The Onion Administration, Affleck A.I. Flak 10.13.26

0:05 Mom life, it's great. We have a boy. He really likes pizza crusts, which scares me a lot.

0:15 Not the real, not the good part? Well, no.

0:19 Yeah, I mean, he's eight months old. I'm sure he'd.

0:23 Love the good part and try to shove the whole thing down his mouth and start choking immediately.

0:31 He eats the pizza bones.

0:33 The pizza bones. He, like, also, I gave him a giant beef bone, and he was just like, this is the best thing ever. So, you know.

0:44 A dog? That's some dog-coded parenting.

0:47 Yeah.

0:48 What do you mean he's gave him a big beef bone?

0:51 You're like, here, take this rib.

0:54 It was some delicious, slow-cooked beef fell right off the bone that friends made. And then, like, so I let him have a piece, like, I was like holding on to it and let him like chew on it. And he was like, really wanted to like shove the whole thing in his mouth.

1:10 So that was good for him.

1:11 That was what was going on. It's great.

1:14 Does any of your formal education and studying animals, are you bringing any of that into your child rearing? Is there any overlap where you go, whoa, this is kind of like.

1:26 Sounds like it with the gnawing on the beef bone. Yeah, yeah. And his poops are like perfect cubes. Yeah.

1:32 I use like a clicker every time he does something good.

1:36 There you go.

1:39 Positive reinforcement.

1:40 Yeah.

1:46 Hello, the Internet, and welcome to Season 460, Episode 2 of The Daily Zeitgeist! Yeah! This is a production of iHeartRadio. It's a podcast where we take a deep dive into America's shared consciousness through the day's news. We also have a non-news, history version of The Daily Zeitgeist dropping each Monday morning called The Iconograph, where we do deep dives into the zeitgeist through the lens of a different icon.

2:11 And we are too deep. In spooky season, we did Dracula. Yes. And then we did. Is that how it goes? I don't know. Yeah, that's much better. Thank you, Miles. Hannibal Lecter. Hannibal Lecter. Hannibal Lecter. He's a cannibal. Did you know that?

2:28 Yeah.

2:29 Did you see this? I saw it. We went deep on the research, and I found out this guy's a frigging goddamn cannibal. Hey, Christopher Columbus even makes an appearance, too, somehow, with all that.

2:39 Yeah.

2:40 Also, we found out the Silence of the Lambs came out in February. Jeffrey Dahmer arrested in July. How did the movie predict the reality? Did the movie influence the story we got? You'll find out, kind of, on the episode. Anyways, those episodes drop on Monday. They have Icon in the title, a slightly different logo. The same great taste and feel, though.

3:05 But right here, right now, it is Tuesday, October 13th. Wow. Tuesday the 13th?

3:14 Oh, no.

3:14 Oh, no, guys.

3:15 Yeah. It's a great, it's National M & M Day. It's International Day of Failure.

3:24 Guys, embrace failure. Embrace failure.

3:26 And because it is October, it is a Breast Cancer Awareness Day. Also National No Broad Day.

3:33 And one of the last ones I saw, Yorkshire Pudding Day. What is that?

3:37 Yorkshire Pudding is like, yeah, it's like a dough that you kind of have like a Sunday roast. Where you kind of use the fat, like it's basically fat drippings, flour, and eggs.

3:48 Yeah, I knew it was going to be way grosser than I thought. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's bread.

3:52 It's like basically bread, but you use meat drippings to flavor it. And then it turns into like a nice little.

3:56 Sounds like stuffing. A little bit. Yeah, yeah. It's like if you go to like any time... Any of like those.

4:02 Old school like prime rib joints is always going to be like.

4:06 Yorkshire pudding. Yorkshire pudding. Nice. All right. Well, you can eat your meat if you haven't had any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat? Thank you. Thank you. My name is Jack O'Brien, a.k.a. when I find myself in times of trouble, GPT is guiding me. Esoteric wisdom, drink your pee. And in my time in med school, there's a tiny cup they gave to me. Esoteric wisdom, drink this pee. Yeah, that one courtesy of whatever happened to Casey Jane on the Discord in reference to... The story that we found, there's a resurgence.

4:48 We knew that pee drinking was a thing on the right, but it's coming back hot. Don't call it a comeback. I've been here for years.

4:54 ChatGPT, with this one little hack your doctor doesn't want you to know, you can.

5:00 Get ChatGPT to tell you to drink your own pee. All you have to do is say, ChatGPT, stop telling me the stuff that's fact-checked. Give me the esoteric wisdom. And then ChatGPT will cooperate and tell you To drink your own tea, which is, in this scenario, really what you want for some reason. Anyways, I'm thrilled to be joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr. Myles Gray! It's Myles Gray, a.k.a.

5:26 You got straw teeth, he's out of work. It's like a snake fang dripping, but reverse it. It's yours, Jimmy Lippe, Flandian double.

5:34 Okay, Blinky Heck with that one. Because what's up with those fangs? We saw what, like, we're still... Right back where we're at. Are the fangs hollow like a snake's to suck the blood out? Are they merely piercing devices to then draw the blood and lap it up? The books say that it's for lapping up the blood. The Reese's Peanut Butter commercial suggests that they're hoovering out the fucking blood with the hollow fangs.

6:01 And I know who I believe.

6:04 Where's the suction come from, though?

6:07 Okay, Harvard. Jesus Christ. I had a perfect thing going and then you introduced.

6:13 ChatGPP, give me an esoteric explanation as to how Dracula things can be hollow tubes for.

6:21 Yeah, where does this... Why do we not have a vacuum cleaner in our body that just can create a... I didn't even think about that part.

6:28 Yeah.

6:29 I don't like that comment whatsoever. God, this is like.

6:33 I feel like a Republican who in probably a brainstorming meeting and some person with half a brain goes, yeah, but what about this thing?

6:38 And they go, fuck.

6:41 Fucking right I hate when she's every time she's in these meetings she just fucking calls out the reality and I got nothing now.

6:49 Can we get her off this project? Can we get her out of here?

6:53 She kept pointing out that you guys were buying ads in Portland, Oregon, not Portland, Maine, where Troy Jackson is currently running for senator.

7:00 That's an actual story right now. I don't know that story.

7:02 Isn't that a landscaping business?

7:04 Yeah.

7:04 To help Susan Collins, they were putting money ad buys in Portland, Oregon, rather than Portland, Maine. And people in Oregon are like, why am I getting fucking Maine Senate race ads here?

7:17 Four DJs. That's the answer. I'll tell you why. You don't know. There's only one four, didn't you?

7:22 There's also only one basketball game at a time in the country, which makes things really easy.

7:26 Would that tip off time? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Thank you. He was at the Atlanta Hawk.

7:32 Hawk.

7:33 There's only one Hawk, too.

7:34 Yeah, yeah.

7:34 He went to go see the Hawk and the Warrior play. Yeah, I know. I know. Miles, we're thrilled to be joined in our third seat by one of the funniest comedy writers doing it anywhere. You know her words from... the account Birds Rights Activist on Twitter. Some more news with Cody Johnson, you know, our voice from the podcast Creature Feature, and secretly incredibly fascinating with Alex Schmidt.

7:56 Please welcome, coming all the way from Italy, the brilliant, the talented, it's Katie Golden! Buonanotte, Katie.

8:03 Hey, guys.

8:04 Thank you for having me.

8:07 And boy, are my arms tired. Okay, how could Dracula... create suction if we were being realistic in the animal kingdom that had nothing like that exists.

8:19 Nobody has vacuum so are you telling us nobody has vacuum teeth like I guess would it be like an extension of his lung or something right if.

8:27 The teeth open up into the nasal passageway and he kind of like sucks it up that way and then it rolls down the throat.

8:33 Okay we're back we're back Miles.

8:37 Yeah my wood stem teeth grew into my sinuses so stranger things have happened whoa.

8:43 What do you mean they grew into your... They grew.

8:46 Well, the delighted orthodontist showed me the x-ray of my skull... With all my weird teeth.

8:53 He's like, look at them go.

8:54 They're like trying to get into your sinus cavities.

8:57 It was like that rendering in The Simpsons. Literal teeth for brains. Yeah. Got rocks for brains.

9:02 Yeah, he's like, oh, that's cool.

9:03 Look at it.

9:04 It's like almost, it's like punching a hole in there. I'm like, what do we do about it? He's like, what do you mean? We're taking them out. But I mean, there's like a hole there. It's like, it's fine.

9:12 Don't worry about it. Yeah, it's good. Yeah.

9:15 I'm just thinking of like that rendering when Lisa needed braces and they're like, this is what will happen if you don't get braces and like your teeth go through your head.

9:23 And I'm like, is that what it looks like?

9:27 It was upsetting. I didn't like to see myself that way.

9:31 You never want to delight a doctor by showing them something novel that they haven't seen before.

9:37 When they're grinning at you in a giddy way, it's not good.

9:41 Yeah, when they get their personal cell phone out and they go, do you mind if I just take a look? Okay. No, no. My colleagues will not believe. Yeah, they're never going to believe this. Holy shit.

9:50 Call the interns in. Come in here. Look at this.

9:53 Hold on. Did Rick pay you to come in here looking like this? No. What? Okay.

10:01 All right.

10:01 I thought I was getting pranked. Okay. Yeah, this is bad. I just lost a big bet. I did not know it could do that. What? You're like the head. So, doctor, is this good? Oh, no, no. This is terrible. This is terrible for you. This is terrible for you. This is good for my career. I'm going to get rid. They're going to call this the Dr. Finkelstein thing. Surgery, what I'm going to have to do to you because Jesus Christ. I thought your name was Dr.

10:23 Edwards.

10:25 Yeah, well.

10:26 Yeah.

10:26 Yeah, well. Katie, we're thrilled to have you here. We're going to get to know you a little bit better in a moment. First, we're going to tell the listeners a couple of the things that we're talking about today. I do, since you are out of the country, I do just like to let you know that everything is fine with some quick updates on how things are going in America. So we have a rapidly closing window.

10:50 I have so many things, so many things to worry about here. Like if I heard... stuff about things in the U.S. that were sad or a little scary, I don't know if I could handle it, to be honest with you.

11:01 So I'm really glad you did that. Allow us. Things are going really well. The window between onion headline and reality has closed to just a five-month gap. There was an onion headline five months ago that said, DOJ to bring back firing squad as means of entertainment and low-end... And behold, that is happening. So we'll talk about that.

11:25 We'll talk about the FBI wanting to proceed with UFC training for agents. We're going to talk about that same FBI raiding Representative Ilhan Omar's house and also the right wing rumor that they were trying to get going, that James Tallarico was locked in a mental hospital over the weekend. We'll definitely check in with the new Affleck joint, Ben Affleck, Ben Affleck. Affleck. Isn't he like doing a thing with Affleck right now? Oh, he is? Yeah, I'm seeing signs where it's like Affleck and then somebody's like wrote Ben over it in spray paint. And I was like, what a weird work of graffiti. And then I started seeing them everywhere around town. I was like, oh, this is like a viral marketing stunt that just sucks. But anyways,

12:17 in addition to that, he has made a movie called called Animals, that is not about the duck from Affleck commercials, as far as I can tell. But Miles watched it, and it is not getting great reviews and has used AI that we have to assume created the scene that has gone viral for all the wrong reasons.

12:38 I suspect it might be a part where he's standing in post-Altadena Palisades fire rubble. There's a weird throwaway shot that I was like, the fuck is this yeah i don't know why i watch these things um.

12:53 Anyways it goes the movie does go full mac and me the the clip of the kid flying off his wheelchair like the wheelchair going down the hill and then him like flying off the wheelchair they they've created recreated that scene.

13:04 Yeah with a radio yeah it's the yeah i'll i'll tell you all about it i'll tell you and guys spoilers ahead because i will spoil the entire fucking movie because you don't need to waste your.

13:15 Time yeah Who's the guest that was always on Conan and they run out of time?

13:20 Paul Rudd.

13:20 Paul Rudd would repeatedly show Conan that would like sort of Rick roll him into watching that. And yeah. So Ben Affleck is essentially doing that to all of us. He's like, well, we found it delightful when Paul Rudd did it to Conan. What this movie presupposes is what if I did it to the whole world? Would they think I was a good director? Remains to be seen.

13:43 We'll also talk about nudity in video games. This was not something that I was super familiar with. But yeah, we're just going to tell you where to find it. We're going to do a Mr. Skin for video games. All of that, plenty more. But first, Katie, we do like to ask our guest, what is something from your search history that is revealing about who you are?

14:04 Let's see.

14:05 I googled how to crochet a smooth conical shape. because I wanted to learn how to do that, uh, in order to make a pumpkin out of yarn for Halloween.

14:20 Okay. Conical pumpkin.

14:23 Well, no, that's just the stem. So like I, I need the cone for the stem and then I need the pumpkin part. That is more of a pumpkin shape, but it's, um, I don't know. I like to crochet, and you can just learn how to crochet a shape, and then you can put those shapes together to create a different, more complicated shape.

14:49 I didn't know that Italy had conical pumpkins. That's weird. It's for the STEM. They still hung up on the STEM part, Katie.

15:00 I don't think you understand. They don't have really suburbs, so they don't have Halloween here. Well, they do have Halloween, but you don't go to people's houses. You go to stores, businesses that open their doors for kids. So the kids like dress up and then they go to like... The stores.

15:19 And then they just, like, hand you a meatball. Do they have, like, what they serve at the store?

15:24 Yeah.

15:24 Where they're like, here's one of my artisanal candles, child. And you're like, ah, well, it is nice.

15:31 Yeah, it's just like you just go into the store and start grabbing stuff off the shelves.

15:36 It's kind of cool.

15:39 You said it's Halloween and I can do this.

15:42 Are you a lifetime crocheter? Is this a recent hobby you picked up? I'm always curious when that is.

15:48 This was from the pandemic. I tried to learn a few hobbies during the pandemic. The dumbest one I tried to do was violin because I played violin when I was like eight years old.

16:02 And I was like, yeah, that was pretty fun. I think I sounded pretty good.

16:06 And then I tried it again and I realized I'd never sounded good. Wow.

16:10 Ever. Yeah.

16:11 A single time. And I probably sounded even worse. And I couldn't... I couldn't get past the badness of it. But crocheting stuck. And I do that now.

16:22 Good with those strings. Busy hand, quiet mind is what I always say. You know what I'm saying?

16:26 Yeah. No, I get that.

16:29 Violin... Like beginner's violin is like my, my hats all the way off to parents with who are teaching kids violin. My kids take piano lessons at a, at a place where people are taking violin lessons and that shit is violence. It is. Yeah. It's a nonstop horror movie. Violins. Yeah. That's what I meant to say. That shit is violins. Stupid.

17:00 What is something that you think is underrated? So I.

17:05 Had my son write these because I was lazy. Underrated is the kitchen sink when you turn the water on. Sorry, I misread that. When you turn the wawa on like a little bit, like a little trickle of wawa. And then when you sit on the edge of the kitchen, like you sit with your feet in the kitchen sink and then the wawa's on just like a little bit, like a little trickle. Not too much because then you get wet and then you get uncomfortable and then you get sad.

17:39 Is it a continuous stream or is it just light enough that it looks like fragmented, broken.

17:43 Up drips of water? Yeah, it's fragmented a little bit.

17:45 I'm trying to know how much wawa we're talking here.

17:48 It's like you can see the droplets near the bottom of the sink.

17:53 You know, like it breaks up a little bit at the bottom.

17:55 And then like you can take a little metal cuppy and put it under.

18:00 The Wawa and it makes a sound.

18:03 Uh-huh. Sorry, I'm just taking notes here to make sure I don't know this.

18:06 That's when it gets really excited.

18:08 Like when you get like a little cuppy and then it like makes a sound because the Wawa hits it.

18:13 Uh-huh.

18:14 And then you can kick your feet. like in the sink really hard and scream.

18:20 Wawa in the cuppy in the sink hits different. It really does.

18:25 Dude, when the wah-wah hits your lyrics to split your head so hard that your hat can't fit you.

18:31 When the wah-wah hits the cuppy and that wah-wah sound drops.

18:35 Are you dumping wah-wah out yet? Are we appreciating what happens when you spill the wah-wah out? Because that's also a whole other reveal.

18:42 Yeah, it's like, yeah, the cuppy gets kind of full and then you got to do something with it.

18:46 So you dump it out.

18:48 And that's, you know, that makes another sound.

18:52 Do you, and while you're I know this is while you're doing it. Is your son also checking it out too?

19:00 He's a little interested, yeah.

19:02 I gotta tell you, this would be perfect for him. I feel like you should share this with him. I know you said he wrote it, but pardon me, Katie, we can all be honest.

19:09 I'd love to put my feet in the sink. Like a life-sized... Like, if you just sized up the kitchen sink so it was something that we could all climb into.

19:19 Oh, come on.

19:20 That's so good. That would be so fucking... Big baby world. A whole baby world. Oh, my God. We're at six feet tall. This podcast ends right now. And we are together now working on making baby world.

19:34 A giant toilet. And you can put things in it and clog it.

19:39 Like toys. So big. You might fucking fall into the fucking thing.

19:43 You can fall in.

19:45 You can legit fall in. This would be our catchphrase. When you're in baby world, the whole... world's a giant toilet. That's so good. You're given a diaper.

19:55 You're given a diaper. You're kind of the.

19:59 Wrong crowd with that tagline.

20:03 We are veering quickly into a community that already exists.

20:07 Yeah, forced infancy. Just like some... Somewhere between micro dose and hero's dose of mushrooms to like really create the process of being a baby.

20:17 I think maybe if you go to things being baby size, people are going to regress in a weird way. I think we just go all in and we go for honey. I shrunk the kid's size.

20:28 I've always thought that this is an under-exploited market. They had, I remember, didn't they have like, they had like a little playground that was sort of like that. It was very small, but like, I'm talking like. But like full execution, where you're just having to like figure out how to get through a giant world. Like, let me walk through four miles of carpet. That's 70 feet tall. I really think Baby World is it. Like, I think, I mean, there's the, obviously Nathan Fielder from season two of the rehearsal.

20:56 Yeah.

20:56 But there's. Eternal Sunshine has the scene where Jim Carrey's just baby-sized. I feel like people yearn for this. This would be huge for people.

21:07 We yearn for the crib.

21:10 You could even have some thrills and chills with a big vacuum.

21:14 Oh, yes, we could.

21:16 Get a little scared. Giant vacuum comes through.

21:20 Right. A 40-pound set of keys.

21:27 And sometimes just a new shape that makes a big sound that.

21:32 You don't recognize. They just invented a new color. Yeah, this would drive the new color and new shape industry crazy. Wait, what do you mean they described it? Like another form of black kind of thing? No, it's like a bluish color that is... I forget. This is news that I'm getting from my eight-year-old. But he did learn it in a magazine that people are pretty excited about. Anyways. All right.

22:00 We have to cut all of that out because we're going to make millions and millions of dollars. Well, don't worry. I wrote it down. I just mailed it to myself. You mailed it to yourself? Thank God.

22:08 Yeah.

22:08 What is, Katie, something that you think is overrated?

22:12 Well, I don't want to like.

22:14 I did see in the doc we're maybe going to talk about the Kelly Clarkson thing.

22:19 No, no. We talked about it yesterday. We already talked about it. So, ignore that. Let it rip.

22:24 Okay. Okay.

22:26 I mean, like, I was going to say that, like, when you go into a store and they have, like, the most amazing bird thing and it dances for you.

22:42 Mm-hmm.

22:42 I think that whole, like, the artisanal store, when they're like, this is not just a store, but it's an experience.

22:50 I don't know that I want an.

22:51 Experience when I go to a store, personally. Like, I just want to get in, get my birds, and get out.

22:59 And return to base. Mission complete. Right.

23:02 Like if I go in there and they're like, I'm going to blow your mind with this bird.

23:08 You're like, it better be with the discount you're going to hit me with. Yeah.

23:11 It's like, I need, I can't, I can't, this can't happen every time I go shopping. I can't like, like for, there's this store that I have seen where it's like this, like curiosity stores. I hate curiosity stores. Cause they're always like, oh, here's like a death mask of someone from the 1700s. Aren't you curious?

23:36 And it's like, no. I want bread and ice cream, you dicks.

23:42 Well, then they go, well, why'd you come in here? Why'd you come to the Curiosity Store? Because those are the things I'm curious about. Bread and ice cream. Do you have that in mind?

23:51 I'm curious.

23:53 I don't want, like, I went in there because I thought, oh, I'm curious. And there was a, like, dead chihuahua head.

24:02 No.

24:03 Mounted to the wall. It's like, guys.

24:05 What is it?

24:06 I don't want to buy that.

24:07 What is a curiosity store? What are we talking about here? Because you just described being like, and there's dead animals on the wall. I'm like, eh?

24:16 I mean, this store like describes itself as like, you know. like antique items and i guess it's an antique oh with.

24:27 Like oddities or something.

24:29 Oddities yeah i would say they're.

24:31 Not gonna have milk in there though 10 times out.

24:33 Of 10 usually you know i mean i i'm just saying that like i could also go for a book or an iphone i.

24:43 Don't know i don't want i don't want to.

24:45 Like go into a store and then like like suddenly a life-size human puppet descends from the ceiling and starts dancing. That's not like, that's not cool. So I don't know what, I don't know if you guys sided with Kelly Clarkson or not, but I don't, I don't like any of, I don't think that we should have any, I don't think we should have any of that ever.

25:08 None of that.

25:10 I don't side with Kelly Clarkson because I don't, I can't identify with the injury that she's claiming she suffered. Which I'm pretty sure is still, I wanted to buy a thing that wasn't for sale and they said no. Or I wanted to buy a thing that wasn't for sale and they were rude to me about it.

25:27 I'm still like, It is a cool bird, though. Did you see the bird?

25:31 Yeah, I get it.

25:32 Made by some artisanal German clockmaker person. And they had another one they could offer her, I heard, that was identical. Like, it's weird because now there's more details coming. Well, then we also offered her an alternative one.

25:45 We don't know too much about this. Yeah, and that's when I'm like, this is so fucking stupid. Like, fuck all this, dude. She's in there complaining because they wouldn't.

25:52 Sell her a thing for 15 grand.

25:54 I don't fucking care. This is also my complaint with museums, too. I walk in there.

25:59 I'm like, give me that for $ 30. They're like, no, we have a gift shop. I'm like, no, I want that one. Give me that one on the wall.

26:06 The one.

26:07 Yeah. Yeah. I get it.

26:09 You want your golden goose. Give me that one.

26:11 Yeah.

26:11 Give me that now. It's not for sale. I said now or I'm going to tweet about it. And I'll have one lonely person come outside with an I'm stand with Kelly Clarkson sign in the rain. Do you want that? I don't know. I have a feeling everybody is wrong, or like both sides are kind of wrong in this one. I just feel like it's weird. The store people were probably weird and annoying.

26:34 I'm just going to side with a wage worker over a millionaire 10 times out of 10.

26:38 I don't care.

26:38 There's nothing they can do to hurt you unless they're being actually fucked up and discriminatory.

26:44 Yeah, I think that's right.

26:45 There's also something disgusting about taking a bird automaton. And owning it privately, I find that weird. Like, it's kind of like when it's out in public.

26:58 It is meant to be shared with the world, right? Right.

27:00 Like, it's like when it's out in public and then they're like, here's our delightful little mechanical bird.

27:05 Watch it. And then the children clap. It's like, okay, sure. That's delightful. Or like at a museum. When Kelly Clarkson is like, I have a bird in my house. It's like, it's weird.

27:18 Yeah, yeah.

27:18 And I don't, you know. It's a, you know.

27:22 We also found it weird how you kept inquiring if buying it would allow you to have its soul as well. We thought that was a weird line of questioning. Yeah.

27:32 It's not an Ursula Little Mermaid situation.

27:34 Can you do this to a human body? She kept screaming.

27:38 I just love the idea, Katie, to your point of like having to take this like bird for people's public enjoyment and taking it for yourself and making it private. Like she's in the store and she sees all the kids like getting all the joy from it and.

27:51 Kind of looking around like what the fuck they like this.

27:53 Bird uh no no no i'd like to buy this yeah yeah uh enough of that i i need to have.

27:59 This but i like joy yeah first you haunt hunch over the child and try and inhale the joy from his face and that doesn't work you have to acquire the Joymaker.

28:11 The store's like, alright, Miss Clarkson, we didn't want to tell the actual story. You were sniffing the kids' heads in there. And you tried to make it about the bird. We asked you to leave and you're just making our customers uncomfortable.

28:23 And you said, fine, I'll take the Joymaker. Give me that.

28:27 And then you said, fine, I guess no one's getting these tickets to Hollywood. And you pulled out an old American Idol prop. Alright.

28:37 Well, we're going to take a quick break, and we're going to come back, and we're going to talk about a lot of fun stuff happening. We're going to catch Katie up real quick on the state of things in the United States. Our barbaric republic.

28:48 I'm so excited. It'll be really fun.

29:01 And we're back. We're back. And so... Last week, Pete Hegseth announced that the firing squad execution... Did you guys know they still did firing squad executions?

29:15 I was vaguely aware that yes, in some states.

29:21 I didn't know. I thought the last one was in Europe or something decades ago. What was the last time we had a firing squad? I was shocked that the guillotine was fairly recently used. They had one in the 20th century, yeah.

29:34 Yeah.

29:35 Because that guy from Lord of the Rings saw it.

29:39 Oh, Lord of the Rings.

29:41 Jesus, the last one was in April of 2025?

29:43 Guillotine? No, sorry, Firing Squad. Firing Squad.

29:49 Ah.

29:51 Jesus.

29:52 Yeah, certain states, I thought, still had that as an option. It's not... I didn't think it was... Mandatory.

29:58 I thought it was like the person could choose between that and then the lethal injection, or am I wrong about that?

30:05 I don't know. I don't know stuff about executions. That's a fucked up menu to be choosing from. Yeah. Yeah. God.

30:12 Well, yeah.

30:12 They don't always go well either. The firing squad ones? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I can't imagine if they.

30:19 Can't even do the.

30:21 Lethal injection one. I can imagine... Firing squad.

30:25 Because one of the last people, Mikhal Mahdi, they said he probably, the autopsy said he may have suffered because no one actually got him in the heart. So he was just shot up a bunch and left to die. Anyway, so we're bringing it back.

30:43 Even harder, huh? Bringing it back. Bringing it back.

30:48 With all of that extra cruelty piled on, Pete Hegseth has announced that we're going to need to make this public.

30:55 And by that, he, of course, means a live stream. Unclear if it's going to be like pay-per-view, if like Dana White is going to be bringing it to us. It's probably going to be on White House TV or whatever the fuck it is, Trump TV. According to death penalty experts, what an area of expertise, This would mark the first known broadcast or live stream of a lawful execution.

31:21 The first known.

31:22 So weird.

31:23 So we're hitting new levels of medieval barbarism here in 2026.

31:31 I mean, it's like, part of me is like, yeah, what kind of country would do this? But in a weird way, we're already this fucked up place.

31:40 You know what I mean? To me, it's not even like, oh, we've crossed over to that place.

31:45 It's more just like, yeah, that's, I think that's expected based on the other ways I see this country spectacularly fail people and let them die. It's sort of like for everyone to see in a very public way. So yeah, it just, it just really does feel like the icing on top to then be like, formally.

32:01 It is definitely like, it is formally, it's like codifying the ghoulishness though, right? Like it's, cause now it's like, yeah, this is like, we do this now. Yeah, we do this now.

32:14 It's, uh, before we did it.

32:17 Yeah.

32:18 I saw some extremely stupid argument where it was like, Oh, it's good. It's public because it's good that people are faced with the reality of this. Like if we have the death penalty, people need to be faced with like the reality of this.

32:31 It's like, I mean, read the temperature, dude.

32:36 The kind of people who would not want the death penalty or could be convinced to not want the death penalty are not going to want to watch it.

32:45 They're not going to watch this.

32:47 No, they're not going to watch it.

32:48 The people who are going to watch it are going to be like, yeah, we're killing people now.

32:53 It's sick. And it's going to make people sicker.

32:56 Yeah.

32:58 Yeah.

32:58 I think that, yeah, the. The person who's pitching this is a uniquely fucked up person who has probably seen some executions and been like, oh, people are going to love this. And he's probably right. So disconnected from their humanity. Yeah, in the same way that we talked about, Oprah knows her audience and just assumes her audience is excited about the same things as her.

33:24 Pete Hexeth is like, oh, fucking weird toxic masculinity sociopaths are going to fucking love this shit. probably right they did uh break a record as far as i know that it was an onion headline just five months ago so that's where you know we've talked about the overton window before this is a different window where it's the window between uh satire and reality is is closing in yeah.

33:52 It's just yeah there's something just really disturbing too because like even when we look at how you know, like ice agents are essentially doing summary executions in the street. Like there's, we've already, we've seen this kind of thing before, but also to Katie, your point for it to have this sort of like a formality to it is also just really, I mean, although it's already done in formal settings, just not live streamed for people to watch, to really be like, Oh yeah, we want to live stream the darkest parts of, of this society. Yeah.

34:23 It seems to have even grossed out JD Vance, who, uh, reacted to the news by saying, I'm not going to be watching it. He said he didn't know if that's going to actually happen. But if it was, I'm not going to be watching. That is like, I do think he should have to watch. You know what I mean? Like, I think the sort of people who are in charge of wielding this power should be forced to watch it.

34:48 Well, like, also, it's like, well, I wouldn't watch it. It's like, oh, why not?

34:51 Because it's disgusting and, like, bad for your soul?

34:56 Vance? JD?

34:58 Jimothy?

34:59 What's his name? I don't even know.

35:01 Jimothy Vance.

35:02 Jimothy?

35:03 No, I was just also saying, like, the Fort Hood shooter, the guy was, like, he was permanently injured when he was shot during his capture. He's wheelchair-bound. So it's like, just the visuals of it all are so fucking... god awful but but the cruelty is the point yeah yeah and like tragically so on point it's like it just kind of does your fucking head.

35:25 In and the thing that is so annoying is whenever this conversation plays out right uh when you talk about the death penalty it's like oh so you think you you have sympathy for this guy like you think it's good this guy is like a killer or a murderer it's like no the point is we shouldn't be like no one has.

35:45 The right to just determine who dies like that so casually.

35:49 It's just so it's just like it's like oh well like I guess you like this guy who's a murderer because you don't want the state to do a televised execution celebrating death like yeah I mean like it's it's about it's about our you know souls or character right like it's not It's not like we're allowing.

36:16 Right.

36:17 So if you think about it this way, right, it's we are lowering ourselves to the level of like, you know, the people that you're saying are really, you know, it's like, oh, this guy's a murderer. He's scum. It's like, OK, so like we're going to.

36:33 Right.

36:33 So like we're going to do we're going to do killing, too, because like that is, I guess, now.

36:40 If someone's bad.

36:41 We should just be as equally bad as them. Like that, that seems like the, that seems like the thing, right? It's like, oh, but this is a bad person. So let's also be bad. Let's also do sick.

36:51 Disgusting things. It would be that simple if it weren't for the statistics, which show that it, oh, wait, sorry. It doesn't help at all. It doesn't dissuade people at all. Nevermind. Fuck. Withdrawn. Withdrawn, Your Honor.

37:03 And I think the irony too, because America loves to, stand on the moral high ground and like finger wag at other places.

37:10 Like, look how they treat their people here or there. And look at us.

37:14 There's no moral. We're in the fucking moral Netherlands, not even the fucking high. We're below sea level in terms of morality and just having like, so again, all of these things, it just kind of brings up just all of this illusion of like moral superiority when we are actually one of the darkest fucking societies on earth. I think one thing though, if we can, Because there's still mystery, right?

37:35 Because Trump ultimately sounds like he's going to make the cut. He sounds like they want to do it the way he's talking about it. It sounds like the teens want to throw a fucking party with a keg.

37:44 Yeah.

37:45 We'll see what I say.

37:46 Are we going to have pizza or are we going to have tacos?

37:48 I don't know what they want to do.

37:49 But apparently he, from what people have said, I guess what we need to do is ask Grok what they think, because that's kind of what Trump's doing.

37:57 It says right now it might not happen. Trump told one confidant.

38:02 Who's speaking with Axios, quote, he didn't sound particularly enthusiastic about webcasting the execution, the source said. That's why he's calling around, doing the Trump thing, asking people what they think. So we'll see if he nets out talking to more bloodthirsty freaks than people who are.

38:20 I'll make a decision. Ultimately, I know what the military would like to do, but we'll make a decision, is how he put it. I don't know. That was kind of Reagan-ish.

38:28 Right. And.

38:30 I think he should live stream the decision like LeBron James did, you know? So he gets, he'll forget what the whole point of it was.

38:37 Yeah.

38:38 Wait, what was I here to say? Also in the world of toxically, uh, toxic masculinity and the U S government, uh, the FBI, we had talked about that, that they were floating this before, but apparently they're very serious about wanting to proceed with UFC training for agents. Yeah.

38:58 This summer, they did a thing we talked about where there was like a weekend where a couple agents got to pretend they were macho men or some shit. But there's a new some new documents are suggesting this is going to be more formal. Quote, Patel, who attended President Donald Trump's UFC birthday bash, is now seeking a one year sole source contract with the UFC to provide a training program for agents in, quote, defense tactical techniques. The purpose of the training is to enhance physical combat abilities, mental toughness, and tactical awareness, which are crucial for special agents in high-risk situations. The document, which was first reported by MS Now, read, it's unclear how much the contract

39:37 is worth as the estimated figure was redacted.

39:40 What is a sole source? Is that like you can't, we can't learn... self-defense from anyone else or that sounds.

39:47 Like an exclusive contract because they're also saying it's like another no bid situation but the most famous one recently being the reflection pool job that's now causing all kinds of investigations so i think now they're saying like.

40:03 Yeah ufc offered training like i didn't know that i thought it was like the NBA, but for fighting, right?

40:10 It is.

40:11 Yeah, well, they have gyms. They had gyms, like UFC gyms. You know what they teach you to do at those gyms? To fight in UFC fights? Yep.

40:21 You know what they also teach you to do? Push down all your feelings of inadequacy in a deep, dark way.

40:29 What were they doing before this? Didn't they already have training?

40:32 Yeah, training that was designed for FBI agents and the situations they might encounter.

40:39 But what if you're going after a terrorist?

40:42 Okay, so a bad guy. Okay, let's game this out then. An octagon?

40:47 Yeah, like an octagon. Okay, so I'm in the ring with a terrorist.

40:51 And it's down to his underwear.

40:53 Right, and he's got like a chair.

40:55 No guns, no weapons. He says, let's handle this like men.

40:59 Eddie, his name is the chair-er-ist. Eddie tries to hit you with a chair.

41:05 Well, actually, first of all, I would tell him that you're actually not allowed to use chairs. You're breaking the... Against.

41:10 The bylaws of a sanctioned fight. I think you're thinking of WWE wrestling.

41:15 I wish they were doing the training.

41:18 It's essentially as... So I will say WWE wrestling would probably be more useful because UFC is like... Specifically, some of the most powerful fighting tactics are ground and pound. It's jiu-jitsu and ground and pound. Yeah, and put them in an uncomfortable position until they can't fight. It's literally called ground and pound? No, that fighting style. That's one of the approaches. So, fellas.

41:47 Okay. I see what you do.

41:48 Hot, right? Pretty hot.

41:50 I see what your whole little UFC thing is, guys. Okay, you're not so slick.

41:57 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

41:58 Ground and pound.

41:59 Okay.

41:59 I just need to get in the octagon with another man and have him show me how to ground and pound by doing it to my body.

42:06 That's the only way for the FBI.

42:09 Get me greasy, sweaty.

42:11 Grease them up.

42:12 So I don't want to warm up and like jump rope like you guys do. So could you, because I don't know, that sounds hard. Can you just choke me, daddy? I'm sorry. Choke me, sensei? Could you just put baby oil on me so that I seem like I'm sweaty and then, yeah, choke me down, baby. It's such a funny thing.

42:30 Again, there's a one-dimensional view of what is tough through the eyes of a 10-year-old.

42:35 It is so 8-year-old coded. What's that thing?

42:39 Everyone's a 12-year-old. 12-year-olds are in charge of everything right now in the government. If you could be Randy Couture, if every FBI agent was Randy Couture or Vanderlei Silva, dude, we would never.

42:51 Stop crime at the fucking root source.

42:54 No.

42:55 But I think, again, this is probably some interesting way to move money around. I'm sure Kash Patel has, maybe he wants tickets to a UFC thing.

43:03 Who fucking knows? But it's not for the reasons they're saying.

43:04 They also did the UFC thing for the Americaversary, right?

43:09 Mm-hmm. For Trump's birthday. Trump's birthday. Oh, his birthday.

43:12 Okay, yeah, yeah.

43:13 I get the mixed up, too. Because Trump's birthday matters so much. That's cute, though.

43:18 That's cute, though, that he had like a themed birthday.

43:20 I'm an adult, so I don't usually do like a themed birthday.

43:25 I usually just go out to a restaurant.

43:27 Right.

43:27 I think that's cute.

43:28 Not this queen.

43:30 To be like 80 and have a themed birthday. You all see themed birthday for the big boy.

43:37 But like you're running an agency and your weird childish fandom is just so transparently seeping into how it's being ran. It's like if I was running, I'm like, oh, I'm like all the players from Arsenal are going to come to show the FBI agents like how to actually like what their best moments were for their career.

43:54 Just to kind of help for them in the field. Firearm training will be turned over to Wild Bill Hickok to do quick gun, quick draw showdown shooting. It's like so specific and dumb to just be like this one thing.

44:10 Do you think Kash Patel might be like, I don't know, a little insecure?

44:14 Come on, come on, come on.

44:16 Because he looks so calm and confident all the time.

44:22 It's a little hard to imagine that he might be really insecure and have massive imposter syndrome.

44:30 There's probably a little bit of that, maybe. Seems like he's pretty easy to push around with just not even... Oh, yeah. Just by accident.

44:40 It's easy to ground and pound.

44:41 Oh, yeah. I'd love to see that guy get grounded.

44:45 I feel like you'd be the easiest guy to steal. You could strong arm rob him into just giving... You'd be like, give me your shoes.

44:51 And he's like, okay. And I'm like, damn, bro. Didn't you take a UFC class or something? Say fucking no or something. You hopped out of those shits so quick. All right. And speaking of cowardly feds, they did raid Ilhan Omar's house yesterday.

45:05 Yeah.

45:06 In a pre-dawn raid.

45:07 Yeah.

45:09 You gotta go in early. When you're dealing with people like this who you're trying to prove that their dad filled out their paperwork incorrectly, you gotta go in hard.

45:20 That's what they said. They said it's a legitimate investigation for criminal fraud because they said when she was born in Somalia and came to this country, they said they're seeing if her legal paperwork may have been filled out incorrectly by her late father when she was a child.

45:42 Yeah.

45:43 So they want to try and find something wrong with paperwork that she had nothing to do with filling out. But also, I don't expect any kind of empathy or sympathy from these people because they don't care. They're like, are you not white and born elsewhere? Then. There's a new policy for that. It's just really fucking cynical that.

46:06 This is a harassment campaign.

46:07 I know it's like super disgusting that they're going after their political opponent this way, like going after, you know, a congresswoman this way. But that like same thing of like, we're just going to find like a little paperwork error and treat you like you're like a dangerous armed criminal is exactly what they're doing also to a ton of other immigrants who like, you know, they just, they have some kind of paperwork error or like some, there's like some procedural thing. Cause it's not, I think people have this notion of immigration in the U S where it's like, Oh, you just like fill out a form and then you wait and then you pay some money and then you walk up to the immigration office and.

46:50 Then you get a stamp.

46:51 It's numerous hoops.

46:52 It's not, it's like really messy. It's super messy.

46:56 There's not, there's like, It's not like there's, like, sometimes you need, like, a lawyer to figure stuff out because it's really weird and it's confusing and the system's not very good. So, like, these mistakes happen a lot, not because people are trying to trick the system or trying to cheat, but because it's, like, it's not a good system.

47:13 It's completely messed up.

47:15 Well, yeah.

47:15 Because I think they've exhausted the sort of explanation, like, well, we're going after criminals.

47:20 They're like, like.

47:22 over 70% of the people you're getting don't even have criminal records.

47:24 So it's like, well, okay.

47:25 And the criminals that they are going after are usually, actually, I think almost always already in prison. So they're not like catching criminals off the street generally. It's like they're just going to prisons and being like, okay, there's a criminal there.

47:39 We can arrest. Let him out for a second so we can arrest him. I just learned this really cool new ground and pound method. I'm going to need like 15 minutes because it doesn't work every time.

47:51 No, no, no, leave the handcuffs on, leave the handcuffs on.

47:53 No, he's going to kick my ass.

47:55 I mean, like you go down the list, it's like, okay, so we're going to skip over people in the Epstein files as maybe people we could put some energy towards bringing to justice.

48:03 And then you're going to be.

48:04 Like, let's get some people on a technicality now and devote all these federal law enforcement resources to this shit again, because that's the cruelty and that's what they want to be advertising to everybody who is thinking they could pursue a better life here.

48:19 It's so wild that they're going after Ilhan Omar, though. Like, that feels like there should just be this mass protest by Congress. Like, every Democrat should be, like, you know, I don't know, out there going like, this is an outrage. Are they doing that?

48:39 We'll see.

48:40 Remains to be seen.

48:41 They'll see what the polling looks like, you know.

48:45 It's like new news.

48:46 So I'm not like I don't want to be unfair. Maybe they are going to do something. But it's just like why it just it's also I feel like when they had been threatening her, I just didn't feel like there was that strong of a response from Congress, like condemning the threatening of a sitting congressperson by the president.

49:08 Yeah.

49:10 I mean, again, it's like, you know, just seeing this increased weaponization of the law to go after political enemies. It's just like becoming so normal. And I think, yeah, I mean, from Ilhan Omar, she's like, I'm not going to be silenced because they're they're fucking trying to intimidate me.

49:28 Yeah.

49:28 Especially because she's this is like. You have to also understand, she's also up for re-election. All these members of Congress, they're in their districts trying to get their shit together to get re-elected into office, and throwing this kind of shit down weeks before is all by design.

49:44 They just tried with Tallarico. They said that he was locked in a mental institution. He got the flu and had to take a day off from campaigning, and they made up this massive conspiracy theory that he was in a Cincinnati mental institution.

49:58 Yeah.

50:00 I saw this incredible exchange between one of these.

50:04 I don't know if it was... What's his name? Pusubiak? Jack the Sobiak. It wasn't that guy.

50:11 It was some other... One of these Chet accounts. Yeah, one of these Chet accounts that was spreading this. Because they're saying, no, this isn't true.

50:22 There's no.

50:23 evidence of this. It's like, well, why doesn't he just release the records then? It's like, because there aren't any.

50:28 What do you mean?

50:29 Release records that don't exist?

50:31 Like, yeah, just release your hospital records that don't exist. Oh, convenient that they don't exist.

50:37 Eh, Talrico?

50:38 Right.

50:40 Interesting.

50:42 Yeah, it's like, also, it's one of those dumbass fucking conspiracy theories that it's, like, that's how, I mean, this is the best they can do. They go, Oh yeah, the guy running for fucking Senate in Texas had to go to Cincinnati to check into some kind of mental health facility because why? Well, that's where the only NBA game was. Oh shit. They're refusing to fucking accept reality.

51:17 It's crazy how much these people are fucking doubling down. They're like, guys, you don't even have You have nothing.

51:22 You have a fake. We have a weird phone call. We let them go. Let it go.

51:30 Oh, just like meanwhile, we see the president of the United States like every day on television from like 50 different cameras while his brain is like actively melting, like just.

51:43 Like, he's disintegrating in front of us.

51:47 And then we're like, oh, but maybe there's a conspiracy about this guy.

51:51 It's like, what are we doing? Yeah.

51:55 Yeah.

51:56 I do like to imagine that there's like one room. That's like the brain, brain trust with like dipshit Mulder and Scully, just like coming up with these like conspiracy theories that are just like so fucking dumb. And they're like, guys, we got a, we got a hot one. Right. Tallarico's in Cincinnati locked away in a mental institution.

52:16 It's crazy how like, yeah, Tallarico, maybe like, it's funny too, because now the, the Lindner Center of Hope, they've come on.

52:23 They're like, dude, this guy was never fucking here. Please leave us alone. It would be a HIPAA violation for them to confirm it, Miles. So we're not. No, we're telling you unequivocally. There is nothing to even talk about. That's not. There is no. There's no expectation of privacy. So he was never fucking here. Legally, you have to lie.

52:41 Holy shit. Are you fucking serious? They wouldn't say that.

52:43 Because they're psychologists.

52:45 Yeah.

52:46 And have you heard of reverse hypnosis?

52:48 This guy that flew for 13 days?

52:52 Really?

52:53 I don't know about that. You know, a lot of people are rightfully pointing out. They're like, remember when Donald Trump was shot in the fucking ear and we never saw a single medical anything? Yeah.

53:04 Anyway, I don't know why we're pointing out the hypocrisy, but nice try, assholes.

53:07 But he's a vegan. And as Trump says, when you're a vegan, you eat meat and you throw it up.

53:14 That is how that works, I think.

53:16 Right.

53:17 Yeah, yeah, and spits it out. Yeah, yeah, of course. Spits it out.

53:21 Chews on it and spits it out. Chews on it.

53:24 I like to lick a cow and then spit it out. There you go.

53:29 You're just dabbling. Yeah, because the other thing, too, is there was a phone call that they said they called the facility, and a lot of people were like, this is like AI, we're pretty sure. This isn't even a real thing. And again, you also have Elon Musk. just amplifying everything this whole weekend over it.

53:44 Oh, that's so cool. Yeah, man. He's a mental hospital.

53:48 Wow.

53:48 Interesting. Looking into this. He was there until the 10th. Looking into this. Austin City Limits on the 9th. All right. All right, man. Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. And I'll keep doing that one Elon Musk for like 15 minutes.

54:16 Sounds like Elon's getting grounded and pounding.

54:32 And we're back. We're back. And we're back.

54:35 All right.

54:36 Miles, you went and you watched the new Mac and Me. Animals. Ben Affleck's new film, Animals. Directed by Starry. Directed by Starry. I believe even wrote. It was one of the three writers on it.

54:52 I mean... Yeah.

54:54 So yeah, basically it's the town, right? I think that's probably what they wanted us to think is this is the next town. This is the next, the town, Joe Mazzola, get ready. The coach of the Celtics who watches the town every day.

55:08 Yeah.

55:09 Uh, it's, it's about, it's so funny.

55:12 So he plays a candidate for LA mayor who's going independent, man. Cause I can't have the baggage of either of these parties. Um, And they like start off with this montage of like the most like just boilerplate, like liberal candidate kind of thing where he's like, when I was a blob, like it's just I get it. They're trying to set the table that he's like this career politician. And then suddenly his child is kidnapped on Halloween and he's hit with a fucking ransom saying, give me seven million dollars.

55:45 On Halloween? Yeah, on Halloween. This is the one night that the kids have to not be... Not only that, Jack, think about this. It's GOTV weekend. Get out the vote weekend. That weekend before Election Tuesday, as people know who are in campaigns. Smart. It's fucking dense. You gotta be doing a lot.

56:02 And I think the whole thing is he's under pressure because he's put all his money into winning this campaign.

56:08 And it has a very interesting....

56:11 Jillian Anderson is in it, and she plays like a wolf like harvey kytel wolf character who kind of comes in to be like your kid was fucking abducted and you need fucking seven million dollars here i am here's my feet she has literal slicked back hair wow and it's just a very unbelievable story carrie washington is his wife who's also.

56:33 At any point he did not start sucking each other's dicks quite yet No, no. Like the wolf in Pulp Fiction? No, no, no. Okay. No, Julian Anderson does not do that quite yet.

56:42 Okay.

56:42 But it's like a very, like, it feels like, you know, like, I feel like Netflix movies kind of have like a vibe now, which they're like so off.

56:49 Good, right? Like there's something surreal. The best movies? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

56:52 Yeah, yeah.

56:53 They're just like so bad. Their vibe is definitely the best. You know what I mean?

56:55 Like they're so, they don't feel like movies in this weird way. It feels like a really long bit or something. I don't know how to quite explain it.

57:04 Well, you know, that's like, You know those AI cuck fruit videos?

57:09 No.

57:11 You don't? Okay, am I the only one?

57:14 No, you're definitely not the only one. We're probably just out of step with the cuck fruit.

57:19 It's the fruit.

57:20 It's the 3D fruit with people, hot, sexy people with fruit for heads. And it's these like AI generated shorts. And like, usually it's like someone's cheating on someone else. It's like, like a cherry lady cheating on her, uh, cherry husband with a banana man. Oh, okay.

57:43 I think I've seen like, this reminds me of those ones where it's like a chubby little kit kitten that I'm like, they tell a little story, like AI stories with the, with like the cat is like very sad.

57:54 It's like that. If the cat, instead of the cat, it's a sexy fruit, people cheating on each other, cooking one another, uh, And having babies out of wedlock.

58:08 So is it like, okay, this person, this banana man and this pineapple woman are like married parents. And then she like has a half pineapple, half cherry baby. And he's like, no. Is it that?

58:24 Yeah, it's exactly that. And there's probably that exact one. The beautiful thing about this is that every single iteration, every combination you can think of already exists in many different formats and many different versions.

58:40 It does have, there's salacious affair stuff going on a little bit.

58:45 In the movie?

58:47 Yeah animals yeah yeah um carrie washington is kind of like has a side piece uh-oh who's like it's funny too because he's like sorry spoiler i'm gonna spoil the fuck oh my god i know.

59:00 I know i know.

59:01 But that's not a reveal the best part is like she's like, she's kind of kissing on this black.

59:06 Dude who's like, man, you need to leave him. He's using you as a fucking, as a prop and shit. I'm like, oh, I mean, I mean, this guy is a career politician. He's out here being like, look at my interracial child. Okay. As a son to a black child. I know.

59:22 But anyway, what happens is I'll tell you what happens. They, they, It's so convoluted, but his kid goes out to trick-or-treat with another kid who's like the stepson of his housekeeper slash nanny.

59:36 Can't do that. Yeah. They're from another class. Yeah. That's class mixing.

59:41 So when the kid gets abducted, it's like, was it her? There's all this like, who was it? Who could have possibly done this to us? You come to find out that his kid comes home and they kidnapped him. the housekeeper's stepson because they were wearing identical costumes with a mask on it. So now the dilemma was, does he save this kid's or this person's child? Because he already got his own.

1:00:05 That's the premise of another movie.

1:00:07 But wasn't Okay, wait, hang on. But then they're like, oh, the kid got kidnapped. Where was the other kid then? The non-kidnapped kid?

1:00:13 The kid, he just got lost and walked home.

1:00:16 Ben Affleck's actual kid is.

1:00:20 The one he thought was kid because the guy goes, we have your son, blah, blah, blah. They're like, oh my God, what are we going to do? Two hours later, his son comes up and goes, hey, mom and dad, so I got lost at the hunt. He's like, oh my God, where have you been? And then they're like, oh shit. We kidnapped the wrong kid. We kidnapped the poor kid. And then the guy's like, doesn't matter. We'll still kill him. It'll be a scandal for your mayoral campaign.

1:00:39 And they're like, oh, God.

1:00:42 And so the scene you're talking about at the end, Where he's saving the shot.

1:00:47 Yeah.

1:00:48 So the scene we're talking, yeah, there is a scene at the end that is being compared to the Paul Rudd.

1:00:55 Oh, I've had it going on loop in the background.

1:00:58 Yeah. There's this movie Mac and Me that just for broad, so you get the full context. It came out right after E.T., ET was groundbreaking in that it is the first time that they really nailed it with product placement in a way that was like very front and center. They went to the M & M' s people and were like, ET is going to be eating M & M' s and leaving a trail of M & M' s and M & M' s. No, M & M' s was like, get fucked. And so they had to use Reese's Pieces. And so it was like a huge disaster for the M & M people.

1:01:33 Um, it's the only reason Reese's pieces are still around. I love Reese's peanut butter cubs.

1:01:38 Reese's pieces. I always think of E.T.

1:01:40 Too.

1:01:41 Yeah.

1:01:42 They're only there because like, I, I think of E.T. when I'm eating them and enjoy them more because of E.T. I'm eating E.T. Yeah. So Hollywood being what it is, they weren't like, we need to, uh, just, you know, find other young filmmakers and trust their weird vision of like, you know, a friendly, uh, They were like, we need to make a movie that takes the product placement thing all the fucking way. We'll skimp on the talent involved.

1:02:11 We'll skimp on the special effects. And so they created a version of E.T. who had a little butthole for a mouth. His mouth is just constantly in a little perked O shape. And he looks, it's offensive. And the movie is incomprehensible enough But there is one part where a child goes goes down a ravine on a wheelchair and then for whatever reason, once they hit the bottom, just get fucking launched. They get sent skyward for no for no reason that anybody who understands how physics works could possibly explain. Yeah, most likely they would just go face forward. just slam face first into the ground yeah yeah but yeah it also happens with a naked gun i don't see people complaining about that but the uh

1:03:04 yeah so i think i think ben affleck released this was like that people are going to be saying this is the new the town and instead people are saying it's the new mac and me because it has a scene exactly like that at the at the end.

1:03:16 Yeah he's going down he goes is this your precious kid he's chasing after the kid hits the LA river basin at full speed.

1:03:24 And then just pops up and is safely launched into the arms of Ben Affleck. And this is not his precious son. This is the, that's Hector. That's Hector. Yeah.

1:03:34 It's also, this whole scene ends with a crazy, like this wacky ass gunfight too.

1:03:39 It's just doesn't, it doesn't make sense. Yeah. You're like, there's going to be more questions being asked.

1:03:44 If anything, if you're a mayoral candidate and you happen to be at the site of a mass shooting with a bunch of people in rabbit masks have been offed. It's a great bit of Netflix movieing, for sure, where, like, I watched the first 45 minutes straight and then had my brain off and I still know every single beat of the story that happened.

1:04:08 It sounds like the movie Gavin Newsom would write about himself.

1:04:12 Yeah.

1:04:12 Isn't that the thing with Netflix now, though?

1:04:14 It's, like, meant to be, it's, like, Nobody just watches TV with their full attention anymore.

1:04:20 They're all on their phones.

1:04:22 So we just need a movie that's like where we're saying the plot is as it's happening. Like, oh, no, my nanny's son is rolling down a ravine on a wheelbarrow or something.

1:04:39 Yeah, Steven Yun plays his campaign manager who's always hitting him with campaign talk.

1:04:45 He's like, if you do that, we might lose another three to four points with Latino voters if we do this. And it's just so labored. That's probably accurate, though.

1:04:53 Yeah.

1:04:53 I mean, he was saying things, but to the point of being like, oh, now I understand why Guy would want to do this rather than being able to glean that from what is happening in the story. And I think that's kind of why these films feel like It's not quite storytelling. It's story screaming in your face in the least subtle way possible and like doesn't really allow for great acting.

1:05:17 But it unfortunately is getting bad reviews. Oh, really? Yeah. According to Forbes, actor director Ben Affleck's Netflix original movie Animals is getting hit with negative reviews from Rotten Tomatoes critics.

1:05:33 Hmm.

1:05:34 What do you think Rotten Tomatoes is? This is a complete sidebar, but do they think that Rotten Tomatoes has a team of critics that does the movie reviews?

1:05:45 Rotten Tomatoes critics.

1:05:46 I mean, it's written by like, it sounds like a Forbes writer who's like, the Rotten Tomatoes critics don't like it.

1:05:52 Yeah, yeah, yeah. People have no concept of what. Anyways, I mean, not that everybody needs to pay attention to the tomato meter like I do, but it is just a tomato meter. But I mean, it also just might be to like intentionally obscure how bad the reviews are to be like, well, This group of people at Rotten Tomatoes thinks it's bad. It's like, no, that is all the critics. That's all the critics. It's an aggregator. They've taken all the critics and done the sweetening that would get it to a higher review level, and they are still only at 36%. So another thing that people are pointing out is that Ben Affleck has been talking about how he ethically used AI for the project. I ethically shoot heroin. He sold his AI company Interpositive to Netflix

1:06:49 for nearly $ 600 million. So this also does scan with everything we know about AI, where it's like people paying each other. It's like, I'll make this movie that uses AI, and then you'll pay me for my AI company, and we're just... nobody's actually doing anything, but it does. He, he was like, but yes, we did use it. And in fact, I thought it was a good example of how to use AI ethically because it's a very human movie, which is a great illustration of just like how, like where the AI movement is coming from and going is that like, it's not being used by like artists or if it is, it's artists who are in meeting with people who are willing to pay you $ 600 million for your technology that is over promising, like what it can do.

1:07:39 And like that, you're not living an authentically human life. And so when you make your movie, you're like, this is actually the most deeply human movie I've ever made. And then it comes out and you're surprised that actual humans believe that it actually sucks shit.

1:07:57 He says he knows more about AI than anybody, Ben Affleck. I just want to play this clip where he was talking about it.

1:08:04 It's going to be super intelligent and it's going to be Skynet and Terminator and take over the world.

1:08:10 This is him on all the smoke. This is who he's talking to. He's talking to two basketball players.

1:08:16 Which is a little bit like, well, let's then maybe just not put AI in charge of shit to start with. You know what I mean? I would say that's probably what I would like to see happen.

1:08:24 Yeah, he said smart things about AI in the past.

1:08:26 Owned and integrated into what filmmakers are doing. It's never going to be. And I don't think anyone ever wants to see like this whole till you know, or we think that that's bullshit. Nobody wants to see or cares about something that you know is false, but in, and like not real and not a person. Like I just don't believe in that. I don't believe that's going to work.

1:08:44 I don't believe that's a real thing to worry about. I think there are some things about the technology that would make visual effects less expensive. And like those things, I think that we should adopt.

1:08:54 And, Less expensive, red, paying people. It's the fucking humans that we already put under terrible.

1:09:00 Conditions to make this shit. We can, we can spend a lot less on this shit.

1:09:04 So I think that's what he's saying, ethical use, because I've seen in multiple things, I'm like, I'm talking about taking the wires off of like a stunt when we launch a 10-year-old out of a radio flyer wagon in the LA River. So like that kind of thing.

1:09:15 And it actually looks just as good. Wait, it doesn't look as good? It's so true to life. I mean, the physicists we employ to get these things right. I mean, we're not using AI for that. But yeah, it's wild that he just kept.

1:09:29 $ 587 million was what that sale was to Netflix for interpositive AI.

1:09:35 I can't believe you didn't have a completely grounded view of how to use AI in a way that keeps things human.

1:09:42 Will you do something ethical with that money you just got? Or are you just going to sit on that? Bigger back tattoos.

1:09:51 Bigger and bigger.

1:09:52 I'm actually going to put a QR code in the Phoenix back tat that I have. So it does like an augmented reality thing when you scan it at the beach.

1:10:00 Katie Golden, such a pleasure having you. As always. Thanks for having me. Where can people find you, follow you, all that good stuff?

1:10:08 Yeah, well, I'm doing a podcast with good old Alex Schmidt called Secretly... Incredibly fascinating. And I'm also doing some writing for, you know, that lunatic leftist show on YouTube called Some More News. You know, real.

1:10:35 What's it like? Are you OK?

1:10:37 I hear that those people on the left are just, you know, let's not talk about it. Yeah.

1:10:44 Well, it's, you know, we want people to have health care, which is, like, you know, kind of scary.

1:10:49 And I'm praying for those people. I'm praying for those people.

1:10:53 And, you know, so I— and then I got— I mean, you recall the sync conversation. I have a boy child, so I've been doing some— Mostly standing at a sink, covering the boy above the sink, going, is this what pleases you?

1:11:14 On Wawa duty.

1:11:16 So I am behind in my Creature Feature podcast, but I have a massive, massive archive of cool Creature Feature episodes. If you want to learn about animals, you can check out Creature Feature podcast about animals.

1:11:33 Yeah, that's it. Otherwise, you know, that, yeah, I don't know.

1:11:38 Yeah, yeah.

1:11:39 That's it.

1:11:39 Amazing. Is there a work of media that you've been enjoying? Yes.

1:11:44 I want to check to make sure you guys didn't already, have you guys already done the chat, chat GBD, chat BBD?

1:11:54 Chat GPT?

1:11:56 Chat, chat GBB? Chat GBB?

1:11:59 There's so many people doing chat GPB. No.

1:12:03 Okay, so it sounds like you haven't. Can I share my audio?

1:12:06 Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a few creators. Is it the one woman who's talking about? She's like, Chad GPP, Chad GTP.

1:12:13 There's also another one where there's a white dude who's like, yo, Chad GPP, how do I become a millionaire?

1:12:19 And they're like, okay, how do I do that without work?

1:12:22 It's the one with the woman. It's very funny.

1:12:25 I don't watch those.

1:12:27 You don't watch funny things.

1:12:29 He doesn't like stuff that brings attention to AI.

1:12:33 This is from pineapple.honeydew on TikTok.

1:12:37 Chubby BT, is my refrigerator running? Chubby BT, is Shrek 2 the sequel or the first one?

1:12:44 Chubby BT, how old is my mom?

1:12:47 Chubby BT, do I know enough words to write an email? Chubby BT, what's your star sign?

1:12:53 Oh no.

1:12:57 There's so many of those. It's so funny, like, how many young creators have this kind of style of video? Like, it makes me, I realize how few people I know who are sort of sincerely talking to it like this, that these people must be around so many more who are like, nah, dude, I just asked ChazzyPG.

1:13:18 ChazzyPG.

1:13:19 How do I write an email?

1:13:22 The sequel to the first one.

1:13:26 I do use a translator sometimes for Italian because I can speak it poorly, badly. But sometimes I do need to actually get something done medically.

1:13:41 So I need to write an email in Italian.

1:13:43 This is just how it feels like when I'm trying to translate something.

1:13:47 It's like, I don't know enough words.

1:13:50 I don't know how to write email.

1:13:56 Miles where can people find you is there a work of media you've been enjoying.

1:13:59 Find me everywhere at miles of gray talking about 90 day fiance on 420 day fiance talking about the premier league the champions league on ain't it footy which emil johnson and chris martin uh a work of media i like just there's been so many good posts about the talarico thing happening and the rights just inability to just like be like no that this never happened fuck face uh this is from At LXEagle17 posted, A conspiracy theorist dies and goes to heaven. When he arrives, God says, Welcome.

1:14:31 Ask me anything you want. The man says, I need to know. Was Tallarico in an Ohio mental hospital?

1:14:39 God says, No. The man pauses and then says, Wow. This goes even higher than I thought. Wow.

1:14:49 Wow.

1:14:50 That's a good street joke.

1:14:52 Interesting.

1:14:53 Very good joke.

1:14:55 Looking into this.

1:14:56 It goes even higher than I thought. You can find me on Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien, Blue Sky Jack OB, the number one. Instagram Jack underscore O underscore Brian. There is a video of a small Quebecois child performing. in a room full of adults who are like fucking loving it. And it's just the most confident performance I've ever seen.

1:15:22 So I am just going to link this link off to the clip so that people can enjoy it. If you so choose, it's throwing the chat. Like I haven't seen this. I need to see this.

1:15:32 He's so confident. It's like, it's mesmerizing.

1:15:36 The way the both of you are like his confidence. I'm like, what? But then so it's his confidence. It's also that they keep cutting away to these grim faced men who like look like they have never had a song in their heart before this moment and like are having trouble controlling their hips from not like breaking into a wild dance. This kid is moving. He's got like a Saturday Night Fever vibe. Yeah, maple syrup in his hips.

1:16:15 It feels like a different version of where these middle-aged men are like the young women who saw Elvis perform for the first time.

1:16:21 Yes, exactly. They're just feeling it so, so hard. Motherfucker killing it. Catherine, is that AI? Are you telling me?

1:16:30 I wonder if it's upscaled by AI.

1:16:32 It's like there's a sheen to it.

1:16:33 Because I thought I.

1:16:37 thought that it looked a little like the smoothness looks a little ai but it could also be an upscaled an actual video that's been upscaled with ai uh that was my guess is that it's like there's an actual video but it's been upscaled and so that's why it has that like weird smoothness but i don't know maybe it's all ai like the there's scary just.

1:16:58 Give us one confident child from quebec please.

1:17:00 Internet I know there's too many, too many AI videos of confident children out there.

1:17:10 Can we have nothing?

1:17:12 God damn it. All right. I don't want to, until I know that this is not AI, I don't want to shout it out. Let me find something else.

1:17:19 I'm finding clips of a French Canadian show.

1:17:23 That looks similar.

1:17:24 That had, yeah, similar setup that has a kid. Why can't we find this fucker's name? All right.

1:17:31 We'll be, we'll be digging. Yeah, Quebecoisite gang. Help us. Help us. We're ignorant.

1:17:39 What if you find out Quebec doesn't even exist? There was never a Quebec.

1:17:46 I also like to tweet from Gunnar that said, you can stay for dinner. I'll just need to boil another hot dog. And that's, yeah, you like to hear that. You can find us on Twitter and Blue Sky at Daily Zeitgeist. We're at The Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram. You can go to the description of this episode wherever you're listening to it. And there at the bottom, you will find the footnotes, which is where we link off to the information that we talked about in today's episode, as well as a song that we think you might enjoy. Miles, is there a song that you think that people might enjoy?

1:18:15 Yeah, this is from the Irish trio called Brick Nasty. And they got a fucking vibe. Let these Irish lads cook. They are doing some really cool music, like kind of futurey R & B.

1:18:33 When Jack first was like, is this some kind of outcast inspired thing? They're cool.

1:18:39 And you got to listen to this. This is Brick Nasty with their track Honey Bee. And yeah, look, shout out. Like this has been maybe like the third new Irish artist I've probably recommended like the last.

1:18:51 Couple of months. Hey, you're making great stuff over there, Ireland. Don't fucking quit. Don't quit. And one of mine was Bram Stoker. Yeah. Irish artist. Hey, hey. Think about that. All right. The Daily Zeitgeist, a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. That's going to do it for us this morning. Back this afternoon to tell you what is trending. And we will talk to y'all then. Bye. Bye.

1:19:17 The Daily Zeitgeist is executive produced by Catherine Long.

1:19:20 Co-produced by Victor Wright. Co-written by J.M.

1:19:23 McNabb.

1:19:24 Edited and engineered by Justin Connery.