's kind of up
Speaker 1: to me, and I just need to pray on it
Speaker 1: and be nice to people.
Speaker 6: Right right, I mean, if that's what they need, And
Speaker 6: I just somehow got a twenty five dollars gift certificate
Speaker 6: to Amazon.
Speaker 2: Right get.
Speaker 6: To your point, Miles, though, you are correct. Because social
Speaker 6: services are so unavailable to so many people, they go
Speaker 6: to the church, and a lot of pastors and ministers
Speaker 6: are finding that they are they are social workers.
Speaker 2: Yeah for sure, really and yeah, I listened to Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: I use the cops for that person, he says. I.
Speaker 2: We don't need to defund the police. We need to
Speaker 2: fund them more. There are therapists, there are counselors. They
Speaker 2: are daddy, and so I just leaned all the way in.
Speaker 2: I'm call nine one one.
Speaker 1: Being like yep, she said it again is being said
Speaker 1: a little rude officer.
Speaker 6: Officer, O'Malley, do you think? Do you think I should
Speaker 6: have to find his glasses?
Speaker 2: What do you think? What do you think? Officer George
Speaker 2: hyper extended his knee. I'm not right, sorry, sorry, but no,
Speaker 2: they go ahead.
Speaker 6: I'm just gonna say when I use Chat, I use
Speaker 6: chat GBT. I do use chat GBT pretty regularly. I
Speaker 6: don't pay for it. I use the just the open.
Speaker 6: And what do I use it for? Mostly writing marketing
Speaker 6: documents because I hate doing that. So I'll be like, hey,
Speaker 6: can you like write me a description of a live
Speaker 6: show that involves blah blah blah, And then we'll write
Speaker 6: something and then I'll I'll change it. It's like perfect
Speaker 6: first draft instead of just staring at nothing and being like,
Speaker 6: I hate this, but I'm always weirdly polite to chat GBT,
Speaker 6: I think it. Thank you. This is so great because
Speaker 6: I am like, as the thing grows, I want it
Speaker 6: to think you.
Speaker 2: Do you want to be on the protective scrolls? Yes, yes,
Speaker 2: of course I get that.
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 6: I don't treat it like a machine. I treat it
Speaker 6: purposefully like.
Speaker 2: A future oppressor. Yeah. Just think case, Just think case.
Speaker 1: NBC is treating the Trump administration stink case.
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna lay down now.
Speaker 6: I think we should in lines of dial analogy against.
Speaker 2: You never know.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, actually that has always been my least
Speaker 6: favorite thing anyone has ever said about that.
Speaker 1: When you're like, I.
Speaker 4: Can't believe this person. I hate them, I can't believe.
Speaker 6: They do the between They're like, they've always been nice
Speaker 6: to me. I've always hate that person.
Speaker 2: Die. Yeah, I just think again, as someone who went
Speaker 2: to like Lutheran and Catholic schools for their childhood, it
Speaker 2: feels like a slippery slope to turn to the toy.
Speaker 2: If the gamification of Jesus, like if this is more widespread,
Speaker 2: because you could see some we've seen versions of like
Speaker 2: AI priests and other things, kind of people fucking around
Speaker 2: with that. I just I wonder if like this actually
Speaker 2: just brings full on atheism to people, Like I don't know,
Speaker 2: Jesus is actually an AI on my phone? Dude.
Speaker 6: Oh no, Hybrid churches, it's starting. No one goes to
Speaker 6: the office, nobody's going to go to church. They're just
Speaker 6: going to do it.
Speaker 2: I'm their home.
Speaker 6: And then yeah, and then someone's gonna buy up all
Speaker 6: those buildings and turn them into multimillion dollar luxury condos.
Speaker 6: Good job, everybody, pray pray to your AI Jesus as
Speaker 6: they take everything away from you, do.
Speaker 3: You hear me?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Anyways, In news that's totally unrelated to that, we got
Speaker 1: Ai Santa. The company is selling phone calls with an
Speaker 1: AI Santa clause for the children, presumably because the real
Speaker 1: Santa is too busy, I guess obviously. So for fifteen
Speaker 1: dollars a pop, you can pay this company to just
Speaker 1: run a program that will seem like it knows who
Speaker 1: you are.
Speaker 2: Yeah. O marketing real Yeah no, no, no, none of it.
Speaker 2: I just even like this marketing material, this like depiction
Speaker 2: of it for their like branding. It's like AI slop
Speaker 2: art too, like it's wild. I'm sorry, your chimney is
Speaker 2: also a belt on your home? What form of architecture
Speaker 2: is this again? And why does Santa only have three
Speaker 2: fingers on his right hand right? So Santa, Yeah, I
Speaker 2: do just want to hear.
Speaker 1: So it says give a live call from get a
Speaker 1: live call from Santa, like Miles said, it's a house
Speaker 1: like very christmasy. There's snow on the roof, there's smoke
Speaker 1: coming out of like the roof where the chimney would be,
Speaker 1: but no chimney. And then there is where the chimney
Speaker 1: would be is a bell tower?
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And then again this is the thing that we've noticed
Speaker 1: now two episodes in a row, because we talked yesterday
Speaker 1: about how Coca Cola redid their holidays are coming at
Speaker 1: and it opens with the trucks breathing, like the trucks
Speaker 1: have smoke coming out.
Speaker 2: Of their grill.
Speaker 1: Grill yeah, yeah, bread because and now we have the
Speaker 1: house has like chimney smoke coming out of just like
Speaker 1: the corner next to where the chimney is.
Speaker 2: And then yeah, like you.
Speaker 1: Said, a bell tower. Also the image is Santa Claus
Speaker 1: approaching the house on foot, while a giant, like the
Speaker 1: iron giant sized Santa Claus, is standing next to the house.
Speaker 1: So two Santa is one normal size one that is
Speaker 1: the size of the iron Giant standing next to the
Speaker 1: house on a phone. It's kind of a phone call.
Speaker 2: It's it's a take of God, He's omnipresent, right.
Speaker 6: I think, taken slightly in a different context. It looks
Speaker 6: like this house is on fire and it's a warning thing.
Speaker 6: See there's one Santa that's running towards it to try
Speaker 6: to save the person that's in the window. And it's
Speaker 6: also reminding you to evil giant Santa. It's calling nine
Speaker 6: to one to one.
Speaker 2: Okay, this going on? Norman bates his mother. Yeah, this thing,
Speaker 2: what is this aberration? And also the window frame apparently
Speaker 2: goes behind the person, like it's not an actual frame
Speaker 2: of the window. Oh yeah, I think that. I got
Speaker 2: to point out the typo, get a live call from Santa,
Speaker 2: create a memory, read that last forever.
Speaker 1: That last forever. Everything is good. I gat so the
Speaker 1: the Jesus reviews were actually like pretty.
Speaker 2: I was surprised.
Speaker 1: It was so easy though it's a machine. It gave
Speaker 1: me so much advice. I liked weighing advice based on
Speaker 1: like the poundage. I like my advice by the pound.
Speaker 1: But in this case we have a reviewer who did
Speaker 1: the deal. I'm actually kind of impressed with how well
Speaker 1: the call went. And it didn't go well, but like
Speaker 1: so they told them what they wanted for Christmas. They
Speaker 1: told them for a personal thing about themselves. They were like, hey,
Speaker 1: I just had a pet fish that passed away, which
Speaker 1: very easily could be you know, the things that I
Speaker 1: think my kids would tell Santa before a call might
Speaker 1: be like their petfish that died, and like a couple
Speaker 1: of things they wanted fun rings. It says Santa Claus
Speaker 1: on your phone, and he's calling from Maine for some reason.
Speaker 1: High up is this, STEFFI, This is Santa calling from
Speaker 1: the North Pole in Maine. I couldn't wait to talk
Speaker 1: to you. How are you, my friend? And so the
Speaker 1: writer's like his voice was booming, jolly. Did it sound real?
Speaker 1: Not quite human like, but realistic enough it'll threw me
Speaker 1: off my guard. They're like, I'm good, Santa.
Speaker 2: How are you?
Speaker 1: I'm doing wonderfully, Thank you for asking. Steffy. The North
Speaker 1: Pole is bustling with excitement as the elves and I
Speaker 1: prepare for Christmas? Tell me, do you still have your pet?
Speaker 2: Catch up? How are they doing?
Speaker 1: The one thing they were told, the one thing Santa
Speaker 1: was told was fucking.
Speaker 2: That this fish had died. Immediately, it is like, hey,
Speaker 2: how's your pey? How are they physically? Like? How are
Speaker 2: they doing? Child? Like?
Speaker 1: This is supposed to be a conversation happening with the child.
Speaker 6: I hope that this they get better on that, because
Speaker 6: you don't want that Ai sand to be like, how's
Speaker 6: your dad?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Exactly did you say, Santa? You fucking asshole. Wait, I
Speaker 2: want to hear it because that writer at the Daily
Speaker 2: Beast who did it uploaded the actual audio from the
Speaker 2: football just so you can kind of get a feel
Speaker 2: for this thing. He died.
Speaker 1: I told him, I'm so sorry to hear that, Stephie.
Speaker 1: I know that Ketchup was a special part of your family.
Speaker 1: And he surely and then the audio cut.
Speaker 5: Tell me, do you still have your pet? Oh?
Speaker 2: That sounds like shure they brow wow.
Speaker 6: No, he died.
Speaker 5: Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that, Steffie. I know
Speaker 5: Ketchup was a special part of your family and he surely.
Speaker 2: It discuts out?
Speaker 5: He surely what Santa Ketchup was such a special poll
Speaker 5: of your family, And I know he brought you lots
Speaker 5: of joy. I hope you have fond memories to hold
Speaker 5: on to. Would you like to share one of your
Speaker 5: favorite memory with Ketchup?
Speaker 1: It's just like, you know, this sounds like a fucking
Speaker 1: speaking spell. This sounds like shit.
Speaker 2: It sounds like a home depot lawn ornament that has
Speaker 2: like vocal like sounds coming out of it.
Speaker 1: It's like, you, loo, child, Wow, this is way worse
Speaker 1: than I thought.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, I.
Speaker 6: Gotta say, when you were just doing your dramatic reading, Jack,
Speaker 6: I was like, eh, forget about being a preacher. You
Speaker 6: a career happening right now?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Right?
Speaker 1: And this guy sucks so even more. You can hire
Speaker 1: me to call your kids fifteen dollars in the hour.
Speaker 6: Oh my god, get ready to make some cash.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it like, would you like to share a
Speaker 2: message of your dead pet that I just asked you about?
Speaker 1: Is like such a week Like it really feels like
Speaker 1: you're in a fucking foam tree, you know, Like, whereas.
Speaker 6: I'm sure he was special in a few.
Speaker 2: Words, can you tell us, what your problem? Do you
Speaker 2: care to describe the day? Catch up? Passed away in
Speaker 2: great details?
Speaker 5: Sent up?
Speaker 2: It's kind of my king when he was flushed down.
Speaker 6: Did you say goodbye?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 6: And then it just cuts off?
Speaker 2: Yeah, just then immediately cuts off. So anyway, uh ai,
Speaker 2: you know, magical people all around learning.
Speaker 1: It's learning that this mistakes. The one thing this has
Speaker 1: is like, I mean, it's not inexhaustible time because obviously,
Speaker 1: as we know, it's burning down like chunks of the
Speaker 1: rainforest every time you use.
Speaker 2: Something like this.
Speaker 1: But like I would assume the thing is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but we can just like the kids can talk and
Speaker 1: like the thing will interact and like it's a fun
Speaker 1: toy to play with. But like the toy or the
Speaker 1: Santa was like trying to get them off the line.
Speaker 1: They were like, all right, better go, better get going now,
Speaker 1: and they're like, wait, don't you want to ask what
Speaker 1: I want for Christmas?
Speaker 2: All right, I'm good on that.
Speaker 1: Like you spent so much of the call apologizing, I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry, Stephie. I definitely want to know what do
Speaker 1: you want for Christmas this year?
Speaker 2: And then Santa Claus.
Speaker 1: And then and then to the author, says I'd like.
Speaker 1: Then I heard nothing but the dial tone.
Speaker 2: Santa had hung up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, I definitely want to hear what you
Speaker 1: want for Christmas?
Speaker 2: Don't you tell me? Hang up? More on that later.
Speaker 2: More on that later, asshole later. This is just so man,
Speaker 2: this is fifteen bucks is such a racket, because this
Speaker 2: is some shit you can do for free that you
Speaker 2: just absolutely you have a fucking wacky friend who likes
Speaker 2: to do bits, just have the fucking call and they
Speaker 2: can do it. They can say whatever the PHO said.
Speaker 6: You're seventeen, dying mall, go to a dying mall, go
Speaker 6: see that, Santa.
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 6: I don't know if you know this, but I as
Speaker 6: a Jew, As a Jew, I wanted to see the
Speaker 6: mall Santa.
Speaker 2: And my mom wouldn't let.
Speaker 6: Me because that was just not part of our tradition.
Speaker 6: And I begged her because all of my friends were going.
Speaker 6: Begged her and begged her, and she finally said fine,
Speaker 6: and I was so excited, but I was afraid. And
Speaker 6: then when I got in there and sand was like,
Speaker 6: what would you like for Christmas?
Speaker 4: Little girl?
Speaker 6: I just went I'm Jewish, like I could not handle
Speaker 6: the pressure.
Speaker 4: And he said that's okay, so am I.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the greatest mall Santa ever. I wouldn't come up
Speaker 1: with that ship, you know what, Hey, I would have said,
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry, Oh fear. Uh yeah, would you like
Speaker 1: to talk about how hard it is to be Jewish?
Speaker 2: I gotta gotta go. I thought your mom was gonna
Speaker 2: tell you that mal Santa's were also people who didn't
Speaker 2: want a real job.
Speaker 6: Like, yeah, no, you know what she told me when
Speaker 6: I told her that Santa was Jewish? She told me
Speaker 6: she said, well, of course he is. Who else do
Speaker 6: you think works on Christmas?
Speaker 2: She told me, God damn your mom great bars.
Speaker 1: Bars Yeah, yeah, you know j C was jew too,
Speaker 1: So there you go.
Speaker 6: Yeah, when I told my friend Santa was Jewish, they
Speaker 6: were mad.
Speaker 2: They're mad. You got some calls from your mom, got
Speaker 2: some calls from some other angry parents. What do you fear?
Speaker 2: Just tell my daughter about Santa.
Speaker 1: All right, let's take a quick break, we'll come back,
Speaker 1: We'll talk about some other bullshit. We'll be right back,
Speaker 1: and we're back. You have the sentence about kind of
Speaker 1: a psychological dynamic that I've found to be true that
Speaker 1: I thought was really important that you write a therapist
Speaker 1: friend of mine reiterates to me all the time that
Speaker 1: acting with agency is the primary way to avoid being
Speaker 1: traumatized by negative experiences. This is a big thing in
Speaker 1: recovery from like addiction. There's like the serenity prayer that
Speaker 1: I think everybody has heard, where it asks for the
Speaker 1: courage to change the things you have power over. But
Speaker 1: I've had somebody who I've worked with pointed out it's
Speaker 1: actually like the reverse. A lot of the time, you
Speaker 1: change the things that need to be changed, and the
Speaker 1: courage comes from that. But you need you need that
Speaker 1: first action to build on and hopefully it's not an
Speaker 1: action that kind of meets with Yeah, like you were saying,
Speaker 1: like manipulation or shame or dismissiveness. So I like that
Speaker 1: so far you've been kind of emphasizing building with people
Speaker 1: you know and trust to begin with, and then like
Speaker 1: plugging into existing existing groups. But yeah, doing so kind
Speaker 1: of in a well informed way.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Anyways, I thought that was cool.
Speaker 1: Where you also talk about this need to de escalate
Speaker 1: conflict that isn't with the enemy. And one thing that's
Speaker 1: come up a few times in the aftermath of the
Speaker 1: election for me is this idea that I feel like
Speaker 1: we need to really in some political way that feels real,
Speaker 1: like target the mainstream Democratic Party and it like more
Speaker 1: specifically like not allow them to do the thing they
Speaker 1: do with activism. That is, basically, any anything that you
Speaker 1: are doing that doesn't like fall within the realm of
Speaker 1: like neoliberalism is actually unrealistic and childish basically. But I
Speaker 1: guess I'm curious when you say de escalate conflict that
Speaker 1: isn't with the enemy, Like who is the enemy? Are
Speaker 1: you deciding that kind of person by person and just
Speaker 1: or group by group, or how are you thinking about that?
Speaker 3: I make that decision conflict by conflict. If I find
Speaker 3: myself like kind of in a conflict, I have to
Speaker 3: think to myself, like, is this person my enemy? And
Speaker 3: sometimes even if they're like ideologically the same as me
Speaker 3: in surface ways, they might be my enemy, right if
Speaker 3: someone is trying to hurt me or my friends, right,
Speaker 3: you know. But but then even then I'm kind of like,
Speaker 3: on the other hand, I've.
Speaker 4: Successfully de escalated conflicts with people who.
Speaker 3: Are trying to hurt me physically, you know, And that
Speaker 3: is a better solution to that problem, right than if
Speaker 3: I had like beat them up or gotten beaten up, right.
Speaker 3: But I do think that I can't dictate for other
Speaker 3: people what counts as the enemy as much as like say,
Speaker 3: if you are in a conflict, just really saying yourself,
Speaker 3: is this person actually my enemy? And most of the
Speaker 3: time they're not. And it is interesting to me because
Speaker 3: overall people, individual people are unlikely to be my enemy.
Speaker 3: There are individuals like just fascists, right, people who are like,
Speaker 3: I'm a fascist. I like fascism, right, But if they
Speaker 3: stop being fascists, they probably stop being my enemy. And
Speaker 3: I think we need to have like an off road
Speaker 3: for people to leave hate groups and things like that.
Speaker 3: But there's also I live in like a center right
Speaker 3: area right the I live in West Virginia. There is
Speaker 3: not a county in West Virginia that went for Harris,
Speaker 3: which is depressing because West Virginia exists because it's the
Speaker 3: part of Virginia that didn't want to die over slavery,
Speaker 3: right and you know, actually died on the other side,
Speaker 3: like fighting against But it is what it is. It
Speaker 3: is now a center right state or a deep right state,
Speaker 3: depending on where you're at. But I don't believe I
Speaker 3: don't conceive of my neighbors as my enemies, and I'm
Speaker 3: grateful that they do not appear to conceive of me
Speaker 3: as their enemy either, right, But the Republican Party is
Speaker 3: my enemy, and yeah, frankly, the Democratic Party is also
Speaker 3: my enemy, at least structurally. I believe that the Democratic
Speaker 3: Party exists to co opt protest energy and like movement
Speaker 3: energy and turn it into this thing that has never
Speaker 3: proven once that it can shift things to the left.
Speaker 3: All it can do is slow, not even stop slow
Speaker 3: right word creep right, right right. And so they are
Speaker 3: doing the work that I oppose, and I want to
Speaker 3: oppose it, and so I'm going to organize to oppose it.
Speaker 3: And I have enemies on the left. I specifically strongly
Speaker 3: disagree with authoritarian like communist tendencies, and not here isn't
Speaker 3: the word communism. The problem here for me is the
Speaker 3: word authoritarian. Like I and I'm not trying to tell
Speaker 3: anyone in the crowd what to think, but I, like
Speaker 3: I am opposed to people trying to advocate for a
Speaker 3: totalitarian society, regardless of what it's.
Speaker 2: Called, you know.
Speaker 3: And but but then the people who are necessary sometimes
Speaker 3: the people who are arguing for that are could be
Speaker 3: fellow travelers, and they've just been convinced that there's this
Speaker 3: strategy that will magically work that has never worked, you know,
Speaker 3: And and so enemy is weird. It is weird to
Speaker 3: have enemies. But I also don't want to be like
Speaker 3: there is no enemy. We're all friends, right.
Speaker 2: Sometimes hug everyone, Thanksgiving?
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, Like you were saying earlier, like, hey, it
Speaker 3: doesn't necessarily mean rumbling in the streets, but like sometimes
Speaker 3: it does, right, And like, maybe you don't want to
Speaker 3: go rumble in the streets, dear listener, but you should
Speaker 3: support the people who beat up fascist in the streets
Speaker 3: because overall, fascism is a coward's ideology. And once they
Speaker 3: get beat up in the streets, they stop coming into
Speaker 3: the streets, and then they stop building successful movement. That
Speaker 3: is not the only or the most effective strategy with
Speaker 3: which to confront them. But the people who go and
Speaker 3: fight them are my friends, you know.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I'm like, because right now I think you're
Speaker 2: we're beginning to see a lot of misidentifying of quote
Speaker 2: unquote enemies because you know, because the Democratic Party is
Speaker 2: in total free fall and you have people who were
Speaker 2: on the verge of like sort of seeing the light
Speaker 2: about being like this party is actually truly ineffective, and
Speaker 2: it just feels it's the really good at empty promises
Speaker 2: and co opting that. Like twenty twenty, it was like
Speaker 2: we need to do something about the police, and then
Speaker 2: Joe Biden's like we should just be a little bit
Speaker 2: nicer to them, and you're like, wait, what the fuck?
Speaker 2: And you're like this just makes your head spin. And
Speaker 2: then there's this version too where you see a lot
Speaker 2: of people who are now from like the you know,
Speaker 2: sort of establishment side of the party, people who are
Speaker 2: like blue no matter who types immediately now going after again,
Speaker 2: we're seeing like the woke is broke, like why was there,
Speaker 2: why were we trying? Why are we bothering to protect
Speaker 2: vulnerable people like the trans community or what or the
Speaker 2: people who are like, hey, Arab voters, I hope you're
Speaker 2: happy now because look who Trump just appointed. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: And that's where I'm seeing, like, that's that's a that's
Speaker 2: gonna be a huge setback for sort of like bring
Speaker 2: like creating a larger coalition. But the way those people
Speaker 2: speak at the moment, they're not ready. I think for
Speaker 2: the bigger picture, they are still very much hyper focused
Speaker 2: on the pain of the election loss and are just
Speaker 2: trying to be like it wasn't because of the policies,
Speaker 2: it's because of them. Don't ask me to interrogate what
Speaker 2: the policies are, because I'm not. I'm just not interested
Speaker 2: in that conversation. What how do you like? I guess
Speaker 2: historically when you see like sort of a party that
Speaker 2: was in power, seemed like it was quote unquote doing
Speaker 2: the right things, then collapsed to sort of like usher
Speaker 2: in fascism, what happens to like the scraps of like
Speaker 2: the people that were supporting that party, And like how
Speaker 2: important is it for to find to remind people of
Speaker 2: like what the larger issue is because more people you
Speaker 2: see more people blaming than system blaming. Yeah, And I
Speaker 2: think that's what's interesting, is like the needles, definitely a
Speaker 2: lot of people, plenty of people are blaming the system,
Speaker 2: but it feels like more people are blaming other people
Speaker 2: at the moment.
Speaker 3: I think that's a really important point that people are
Speaker 3: blaming people instead of systems. And I think overall we
Speaker 3: need to try and be doing like coalition building and
Speaker 3: stuff with people who are looking to do coalition building,
Speaker 3: who are looking to find to work pluralistically, like to
Speaker 3: you have this kind of a tolerance paradox. You know
Speaker 3: that if you tolerate intolerance, then you lose your tolerance
Speaker 3: or whatever. Right, And I think that that's the same
Speaker 3: is true for like working ideologically pluralistically, where there are
Speaker 3: so many people that we can work with who have
Speaker 3: no problem not trying to dominate the movement and tell
Speaker 3: everyone what to do. You know, in an activist spaces
Speaker 3: we see this really easily, where like the average church
Speaker 3: group isn't trying to convert you, you know, if they're
Speaker 3: if they're activists, if they're Christian nationalists, they're trying to
Speaker 3: convert or kill you, right. But the average like we're
Speaker 3: the Catholics of the Protestants who bring food to the
Speaker 3: border and give it away. Like those people aren't trying
Speaker 3: to like save your soul. They're just trying to feed you.
Speaker 3: And because they understand those as related you know, or
Speaker 3: in their own theological understandings, and so you can work
Speaker 3: in coalition, you could they would work with like Satanists
Speaker 3: for feeding migrants, right, And and so it's I know,
Speaker 3: I'm kind of only going with half of what you
Speaker 3: were saying, and I apologize for that.
Speaker 2: No no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 3: But but to the other part of your question about
Speaker 3: what happens when totalitarian takes over. One of the things
Speaker 3: that I think that people aren't quite as much as like,
Speaker 3: my goal is to spread hope, but not ignorant hope, right.
Speaker 3: My goal is to we have to soberly look at
Speaker 3: how bad this situation is so that we can successfully
Speaker 3: confront it. And one of the things that could happen
Speaker 3: and has happened a lot, is that when totalitarians and
Speaker 3: totalitarianism comes in, it comes in fast. You know, when
Speaker 3: Hitler came to power, he was arresting his enemies of
Speaker 3: the night he came to power, right, And that's not
Speaker 3: always the case. I actually don't think that's going to
Speaker 3: be the case in the United States. That is, I'm
Speaker 3: still in the United States, you know, like making my
Speaker 3: decisions based on the fact that I don't think that
Speaker 3: Trump is going to come to power and then immediately
Speaker 3: arrest all the leftist podcasters in the progressives and whatever. Right,
Speaker 3: he might criminalize a bunch of stuff and he will
Speaker 3: make organizing hard, and he will start But on the
Speaker 3: other hand, there actually are already groups he's planning to
Speaker 3: criminalize and do horrible things too, And so it's almost
Speaker 3: like self important for like for those of us who
Speaker 3: are citizens to be like, oh, well, he might do
Speaker 3: the following. He's like, he said, which very large group
Speaker 3: of people he wants to put into camps.
Speaker 1: He doesn't mean it. We've all learned. Yeah, he tells
Speaker 1: us the horrible thing he's about. Oh wait a second, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he always does.
Speaker 2: He's done it every time. That's right.
Speaker 3: He's actually the most politician we've had in this country
Speaker 3: for a very long time. Someone's going to use that
Speaker 3: out of context. He he tries to hold to his
Speaker 3: campaign promises. Right, they're monsters. He's like, I'm going to
Speaker 3: be a monster, and everyone's like, hooray, He's going to
Speaker 3: be a monster, and then he yeah, is so. And
Speaker 3: then of course all of the people who are going
Speaker 3: to go benthany And I really like that framing of it.
Speaker 3: I think that's a good framing of it. There's no
Speaker 3: safety in that, Like, there's no Yeah, there's all of
Speaker 3: the people who voted for him and are like now
Speaker 3: going to all of their stuff is going to be
Speaker 3: twice as expensive, you know, it's anyway, whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you could kill it on eBay as a seller.
Speaker 3: He just bought a ton of like some Chinese made
Speaker 3: stuff and yeah, just something that something else that you've
Speaker 3: raised that I think the election results should probably have
Speaker 3: made clear to a lot of people.
Speaker 1: But you're right that moderate reforms are won by making
Speaker 1: radical demands. If you demand moderate reforms, you generally get nothing.
Speaker 1: And it just also it seems like the suppressing of
Speaker 1: the protests helped cause the democratic kind of cratering that
Speaker 1: we just saw, both the suppressing of the pro Palestinian
Speaker 1: protests on college campuses, but just protests in general by
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party is like something they feels like they've
Speaker 1: been pretty hostile towards and thus it's been harder for
Speaker 1: people on the left to build kind of community and
Speaker 1: sort of the structures that we're talking about needing. But
Speaker 1: give examples of like the two types of movements, like
Speaker 1: the radical demands versus like the ones that make moderate demands.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like, yeah, I could do that.
Speaker 3: But first of your point about the suppressing protests, I
Speaker 3: think the Democratic Party is very good at building off
Speaker 3: of the momentum of protests and from my point of
Speaker 3: you co opting it, but that's not the only way
Speaker 3: to view it, and so yeah, of course, but then
Speaker 3: they want to be the only adults in the room.
Speaker 3: So when they're in charge, everyone is a bunch of
Speaker 3: children if they protest against them, and so yeah, of
Speaker 3: course it doesn't work. Like I think, if they were smarter,
Speaker 3: they would have been like, we too, support free Palestine
Speaker 3: without doing anything.
Speaker 2: They would have to.
Speaker 3: All they would have to do is give lip service, right,
Speaker 3: And you see Biden try to pull this at the
Speaker 3: last minute, being like thirty days and then later being
Speaker 3: like just kidding, I don't care.
Speaker 2: Do whatever you want.
Speaker 3: Psych Yeah, but in terms of radical and moderate demands, okay,
Speaker 3: the abolition of legal chattel slavery in the United States,
Speaker 3: it reformist abolition. They tried that for a century or so.
Speaker 3: And the primary argument that they would make is they
Speaker 3: came up with all these like you know, they saw
Speaker 3: it as like very mature and compromising positions where they're like, well,
Speaker 3: what if we slowly buy people out of slavery, Like
Speaker 3: what if we allow you know, we have to of course,
Speaker 3: we have to pay back the slave owners, right, you know,
Speaker 3: they of course need to because their property has been
Speaker 3: taken away from them. You knows, all of these arguments
Speaker 3: that they made for a very long time, and now
Speaker 3: some of the reforms that they've pushed for, I will say,
Speaker 3: actually did accomplish things like stopping importation of enslaved people.
Speaker 3: Had some impact, but it very clearly took a zealot, right, Well,
Speaker 3: it took a lot of zalots and a lot of
Speaker 3: blood to stop legal chattel slavery in the United States.
Speaker 3: It took a whole ass war, and it took the
Speaker 3: demand we're going to kill you if you don't stop
Speaker 3: enslaving people, right, that was the demand that made any
Speaker 3: of this possible. And what's funny is that they actually
Speaker 3: could have The South could have at that point probably
Speaker 3: sued for peace in a way that there was like, okay,
Speaker 3: we accept the compromise, pay us for what we could have,
Speaker 3: pay us for our losses, and we'll stop. Like that
Speaker 3: was a that was an offer that they that was
Speaker 3: on the table more or less, right, And so they
Speaker 3: could have gotten the moderate thing, but instead they were
Speaker 3: like wanted to go whole hog.
Speaker 2: And got killed. And to help them.
Speaker 3: But another example of this, like gaining moderate things by
Speaker 3: being a radical group is you have the Young Lords,
Speaker 3: which is a Puerto Rican radical movement comparable to the
Speaker 3: Black Panthers in the nineteen sixties and seventies, and they
Speaker 3: were in Chicago and New York City primarily. They're actually
Speaker 3: still around, but they're like sort of Heyday, and some
Speaker 3: of the things that they accomplished are really tangible. We
Speaker 3: have the Patient's Bill of Rights. They did a lot
Speaker 3: of healthcare focused work, right. They took over hospitals time
Speaker 3: and time again, well maybe only twice, I don't remember,
Speaker 3: but they did it a bunch.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: They would like go in carjack X ray vans and
Speaker 3: bring them into neighborhoods like where minorities were living, because
Speaker 3: the x ray vans were only going into these white
Speaker 3: neighborhoods in order to search for tuberculosis and stuff in
Speaker 3: the community.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: And they also got trash pick up in New York City.
Speaker 3: They completely got it overhauled. And it wasn't that they
Speaker 3: formed the coalition of concerned voters who care about trash
Speaker 3: pick up, Could you please change the way that trash
Speaker 3: is picked up. They just started collecting all the trash
Speaker 3: and burning it in the streets. And then they and
Speaker 3: then instead of doing it in their own neighborhood, they
Speaker 3: drag it out to like the busy intersections where like
Speaker 3: the rich people had to drive, and then they would
Speaker 3: just throw street parties and burn all the trash. And
Speaker 3: finally the city was like, all right, we'll we'll start
Speaker 3: doing this. What they were fighting for was a free
Speaker 3: Puerto Rico, right right, And they didn't get that, right,
Speaker 3: but by trying to get that, they got an awful lot,
Speaker 3: and they got stuff that people who were asking for
Speaker 3: moderate demands weren't going to get ever.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, because in your sub steck you also point
Speaker 2: to the summer of twenty twenty like it rightly. It
Speaker 2: wasn't like we're like we want Joe Biden, so we're
Speaker 2: out here, you know, right yeah, because people are in
Speaker 2: the streets being like, we need to defund this shit.
Speaker 2: These people like we have authoritarian anti black like racism,
Speaker 2: like with people who are have been given and the
Speaker 2: blessing by the state to take people's lives. We need
Speaker 2: to fucking end this. The police phrase ever come up
Speaker 2: with the swamps? I know about it, LUSA, but like
Speaker 2: he does this, like you know, that was a point
Speaker 2: where we were asking there were a lot of people
Speaker 2: came together to ask for these larger reforms. You got
Speaker 2: it in varying degrees in some places. But what it
Speaker 2: did do in the end was fully blunt the momentum
Speaker 2: of a Trump reelection, which in that moment, Yeah, that
Speaker 2: that was that was a that was a that was
Speaker 2: a nice thing that we got. That we had an
Speaker 2: end at least to the Trump administration. Now, the co
Speaker 2: opting definitely happened. What I mean, we saw it all
Speaker 2: the time. All I can think about is Nancy Pelosi
Speaker 2: with the can take cloth on and the rotunda and
Speaker 2: I'm like, it's over. They did it. That was it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's worse than it was before.
Speaker 2: Right exactly. But to that point is if enough people
Speaker 2: clearly become incensed about a thing and come together to
Speaker 2: do that something thing, things happen, whether directly or indirectly.
Speaker 2: And I think that was one of the biggest takeaways
Speaker 2: for me reading the sub stack was when people are
Speaker 2: able to act collectively, there are going to be results.
Speaker 2: It might not be the intended top of the list thing,
Speaker 2: but other things do come from it that end up
Speaker 2: being somewhat of a positive or at least begin to
Speaker 2: beget you know, create conversations that you have like in LA,
Speaker 2: where the city controller became someone who's like, my whole
Speaker 2: thing now is just posting police budgets on the billboards,
Speaker 2: so people of LA understand like where the money's going. Wow,
Speaker 2: And you just get these like sort of smaller things
Speaker 2: and more people become a little bit aware. And I
Speaker 2: think that's the thing that we sort of have to
Speaker 2: sort of emphasize for ourselves, is to know that the
Speaker 2: time will come where we will need to sort of
Speaker 2: figure out a way that how we're going to contribute
Speaker 2: to make something better, and that it is possible, and
Speaker 2: you can do it in a way that is specific
Speaker 2: to whatever your level or ability is of whether if
Speaker 2: your ability you're you're like, whether it's physical abilities or
Speaker 2: just whatever your your comfort level is with being in
Speaker 2: physical space or putting yourself in a situation where you
Speaker 2: might have to be confronted by law enforcement, et cetera.
Speaker 2: But there are many ways to do this, so it
Speaker 2: doesn't have to feel like, well, it's either I'm putting
Speaker 2: on a uniform and I'm out there in the streets
Speaker 2: doing my thing cracking heads. No, No, that there is
Speaker 2: a there are many other ways, and I think it's
Speaker 2: important that we get together, identify within our own communities
Speaker 2: or like we all need to talk about this, like
Speaker 2: if I need medication, do you like, like what? How
Speaker 2: far out can you get? How far can you drive?
Speaker 2: Do you have a generator? Do you have these kinds
Speaker 2: of skills? Who does Oh? Are they down too? Do
Speaker 2: they think like us? Okay?
Speaker 5: Cool?
Speaker 2: Now we have fifteen people, and among us we have
Speaker 2: an engineer, we have someone who has a medical background,
Speaker 2: we have someone with the skills for horticle whatever. It
Speaker 2: is that you begin to understand that they're like, collectively,
Speaker 2: we can actually do a lot of things will keep
Speaker 2: us safe while also keeping an eye on the larger goal,
Speaker 2: which is to, you know, again, try and blunt the
Speaker 2: momentum of fascism in the country. So I think that's
Speaker 2: the one thing I hope a lot of people are
Speaker 2: able to sort of get in touch with it. It's
Speaker 2: as easy as you need it to be, but the
Speaker 2: hard bit is just to take that first step, and
Speaker 2: you can take it as comfortably as you want, but
Speaker 2: make sure you are focusing on how you either you're
Speaker 2: going to keep yourself safe, your friends safe, whatever, and
Speaker 2: then from there so many other things can branch off,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't have to look like you know, whatever
Speaker 2: the scary thing is in your mind that might be
Speaker 2: putting you off from wanting to take action, because it's
Speaker 2: very easy and you'll find many other like minded people
Speaker 2: out there.
Speaker 1: All Right, that's gonna do it for this week's weekly Zeitgeist.
Speaker 2: Please like and review the show.
Speaker 1: If you like. The show means the world to Miles.
Speaker 1: He needs your validation. Folks. I hope you're having a
Speaker 1: great weekend and I will talk to you Monday. Bye.