Speaker 1: Hello the Internet, and welcome to season three, twenty nine,
Speaker 1: Episode four of Daily's Like Guys.
Speaker 2: Day production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: This is the podcast where we take a deep dive
Speaker 1: into America's shared consciousness. And it is Thursday, March fourteenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. That's pie Day.
Speaker 2: You got that? Wow?
Speaker 1: You don't have to. I don't even have three man,
Speaker 1: Why don't you bad on?
Speaker 2: That's that's all you get on your base? Holy shit? Man,
Speaker 2: tell them, I guess, tell them what everything else is? Man,
Speaker 2: because you know everything else?
Speaker 3: It's Oh, you're so smart? Is to read off this
Speaker 3: list every day? It's also National Write Down Your Story Day.
Speaker 3: I don't know why, National Children's Craft Day.
Speaker 2: Shout out to everybodying arts and crafts, National Learn about
Speaker 2: Butterflies Day, National Potato Chip Day, okay, and I guess
Speaker 2: also shout out to Saint Louis area because your area
Speaker 2: code is three one four, so maybe it's also National
Speaker 2: stl Day.
Speaker 4: Three one four.
Speaker 1: My name is Jack O'Brien aka Potato chip Obrian, oh.
Speaker 1: In honor of our national day here and I'm thrilled
Speaker 1: to be joined as always by my co host, mister
Speaker 1: Miles Gray.
Speaker 5: Miles Gray aka Whoa definitely just wanted to brag about
Speaker 5: how my mom is.
Speaker 2: Still breathing now.
Speaker 1: Whoa.
Speaker 2: It was always my intention to brag about how my
Speaker 2: loved one still breathing right now. But God, does it
Speaker 2: feel so good that I wrote red row on the
Speaker 2: mirror they breathed on. And if you could, then you
Speaker 2: know you would anxiously check on your loved ones hell
Speaker 2: check on their hell. Shout out. I am a person
Speaker 2: on the discord. Shout out you for picking up on
Speaker 2: my childhood anxiety of just checking in on my mom
Speaker 2: if she was breathing, even though creeper of the fuck out,
Speaker 2: just have to know as a curious Fields just got
Speaker 2: to check in on the parents and they're breathing. So yeah,
Speaker 2: and wow, it's been a while. Submit it will belt
Speaker 2: out misery business by Paramore, So thank you. It was beautiful.
Speaker 1: Uh well, Miles, we are thrilled to be joined in
Speaker 1: our third seat by the best author of books like
Speaker 1: John Dies at the End Zoe. He punches the future
Speaker 1: and the dick and we got a new one, got
Speaker 1: a new Chiese, or at least as the first not
Speaker 1: part you know, original unrelated to a previous franchise novel
Speaker 1: he's dropped in a while. It's called I'm Starting to
Speaker 1: Worry about This Black Box of Doom. It's available for
Speaker 1: pre order right now, so anywhere you want to go
Speaker 1: preorder it, go do that right now. And he's also
Speaker 1: one of the hosts of the podcast Big Feats, which,
Speaker 1: if I'm reading this New Yorker profile correctly, is quote
Speaker 1: the only Mountain Monsters podcast officially endorsed by Big Feet.
Speaker 1: He's my former coworker at crack dot Com and co
Speaker 1: creator of the Cracked podcast. Welcome back to the show, Jason.
Speaker 4: Parjo, and congratulations on getting renewed for a three ninth season.
Speaker 1: It's every time. It's so nerve wracking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of people count on us, and so
Speaker 2: every time we always hear on a Friday night whether
Speaker 2: or not we get the thumbs up with them now
Speaker 2: and it's amazing.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 4: So many shows start to go downhill after the three
Speaker 4: hundred season, but it's cool now. This is there's so
Speaker 4: much there's so much juice left to squeeze from.
Speaker 2: Some say we're just starting to, you know, catch our
Speaker 2: stride scribe Yeah, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, most most say we fell the fuck off at
Speaker 1: three hundred, They were like, wow, yeah, are you guys
Speaker 1: even trying anymore? Like?
Speaker 2: What is this? Season nine of.
Speaker 1: The Simpsons come on? Season nine is still good? I
Speaker 1: like them well into the teens, to.
Speaker 2: Be honest, that's fine. I'm one of those. I'm rigid.
Speaker 2: I'm not that I don't like it, but my my
Speaker 2: fondest memories end around for sure. But not to say
Speaker 2: that there aren't good ones after nine, but you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: it is what it is.
Speaker 1: Jason, how are you doing? Where are you coming to
Speaker 1: us from?
Speaker 4: I am coming to you from an unnamed city in
Speaker 4: Tennessee somebody who has to try to find me. You've
Speaker 4: got the entire state. I could be anywhere. Yes, it
Speaker 4: is extremely easy to find out if you wanted to.
Speaker 4: But if you're coming after me, you will have to
Speaker 4: take the extra forty to fifty seconds.
Speaker 2: I mean, you did give us a hint earlier by
Speaker 2: saying that there was a gas station where you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was actually looking for Google Maps coordinates, but
Speaker 1: definitely we're not going to get that.
Speaker 2: Google Jack kept consuming in on Google Maps, like, damn,
Speaker 2: which one of them? Could you think? Which one? Do
Speaker 2: you think? It? So many gas stations amazing.
Speaker 1: Well, tell us a little bit. What was the new
Speaker 1: book about. I'm hearing it maybe about a black box
Speaker 1: of doom.
Speaker 4: There is a guy who drives for a lift, and
Speaker 4: he pulls up outside of LA to find a woman
Speaker 4: sitting on a big black box, one big enough that
Speaker 4: a person could fit inside of it. In theory, she says,
Speaker 4: I will offer you two hundred thousand dollars in cash
Speaker 4: to drive me and this box to Washington, DC, across
Speaker 4: the country. Wow, she says Derek. Conditions one, you cannot
Speaker 4: look in the box. You cannot ask me what's in
Speaker 4: the box. You cannot ask me anything about myself. You
Speaker 4: cannot tell anyone you're doing this. You must leave behind
Speaker 4: your phone and any devices that can be tracked. We
Speaker 4: will pay with cash, we will navigate with a map.
Speaker 4: And also you have to leave right now because I'm
Speaker 4: in a hurry. That is to set up and then
Speaker 4: that starts going off the rails. On about page.
Speaker 1: Three you have read, see that seems like just a
Speaker 1: fairly straightforward ask to me. See, I see nothing foreboding
Speaker 1: about that. That all seems pretty straightforward.
Speaker 2: And it's like the nature of most jobs on some
Speaker 2: level where they're like, look, don't ask what you're doing here?
Speaker 2: Who is enriching? Just come on, just here's money, here's
Speaker 2: health insurance.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I created a little video on TikTok to promote this,
Speaker 4: basically offering this, like would you do this? Because it's
Speaker 4: clearly shady, Like clearly this is not, you know, a
Speaker 4: box of you know, somebody's encyclopedia collection and there's something
Speaker 4: weird going on here? Would you do it? And obviously
Speaker 4: there was a thousand comments of people saying I would
Speaker 4: do it for two hundred dollars? What are you talking about?
Speaker 1: Why you got two hundred on you? Man? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so what the box is full of heroin or
Speaker 4: severed heads? I don't care two hundred thousand dollars. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I'll pick you up right now. Man, where are you?
Speaker 4: What's the worst case that could happen? I could I
Speaker 4: could die? Well that I don't have to pay my
Speaker 4: bills anymore? When when we all have our own calculus?
Speaker 2: Yeah for sure, that's right.
Speaker 1: All right, Jason, we're going to get to know you
Speaker 1: a little bit better in a moment. First, we're going
Speaker 1: to tell our listeners a couple of the things we're
Speaker 1: talking about today. Yesterday the House passed a bill to
Speaker 1: ban or force the sale of TikTok. Still has to
Speaker 1: go through the Senate, but it is I don't know,
Speaker 1: it feels pretty dramatic, feels I don't know. I guess.
Speaker 1: I guess We've known this was in the works for
Speaker 1: a little while, but it just feels like a new
Speaker 1: a thing we haven't seen in the US government do
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm wrong about it, but feels like a new
Speaker 1: level of just putting their hand on the scale. So
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that. We might talk about rats getting
Speaker 1: high thanks to New Orleans cops, all of that, plenty more.
Speaker 1: But first, Jason Pargen, we do like to ask our guests,
Speaker 1: what is something from your search history that is revealing
Speaker 1: about who you are?
Speaker 4: Kate Middleton, fake photo explained.
Speaker 1: And I like the little side that came first.
Speaker 4: Well, this explains who I am. Because a lot of
Speaker 4: viral stories like this where something where a huge chunk
Speaker 4: of the internet social media is obsessed with it. I'm
Speaker 4: always a little bit behind the curve. I'm never right
Speaker 4: on the cusp, on the cutting edge of knowing like
Speaker 4: each step, I'm always the guy who has to finally
Speaker 4: sigh and then.
Speaker 2: Go to Google.
Speaker 4: Let's say, okay, who is this person? And the answer
Speaker 4: surprisingly difficult to figure out because you instantly plunges into
Speaker 4: a whole history of British tabloid stuff about the royal
Speaker 4: family and all of these side the scandals and stories
Speaker 4: that I was unaware of, like the fact that I
Speaker 4: guess Kate Milton's not been seeing that public since before Christmas.
Speaker 4: I'm sure you have covered the story, but I was
Speaker 4: totally unaware of all of it, and I still, after
Speaker 4: having spent an hour reading about it, am still mostly
Speaker 4: unaware of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's mostly questions at this point. It's it is intriguing.
Speaker 1: I gotta say, like, I don't blame the Internet for
Speaker 1: this one. It's it's a really weird story, like the
Speaker 1: level that I think unless these are like bullshit images
Speaker 1: Like some of the like zoomed in images of the
Speaker 1: photoshop work that like clue people into the fact that
Speaker 1: the image was manipulated were like pretty bad. They were
Speaker 1: like if you asked me to photoshop it in like
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes, Like there was just weird like things that
Speaker 1: they had and it looked like they hadn't quite finished it,
Speaker 1: which you know, you for for the royal family, you
Speaker 1: would expect that they'd be up to the task of
Speaker 1: right of a good configure.
Speaker 2: Creating like state propaganda. You'd be like, come on, man, like,
Speaker 2: let's let's fucking dial in the fucking photoshop here. Yeah.
Speaker 4: But the question that I wanted to know is what
Speaker 4: do they think has happened? Because they're not they're not
Speaker 4: asserting that she's dead, and that they're trying to cover
Speaker 4: up the fact that she's dead by releasing a fake
Speaker 4: photo of her with the family. So want is want
Speaker 4: is the thing they're trying to cover up that because
Speaker 4: the story was that she had become ill with some
Speaker 4: sort of illness before Christmas and just had been out
Speaker 4: of the public spotlight because she wasn't feeling well. But
Speaker 4: they're saying, well, but they're actually covering up and then
Speaker 4: trying to figure out what.
Speaker 2: What they think what is the cover up?
Speaker 4: Did she in reality has what become disfigured somehow, or
Speaker 4: that she looks just really bad or.
Speaker 1: She had the joker face thing from the original Tim
Speaker 1: Burton's Batman where faces all white now and they haven't
Speaker 1: been they haven't nailed the makeup down quite yet, and.
Speaker 4: So fell into a that of chemicals.
Speaker 1: That of green bubbling chemicals. Yeah, would be my best walk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess England is lousy with those things. Just factories
Speaker 1: full of catwalks and green bubbling that.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's I think that's what's weird is because
Speaker 2: like the why I'm there isn't anything that feels like right,
Speaker 2: you know, we're like, oh, I see why they would
Speaker 2: want to do that. I'm still just like what what
Speaker 2: what what? What are you alleging? Though? I don't know,
Speaker 2: but it's just again with all the sloppy shit that's
Speaker 2: been going around, You're like, I don't know, man, maybe
Speaker 2: they're just really bad at communicating and then just making
Speaker 2: things worse when it's really pretty innocuous. Probably, yeah, Or
Speaker 2: it could be the story of the fucking century. We
Speaker 2: don't throw That's what's so weird. It's either like who
Speaker 2: gives a fuck or the story of the century. So
Speaker 2: that's why it allows anybody to weigh in with something
Speaker 2: and be like, oh, yeah, maybe be that. Yeah, maybe
Speaker 2: it was a joker situation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does. It does. Like the allegations and insinuations
Speaker 1: don't totally line up, you know, with like they'll be like, well,
Speaker 1: you know Will was cheating on her, and here's what
Speaker 1: we know about his mistress. And it's like, oh, so
Speaker 1: what does that have to do with her not being
Speaker 1: able to appear in a picture?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 6: What?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Sure, I don't know. Again, it could be totally inoculous, innocuous,
Speaker 2: or the story of the century. Yeah, I'd rather just
Speaker 2: be innocuous. We got enough. We got enough, We got
Speaker 2: enough tables right now here in twenty twenty fourth, right,
Speaker 2: we got to deal with Jason.
Speaker 1: What's something you think is underrated.
Speaker 4: Third party presidential candidates this year? Not that they're going
Speaker 4: to win that Robert Kennedy Junior, not that he's gonna
Speaker 4: he's not going to be president, but you think they
Speaker 4: should win.
Speaker 1: You're saying, But for.
Speaker 4: Example, I hit Twitter yesterday that one of his short
Speaker 4: lists for VP candidates says quarterback Aaron Rodgers, Wow of
Speaker 4: the New York Chet. That is not a joke. That
Speaker 4: was a story that came about that he is one
Speaker 4: of the people he's considering adding as a running mate,
Speaker 4: and right now he's pulling between like nine and twelve
Speaker 4: percent at Robert Kennedy Jr.
Speaker 2: That is not Aaron.
Speaker 4: Rodgers that's super high for a third party candidate in
Speaker 4: the United States. Now, traditionally, by election day, most of
Speaker 4: that support melts away because people don't want to throw
Speaker 4: away their vote because our system is specifically set up
Speaker 4: so that only two people can run and anyone else
Speaker 4: there just wasting their time. But if he gets only
Speaker 4: let's say four percent, that is more than enough to
Speaker 4: throw the election one way or the other. Because if
Speaker 4: you say, of whatever, Harver many million votes, that is,
Speaker 4: if maybe twenty percent of those people would not otherwise
Speaker 4: have voted. Of that remaining eighty percent, if they break,
Speaker 4: say forty seven to fifty three toward Trump, as in
Speaker 4: that's who they would have voted for otherwise, that flips
Speaker 4: the election. Because again, all of our residential elections come
Speaker 4: down to like twenty thousand votes in three swing stakes, right,
Speaker 4: you don't have to flip that many votes. So there's
Speaker 4: not a ton of coverage of Robert Kennedy Junior, though
Speaker 4: he's very popular on social media because it is mostly
Speaker 4: just a site show and he's big into the anti
Speaker 4: vax stuff and conspiracy stuff. But I think people are
Speaker 4: badly underrating how much this election is going to come
Speaker 4: down to. How much those third parties peel way, because
Speaker 4: these are two historically unpopular candidates, their pool of disgusted
Speaker 4: voters is probably literally all time high, right, Yeah, I
Speaker 4: guess it's just we don't know which way it will go.
Speaker 4: So it's just this kind of free radical kind of
Speaker 4: variable that's out there, and we're like, man, that's gonna
Speaker 4: fuck shit up, and we don't know exactly how at all.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean he's like,
Speaker 2: he's like, I'm not going to be a spoiler or whatever.
Speaker 2: I mean like that, but it may be if intent
Speaker 2: is that or not. The fact remains, like to Jason's point,
Speaker 2: there are a lot of people who are like, man,
Speaker 2: fucking neither of these two guys, And yeah, how will
Speaker 2: that break down? Because already you're seeing people already begin
Speaker 2: to like protest vote, whether that's to vote uncommitted like
Speaker 2: in a primary, and what that appeal looks like again
Speaker 2: in November.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this would not be unprecedented, Like a lot
Speaker 1: of people think that Bill Clinton, the reason that he
Speaker 1: ever became president of the first place was because Ross
Speaker 1: Perrot was a third party candidate who took a bunch
Speaker 1: of the Republican vote away from George Bush won.
Speaker 4: So Culinton won with forty three percent of the vote. Yeah,
Speaker 4: like that changed the course of American history. He won
Speaker 4: with forty three percent. But of the three, you know,
Speaker 4: obviously the three candidates, that was the most because Ross
Speaker 4: Parrot peeled off. It was a bunch, but it was
Speaker 4: like fifteen percent or something, and it is It is
Speaker 4: extremely difficult to poll where that that support is coming from,
Speaker 4: because if you do a poll, that's just it's just
Speaker 4: between the two candidates. You don't let people pick, you know,
Speaker 4: a third party, you get a decent chunk of I
Speaker 4: think it's like twelve percent saying either neither or undecided.
Speaker 4: It's a very high number, sure, but it's extremely difficult
Speaker 4: to discern of those people who would come out for
Speaker 4: a third party again, how many of them if like
Speaker 4: if RFK dropped out, how many of them just wouldn't
Speaker 4: vote versus okay, well I'll go with Trump or okay,
Speaker 4: I'll go with Biden. It is extremely difficult to pull.
Speaker 4: It's difficult to know this, and I suspect that on
Speaker 4: election night in November, we are not even then, we
Speaker 4: are honestly not going to know who's going to win.
Speaker 4: And this will be a big reason why because of
Speaker 4: the high number of voters who just hate both candidates
Speaker 4: and trying to figure out how they're going to behave
Speaker 4: Will they stay home or vote for somebody else, or
Speaker 4: hold their nose and vote for whatever candidate they think.
Speaker 2: Is least bad, right, Yeah, it'll be Yeah. Because the
Speaker 2: other thing too is, like you see, with a lot
Speaker 2: of people who even they pull about RFK, not many
Speaker 2: people know all of his positions. But then again, people
Speaker 2: even like that, we're not even sure how much that's
Speaker 2: gonna affect thing once they learn of what his positions are,
Speaker 2: because like in some polls it's like sixteen percent of
Speaker 2: Republicans will vote RFK, eighteen percent of Democrats would do it.
Speaker 2: Others it's kind of like inverted. So yeah, it's a
Speaker 2: truly u We just don't know.
Speaker 1: Oh RFK junior junior. Oh shit, that changes. It was
Speaker 1: way off.
Speaker 2: I thought RFK came back because that would be fucking
Speaker 2: that would that guy had some.
Speaker 1: Riz as the kids call it. Yeah, it's funny. And
Speaker 1: even in the FU into the future, if this ends
Speaker 1: up swinging things to a pretty drastic degree, it will
Speaker 1: probably be written out of it. The way that the
Speaker 1: Ross pro thing, you know, it's the way that we
Speaker 1: like to think about history is with a single protagonist
Speaker 1: and it's like, well they won because they were the
Speaker 1: talented politician, and you just kind of write out the
Speaker 1: third place person who you know, So even even if
Speaker 1: he swings it and as the spoiler, I feel like
Speaker 1: that that won't be the story that we all get.
Speaker 2: Aaron, It's just is the truth? Is you about to
Speaker 2: say it's just.
Speaker 1: My favorite politician quarterback? No, it's just so funny to me.
Speaker 1: Like I was reminded recently how hard he was lobbying
Speaker 1: to take over for Alex Trebek after Alex Trebek like
Speaker 1: announced that he'd be stepping down from Jeopardy, And it
Speaker 1: just like hit me a second time, how weird that is,
Speaker 1: Like what like what did he think? Why how does
Speaker 1: he think we view him? And again this is this
Speaker 1: is interesting, Like he's not going to be the one
Speaker 1: who says no to being the vice presidential candidate, right
Speaker 1: He's He's like, I mean, yeah, I should, I should
Speaker 1: probably be running for president, but I guess i'll I'll
Speaker 1: be your view for too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Like for the listeners who are not sports fans,
Speaker 4: Aaron Rodgers is currently the starting quarterback for the New
Speaker 4: York Jets. He's not a retired athlete, he's under contract.
Speaker 4: The Jets are very much depending on him to be
Speaker 4: their starter on opening day when the football season comes
Speaker 4: around in September. So the question of could he serve
Speaker 4: that role while also being on the presidential ticket, knowing
Speaker 4: that if if, if you know, his team were to win,
Speaker 4: as in his you know, if RFK were to somehow
Speaker 4: win the election, that Aaron Rodgers would miss the playoffs
Speaker 4: because he would have to assume the United Yates. He
Speaker 4: would be out that that week when the Jets are
Speaker 4: in the you know, the AFC Championship game or whatever,
Speaker 4: like their starting quarterback would be out for the inauguration.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and and then his O line is all secret service.
Speaker 2: It could be all very interesting, very interesting.
Speaker 1: They he would have to be forced to recuse himself
Speaker 1: from one of the roles, Like I feel like he'd
Speaker 1: be like, no, dude, I could I could do both?
Speaker 2: Be so funny. He just fuck so he's like he's like,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, dude, I'm not gonna be VP. Dude, I
Speaker 2: got to play football man.
Speaker 1: People who are really successful in one place just gained
Speaker 1: this outsized confidence that they're good at this, like everything,
Speaker 1: everything because they're surrounded by people, especially in this country,
Speaker 1: who will tell them repeatedly that they're good at everything.
Speaker 1: And this might he might be on the verge of
Speaker 1: being like the greatest textbook case of that ever. Like
Speaker 1: guy throws a beautiful ball. But don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: guy throws one of the most beautiful balls I've ever
Speaker 1: seen that last time. I don't think that was one
Speaker 1: of the things that I mentioned a lot in the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty election. Who threw a more beautiful ball?
Speaker 2: Who could throw a tighter spiral?
Speaker 1: Tighter spiral?
Speaker 5: God, Although I feel like we're fucking I feel like
Speaker 5: we're headed there, like the White House is going to
Speaker 5: be Like just so you guys know, should like shout
Speaker 5: out at Joe Biden on TikTok for fucking launching this
Speaker 5: pig skin through a fucking tire the tightest spiral, Folks,
Speaker 5: he's doing it.
Speaker 2: You don't trust this America.
Speaker 1: I mean I have like talked about doing like push
Speaker 1: up contests or like fighting each other, So we're not
Speaker 1: that far off. Jason, what's something you think is overrated?
Speaker 4: Any kind of presidential poll that occurs in March. We
Speaker 4: just referenced the fact that not many people seem to
Speaker 4: know anything about RFK Junior. They're just kind of selecting
Speaker 4: him as the other candidate, and that if you actually
Speaker 4: ask people specific things that's going on, they generally don't know.
Speaker 4: Most people are not paying attention. I think most people
Speaker 4: listening to this show probably are. But the electorate in general,
Speaker 4: you don't see huge swings in the polls unless there's
Speaker 4: something like a big spike in inflation or some sort
Speaker 4: of you know, a new war breaks out or something
Speaker 4: like that. But in terms of the way people on
Speaker 4: social media ruin their mental health by obsessively watching. You know,
Speaker 4: there's another poll that came out today. They had Trump
Speaker 4: up by three Oh my god. Last week there was
Speaker 4: one that had Biden up by a couple.
Speaker 1: That's all just toise.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's going to be noise until the fall,
Speaker 4: and because one pulling has become extremely difficult in the
Speaker 4: Trump era. As we've learned, he tends to. He has
Speaker 4: outperformed his polls in both of the presidential elections by
Speaker 4: a few points.
Speaker 1: So far.
Speaker 4: In the primaries, he has drastically underperformed his polls in
Speaker 4: the Republican primary. As for why that is, nobody knows
Speaker 4: even to this day. All they know is that Trump's
Speaker 4: support is extremely difficult to pull. So I am telling
Speaker 4: you right now, I'm going to make a prediction, assuming
Speaker 4: both of these guys are still alive in November, when
Speaker 4: it comes to day election day, we are not going
Speaker 4: to know who truly is up, because somebody in the
Speaker 4: polls is going to be up like three or four points,
Speaker 4: and that's not going to mean anything because these days,
Speaker 4: any when it's a non Trump election, you can get
Speaker 4: a pretty decent idea. But Trump draws so many non
Speaker 4: typical voters and people who otherwise they only vote when
Speaker 4: Trump's involved, that it is extremely hard to tell what's
Speaker 4: going on, and we're simply not going to know.
Speaker 1: You were pointing out something on TikTok. Also, that's interesting
Speaker 1: that I hadn't fully appreciated or like kind of run
Speaker 1: the tape forward through this scenario. But if Trump is
Speaker 1: like in the midst of a trial at that point,
Speaker 1: like he's you know, and it's looking like he's going
Speaker 1: to go to jail, the election becomes his voters voting
Speaker 1: to like free him, basically.
Speaker 4: And like Trump Trump is fundraising on that idea. He
Speaker 4: is fundraising if I lose, I will have to go
Speaker 4: to jail. You are coming to So I try to
Speaker 4: explain to people, like, imagine if when Trump had taken office,
Speaker 4: because again, his supporters see these as all fake charges,
Speaker 4: right they're not, but that's how they see. Imagine if
Speaker 4: when Trump took office, he immediately like launched a phony
Speaker 4: investigation into Barack Obama. And now it's like, if Trump
Speaker 4: gets an office, He's going to put Barack Obama in jail.
Speaker 4: And that's what was at stake, Like this guy, you
Speaker 4: have good feelings about the idea of him having to
Speaker 4: go to prison if the evil other team like the
Speaker 4: idea of what that would do for turnout or whatever.
Speaker 4: And this is the thing about that Supreme Court ruling
Speaker 4: that delayed the case, because again I know it was
Speaker 4: Trump's side that wants to delay this because you know,
Speaker 4: obviously the people doing the prosecution say, the voters kind
Speaker 4: of need to know before they vote whether or not
Speaker 4: Trump has been guilty of something and if he's about
Speaker 4: to go to jail. And Trump's team is trying to
Speaker 4: push the results until after the election because if he
Speaker 4: becomes president, he can simply dismiss the prosecutors and replace
Speaker 4: him with somebody who agrees to drop the charges, so
Speaker 4: he can make the charges go away if he takes office.
Speaker 4: So the Supreme Court successfully pushed probably the finished date
Speaker 4: of these trials past election day. But I don't know
Speaker 4: that they did him a favor because the current schedule
Speaker 4: now probably has the trials going on during election day,
Speaker 4: like they will be giving testimony and evidence about Trump
Speaker 4: trying to overthrow the twenty twenty election, and then they're
Speaker 4: gonna pause so that we can go vote whether or
Speaker 4: not he should be president, and then the trial will
Speaker 4: resume after election day. That is a truly crazy situation.
Speaker 4: And I don't know. I would have to think it
Speaker 4: would hurt him because that's all of the news will
Speaker 4: be negative and all this negative testimony and people testify
Speaker 4: it against him. But yeah, then we also people will
Speaker 4: be super motivated.
Speaker 2: Right, and we don't know if the DOJ will stick
Speaker 2: to their guns on there. We're not gonna do anything
Speaker 2: that could be seen as political sixty days out from
Speaker 2: an election, even though they did that with Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 2: That's a thing that could potentially be like, well, I
Speaker 2: don't know. We'll see how they decide to enforce that
Speaker 2: policy or not. But i'd imagine I mean, given what's
Speaker 2: at stake, they maybe internally they'll be pressured to be like, no,
Speaker 2: we have to we have to do this. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's hard to tell.
Speaker 1: Maybe.
Speaker 4: I mean. The whole thing is, this has never happened before.
Speaker 4: Nothing remotely like this has ever happened for There's no
Speaker 4: precedent or procedure or protocol to fall back on. This
Speaker 4: has never come up. So people asked the question like, well,
Speaker 4: if he goes to prison, can he still be president?
Speaker 4: But as far as we know, it's never come up before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that would just be funny, like a counter
Speaker 2: campaign where like Barack Obama goes out there he's like, hey, man,
Speaker 2: if Trump wins, he's gonna put me in jail. Vote Biden,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, Like just be like, oh,
Speaker 2: we everybody can play this game.
Speaker 1: Bright.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: To me, clear, that is Trump's whole deal. This whole
Speaker 4: deal is, this is the revenge presidency. This is where
Speaker 4: I will get retribution on everyone who tried to to
Speaker 4: harm you when I was an officer in the four
Speaker 4: years sent So yeah, that's not that's not too far off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let me be the vessel for your revenge. Because yeah,
Speaker 2: even at all his rallies, he's like, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: I'm being prosecuted for you, for all of you. That's
Speaker 2: that's what I'm doing this for. And yeah, he's really
Speaker 2: anchoring that into the sort of I am the sacrificial lamb. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I realized he was underperforming in the primary. That's
Speaker 1: Is it just this primary or has he traditionally.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all the prime because he's not running unopposed, like
Speaker 4: he has crushed Nikki Haley, and he has crushed but
Speaker 4: each time the margin is like ten points lower than what.
Speaker 1: The polls showed.
Speaker 4: So if you had a poll that showed that Nikki
Speaker 4: Haley or Desantras or whoever was in the race against
Speaker 4: him before they all dropped out, where they were only
Speaker 4: taking twenty percent of the vote, in the final toll,
Speaker 4: they were taking thirty two percent, So either a lot
Speaker 4: of Trump voters were staying home or again, pulling keeps
Speaker 4: getting more difficult over time. Pulling methods keep having to
Speaker 4: evolve because so many people don't answer the phone. It's
Speaker 4: it's a whole deal. That's actually a really fascinating science.
Speaker 4: And it's not that the polls are meaningless. They still
Speaker 4: give you an indication of what's of what's going to happen.
Speaker 4: It's just that when the elections are all less close,
Speaker 4: and all of our presidential elections are razor close, pulling
Speaker 4: at this point is not accurate enough now to tell
Speaker 4: you one way or the other. It all comes down
Speaker 4: to turnout. And as we mentioned, like history changed in
Speaker 4: twenty sixteen, that the direction of the United States, the
Speaker 4: makeup of Supreme Court pivoted radically on like fifty thousand
Speaker 4: votes in a couple of states, Like it was enough
Speaker 4: people to fit in a small NFL stadium, Like that's
Speaker 4: how many people, you know, as we had we probably
Speaker 4: mentioned a previous podcast, if you had had bad weather
Speaker 4: in one major city, it would have suppressed turnout by
Speaker 4: you know, a few thousand votes that could have pivoted
Speaker 4: the election. Like that's how that's how close history becomes.
Speaker 4: And as you mentioned, in the future, we never acknowledge that.
Speaker 4: It's just like, well, you know, there's a sea change
Speaker 4: and all this this grassroots support of Trump and the
Speaker 4: country pivoted. It's like, no, if you flipped, if you
Speaker 4: re ran that election twenty times. I don't know, maybe
Speaker 4: thirteen times Hillary wins and Trump wins seven times. That
Speaker 4: it just this is the way it fell. But it
Speaker 4: was a true coin toss and it will probably be yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: All right, Well that's terrifying. Let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: and we'll come back and talk about the House bill
Speaker 1: to force the sale of TikTok and work back. We're back,
Speaker 1: And I mean, I guess you know, Jason, as we've
Speaker 1: talked about on past appearances on this show, you kind
Speaker 1: of became I wouldn't say accidentally famous, but like unexpectedly
Speaker 1: like TikTok famous, And so I just want to like say,
Speaker 1: up top, do you feel personally attacked by this bill?
Speaker 1: Like do you think they're trying to keep a lid
Speaker 1: on some of your more viral TikTok's, like the one
Speaker 1: with the lizard wearing the hat er. There's that one.
Speaker 1: It wasn't from you originally, but you recently shared on
Speaker 1: Twitter where a guy does a high kick, his friend
Speaker 1: catches his leg up there, and then his other friend
Speaker 1: comes up to him with a boxing glove and like
Speaker 1: punches him in the butt over and over again. But
Speaker 1: then it becomes clear that the butt punches are part
Speaker 1: of the workout, and there and then he like they're
Speaker 1: like one, two, three, four, like ten butt punches. And
Speaker 1: then he drops his leg and like slaps his own
Speaker 1: butt like, ah, I'm the best at taking a butt punch.
Speaker 4: Oh no, it was not ten butt punches. He punches
Speaker 4: them in the butt like fifty five times. It goes
Speaker 4: on for a very long time.
Speaker 1: Do you think the whole point of video they want
Speaker 1: to keep a lid on.
Speaker 4: That there's zero context for. That's the joy of TikTok.
Speaker 4: Sometimes you've got to clip and because they're speaking in
Speaker 4: out of the language, and it's who is this guy?
Speaker 2: What is he doing?
Speaker 4: Why are they doing this? You don't know, you don't
Speaker 4: want to know. It's just a few seconds of a
Speaker 4: guy getting punched in the butt for a very long time.
Speaker 4: Then he screams at the camera and cuts and now's
Speaker 4: time for the next video. But yeah, this would have
Speaker 4: a huge impact on my life. I'm not unbiased here.
Speaker 4: I have four one hundred and twenty five thousand followers
Speaker 4: on tech tik. There you go, and I that is
Speaker 4: this has revitalized my author career. I sell a lot
Speaker 4: of books on tech talk. A whole generation of kids
Speaker 4: who would not have cared about me and have no
Speaker 4: memory of the heyday of Cracked or any of that,
Speaker 4: are finding out about my books on there. So this
Speaker 4: is something that is personal to me that it's also
Speaker 4: there's one hundred and seventy million TikTok users in the
Speaker 4: United States. Yeah, this is not a trivial It's not
Speaker 4: a niche thing they're trying to ban. This's not a
Speaker 4: niche product. This is like if they tried to ban
Speaker 4: I don't know, Starbucks, you know from you say, I'm saying,
Speaker 4: like the size of the customer base, what other business
Speaker 4: could you even compare to if they if they tried
Speaker 4: to ban Toyota cars from being sold. Are there one
Speaker 4: hundred and seventy million Toyota cars in the United States? Like,
Speaker 4: it's hard to think of a comparison about the scale
Speaker 4: of what they're of what they're trying.
Speaker 1: To do here, right, And Toyotas would have to be
Speaker 1: like the most popular car and like qualitatively different than
Speaker 1: every other car, like in a way that people that
Speaker 1: is like really popular with young people. It Yeah, it.
Speaker 2: Feels like everyone who uses Disney plus basically yeah, brown,
Speaker 2: but even then, that's that's yeah, it's still.
Speaker 4: Does Disney Plus even have one hundred and seventy million subscribers.
Speaker 2: It's maybe good at their peak, at their peak one
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty four million, Yeah, that's worldwea, that's worldwide.
Speaker 2: So yeah, h it's like hard to even fathom like
Speaker 2: what that really looks like.
Speaker 4: But for example, five million of those accounts are businesses.
Speaker 4: I mean, every every business has a TikTok you have
Speaker 4: to buy. You know, every every restaurant in bakery and
Speaker 4: law firm and everything, they're all on TikTok. So it's
Speaker 4: not just it's not just a bunch of the way
Speaker 4: they talk about the headlines. They'll kind of talk like, well,
Speaker 4: it's after a bunch of kids use you know, a
Speaker 4: bunch of bunch of thirteen year olds will be mad.
Speaker 4: It's like, you're not understanding how many people advertise on
Speaker 4: TikTok or use it to promote their work, or.
Speaker 2: If you're on there, you'll see many people who are
Speaker 2: above voting age that are using TikTok.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, I mean I'm extremely old. I'm one of the
Speaker 4: oldest people on the planet. So but this overwhelmingly past
Speaker 4: the House and people don't know. So this now has
Speaker 4: to go to the Senate. The Senate doesn't seem as
Speaker 4: excited about taking up but Joe Biden made the step
Speaker 4: of saying, if it comes to my desk, I will
Speaker 4: approve it, that they will not be a view to
Speaker 4: I will sign a bill to band TikTok. And the
Speaker 4: terms of the bill they're talking about right now would
Speaker 4: basically give the parent company, that is a Chinese company,
Speaker 4: six months to sell TikTok or to spin off the
Speaker 4: American arm of it to some American company, and you
Speaker 4: have to have terms where they because the entire issue
Speaker 4: is about the day that TikTok collects being available to
Speaker 4: the Chinese government. Because the relationship between the Chinese government
Speaker 4: and the corporations in China is different from the way
Speaker 4: it works in the United States. The United States is
Speaker 4: corrupt in a different way. Right, So it's my understanding
Speaker 4: that logistically that would be extremely a huge ask, Like
Speaker 4: I don't the Chinese government basically said this is not
Speaker 4: going to happen. We're not sure what we will just
Speaker 4: let you you ban it, And I think trying to
Speaker 4: make it work from a technical aspect. I think is
Speaker 4: difficult because again they're they're talking about basically spinning off
Speaker 4: just the American segment of the app and then separating
Speaker 4: it from the way it operates in the rest of
Speaker 4: the world. I'm sure it could be done if they
Speaker 4: want it to be, but I think from China's point
Speaker 4: of view, they don't like the precedent this would set.
Speaker 4: I don't know, it's it's really up in the air.
Speaker 4: But it's also really interesting and I can't think of
Speaker 4: another thing for my entire lifetime where they've been trying
Speaker 4: to ban something at a federal level that would affect
Speaker 4: this many people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also be like a rights issue to it
Speaker 2: the same time of like the digital rights or people's
Speaker 2: ability to communicate or express themselves on an app.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, it feels like there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: ingredients at work here that are like making this sort
Speaker 1: of unprecedented thing possible. It feels like there's something that's
Speaker 1: as old as media and as old as like the
Speaker 1: you know, like investigations into comic books, and like the
Speaker 1: morality of young people are like, you know, older people
Speaker 1: being outraged about rock and roll music, And I think
Speaker 1: there is you know, we are in this version of
Speaker 1: US power and wealth where a lot of the people
Speaker 1: who have power and you know, the ability to do
Speaker 1: things like this are old and they don't understand, you know,
Speaker 1: that they are out of step with the overwhelming kind
Speaker 1: of ideals that are prevailing on TikTok, and they're freaked
Speaker 1: out about that. I think there's also the fact that
Speaker 1: this would be a massive windfall for existing US companies
Speaker 1: like fit you know, social media companies like Facebook is
Speaker 1: going to want this to happen, like this is a
Speaker 1: major competitor that is harming them. And you know, we
Speaker 1: are at a point in the history of the US
Speaker 1: government where powerful companies are able to capture regulators, they're
Speaker 1: able to lobby, they're able to you know, they have
Speaker 1: as much power as they've ever had. So like those
Speaker 1: feel like major issues that are at work here that
Speaker 1: are probably making this more successful than Yeah, like you
Speaker 1: said anything like that. There was a lot of fear
Speaker 1: of like Japan in the like late eighties, early nineties,
Speaker 1: like they never like weren't like like we banned Sony.
Speaker 1: You know, that wasn't even a thing that like came
Speaker 1: up as far as I remember, But I right, and
Speaker 1: I was paying a lot of attention. I was nine
Speaker 1: years old, so I was on top of the business
Speaker 1: news site. I was waking up every morning and opening
Speaker 1: the Wall Street charm. No, but it just feels like
Speaker 1: this is I don't know, yeah, well something now.
Speaker 2: There's so there's so many different versions. Like so pre
Speaker 2: October seventh, this was all about privacy and national security
Speaker 2: for Americans. And but then if that was an actual concern,
Speaker 2: why not crack down on all the other social media
Speaker 2: platforms if you're talking about user data and shit like that.
Speaker 2: But again, it's because it's American, right, and and and
Speaker 2: then again like to your point, it's like TikTok is
Speaker 2: becoming a threat to the dominance of like American tech companies.
Speaker 2: Like like, so it shouldn't surprise me that Facebook was
Speaker 2: heading up a huge anti TikTok campaign as they were
Speaker 2: being like, yeah, maybe reels can be like TikTok, maybe
Speaker 2: because that's who we're competing with. And the Internet has
Speaker 2: always been dominated by like American companies, so this just
Speaker 2: sort of helps maintain like that hegemony. And but also
Speaker 2: like when you think about also China too, like they
Speaker 2: keep certain Western companies out, so they can help their
Speaker 2: own companies get a foothold and then become globally competitive.
Speaker 2: There's like a way of being like, well, hold on,
Speaker 2: we need to protect our own interests, so I think.
Speaker 2: And then the pro Palestinian part of it, you know,
Speaker 2: I think has now become sort of like the focus
Speaker 2: where they're like, man, it's got to be TikTok. That's
Speaker 2: the only way. Young people are somehow saying that they
Speaker 2: have like these sort of pro Palestinian sentiments. But if
Speaker 2: you look at the balance of like popularity between pro
Speaker 2: Palestinian or pro Israeli content on other social media platforms,
Speaker 2: it's the same everywhere. There's just more the sentiment is
Speaker 2: more leans, more pro Palestinian than pro israel.
Speaker 1: So this is the place where they can like step
Speaker 1: in because it's not an American.
Speaker 2: Company exactly, and it's not an effective way of curbing
Speaker 2: that support. And like when you also look at again
Speaker 2: when they say like, oh, my goods being run by
Speaker 2: the CCP and they're controlling everything. Well, also when you
Speaker 2: look at what the Biden administration was initially demanding from TikTok,
Speaker 2: they're basically saying like, okay, well how about this you
Speaker 2: need to give the US government basically total complete control
Speaker 2: over everything on the app from the moderation policies to
Speaker 2: even having the power to temporarily shut the tamp the
Speaker 2: platform down. So it's like, but those are the that's
Speaker 2: that's exactly what you were saying this other government was doing.
Speaker 2: So is it just merely that you want to be
Speaker 2: able to control this very specific, very popular platform because also,
Speaker 2: like this move is also so unpopular. Couldn't come at
Speaker 2: a worse time for Biden, Yeah, to try and make
Speaker 2: himself even less appealing to young voters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is another important detail is that this is
Speaker 1: so unpopular that even though this was originally like a
Speaker 1: very i think Republican point like idea or at least
Speaker 1: very appealing to the like anti China hawks and the
Speaker 1: Republican Party, their presidential candidate Trump has like reversed his
Speaker 1: position and been like, yeah, no, this is I like
Speaker 1: to I'm no longer for this, I like TikTok. Because
Speaker 1: he recognizes how unpopular it is, he.
Speaker 4: Won't signed an executive order banning TikTok. Like this was
Speaker 4: one of the last things he did and it got
Speaker 4: it wound up not going anywhere, but this was. Yeah,
Speaker 4: this is a huge reverse reverse course of course for him.
Speaker 4: And the thing is, I think the listeners they they're
Speaker 4: sitting there thinking, well, don't I remember Mark Zuckerberg being
Speaker 4: pulled in front of Congress and a bunch of eighty
Speaker 4: six year old men like Mester Zuckerberg? Can can Facebook
Speaker 4: see me when I'm in my car?
Speaker 1: Is your can my phone listen?
Speaker 7: To?
Speaker 2: Back off?
Speaker 1: There?
Speaker 4: Sorry?
Speaker 1: Did I say that out loud? My bad?
Speaker 4: Like, they revealed that they were incapable of regulating this
Speaker 4: industry because they have zero concept of what the algorithms
Speaker 4: do or what the actual issues are. It's like, well,
Speaker 4: couldn't they interfere with our election? It's like, well, some
Speaker 4: of this is just people being stupid and spreading stuff around.
Speaker 4: You know, if like a bad rumor gets around, or
Speaker 4: a badly photoshopped AI image of whatever, Joe Biden doing
Speaker 4: something horrific and it makes the rounds. You know what
Speaker 4: Facebook's possession has always been if people are dumb enough
Speaker 4: to instantly share that over and over and over again
Speaker 4: and it explodes. Trying to stop people from sharing the
Speaker 4: dumbness is not a simple technical challenge. It is there's
Speaker 4: a point where you're actually upset about the flaws in
Speaker 4: the human spirit and the fact that a lot of
Speaker 4: Facebook users are sixty two years old and don't have
Speaker 4: super high literacy of what AI image looks like or
Speaker 4: what a photoshop image looks like. And when they just
Speaker 4: get this little meme that it's here, it's like, well,
Speaker 4: did you know that under President Biden that due to immigration,
Speaker 4: egg prices have gone up three hundred and forty seven
Speaker 4: percent because of immigration. There's no source or anything, you're
Speaker 4: instantly going to share it. And so what they're saying
Speaker 4: is like, well, look, you can blame the algorithms, but
Speaker 4: the algorithm is just detecting what people are sharing and
Speaker 4: what they want to look at. If you want us
Speaker 4: to put our thumb on the scale to block some stuff,
Speaker 4: then you get what happened to us back at Cracked,
Speaker 4: where they're like, oh, yeah, one thing that we're not
Speaker 4: going to allow anymore is what you're doing right right,
Speaker 4: like your comedy articles, where we're just we're just not
Speaker 4: going to We're not going to show that to anyone anymore.
Speaker 4: That's one thing we've just eliminated. I was not happy
Speaker 4: with that. I would have preferred they let our readers
Speaker 4: decide if they want to see our stuff. But they
Speaker 4: were like, no, we're we're pivoting away from that too.
Speaker 4: And then you look at who dominated traffic after that.
Speaker 4: It was freaking Ben Shapiro and a bunch of these
Speaker 4: other right wingers who just had these very viral clips
Speaker 4: that were great at drumming up outrage. So's you can
Speaker 4: make the exact same criticisms of TikTok. It's like, well, yeah,
Speaker 4: but China's allowing all sorts of misinformation and stuff on there,
Speaker 4: and I use it every day, I have to because
Speaker 4: I'm on there. It's not any worse or dumber the
Speaker 4: same shit. Yeah, it's definitely not worse than Twitter. Under Muscarra, Twitter,
Speaker 4: you can pay eight dollars a month to have the
Speaker 4: nastiest conservative you know, conspiracy stuff rise to the very
Speaker 4: top reply of every single post. Like, if you read
Speaker 4: a reply to a post about a news story or whatever,
Speaker 4: you have to scroll past all of these blue checks
Speaker 4: that are all right wing conspiracy weirdos to find the
Speaker 4: actual human beings interacting with the post. There's nothing that
Speaker 4: TikTok does that's as weird and toxic as that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's all bad to be honest, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's anything worse about TikTok, but I
Speaker 1: don't think there's anything that is going to be fixed
Speaker 1: by this plan, which is giving TikTok to the tech
Speaker 1: industry that has already demonstrated themselves to being capable of
Speaker 1: the power and scale that they've already been operating under.
Speaker 1: You know, they can't do any of it responsibly. Nobody can.
Speaker 4: And well if they ban it, the traffic goes to
Speaker 4: two companies. It goes to Google, where YouTube shorts is
Speaker 4: just TikTok's just literally they're just trying to imitate. And
Speaker 4: on Instagram reels Instagram and Facebook metas reels again it's
Speaker 4: just TikTok. It's they both have the infinite scroll video.
Speaker 4: So there's two. There's two basically imitators that all of
Speaker 4: the traffic is going to flow to. And take your
Speaker 4: pick your poison.
Speaker 2: Google or Meta.
Speaker 4: Right, we two companies have a dulopoly on all Internet
Speaker 4: traffic and Internet advertising that has basically ruined the public.
Speaker 4: The publishing industry and every news outlet has been utterly
Speaker 4: crushed by the fact that these two companies have basically
Speaker 4: owned the flow of information. So you're saying going from
Speaker 4: a three headed monster to two, that that's suddenly going
Speaker 4: to fix the problem. I don't buy it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and I think there's also the other I
Speaker 2: think the other part of people are talking about with
Speaker 2: Trump coming out against it, is like he just doesn't
Speaker 2: want Mark Zuckerberg to own TikTok either. So if this
Speaker 2: thing forces a sale, then potentially Zuckerberg becomes a suitor,
Speaker 2: and then that's sort of Trump's calculus like, well, I
Speaker 2: don't want Zuckberg doing that either, right, So yeah, there's
Speaker 2: a lot I mean the idea though too of like
Speaker 2: when you see the companies that are like saying like, no,
Speaker 2: yeah we should we should actually maybe ban TikTok, those
Speaker 2: are the precise the ones that stand to benefit. So
Speaker 2: there's like there's a obviously like a tech capitalism argument here,
Speaker 2: and also like the disconnect between elites and thinking that
Speaker 2: young people or people in general who cannot abide by
Speaker 2: watching like innocent people be slaughtered, that it must be
Speaker 2: some kind of digital spell binding that's happening on TikTok
Speaker 2: rather than you know, the humanity of it. But hey,
Speaker 2: that's that's what they're that's what they're arguing over.
Speaker 1: Now, Yeah, I mean, like a writer JM McNab was like,
Speaker 1: I have a theory that it's the specific videos where
Speaker 1: like soldiers are just posting tiktoks being like this shit
Speaker 1: sucks man, like being in the military absolutely is a
Speaker 1: shitty lifestyle, and like I but I don't like, it's
Speaker 1: just another way in which social media makes information and
Speaker 1: opinions available that are inconvenient to people with tons of
Speaker 1: institutional power. And I do think that that is broadly
Speaker 1: a thing we're seeing over and over again. Is like
Speaker 1: you know, we've been talking about it a lot recently
Speaker 1: with regards to like the rot economy, but just this
Speaker 1: disconnect between the people who are investing in things and
Speaker 1: controlling the market and then everyone else's day to day realities.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and also just not even not even actually
Speaker 2: giving any thought to the fact that many venture capital
Speaker 2: like a capitalist, they're invested in Chinese tech companies and
Speaker 2: even compet Chinese competitors to like AI like American AI companies.
Speaker 2: So like how it's the inconsistency that sort of I
Speaker 2: think makes it very easy to understand, like what what
Speaker 2: the main goals are of a TikTok ban and there's
Speaker 2: nothing to do with privacy and has nothing to do
Speaker 2: with some of these other points that they make up.
Speaker 2: It's more just protecting these sort of like the dominance
Speaker 2: of these American tech companies. And yeah, maybe and now
Speaker 2: that October seventh happen, now we also maybe have this
Speaker 2: thing where like with with this one trick, the government
Speaker 2: was able to invert the polling on how people feel
Speaker 2: about Gaza.
Speaker 1: Right right, they're hoping, hoping for one easy trick that
Speaker 1: doctors don't want you to know about. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: And we're back, And just a headline that captured our attention,
Speaker 1: says cop Boss says. Marauding rats are getting high on
Speaker 1: marijuana at New Orleans Police headquarters.
Speaker 2: Am I supposed to read that as like a mobster
Speaker 2: and be like informants or smoking weed at the at
Speaker 2: the fucking at HQ, or we're talking rodent rats?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, a bunch of canaries getting high, you know,
Speaker 1: a bunch of songbirds. Yeah, I love anytime you know
Speaker 1: that were marauding rats. But yeah, yeah, these these rats
Speaker 1: in particular are marauding.
Speaker 2: I mean yeah. I mean there's a lot of rats
Speaker 2: in New Orleans. You know, that's that anyone who's been there,
Speaker 2: you see rats around. It's kind of a normal part
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but apparently the New Orleans Police Department headquarters is
Speaker 1: a real dump plagued by possums. Also, don't forget about
Speaker 1: the possums, because that's that's the next level. Like, I
Speaker 1: feel like many police headquarters probably have a rat problem.
Speaker 1: Possums is kind of next level shit. So possums, mold
Speaker 1: and rats, and the rats in particular have been getting
Speaker 1: into the evidence room and eating our marijuana. Our Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's our marijuana, man and our quote all high, according
Speaker 1: to police superintendent and Kirkpatrick. I love that she calls
Speaker 1: it our marijuana and that they're all high.
Speaker 2: Just they're all high.
Speaker 1: Yeah, guys are all high smoking our marijuana. I mean
Speaker 1: the marijuana that we seized.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: This is such a great example of how information in
Speaker 4: news moves through the ecosystem because the context was they
Speaker 4: were having a committee meeting and the police a pretendant
Speaker 4: was complaining about how they're the police department that they're
Speaker 4: building is like falling apart. Dump the elevators. Yeah, elevators
Speaker 4: don't work, bathrooms that don't work, not been working for
Speaker 4: like she said, fifteen years, and they're there's overrun with
Speaker 4: rats and possums and mold. And then somewhere in all
Speaker 4: of that mentions or jokes or says the rats are
Speaker 4: actually eating the marijuana and the evidence room they're all high.
Speaker 4: And I don't know if this was a laughline, if
Speaker 4: there's just something she threw in there. Then now this
Speaker 4: becomes the headline because she's trying to bring wires like
Speaker 4: like presumab is asking for money to fix up the
Speaker 4: building or to get a new one. And we pull
Speaker 4: out that little tidbit tidbit, and this is you know,
Speaker 4: we've we've been in this industry for like a quarter
Speaker 4: of a century. We know how this works. You're scanning
Speaker 4: through from the from the odd ball little bit of
Speaker 4: information and then this is the thing that goes viral,
Speaker 4: is the rats are getting high off the off the marijuana,
Speaker 4: and somewhere out there police superintendent and Kirkpatrick is hoping
Speaker 4: that the virality of that headline will help them get
Speaker 4: their funding or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's like embarrassing enough to the powers that control Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it won't.
Speaker 2: We will see this.
Speaker 4: We will we will chuckle to ourselves, and we will
Speaker 4: immediately forget about it for the rest of our lives.
Speaker 1: It's you.
Speaker 4: You just brought a smile to our faces during our
Speaker 4: morning commute, and then we will forget about it violent time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for the larfs. Yeah, a lot of it too,
Speaker 2: is She's like, this isn't a this isn't a dignified
Speaker 2: way to treat people that are working for the department,
Speaker 2: And like, we can't even attract people, We can't even
Speaker 2: attract people from out of state to brutalize our local
Speaker 2: citizens because of the where the headquarters is in such
Speaker 2: a state of disarray. Please do something, do something. But
Speaker 2: it's true, Like I mean, I think that that's the thing.
Speaker 2: It's like, look, man, no one gives a fuck if
Speaker 2: their headquarters are all fucked up. Just just run with
Speaker 2: the fucking stoner rat thing and people actually pay attention.
Speaker 1: It won't bring about any funding changes. It will actually
Speaker 1: be optioned for an adult swim short cartoon. People.
Speaker 2: It's gonna bed rats at baited rats at the station.
Speaker 2: But let me see if I can, let's shine and
Speaker 2: hear how it actually came out during the hearing, just
Speaker 2: so we get some idea of how this shocking news
Speaker 2: was delivered to the city council.
Speaker 7: Is the evidence room is losing evidence to rats, major
Speaker 7: rodents on the floor, the cockroaches, the rats eating our marijuana.
Speaker 8: They're all high. In the end, financially, it does not
Speaker 8: make sense for y'all to put any more money into this.
Speaker 1: It's not okay.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and it's not okay for your people to be
Speaker 8: treated that way and called valued.
Speaker 2: M Yeah, it sounded very like sounded like she was
Speaker 2: frustrated with high rats. I mean they're all high. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it didn't feel like it was like and they're in marijuana.
Speaker 2: They're all high, y'all, Like it wasn't didn't feel like
Speaker 2: that kind of things like that, they're all high.
Speaker 1: Its sounded like a thing that she's been bringing up
Speaker 1: for weeks, like yeah, you know, no.
Speaker 2: They're all the high rats. The droppings everywhere on the desks,
Speaker 2: that's also a problem. Hold on, hold on, when they're high,
Speaker 2: are they like cool? Like are they yeah?
Speaker 1: Are they paranoid like one of those experiments where they
Speaker 1: gave spider is LSD and they made like really cool
Speaker 1: looking webs or is it like the Ones really gave
Speaker 1: spiders cocaine and the webs looked all fucked up. What
Speaker 1: does the rating look like when they're all high? Is
Speaker 1: it like more viby?
Speaker 2: We don't know.
Speaker 4: It kind of reminds me of that one quote from
Speaker 4: Alex Jones that people quote to prove that he's crazy,
Speaker 4: and we see like they're the chemicals are turning the
Speaker 4: frogs gay, right right, But the actual headline was that
Speaker 4: stuff that we're flushing into the water system, it messes
Speaker 4: with frogs and screws up their ability to breathe. It's
Speaker 4: like an environmental issue because we do flush a lot
Speaker 4: of drugs and chemicals and stuff into the sewers and
Speaker 4: the treatment plants don't necessarily do a great job of
Speaker 4: filtering it out. That makes its way to the waterways,
Speaker 4: and then like it causes frogs to whatever, change sex
Speaker 4: or whatever. But the issue is that they don't. They're
Speaker 4: not breathing, so it threatens their population. But that's like
Speaker 4: a boring story. Whereas crazy man shouts there's a conspiracy
Speaker 4: to turn the frogs gay, it's like a perfect little
Speaker 4: little It's like, well, no, it's weird because the thing
Speaker 4: he was talking about is a problem, but it's not
Speaker 4: a problem in the way he thinks it is, right
Speaker 4: because he's just a carnival barker and he doesn't he
Speaker 4: doesn't want more regulations over the the you know, water treatment.
Speaker 1: Plants, fucking up the morality of our frogs. When I
Speaker 1: was young, I remember bull frogs were you know, masculine.
Speaker 1: Now they're all turning gay because they should have seen
Speaker 1: their arms, man, fucking proper ripped frogs.
Speaker 2: Now they're all nowtlely And yeah, I mean, uh yeah,
Speaker 2: sorry to that police department for for all the faded rats.
Speaker 2: But yeah, again, this is more interesting honestly, like a
Speaker 2: dry city council meaner like hey help us, like because
Speaker 2: they're like, give help, spend the money in this other place,
Speaker 2: not just keeping the rat house alive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the news cycle at this point, like the we
Speaker 1: talked about this with the State of the Union last
Speaker 1: week and Biden had a strong performance, but the only
Speaker 1: thing anybody was talking about was the really weird performance
Speaker 1: from Katie Britt afterwards. It's just it's like trying to
Speaker 1: get the attention of just a bunch of idiots, and
Speaker 1: where we are idiots as well.
Speaker 2: I mean, but there's also a part. It's like, don't
Speaker 2: you can't go in there and allege the rats are
Speaker 2: high without like a.
Speaker 1: Little think we're going to jump on, like how do
Speaker 1: you know?
Speaker 2: Like sure they're eating the weed and logically or like yeah,
Speaker 2: they're probably something altered, in an altered state from consuming
Speaker 2: cannabis like that, but like are they just are they
Speaker 2: fixed in one place? Are there? I mean aren't aren't
Speaker 2: rat eyes already bloodshot? Yeah? So I don't know. They
Speaker 2: could also just be anti anti rat propaganda. That's the
Speaker 2: other thing I think we should just look out for. Yeah,
Speaker 2: anti can it's cannabis hysteria.
Speaker 1: Yeah, rats are an impressive foe. They are the most
Speaker 1: likely thing to overtake us. I feel like as the
Speaker 1: species most dominant, as the most dominant species.
Speaker 2: The noble rat, and as someone who was born in
Speaker 2: the Year of the Rat, you know, I kind of
Speaker 2: resent this. I'm like, are you talking about me? Because yeah,
Speaker 2: rats are getting high at the police headquarters.
Speaker 1: You're right, we are, well, Jason Pargin, such a pleasure
Speaker 1: having you on the daily Zeitgeist? Where can people find you?
Speaker 1: Follow you all that good stuff.
Speaker 4: As long as TikTok exists, I am Jason K. Pargin
Speaker 4: on there j s O N K P A R
Speaker 4: G I N. But I'm also Jason K. Pargen on
Speaker 4: Twitter and or x and blue Sky and threads and
Speaker 4: Instagram in YouTube, and I'm also on Facebook and uh
Speaker 4: and on substack, same username.
Speaker 1: There you go. And then the TikTok thing probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: be coming anytime soon, right like.
Speaker 4: Now next year at the earliest. Yeah, they will get
Speaker 4: them months to it'll yeah, it'll get it would be
Speaker 4: even if they passed a band, it would get tied
Speaker 4: up in court and they would stay the band while
Speaker 4: it's and it would go all the way Supreme Court
Speaker 4: because it's no, it would this will be. This would
Speaker 4: be news from twenty twenty seven or something. And I
Speaker 4: think if it actually ever happened, Yeah, good.
Speaker 1: So you're We've got a steady stream of butt punch
Speaker 1: videos for the foreseeable future. They're not going to cut
Speaker 1: off our supply. Is there a work of media, Jason,
Speaker 1: that you've been enjoying.
Speaker 4: There's a tweet that went out after the Oscars or
Speaker 4: user kb Anderson Yo said all of the best film
Speaker 4: editors are women because the dudes are like, this is
Speaker 4: my five hour opus and then a woman comes in
Speaker 4: and goes, okay, calm down, buddy.
Speaker 2: That does seemed to be the dynamic and a number
Speaker 2: more later. Man, let me just get through this cut.
Speaker 1: Miles, where can people find you? Is there a workimedia
Speaker 1: you've been enjoying?
Speaker 2: Yeah, at Miles of Gray, pretty much everywhere they got
Speaker 2: the ad symbols. Find Jack and I on the basketball
Speaker 2: podcast Miles and Jack moosties. You can find me on
Speaker 2: the ninety Day Fiance podcast for twenty Day Fiance. A
Speaker 2: tweet I like, is there's this picture of young Dolly
Speaker 2: Parton has been like going around on Twitter. I don't
Speaker 2: know if you if saw it, Like this is like
Speaker 2: Dolly Parton like back in the sixties, like in a
Speaker 2: photo booth image and at local soundwave like quote toned
Speaker 2: and said, bro, what the fuck could Jolene have possibly looked? Like, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just like this stunning photo Dolly Parton. Like yeah,
Speaker 2: that's true. Man, what can we see Jolene?
Speaker 1: Actually, let's see a tweet I've been enjoying. Justin Kirkland
Speaker 1: tweeted everyone criticizing Princess Kate's photoshop just needs to calm down.
Speaker 1: She's going through so much right now. For example, she's dead,
Speaker 1: which I don't know. You know, that's a source, that's
Speaker 1: one source saying it. You can find me on Twitter
Speaker 1: at Jack Underscore O'Brien. You can find us on Twitter
Speaker 1: at daily Zeikeeist where at the Daily Zekeeist on Instagram,
Speaker 1: we have a Facebook fan page on a website Daily
Speaker 1: zeikes dot com where we post our episodes and our
Speaker 1: foot notes where we link up to the information that
Speaker 1: we talked about in today's episode, as well as a
Speaker 1: song that we think you might enjoy. Miles, what song
Speaker 1: do you think people might enjoy it?
Speaker 2: I just want to put there's someone under that tweet.
Speaker 2: Quote like sort of found an interview where Dolly Parton's
Speaker 2: talking about Joeline and actually, like some people were like
Speaker 2: Dolly Parton was Joelene and this one apparently said the
Speaker 2: song was mainly inspired by a red haired bank teller
Speaker 2: who flirted with her husband, Carl Thomas Dean, all the
Speaker 2: way back in the beginning of their marriage. Quote she
Speaker 2: had everything I did, and like legs, you know, she
Speaker 2: was about six feet tall and had all that stuff
Speaker 2: that some little short sowd off homkey like me don't have.
Speaker 6: This, Wow, my favorite kind of shotgun. Let's see a
Speaker 6: song we're gonna go out on. You know, just some
Speaker 6: just some electronic, you know, some drummond bass from from
Speaker 6: the UK chasing status. This is called Bada Dan meeting
Speaker 6: a Badder Van. But to win a bit of patois
Speaker 6: b A D D A D A N. And it's
Speaker 6: just like a just an aggressive song.
Speaker 2: You know, maybe run on your treadmill, lift your weights,
Speaker 2: drink your sodas, whatever you want to do it to
Speaker 2: some high energy music. Go ahead, do it to this.
Speaker 2: When Chason state this done.
Speaker 1: All right, we will link off to that in the footnotes.
Speaker 1: The Daily Geis is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
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Speaker 1: Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your podcast. That's
Speaker 1: gonna do it for us this morning, back this afternoon
Speaker 1: to tell you what's trending, and we will talk to
Speaker 1: you all then. Bye. Peace