Speaker 1: Hello the Internet, and welcome to season two ninety one,
Speaker 1: Episode one overall, episode number one thousand and five hundred.
Speaker 2: Of Daly's Geist.
Speaker 1: To super producer Justin for out pointing that out we
Speaker 1: are mild so bad, We're so bad and know him
Speaker 1: about this Half the time, it's y'all going like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know that was like your twelve hundred episodes.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like a thousand episodes, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: is it?
Speaker 3: And I know there's like trending episodes two that don't
Speaker 3: even mix in the mix all that to say, yeah,
Speaker 3: this one's fifteen hundred, man, Yeah, that's without trend one thousand,
Speaker 3: five hundred daily episodes of.
Speaker 1: Guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we got a murder at fifteen hundred.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, that's right, we do have a murder of
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred. This episode is absolutely Slays Still a production
Speaker 1: by Heart Radio Yeah podcast where we take Deep Avenue
Speaker 1: American share consciousness. This is one of our very special
Speaker 1: Dailies guest episodes where we have a couple of guests
Speaker 1: on and kind of focus on their areas of expertise.
Speaker 1: We have the one, the only one of our favorite
Speaker 1: listeners and the only listener who has been a full
Speaker 1: on guest on the show. Christy Amagucci Mane coming a
Speaker 1: little bit later to talk to us about his on
Speaker 1: the job exploits a man who wears many hats and
Speaker 1: of first we are talking to Aisha Harris. Yeah, pop
Speaker 1: culture experts. She just wrote an amazing book about pop culture. First,
Speaker 1: I guess I should. We've only done it one thy
Speaker 1: five hundred times. I'm a little rusty. My name is
Speaker 1: Jack O'Brien aka Potatoes O'Brien, and I'm thrilled to be
Speaker 1: joined as always by my.
Speaker 2: Co host me, mister Miles Great. Oh, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: It's Miles Great aka.
Speaker 3: I was gonna declassify, but then I got high. I
Speaker 3: was gonna turn them all into the Fed, but then.
Speaker 2: I got high.
Speaker 4: Now I'm being indicted, and I know because I'm the
Speaker 4: guy that just wouldn't try to simply comply. But da da,
Speaker 4: and that's from Reddit.
Speaker 3: TV on Discord said, hey, this is this is popping
Speaker 3: off on our politics, and then like people, this is
Speaker 3: this isn't even a listener. But sometimes y'all are finding
Speaker 3: just fantastic eight a's on there, So shout out TV
Speaker 3: on the Discord.
Speaker 1: I feel like he would have a real mental health
Speaker 1: episode if he ever smoked weed.
Speaker 3: Donald Trump, Oh, he'd honestly, And I don't want to
Speaker 3: say that. I'm not interested in justice, but I would
Speaker 3: settle if they if the Feds would allow me, I
Speaker 3: would roll a blunt soap potent that Trump's hair would
Speaker 3: fly off his head. And I would like to just
Speaker 3: watch him squirre him for that like seventy five ish
Speaker 3: minutes where he's like, they hate me, don't they? What
Speaker 3: is this I've been eating pizza all wrong or whatever
Speaker 3: is going on? But yeah, he's there's no way you
Speaker 3: can be in like mentally on like a tight rope
Speaker 3: all the time like this guy is. And then it
Speaker 3: introduced weed to the mix.
Speaker 1: Not but Yes so special guest expert guest up front,
Speaker 1: Aisha Harris. We're going to talk to her about whether
Speaker 1: stand culture is the new religion. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about pop culture like archetypes like I. You know, I've
Speaker 1: always said that Freud should have just analyzed pop culture
Speaker 1: like movies from the nineties.
Speaker 3: Right, rather than like Oedipus you are you are Charlotte
Speaker 3: from sex.
Speaker 1: Oedipus is the like pop culture figure that smart people
Speaker 1: bring up first when they're like, hmm, doctor Freud, anyone.
Speaker 1: But I feel like all characters operate in that way,
Speaker 1: especially ones that really connect and become iconic. I managed
Speaker 1: not to talk for a half hour about Hannibal Lecter,
Speaker 1: but that is my number one example of like, you know,
Speaker 1: something expressing something in our unconscious as.
Speaker 3: If you talk about Jaws. Though I do talk about
Speaker 3: Jaws quite a bit. I even reveal a very obscure
Speaker 3: character from film that I related to that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll talk about that after the episode. But oh
Speaker 1: my god, yeah, all that plenty more so, yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: we dive on and get into it right now.
Speaker 2: Aisha Harris the author of the upcoming Wanta Be Reckonings
Speaker 2: with the Pop Culture That Shapes Me?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, Miles, you're thrilled to be joined for our
Speaker 1: expert interview portion of the show by a renowned culture
Speaker 1: critic podcaster who you can currently here is one of
Speaker 1: the hosts of MPRS pop Culture Happy Hour. Her new
Speaker 1: book is want to Be Reckoning with the Pop Culture
Speaker 1: That Shapes Me?
Speaker 2: It's Aisha harr.
Speaker 1: Welcome.
Speaker 5: Oh that's the most boisterous introduction I've gotten ever.
Speaker 2: ASO level.
Speaker 1: We're very boterous here.
Speaker 3: Well let us know if someone does a more boisterous introduction,
Speaker 3: call us, because we'll have you back just to come
Speaker 3: for that crown.
Speaker 5: Yeah, given, Oprah, I like it.
Speaker 1: I like it the first Yeah. Actually we were a
Speaker 1: big old energy there for sure. That such a compliment.
Speaker 1: First of all, I have to say, I laughed so
Speaker 1: hard when you called out the DMX lyric I'm not
Speaker 1: a nice person.
Speaker 5: It's such a great line.
Speaker 1: It's such a great line. It's just it's such a
Speaker 1: funny distillation of his whole vibe. But it just like
Speaker 1: drops all pretense, all dog metaphors go out the window.
Speaker 1: It's just I am not a nice person. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that. I remember the opening of the song
Speaker 1: is so intense when it's.
Speaker 6: Like, see this is ship I fucking be talking about,
Speaker 6: and then in a certain part it's like I'm not
Speaker 6: a nice person. Like, wow, it's the same thing I'm
Speaker 6: always when my friends when that album came out and
Speaker 6: then there was we were like, this is somehow the
Speaker 6: best line in all hip hop.
Speaker 1: Yes, this is to the point it sounds a little
Speaker 1: like therapy, Like it sounds like I'm worried, I'm not
Speaker 1: nice person.
Speaker 5: But yet he sounds so menacing and like, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: That yeah, but yeah. One of it is a great read,
Speaker 1: very insightful. I want to kind of jump around to
Speaker 1: some of the different ideas that it raised that we
Speaker 1: talk a lot about on this show, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk start off with stan Culture. You have a
Speaker 1: really great essay I think called Kenny g Gets It, Yes, Yes,
Speaker 1: about stand culture. So, you know, a story that we
Speaker 1: talked about recently on our show a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: back was that people are experiencing post concert amnesia after
Speaker 1: going to Taylor Swift concerts. And one of the more
Speaker 1: interesting like feces I've seen for why this is happening
Speaker 1: was Myra Fox and Forward comparing it to the Jews
Speaker 1: forgetting all of their time in the desert and Talmud.
Speaker 1: And but like even when you go into like their
Speaker 1: psychology today articles that are talking about, you know, why
Speaker 1: this might be happening, and it does seem to all
Speaker 1: kind of coalesce around this idea of their having this
Speaker 1: highly affected, elevated experience at this show. And you know,
Speaker 1: the article then points out that you know, Swifties kind
Speaker 1: of pour over her lyrics the way that like a
Speaker 1: talmud Ex scholar would debate the finer points of their
Speaker 1: core text, and you know, there will be an extremist
Speaker 1: offshoot that believes she's coming out in her lyrics or something,
Speaker 1: and then they will go to war with like some
Speaker 1: you know, some other branch of interpretation. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: just wanted to kind of you describe stand behavior as
Speaker 1: quote a wave of cultish behavior that has threatened to
Speaker 1: over tikpop culture of the past few years. Where stands
Speaker 1: original a pejorative reference to a crazed, violent fan like
Speaker 1: the one described in Eminem song Stand, but now apparently
Speaker 1: a badge of pride express a kind of unyielding devotion
Speaker 1: to artist, which mirrors zealous followers of you know, religion.
Speaker 1: So yeah, like, did you see the story about people
Speaker 1: experiencing post concert amnesia? Are you buying that it's related?
Speaker 5: No, this is the first time I'm hearing about it.
Speaker 5: So like they're forgetting the show happened.
Speaker 3: They were saying things like, were it not for literal
Speaker 3: footage on my phone, I could I was having trouble
Speaker 3: remembering the details of the entire concert.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Uh, that just sounds like they want an excuse
Speaker 5: to have their phones up the entire time instead of
Speaker 5: just like letting themselves enjoy its memory. Oh my goodness. Like, look,
Speaker 5: I have definitely been that person sometimes at concerts who
Speaker 5: puts her phone out and is like, oh my god,
Speaker 5: I need to catch this experience, and then like ten
Speaker 5: seconds the I'm like, what am I doing? They're right
Speaker 5: in front of me.
Speaker 2: Right, and I'm looking at it through my phone screen.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I And like I almost never go back and
Speaker 5: actually watch that video, so like, I don't know, I.
Speaker 1: Don't think it's ever happened in recorded human history that
Speaker 1: someone has gone back and looked at the video of
Speaker 1: the footage they took at a concert. I feel like
Speaker 1: it's always just the act of taking it down to
Speaker 1: be like this is so good for evidence, right, Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I don't It's it's dumb. I'm actually going to
Speaker 5: see Janna Jackson this weekend, and I'm very very excited,
Speaker 5: and I might pull out my phone, but it'll probably
Speaker 5: be more to like film myself and my friend's lip
Speaker 5: syncing as opposed to like trying to film you know,
Speaker 5: her dancing. To me, that makes a little bit more
Speaker 5: sense because like you're capturing the moment and you want
Speaker 5: to remember who you wrote with like that sort of thing.
Speaker 5: But yeah, stands stands are weird, man. I mean, like you,
Speaker 5: like you said in the quote from my book, like
Speaker 5: this was originally a Stan was someone who murdered his
Speaker 5: his his. I mean, Stan was someone who murdered his
Speaker 5: wife and his pregnant wife or girlfriend and was writing
Speaker 5: crazy notes to EM and M And somehow we've turned
Speaker 5: this into like a positive thing.
Speaker 2: That's me.
Speaker 5: It's like it's such an American way of life. Like
Speaker 5: that's just like turning something that has really deep seated,
Speaker 5: like awful roots. And like I think Stan itself is
Speaker 5: the song is a really interesting song. I don't think
Speaker 5: it's a bad song. I just think like the whole
Speaker 5: point is that it's sort of a cautionary tale and
Speaker 5: now it's like something to aspire to, right, And that's
Speaker 5: just it's just fucking weird. It's it's dumb. And so
Speaker 5: what I was trying to argue in the book was
Speaker 5: just like we need to have a better way of
Speaker 5: being fans and thinking about what fandom means. And I
Speaker 5: think for me, one of the more insidious parts of
Speaker 5: Standem is not just like that people are so into
Speaker 5: whatever artists or whatever franchise they're into. But it's that
Speaker 5: if someone else doesn't like what you're into, then it's
Speaker 5: taken as like this, you know, the worst offense in
Speaker 5: the world. You hate this person and they hate you,
Speaker 5: and it's very like jets and sharp sort of situation.
Speaker 5: It's like, this doesn't need to be that serious, like yeah, oh,
Speaker 5: should be able to like what they like, hate what
Speaker 5: they hate, and never the twins shall meet or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, Yes, well, I mean, but that is also
Speaker 1: a thing that's been happening for millennia when it comes
Speaker 1: to religion rights, like my interpretation of the religion, and
Speaker 1: I mean, we've talked about trends around religion on the show,
Speaker 1: and it's clear that for a large portion of the country,
Speaker 1: like God and traditional religion are dead or dying or
Speaker 1: at least do not hold the central part of their
Speaker 1: life that you know, they did a couple generations ago,
Speaker 1: like and even that they did like a couple decades ago.
Speaker 1: But the human search for meaning and like having some
Speaker 1: broad significance to their life doesn't just go away. And
Speaker 1: I do wonder, like your essay really made me wonder
Speaker 1: if this is what is coming in to fill that
Speaker 1: space in people's lives, like the the like you mentioned
Speaker 1: in the essay, the religious fervor of Star Wars fans
Speaker 1: when they're forced to confront a new trilogy that might
Speaker 1: move in a different direction than their worldview, and the
Speaker 1: amount of energy that puts forth that they put forth,
Speaker 1: you know, arguing about it and criticizing it and stuff,
Speaker 1: I feel like starts to make sense to me if
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of it, Like, you know, what if the
Speaker 1: Catholic Church was just like hey, new Gospel just dropped,
Speaker 1: Like I feel like that would get quite the reaction
Speaker 1: from you know, develot Catholics. And so this is like,
Speaker 1: if these stories fill that place in people's lives, then
Speaker 1: like I feel like I can understand the world. It
Speaker 1: is a terrifying situation to you know, a weird culture
Speaker 1: to exist in, and also like really makes the position
Speaker 1: of these celebrities and these filmmakers like very scary. Right,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of pressure.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, I mean there's something weirdly evangelical about the
Speaker 5: way that these fans stands approach these things, whether it's
Speaker 5: like trying to wrinkle as many streams of this artist's
Speaker 5: song or album so that they gets at the top,
Speaker 5: or you know, trying to convince strangers on the internet
Speaker 5: why like this is the best movie ever. Like it's
Speaker 5: just there is this weird sense of like and I
Speaker 5: think I don't think all social media is terrible. I
Speaker 5: think it can be great for actually connecting fans to
Speaker 5: other people who they wouldn't normally interact with, you know,
Speaker 5: and people have more of a community they can find
Speaker 5: and foster online. But but then on the other hand,
Speaker 5: it is it does have this weird sort of like
Speaker 5: religious bent to it that feels icky, and the fact
Speaker 5: that in some cases these artists who shower name nameless,
Speaker 5: sometimes they foster this weird religious fervor by you know,
Speaker 5: singing having seeking their fans on people who criticize them,
Speaker 5: you know, or the studios or are you know they
Speaker 5: really play into this or you know, release the Snyder
Speaker 5: cut like oh my goodness, like calm down, let's let's
Speaker 5: calm down here. I definitely think the religious aspect of
Speaker 5: it is is very accurate. I also think there's like
Speaker 5: a comparison to be made to sports fans and how
Speaker 5: you know, pop culture has in some ways become its
Speaker 5: own sport. Where people take sides and you know, like
Speaker 5: team I don't know, team Malli, team you know, like
Speaker 5: all the yeah or yeah. So yeah, it's really screwed
Speaker 5: up our way of like relating to one another, and
Speaker 5: also how we relate to art, because at the end
Speaker 5: of the day, it's like we should just like be
Speaker 5: able to enjoy it without having to add on all
Speaker 5: this extra layer of like meaning that I think can
Speaker 5: be harmful to society. Yeah yeah, social media, yeah.
Speaker 3: Because yeah, I think everything's kind of like inverting in
Speaker 3: this weird way, especially with celebrity culture being where it's at.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: If someone had a quote that I read like years
Speaker 3: ago that was saying, like, prior decades, you became a
Speaker 3: celebrity for achieving something. That's what brought along celebrity to
Speaker 3: someone was because of an achievement. And now we're in
Speaker 3: an era where merely being a celebrity is the achievement
Speaker 3: and it sort of ends there. And I think through
Speaker 3: all that we're always if that's the case, then we're
Speaker 3: also trying to find like who our heroes are, and
Speaker 3: like it becomes this thing where now we're defending people
Speaker 3: tooth and nail over these criticisms of again like people
Speaker 3: were we just talk about how we're like deifying these people,
Speaker 3: but it's starting to take on like quite a more
Speaker 3: like literal sense of that, like where people are you know,
Speaker 3: coming at each other with the same level of energy
Speaker 3: that you normally would be like, oh, is this some
Speaker 3: kind of religious like a religion like intra religion.
Speaker 2: Battle or something like that.
Speaker 3: But again, I feel like it's maybe just because like
Speaker 3: as we slowly like losing touch of like what has
Speaker 3: meaning what doesn't, then we just sort of like are
Speaker 3: left with these things and being like, well, I'm a barb,
Speaker 3: so this is.
Speaker 1: What like my right.
Speaker 3: You don't be careful, I've already died a thousand deaths
Speaker 3: on the internet.
Speaker 1: I mean truly like not to take it to too
Speaker 1: dark a place, but I mean I feel like the
Speaker 1: Beatles might have been the first people to like fully
Speaker 1: get to this place, and like John Lennon commented on
Speaker 1: it by being like, we're bigger than Jesus like in
Speaker 1: some in some ways, and then he was assassinated, you know,
Speaker 1: by one of his fans. Like, you know, so I
Speaker 1: do think there are like all sorts of dark directions
Speaker 1: that this shit can go, you know, John Lennon was
Speaker 1: at surface level a pop singer who sing sang songs
Speaker 1: about being a walrus, and yet like he took on
Speaker 1: such meaning to so many people that, like the the
Speaker 1: guy who shot him, I think one of his like
Speaker 1: chief motives was that he didn't like the direction that
Speaker 1: his career was taking at that point and like wanted
Speaker 1: to preserve him in amber. So like again, it's just
Speaker 1: this religious fanaticism and devotion that has to kind of
Speaker 1: go somewhere and can go in like these really dark, horrifying.
Speaker 5: Directions and before stan right, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, Like for for people who like aren't familiar,
Speaker 3: you know, some people know Kenny. Why did you use
Speaker 3: Kenny G to sort of illustrate this point? Because like I,
Speaker 3: for me as like a millennial, like I get it, yes,
Speaker 3: because that was like the first thing that we were
Speaker 3: like Kenny G sucks.
Speaker 1: Face forever I felt seen because I have a religious
Speaker 1: devotion to Kenny g idol tootail that I just like
Speaker 1: kind of brayed into the back of mine like a
Speaker 1: paddle on.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean what about Kenny G sort of
Speaker 2: like encapsulated this for you?
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, so I had I had seen the documentary
Speaker 5: Listening to Kenny G, which is really great. I mean
Speaker 5: you have to actually listen to Kenny G music while
Speaker 5: watching it. So that's like the bad, the downside of it.
Speaker 5: But like it's really interesting because he seems very he's
Speaker 5: very aware of his reputation as like someone who's made
Speaker 5: millions and millions of millions of dollars because a certain
Speaker 5: segment of the population at a certain period in time
Speaker 5: was obsessed with him. And you know, my my, my mom,
Speaker 5: she had several Kenny G albums. I had to listen
Speaker 5: to that ship a lot, especially during the holidays because
Speaker 5: like that was like peak Kenny G season and like
Speaker 5: the mid to early nineties so smooth, so few few
Speaker 5: genres as a whole, like just make my blood boil,
Speaker 5: like smooth jazz. I hate it so much, Like it's
Speaker 5: not it's not real jazz. It's not.
Speaker 1: Oh no, it's so sanitized.
Speaker 5: Yet it's so But that's the point of the documentaries
Speaker 5: that you have these music critics who are arguing, like
Speaker 5: this is not he's like not playing real jazz, and
Speaker 5: even he will admit, like, look, I know some people
Speaker 5: don't like me, and I realized I'm a polarizing figure.
Speaker 5: And he says, you know when I'm paraphrasing here, but
Speaker 5: he says, you know, when someone says they you like something,
Speaker 5: I like something, don't you, and that person says no,
Speaker 5: I don't, then you take it really personal, as though
Speaker 5: like they're saying something is wrong with you or something
Speaker 5: bad about you. And that's kind of like how I
Speaker 5: frame the essay, which is like I talk about stand
Speaker 5: up and all that, but I also talk about sort
Speaker 5: of how we also use these figures and these movies
Speaker 5: and TV shows to sort of like assign value to
Speaker 5: ourselves or make ourselves feel better about who we are.
Speaker 5: And so like it's not just enough to really like
Speaker 5: Beyonce's music, but you also have to feel as the
Speaker 5: Beyonce represents your values, like as a as a moral
Speaker 5: human being. And so when she's called out for using
Speaker 5: the word spas in a song and then re sends it,
Speaker 5: like that makes you feel good because you're like, oh,
Speaker 5: she's listening, and like she's progressive and she understands these
Speaker 5: things yea, and like same like with Taylor Switch when
Speaker 5: like she finally stopped being well then she dated Matt
Speaker 5: Healey apparently, but like whatever, before that, you know, she
Speaker 5: was supporting democratic politicians and supporting queer rights, and when
Speaker 5: that happened, it made her fans, many of them feel
Speaker 5: better about themselves because they're like, oh, she she also
Speaker 5: thinks like me. And I think that's just as much
Speaker 5: of a trap in some ways as you know, being
Speaker 5: just a religious fan of anyone, in part because it's
Speaker 5: just like, yeah, I mean sure there are ways. There
Speaker 5: are certain ways where you can assign like if someone
Speaker 5: is listening to I don't know, I'm trying to think of,
Speaker 5: like who's the like, are there any neo Nazi artists.
Speaker 5: I'm sure there are, like if they're like, if you're
Speaker 5: listening to someone who has like neo Nazi traits, Oh,
Speaker 5: I recently learned that like one of the members of
Speaker 5: Ace of Base was like connected to neo Nazi.
Speaker 2: Whatever kind of a wing at Nazism.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, but apparently he was like a
Speaker 5: neo Nazier. I don't want him coming from it, but
Speaker 5: like may have been associated or sympathized with that movement.
Speaker 5: And if someone knows this and then like is like,
Speaker 5: oh yeah, I still loves the Base, like, then you
Speaker 5: might be like that's that's troubling. But I also don't
Speaker 5: think that like it's it's it's just kind of it's
Speaker 5: a slippery slope because not every artist, most artists, most
Speaker 5: people are not going to have the same exact line
Speaker 5: of values as you are, So like, I think it's
Speaker 5: just like we shouldn't trap ourselves into like, you know,
Speaker 5: I guess our Kelly would have better like if someone's
Speaker 5: like fully supporting our Kelly, like in this day and age,
Speaker 5: I'm going to look sideways at you and I'm probably
Speaker 5: not going to like want to be around you, but
Speaker 5: like at the same time, you know, I think most
Speaker 5: artists are more complicated than that. And just the subscribing
Speaker 5: of meaning it feels like play like, it feels like posturing,
Speaker 5: and I don't like it. I wanted to just kind
Speaker 5: of like like what we like and hate what we
Speaker 5: hate and not always try to put deeper yeah, not
Speaker 5: not put too much deeper meaning into it than that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because there's so many times too I'll hear a
Speaker 3: song and then like someone's like, oh, you know that
Speaker 3: person like was you know, it's like actually a monster,
Speaker 3: And I'm like, what even know, Like an algorithm suggested
Speaker 3: this song me and I liked it, but I also
Speaker 3: get too a part of you is like you start thinking,
Speaker 3: as a consumer, what's your role in that? But I
Speaker 3: think the further point is, like I think for some
Speaker 3: people the experience of music is probably the closest thing
Speaker 3: we have to religion sometimes because people aren't. Ye, we're
Speaker 3: so disconnected that I can tell. Like for me, when
Speaker 3: I was just losing my shit to different music, it
Speaker 3: was because it was I could say, like I was
Speaker 3: envisioning myself like living out the lyrics or like the
Speaker 3: beat was just like put me in a different zone
Speaker 3: and things like that. And I think that's where it
Speaker 3: kind of gets slippery, where you do begin to be
Speaker 3: like this person can give bring this feeling out of me.
Speaker 3: Therefore I'm going to like assign like all these higher
Speaker 3: values to them or their persona because of like that connection.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I think it does get a little It
Speaker 3: can't get a little slippery at times if you're also
Speaker 3: like you have to mirror every single value I have too,
Speaker 3: because shit, I mean, I love jay Z, but I
Speaker 3: hate capitalism. And he's told me, says day one, he
Speaker 3: is a capitalist, and so I'm like, yeah, you know everything,
Speaker 3: but that you know, crossing pit it lines and stuff,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, And to be clear, I don't think we
Speaker 5: shouldn't critique those things. I'm just saying I don't think
Speaker 5: it should be a like burn it all down situation
Speaker 5: where you know, I think we should be able to
Speaker 5: enjoy the music but also say, like, but this this
Speaker 5: aspect of whatever they're saying or whoever they are, like
Speaker 5: jay Z, you're even Beyonce, who look, I levet Beyonce,
Speaker 5: but she's also just as much of a capitalist as
Speaker 5: she is. You know, that is worth noting because it
Speaker 5: also just it comes up in their music, so it's
Speaker 5: impossible to separate the two. But yeah, I also don't
Speaker 5: believe that we should just be like, oh, well, if
Speaker 5: you like Beyonce, then you fully support capitalism, because it's like, no,
Speaker 5: that's not how this works.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's disconnected. It is that, you know, Kenny G's
Speaker 1: music gets me outside of myself, gets me outside of
Speaker 1: like time as normally experienced, which like that is something
Speaker 1: that is being that needs to be a replaced. It's
Speaker 1: like people used to have these religious services where they'd
Speaker 1: all get together in community and you know, listen to
Speaker 1: music and and yeah, meditate and like, so if I
Speaker 1: because we're in this like hyper capitalist like cellular existence
Speaker 1: as like individual nodes, and like there aren't that many
Speaker 1: opportunities to get outside of ourselves. So like if Kenny
Speaker 1: G does that for me, like you know, and I
Speaker 1: didn't start listening to him because I knew that the
Speaker 1: G stands for God. That realization came to me later,
Speaker 1: like you know, years after. All Right, let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break and we'll come back, and I want to
Speaker 1: talk to you about this quote where you talk about
Speaker 1: inadvertent self formation by way of popular culture, which I
Speaker 1: think is brilliant, and I want to talk about some
Speaker 1: psychological archetypes. So we'll be right back, and we're back.
Speaker 1: We're back, and Ayisha, So yeah, I read the quote.
Speaker 1: But you talk about pop culture informing how we think
Speaker 1: about ourselves, how we like shape ourselves. You kind of
Speaker 1: run us through various pop culture figures who you modeled
Speaker 1: your identity on as you were growing up. I've often
Speaker 1: said on this show that Freud fucked up big time
Speaker 1: by using ancient Greek myths instead of pop culture archetypes
Speaker 1: from the nineties. I think he could have really made
Speaker 1: a name for himself if he had just you know,
Speaker 1: stuck to pop culture. But it does feel like there, Yeah,
Speaker 1: these are the things that we should be like as
Speaker 1: we're thinking about you know, where does this weird urge
Speaker 1: come from? Two stand people? For instance? Like these are
Speaker 1: the figures that I think actually exist in people's minds
Speaker 1: and like deep in their unconscious.
Speaker 3: Right, how would you how did you explain again this
Speaker 3: concept of inadvertent self formation by way of popular culture.
Speaker 5: Well, I think especially when we're just kids or adolescents,
Speaker 5: we're not thinking deeply about what we're consuming, what we're
Speaker 5: viewing or watching. We are just we're taking it in.
Speaker 5: We're like a sponge, right, It's just everything affects us
Speaker 5: and we don't necessarily know how to name it or
Speaker 5: know how to identify it, and it comes out. And
Speaker 5: how we talk to each other, how we think of ourselves,
Speaker 5: how we see ourselves. I mean, I think about, you know,
Speaker 5: growing up as a kid in the nineties and how
Speaker 5: casual homophobic language is just like the thing that everyone did.
Speaker 5: And if you go back and watch the movies that
Speaker 5: we were all watching, whether it was like Acepure or
Speaker 5: like the teen movies of it, Like there's all this
Speaker 5: casual homophobia, you know, showing up there, and so you
Speaker 5: don't realize until years later, or at least, I mean,
Speaker 5: I'm sure plenty of actual queer people recognize it in
Speaker 5: those moments.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: I obviously it was never right or okay, and it
Speaker 5: definitely was hurting people then. But I think, you know,
Speaker 5: part of what growing up hopefully is means being able
Speaker 5: to go back and sort of look at the things
Speaker 5: that you took in when you were younger and understand
Speaker 5: how they may have and may still be affecting how
Speaker 5: you view things today. And so that's where the sort
Speaker 5: of the idea of it being inadvertion comes from, is
Speaker 5: because like it doesn't like sometimes it just happens to
Speaker 5: you and then you have to later go back and realize, Okay,
Speaker 5: how did this happening to me make me who I
Speaker 5: am now? And a lot of it is sometimes like
Speaker 5: going back and undoing, trying to undo what sort of
Speaker 5: calcified in your mind and brain and how you relate
Speaker 5: to things. Yeah, like it was. I'm pretty sure when
Speaker 5: I was a kid, I probably use the F word,
Speaker 5: the homophobic F word a couple times, because that's what
Speaker 5: I you know, grew up around. So yeah, it's a
Speaker 5: lot of undoing and trying to become better, hopefully if
Speaker 5: you're able to go back and look at those things
Speaker 5: and recognize those things.
Speaker 3: I feel like so much of that debate now where
Speaker 3: people are like it's true, woke are like people who
Speaker 3: can't let go of Like, but my favorite movie is this,
Speaker 3: and I have to say it's bad now if I agree,
Speaker 3: and true, like how much we we take on shit
Speaker 3: that we see in the media, especially in the age
Speaker 3: before social media, Like I was, everyone's like looking for
Speaker 3: something that might feel like them or could be them,
Speaker 3: or something you could kind of just feel like aligned
Speaker 3: with what were like the shows or works of media
Speaker 3: that you kind of grasped and sort of ingested to
Speaker 3: kind of become your personality.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: I write in the book about what I called my
Speaker 5: my Hoe phase and and you know, which lasted from
Speaker 5: roughly my late teens to mid ish twenties, and how
Speaker 5: I kind of had this idea of what I wanted
Speaker 5: to be as a as a as a girl slash woman,
Speaker 5: and how I related to men, boys and men, and
Speaker 5: I thought that, you know, I had to be sort
Speaker 5: of tomboy ish and the type of girl who could
Speaker 5: hang with the guys, not necessarily, Like I never pretended
Speaker 5: to like sports like that was never my Like sports
Speaker 5: aren't my thing. I never pretended to do that, Like
Speaker 5: it wasn't that. But you know, I'd use what I
Speaker 5: liked movies, TV music to sort of signal, oh, I'm
Speaker 5: like I'm cool, Like super Bad is one of my
Speaker 5: favorite movies, Aren't I cool? It really is one of
Speaker 5: my favorite movies. I love that movie. Uh, but like
Speaker 5: I would play that up, or play you know, play
Speaker 5: up the fact that you know, I was really into
Speaker 5: I don't know, freaks and geeks or the wire whatever
Speaker 5: as like the thing I put on my dating profiles,
Speaker 5: and I saw like this vision of like wanting to
Speaker 5: be closer to this idea of masculinity in a way
Speaker 5: as a way of like shielding myself from getting hurt
Speaker 5: by boys and men. And so I was very much
Speaker 5: like Samantha Jones was my girl. I wanted to be
Speaker 5: like her from Sex of City, Nola Darling and She's
Speaker 5: Got to Have It, the nineteen eighty six film, not
Speaker 5: the TV remake by Spike Lee, Like those were kind
Speaker 5: of my you know, the badass women who fucked around
Speaker 5: a lot, and like didn't like we're anti relationship, anti
Speaker 5: getting too close to two men. That was kind of
Speaker 5: what I clung to, and then over time I realized,
Speaker 5: one that's reductive and also like at acting like a man,
Speaker 5: thinking like a man and whatever this was before Steve Harvey,
Speaker 5: I wasn't just like I'm not gonna just think like
Speaker 5: a man, I'm gonna act like one too, fuck being
Speaker 5: a lady. But like I once I realized that that
Speaker 5: was all kind of a false dichotomy and that even
Speaker 5: if you do act like that as a woman or
Speaker 5: as a person who presents as a woman, like, you're
Speaker 5: still gonna get the short of ends of the stick,
Speaker 5: because like you're, you're still gonna get You're gonna be
Speaker 5: slut shamed or you're gonna be you know, you're. It's
Speaker 5: just there's no winning, and the idea of getting closer
Speaker 5: like masculinity is not something at least that I want
Speaker 5: to aspire to in the way that I conceived of it,
Speaker 5: or that pop culture conceived of it, which was often
Speaker 5: like the ladies man, whether it's Sam alone and cheers
Speaker 5: or not, not that this like actually what I love about.
Speaker 5: It's always Sundy Philadelphia, is that it's actually like critiquing
Speaker 5: those things. But like I'm thing of Dennis and like
Speaker 5: the dentist system and how like that is clearly something
Speaker 5: to be. That's like being critiqued, this idea of masculine
Speaker 5: men and what are those guys the pickup artists or
Speaker 5: whatever like that? Yeah yeah, or the game or whatever. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: like that whole thing. I like, I thought that's what
Speaker 5: I wanted to be, and then I realized it's all
Speaker 5: it's all, it's all bullshit, it's all patriarchal, and I
Speaker 5: had to sort of undo all of that mindset about
Speaker 5: how to be a good person and how not to
Speaker 5: be an asshole, because really I was just trying to
Speaker 5: mimic not just not really masculinity per se, but just
Speaker 5: like being an asshole, which is often assigned to men
Speaker 5: and often seen as a good thing in men.
Speaker 1: Jack de What what?
Speaker 2: What TV people?
Speaker 3: What media people shaped you over the years, because I
Speaker 3: feel like I was always a loose collection of shit
Speaker 3: I saw on TV.
Speaker 1: In film, yeah, I mean Kenny g number one first
Speaker 1: and foremost obviously influenced. I don't know if you've seen
Speaker 1: pictures of me in fifth grade, but my hair was long,
Speaker 1: kerned and always looked a little bit wet. I just
Speaker 1: wore you know, dress shirts with a vest over top.
Speaker 2: At all times, you know, I was.
Speaker 1: I watched Jaws so many times before the age of
Speaker 1: like six, that I think I was like a combination
Speaker 1: of like Sheriff Brodie and Quint at various points are
Speaker 1: like wanting to be that. And then also Rocky and
Speaker 1: Karate Kid were the ones that I where I really
Speaker 1: saw in like something about like the like I thought
Speaker 1: it was cool to get your ass kicked. I think
Speaker 1: other people like thought like yeah, like other other kids
Speaker 1: would be like I'm into Bruce Lee or like somebody
Speaker 1: who is famously an ass kicker. And the two characters
Speaker 1: that I really loved were people who could like really
Speaker 1: take a punch and just like keep getting back up
Speaker 1: and so dog, yeah, the underdog who is just like
Speaker 1: losing fights repeatedly. I also liked John McClain, who you know,
Speaker 1: is just dragging his like broken body across broken glass
Speaker 1: like by the end of that movie. Like so something
Speaker 1: about that probably tied into the very strict Catholic app
Speaker 1: upbringing that I had, you know, like some like weird
Speaker 1: Mel Gibsonian like the Pasure. Yeah, yeah, Jack's sadism or
Speaker 1: something was probably tied in there, but yeah, and then
Speaker 1: Michael Jordan came along and I was like I want
Speaker 1: to be that. I want to be Michael Jordan, and
Speaker 1: then went to like you know, early nineties hip hop,
Speaker 1: and then I'd say like pop intellectuals and writer like
Speaker 1: Hunter S. Thompson, even though I like didn't love his writing.
Speaker 1: I was like, man, that guy's cool. I want to
Speaker 1: you know, drink and use drugs like the future doesn't
Speaker 1: exist while still being respected as an intellectual and the Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like those were kind of the main ones
Speaker 1: as I was like still forming myself. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: just so addicted to TV and like films that like
Speaker 1: every time I saw something I could like find I
Speaker 1: was like always looking for like identity in like film
Speaker 1: like the things I was watching, and like one of
Speaker 1: the earliest ones was like Goku and Dragon Ball. As
Speaker 1: a kid, like I was just like, oh this, like
Speaker 1: I felt like it was teaching me things about toughness.
Speaker 1: And then then I want to be Michael Jordan, and
Speaker 1: then I wanted to be Will Smith and Fresh Prince.
Speaker 1: Then I was ace Ventura for about two years with
Speaker 1: the way I spoke, like just like Pete annoying.
Speaker 5: To every kid, every kid, every.
Speaker 1: Kid I was.
Speaker 2: I was alrighty then all that shit, yeah, I had.
Speaker 1: I had specific friends I remember who were ace Venturer
Speaker 1: for three years in a row, and they, in my memory,
Speaker 1: the funniest kids I knew, people I've ever met were
Speaker 1: totally co opted that ship. And I was like, this
Speaker 1: man is a genius.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then I was the Wayans brothers. I mean,
Speaker 3: Marlin more than Sean because Marlon was a little more outgoing.
Speaker 3: Then I was Tiger Woods because that was the first
Speaker 3: time I saw a Blazian person like me on TV.
Speaker 3: And I was like, okay, so I'm that and I
Speaker 3: tried to play golf. That ship that was I was
Speaker 3: never going anywhere. Then there was the rock shot at
Speaker 3: another like vaguely blazing person. Then Puberty hit. It was
Speaker 3: all wrapped. I was like jay Z, I was method man.
Speaker 3: I was Pharrell because people are like you gotta you
Speaker 3: could be like for I was like, yeah, thank you,
Speaker 3: thank you, thank you, thank you. I will not wear
Speaker 3: trucker hats. I was wearing trucker hats and she should
Speaker 3: have seen me in the early.
Speaker 5: I wore trucker hats too, because it was it was
Speaker 5: the odds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you had to, you had to, and at least
Speaker 2: for me, I was like, that's a trucker hat.
Speaker 1: I'm like, but Pharrell wears one, so.
Speaker 3: I guess yeah, right. I wasn't wearing Bond Dutch quite yet.
Speaker 3: Then I was like, I love Tom Sizemore and saving
Speaker 3: Pride Ryan for something that is so weird. It's because
Speaker 3: he kept jack to your point, and the Goku thing.
Speaker 3: He kept getting shot and he kept getting back up
Speaker 3: in the moment, and I was like, yo yo. And
Speaker 3: then my mom was like, there was a monk in
Speaker 3: Japanese folklore called Benk who maybe you would be more
Speaker 3: interested in. So then I got into figures like that.
Speaker 3: But now I don't think I've moved on past Pharrell.
Speaker 1: To be honest.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it is one of those things where, like
Speaker 3: so much of my identity was being defined by the
Speaker 3: media sadly, and I was taking cues, especially from like
Speaker 3: the blackness that I saw on screen as some kind
Speaker 3: of standard that I had to sort of uphold because
Speaker 3: I was being fed in a very specific version of
Speaker 3: like what black culture was via television and film, then
Speaker 3: other versions from my family, and then other times also
Speaker 3: being Asian, I felt like I was just kind of
Speaker 3: like a punchline. So I was always kind of sifting
Speaker 3: through media to try and give me something.
Speaker 2: I'm like, well, that shit's cool on TV.
Speaker 5: For you, Oh.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you how.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my cousins, my black cousins were immediately they're like
Speaker 3: I was Jackie Chan from the second the first rush
Speaker 3: Hour came out, or Blackie Chan with a lot of things,
Speaker 3: and yeah, that was And at the time I was like,
Speaker 3: or I would even you know, the thing is you
Speaker 3: even point that inward and you're like telling other people.
Speaker 3: You're like, I'm like rush Hour the person, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean, and then take that because you'd rather
Speaker 3: like you got laughs from that. But it's always interesting
Speaker 3: how I was, like I was always using media sort
Speaker 3: of like this touchstone to inform those things.
Speaker 2: And again it was.
Speaker 3: Like out of seeking some way of like finding myself,
Speaker 3: but also like maybe inadvertent or maybe very intentional kind
Speaker 3: of personality formation as I was doing that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does feel like a very interesting way to
Speaker 1: kind of just view the world and the cultural landscape
Speaker 1: as like these figures that people that like resonate and
Speaker 1: you know, they express some like you know that I
Speaker 1: read this book when I was young about like how
Speaker 1: movies are like cultural dreams. They're like expressing some something
Speaker 1: from like our shared unconscious and you know, so obviously
Speaker 1: they resonate and people pay money to see them, but
Speaker 1: then they have this second life where they shape us
Speaker 1: in the same way that like linguists talk about language
Speaker 1: shaping everything we do because they like give us the
Speaker 1: color palette that we are working with when we're like
Speaker 1: trying to build the person that we want to be,
Speaker 1: like how we talk, what we wear, how to like
Speaker 1: you know, hold our body posture wise. There's this crazy
Speaker 1: story about how like Marlon Brando, characters like nobody in
Speaker 1: the Mafia dressed like that until Marlon Brando did in
Speaker 1: a movie and then they were just like, yo, that's me,
Speaker 1: that is me, that is who I want to be.
Speaker 1: And then they started dressing like that, and then that's
Speaker 1: that's what we associate with, you know, people in the Mafia.
Speaker 1: But it was like this invention by a great artist.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's so funny you brought that up, because I
Speaker 5: did an entire I did like this deep dive episode
Speaker 5: about The Godfather and how Italian Americans reacted to it,
Speaker 5: And I learned that where it was just like they
Speaker 5: were they the gangsters were imitating the movie version of themselves,
Speaker 5: which is just such a great little anecdote and a
Speaker 5: great example of how there's just this back and forth,
Speaker 5: this cultural exchange between the language of the movies and
Speaker 5: then the language of the people, and how they feed
Speaker 5: into one another, and sometimes they become so blurred that
Speaker 5: you don't know, it's like a chicken and egg situation,
Speaker 5: like which actually came first? Like was this you know,
Speaker 5: did this exist?
Speaker 2: Was it?
Speaker 5: You know? Was Marlon Brandall basing the character off of
Speaker 5: a specific gangster, Humid, and then it just became sort
Speaker 5: of the template for all these other gangsters. Yeah, it's
Speaker 5: just it's so interesting to think about that, or even
Speaker 5: something like I don't know, the Rachel haircut in the nineties,
Speaker 5: how everyone wanted that. It's just like, what a weird time,
Speaker 5: what a weird weird thing, how ingreat pop culture is
Speaker 5: to all of us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I feel like we see it now even
Speaker 3: more right, especially like with in politics, like every like
Speaker 3: especially with like when you look at the symbolism and
Speaker 3: like the imagery the semiotics of like political factions. Now,
Speaker 3: Like I feel like you see so many people on
Speaker 3: the right, like far right, who are just they like
Speaker 3: they love the Punisher, they love the Joker, and there's
Speaker 3: like this weird like again there are people are finding
Speaker 3: these archetypes again. Do I think maybe give even their
Speaker 3: own like political battles, meaning you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: like because it might not be enough for them to
Speaker 3: be sort of get the picture because they're looking at
Speaker 3: maybe their own situation, but they like they're saying like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm on this side of the fence plus Punisher. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: I like this, this is me. Now, this is me
Speaker 3: the guy who is like just unhinged violent and feels
Speaker 3: like that's the only way that can solve things, to
Speaker 3: make people safe.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think those two in particular are very like
Speaker 1: powerful central sort of psychological archetypes that have really you know,
Speaker 1: like back to Heath Ledger's Joker comes out at the
Speaker 1: start of the Obama administration, and I think the like
Speaker 1: resonated with people being like not everything's okay here, even
Speaker 1: though kind of the mainstream media seemed to be like
Speaker 1: we're good here, everything's good, right, history is over, and
Speaker 1: then like the Joaquin Phoenix Joker comes out and like
Speaker 1: adds what I think are two crucial ingredients that he
Speaker 1: is an in cel and that he is like pointedly
Speaker 1: not funny but wants to be funny, which I feel
Speaker 1: like are two of the key features of a lot
Speaker 1: of the people who identify with the joke and like that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, that character's been around and resonating for a
Speaker 1: long time, but it just feels like it's really Yeah. Wait,
Speaker 1: in the books that are written about our culture, there
Speaker 1: probably won't be as many of them as we like
Speaker 1: to think, but I feel like that there will be
Speaker 1: a whole chapter on like the Joker and The Punisher
Speaker 1: and shit like that. Unfortunately, yeah maybe just yeah.
Speaker 3: Again, just shows how much meaning we like extract from
Speaker 3: like our like our popular culture, because it wasn't like
Speaker 3: no one's like going in history, right, Like I I
Speaker 3: want to like I want to be William to comes
Speaker 3: to Sherman or something like John Brown.
Speaker 2: They're like, I want to be the Punisher.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to be Batman.
Speaker 3: And you're like, oh shit, okay, so we've completely just
Speaker 3: exchanged one for the other. But again has like that
Speaker 3: same motivating force behind it.
Speaker 1: I guess. Well.
Speaker 5: Also, like the meaning that is being extracted is often
Speaker 5: just like totally out of line of what the meaning
Speaker 5: originally was or really is. Like when I think about
Speaker 5: all the you know, the Bill Maher types who complain about, oh,
Speaker 5: you can never get Blazing Saddles made today, it's like, okay,
Speaker 5: but like Blazing Saddles is actually like a radical piece
Speaker 5: of like.
Speaker 2: Filmmaking, and they're just yeah.
Speaker 5: And they're just like focused on Oh, well they you know,
Speaker 5: they're they're using the N word or or whatever whatever.
Speaker 5: Actually I don't even remember if the N word is us.
Speaker 5: It doesn't matter. It's like they are taking the wrong
Speaker 5: takeaways from that movie to prove their point. But really
Speaker 5: it's just like that movie was, like maybe it wouldn't
Speaker 5: have been made today. But also like most people who
Speaker 5: are actually like liberals, the ones you are fighting against,
Speaker 5: they would argue that Blazing Sddles is actually really great
Speaker 5: because it's way more transgressive than an episode of Family
Speaker 5: Guy or whatever. Like it's yeah.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't let you Bill Maher remake that would suck
Speaker 1: and you would do a bad job. All right, let's
Speaker 1: take one more break and we'll be right back. And
Speaker 1: we're back, and I wanted to talk to you finally
Speaker 1: about the chapter This is Ip That Never Ends, which
Speaker 1: you open talking about what I think is one of
Speaker 1: the more significant movies of the past like a couple decades,
Speaker 1: which is the Lion King live action remake, And that
Speaker 1: movie jumps out at me when you look at the
Speaker 1: list of the top grossing films of all time, it's
Speaker 1: in the top ten. But it's like a movie that
Speaker 1: didn't really like all the other movies on there, resonated
Speaker 1: and like had these cultural ripples and like you saw
Speaker 1: like Halloween costumes or whatever, and it felt like the
Speaker 1: Lion King movie, Like not a lot of people came
Speaker 1: away from that movie and were like great job, no notes,
Speaker 1: but it was it was a massive Like it wasn't successful.
Speaker 1: I guess this is this is the thing that makes
Speaker 1: it stand out for me from the rest of the movies,
Speaker 1: and like the top twenty top grossing movies of all
Speaker 1: time is that it was not successful as a movie,
Speaker 1: but it was extremely successful as a marketing like event basically,
Speaker 1: And like I feel like we saw the same thing
Speaker 1: with like the Jurassic World franchise where it's like the premise,
Speaker 1: the promise of this movie, the trailer are all like
Speaker 1: they're really brilliant works of marketing. They make all the
Speaker 1: sense as a marketing offering to a consumer, but like
Speaker 1: the product doesn't follow through in a way that is
Speaker 1: like culturally lasting. But because we live in a world
Speaker 1: of like you know, where capitalism is kind of the
Speaker 1: ultimate score that we're keeping, then we just like notched
Speaker 1: them as a w and kind of move on. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just curious, like what made you kind of want
Speaker 1: to open that chapter talking about the Lion King live
Speaker 1: action remake?
Speaker 5: Well, I, first of all, I did not realize it
Speaker 5: was like now in the top ten. But obviously that's
Speaker 5: account like I'm assuming that's not accounting for inflator or
Speaker 5: it's counting for inflation and not like actual number of
Speaker 5: tickets sold. But so yeah, the thing about The Lion
Speaker 5: King is unlike it's other Disney's other live action remakes
Speaker 5: and the ones that they have already made, the ones
Speaker 5: that they are going to continue to turn out, that
Speaker 5: movie has all animals. There are no human characters, and
Speaker 5: so this movie was advertised it's like, look at how realistic.
Speaker 5: This is look at how it basically it really did
Speaker 5: look like an episode of Planet Earth. Like that's how
Speaker 5: quote unquote good the animation the CGI was, but good
Speaker 5: for who? Because you know, the nineteen ninety four version
Speaker 5: of Lion King is a classic in part because the
Speaker 5: animation is so rich, richly drawn. They the character, the
Speaker 5: animals have facial expressions you can understand like they are connected.
Speaker 5: Their bodies and the way their bodies move are connected
Speaker 5: to their emotions and their feelings. It is animated, It
Speaker 5: is actually animated. And what we got with the Lion
Speaker 5: King was a sort of dead eyed reminded me of
Speaker 5: polar express like why are we doing this? There's nothing here?
Speaker 5: And I think, to me, I wanted to focus on
Speaker 5: that in part because it was so stark, how much
Speaker 5: of a cash grab this was, and how Disney can
Speaker 5: you know, say, until it's blow in the face that
Speaker 5: it like wants to update these stories for new audiences
Speaker 5: and blah blah blah. I mean, you just know that
Speaker 5: we already know this property exists, we know the music,
Speaker 5: we know the songs. You throw in Beyonce and Donald
Speaker 5: Glover and people are gonna go see it. The artistic aspirations,
Speaker 5: whatever they are, they do not play out for me,
Speaker 5: at least on the screen, And so I wanted to
Speaker 5: use it as a jumping off point to sort of
Speaker 5: examine how we are just drowning in all of this
Speaker 5: ip enfranchise bs for the most part in ways that
Speaker 5: just feels suffocating and cyclical and as though we're like
Speaker 5: never gonna get off this hamster wheel. It's interesting because,
Speaker 5: like that essay, I mean, this entire book goes through
Speaker 5: down a lot of rabbit holes. But I was not
Speaker 5: expecting when I started writing the essay that I was
Speaker 5: going to wind up like quoting Nietzsche. But here we were,
Speaker 5: you know, in this idea of like us not being
Speaker 5: willing to reckon with like things ending and having an end.
Speaker 5: And I hire shows or movies that exist like as
Speaker 5: a single thing without having to be resurrected in any way.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: Obviously pop culture has always had, you know, resurrections and
Speaker 5: reboots like, not that this is a new thing at all.
Speaker 5: And I explain that in the essay, like I go
Speaker 5: all the way back to the Silent era, where there
Speaker 5: were remakes of Cecil b. DeMille, the filmmaker made like
Speaker 5: three or four different versions of the same movie over
Speaker 5: the course of his career, so it's not like this
Speaker 5: is new, but it has definitely reached its like suffocation
Speaker 5: level of like this is all Hywood seems to be
Speaker 5: focused on is recreating and rehashing its old ideas because
Speaker 5: that's what's the easiest to get butts in seats. And
Speaker 5: I'm kind of sick of it and for every like
Speaker 5: Spider Man across the universe where it's like, hell, yeah,
Speaker 5: this is this is good, Like this is great, even
Speaker 5: there's plenty of Ghostbuster twenty sixteens or you know, offering
Speaker 5: all those busters or Arrested Development like on Netflix, which
Speaker 5: was just like a terrible Like.
Speaker 3: I just I couldn't even do that where it's my
Speaker 3: favorite season, my favorite season.
Speaker 1: I listened to that. I listened to Kenny g while
Speaker 1: watching that. It's nice because the words don't clash with
Speaker 1: the music, so you can kind of have just an
Speaker 1: overall yeah, no, it's it's a weird. It's you do
Speaker 1: a good job of describing like that, what the experience
Speaker 1: was for people watching season four of Arrested Development interesting
Speaker 1: like this, they're the same characters, but like just everything
Speaker 1: seems like a little bit off.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and way longer, Like they need those episodes longer
Speaker 5: than they ever needed to be because it was on Netflix.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like we can be wacky, man, what about a
Speaker 2: forty five minute one?
Speaker 1: Who cares?
Speaker 3: It's also just hard as a consumer, right because like
Speaker 3: we talk about this all the time on the show
Speaker 3: of like just how like in the nineties, when development
Speaker 3: people became all the marketing people at the studios, the
Speaker 3: emphasis just became about like raw numbers, and like imagination
Speaker 3: was kicked to the curb. And even now, like knowing that,
Speaker 3: I'm still susceptible to them the studios basically being like, Hey,
Speaker 3: the McRib is back, and I'm like, what a new
Speaker 3: Jurassic Park movie? And I know it's not gonna come
Speaker 3: close to the fucking the first hit a Jurassic Park
Speaker 3: I took in nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 1: It's not even gonna come close but that high.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I'm chasing the proverbial dragon or dinosaur in
Speaker 3: this case, Yeah, because it.
Speaker 1: Stands out to me as like a real like it
Speaker 1: could have if they had the right people, like the
Speaker 1: dinosaurs at a park and like the park is now
Speaker 1: full of people or the last one, the third in
Speaker 1: the Jurassic World trilogy, where the dinosaurs are close in
Speaker 1: the world, Like, those are amazing premises for films that
Speaker 1: it feels like they were just like yeah, but the
Speaker 1: marketing is gonna crush, so we actual we don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about making them like great films.
Speaker 3: You guys want to go to Italy, Why don't we
Speaker 3: say they're in the mountains in Italy?
Speaker 2: So I was like, what, they're in the Dolomites.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: The other issue with like that specific example of Jurassic
Speaker 5: Park is that like the new one, the CGI, like
Speaker 5: it doesn't even come close to feeling as real and
Speaker 5: terrifying as the first movie. Like I can still watch
Speaker 5: the first movie and when those kids are trapped in
Speaker 5: that truck and it's like literally you can feel it
Speaker 5: breathing on you. Oh yes, these new CGI ones just
Speaker 5: don't I sound like such a fogie like there these
Speaker 5: kids these days? Blah blah blah. But really, I think
Speaker 5: we reached a tipping point at some point, Like maybe
Speaker 5: it was Avatar where it's like it's just like, you know,
Speaker 5: he did James Cameron did Avatar, and then everyone decided
Speaker 5: like we're gonna go all in, but no one can
Speaker 5: do it quite as good. We're even close as good
Speaker 5: as James Cameron. So now we get all it's really
Speaker 5: shitty CGI that like doesn't feel real and doesn't feel
Speaker 5: like you're experiencing like it's just so flattening, and.
Speaker 1: Learned the exact wrong lesson from that. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean yeah, like to your point, this has been going
Speaker 1: on for years, Like the theater world has been putting
Speaker 1: different versions of the same classic plays on for years.
Speaker 1: Nobody decries the cynicism of that. I have in the
Speaker 1: past been like what if we treated you know, superhero
Speaker 1: movies the way that the theater treats Shakespeare plays, and like,
Speaker 1: you know, if it takes you forty two Spider Man's
Speaker 1: to get to across the Spider verse, so be it.
Speaker 1: But it like, yeah, the thing where Miles, as you said,
Speaker 1: like the development got taken over by the marketing people.
Speaker 1: It feels like you're actually able to feel that. And
Speaker 1: now the movies in the top ten, top twenty are
Speaker 1: being taken over by these movies that like the you know,
Speaker 1: they're directed by the studio, like they you know, they
Speaker 1: just they it's it's all based on like different moments
Speaker 1: that you can put in a trailer, and we're trending
Speaker 1: in like a just a very flattened direction, to use
Speaker 1: your word, Ayisha. I guess the other possibility is movies
Speaker 1: are just not the art form going forward, and all
Speaker 1: the artistry and storytelling is gonna go into video games.
Speaker 1: But I will refuse to acknowledge that idea because I
Speaker 1: don't play video games that much except for your switch
Speaker 1: that you except for my Switch, which I love and
Speaker 1: play all the time.
Speaker 5: Wow jamming out to Kenny and with the rest development
Speaker 5: in the background.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think, I mean it does make me wonder.
Speaker 3: Like I think that's why everything everywhere all at once.
Speaker 3: I think was such a tonic for people because I
Speaker 3: think so many of us aret this place.
Speaker 1: I'm like, bro, already seen this movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, on some level, we like I feel so many times,
Speaker 3: even when I went to go see Across the Spider Verse,
Speaker 3: you see some trailers, I'm like, already see this, Like,
Speaker 3: I mean, I know I haven't seen this, but I've
Speaker 3: already seen this, and and again, like it's just all
Speaker 3: about these like laser guided money making hits that aren't
Speaker 3: necessarily like they just know that there's certain levers. It's
Speaker 3: like I'll pull the celebrity lever because if I put
Speaker 3: the right mix of celebrities in this certain ip which
Speaker 3: I know people just they don't care whatever it is,
Speaker 3: they want to be there. Then we have these quote
Speaker 3: unquote movies that do well while completely just you know,
Speaker 3: they don't they don't satisfy like our appetite for something
Speaker 3: like imaginative. Yeah, and like you'd think maybe now the
Speaker 3: cynical like the cynicism of studio would be like what
Speaker 3: if we just did like wacky stuff, man, like everything
Speaker 3: everywhere is like that just that blew people's minds.
Speaker 1: But that might be a bridge too far for.
Speaker 5: That, I mean, but then then of course that's that's
Speaker 5: the problem though, is that often they the studios will
Speaker 5: try to recreate in everything everywhere at once, or like
Speaker 5: think of all the the movies we've movies and shows
Speaker 5: you've seen posts get out where I'm just like, right,
Speaker 5: m no, you're not doing it as good as you
Speaker 5: know the rest, Like you.
Speaker 2: Know, we're talking about the same stuff kind of yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is marketing. That is how marketing operates is
Speaker 1: by imitating things that already work. You can't. You can't
Speaker 1: invest in something unless you have like a proven track
Speaker 1: record and like a deck with you know, metrics that
Speaker 1: show that this like connected with people, And therefore you'll
Speaker 1: never get As long as marketing is running development, you
Speaker 1: will not get anything that has like a truly lasting impact.
Speaker 1: You might have to start playing video games and get
Speaker 1: used to subtitles because the movies coming from non English
Speaker 1: speaking countries.
Speaker 2: Are really great.
Speaker 1: Yeah have you seen it? I finally saw Past Lives
Speaker 1: this weekend, so good, highly recommend. Yeah, I enjoyed that.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, Ayisha, thank you so much for coming
Speaker 1: and talking to us about your amazing new book. Where
Speaker 1: can people find you find? And anything else you'd like
Speaker 1: to mention about the book?
Speaker 5: Yeah, go check it out. It's it's everywhere everywhere you
Speaker 5: get books. Go to your local bookstore. Get it because
Speaker 5: I like to support the local indies. Also, I have
Speaker 5: an audio version I recorded by myself and you can
Speaker 5: amazing check that out. I do a okay impression of
Speaker 5: Dave Chappelle, so like, look for that if you if
Speaker 5: you're if you're curious about it, and yeah, you can
Speaker 5: find me as I'm sure everyone says. For now on
Speaker 5: Twitter at crafting my style on Instagram at AHA number
Speaker 5: eighty eight. And I'm now in Blue Sky, not really
Speaker 5: posting too much because like it's it's a place where
Speaker 5: things are still figuring themselves out. But I'm on Blue
Speaker 5: Sky at just Aisha Harris. Yeah, that's that's oh. And
Speaker 5: of course in pr howcoult your happy hour? There you go, Yeah,
Speaker 5: come listen to us.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much for taking the time and
Speaker 1: for writing this book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1: This was awesome and we're back. What a fun interview.
Speaker 1: Miles the time size more revelation.
Speaker 3: I I look, I think I also, I too wanted
Speaker 3: to get my ass kicked and still be standing like.
Speaker 1: You, Yeah, listeners, let us know anybody else like just
Speaker 1: really fantasizing about getting the shit kicked out of you.
Speaker 1: I just like there was that.
Speaker 3: And also that Jetly movie Hero there's like the I
Speaker 3: think the last scene he's like facing down a wall
Speaker 3: of arrows. Yeah, and like it's like the last scene
Speaker 3: I think, and obviously like he dies, but I was like,
Speaker 3: that's tight, bro.
Speaker 1: I was like one of the most iconic figures of
Speaker 1: culture of the past, like thirty forty years is Scarface
Speaker 1: and he goes out in a hill like it is taking,
Speaker 1: Like they just invent a rule that you were impervious
Speaker 1: to the first like forty five bullets when you're the
Speaker 1: highest anyone's ever been on cocaine. They're like, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: and I think everyone was like, Okay, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think there's something there that we've identified.
Speaker 1: We'll keep mind, always be standing, always be standing, will
Speaker 1: always take a punch, but for at least thirty five
Speaker 1: seconds and then we'll fall into a giant fountain and
Speaker 1: float face down. But that was fun. Another piece of
Speaker 1: information to producer justin let us know that apparently the
Speaker 1: SIMS video game now like when you hit a certain level,
Speaker 1: you can could be a rand game. Yeah you have
Speaker 1: to you Stan like, yeah, it just shows you how
Speaker 1: that evolution went from like that's not a good thing
Speaker 1: to now like it's aspirational. Yeah, what I would do.
Speaker 2: For a stand?
Speaker 1: And also I wanted to well, we'll have to have
Speaker 1: aisha back on. I wanted to dig into, like what
Speaker 1: who are the pop culture like icons right now? Like
Speaker 1: Drake is mining some weird like sad fuck boy energy
Speaker 1: that I feel like I see in a lot of people.
Speaker 1: These days. Pete Davidson is like an archetype that was
Speaker 1: like he spoke into existence or something like that. Like
Speaker 1: I see a lot of Davidson's out there around. But
Speaker 1: what a fun conversation. We are going to take one
Speaker 1: more break. We're gonna come back and we are going
Speaker 1: to talk to Christi Yamagucci man And we're back and
Speaker 1: it's time for us to call up one of you listeners.
Speaker 1: It could be anyone right now. We don't know, we
Speaker 1: don't know. Let's pick from the from this pile of
Speaker 1: submissions and would you look at that easy top hat?
Speaker 2: Uh? Is it Christi Yamagucci Mane. Okay, I think we're
Speaker 2: gonna call. Let's call Christy.
Speaker 1: Get this man on the horn.
Speaker 3: Justin please get Christi Yamagucci Mane on the line.
Speaker 2: Hello, Oh hey guys, what's up. This is so normal,
Speaker 2: This is so organic, This is so not scripted. Wow,
Speaker 2: I actually knew it was.
Speaker 1: Y'all.
Speaker 7: Do you realize that it says the Daily Zeitgeist like
Speaker 7: on the caller idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when we call from the big red phone in
Speaker 1: the studio. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Was surprised by that. But thanks for giving me a call.
Speaker 2: Christy Yamagucci Mane a k A. Willie. Uh, you said
Speaker 2: we could. We're going to use your government name today.
Speaker 3: I told you, I you know, I'm more comfortable with
Speaker 3: Sir Yamagucci Maine, Sire Yamaguchi Maine Esquire. But I guess
Speaker 3: we'll call you Willy today. Thank you for.
Speaker 1: Expert of the AKA game. Christy Yamagucci Mane AKA will
Speaker 1: feels like it's like brilliantly anti clinat.
Speaker 2: It's very it's very lackluster.
Speaker 7: It's like when you find out like John Wayne's real
Speaker 7: name or some shit, you know, like like some some
Speaker 7: really cool stage name and then you find out their
Speaker 7: real name is Bob or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was this?
Speaker 2: Oh oh yeah, Marion, Robert Morrison.
Speaker 1: Yeah, John Way, that explained so much about him.
Speaker 2: Doesn't have the same gusto as John Wayne.
Speaker 7: In my mind, it's a cool name on its own.
Speaker 1: Yeah, shout out Marian though. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But yeah, man, we wanted to talk to you, obviously,
Speaker 3: because we're asking our listeners. We wanted to hear from
Speaker 3: people with interesting jobs. I know you like from the
Speaker 3: what you post. You wear many hats And when we
Speaker 3: were talking before, I was like, well, you hit us
Speaker 3: up about a your work out of car dealership, your
Speaker 3: time as a repo man, your time as a wedding
Speaker 3: efficient which like car lot and wedding efficient are your
Speaker 3: two primary occupations.
Speaker 7: Before before you get me canceled or anything, I was
Speaker 7: the repo guy for like a year and a half,
Speaker 7: a long time ago. Damn yer, seventeen years ago. Now.
Speaker 2: Yes, I do wear many hats. I'm a bald boy
Speaker 2: like you, Miles. I gotta keep the people the sun
Speaker 2: off of it, you know.
Speaker 7: But yeah, for the past thirteen years or so, I've
Speaker 7: worked at a car dealership detailed cars, just full recon Basically,
Speaker 7: if you trade your car in, it goes through me.
Speaker 7: I do everything to the car that needs to be done,
Speaker 7: unless it's like heavy duty paint work and body work,
Speaker 7: then we.
Speaker 2: Have an in house body guy.
Speaker 7: But yeah, I basically try to make your car look
Speaker 7: as good as new before we stick it back on
Speaker 7: our lot so we can get as much money for
Speaker 7: it and ruin everybody's ability to go buy cars right
Speaker 7: now because the market is absolutely stupid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, use cars. Yes.
Speaker 7: So in addition to that, I've been a wedding efficiant.
Speaker 7: I think this is let me do them. This is
Speaker 7: gonna be the seventeenth year I'm coming up on having
Speaker 7: done weddings. So a friend of mine, good friend of
Speaker 7: mine that I went to high school with, he was
Speaker 7: getting married and he asked me to be the efficiant
Speaker 7: because of my beard, literally because of my beard.
Speaker 2: That was I swear to God that was.
Speaker 1: Something.
Speaker 2: No, it was, it was not that.
Speaker 7: It was just basically they they went and got the
Speaker 7: marriage license ahead of time and got married actually in
Speaker 7: a coffee shop that they met in. They they actually
Speaker 7: exchanged the legal vows, and then when they did the
Speaker 7: wedding for their friends and family in downtown Wilmington, they
Speaker 7: had me be the officiant. But they were like, yeah,
Speaker 7: your beard looks official. Well we want you to do it.
Speaker 7: We want you to stand up there. So that's why
Speaker 7: they asked me. And you know, I've always played music.
Speaker 7: I've always been you know, I love a good karaoke night.
Speaker 7: I don't mind having a microphone in my hand and
Speaker 7: being in front of people, and so it kind of
Speaker 7: was just a natural pairing. I kept after after I
Speaker 7: did that first one, I kept having people ask me
Speaker 7: about about doing theirs, and then that branch.
Speaker 1: Murmur throughout the wedding, people being like, damn, look at
Speaker 1: that guy's beard. We got to remarry exactly.
Speaker 7: We need to do a vow renewal, we need to
Speaker 7: do a commitment ceremony.
Speaker 2: We got to have this guy do this for us.
Speaker 7: But uh, yeah, that's uh, that's essentially what happened is
Speaker 7: my friends. You know that that wave of friends you
Speaker 7: have in there in your mid twenties, that everybody starts
Speaker 7: getting married, and suddenly they all had somebody that they
Speaker 7: knew that they had a personal relationship with that was
Speaker 7: willing to do it. And so I went and got
Speaker 7: ordained and like made sure all the paperwork was squared away,
Speaker 7: and uh and there you go. It's just non stopped
Speaker 7: since then. And it's it's my side gig, as most
Speaker 7: millennials have one of those these these days. I do
Speaker 7: the car dealership five days a week, you know, it's
Speaker 7: kind of like bankers hours, and then on the weekends
Speaker 7: or in the evenings during the summertime, especially when people
Speaker 7: are eloping down here. I live at the beach, so
Speaker 7: it's a it's blown up as far as a wedding destination.
Speaker 7: Over the past, however, many years I stay as busy
Speaker 7: with it as I want to turn down just as
Speaker 7: many weddings as I accept. At this point, and I'm
Speaker 7: at about forty forty five weddings a year, I'd.
Speaker 1: Say, holy shit, And do you ever just like kind
Speaker 1: of they happen upon two people who look like they're
Speaker 1: in love and you're like, hey, you know what I
Speaker 1: do for a living.
Speaker 2: Here's my car? Yeah, so y'all on Twitter? Uh So
Speaker 2: I have.
Speaker 7: I have jokingly said that to people that I've met
Speaker 7: who I know are on a date or something. You know, Hey,
Speaker 7: just if you ever need my services in the future,
Speaker 7: you know, and drop my name to them.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, I kind of have done that.
Speaker 3: So what would you say, in your infinite wisdom of
Speaker 3: doing all these weddings? What kind of what kind of
Speaker 3: advice do you offer people from your efficient perspective, Like
Speaker 3: what do you see couples get wrong? Or what what
Speaker 3: do you wish people knew going into planning a ceremony
Speaker 3: to just to give a little insider tips wisdom.
Speaker 7: If you're going to have a friend do your ceremony,
Speaker 7: make sure the efficiant gets out of the way for
Speaker 7: the kiss.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that is the number one.
Speaker 7: Thing that I steak that I see couples do are
Speaker 7: mistakes made at couple of ceremonies who have like a
Speaker 7: friend of the family or a relative of theirs, that
Speaker 7: they want to perform the ceremony to go.
Speaker 1: Face in between and take a kiss on either cheek.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's exactly like a surprise me. It happened to
Speaker 2: me one time early on.
Speaker 7: My big stupid face was right smack dab in the
Speaker 7: middle of the of all of their kisses the frame,
Speaker 7: and I was you looked horny and it was uncontrollably horny.
Speaker 2: My hand was on both of their asses. That did
Speaker 2: not help, did not beat those allegations.
Speaker 7: But yeah, that is the number one thing I would
Speaker 7: say is always remember when when your your guests are
Speaker 7: standing for the bride to come in, always have the
Speaker 7: officiant tell them to sit down, and always remember to
Speaker 7: step out of the way when you say, uh, ladies
Speaker 7: and gentlemen, friends of family, it's my unique honor of
Speaker 7: privilege to present you for the very first time his
Speaker 7: husband and wife. Mister and missus, you may kiss your bride.
Speaker 7: You get out of the way of all the photos.
Speaker 1: Any anything from the repo mandates or from car detailing
Speaker 1: like anything. That is an easy way to spruce up
Speaker 1: your car and make it look like it's brand new.
Speaker 7: So I would say some advice I would give you
Speaker 7: is if your car shopping, there are some very easy
Speaker 7: giveaways to find it. First of all, the carfax thing
Speaker 7: that you see on windshields, it's all bullshit, like, don't
Speaker 7: don't listen to them when they say, oh, it's got
Speaker 7: a clean carfax, you have no idea. A very easy
Speaker 7: way of uh, there's you can go online and see
Speaker 7: what I'm talking about. But there are clues as far
Speaker 7: as what the paint looks like what's called the orange peel,
Speaker 7: which is the texture of the on two stage paint.
Speaker 7: You've got your base and then you've got your clear
Speaker 7: and the base is going to have this like texture
Speaker 7: to it. And if that texture is wildly different from
Speaker 7: the other paint, even if it matches pretty close in color,
Speaker 7: that's a strong almost like one hundred percent sign that
Speaker 7: there's been body work done to those panels, so you
Speaker 7: know it's at least been in a wreck. So then
Speaker 7: you need to definitely have it inspected by an outside
Speaker 7: mechanic and say, hey, pretty sure there's been damage on
Speaker 7: this quarter panel right here or this back bumper. Can
Speaker 7: you just take a look at the frame, make sure,
Speaker 7: you know, spend the few bucks if you're in the
Speaker 7: market for something.
Speaker 2: That's what I would say.
Speaker 7: As far as driving crazy stuff that I've found on
Speaker 7: the car lot, I mean, I've found just not I
Speaker 7: found electronics. You know, we found iPods and iPads and
Speaker 7: cell phones and stuff like that, but that just the
Speaker 7: typical stuff that people forget in their cars when they
Speaker 7: go to trade them in. Found money and there before,
Speaker 7: like wads of cash hidden in like little compartments, but
Speaker 7: nothing crazy good, you know, no serious drugs that I
Speaker 7: could have flipped and made any money off of, you know.
Speaker 1: Right, I feel like that's good advice just in general.
Speaker 1: Is like I'm always way more confident that I'm going
Speaker 1: to remember where I hid something and that I hid
Speaker 1: something exactly like, well, gotta be safe, so I'm gonna
Speaker 1: put this thing like a in a side panel.
Speaker 7: We're not We're actually not very different from the squirrels,
Speaker 7: Isn't that the whole thing? They like, they hide stuff everywhere,
Speaker 7: and then that's how trees.
Speaker 1: Grew because they find.
Speaker 7: Yeah, they can't remember that shit from the repoing days.
Speaker 7: So again I have to reiterate, I'm not this person anymore.
Speaker 7: Don't don't cancel me. I didn't have the class for
Speaker 7: the Democratic Party.
Speaker 2: Okay, you know, fucking we row exactly exactly. Me and
Speaker 2: Miles are on the same page.
Speaker 7: He worked for the Democratic Party, and I used to
Speaker 7: legally steal people's cars.
Speaker 3: Okay, wait, break down, break down though the repo the
Speaker 3: connection between like in your specific situation you were telling
Speaker 3: me earlier about like the business of this car a
Speaker 3: lot and where you come in as a as a
Speaker 3: repo person.
Speaker 7: So the economics of this specific car lot, this car
Speaker 7: lot had like a bad reput still does, it's still around,
Speaker 7: They're still wildly successful. And this was again like seventeen
Speaker 7: years ago, I think, going on, I was around twenty
Speaker 7: years old that I repod. But essentially when you would go,
Speaker 7: you know, you see tho these little rock lots and
Speaker 7: it has like you know, twenty two hundred dollars down,
Speaker 7: thirty five hundred dollars down, drive off the day, right,
Speaker 7: that's all the money they have in it. So the
Speaker 7: moment you make that down payment and you drive off,
Speaker 7: they have broken even so any payments you make after
Speaker 7: that it's just profit. It is just money, is just
Speaker 7: gravy from them on then of course the financing, you
Speaker 7: know that they it's it's not just the payment, but
Speaker 7: they're making money off of the financing. And there was
Speaker 7: one of those buy here, pay here situations. And so
Speaker 7: if you got your car repod, if you stopped making
Speaker 7: payments and you got your car repode, you either showed
Speaker 7: up the next day or the next few days and
Speaker 7: caught all the payments up, which again is just pure profit.
Speaker 7: They just turned around and sold the car again. They
Speaker 7: still held the title, so they they were selling the
Speaker 7: same car over and over like on multiple occasions where
Speaker 7: people would would buy a ride, not not make the
Speaker 7: payments after a few months, and then they would they would,
Speaker 7: you know, we'd find it, bring it back. They would
Speaker 7: clean it up, you know, maybe pay like a small
Speaker 7: detail fee to someone and then stick it back on
Speaker 7: the lot.
Speaker 3: Wait, how would you take the car like with the
Speaker 3: tow truck or did you you were like bust.
Speaker 7: So if there was a towards the end of the
Speaker 7: time that I was doing it, he did get a
Speaker 7: snatch struck one of those that asked, you know, the
Speaker 7: little boom arm on the back of it goes under
Speaker 7: the front wheels, you lift it up, make sure, you know,
Speaker 7: you crawl underneath that, make sure it's in gear.
Speaker 2: For the most part, though, we would get keys cut
Speaker 2: so we would pay.
Speaker 7: We would go like, say you drive a Mazda, Yeah,
Speaker 7: we would take the ven number, go to the Mazda dealership,
Speaker 7: give it to them, and they could cut a key
Speaker 7: based on that ven number.
Speaker 2: So then you're just riding around. You've got the file.
Speaker 7: You know what their references are, you know where to
Speaker 7: look for the car, because if it's not parked their address,
Speaker 7: if they're trying to hide it. A lot of times
Speaker 7: it would be at one of the three references that
Speaker 7: they would put down on the application to buy a car,
Speaker 7: So then we would if we found it, we we
Speaker 7: just wrote around. The guy I worked for, his name
Speaker 7: was he drove this this Fleetwood Cadillac, you know, like
Speaker 7: like villain ass looking car, right.
Speaker 2: And so we would we would scope it.
Speaker 7: Out and we did not want any confrontation because it's
Speaker 7: dangerous as hell, you know, you those those from the
Speaker 7: yeah in their mind exactly that that uh that lizard
Speaker 7: lick toeing shit like it's it's not. It's not like
Speaker 7: that at all those reality shows that you see. We
Speaker 7: would scope it out and we would repo from like
Speaker 7: ten o'clock at night to three o'clock in the morning,
Speaker 7: and then either I was driving the getaway car, I
Speaker 7: was driving the Cadillac, or I would walk up, you know,
Speaker 7: make sure there's no lights on in the house, nobody's
Speaker 7: moving around, and then it's just a mad dash to
Speaker 7: opening the car up, opening an alarm doesn't go off,
Speaker 7: hopping in, cranking it up, and peeling out essentially, and
Speaker 7: again I have to reiterate, it is the funnest job
Speaker 7: I've ever had.
Speaker 2: I hate that fact. I hate it. I hate it
Speaker 2: right right, But there's something about it. Yeah, you're like,
Speaker 2: you're twenty years old.
Speaker 1: Cart, Yes, you're.
Speaker 7: Twenty years old, and you're not in trouble for stealing cars.
Speaker 7: You get to, you know, go out late at night
Speaker 7: and and like you said, steal cars. It's unfortunately it
Speaker 7: was a blast, man.
Speaker 1: But then yeah, you kind of come around.
Speaker 3: You're like the economics of it too, It's like it's
Speaker 3: a wild how predatory it is to the pot. Huh,
Speaker 3: this is the best business you bring them in because
Speaker 3: you say you can pay with you can bring virtually
Speaker 3: nothing down, I get the financing deal. Then when they
Speaker 3: inevitably can't pay, I just rinse and repeat with the
Speaker 3: same vehicle. Baby, Like wow, I'm like that's when I'm like,
Speaker 3: that's I always like want about lots like that in
Speaker 3: the business dynamics of it, and like that makes perfect sense.
Speaker 2: And I can't think of something more American than that, too,
Speaker 2: right right, I kind of wonder too.
Speaker 7: I've I've caught up with the guy that I worked
Speaker 7: with at the time. It was a very weird dynamic
Speaker 7: because I saw him show like empathy to a lot
Speaker 7: of the clients that he whose car he was looking for.
Speaker 2: There was a few instances.
Speaker 7: Where they were older people that got behind on their
Speaker 7: payments and he refused to repoe their cars, like genuinely
Speaker 7: refused to take them. And he would we got on
Speaker 7: this this cycle where we would stop buy a few
Speaker 7: people's homes. He would take their payment for them because
Speaker 7: this was again this was before you could pay online
Speaker 7: or anything like that, and he would literally bring their
Speaker 7: payment back to the dealership to keep them out of
Speaker 7: trouble with you know, with with the lot. And so
Speaker 7: I actually found out. Years later, he got out of
Speaker 7: the business. I don't think he was built for it
Speaker 7: long term. I think he probably had that kind of
Speaker 7: eventually you know, eventual awakening.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: He moved out of town and I think he opened
Speaker 7: up like a comic book shop or something there.
Speaker 2: You go, so yeah much, you know, opposite ends of
Speaker 2: the business spectrum.
Speaker 3: I feel like, and I think, because you ord the
Speaker 3: repo man, you got to give us the zeitganga tip man.
Speaker 3: If you're behind on your payments, how to fuck you
Speaker 3: hide your car from the day away.
Speaker 1: From those four references.
Speaker 2: I guess yes, that that's that's my number one.
Speaker 7: My number one thing is always uh like, wherever you
Speaker 7: hide it, always back it in because the first thing
Speaker 7: they're looking for is the license plate number. But don't
Speaker 7: park it at your house and any of the references
Speaker 7: that you put down, do not do not park it there.
Speaker 7: Mike had another thing which I don't know how you
Speaker 7: avoid this really.
Speaker 2: He had if he.
Speaker 7: Knew a car was like going to be in a
Speaker 7: general area, he had people from like Dominoes and pizza
Speaker 7: hut and delivery places. If they spot he would give
Speaker 7: them a finder's fee. Wow, and we're talking like fifty bucks.
Speaker 7: And this was like two thousand and three, two thousand
Speaker 7: and four, so it's like a nice little chunk of change.
Speaker 2: And so he had like he had like spies everywhere
Speaker 2: and ship. It is pretty wild.
Speaker 7: But we got chased by one guy one time. We
Speaker 7: repolled his escalade and he jumped in another car and
Speaker 7: took off after us, and it was a wild ass
Speaker 7: chase down this two lane. Yeah, essentially, until called the
Speaker 7: off duty sheriff's department number and they set up like
Speaker 7: a roadblock into downtown where we were headed and uh
Speaker 7: and so we flew through it, and then this guy
Speaker 7: like the they pulled in after him, and uh and
Speaker 7: and the next day he came down and called his
Speaker 7: payments up.
Speaker 2: And so it was.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: It was a wild, wild couple of days for that guy.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he might not have even known that you
Speaker 1: were repalling.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right, that's exactly right.
Speaker 7: Like he he genuinely just thought that his car got stolen.
Speaker 7: And we're trying to avoid confrontation as much as you know,
Speaker 7: you don't want to open up a dialogue there with
Speaker 7: it when you don't know what somebody's got, you know,
Speaker 7: behind their back when when you're on their property. And
Speaker 7: then another time we had a guy he had a
Speaker 7: truck in a ditch in his front yard. It was
Speaker 7: the truck we were looking for, and knocked on the
Speaker 7: door and he told us to fuck off, And so
Speaker 7: we were waiting. We didn't have a tow truck at
Speaker 7: the time. We were waiting on another guy. So we're
Speaker 7: sitting in this food line parking lot, this grocery store
Speaker 7: parking lot, and all of a sudden, we get surrounded
Speaker 7: by cops, like seven or eight car Sheriff's deputies.
Speaker 2: They all draw their weapons.
Speaker 7: You know, they weren't completely aiming them at us, but
Speaker 7: we get up with our hands up and starts explaining.
Speaker 7: You know, basically, the guy whose car we were trying
Speaker 7: to repo, he called the Sheriff's department and said that
Speaker 7: we were threatening him with guns and baseball bats, which
Speaker 7: we didn't carry any weapons on us. You know, it's
Speaker 7: just a recipe for disaster. It's going to escalate things
Speaker 7: into a bad area. So yeah, he explained it to him,
Speaker 7: and they all put their weapons down and and let
Speaker 7: us go.
Speaker 3: And You're like, no, I'm doing this on behalf of
Speaker 3: a car lot company. Oh oh of course, Well then
Speaker 3: please on the on the degrees of awfulness.
Speaker 7: I feel like we were not very high above the
Speaker 7: Sheriff's department, but just slightly, just that I wasn't a
Speaker 7: full on cop in that situation.
Speaker 3: Right, because like it is like you're in that group
Speaker 3: of people who can like legally steal someone ship.
Speaker 2: It's like, I'm sorry, man, Miles used to be a hoodlum.
Speaker 2: I know it.
Speaker 7: You said, Jackie used to hang out the sewers of
Speaker 7: Kentucky or wherever Ohio.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the Hallmark store. We know about that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Hallmark Store. Yes, how could I have forgotten? You almost
Speaker 2: got you?
Speaker 7: Uh, it's a blast. Doing bad ship is so much fun.
Speaker 7: That's why people, I mean, if it's not a crime
Speaker 7: of like needing to feed yourself or something, it's just
Speaker 7: fun doing fucked up ship.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately it sucks, right, Yeah, that that's never the explanation given,
Speaker 1: like in law and Order when they're like why'd you
Speaker 1: do it? Son, and it's like I was fucked up?
Speaker 1: They're never like, yo, it was fun as.
Speaker 2: Fun as ship.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: It's an adrenaline rush.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you know, people some people skydive and and uh,
Speaker 7: some people you know, do motocross or whatever ship and
Speaker 7: some people repoke cars.
Speaker 1: I guess yeah, his is better than motocross. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Absolutely well, Christy, I'm a Gucci man aka Will. Such
Speaker 1: a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming through talking
Speaker 1: to us about uh that your career. You're you're one
Speaker 1: of our favorite listeners and guests to have on the show.
Speaker 1: We really appreciate you, man.
Speaker 2: It's my pleasures, my pleasure, and this was a was
Speaker 2: this a collect call?
Speaker 3: Yes, if you could actually just not yeah, cut just
Speaker 3: to cut that part out, say that again and say
Speaker 3: well actually whytch you take that again, Will, and say
Speaker 3: thank you so much.
Speaker 1: And I can't wait to foot the bill for this call.
Speaker 2: Guys.
Speaker 7: It was an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for
Speaker 7: having me. Yeah, it's an honor to be I'm a
Speaker 7: two time guest now. I believe two Tiers club, so
Speaker 7: two Timers club, and I cannot wait to pay the
Speaker 7: long distance bill.
Speaker 1: You're such a not that we need to anything, but
Speaker 1: it's just good to know that you would.
Speaker 7: Of course I insist because this was my pleasure first
Speaker 7: and foremost.
Speaker 1: So amazing.
Speaker 2: Thank you, guys.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you all right, that's gonna do it. That's
Speaker 1: gonna wrap it up.
Speaker 3: Don't leave your car at the places you leave as references,
Speaker 3: which feels like kind of obvious, but I get how
Speaker 3: people will get lazy. It might be like what ain't
Speaker 3: my house and then forget that, Like I think about
Speaker 3: that shit all the time, Like how like do I
Speaker 3: have people that like the government would have known I'm
Speaker 3: friends with because I'm not friends with them on Facebook
Speaker 3: type shite?
Speaker 1: If you have any expertise on how to like drop
Speaker 1: off the grid or evade your debtors, just hit me
Speaker 1: up privately. We want to talk about it on the show.
Speaker 1: But yeah, just got some things going on. No that
Speaker 1: that was super interesting. And you know, crime not only
Speaker 1: does crime pay, crime is fun is I think I
Speaker 1: can't wait to play this episode for my seven year
Speaker 1: old when he when he hits age.
Speaker 3: Eight and then show New Jersey Drive. That's right, all right,
Speaker 3: but that's gonna do it. You can find me on
Speaker 3: Twitter A Jack Underscore, O, Brian, how about you miles
Speaker 3: at Miles of Gray wherever there's at symbols go there.
Speaker 1: You can find us on Twitter. Daily zeit Geist right,
Speaker 1: the Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram, we have Facebook fan page
Speaker 1: and a website daily zeit guys dot com. We post
Speaker 1: our episodes and our footnote link off to the information
Speaker 1: that we talked about in today's episode. Won't really be
Speaker 1: happening as much in today's episodes.
Speaker 2: But yeah, but there is a song.
Speaker 1: There is a song, miles and what is a song
Speaker 1: that you think people might enjoy it?
Speaker 3: Okay, There's like a duo called Wilma Vritra v r
Speaker 3: I t R A and the first track on their
Speaker 3: album Grotto.
Speaker 2: I was looking this album Grotto.
Speaker 3: The first track just blew me away. It's called find
Speaker 3: an Hour, and they're like this, like one guy's like
Speaker 3: one of the people in the group's of lyricists.
Speaker 1: The other's like a multi instrumentalist, and it just got this.
Speaker 3: Like very cool, like live hip hop feel but kind
Speaker 3: of low fi, spooky sounding, like the recordings very like
Speaker 3: sounds very diy in this track, and like great string
Speaker 3: arrangement too, which I was telling Jack, I was like,
Speaker 3: this feels like when Mary ben Ari, the hip hop violinist,
Speaker 3: was like blowing it up in the odds, but like
Speaker 3: in a classier way, you know, more like Isaac Hayes
Speaker 3: type of shit. So anyway, this is Find an Hour
Speaker 3: by Wilma Ritra.
Speaker 2: I'm getting losing my breath check it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I totally got Miles's reference and didn't need
Speaker 1: to explain to me at all.
Speaker 7: I know.
Speaker 3: Look, it reminds me of when Marcel was like, what
Speaker 3: kind of fucking Tumblr ass explanation?
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm sorry, I only speak at Tumblr all right. Well,
Speaker 1: The Daily Zeik is the production of iHeart Radio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Yep,
Speaker 1: that's gonna do it for us this morning, back this
Speaker 1: afternoon to tell you what is trending, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: to you all done.
Speaker 2: Bye bye