Speaker 1: Hello the Internet, and welcome to season three thirty one,
Speaker 1: Episode two of dir Daily's Like Guy Say production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: This is a.
Speaker 1: Podcast where we take a deep down and do America
Speaker 1: share consciousness. And it is Tuesday, March twenty sixth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four.
Speaker 3: That's right, March twenty six It's National Nugat Day. We
Speaker 3: don't understand what nugat is. Technically Epilepsi Awareness Day, National
Speaker 3: Spinish Day, shoutout Popeye, an American Diabetes Association Alert Day.
Speaker 3: But nugat, what is it? And how do we continue
Speaker 3: to live without knowing what it is? I just know
Speaker 3: it as white chewy stuff in the middle.
Speaker 1: I thought it was the stuff in the middle of
Speaker 1: three Musketeer bar and in Milky Way with carmel. But yeah,
Speaker 1: when I look at the Google image surge of nugat
Speaker 1: would indicate that it's like a white budge thing. It
Speaker 1: looks terrible. Look at this nugat right here. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Like all the nugat that Google image search returns is
Speaker 1: not what I had in mind.
Speaker 3: It says made by whipping egg whites together and adding
Speaker 3: honey or sugar, roasted nuts, and sometimes candy fruit. No
Speaker 3: thank you on the cant Oh. It dates back to
Speaker 3: the Roman Empire. See that's why I think about Rome
Speaker 3: so much, because I love nugat.
Speaker 1: I feel like they also it's from so long ago
Speaker 1: that just anything that was sugar was like called nugat.
Speaker 1: You know, they just like it was from a time
Speaker 1: of like when the only candy was like necho wafers
Speaker 1: and nugat. Yeah, what's that. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I dropped some eggs and some sugar and I just
Speaker 3: whipped it up furiously, and I don't know my kids
Speaker 3: then it fell.
Speaker 1: On the ground and they're like nuts and sticks stuck
Speaker 1: in it. So we're gonna call that on purpose.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I needed to like the etymology of
Speaker 3: fucking nugat Nugat.
Speaker 1: My name is Jack O'Brien aka.
Speaker 4: Welcome to my golf course, Palmersaurus. That's Jeff Explore the
Speaker 4: Titanic but before it got wrecked. All these medals I've sold,
Speaker 4: I'm the smartest god because of cold.
Speaker 1: That is courtesy of Rezik on the Discord in honor
Speaker 1: of the Australian billionaire Clive Palmer, who first of all
Speaker 1: came to our attention most recently because he's rebuilding the
Speaker 1: Titanic and like doing the trip again, making the making
Speaker 1: the captain get drunk again and just like kind of
Speaker 1: sloalow them through those icebergs. But already had turned the
Speaker 1: best golf course in Australia, like I don't I don't
Speaker 1: know from golf courses, but like the golf course where
Speaker 1: the PGA like would hold their big tournaments. He bought
Speaker 1: that and started putting animatronic dinosaurs all over it. Called
Speaker 1: it Palmersaurus. It's called it's called you gave it a
Speaker 1: put a giant plastic t rex on the ninth hole
Speaker 1: and named it Jeff. So anyways, shout out to that man.
Speaker 1: I'm thrilled to be joined as always by my co host,
Speaker 1: mister Miles Gras.
Speaker 3: That's right, it's Miles Gray driving in a busted Honda
Speaker 3: Prelude down lankershim because he's a lord of Lankersham. It's
Speaker 3: the black and the showgun with no gun. Miles, Great,
Speaker 3: thank you so much for having me back, Jack again.
Speaker 3: Always appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Hey man, let's you know you're you're one of the
Speaker 1: faces on Mount site more. Yeah, thank you. I love
Speaker 1: one of our favorites.
Speaker 3: I love getting that email from you on a Monday
Speaker 3: morning and being like, hey, man, would love to have
Speaker 3: you back another season.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I do email. You've been on every episode
Speaker 1: so far. I do email you every time and invite
Speaker 1: you back to the next season to keep you in
Speaker 1: your place, so you know, yeah, I mean at a
Speaker 1: certain point, I'm like, well, this is kind of contractual.
Speaker 1: At this point, Hey man, I don't know if you're
Speaker 1: doing anything. I always open it. Yeah, man, no, every
Speaker 1: time at the same time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. Sure,
Speaker 1: I'm already here. I'm sending you the zoom. I'm actually
Speaker 1: into the zoom. Thanks, thanks, thanks, thanks for that man. Anyways, Miles,
Speaker 1: we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat
Speaker 1: by a writer, media critic, host of a couple podcasts.
Speaker 1: You Are Good, a feelings podcast about movies, and the
Speaker 1: classic the Mount Rushmore Podcast. It's not a podcast about
Speaker 1: Mount Rushmore. It is like on the Mount Rushmore of
Speaker 1: great podcasts, exactly You're wrong about Her writing has appeared
Speaker 1: in The Believer on BuzzFeed. Truly one of the best
Speaker 1: people in the world at interrogating the myths and narratives
Speaker 1: we use to define ourselves. In the world around us.
Speaker 1: Please welcome the brilliant and talented Sarah Marshall.
Speaker 2: And what a crazy intro. I feel so pumped up.
Speaker 2: I feel like I want to be one of those
Speaker 2: kids running onto the stage of Marian. Yeah. I don't
Speaker 2: care much.
Speaker 1: Yeah yet, did you ever do an episode about that?
Speaker 2: He really should? I was just thinking this morning. One
Speaker 2: of the things I find most fascinating is the question of,
Speaker 2: like the inner workings of a nineties daytime talk show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like, my god, right, because I mean, like, I
Speaker 3: feel like we got the like the darkest glimpse after
Speaker 3: the Jenny Jones thing. Yeah, that's when we started to
Speaker 3: be like, oh no, no, no, was.
Speaker 2: The what if our actings have consequences?
Speaker 3: Jenny Jones one was where they outed one of their
Speaker 3: guests for being in love with this other man, right,
Speaker 3: and then the guy was murdered.
Speaker 1: Oh Jesus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna be iffy on the details, but yeah,
Speaker 2: they and I don't think they aired the episode, but
Speaker 2: right they they did facilitate a murder there.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And you know you're wrong about as big on
Speaker 2: the satanic panic and they were such a big part
Speaker 2: of the wonderful things. Yeah, a real accelerant to the
Speaker 2: like the wet cardboard and the mushroom growing experience, my
Speaker 2: colleague metaphor, that's where we are.
Speaker 1: Which we are? Yeah, I was going to ask for
Speaker 1: the best micology metaphors. You could call it what. Yeah,
Speaker 1: We've talked about You're wrong about a lot on this podcast,
Speaker 1: especially around human trafficking, and uh, it's just I think
Speaker 1: the foremost debunker of bullshit myths and our show pedals bullshit.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's what we do. We love to know.
Speaker 1: We also like to bust bullshit myths when we're heads
Speaker 1: up enough to catch them. But so we wanted to
Speaker 1: just have you back on the show and go through
Speaker 1: some of the stories you've covered, some of your favorites,
Speaker 1: some of our favorites that we just want to make
Speaker 1: sure our listeners are aware of because it's a great
Speaker 1: show and.
Speaker 2: I'm so happy to be here. This is so love
Speaker 2: and I'm so happy that we're in your zeitgeist. And
Speaker 2: it's a really it's like a lovely and bleak and
Speaker 2: lovely distinction to hold when it's like, you know, myth
Speaker 2: busting is one of the most important roles in society today.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately. Yeah, it truly is all right. Before we get
Speaker 1: into all that stuff, though, we do like to get
Speaker 1: to know you a little bit better by asking you,
Speaker 1: what is something either from your search history that's revealing
Speaker 1: about who you are, or you could tell us something
Speaker 1: that you've recently screencapped that is about who you are.
Speaker 2: Oh, I like the screencap question. Screencaps were such a
Speaker 2: big part of my life in the Twitter era. Okay,
Speaker 2: something I screen captured from a New York Times article
Speaker 2: that I'll have to look up, but it was from
Speaker 2: a couple of years ago is about the history of
Speaker 2: food writing. And it was I was screencapping a quote
Speaker 2: from Benjamin Disraeli from a letter he wrote and ate
Speaker 2: in thirty one while he was in Cairo, and he wrote,
Speaker 2: the most delicious thing in the world is a banana.
Speaker 2: And I was like, I gotta save that. Wow, Now,
Speaker 2: why did I think that was interesting? It's hard to articulate,
Speaker 2: but I guess I guess need I need to have.
Speaker 2: I can't remember that kind of thing anymore, so this
Speaker 2: is the kind of thing I save.
Speaker 1: I am sometimes struck by the deliciousness of bananas, don't
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever made that claim, like to
Speaker 1: that degree, but as an ingredient, and like it is
Speaker 1: kind of a miraculous ingredient. There's a whole trunk.
Speaker 2: Fruit is kind of miraculous.
Speaker 1: Really, fruit really is an amazing invention invented by people
Speaker 1: whose names we don't know, but like corticulturists years ago
Speaker 1: made these things through just ingenious skills that we have
Speaker 1: completely lost track of. Yeah, the banana being as creamy
Speaker 1: as it is, Like the difference for me between a
Speaker 1: smoothie with banana and without is like I don't think
Speaker 1: you should be allowed.
Speaker 2: To where would smoothie be without? We will be nowhere?
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 3: You think it's the high potastic I feel like it's
Speaker 3: like those high potassium foods like avocados and bananas, they
Speaker 3: got that butteriness, that creaminess to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Nature's custard. And it's also like do you ever
Speaker 2: get too high and think about like what if the
Speaker 2: plants are in charge? You know, because they make the fruit,
Speaker 2: and you know, we human ingenuity, like you said, has
Speaker 2: done so much to make this fruit delicious, like we've
Speaker 2: carried it forward, but like they make the fruit so
Speaker 2: that we spread it around and we've like you know,
Speaker 2: sward high and now we're crashing, and who's going.
Speaker 1: To take We've got these dipshits do for us? Yeah? Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: take me over one game. Yeah, bring me to France,
Speaker 1: that one big square mile of their finest land and
Speaker 1: just like do everything to make us as comfortable as
Speaker 1: possible on that land. Yeah, I uh, don't get too
Speaker 1: high anymore. But when I did, that is the sort
Speaker 1: of thought that would occur to me, I think, didn't
Speaker 1: was it Michael Polland who wrote about plants like from that.
Speaker 2: The yeah read that book? But yeah, he did the
Speaker 2: botanist dilemma, the Botany of Desire. He did a ton
Speaker 2: of plant books.
Speaker 1: Not a type, but is isn't He also like the
Speaker 1: drug the mind expansion, like yeah, rugs.
Speaker 2: He wrote a book that I can't remember what the
Speaker 2: title is because my friends and I decided to call
Speaker 2: it Michael Polland does drugs.
Speaker 1: But it is funny that that is such a high
Speaker 1: thought that has like dominated the New York Times for
Speaker 1: like a decade now.
Speaker 2: Right, the New York Times seems to frequently get high though,
Speaker 2: based on the.
Speaker 1: Oh now this is your mind on plants? The mind
Speaker 1: on plants, yeah. Then I think he was a guy
Speaker 1: behind the Netflix Mind on Plants documentary as well, like
Speaker 1: that that was an adaptation of this is your Mind
Speaker 1: on Plants. But yeah, and then you've all know a
Speaker 1: Harari and Sapiens kind of had a chunk where he
Speaker 1: was basically like, we got trapped by wheat. We're in
Speaker 1: the wheat trap and we got outsmarted by wheat.
Speaker 2: It's the lowest horror movie. That horror movie Millennium the making.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, it's beautiful.
Speaker 1: The happening, Yeah, it is. The spoiler alert, but that
Speaker 1: is the plot of the happening is essentially the plants
Speaker 1: are killing us much quicker than wheat does, and much
Speaker 1: more directly the corn too.
Speaker 2: Corn.
Speaker 1: Think what is something that you think is underrated?
Speaker 2: Sarah, hmmm, God, I love this question. And I think
Speaker 2: here's a little vend that I have, which is that
Speaker 2: we've really seen sort of the technologization if that's a word,
Speaker 2: probably not of bread in the past twenty years, right,
Speaker 2: bread has become this thing people make spreadsheets about, and like,
Speaker 2: God bless them. If you're making bread spreadsheets, then you're
Speaker 2: probably doing things that mere mortals aren't even capable of.
Speaker 2: With bread bats, Yeah, exactly. Yeah, And there's so many
Speaker 2: you know, there's so many ways to approach something, but
Speaker 2: I think that it's made people feel like bread is
Speaker 2: overly technical and something they can't just kind of like
Speaker 2: fake their way through. Yeah, and really, and to me
Speaker 2: there's a whole other I think both ways and other
Speaker 2: ways are equally valid, and to me, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of joy and just kind of muddling your way through.
Speaker 2: I was just watching a video about how to agedly
Speaker 2: create your own yeast using dandelion fermentation, like dandelions and sugar,
Speaker 2: and you kind of create a wild yeast that way,
Speaker 2: and that's not you could approach that technically, but you
Speaker 2: could also just be like I am a witch and
Speaker 2: I'm gathering weeds and getting them in a little right.
Speaker 2: And I think something underrated is just like messing around
Speaker 2: in a way that isn't meant to be successful the
Speaker 2: first time, but that gives you a feel for something,
Speaker 2: whether that's bread or whatever else, right, as long as
Speaker 2: you're not like a surgeon, you know, don't do that.
Speaker 1: Right, right. Yeah. It feels like if like a jazz
Speaker 1: musician was like recording all the notes they played in
Speaker 1: like a solo and Okay, that was good.
Speaker 3: See right there, I probably should have gone to the
Speaker 3: deflat not nice time though. It's like, no, just just
Speaker 3: let it flow out of you, because I mean, I'm
Speaker 3: not a baker myself, but based on what you're saying,
Speaker 3: i'd imagine it's not that hard to completely fuck up
Speaker 3: a loaf of bread if you have the ingredients in
Speaker 3: the semi correct proportions, right right.
Speaker 2: It's like, you know, you'll end up with something that's
Speaker 2: like basically bread. It might not be exactly the kind
Speaker 2: that you want, but like it's bread, you'll be pretty
Speaker 2: happy with it. Put butter on it, who cares? Do
Speaker 2: another love learning it?
Speaker 1: Make a soup out of it, just soak it or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is one of the krutons. This is
Speaker 2: one of the things I am most strident about is
Speaker 2: that I hate it when people sort of create the
Speaker 2: illusion that something requires book learning.
Speaker 1: Right and like analysis and spreadsheets and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like it is a way into it,
Speaker 2: but it's not obligatory.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I feel like a lot of like I'm very
Speaker 1: bad at cooking, or at least it takes me a
Speaker 1: really long time to cook because I am like very
Speaker 1: precision and do not trust my instincts at all, Like
Speaker 1: I believe I have very bad instincts and in that
Speaker 1: in particular. But then you will see people who like
Speaker 1: who think that you need to like over explain and
Speaker 1: be like how did you make that exact cut in
Speaker 1: that movie or like how did they choose that precise word?
Speaker 1: And yeah, like like you were saying miles about jazz,
Speaker 1: it feels like it's really the distinction between like people
Speaker 1: who are good at an art and like not good
Speaker 1: at an art, Like I suck at cooking, and so
Speaker 1: I want to overanalyze it and just be like no,
Speaker 1: but like if if I step here when I'm stirring
Speaker 1: the dough, then like it could totally fuck everything up.
Speaker 1: And it's like, yeah, because you don't have any instincts
Speaker 1: in that regard, what's the.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's you have to you have to find the
Speaker 3: joy in it, because like even there are dishes that
Speaker 3: I make a lot, and I don't I don't really
Speaker 3: write down what the difference was every time. I just
Speaker 3: kind of like intuiting that or just like realizing like,
Speaker 3: oh right, I did this last time, Oh don't do
Speaker 3: this next time, And I think I'm engaging with it
Speaker 3: in a way that's more playful rather than.
Speaker 5: Like I'm cooking for the fucking head of state, don't
Speaker 5: there's some kind of energy, And I think that's where
Speaker 5: the spreadsheetism kind of creeps in, because we're not allowing
Speaker 5: ourselves to be more playful about it.
Speaker 1: It's like so results based to maybe an overly rigid degree.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and it's you know, and it's about whatever's
Speaker 2: fun for you. But like, something I also love that
Speaker 2: I read once in a Jillia Child cookbook is that
Speaker 2: she's like, I will always tell you why I'm asking
Speaker 2: you to do something, because I never do something if
Speaker 2: a cookbook tells me to do it and doesn't tell
Speaker 2: me why, you know, because there's there's so many things,
Speaker 2: you know that it's kind of like trying to learn
Speaker 2: how to speak English perfectly by studying grammar, where like
Speaker 2: you get to a point where experts agree or where
Speaker 2: you sound so correct that people can understand you. And
Speaker 2: like a lot of the joy of it is colloquial colloquialism.
Speaker 1: At a certain point, you just have to watch the soap operas.
Speaker 1: You have to watch Jenny Jones and learn English from
Speaker 1: those exactly.
Speaker 2: And you got such good vocabulary.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh yeah. What is something you think is overrated? H?
Speaker 2: I think texting is overrated. I think we're all texting
Speaker 2: too much. We got to stop all the texting. Like,
Speaker 2: I think it's a great tool, but I feel like
Speaker 2: there are relationships I have where like we only text
Speaker 2: with each other for years, and I realize that phone
Speaker 2: calls are terrifying, but I don't know, maybe bring back
Speaker 2: postcards or something which is like a text, but there
Speaker 2: isn't a pressure to return one immediately. You can let
Speaker 2: it simmer for a minute, right, I feel like we
Speaker 2: should be talking to each other more, Like I am
Speaker 2: feeling genuinely disturbed by how we are drifting farther and
Speaker 2: farther apart technologically. And I also like, I love not
Speaker 2: just TikTok, but any form of addictive scully short form
Speaker 2: video the same way I loved Tumbler ten years ago.
Speaker 2: But I was thinking about how we've come to the
Speaker 2: point where, in a way, it feels like if you
Speaker 2: don't make a montage about something, did it even happen?
Speaker 2: And like it's so cool that people have the ability
Speaker 2: to like take cinematic approaches to their own lives. But again,
Speaker 2: it's like, it's your life, you know. We don't have
Speaker 2: to we don't. I'm just a big ludite who wants
Speaker 2: everyone to make bread without a recipe. That's my dream.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and just dump your whole SD card of digital
Speaker 3: photos into a Facebook album like the ways of the
Speaker 3: ancients did ago.
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe there's something in there. I don't know,
Speaker 1: you have some weird stuff and then checked that out.
Speaker 1: But yeah, let's go.
Speaker 2: We'll sit for a Daghera type once a year when
Speaker 2: the dagheratype man comes to town on his pony ryes.
Speaker 1: Stay very still, very very still.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, I know that feeling of like having
Speaker 3: these like pure like feels like text exclusive friendships, and
Speaker 3: they're like the way I've like cause again sometimes they're
Speaker 3: not people like you would always talk to on the phone,
Speaker 3: but somehow you just have good banter over text more
Speaker 3: than you do over like on a phone call. But
Speaker 3: then I did the thing of the bro version of
Speaker 3: of escalating the socializing by being like, hey, man, are
Speaker 3: you on PlayStation?
Speaker 1: Do you play this game?
Speaker 3: Then I can Then I'll then I talk to them
Speaker 3: while playing a video game, and that becomes like sort
Speaker 3: of the basis for like a phone call or substitute.
Speaker 3: But it's interesting how sometimes they're like you have this
Speaker 3: feeling of like, I don't know, man, like it's just
Speaker 3: kind of cool just texting somebody. But to your point,
Speaker 3: there's something much more like I don't know, Like I
Speaker 3: think being an older millennial, like I grew up talking
Speaker 3: on the phone endlessly, right, so I do miss that
Speaker 3: to a certain extent. But I think with adult responsibilities,
Speaker 3: it's not possible to be on the phone for three
Speaker 3: hours watching cops.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, what a dream. Yeah, I or a
Speaker 2: Lifetime the Lifetime Movie Network. Maybe I feel like, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's something some inevitable process of aging at least today.
Speaker 2: When you know time is marked by technology, is that
Speaker 2: details of your early life begin to sound made up.
Speaker 2: And one of them is that we could only send
Speaker 2: a certain number of texts per month.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly right, right right?
Speaker 3: Yeah, or be like, dude, don't call me like fucking
Speaker 3: before eight fool, I don't have I only have free nights.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we had minutes, we had character limits. We were
Speaker 2: very we had to be kind of economical.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm not. I'm bad at texting in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases. But yeah, there are some friendships where
Speaker 1: it's like easier to just text, and then I have
Speaker 1: like text exclusive friendships about where we're constantly talking about
Speaker 1: how we should hang more, we should hang out in yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: content of the text.
Speaker 2: And it's like this plant that's like barely alive in
Speaker 2: your past room and you give it like a teaspoon
Speaker 2: of water every two months, and it's like I avenge me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or you're just like, oh, good thing I did
Speaker 1: to turn the exhaust fan on while I was showering
Speaker 1: because the humidity actually nourished that plant in as still
Speaker 1: just mean alive a little bit, right.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it feels like we have all these relationships
Speaker 2: that are like scraggly and attenuated, and then we're like,
Speaker 2: why do I feel lonely? I talk to people all day?
Speaker 2: And it's like, well not really.
Speaker 1: Yeah, did people used to have those types of friendships
Speaker 1: where they were like I've got a got a drawer
Speaker 1: full of letters that I'm supposed to get back to.
Speaker 2: Like you know, I don't know, because even then you
Speaker 2: would be like, dear Elisha, the sheep are lamming early
Speaker 2: this spring.
Speaker 1: Right, It's like, yeah, I had to ground more wheat
Speaker 1: at the water mill than I had expected this spring.
Speaker 1: I hope you are well and yeahs.
Speaker 2: You know, dear Jack, let's go fishing yours.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, Jack, twist fish and nasty. Just one word.
Speaker 3: Letter, dude, my mom's favorite movie. She'll always say that, Dude,
Speaker 3: my mom fucking loves Broke Back Mountain. She's just like
Speaker 3: it's so powerful. Like she'll because like she's a film
Speaker 3: critic and in Japan, you know, she's she kind of
Speaker 3: has kind of got a bit of a reputation there,
Speaker 3: and like sometimes when there's like Oscar coverage that they'll
Speaker 3: bring her on for it because like.
Speaker 1: You've been in La for you know, forty years covering
Speaker 1: the business blah blah blah, and they'll be talking about
Speaker 1: like the movies that are popping right now. She's like,
Speaker 1: but what was it? What's the best film for you?
Speaker 3: She'll always always, she's always about it that I respect
Speaker 3: the hell that consistent.
Speaker 1: She's consistent when that's your favorite movie, that's your favorite movie.
Speaker 1: You know I can respect that as a as a
Speaker 1: Jaws fan, you know, who will bring that up no
Speaker 1: matter what. Yeah, I mean, I just brought it up there,
Speaker 1: he did. Hey, all right, let's uh take a quick
Speaker 1: break and we'll come back and we'll dig into some
Speaker 1: great stuff from the podcast you are wrong about. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back. What are we wrong about? You are
Speaker 1: wrong about? And we're back. And I think we already
Speaker 1: mentioned that you're wrong about. Is really you're really good with,
Speaker 1: like moral panics, the satanic panic in particular, and just
Speaker 1: the role. Yeah, it turns out the role of evangelical
Speaker 1: Christianity and some of our biggest social movements of the
Speaker 1: past half century. And you recently had an episode about
Speaker 1: the pro life movement that was surprising to me, Like
Speaker 1: I think you said this right off the bat that
Speaker 1: I was not expecting you point out the pro life
Speaker 1: movement is younger than Jeff Bridges the Deuce.
Speaker 2: This is how we mark age now, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's yeah, Like I guess it's specific, Like
Speaker 1: there were people who were opposed to abortion before that,
Speaker 1: but the kind of concerted, cohesive, evangelical driven version kind
Speaker 1: of starts in nineteen seventy three, and it's part of
Speaker 1: this movement by evangelicals to be like, hey, so our values,
Speaker 1: people hate them. We're we've got bad values. We're we're
Speaker 1: pro segregation. Nobody else seems to like that very much.
Speaker 1: They're pretty uh, you know, they recognize that they're going
Speaker 1: the wrong way in terms of relevancy.
Speaker 2: They're in need of a real makeover exactly.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, they settle on abortion, which the most
Speaker 1: well known evangelical in the seventies was Jimmy Carter, which
Speaker 1: is like, that's not who I come to associate evangelicals with.
Speaker 1: But it was like a different time, and at that
Speaker 1: time you didn't necessarily like being super violently against people's
Speaker 1: right to have an abortion was not one of the
Speaker 1: first things you associated with evangelicals, no.
Speaker 2: Or with the Republican Party. And I always love to
Speaker 2: cite the fact that Betty Ford famously was pro choice
Speaker 2: Republican and that that was a coherent political position for
Speaker 2: the first lady to have at the time.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, and Jimmy Carter being an evangelical again, I
Speaker 1: a social justice warrior. Some would say he.
Speaker 2: Loves building houses for people. Yeah, I feel like there's
Speaker 2: something that it is. Really it's interesting to reflect on
Speaker 2: maybe arguably what has been lost because this is not
Speaker 2: exactly my field, but many of my fields brush up
Speaker 2: against it. And the history of evangelicism in America really
Speaker 2: connects to the idea that God really is of and
Speaker 2: for the people, and that prayer is about direct communication
Speaker 2: with the divine and that you deserve to have a
Speaker 2: connection to the Holy Spirit without there needing to be
Speaker 2: some kind of conduit. So it really is, in a way,
Speaker 2: another wave of you know, the various religious reformations that
Speaker 2: we've seen throughout history that have made Christianity more and
Speaker 2: more egalitarian. And there's historically been a lot of potential
Speaker 2: for good in that and still is. But it's just that,
Speaker 2: you know, evangelical Christianity in twenty twenty four, I think
Speaker 2: is absolutely synonymous with the unbelievably sinister, the acratic, kleptocratic,
Speaker 2: fascist dictatorship that we're now basically living in. So that's
Speaker 2: really fun. It's nice.
Speaker 1: They really did not see it going that way, like
Speaker 1: I guess I did, because we.
Speaker 2: Get it's the compliment sandwich. You gotta start with the
Speaker 2: good and then you're like, now we have some news
Speaker 2: we have we do have.
Speaker 1: About how things have gone since then. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: you point out that one point. I forget if it
Speaker 1: was that episode or not, but just if you look
Speaker 1: at what the evangelical movement has done over the past
Speaker 1: forty years in our lifetime, it's kind of what paranoid
Speaker 1: eras of the US, you like, accused communists of doing.
Speaker 1: You know, that there's going to be this secret takeover
Speaker 1: that they were going to secretly infiltrate our Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: and like.
Speaker 2: They have failed to infiltrate the media, which is nice.
Speaker 2: You know, Interestingly, there's nothing conservatives are worse at than
Speaker 2: making media.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they tried turning their hat around backwards, turning the
Speaker 1: chair around backwards, they try everything. You still can't Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, and then it's kind of what they accuse
Speaker 1: Satanists of doing in the eighties, like secrets.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, yeah, and what they're accusing you know, all these
Speaker 2: drag queen groomers of doing. Now, there's a very in
Speaker 2: any kind of abusive relationship where you think that your
Speaker 2: user has more complicated motives than you ultimately realize that
Speaker 2: they do. It's I think largely a projection game.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, And it seems like so many of the
Speaker 3: moral panics too, like they're like, you know, like all
Speaker 3: the ones you've mentioned, even human trafficking, they're just sort
Speaker 3: of like built on people's inability or like unwillingness to
Speaker 3: examine actual systemic forces, and it's just much easier to
Speaker 3: chalk it up to like, yeah, it's this other thing, man,
Speaker 3: it's these Satanists that are going that are freaking out.
Speaker 3: It's like, it's not that there's inequality, is that there
Speaker 3: are these flash rob where they just go through and
Speaker 3: steal everything and it's a crime wave, and it just allows,
Speaker 3: i don't know, for people to sort of neatly put
Speaker 3: some kind of larger issue into a problem that doesn't
Speaker 3: quite actually get to the root of the cause.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been fascinated by slasher movies for a long time,
Speaker 2: and I think that they do a weirdly great job
Speaker 2: of illustrating this very i think kind of core piece
Speaker 2: of American folklore where you know, if he was Friday
Speaker 2: the thirteenth, as the er example, like some kind of
Speaker 2: like the traditional slasher template is that somebody is wronged
Speaker 2: in the past, Jason drowns because the counselors weren't paying
Speaker 2: attention to making Doodle that boy drown and then some
Speaker 2: kind of force avenging the wronged party shows up in
Speaker 2: the present and innocent teens who are simply you know,
Speaker 2: smoking a joint or making out suffer. And the sort
Speaker 2: of arc of it is that you can sort of
Speaker 2: momentarily acknowledge that injustice has occurred in the past, but
Speaker 2: as long as you turn a representative of that injustice
Speaker 2: into a force so dangerous that there's no proportionate response
Speaker 2: except killing them, then you can justify any action in
Speaker 2: the present and kind of even out the lecture. And
Speaker 2: that feels like a really I don't know some way
Speaker 2: that we were we were thinking through with these summer
Speaker 2: camp movies, the kind of dominant political ideology we were
Speaker 2: all living under.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it is a kind of frontier wilderness setting
Speaker 1: that everybody's familiar with, right that is where you know
Speaker 1: colonial like these.
Speaker 2: Summer campser I can never populated my camp.
Speaker 1: They're always way out there in the woods. And then yeah,
Speaker 1: they are being punished. Like I just think that at
Speaker 1: a certain level, there's like an unspoken knowledge amongst Americans
Speaker 1: that like, oh, yeah, we we've got it coming, like
Speaker 1: this is this has been bad, Like what every everything
Speaker 1: we've everything you see around you is built on top
Speaker 1: of just ashes and atrocities, and we've got something horrible coming.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, it makes sense when slasher films like
Speaker 1: it does feel like if an alien came down and
Speaker 1: just like looked at our films. Slasher films would be
Speaker 1: pretty difficult to explain if you if they didn't have
Speaker 1: like a psychological read all right, like we get no, no, no,
Speaker 1: it would never happen. It's just a thing we like
Speaker 1: to imagine happened to us. Why what is wrong? I
Speaker 1: think we got to come in or something. I don't know, I.
Speaker 2: Just kind of active masochism. Yeah, we know we are
Speaker 2: not what was intended.
Speaker 1: People, Right, So we put the Poulter guy's house on
Speaker 1: top of a Native American burial ground and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that gets it out, That gets it.
Speaker 3: It's just funny how like that that sort of that
Speaker 3: angst manifest in different ways, sometimes in films other times,
Speaker 3: and people screaming at school board meetings, and like.
Speaker 1: I don't want my kids to know what a civil
Speaker 1: war is or was about.
Speaker 2: People should be watching more horror movies, I think, yeah.
Speaker 1: Right, I wonder if that's my aversion? Why am I
Speaker 1: so horror averse? I wonder what am I? You don't
Speaker 1: feel guilty about anything? Yeah, I've got to clean consciousness.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess it's like a black and Japanese American.
Speaker 3: I'm like, I don't know, bro.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, y'all got that shit coming. Yeah, you shouldn't
Speaker 1: feel weird about not liking the horror movies. That's us
Speaker 1: man before liking them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just yeah, white people four hours a week
Speaker 2: go to the horror movie clinic a movie because I.
Speaker 1: Mean, like there's also like bad.
Speaker 3: I mean there's Japanese horror films, and there's clearly there's
Speaker 3: a laundry list of atrocities that Japan has committed to.
Speaker 3: And I wonder does there are there like what's German horror?
Speaker 3: Like does this is there?
Speaker 1: Is there like a universal language of like sort of
Speaker 1: expressing this like through what we consider horror, because I know, cultural.
Speaker 2: Difference is really interesting because I feel like Japanese horror
Speaker 2: movies there are often ghosts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, precisely, and we have so.
Speaker 2: Few ghosts nowadays in American horror. We love demons. We
Speaker 2: won't shut up about demons. Yeah, my chagrin.
Speaker 1: Germany just has Werner Herzog, who's just everything is an.
Speaker 2: Her SOG's new TV? Why crayons?
Speaker 1: Why do you need horror movies when nature is trying
Speaker 1: to kill you.
Speaker 2: Always gardening with verner herd song.
Speaker 1: It's just a it's just a documentory about hummingbirds.
Speaker 2: In the abundance of these queens pushings that way out
Speaker 2: through the soil. I see none of the divinity of
Speaker 2: springtime or the pagan gods. I see only pointless tea.
Speaker 2: But I can also use them to make a nice pesto.
Speaker 1: The While we're on the subject of movies, you kind
Speaker 1: of stumbled on I don't like the Andes. You did
Speaker 1: an episode on the Andes rescue the Alive story, as
Speaker 1: I think it's mostly known in America, the rugby team
Speaker 1: crashes in the Andes is living there for months.
Speaker 2: On a fricking glacier on a.
Speaker 1: Glacier, freezing to death, starving to death. Eventually turned to
Speaker 1: cannibalism to avoid starving to death a couple. So this
Speaker 1: past year, one of the best movies I saw was
Speaker 1: Society the Snow, which does a really good job of updating.
Speaker 1: You know, there was the version in the nineties Alive
Speaker 1: with like Ethan Hawk, I think, and you know it
Speaker 1: was like the hollywood ized version Society the Snow like
Speaker 1: updates it and like adds a lot of the humanity
Speaker 1: back to it, which was something that your episode really did.
Speaker 1: But both movies really missed something that I loved that
Speaker 1: you brought up, which is that people like they were
Speaker 1: doing bits the whole time, right, Like the number of
Speaker 1: bits that they did was like, at one point, they're
Speaker 1: waiting to be rescued, and then they look off and
Speaker 1: they see an avalanche like a white wall coming towards them, right,
Speaker 1: and then they realized that somebody is actually using a
Speaker 1: fire extinguisher to like make it look like there's an
Speaker 1: avalanche coming with them as a bit, and then they're
Speaker 1: like pretend they were like talking like planning bits for
Speaker 1: what to do when the helicopter arrives at the scene
Speaker 1: of their plane crash, like talking about like the funniest
Speaker 1: thing to say while they were in it. But it's
Speaker 1: just it's, I don't know, generally, just movies about true
Speaker 1: stories and history feel like they have to be as
Speaker 1: humorless as like a Christopher Nolan film, you know, right,
Speaker 1: and totally it's just not how reality is. Like I
Speaker 1: would have loved the bits in both of those movies.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, well, because even you think about like the
Speaker 3: like the like the wild stuff, like engineering students pull
Speaker 3: like while they're in college, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: the fun they have like like JPL is nearby in
Speaker 3: LA and like they do like wild just pumpkin carving contests,
Speaker 3: just weird things are like now we're using our like power,
Speaker 3: like brain power to get stuff to other like the moon,
Speaker 3: to have fucking fun. And yet to think that like
Speaker 3: they were just I don't know, at the in where
Speaker 3: were those alamos. They were just like hanging out counting
Speaker 3: marbles or something. They're like, all right, I'm gonna go
Speaker 3: to bed, Yeah, see you later, like the horse and
Speaker 3: around come on.
Speaker 1: Though, Yeah no, yeah, those they were doing goods constantly,
Speaker 1: like all throughout history. And I think it, I really
Speaker 1: do think it's the same reason that comedies almost never
Speaker 1: win at the Academy Awards, is the reason that they
Speaker 1: feel like they need to launder movies of any like
Speaker 1: fun when they're about history. Yeah, no, this has to
Speaker 1: be serious. We can't. We have to like remove the fun.
Speaker 1: But I feel like it would just feel more lived
Speaker 1: in and yeah, I don't know, it would be be
Speaker 1: a blast if we actually saw how the people were
Speaker 1: funny at the time.
Speaker 2: Well, and you know, and I think about when you
Speaker 2: think about the movies that endure and that are a
Speaker 2: part of your life and that you watch a lot,
Speaker 2: like and you know, it's different. People have different requirements.
Speaker 2: Some people have comfort movies that have no funny parts
Speaker 2: in them at all, God bless her, But like, aren't
Speaker 2: most of the things that you watch more than a
Speaker 2: couple times funny?
Speaker 1: Yeah, they have fun the characters are having fun or
Speaker 1: they're funny.
Speaker 2: Or yeah, there's the you know, because it's like a
Speaker 2: full spectrum of humanity. It's kind of like eating an
Speaker 2: entire meal with nothing, no sweetness in it at all,
Speaker 2: Like you can do it, but it's it feels there's
Speaker 2: something missing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right. Yeah. The other thing that gout left out
Speaker 1: of both movies that your episode kind of restores is
Speaker 1: like it's kind of an important detail. Like you go
Speaker 1: from the story of them like surviving getting rescued to
Speaker 1: that that's kind of it. And then like today we
Speaker 1: know them as like the cannibal people and the media
Speaker 1: discovering the cannibalism, like the doctor checking them out and
Speaker 1: being like, wait a second, these guys like had to
Speaker 1: have been eating something. And then like a big like
Speaker 1: moral judgment ensues and like everybody's like their family is
Speaker 1: like upset buy it and they're like, wait, would our
Speaker 1: parents have rather us starved to death than like the
Speaker 1: Catholic church weighs in and is like, no, it's good
Speaker 1: that they were eating people, which was very Yeah, every
Speaker 1: once in a while they nail it. And then the
Speaker 1: other detail was that they were like a few days
Speaker 1: walk from a hotel full of food. Was like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I can see why you left it out,
Speaker 1: but Jesus Christ, that's I mean, it's like triangle of
Speaker 1: sadness like that. It's I don't know if you guys
Speaker 1: saw that movie. I did.
Speaker 2: I really liked that movie and I saw that the
Speaker 2: night that midterm results were coming in, so it was
Speaker 2: like perfect for that very distracting.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh that's a good idea. Just watch a really
Speaker 1: good like, save a really good movie for when for
Speaker 1: election night. Yeah, gets sucked.
Speaker 2: You need to be transported for real?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Is.
Speaker 2: I think that the kind of texture of tragedy is
Speaker 2: what makes it feel real. And I think that to
Speaker 2: some extent, when we tell stories that are so grim
Speaker 2: and feel so distant from us, that that's a way
Speaker 2: of us feeling like it's not going to happen to us,
Speaker 2: when you know, really, so many of these things are
Speaker 2: the result of being in a boat, being in a skyscraper,
Speaker 2: being in the path of a forest fire. Like, we're
Speaker 2: going to have more and more epidemics and disasters and
Speaker 2: they're just going to become part of everyday life. For
Speaker 2: those of us who don't feel that way yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hope we can remember to be funny, and
Speaker 1: we're going to.
Speaker 2: Be so funny. We're going to be the funniest generation
Speaker 2: that has ever lived.
Speaker 1: The has ever lived through an apocalypse? Yeah right, you
Speaker 1: know the aliens will come and they're like Wow. As
Speaker 1: their civilization was dying, they put out some of the
Speaker 1: best comedies.
Speaker 2: Best content came right near me.
Speaker 3: The guy need a Drum set out of billionaire skulls
Speaker 3: and they're scouring doing solos. It was really quite artistic.
Speaker 1: I have to say, oh, yeah, great, I think you
Speaker 1: should leave quotes. As their city was burning.
Speaker 2: Down, well then once the grid went down, they had
Speaker 2: to make those meme museums, right, those were a real tree.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be fun though, to like figure out
Speaker 1: which memes go in the museum, Like, I might as
Speaker 1: well just do that now. I feel like it would
Speaker 1: be a good public works project. Biden, Come on, yeah,
Speaker 1: come on, but these Yeah, because we're gonna have somebody
Speaker 1: out of work TikTokers when you ban the app. Uh
Speaker 1: you know the new Civil Conservation Corps of Meme Collection
Speaker 1: and Remembrance. Yeah, all right, let's uh, let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break and we'll come back. We'll keep talking and
Speaker 1: we're back. We're and just generally not to like put
Speaker 1: you on the spot, but I am curious that, like,
Speaker 1: do you have some common flags that like pop up
Speaker 1: where like just at this point, you've seen so many
Speaker 1: stories that are full of shit, like where you're just like, oh,
Speaker 1: like I think one that you mentioned during the I
Speaker 1: think it was the human Trafficking episode. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: the human trafficking episode, because right, yeah, the Bob Craft
Speaker 1: thing where it's it's a tactic you see used by
Speaker 1: these low rent journalistic outlets like the New York Times
Speaker 1: where they will just use a like the only source
Speaker 1: in the article will be a cop or multiple like laws.
Speaker 2: That was the first thing I was thinking of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, oh, they love to do it, don't they.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And It's so interesting because it is you know,
Speaker 2: not just within moral panics, but you know, really any
Speaker 2: story that we get wrong or report in a biased fashion.
Speaker 2: It is just journalistic tradition in this country to write
Speaker 2: a story where the police are your only source and
Speaker 2: where you say, you know, police say this and that,
Speaker 2: and treat it with utter credulity, because that's how the
Speaker 2: profession has worked historically, and so it is. It's an
Speaker 2: interesting area too, where you know, something that has gotten
Speaker 2: grandfathered in as a convention that we've only recently begun
Speaker 2: chipping away at, has allowed for worse reporting because you know,
Speaker 2: we've inherited it from I don't know what I would say,
Speaker 2: basically the sense that reporters have to work with and
Speaker 2: to an extent for the police in order to get access.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what they've told themselves the least, right, like
Speaker 1: we need to do this and you know, talk to
Speaker 1: the people who skulls they're cracking. They're a good source,
Speaker 1: right right. And then the sense that you're you're on
Speaker 1: the same side or on the side of the establishment,
Speaker 1: which is also you know, hopefully that's changing. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: Robert Craft story, in particular Robert Craft is the billionaire
Speaker 1: owner of the New England Patriots who got caught in
Speaker 1: a massage parlor in Florida paying for sex, And the
Speaker 1: New York Times just extensively quotes this one share of
Speaker 1: talking about how the women were brought in like China,
Speaker 1: from China, from China. They were smuggled in from China,
Speaker 1: presumably in shipping containers. I don't know if that's specifically mentioned,
Speaker 1: but God, the trafficking people love that.
Speaker 2: It's just like the shipping container thing. Just get this
Speaker 2: woman a coach, a seatan coach. It'll be just as uncomfortable,
Speaker 2: and her break her spirit just as well.
Speaker 1: But he's the cops and the forced sex with thousands
Speaker 1: of men and you know, new women, right, new shipments
Speaker 1: of women every couple of days or you know, every week.
Speaker 2: Like and again, the overhead of this kind of an
Speaker 2: outs think about how hard it is to manic inventory
Speaker 2: if you're selling.
Speaker 1: Beads just like an evil massage parlor corporation with the
Speaker 1: budget of Amazon.
Speaker 2: You know, right, yeah, And I hate to sound insensitive,
Speaker 2: but it is like it's stuff like that where you're like,
Speaker 2: what are the physical realities of even the building that
Speaker 2: we're talking about this happening in because that's such a
Speaker 2: big part of the Satanic panic, where the direness of
Speaker 2: the crimes people are being accused of means that people
Speaker 2: are less likely to be like, excuse me, I was
Speaker 2: just wondering, how are this many infants going missing from
Speaker 2: hospitals every year? None of them are reporting these crimes
Speaker 2: or you know, because we know that, like people actually
Speaker 2: study real crimes that occur, and so we learn sort of,
Speaker 2: you know, it's imperfect, but we learn certainly that there
Speaker 2: are trends, and one of them is that people who
Speaker 2: kidnap babies from hospital nurseries tend to be a woman
Speaker 2: who's lost a child who's trying to replace that child. Yes,
Speaker 2: that's kind of the typical profile. And that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: it covers everything, but it means it's you know, that
Speaker 2: kind of accounts for the cases that people have noticed.
Speaker 2: And if there were thousands of babies needed for Satanic
Speaker 2: sacrifice going missing all the time in the eighties, then
Speaker 2: why weren't hospitals noticing that? And that's just a question
Speaker 2: about are we advancing by degrees into a worldview where
Speaker 2: none of these questions matter? And you know that has
Speaker 2: happened for some people clearly, but it's I don't know.
Speaker 2: I hope it can still have a cooling effect to
Speaker 2: bring these things up.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, I mean when the human trafficking episode, when
Speaker 1: I first heard it, it was at the time when
Speaker 1: TikTok and social media was full of videos where people
Speaker 1: would be like, you see the zip tie on my
Speaker 1: car door handle?
Speaker 2: Oh, the one that you could have put there?
Speaker 1: Yes, impossible, actually impossible when that matches the stuff that's
Speaker 1: in your trunk. Now that means I've been marked for
Speaker 1: trafficking and there's probably a man under my car right
Speaker 1: now waiting, and it's.
Speaker 2: Like, cool, why did he put the zip tie on
Speaker 2: there then?
Speaker 1: To remind himself obviously? Is it like parking enforcement when
Speaker 1: they chalk your tires, when they're like, oh, this person's
Speaker 1: been here for these two hours. Yeah, they're still there
Speaker 1: in that chalk's there, I'll know. But yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: very like it just it obscures like the real dangers.
Speaker 3: Because I think that was the really eye opening part
Speaker 3: of the episode, is even understanding how we're defining trafficked
Speaker 3: people and who they are, because most of the time
Speaker 3: it doesn't conform to the very like Liam Niesen based
Speaker 3: version taken version of like trafficking that people think of
Speaker 3: like you were snatched up violently in broad daylight and
Speaker 3: then sent off to some you name whatever.
Speaker 1: Specific horror appeals to the audience right to be.
Speaker 2: One of the thousands of women servicing thousands of clients
Speaker 2: at a massage parlor next to you palm stry place
Speaker 2: with three parking spots in front of it. And also
Speaker 2: it's like, you know, there's this great inflation of tragedy
Speaker 2: where it's like, do we care about people who've been
Speaker 2: victimized in like less extreme ways, like what about people?
Speaker 2: Because it And again this ties to the satanic panic
Speaker 2: where it feels like it becomes a way of obscuring
Speaker 2: the importance of trauma that happens on a more modest scale.
Speaker 2: Not that extreme cases don't exist, but they're more rare.
Speaker 1: Yes, we take real world tragedies that are mundane or
Speaker 1: are the things that people just don't want to think about,
Speaker 1: and we put movie tropes over them, like we put
Speaker 1: the movie tropes that like the warning the zip TI
Speaker 1: thing is a perfect example because it's like movie villains
Speaker 1: love to warn you before they do a thing. They
Speaker 1: like to be.
Speaker 6: Coming for you and then like disappeared just a lot
Speaker 6: a Danny Gonzalez video I was reminded of through a
Speaker 6: YouTube comment that force of literature I'm most familiar.
Speaker 2: With these days about I think about flat earthers, but
Speaker 2: some nature of conspiracy theories, where so many conspiracy theories
Speaker 2: hange on the idea that like there are these clues,
Speaker 2: there's this puzzle you're in, like a Michael Douglas in
Speaker 2: the game game and he's like, if the government was
Speaker 2: hiding something from you, then why would they leave clues
Speaker 2: to help you figure it out? Like why wouldn't they
Speaker 2: just not do that?
Speaker 1: Right? Because they're the snowman. They wanted to give you
Speaker 1: all the clues, mister policeman.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: That's that's how they get their sick kicks, is right.
Speaker 2: I guess. And these stories where it's like where you
Speaker 2: get to imagine yourself as the hero of a complicated
Speaker 2: game or Harry Potter and your letter is coming and
Speaker 2: it's just like you're just a person. Like there are
Speaker 2: a lot of conspiracies going on, but the thing is
Speaker 2: that the people who conspire tend to be doing it
Speaker 2: internal memos or out loud or in books that they publish.
Speaker 1: Yes, right, and just they have all the money and
Speaker 1: a big enough legal team that you can't point out
Speaker 1: and it's.
Speaker 2: Not a puzzle. They just say it because they don't
Speaker 2: really think there's anything wrong with what they're doing, or
Speaker 2: if they think that what they're doing is illegal, then
Speaker 2: they'll you know, still say it like Rudy Juliani.
Speaker 3: Right right, and it's be like, so what though, like.
Speaker 1: Everybody does that actually do think? Yeah.
Speaker 3: The other thing that really struck me too is just
Speaker 3: like the the way that especially things like human trafficking
Speaker 3: it's talked about, is like they talk about it is
Speaker 3: if it's this this gigantic thing that's happening, like hundreds
Speaker 3: of hundreds of thousands of people perhaps are being taken
Speaker 3: and trafficked.
Speaker 1: Or it happened to anyone, could have happened to anyone.
Speaker 2: But then it's the way to white women in their
Speaker 2: thirties who are beginning to feel less valued by society
Speaker 2: now that they're aging visibly. I personally think.
Speaker 1: The Stepford Wives episode, right.
Speaker 3: Or even like or even just like the idea of
Speaker 3: you know, like that they were like you know, certain teachers,
Speaker 3: there was information circulating around about be like how to
Speaker 3: identify if one of your students are being trafficked and
Speaker 3: it's like depressed?
Speaker 2: What if they're being abused by their very own parents?
Speaker 1: Right right, Yeah, we don't care about that. No, no, no trap.
Speaker 3: But that's what I mean, Like, that's it's always interesting
Speaker 3: to see because even that description was so bad. It
Speaker 3: was merely like even you brought up on the show.
Speaker 3: It's like you're describing a teenager.
Speaker 1: Like someone who's like becoming maybe a little more confrontational,
Speaker 1: maybe tired because they don't sleep, maybe like they do
Speaker 1: they have a bar code tattoo, Yeah, a bar code perhaps,
Speaker 1: Like come on, now, like there's not skew numbers like this,
Speaker 1: Now what movie is?
Speaker 2: You would just chip them? At this point That's what
Speaker 2: I do at my child trafficking concern. Of course, what
Speaker 2: everybody does now.
Speaker 3: Right, and so much of that is born out of
Speaker 3: just the way even these numbers are gathered. But then people,
Speaker 3: depending on what your perspective is, like, well, I don't
Speaker 3: want to go off what law enforcement said that there's
Speaker 3: maybe around five hundred cases. I'd rather go with the
Speaker 3: number that is by the thousands, where the reporting on
Speaker 3: that is not it's not accurate, and it's quite flawed.
Speaker 3: But again, for people who want to sort of pedal
Speaker 3: this sort of myth around it, it's very convenient to
Speaker 3: be like, well, look a look at this reporting. I mean, now,
Speaker 3: don't look too deep into how that is, because it
Speaker 3: can be a child that runs away multiple times and
Speaker 3: if a parent says I think they're being trafficked, that
Speaker 3: we can count that as like ten times. Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: ten traffickings. Yeah, that's ten takens.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I guess watched my own Private Idaho for the first
Speaker 2: time in a really long time, and it's, you know,
Speaker 2: such a kind of artifact of thirty years ago, but
Speaker 2: it's also you know, it's about young like teenage hustlers
Speaker 2: working in the Northwest, and there's a scene where some
Speaker 2: of them are telling, you know, these really horrifying stories
Speaker 2: of assaults that they've expect sperienced and what they've gone
Speaker 2: through at the hands of clients. But also you know
Speaker 2: that this is a picture of you know, this pretty
Speaker 2: you know, as far as I can tell, pretty realistic
Speaker 2: view of what it's like to be kind of on
Speaker 2: your own trying to make it in a world that's dangerous,
Speaker 2: but maybe is the only world that there can exist
Speaker 2: for you because you have no home to go back
Speaker 2: to or you were kicked out of it, or at
Speaker 2: home is still less safe than being out here, you know.
Speaker 2: And that's I think, so much more present of a
Speaker 2: danger and so much more real danger, yeah, than what
Speaker 2: we've been talking about as a conservative fantasy. But then
Speaker 2: it's like, again, that's a problem that directs our attention inwards,
Speaker 2: and so we love to make up a bigger problem
Speaker 2: outside to distract ourselves with.
Speaker 1: Right, right, trafficking is like that. The crimes of trafficking,
Speaker 1: the section abuse, the you know, being under the influence
Speaker 1: of somebody who is you know, exploiting you. Those things
Speaker 1: actually do happen. The numbers are not on par with
Speaker 1: like what the guy who made Sound Freedom might lead
Speaker 1: you to believe, but they do happen, and it's usually
Speaker 1: too like you mentioned, like queer youth who are kicked
Speaker 1: out of their homes, just people who are living in
Speaker 1: poverty and like need a place to sleep and are
Speaker 1: therefore like forced to do things that they don't want
Speaker 1: to to just like avoid being on the street and
Speaker 1: like having their lives put in danger. And but yeah,
Speaker 1: those are things that are endemic, systemic problems that people
Speaker 1: would rather not pay attention to. And so you get this,
Speaker 1: like it's really wild how there's not like the original
Speaker 1: like that the US, the world is such a big place,
Speaker 1: like you could you should be able to find an
Speaker 1: example of the thing that you want to happen, Like you.
Speaker 2: Can find examples of really weird versions. You can have
Speaker 2: anything you can think of. Someone is put in their
Speaker 2: rectum somewhere in this country.
Speaker 1: They have not come up with, like all they have
Speaker 1: is taken and now the sound of like they have
Speaker 1: Liam Neeson movies and the sound of freedom, like that's
Speaker 1: what they've got. They don't even have their like one
Speaker 1: news story that they've like just exploited to be like
Speaker 1: this happens all the time, because yeah, it's just there's
Speaker 1: so little there there.
Speaker 2: Right, there needs to be a ranking system, and this
Speaker 2: is like a level lower than like you know, crime
Speaker 2: like stranger danger kidnappings, which do occur, but just not
Speaker 2: on the scale that we ever said they did, and
Speaker 2: so therefore can be blown out of proportion and used
Speaker 2: to pass laws that chip away at the rights of defendants.
Speaker 2: But but yeah, we're we're now on on a lower tier,
Speaker 2: the tier if you will, where nothing is real.
Speaker 1: Yes, just the guys from w Liam Neeson.
Speaker 3: Like, from your perspective, do you think a lot of
Speaker 3: you know, pushing these kinds of like moral panics because
Speaker 3: like the are to do with trying to criminalize things
Speaker 3: that they don't want. But it's also because like in
Speaker 3: built with all of these moral panics, like we've just said,
Speaker 3: is like this just lack of desire to actually confront
Speaker 3: what these systemic forces are. And I guess by trying
Speaker 3: to solve it, then they just enact all kinds of
Speaker 3: like you know, criminal like just to try and criminalize
Speaker 3: as much shit as possible and that's the solution. What
Speaker 3: do you think the sort of balance is between like
Speaker 3: the agenda and just sort of the human sort of
Speaker 3: the human nature of not wanting to actually take on
Speaker 3: a problem at all, because it feels like they work
Speaker 3: so hand in hand with so many things that it
Speaker 3: feels like maybe they do start with something but being like, no,
Speaker 3: this is an issue, and then it turns and actually
Speaker 3: no immigrants are bad, and you're like whoa, whoa, Okay,
Speaker 3: well which one was it? And I know that some
Speaker 3: people are absolutely on the anti immigration thing, but a
Speaker 3: lot I think people get pulled in, probably because it's
Speaker 3: the don't want to confront the realities of what's going
Speaker 3: on side of the coin.
Speaker 2: Maybe yeah, yeah, And I think that there's I think something,
Speaker 2: you know, this kind of connects with the pro life movement,
Speaker 2: And as you've been saying, I think that something you know,
Speaker 2: the human trafficking panic, the satanic panic, a really strong
Speaker 2: moral panic, feels like it endures and it returns and
Speaker 2: it never really leaves us, partly because it comes from
Speaker 2: so many fronts, and also because it addresses some kind
Speaker 2: of real concern right because I think, you know, we
Speaker 2: saw such a huge takeoff in the summer of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty of you know, the claim that you can't put
Speaker 2: your kid in a mask because that's that makes it
Speaker 2: easier for the human traffickers. Do you remember that we
Speaker 2: were doing that for a while.
Speaker 1: It was like, you can't put.
Speaker 2: Your kid in a mask because God knows, you can't
Speaker 2: tell what your child looks like with their face covered.
Speaker 2: You don't like wash their clothes and do their hair right,
Speaker 2: and you know, and that felt to me, this at
Speaker 2: least was what I thought at the time and still
Speaker 2: think some kind of response to the fact that, like
Speaker 2: we understood that what was happening was really really bad
Speaker 2: for kids, you know, Like I was very very conservative,
Speaker 2: small c conservative, careful con conservative about you know. I
Speaker 2: didn't go into like a place of business for like
Speaker 2: a full year. I was extremely strict with myself in
Speaker 2: terms of COVID coutiousness, just because I knew that if
Speaker 2: I gave myself any parameter to screw up, I probably would.
Speaker 2: And I had sort of sensitive people in my orbit,
Speaker 2: I mean, immune system wise, so you know, just being
Speaker 2: fully on you know, that being my life at the time,
Speaker 2: I felt I still felt, as it's very reasonable to
Speaker 2: feel that like we were all being sort of broiled
Speaker 2: alive psychologically and there was nothing we could do about it,
Speaker 2: and that this was dangerous for children. And I think
Speaker 2: that the kind of the way the trafficking panic about
Speaker 2: children took root at that time, I think, and maybe
Speaker 2: this is charitable of me, but I don't think it's
Speaker 2: you know, it's not maybeing nice to say this. It's
Speaker 2: just kind of thinking about what would be on people's
Speaker 2: minds that like, if you want and also cynically, if
Speaker 2: you want to whip up a panic. You look at
Speaker 2: what are parents upset about. They know that something bad
Speaker 2: is going on in terms of their children's welfare, so
Speaker 2: you can invent something that they would rather be the
Speaker 2: bad thing going.
Speaker 1: On, right, Yeah, and just all that everybody's under a
Speaker 1: lot of emotional purmoil.
Speaker 2: We're not thinking critically right in those periods so much. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I certainly wasn't. But I think just ultimately the point
Speaker 2: that you land on in that episode is to kind
Speaker 2: of understand what is actually at stake and what is
Speaker 2: actually the intention of this concern over human trafficking, Like
Speaker 2: when they actually bust a quote unquote human trafficking ring,
Speaker 2: Like there's an example of a place that was providing,
Speaker 2: you know, services for sex workers in Seattle and it
Speaker 2: got busted, and you know, when they're criminalizing the people,
Speaker 2: they don't seem interested in taking care of the victim.
Speaker 2: They basically tell the victim like, you can go to
Speaker 2: jail for sex work, or you can like go to
Speaker 2: this shelter where we'll take away your phone and internet,
Speaker 2: you know, like a trafficker would like, you know, like
Speaker 2: we'll now we'll treat you like we are cleaning about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, it's and a lot of it. Like
Speaker 1: I mean, people should go listen to the episode. There's
Speaker 1: also some really you know that you're much more likely
Speaker 1: to be called out as a trafficker if you are
Speaker 1: part of like an interracial thing family these days, and
Speaker 1: that actually goes back to the what the intent of
Speaker 1: the original trafficking laws was were was like you know,
Speaker 1: anxiety over slavery ending and women's rights happening, and like
Speaker 1: they needed a way to make it against the law
Speaker 1: for interracial couples to date each other.
Speaker 2: And yeah, so and perceived advances in civil rights seem
Speaker 2: like a really important ingredient. Yes, for moral panics too, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, because what was that Like I think there
Speaker 3: was something that was that was in the episode is
Speaker 3: essentially that like around any kind of trafficking pipeline, it
Speaker 3: always led to some kind of anti immigration sentiment.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Like it was just sort.
Speaker 3: Of like that was like the that was the sort
Speaker 3: of sequence there, and I think just yet, yeah, with
Speaker 3: like so many things, like so many of these sort
Speaker 3: of moral panics, right, like whether it's the anti choice
Speaker 3: movement or human trafficking, like the rhetoric is so victim focused.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and but.
Speaker 3: Really you just but it really reveals itself how much
Speaker 3: the victims were merely just sort of the road to
Speaker 3: the criminalization of something, because at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: there's no one actually advocating for helping the victims in
Speaker 3: any meaningful way for all the people like, well, then yeah,
Speaker 3: how about adoption if that's a route without having to
Speaker 3: have an abortion, but we have we do fuck all
Speaker 3: in terms of creating a system that helps people, whether
Speaker 3: that's like a foster care system or making it easier
Speaker 3: to adopt. It just like it just falls apart. It's
Speaker 3: just sort of like, let me just chum the water
Speaker 3: with this first part. And then if you're really asking
Speaker 3: me to do the work, Oh no, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I'm not. It's not more about the end.
Speaker 2: It comes back to Shaws.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Sarah, what a pleasure having you. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for taking the time to gosh, where can people
Speaker 1: find you and follow you and all that good stuff?
Speaker 2: Ooh, you can find me at You are good And
Speaker 2: you're wrong about wherever you get your podcasts. I've always
Speaker 2: said I should start a podcast service called Wherever because
Speaker 2: I would get free advertising everywhere into the past and
Speaker 2: you can find me there. And also I live in
Speaker 2: Portland and I'm always looking for fun stuff to do.
Speaker 2: So if you have an event or a art thing
Speaker 2: or a fun I don't know you got a neat
Speaker 2: squash variety, let me know about it.
Speaker 1: There you go, And is there a work of media
Speaker 1: that you've been enjoying, either a tweet, anything from a
Speaker 1: tweet to a film.
Speaker 2: I'm so happy you asked, because I fell in love
Speaker 2: recently with I don't know if either of you remember this,
Speaker 2: but the web series Chris Fleming did like ten years ago, Gail.
Speaker 2: It's like forty episodes of it. There's a whole arc.
Speaker 2: Gail is the ultimate high strong mom from Massachusetts. I agree,
Speaker 2: an absolute genius. The Gail series got me through the
Speaker 2: darkest days of winter and there's an episode I think
Speaker 2: called The Dinner Party, Part two where Gail forces her
Speaker 2: a cappella troop to lip sync to Yannie Live at
Speaker 2: the Acropolis and it is still one of the funniest
Speaker 2: things I have ever seen in my whole life. And
Speaker 2: the Holy Spirit was in Chris Flemming that day. That's
Speaker 2: what I believed.
Speaker 1: Amazing miles. Where can people find you as their working
Speaker 1: media you've been enjoy it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, at Miles of Gray on Twitter and Instagram. Obviously
Speaker 3: you know about mad Boosties. You know about four to
Speaker 3: twenty day fiance find me there also, uh working media.
Speaker 1: Man. These Korean reality shows on Netflix, they get me
Speaker 1: all the time. There's a new season of the show
Speaker 1: Physical one hundred that's out that's like just about like
Speaker 1: I guess they just pick like one hundred fit people
Speaker 1: to do just like the wildest stuff. Like the first
Speaker 1: thing is like who can just run on it? Yeah?
Speaker 3: The first season is like who can just hang off
Speaker 3: this till their muscles give out? Or like in the
Speaker 3: second seed the second season, the first challenge they do
Speaker 3: to like start sorting people's like who's just gonna run
Speaker 3: so hard on these treadmills?
Speaker 1: Like yeah, just spread someone? Yeah Yeah. As someone who
Speaker 1: would never do that, I'm always like, Wow, I'm just
Speaker 1: fascinated by people who are just such physical specimens. And
Speaker 1: it's just a very interesting way to watch a competition
Speaker 1: reality show and learn some Korean along the way. Also,
Speaker 1: So yeah, watching amazing tweet I've been enjoying. Jason Smiley
Speaker 1: tweeted a picture of Lenny Kravitz looking shredded and said
Speaker 1: Lenny Kravitz turned sixty in a couple months, what's your excuse?
Speaker 1: And then honey, I am a guy and I shrunk.
Speaker 1: The kids on Twitter retweeted that and wrote, I don't
Speaker 1: understand was I supposed to kill him? What's your excuse?
Speaker 1: You can find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore Obrian.
Speaker 1: You can find us on Twitter at daily Zeikeeist. Read
Speaker 1: The Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram. We have Facebook fan page
Speaker 1: on a website, Daily zeikeist dot com. Wore you post
Speaker 1: our episodes and our foot note where we link off
Speaker 1: t information that we talked about in today's episode, as
Speaker 1: well as a song that we think you might enjoy. Miles,
Speaker 1: is there a song where you think people might.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a just some new Chromebin.
Speaker 1: I love Krumbin, I love the vibes. I like being
Speaker 1: dreamy out there. They're a great, great band. They have
Speaker 1: a new track called May ninth that's out that came out.
Speaker 3: Just this year. So check this out. This is May
Speaker 3: ninth from Chromebin.
Speaker 1: May the ninth be with you and all right, you
Speaker 1: will link off to that in the footnotes. The Daily's
Speaker 1: like as a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio Wrap, Apple podcast, or
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Speaker 1: you about fight by