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: We are thrilled to be joined in our third seat
Speaker 1: by an award winning journalist who's worked for places like
Speaker 1: The Washington Post, The La Times, the Financial Times of London.
Speaker 1: It's also the author of the books The Jakarta Method,
Speaker 1: Washington's Anti Communist Crusade, and The Mass Murder Program That
Speaker 1: Shaped Our World, and more recently If We Burn, The
Speaker 1: Mass Protest Decade, and The Missing Revolution. Please welcome to
Speaker 1: the show.
Speaker 2: Vincent Bebe, Hello, Hello, thank you for having me, Thanks
Speaker 2: for doing that. Yeah, it is tomorrow, really national ambrosiaday.
Speaker 2: Is that a real thing that you Yeah, it's legit.
Speaker 3: There's a there's an entire website that just has every
Speaker 3: day there's something nonsensical or of deep consequence like yes,
Speaker 3: the same time deeply yeah exactly, runs.
Speaker 1: The gamut from sensical to deeply nonsense, deeply nonsensey yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, Like mainly it's consumer groups. Corporate groups are
Speaker 1: lobbyists just naming something a day to yeah, give themselves
Speaker 1: a reason to collect a paycheck exactly, exactly, the bullshit
Speaker 1: economy thrives. We like to cover the bullshit economy as
Speaker 1: much as possible. And you're coming to us from London. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm in London now.
Speaker 2: We've heard Los Angeles by the end of the year
Speaker 2: for you know, home for the holidays. But I'm currently
Speaker 2: in the United Kingdom.
Speaker 1: Is that where you? Is that your home base at
Speaker 1: the moment?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it has been. I mean I've been on the
Speaker 2: road like actually for years for the second book, between
Speaker 2: South Paulo and London often, but I'm like at the
Speaker 2: end of this book to our I've yeah, resettled into
Speaker 2: London for a bit.
Speaker 1: Cool cool love. You've been at some of the protests
Speaker 1: in London for you know, Palestinian rights and survival and
Speaker 1: depending depending where you get your news, I heard it
Speaker 1: was a pro homans.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, I kind of yeah, Yeah, I've been. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I've been at the protest weekly here like not far
Speaker 2: from from from where I am now. Yeah, absolutely, and like,
Speaker 2: uh absolutely that presentation they tried it here, certainly, I
Speaker 2: mean the government here is quite committed to demonizing anyone
Speaker 2: like to the left of I don't know, uh Joe
Speaker 2: Biden even or even to the left of britsuye snak.
Speaker 2: So yeah, there was there was quite a big narrative
Speaker 2: that was either antie like mostly anti Semitic, or quite
Speaker 2: about supporting Hamas. And then when I went there, you know,
Speaker 2: even though I should have known better, I even kind
Speaker 2: of expected to see some elements maybe there are out there,
Speaker 2: but what I found was like quite a lot of
Speaker 2: families and kids, and quite like.
Speaker 1: If they're out there, they'll find them here. Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, That's the thing that's kind of the I to
Speaker 2: what I've been working on is that, yeah, you can
Speaker 2: if a protest is large enough, you can usually find
Speaker 2: an element in the crowd. You can usually find a
Speaker 2: fact to support your narrative if you look hard enough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And sometimes the narrative will be you know, anti Semitism,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it'll be they just like really fuck with America.
Speaker 1: They just want to like be America, just like whatever
Speaker 1: honors their preconceived notions coming.
Speaker 2: In this This rises to the top quite almost all
Speaker 2: the time. Usually when you sign a Cadre of US
Speaker 2: based or correspondence for the US media to cover some
Speaker 2: uprising in some part of the world. Someone will see
Speaker 2: a desire to become junior, like the League America, which
Speaker 2: often like shocked and horrified some of the actual people
Speaker 2: that I met that put together protest movements in the
Speaker 2: last fifteen years, But it almost always happens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what is something from your search history that is
Speaker 1: revealing about who you are?
Speaker 4: The only thing I can think of is that I
Speaker 4: went out to eat with one of my friends the
Speaker 4: other day and I had to search what is what
Speaker 4: is the sushi that's a taco but not really a
Speaker 4: taco and it's tamaki because it's like the open face
Speaker 4: like sushi, but I didn't.
Speaker 1: Know what it was. Oh okay, okay, so you're talking
Speaker 1: about just the little bed of rice with the sushi
Speaker 1: on top of it. But it's like wrapped in the seaweed.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like, oh okay, like a hand roll.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I'm like a foodie, but like I don't
Speaker 4: always have the right names for stuff, So I'm like, okay, well,
Speaker 4: what is the sushi kind of taco hybrids?
Speaker 1: It looks like an ice cream cone filled with fish
Speaker 1: kind of right, it does, and it was good.
Speaker 4: I mean, we went to the place and it was amazing.
Speaker 3: There's a there's like a place in la that's just
Speaker 3: all hand rolls that I know, Like I don't know,
Speaker 3: I'm sure they have that kind of yeah, and like
Speaker 3: they have it by the I forget the name and way,
Speaker 3: but yeah, Timucky is like my one of my favorites.
Speaker 3: Usually you eat it at the end, like when you
Speaker 3: have like a sushi meal, because like the mentality is
Speaker 3: you like it's it's meant to be the closing sushi
Speaker 3: that you eat to make sure like oh oh so
Speaker 3: you think you're full now, well then try this one
Speaker 3: and now go home.
Speaker 1: Yeah, get down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's why I like the philosophy behind it. It's
Speaker 3: like no hit hit yourself with the big one at
Speaker 3: that is.
Speaker 1: There a study of food that like passes through you
Speaker 1: at like different speed, the speed at which you go
Speaker 1: from full to not full anymore? Because sushi, I can
Speaker 1: eat myself to like stuffed to the like very bottom
Speaker 1: of my esophagus, like I can feel the sushi down
Speaker 1: there and then like be hungry an hour and a
Speaker 1: half later, Whereas like Thanksgiving dinner or something like that,
Speaker 1: I'm done, like I'm cooked, like yeah, it's just stuff.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know what it is. Korean food
Speaker 1: also goes right through me. I feel like, I feel
Speaker 1: like it's a lot of the foods from Asian countries
Speaker 1: that are like that. You're able to eat a ton.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's probably able to eat a ton and
Speaker 1: then be hungry at like the next the next time
Speaker 1: a meal rolls around.
Speaker 3: You look, we like to eat, man, we like to Yeah,
Speaker 3: so we're not gonna get slowed down. And I think
Speaker 3: I don't know. I mean, I know the same way.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of it, like when eating sushi.
Speaker 3: There's also the part of it you're like, how much
Speaker 3: fucking money is this costing? So like you can't I mean,
Speaker 3: unless you want to really go there, like you could
Speaker 3: you I'm I'm sure you could eat that amount.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure there's also like a psychological effect of.
Speaker 3: Like, Okay, do I get another fifteen dollars thing and
Speaker 3: see if that will do it, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: versus like what fifteen bucks gets me a Chipotle or something.
Speaker 1: I think there's that part of it too. I don't
Speaker 1: know if anyone's eating to their full potential.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean starches make you feel full, right, yeah,
Speaker 4: and they fiber stuff. I think, no, But I feel
Speaker 4: like it's like things that are super fatty or whatever,
Speaker 4: like they make you want more because like if I
Speaker 4: eat bacon, I never want to stop.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like if I eat.
Speaker 4: Like pork belly or something, I never want to stop.
Speaker 1: I want to keep going.
Speaker 3: Oh so you like the like the luxurious kind of juicy,
Speaker 3: fatty parts of I Look when you said bacon and
Speaker 3: pork belly, it's the same part, but we're doing it
Speaker 3: different ways. And I'm like, I love.
Speaker 1: I say the number one food for like what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about is pancakes, because pancakes you eat them and
Speaker 1: then get less and less hungry after you've eaten them
Speaker 1: as they expand in your stomach, you know, oh right,
Speaker 1: Like I get more and more full, like even after
Speaker 1: I've eaten them. Right, So, like there is a science
Speaker 1: that I'm sure like chefs and culinary artists pay attention
Speaker 1: to the like, Okay, this is how it's going to
Speaker 1: feel going down. But also like once you've eaten it,
Speaker 1: because you do have like taste buds in your stomach.
Speaker 1: You know, That's that's a part of there's definitely stuff
Speaker 1: that when you eat it or drink it, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I liked it when I was having it in my mouth,
Speaker 1: but then like there's just something about it that fucks
Speaker 1: me up once it's in my stomach. You know what
Speaker 1: is something you think is overrated? Blair?
Speaker 6: Oh, thank you for asking, Jack Boy? Do I have
Speaker 6: an idea for you? Okay? Overrated? I don't want a
Speaker 6: small salad bowl. Okay, I need a big daddy salad bowl.
Speaker 6: I need room to work without shrapnel going everywhere. I
Speaker 6: throw elbows like we're on our test.
Speaker 1: I need a dexter room to eat that well. I
Speaker 1: need it.
Speaker 6: Salad am I gigantic bull. I'm digging in a well.
Speaker 6: I'm finding creature down there without any fear of lettuce
Speaker 6: flying out. Okay, I'm working, I'm swirling. Can't do that
Speaker 6: with a small salad bowl.
Speaker 1: How big are we talking?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: What's a small salad bowl? Are you going to be
Speaker 1: able to get some torso in there? Like some of
Speaker 1: your torso? Elbow above elbow?
Speaker 6: Show these small salbows, you know, the ones that the
Speaker 6: standard size, the standard side, these little tiny bulls. I said,
Speaker 6: this is not correct for a solad. Oh a plate.
Speaker 6: Do not even get me started on salad on a
Speaker 6: plate in a restaurant that you pay to go to.
Speaker 6: These people are sick.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe if you get me a cubicle with like
Speaker 1: dividers around it. Otherwise it is going to be there
Speaker 1: will be projectiles and people are going to have to
Speaker 1: like take cover as liabilities.
Speaker 6: I don't want to do that.
Speaker 1: Is your like salad eating style just sucking Tasmanian devil?
Speaker 1: Is that to do?
Speaker 2: Just a blur of fle.
Speaker 6: Do you think that? You think that, but it's not steady.
Speaker 6: I'm polite. I just don't want to be sort of
Speaker 6: feeling castrated in that situation. Okay, I'm trying to have
Speaker 6: it be a really acting spall like experience. I'm not
Speaker 6: trying to do too much. I'm just being appropriate. I'm
Speaker 6: just saying there's a flaw in the system of what
Speaker 6: we're doing right now and what we have been doing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I like whenever I eat a salad, like, are
Speaker 3: you a trader Joe's bag salad?
Speaker 1: I eat that in a gigantic mixing bowl.
Speaker 6: Yeah exactly. That's peace, that's peace, that's.
Speaker 1: Well being because you got to toss it to yourself.
Speaker 1: You can't do that. Shit, the tight I can't get
Speaker 1: j with when I'm doing that.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, how am I supposed to spread the salad
Speaker 6: dressing in a tiny bowl when there's no room to
Speaker 6: even there's not even any air in there?
Speaker 1: Thank you? And do you toss? Do you put like
Speaker 1: the salad dressing on and then put something over the
Speaker 1: top and like shake it up? Or you you mixing it?
Speaker 1: How are you doing that?
Speaker 6: I'm even more delicate than that, I'm lighter than that.
Speaker 6: I'm just do a quick swirl with the I'm not
Speaker 6: trying to do anything. Crazy people are gas lighting with these.
Speaker 1: I do dressing in the bowl first.
Speaker 6: Then that's smart, Miles. That's like a pinter as bitch.
Speaker 1: That's just how they do that.
Speaker 3: That's out every time I watch like like behind the
Speaker 3: scenes ship in like a restaurant, they'll like dress the
Speaker 3: bowl and then put the leaves in and then they
Speaker 3: really yeah yeah, damn man, that.
Speaker 1: Just fucking blew my mind. That's great, great.
Speaker 3: Advice, because then all you do is like if you
Speaker 3: just keep scooping from the bottom like all the dressings
Speaker 3: there and.
Speaker 1: It kind of mixes really well. So yeah, anyway, Blair's right,
Speaker 1: it does sound like some pinterest ass like I actually
Speaker 1: make my nachos on my tabletop, just directly on the table.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, but slop sloppy style, Yeah, slappy style.
Speaker 1: What is something you think is underrated?
Speaker 5: Okay, you guys gotta bear with me on this one.
Speaker 5: Underrated Taylor Swift? Hear me out here?
Speaker 1: Go on? Now, what is it about Taylor Swift I've
Speaker 1: been wondering.
Speaker 5: Okay, yes, she is so overexposed. We're hearing news about
Speaker 5: her every single day. She's a billion dollar business. She
Speaker 5: has like a million products. She's always selling something. But
Speaker 5: the way I still see like half of people be
Speaker 5: like I don't like her. Oh no, she's like I
Speaker 5: don't like her music, Get her off my TV screen.
Speaker 5: The thing that I love is we now have like
Speaker 5: another like a princess Diana Michael Jackson. We have a
Speaker 5: single person to focus our whole culture on, which is
Speaker 5: so unifying and fun. And I think I don't want
Speaker 5: people to like her. I don't care if they like her.
Speaker 5: I want them to accept that it is her world.
Speaker 1: She is verse.
Speaker 5: Yes, when the aliens come down, Why would I send
Speaker 5: Joe Biden a.
Speaker 1: Taylor swift.
Speaker 3: You know what, if the alien are smart, they might
Speaker 3: just pull up straight to Taylor Swifts like place in Manhattan.
Speaker 1: Oh she's I remember early on we were like, is
Speaker 1: she like she just like has she looks alien adjace?
Speaker 1: Can you run a full marathon while singing songs? I know? Oka?
Speaker 1: Or is that some kind of alien technology? I feel
Speaker 1: like she would be If I had to guess who
Speaker 1: has access to the alien technology a'llah Independence Day, it
Speaker 1: would probably be her, right, Like, that's who first of
Speaker 1: all they would want to give it to, because they're like,
Speaker 1: You're like, I think, what do they call the really
Speaker 1: tall slender like pale aliens? The grays? The grays are
Speaker 1: the short little ones eyes, the Nordic aliens. I feel
Speaker 1: like they might be like yeah, or they might be
Speaker 1: like you're one of You're not one of them? Okay,
Speaker 1: like you're just really really she's the freaker, the out No, no,
Speaker 1: you're one of us. Let's go, let's go. We've talked
Speaker 1: about this before quite a bit on the show. As
Speaker 1: a show that tries to take a look at the
Speaker 1: national share consciousness and the zeitgeist, Taylor's swift may have
Speaker 1: come up a time or two. And the question that
Speaker 1: I feel like we come up against is is she,
Speaker 1: like so time person of the Year has never been
Speaker 1: a entertainer. Really, it's been a Bono made it for
Speaker 1: his humanitarian work with and I am making the jerk
Speaker 1: off him gesture as I say that. But she's the
Speaker 1: first one who's just like this year. Yes, exactly so.
Speaker 1: Is this One of the theories that we like to
Speaker 1: talk about is that as humans in the in this
Speaker 1: modern world have lost access to religion, like our Beyonces
Speaker 1: and Taylor's swift have come in to like replace those
Speaker 1: foundational spiritual myths. Do we think that she is like
Speaker 1: it's on par with Michael Jackson and Princess Diana or
Speaker 1: is she even like a loves that at this point?
Speaker 3: Mmm, she's not quite there. I still contend she's not
Speaker 3: quite there.
Speaker 7: She had a not quite no no, no, no no,
Speaker 7: like you're gonna have you're gonna you're gonna need to
Speaker 7: pull up to like Sub Saharan Africa, show the picture
Speaker 7: and they all got to be like.
Speaker 1: Trouble, Like if they're not doing that, then it's.
Speaker 3: Not quite You're not hidding globally, but because like everywhere else,
Speaker 3: you know, like in Europe, fucking North America and South America.
Speaker 3: Even it's definitely, I mean, she could be on her
Speaker 3: way for sure. I think at this moment it's it's
Speaker 3: not quite there. But I think more interestingly, we were
Speaker 3: talking about an episode I hate to show our hand
Speaker 3: for a future episodes coming up, you know, we were
Speaker 3: actually asking is she the anti Christ?
Speaker 1: Mm hmmmm mmm.
Speaker 3: And like and not in like a ah get away,
Speaker 3: but the you know, the influence that she has and
Speaker 3: the fear that she strikes in the hearts of conservatives
Speaker 3: and religious figures, something like that, she might be something there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, and people love people are always looking for
Speaker 5: labels for themselves so that they can feel like they
Speaker 5: have a spot. That's what religion does. That's what being
Speaker 5: as swifty is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she could.
Speaker 5: She could use those sweets. I mean, not that I'm
Speaker 5: not as swifty. She could kill all of us if
Speaker 5: she wanted. She could just be like swifties attack.
Speaker 3: Honestly, I have a feeling she could manage to do
Speaker 3: like irl damage in physical space more than like Trump
Speaker 3: could with maybe maga people if you really wanted to
Speaker 3: start turning the dial up, you know, so it's you know,
Speaker 3: with just.
Speaker 1: World War Z level waves of humans just running, Like
Speaker 1: I feel I could scale like a wall, you know,
Speaker 1: but they're all like seventeen year old girls. But which
Speaker 1: I mean, don't never underestimate a seventeen year old girl. No, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like this argument. I think I think it is counterintuitive.
Speaker 1: But I do think that people people are sleeping on
Speaker 1: tailors swift.
Speaker 5: I just want people to stop resisting.
Speaker 1: Stop resistance, you go, thank you. Yeah, just fucking become
Speaker 1: one with the borg that is Taylor. Yeah, you'll be happier.
Speaker 1: Do we just see this continuing? Like on some level,
Speaker 1: I've heard people like she can't get much bigger, and
Speaker 1: America loves to see someone torn down right. On the
Speaker 1: other I think saying it can't get she can't get
Speaker 1: any bigger is a little like saying like, well, it's
Speaker 1: not like it can get any worse. Politically, It's like,
Speaker 1: well you just lack the imagination. Yeah, hold all these beers, please, yes,
Speaker 1: watch this happen. So like, I do think she could
Speaker 1: get any bigger, but I think as she gets bigger
Speaker 1: from here, we do start to enter unprecedented territory.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a weird spot where we don't this is
Speaker 5: the first time we don't have a break from someone ever,
Speaker 5: because she's been re recording those albums and just putting
Speaker 5: them out in the middle. So she's been in the
Speaker 5: news every day for over a year now, and usually
Speaker 5: with you know, Olivia Rodrigo just put out her new
Speaker 5: album and that was huge too, but we didn't hear
Speaker 5: from her for a couple of months before that we
Speaker 5: got a better either. So I have no idea what
Speaker 5: it's gonna look like. You know, I isn't gonna explode
Speaker 5: and everyone's gonna hate her all up.
Speaker 3: Do you think like that sort of like American misogynistic
Speaker 3: pattern is gonna come for her or like, because like
Speaker 3: you say, Jack, every anytime anyone gets big, it's there
Speaker 3: is a teardown phase, like with entertainers no matter what.
Speaker 3: And I'm curious because I know, like even in reading interviews,
Speaker 3: how she said she was much more affected by things
Speaker 3: that people said when she was younger, but she's older
Speaker 3: and now like it doesn't nearly affect her. So maybe
Speaker 3: she's like, I've reached my final form. You can fucking try, motherfuckers.
Speaker 3: But I like the madam Anti Cruxes.
Speaker 1: Yep, yep, yeah, I feel like I think Oprah like
Speaker 1: left the planet a long time ago, but it is
Speaker 1: still very consistent Lee Oprah, you know, like there's nothing
Speaker 1: that changed it. I feel like I could see Taylor
Speaker 1: Swift just evolving in that direction of like no longer
Speaker 1: on this planet, because I think the thing that often happens.
Speaker 1: First of all, people want to see a giant, giant
Speaker 1: celebrity taken down just because for the same reason they
Speaker 1: watch like buildings being detonated. But I I think that
Speaker 1: also just it is such a strange like level of
Speaker 1: fame and like psychological experiment that it's hard to maintain
Speaker 1: one's like coherent gravitational equilibrium of reality at that level.
Speaker 1: And then so it you know, if the whole world
Speaker 1: is rooting for you to fail spectacularly kind of even
Speaker 1: if they don't admit that. And also you are in
Speaker 1: a bizarre psychological experiment where like nobody has told you
Speaker 1: the truth in twenty years. You know, like everybody around
Speaker 1: you is just like WHOA, yeah, you're killing killing that
Speaker 1: it's almost an impossibility that you maintain anything resembling normalcy.
Speaker 1: But the kind of how you get weird can go
Speaker 1: in a direction that just keeps making you more and
Speaker 1: more famous, right.
Speaker 5: And she's so weird by the way, Taylor, I saw
Speaker 5: the concert. The way she like pauses for applause after
Speaker 5: every three words is so funny, and I love how
Speaker 5: crazy she is.
Speaker 1: And but like, also, yeah, that's a good example of
Speaker 1: she is. Every single gesture and micro gesture and micro
Speaker 1: expression is perfect. Like that's how she's gotten weird. That's
Speaker 1: how she's become inhuman, dialing it in tighter and tighter
Speaker 1: into exactly what people want from her, right, Yeah, So.
Speaker 5: I feel like that's got to be the point at
Speaker 5: which fame actually is purely worse than it is good,
Speaker 5: when nobody's being honest with you anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh yeah, that's gotta be it. The thing that
Speaker 1: like you really don't want to see is when they
Speaker 1: like build their own universe that has its own name,
Speaker 1: like Graceland and Neverland and right right, right, I think
Speaker 1: like Eddie Murphy had that for a little while, and.
Speaker 3: It's and then he came out Jamaican came that reggae
Speaker 3: album and they were like, what the fuck it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Prince had it, and Prince maintained his prince
Speaker 1: ness up till up until the end.
Speaker 3: But he got weird too. You know, you gotta get weird.
Speaker 3: I think that's the thing. It's like, we gotta get.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he was weird. He was known for being weird.
Speaker 1: That was kind of his whole thing, and he just
Speaker 1: like kind of honed it and honed it more and more.
Speaker 1: She is famous for being like very broad and miss Americana,
Speaker 1: but she is seems able to hone that more and
Speaker 1: more and more somehow.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, yeah, we seem to find out that she
Speaker 3: has like a like a secret Dunkin Donuts in her
Speaker 3: garage or some weird shit like that, like bring.
Speaker 1: On the Dunket Donuts more. I feel like, I know,
Speaker 1: right crazy, that's I'm saying.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 3: That's why I need to see the weird tailor phase, Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: weird Tailor, take everybody with you please to the weird Land.
Speaker 1: I just like want to see what her media diet,
Speaker 1: like what her just like intake is like, like is
Speaker 1: she reading Barbara Streisand's memoir or is she reading books
Speaker 1: about Napoleon right now? You know, like what is what?
Speaker 1: What does she think is next for her? It's like
Speaker 1: I'm reading a lot of bell hooks. Actually, yeah, it
Speaker 1: would be done day. All right, let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break and we'll be right back. And we're back, and
Speaker 1: you know, one of the kind of central questions that
Speaker 1: I went into the book with and that I just
Speaker 1: think is interesting and you kind of open up talking
Speaker 1: about is just the way that like a you know,
Speaker 1: we're interested inherently in these like the idea that there
Speaker 1: is zechgeister a collective consciousness. And you know, you open
Speaker 1: your book, which is about like one of these things
Speaker 1: where for a decade there were these movements that seemed
Speaker 1: to resemble each other in some ways, kind of often superficial,
Speaker 1: but spreading around the globe. You also open your book
Speaker 1: talking about the spirit of nineteen sixty eight, the idea
Speaker 1: where like revolution is happening across the globe all at once,
Speaker 1: almost like there's something in the air, right, And this
Speaker 1: is you know, sixty years before social media, and you know,
Speaker 1: these protests and uprising sweep around the world and even
Speaker 1: in communist countries. So I'd just be interested in first
Speaker 1: just for framing of the entire conversation, like hearing you
Speaker 1: speak about what what are the dynamics that are at
Speaker 1: play there? Like how do you think something like that happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, So whether or not we really truly understand,
Speaker 2: I think we can come up with theories. But historically,
Speaker 2: revolutions uprisings are common waves. They cluster around certain years,
Speaker 2: and you know, the best way we have to explain
Speaker 2: this is people hear about things happening us where they think,
Speaker 2: maybe I can do this here, even if their conditions
Speaker 2: are different, even if the things they're protesting against are different.
Speaker 2: And I think media has to be part of this story,
Speaker 2: right because before media would be impossible for people to
Speaker 2: find in Germany to find out what's happening in France,
Speaker 2: and you know, unless somebody came and told them that's
Speaker 2: the story. So even like in eighteen forty eight, like
Speaker 2: you know, the Spring of Nations in Europe.
Speaker 1: You saw like common.
Speaker 2: Commonalities across countries, and I think you see in a
Speaker 2: acceleration of that process the more media ties we become.
Speaker 2: So nineteen sixty eight you have quite a lot of
Speaker 2: back and forth happening between Western Europe in the United States,
Speaker 2: especially California, but also like they're doing different things. Like
Speaker 2: if you just if you just like look at the
Speaker 2: pictures of it, it may look the same, but there's
Speaker 2: different things happening, and certainly the people in Prague, or
Speaker 2: in China or in Egypt, which in my book I
Speaker 2: kind of say that they all do kind of have
Speaker 2: their own type of nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 1: They're all very different types.
Speaker 2: Of movements in protesting, very different types of governments. But
Speaker 2: like this seems to be a thing at least in
Speaker 2: the histories, in the history of revolution. Most serious thinkers
Speaker 2: do think that there is some kind of like a
Speaker 2: zeitgeist of rebellion in the air, that there are waves
Speaker 2: of rebellions, there are clusters of uprisings. I think media
Speaker 2: has to be part of that story about like again,
Speaker 2: we have to that's something we as an explanation, we
Speaker 2: pose on retroactively to make sense of what's happened after
Speaker 2: it all explodes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there's also the phenomenon of like parallel invention,
Speaker 1: where you know, the light bulb is invented in multiple
Speaker 1: places around the world, like within you know, month of
Speaker 1: each other, like at least you know, years of each other,
Speaker 1: and so like we're all kind of working from the
Speaker 1: same book and coming up with the same ideas. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just just interested. It's not really the central thesis
Speaker 1: of your book. But just as somebody who's spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time thinking about that, I was curious to
Speaker 1: hear your thoughts on that.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean, I guess Zeitgeist is kind of
Speaker 2: a Gelian idea, right, And like in this book and
Speaker 2: in like this the understanding of what's supposed to be
Speaker 2: happening in protests, there is kind of some like deep
Speaker 2: Hegelian assumptions that there is kind of like a world
Speaker 2: historical spirit like this, like history with the capital H.
Speaker 1: Moves forward right in some grandi mystical way.
Speaker 2: And so whether or not that's true or not, I
Speaker 2: think we can you know, probably most people are not Galiens,
Speaker 2: but some people, but you know, I think a lot
Speaker 2: of people do kind of have this deep, deep down
Speaker 2: feeling or assumption that there is kind of like a
Speaker 2: history with a capital H that moves forward and this Yeah,
Speaker 2: this this ends up actually coming up in the book
Speaker 2: for better or worse.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another thing you talk about is just this sense among
Speaker 1: revolutionaries of and this is something that I've just noticed
Speaker 1: across you know, reading about history of like the joy
Speaker 1: that people feel, and reading about protests like the fading
Speaker 1: out of these capitalist roles, and you know, you mentioned
Speaker 1: the idea of a medieval carnival where they would kind
Speaker 1: of topple hierarchies for a set period of time. In
Speaker 1: the book Dawn of Everything, David Graeber talks about, like,
Speaker 1: you know, doing archaeological studies of these tribal Native American
Speaker 1: civilizations that have like that was actually built into the
Speaker 1: structure of how they operated, where there would be these
Speaker 1: holidays where people would change and you know, the chiefs
Speaker 1: or the police, the people who acted as the police
Speaker 1: would become clowns, and you know, just all of these
Speaker 1: like switching of the role the people had, so and
Speaker 1: it it was kind of built in that if somebody
Speaker 1: had a really great hunting season, they would then be
Speaker 1: kind of ritualistically humiliated in front of everybody so that
Speaker 1: they were not attached to their kind of hierarchical role.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I don't know, it's just interesting, like giving
Speaker 1: people an environment where they can forget their capitalist lives
Speaker 1: and dissolve into a collective seems to more and more
Speaker 1: like connect with people, and I feel like is kind
Speaker 1: of an important part of the equation and part of
Speaker 1: what makes me hopeful about you know the fact that
Speaker 1: there could be some people driven change is how much
Speaker 1: there is just that that urge there. But obviously you know,
Speaker 1: this is something you think about and put in the book,
Speaker 1: so just curious to hear your thoughts. Is that part
Speaker 1: of the thing that makes you come away from this
Speaker 1: and still be hopeful even though the of the protesters
Speaker 1: often get swarted repeatedly in these stories.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's part of it. I mean, I guess the
Speaker 2: main thing that makes me hopeful is that I came
Speaker 2: away from this book that I did. You know, through
Speaker 2: two hundred two hunred and fifteen interviews in twelve countries,
Speaker 2: and almost everyone, even if they had been, you know,
Speaker 2: apparently defeated in the short term, had experienced some kind
Speaker 2: of a crushing defeat. Almost no one had given up
Speaker 2: on the idea of getting together with other human beings
Speaker 2: and tried to build a better world. They had thought
Speaker 2: about new strategies, they had thought about doing things differently.
Speaker 2: They maybe had to leave their home country or gone
Speaker 2: to jail, but they had not given up. And a
Speaker 2: lot of people have said even if they knew, even
Speaker 2: after they knew how things ultimately turned out, even if
Speaker 2: they now know that the story ended in disaster. They
Speaker 2: would say things like I could relive that day every
Speaker 2: day for the rest of my life. It's the most
Speaker 2: alive that I've ever felt, and that feeling is something
Speaker 2: that I will never stop reliving.
Speaker 1: And I think.
Speaker 2: That that feeling is related to not only what you
Speaker 2: said about this historical practice of inverting hierarchies and sort
Speaker 2: of creating more direct links between people that you see
Speaker 2: in all kinds of any civilization, of any complexity. I
Speaker 2: think you see these things, kinds of things popping up,
Speaker 2: the medieval carnival, the case you just online have.
Speaker 1: I've read a lot of Graver books. Graver's books been
Speaker 1: not that one.
Speaker 2: But I think it's also related to that other phenomenon
Speaker 2: we spoke about earlier, like the feeling right now, which
Speaker 2: I think drives the elections of people like Schwartzenegger and
Speaker 2: Trump and Bolsono in Malay, that we're not actually in
Speaker 2: control of what's happening. The structures that you're supposed to
Speaker 2: represent us are not actually representing us. There are a
Speaker 2: few moments in your daily life when you really feel
Speaker 2: that you're making history, that you're part of something, like
Speaker 2: guys that you're actually working connecting with other people and
Speaker 2: actually imposing your will in the most part positive sense,
Speaker 2: like trying to reshape reality in a way that actually
Speaker 2: matters at all. And so when those feelings come around
Speaker 2: for people in this day and age, at this level
Speaker 2: of like social complexity and in a world of interconnected
Speaker 2: political systems which I think it is right to believe
Speaker 2: don't really represent us that well anymore, it feels so
Speaker 2: incredibly powerful. It feels like this is something that I've
Speaker 2: been starving for because the like right now, what I'm
Speaker 2: actually doing feels like it's really changing things. And that
Speaker 2: is a feeling that I think that even if we
Speaker 2: didn't have to improve the global system, which I think
Speaker 2: we do, it's like there's a deep there's a deep
Speaker 2: yearning for that in humanity to connect with other people
Speaker 2: and build something, connect with other people and do something
Speaker 2: really like to make a difference, and there's not We
Speaker 2: don't feel that way very often. Often where you know,
Speaker 2: much a movie.
Speaker 1: There's like a meaningless that has like been encoded and
Speaker 1: everything that is pretty frustrating. And I think people assume
Speaker 1: might be like something that we just like take for
Speaker 1: granted as like part of day to day life. But
Speaker 1: it really when you read you know, historical accounts and
Speaker 1: like interviews with people who are parts of things like
Speaker 1: this in your book, and it's really like there is
Speaker 1: something that makes you feel alive, which suggest to me
Speaker 1: maybe that's how we're supposed to feel, is like in
Speaker 1: our lives, you.
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, I mean, yeah, you don't feel a lot
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, you feel something when you you know,
Speaker 2: like scroll in social media all day and like get
Speaker 2: mad at a post and then do a post and
Speaker 2: people get mad at you.
Speaker 1: You feel something. You don't exactly feel alive, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not that omnipotence that like being in the
Speaker 3: streets or being the collective can kind of bring you
Speaker 3: when you're just kind of yeah, when it's the digital
Speaker 3: response version, you're getting to feel something, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: I'm curious, like in that, you know, like that feeling
Speaker 3: that allow people to come together and be like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know what, I'm also not pleased. I'm angry about
Speaker 3: this thing. You know in your book, you know, for
Speaker 3: people who aren't fully aware, you're examining a lot of
Speaker 3: these mass movements that you know, most of the time
Speaker 3: didn't actually end up bringing about the change that the
Speaker 3: people were seeking, and the fact that the movements get
Speaker 3: co opted and you know, can turn into, as you say,
Speaker 3: like almost bringing the opposite effect of what they wanted initially.
Speaker 3: Is there something do you think there is something woven
Speaker 3: in that like that the like obviously there are very
Speaker 3: politically minded activists and people who are organizing and understand
Speaker 3: like maybe mechanically what has to happen, But because so
Speaker 3: many are just sort of taken up by this larger
Speaker 3: feeling that we kind of get stuck in the loop
Speaker 3: of doing the explosive like this is our feedback to
Speaker 3: the leaders of the world kind of thing, and then
Speaker 3: forgetting what happens after that.
Speaker 1: I think that, yes, partially, I think that.
Speaker 2: So the phenomenon that I choose to build this history
Speaker 2: round is is mass protests that gets so big that
Speaker 2: they either overthrow governments or fundamentally destabilized governments. So these
Speaker 2: are movements that at first unexpectedly appear to be incredibly successful,
Speaker 2: Like so enough people came on the streets that actually
Speaker 2: the president or the dictator is like fleeing the country
Speaker 2: or is so scared and so desperate to stay in
Speaker 2: power that they want to that they'll give something up
Speaker 2: to the people in the streets in order to stay
Speaker 2: in power. Now, what happens next ends up being the
Speaker 2: focus of my book. Is what I try to do
Speaker 2: is I go back and say, well, what actually happened
Speaker 2: in the years that followed, after a lot of the
Speaker 2: foreign journalists have stopped, you know, reproducing the very inspiring
Speaker 2: images on screens around the planet, what really happened? And
Speaker 2: to answer that question as to what actually happened? I
Speaker 2: think is related to your question someone indirectly, but related
Speaker 2: is that the way that we are living starved of
Speaker 2: this feeling, starved of this actual connection with other you know,
Speaker 2: we are like digitally quote unquote connected because we're you know,
Speaker 2: we're we're sending you know, messages on screens. But we're
Speaker 2: living more individualized lives than I think most of humanity
Speaker 2: ever has.
Speaker 1: We are often responding to like posts.
Speaker 2: This, This way that we have been living for several
Speaker 2: decades shaped the type of the types of responses which
Speaker 2: were easiest to put together to real injustice. They've shaped
Speaker 2: the types of things that we did first when confronted
Speaker 2: with real abuses of power. And I think that is yes,
Speaker 2: part of the story and a lot of a lot
Speaker 2: of the people said this at the end, like you know,
Speaker 2: we at the end of the book, you know, after
Speaker 2: I've interviewed everyone asked them to look back in what happened,
Speaker 2: and a lot of them said, yes, it was not
Speaker 2: only this system that we thought that it had had
Speaker 2: been oppressing us, but that shaped the way that we
Speaker 2: understood political change.
Speaker 1: It shaped the way that we could put.
Speaker 2: Together responses to injustice, and that ended up meaning that
Speaker 2: we couldn't get through that first of apparent victory to
Speaker 2: the next step, which was actually creating something better.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I do. I do think it's all related.
Speaker 2: I think that we we and then you know, that's
Speaker 2: part of the learning process, right, That's part of the
Speaker 2: what happened in the twenty tens is a lot of
Speaker 2: people got much further than they expected and then.
Speaker 1: Realized where the barriers were.
Speaker 2: But I think that the fact that we have been
Speaker 2: living this way for so long is part of the
Speaker 2: reason that explains why it was the mass protest that
Speaker 2: came together very very quickly. That was the way that
Speaker 2: often was the automatic response, Like why the twenty tens
Speaker 2: the dominant mode of the twenty tens rather than other
Speaker 2: of these you know, years of uprising was mass protest
Speaker 2: or the mass why it was a mass protest decade
Speaker 2: if you want to use the subtop of my book.
Speaker 1: You know, I think one of the things that you
Speaker 1: end up pointing to is that a lot of these
Speaker 1: protests were coming at the right time, right, there was
Speaker 1: this energy and this desire, but they were specifically horizontally
Speaker 1: organized or organized to resist leadership. And is that kind
Speaker 1: of the big takeaway that you just you think that
Speaker 1: future protests protest movements need to kind of take away
Speaker 1: from this book, Is that some manner of organization, some
Speaker 1: manner of like, you know, if you aren't prepared after
Speaker 1: you create the change to step in to lead, somebody
Speaker 1: else is going to lead for you. Is that would
Speaker 1: that be kind of the big you know, because that
Speaker 1: there is the example of this actually working, right, and
Speaker 1: the big thing there was that the leftists who created
Speaker 1: the change then involve themselves in national politics, right right,
Speaker 1: So like would you say that is the big takeaway
Speaker 1: that they just need to be ready to organize and
Speaker 1: then lead that dynamic? I think that you just outlined is.
Speaker 2: Goes a big goes a long way towards explaining a
Speaker 2: lot of what happened in many of the cases in
Speaker 2: the book, there's like ten to thirteen depending on how
Speaker 2: you count them. But that dynamic if you you know,
Speaker 2: if the book is indeed built around the question, how
Speaker 2: is it possible that so many mass protests led to
Speaker 2: the opposite of what they asked for? You've outlined I think, yeah,
Speaker 2: A major part of the answer, which is that what
Speaker 2: happened unexpectedly is that more people came out in the
Speaker 2: streets than was planned for. They joined a very specific
Speaker 2: type of response to injustice, a very specific type of
Speaker 2: mass protests, which is you know, which has various elements.
Speaker 2: It is apparently spontaneous, leaderless, digitally coordinated. Often you know,
Speaker 2: people are finding out about this because of social media
Speaker 2: or media and general and then horizontally structured, which means
Speaker 2: that there's not hierarchy, and there's often an idea that
Speaker 2: there shouldn't be. And then these are protests in public
Speaker 2: squares or in or in public spaces, and when more
Speaker 2: people come than expect, than are than are expected, then yeah,
Speaker 2: the government is perhaps dislodged or the government is so
Speaker 2: weakened the power is up for grabs. And often what
Speaker 2: happened and you know that this is where you know,
Speaker 2: cases really diverge. But often what happened is whoever was
Speaker 2: already there organized waiting in the wings, steps in and
Speaker 2: takes power. The person that was like waiting, you know,
Speaker 2: off off off camera, off stage, takes over, or you know,
Speaker 2: sometimes that is local national elites. They're not always on
Speaker 2: the right.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they are on the right.
Speaker 2: Or especially in the cases of countries that are weaker
Speaker 2: than the US, you often had some neighbor or the
Speaker 2: US itself coming in to to fill that vacuum and
Speaker 2: crush the movement, and then that kind of counter attack coms,
Speaker 2: just like it did in seventeen eighty nine or in
Speaker 2: the revolutions in previous eras of global revolution, there's usually
Speaker 2: a counter attack of counter revolution. That protest that had
Speaker 2: it planned on going to war with anybody that had
Speaker 2: not planned on even actually overthrowing a government is really
Speaker 2: was really not really ready for it was really not
Speaker 2: ready to defend this project, which really concretely consisted of
Speaker 2: millions of different people with different ideas as to what
Speaker 2: it was. Because they came together so quickly, and you
Speaker 2: know that part of it, I think is a strength
Speaker 2: in the beginning is you can get so many people
Speaker 2: together very quickly because the sort of everyone's invited. But
Speaker 2: once you get past that first moment, often there was
Speaker 2: a brief moment when there was an opportunity, and usually
Speaker 2: the people that took the opportunity were already organized, already ready,
Speaker 2: and already waiting in the wings to seize power, where
Speaker 2: whereas the stream movements couldn't decide if they believed in
Speaker 2: taking power, was supposed to do it, or if what
Speaker 2: they were doing with it, if they would and while
Speaker 2: that sort of non conversation was not happening, like the
Speaker 2: military sweeps in or a right wing popular sweeps in,
Speaker 2: or NATO bombs of your country and so on.
Speaker 3: When it comes to like kind of like looking like
Speaker 3: because you know, looking at the book and just kind
Speaker 3: of thinking about everything I'm always thinking of, like you know,
Speaker 3: like how this like relates to the United States too,
Speaker 3: and how we've we dabble a lot. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 3: we've seen a lot of mass protests. I mean, like
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty felt like a huge moment with Black
Speaker 3: Lives Matter and people beginning to sort of be able
Speaker 3: to articulate like sort of what is wrong with our
Speaker 3: system of policing only to just get like Nancy Pelosi
Speaker 3: kneeling in the kintake cloth at the Capitol, right, and
Speaker 3: then like like what.
Speaker 1: About qualified immunity. There's like a lot of things we
Speaker 1: could do.
Speaker 3: And so I look at things like you know, like
Speaker 3: United Auto Workers or Organized Labor right now, and they've
Speaker 3: been able to wield some really inspiring like collective power
Speaker 3: and we're able to extract tangible concessions. But I feel
Speaker 3: like that a lot of that is because these groups
Speaker 3: are organized around proper power and in a specific industry,
Speaker 3: and their tool is to withhold their labor, which then
Speaker 3: affects revenue, which then affects the leadership, and then that's
Speaker 3: how they bring them to the table when you know,
Speaker 3: how do we take sort of like you know, what's
Speaker 3: from your perspective, what are the learnings?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 3: That's a very obviously potent tool that it's like it's
Speaker 3: very specific, and I think that's probably the benefit of
Speaker 3: those kinds of movements is because they're all they're very
Speaker 3: focused on like some very specific things. But when we're
Speaker 3: talking about sort of like the discontent that people are
Speaker 3: experiencing in the United States based on inequality, et cetera.
Speaker 3: How do we take that going merely past the point
Speaker 3: of these sort of huge gestures, you know, these expressions
Speaker 3: of anger and translate that into outcomes, because a lot
Speaker 3: of the times, like you're saying, these movements, they're not there,
Speaker 3: are horizontally organized, or they get so big, like people
Speaker 3: like at the picket for police were travels, some guys
Speaker 3: got to sign. He's talking about like batteries give you cancer,
Speaker 3: And you're like, well, what the fuck is what?
Speaker 1: Like what are we doing now?
Speaker 3: Like, so what do we do when it sort of
Speaker 3: falls outside of that realm of something as specific as
Speaker 3: like the workplace or outcomes as of workers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's a good that's a good way to
Speaker 2: pose the question because those two two's two phenomena I
Speaker 2: think are interrelated in different and important ways. On the
Speaker 2: one hand, one of the things that people said in Egypt,
Speaker 2: for Brazil, or or or or Libya or around the
Speaker 2: world at the end of the book is I wish
Speaker 2: we would have been more organized before the explosion came.
Speaker 2: I would I wish we would have organized when it
Speaker 2: seemed like nothing was happening, Like the lesson, the lesson
Speaker 2: of being essentially built in the off season because you
Speaker 2: don't know what's gonna come, and when something, an opportunity does,
Speaker 2: does arise, you want to already happy word you know,
Speaker 2: connected with other people that believe in the same things
Speaker 2: as you. And this is kind of the story of
Speaker 2: the UL right. Like in twenty seventeen, you do have
Speaker 2: people that are from the kind of the world of
Speaker 2: progressive politics realizing, oh, we kids try to reform. There's
Speaker 2: the UAW reform concuss. This is a process that starts
Speaker 2: in twenty seventeen when it seems like, you know, there's
Speaker 2: no opportunities for organized labor right now, you know, Donald
Speaker 2: Trump's just won the presidency. What you know, you know,
Speaker 2: But but it ends up paying off much much later.
Speaker 2: And it pays off because as you say, you withdraw,
Speaker 2: you withhold your labor. And not only do you withhold
Speaker 2: your labor, because this is a this is the really
Speaker 2: hard move that is almost impossible for the horizontally structured
Speaker 2: mass protest to pull off, is that you withhold your
Speaker 2: labor asking for a raise. You may ask for all
Speaker 2: kinds of things that you think you're not going to get.
Speaker 2: You ask for them, but you know that there is
Speaker 2: a amount of money that you can get that will
Speaker 2: lead you to go back to work. And the boss
Speaker 2: also knows that. The boss believes the boss will make
Speaker 2: an offer, and then the union says, oh, yes, if
Speaker 2: we get this amount of concessions from you, we will
Speaker 2: go back to work. And that's why the boss gives
Speaker 2: it because there's this exit ramp right like everyone can
Speaker 2: you know, even if you could, even if you use
Speaker 2: the strike to raise consciousness about working class part in
Speaker 2: the United States, even if you make all kinds of
Speaker 2: some demands that you're not going to get this time,
Speaker 2: the only reason for the boss to give the raise
Speaker 2: is the credible promise that the labor is restored the
Speaker 2: next day. And this is something that this was the
Speaker 2: very strange, like it really confounded everyone that was living
Speaker 2: through it, Like as it was happening, the politicians and
Speaker 2: the original organizers for example of this unexpected mass explosion
Speaker 2: in Brazil in twenty thirteen, didn't know how to deal
Speaker 2: with this phenomenon because the president wanted to give the
Speaker 2: street something but could not figure out what it was
Speaker 2: that would that could be given and then that the
Speaker 2: streets could say, oh, yes, that's great. We'll take that
Speaker 2: for now, you know. And again in these movements you
Speaker 2: may ask for really really radical reforms. You may you know,
Speaker 2: bring up the possibility of entirely changing or getting rid
Speaker 2: of the current policing orcarceral system. That's that is a
Speaker 2: thing that can be part of this larger process. But
Speaker 2: when there's no when there was no ability for the
Speaker 2: people in power to understand that they would somehow get
Speaker 2: out of this like because they're often, like I said,
Speaker 2: they're scared. So if you're not willing to actually overthrow
Speaker 2: the government and form a new one, but you can
Speaker 2: scare the government, then what you want is to use
Speaker 2: that moment where they're kind of on their back on
Speaker 2: their heels to get something. But they're only going to
Speaker 2: get it if they think that, okay, well that that
Speaker 2: means that I can stand again that if I do
Speaker 2: give this thing, I will be it will be demonstrated
Speaker 2: that you know, mass protest extracts goods from me.
Speaker 1: It will be it would be proven.
Speaker 2: You know, on the other side of this equation there
Speaker 2: might be all this more this radical energy that's that's born.
Speaker 2: But at least I can hold on for now, and
Speaker 2: and a lot of times in the twenty tents, the
Speaker 2: government couldn't even figure out what to give in order
Speaker 2: to full order, so then they just they end up
Speaker 2: opted opting for And this depended on context repression just
Speaker 2: like crack like just cracking down or just waiting it out,
Speaker 2: which turns out kind of works. And and that that
Speaker 2: that that that that dynamic that you brought up too,
Speaker 2: like because I you know, in twenty twenty, I mean
Speaker 2: I didn't write I know very little about the George
Speaker 2: flot uprising, and I spent a lot of time learning
Speaker 2: about the rest of these in the book, but I
Speaker 2: did get like I did watch of course, and and
Speaker 2: this was something that I started to talk about with
Speaker 2: my friends that were in you know, involved on the streets,
Speaker 2: that if the government just kind of does nothing, the
Speaker 2: longer things go on, the more likely it is that
Speaker 2: that guy with sign that says batteries give you cancer,
Speaker 2: we'll get on television. Right even if and again to
Speaker 2: go back to the very beginning of a conversation, even
Speaker 2: if like that's an fbhiaja, you know, if like it
Speaker 2: makes sense for the government to just send three people
Speaker 2: out there to do the dumbest thing that you can
Speaker 2: imagine point a camera at.
Speaker 1: Them and be like, this is what you are? Is
Speaker 1: that what you are?
Speaker 2: And in the case of these horizontally structured uprisings, the
Speaker 2: uprising cannot say no, we're not, no, it's not, which
Speaker 2: is something that the Black Panther Party and CORE and SNCAC,
Speaker 2: the civil rights groups in the fifties in sixties then
Speaker 2: inspired so much of contemporary process as we know it.
Speaker 2: So much of the sixties movements in the student new
Speaker 2: Left were really inspired by the civil rights organizations in
Speaker 2: the fifties and sixties. They absolutely would have had an
Speaker 2: ability to say that guy, we don't know that guy, right,
Speaker 2: but that was lost in the you know, it's it's
Speaker 2: a mixed bag. There's positive negatives to the to the
Speaker 2: dynamic which allows people like a lot of people to
Speaker 2: come to the streets at the same time, whereas often
Speaker 2: it took like two years to together the mass demonstrations
Speaker 2: that were common in the fifties and sixties because they
Speaker 2: had to like slowly slowy, one by one recruit people
Speaker 2: invent them, whereas now we can everyone can show up,
Speaker 2: but then there's no one to say yeah, really anything
Speaker 2: full on behalf of the streets right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like when Boogoloo boys showed up at like BLM
Speaker 3: things and they're like, wait what, well, hold on y'all.
Speaker 3: They're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we like this too,
Speaker 3: and it's like, okay, no, this is not it, not
Speaker 3: over here.
Speaker 1: But yeah, let's take a quick break and then yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to keep talking about this. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: And we're back. We're back, And BuzzFeed has dropped what
Speaker 1: I hope will be a tradition going forward, a tradition
Speaker 1: unlike any other. That is twenty twenty three's most out
Speaker 1: of touch celebrity moments. And I had missed some of
Speaker 1: these because I don't pay that close attention to what
Speaker 1: Bryce Dallas Howard and Kim Kardashian are doing on social media.
Speaker 1: Oh Jack, you're missing a whole world nonsense, a whole
Speaker 1: new word.
Speaker 3: Roolery was what was bryced own? I remember she was
Speaker 3: getting like the NEPO baby thing. Yeah, I think what
Speaker 3: was going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So in May she did an Instagram post that
Speaker 1: was about the challenges of breaking into the film industry
Speaker 1: and your dad Ron Hid Yeah, one of the most
Speaker 1: successful directors working and has like a massive production company
Speaker 1: and your first roles were oh, let me see here.
Speaker 1: In Ron Howard films like How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
Speaker 1: By the way, she does have the perfect nose. I
Speaker 1: feel like the noses of the Who's in that movie
Speaker 1: were modeled off of her.
Speaker 6: I would die to be a who.
Speaker 1: Oh you kind of have like a great hoop?
Speaker 8: Yeah, kill it as a who?
Speaker 1: Are you like?
Speaker 3: The who that they're all like, Like, Blair's kind of
Speaker 3: like a little different than us, right, I.
Speaker 6: Got a lot of love and holidays cheer in my
Speaker 6: heart to spread around. I think I fit right in.
Speaker 6: I think they would be like, you're the who that
Speaker 6: we never knew we miss, you know?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, all right, all right, petition to have Blair
Speaker 3: transported to Whoville.
Speaker 1: There we go. Also, she was in A Beautiful Mind,
Speaker 1: which I didn't even realize. I need to watch that.
Speaker 1: You got to rewatch a Beautiful Mind to see Bryce
Speaker 1: dllice how that shit hits different when you realize Bryce
Speaker 1: Dallas Howard's in it and.
Speaker 6: See her out of touch celebrity moments.
Speaker 1: That was just example of teeth acting. Someone was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you remember Russell Crow's teeth in a Beautiful Mind? Oh, no, no,
Speaker 1: he's tooth. He's tooth acting. I don't know. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: We also got Kim Kardashian promoting a wildly expensive, totally
Speaker 1: unnecessary according to medical science MRI scan for some reason.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Oh I saw that one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pre nuvo scan. Yeah, And in August Instagram post,
Speaker 1: Kim Kardashian promoted a two thousand, four hundred and ninety
Speaker 1: nine dollars so kind of a deal a medical scan,
Speaker 1: which sorry, did I say scammer scan? It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: medical yeah, way, actually both are correct, which isn't covered
Speaker 1: by insurance because it's, according to medicine, completely unnecessary. It's
Speaker 1: her in a picture next to an MRI machine. I
Speaker 1: believe she is wearing figs like the form fitting medical
Speaker 1: scrubs and.
Speaker 3: She wait, that's a thing they got, like they got
Speaker 3: like sexy medical scrubs.
Speaker 1: I mean they're not like they're just sexy, but they're
Speaker 1: you've seen you've seen medical scrubs. They are like cut
Speaker 1: to fit box yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah exactly, they're
Speaker 1: like built for Minecraft characters. And yeah, figs were just
Speaker 1: like what if we like recognized that humans worthies? Oh okay,
Speaker 1: all right, yeah yeah, but Anyways, Kim said, I recently
Speaker 1: did this at pre Nuvo scan and had to tell
Speaker 1: you all about this life saving machine. It has really
Speaker 1: saved some of my friends lives, and I just wanted
Speaker 1: to share hashtag not an ad.
Speaker 3: That's that's that's how that's that's a potent endorsement, I guess.
Speaker 3: But like to your point, I like that the American
Speaker 3: College of Preventative Medicine and the American Cause of Radiology
Speaker 3: they're both like, this is nons it's not necessary, it's
Speaker 3: not this isn't something you need.
Speaker 1: But hey, it saved some of her friends' lives, but
Speaker 1: it is. If you talk to doctors like a thing,
Speaker 1: everybody's like, I think I'm gonna need an MRI on
Speaker 1: this one to confirm what's going on.
Speaker 6: Say that, though, because like I saw that, and I mean,
Speaker 6: I'm very easily influenced. So one of my flaws, I
Speaker 6: was like, I need that.
Speaker 1: I need that.
Speaker 6: My head hurts. I didn't breathe that deeply for a second.
Speaker 1: I need that. Kim Kardashian that Kim Kardashian m R.
Speaker 1: In the David Wayne movie The Ten, where these two
Speaker 1: neighbors get competitive about collecting cat scam machines try there's
Speaker 1: like an arms race between two neighbors collecting cat scam machines.
Speaker 1: And I feel like that is we're not far from that,
Speaker 1: Like people are gonna be like I got I got
Speaker 1: my own damn MRI machine at home.
Speaker 6: And I just love the way that this country just
Speaker 6: makes money off of deep medical issues in humanity.
Speaker 1: Right and neurotic people.
Speaker 6: It's soulful. Yeah, I'll include I'll throw myself it's a
Speaker 6: it's a soulful nation, and I'll throw myself in the neurotic.
Speaker 3: I would love like if it was somehow a scam
Speaker 3: and it's just a bit like it was just somehow
Speaker 3: like tracking like your brain activity to.
Speaker 1: Be like okay, we've we've downloaded another person with the
Speaker 1: pre new it's a girl, she's working there it is.
Speaker 1: There's also a trend of rich celebrities pretending to be
Speaker 1: working class. There was a moment in the Beckham documentary
Speaker 1: where Victoria Beckham to come from a working class background
Speaker 1: and like David Beckham was like what she was.
Speaker 3: Like my father would bring me to school and pick
Speaker 3: me up, and David Beckham's like, in what kind of car?
Speaker 1: It's not really relevant. It's not in what kind of car?
Speaker 1: What kind of what kind of car? Was it a Rolls?
Speaker 1: She's like a Rolls Royce and it's like and then no,
Speaker 1: he like looks at He's like, is this your queen Rolls?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 3: Yeah, because Beckham definitely had a different upbringing than Victoria Beckham.
Speaker 1: But I love how he couldn't stand for the cosplay,
Speaker 1: Like he's like, I thought that that that. I mean,
Speaker 1: her name was Posh Spice, like that was her whole
Speaker 1: You can't go back on that.
Speaker 3: It wasn't like trade Spice, you know, because she's a
Speaker 3: trade or something like that.
Speaker 1: Right, then there were celebrities actually costplaying as people with
Speaker 1: real jobs. Charlie d'milio worked at a Walmart cash worked
Speaker 1: as a Walmart cashier for I think like one belts
Speaker 1: worth of food and a video to promote her new
Speaker 1: snack brand. But she was like just so found it
Speaker 1: so amusing to be like and then what do you
Speaker 1: do you do? Like this? Oh it's okay here, I
Speaker 1: am underscanning the growth. Oh my gosh, your jobs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she and worked at a Starbucks. I had missed that,
Speaker 1: but that's like.
Speaker 6: Going in the trenches though, we gotta give him that one.
Speaker 6: I mean that job. Whenever I go to Starbucks, I
Speaker 6: go these men and women are the greatest people I
Speaker 6: have ever met. The things they go through, what people
Speaker 6: tell them. I'm like, I would blow my brains out.
Speaker 6: I mean, these people yapping in their ear about fucking
Speaker 6: almond milk and ship.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oat milk, oat milk. Come on, now, you know
Speaker 1: how we get down in la Oh you're sick. You
Speaker 1: moved on to oat milk.
Speaker 6: You know you watched it, you heard the oat milk?
Speaker 1: Yeah, no milk. I'm just dropping.
Speaker 3: I'm dropping little references here and the special for people
Speaker 3: to get get involved in a fan I.
Speaker 6: Know I am not. I am not a fan, absolutely not.
Speaker 1: It feels like it has a little more viscosity. It's
Speaker 1: a little more like it's the back of the fake milks.
Speaker 1: I'll say, Wow, we're doing too much.
Speaker 6: How do we even get to oh oats are our
Speaker 6: oats are not milkable? That we've gotten way too We've
Speaker 6: strayed too fall do.
Speaker 1: You sound like that like American dairy lobby right now?
Speaker 1: They did help pay for the hour, but.
Speaker 6: The taste is that warrant.
Speaker 1: We need to be honest, I truly love milk so much,
Speaker 1: like like cow's milk. Yeah, I really do. And the
Speaker 1: fact that they have lactose free milk now is like,
Speaker 1: why are we doing anything else? I need that toast, bro,
Speaker 1: I need that toast. Oh the toast fucks me up.
Speaker 1: And we we have a lot of non lactose digesting
Speaker 1: individuals in my household. But it makes sense, it really,
Speaker 1: Like I don't I don't notice the difference between lactose free,
Speaker 1: Like does anybody make the claim that they're like, no,
Speaker 1: this tastes like shit without the lactose. Actually, I've never
Speaker 1: even tried, like like lac takes.
Speaker 6: It either.
Speaker 1: Well. Yeah, it used to be just a product made
Speaker 1: by lack Tad, which are the people who make the
Speaker 1: chalky little chewa bowls that you eat before you have lactose,
Speaker 1: And so that was kind of gross, like that got
Speaker 1: lactose free milk off on a bad foot. But now
Speaker 1: like all the regular milk companies now have lactose free
Speaker 1: milk and it's exactly the same.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: See, I have learned so much in this short time together.
Speaker 6: It is crazy. I've always seen lactaid, but it sounds
Speaker 6: so pharmaceutical.
Speaker 1: Keeps Yeah, exactly, it got us off on the wrong foot.
Speaker 1: But try try lactose free milk if you don't.
Speaker 8: Like yeah, And also if you did, you're built for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, David Letterman made a video in which you pretended
Speaker 1: to work at a grocery store. Will forgive him for that?
Speaker 1: I cannot. Prince William served veggie burgers out of a
Speaker 1: food truck and looked but wildly uncomfortable. But this was
Speaker 1: I think his attempt to be like, I'm the people's prince,
Speaker 1: not Harry. Look at me.
Speaker 3: He's like he's like using like fucking hand sanitizer every
Speaker 3: time he hands something off to a regular person. Oh
Speaker 3: my god, Okay, what's the next one?
Speaker 1: All right? Anyways, shout out to BuzzFeed because I talking
Speaker 1: a lot of shit about how bad the internet is
Speaker 1: these days, and that it is bad. Everything is written
Speaker 1: by AI. Now it turns out it looks like but
Speaker 1: BuzzFeed still doing their thing out there. Yep. Hashtag not
Speaker 1: a ned, hashtag not an ad.
Speaker 3: Hashtag, renewvos can save my life hashtag, hashtag, hashtag marketting,
Speaker 3: hashtag just kidding.
Speaker 1: Hashtag beautiful on the inside and the outside hashtag all right,
Speaker 1: hashtag This Christmas gift will change your life by getting
Speaker 1: you to finally shut the fuck up exactly put your
Speaker 1: ass on mute. I'm all heres, bitch, Okay.
Speaker 3: So we like we talk about all the time on
Speaker 3: the show, like how we're like we're always as every
Speaker 3: day getting closer to like a Wally type world. And
Speaker 3: I'm curious what you guys think of this thing if
Speaker 3: is dystopian or useful. So there's this picture if you
Speaker 3: could all look in the dock that is not a
Speaker 3: virtual oral sex simulator, that's actually a device called a
Speaker 3: mute talk and if and you're like thinking, like what
Speaker 3: the fuck is this? Guys, We're in a VR headset
Speaker 3: with like a box strap to his mouth and you're like, so,
Speaker 3: if it isn't a kunnelingis simulator, then what is it? Well,
Speaker 3: it's a Bluetooth device that serves as a microphone.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing. It also slightly muffles the sound
Speaker 1: of your voice, so people nearby can only kind of
Speaker 1: hear what you're talking about. U does it like suck
Speaker 1: the words out of your mouth, like like like someone
Speaker 1: speaking from beyond the veil in a horror movie? Like
Speaker 1: it sounds like it's being spoken backwards.
Speaker 3: No, it's yeah, okay, look, if you're really into the
Speaker 3: science of it, it's using something called the Helmholtz resonator principle,
Speaker 3: which is just a muting. I don't know, man, it's
Speaker 3: about like taking it's a Hamlt's resonata, man, thank you,
Speaker 3: it's a Hamultz resonating exactly. It's using car mufflers and
Speaker 3: things like that. It's like, I don't know. Look, I'm
Speaker 3: not a I'm not a science guy. I'm only into
Speaker 3: weird digital SMM products. That's why this had caught my eye.
Speaker 3: But like, so it's being marketed as a device for
Speaker 3: people who are on the phone who like want to
Speaker 3: be on a wild ass conversation in public or something,
Speaker 3: or at gamers. That way, you don't wake your family
Speaker 3: while just getting totally pooned on Fortnite or some shit.
Speaker 1: And so I get one of these things on Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: oh Base, Yeah, that's gonna be. We send a pack
Speaker 1: of these two Congress maybe thanks Bill Mahrk.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean I get the need for something
Speaker 3: like this if I guess you're allowed talker in public,
Speaker 3: but it's it doesn't might it just doesn't make sense fully, Blair,
Speaker 3: what are your thoughts on a device like a fucking
Speaker 3: bomb you?
Speaker 6: I'm conflicted. Honestly, there's part of me the loves the idea.
Speaker 6: But then also if I get the fantastical side of
Speaker 6: my brain, it's like that sounds cool. The other more
Speaker 6: responsible high school principal in me says, we must stop
Speaker 6: this now before we are taking over.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what's that? It looks like a view finder like
Speaker 1: that want of you know, like it looks like a
Speaker 1: you finder that goes over your mouth. It looks like
Speaker 1: an oculus for your mouth.
Speaker 6: Oculus is such a sick word.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that they got they got the good name back then.
Speaker 1: They should call it the talk u Less. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: talk fucking sucks.
Speaker 5: I was.
Speaker 1: That was my main note for this is that the
Speaker 1: it looks like an S and M device and the
Speaker 1: name sucks. It sounds like a like something having to
Speaker 1: do with mucus or something thing. But yeah, it's like Tom,
Speaker 1: you less miles, Look, Howard are you bare? I ask
Speaker 1: myself that every.
Speaker 3: Death, because I have so much debt that all my
Speaker 3: billions go to the servicing my debt.
Speaker 1: I have billions in debt.
Speaker 3: Jackson, I am under somehow I have billion dollars worth
Speaker 3: of debt. But the reviews are also decidedly men. Like
Speaker 3: people are like, I don't know, you can use it.
Speaker 3: It kind of sounds like it's definitely muffled, but your
Speaker 3: kind of mouth has to get used to talking like
Speaker 3: in this little tiny box the whole time. But the
Speaker 3: company behind this is Japanese, which now makes a lot
Speaker 3: more sense to me, because since being audible in public
Speaker 3: is like peak rudeness, Like you do not want to
Speaker 3: be out here on your phone in public, so I guess,
Speaker 3: like if you absolutely had to, this is like the wave.
Speaker 3: But they also this same company makes this other device
Speaker 3: called the wear Space, and it's like horse blinders for
Speaker 3: a human. It looks like a it's like a noise
Speaker 3: canceling headset that can basically like envelop your entire head.
Speaker 1: Blair, I know you're laughing just by looking at this thing.
Speaker 6: I'm well, no, I mean, I gotta, I gotta make
Speaker 6: a hard turn and say this. Actually this company seems
Speaker 6: suited for my knees, because I was like, that sounds
Speaker 6: like my heaven. I try to check out.
Speaker 1: Take me blind, take me to horse blind.
Speaker 3: Mute me, yeah, put me in the matrix.
Speaker 1: This all looks like like you know how every year
Speaker 1: there's a new American horror story like cover like cover
Speaker 1: art that comes out. This all looks like that ship
Speaker 1: to me, like it just yeah.
Speaker 3: Between the wear Space and Mutak. The wear Space from
Speaker 3: the designers is quote. It's a device that allows yous
Speaker 3: to wear a personalized space, equipped with the noise cancelation
Speaker 3: technology and a partitioning function that visually blocks portions of
Speaker 3: the space.
Speaker 1: It allows horse blinder. It's not space horse wearing space
Speaker 1: horse blind. You stay in your lane. That also allows
Speaker 1: words to quote instantly create a psychological boundary with their
Speaker 1: surroundings and acquire a personal space while being in such
Speaker 1: open environments. Keep yeah, Blairs just did ten burpies.
Speaker 8: I was like, oh yeah, that's incredible. Actually that psychological
Speaker 8: barrier coming up.
Speaker 6: Give me that psychological barrier. I haven't searching for that.
Speaker 1: My whole life. It's like, yeah, so this is interesting too.
Speaker 3: It says it's equipped with a visual angle adjustment mechanism,
Speaker 3: which just sounds like some kind of like bendable thing
Speaker 3: to just maybe block off your field of vision, operated
Speaker 3: by opening closing the partition a noise cancelation function and
Speaker 3: a sound filtering function that allows you just to customize
Speaker 3: only those sounds they don't want to miss, such as
Speaker 3: someone calling their name or knocking on the door.
Speaker 1: This is uh, this is this does invent a new
Speaker 1: rudest thing to do when someone asks you a question
Speaker 1: side and then block yourself yeah, and then look at
Speaker 1: them again and then put them you talk over your back.
Speaker 6: I need one of those. I need one of those.
Speaker 6: I will spend all my money on that.
Speaker 1: What would you how would you use this horse blinder
Speaker 1: for humans? Like? What context are you thinking? Okay, this
Speaker 1: is this has Blair Hockey written over.
Speaker 6: I'm thinking twenty three hours a day.
Speaker 1: I come out.
Speaker 6: It's like, you know, I've always looked at turtles. I've
Speaker 6: been so extremely jealous of turtles. They can just retract
Speaker 6: inside their home built in. It's incredible saying no, thank you,
Speaker 6: go back inside. Now, someone's mid conversation. The turtle just
Speaker 6: goes back bye bye. Yeah Michelle, And this would be
Speaker 6: like that for me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like a like a like a like an online
Speaker 3: dating app date isn't going well, and you're like, actually,
Speaker 3: just one second, while you're talking about crypto, hold on,
Speaker 3: let me get this one.
Speaker 1: Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye in.
Speaker 6: This conversation right now.
Speaker 3: I do like that it has like ego adjustments. So
Speaker 3: it's like, I mean, the one thing you do want
Speaker 3: to cut through is someone saying your name. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: you know that that will wake you out of your
Speaker 3: digital comba.
Speaker 1: How does it does it learn your name? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just open it up a little bit more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's probably like any noise canceling stuff that can
Speaker 3: kind of give you brief like fil sound filtering. But yeah, again,
Speaker 3: this thing is all it's all very futuristic. I don't
Speaker 3: know what it's saying about us. Talk about brother's little helper.
Speaker 3: Just tune those kids out, talk shit about them to
Speaker 3: your friends and into the mutalk right.
Speaker 1: Like, I can't believe him.
Speaker 9: He's so fucking embarrassing my kid, so selfish anyways, Uh,
Speaker 9: true nightmare that we're living in. But I mean, for
Speaker 9: some a fantasy, as we've learned, Blair, this this thing
Speaker 9: might be purpose built for you.
Speaker 6: Oh no, I mean this was this person we've never met,
Speaker 6: but they're my greatest lover of all time. Soul there
Speaker 6: in my spirit, during my mind, body, spirit soul.
Speaker 1: You just see a couple both wearing wear spaces with utahs,
Speaker 1: Like just like, that's.
Speaker 6: My dream, that's my literal dream.
Speaker 3: Like I just like to feel that someone's there. I
Speaker 3: don't want to acknowledge them really beyond that.
Speaker 6: That is your romance in my heart.
Speaker 1: Oh fuck amazing. All right, that's gonna do it for
Speaker 1: this week's weekly Zeitgeist. Please like and review the show
Speaker 1: if you like. The show means the world to Miles.
Speaker 1: He he needs your validation, folks. I hope you're having
Speaker 1: a great weekend and I will talk to him Monday.
Speaker 1: By nothing,