Hello the Internet, and welcome to season fifty six, episode fourth. The Daily zeitgeis the podcast where we take a dive into America's shared consciousness. It's Thursday, November eight, two thousand eight. Team, my name is Jack O'Brien. A k here the zeit Geys podcast its second rate at best, and my name's Jack O'Brien with Miles and a guest, A little fulsome prison, and I'm trio to be joined as always by my co host, Mr Miles Grays. Miles Gray at the reception a glass wine in his hand. I knew he would make his connection. At his feet was a at Jack O'Brien. I had to add all those locals, but thank you to Robert Coffee at Roberto Court. That rolling stones and mine was courtesy of Becca Yard at Bay of Becca. We are thrilled to be joined in our third seat by an old friend of mine from Back to Crack Days. Is the best selling author. Uh. He is the executive editor. He's still the executive editor over there at Prayin uh. He writes on that site as David Wong. He is Mr Jason Pargeon. Hello all the to all of the Daily zeitgeists heads out there. What do you call your fans gangs? I don't like that. Let's try geist to maniacs. There we go, alright, alright, geist maniacs. A. How you been man? Fill me in on the last two years. It's it's all a blur. All I know is that it has lasted about forty years. I think that the effect of time compression, because let's be honest, Trump has never not been president. Right as far as I remember, the idea that this is the same country that elected a black man with the middle name Hussein just six years ago, is that it is very weird. That feels like a whole different lifetime. Yeah, all right, Jameson, We're gonna get to know you a little bit better in a moment. But first we're gonna tell our listeners what we're talking about. We're gonna talk about speaking of just packing a whole lot into a short period of time. The mid terms are already old news because Sessions is out, Rosenstein is off the Muller probe, and Trump did just a I don't know, like a two hour long touchdown dance in front of a puzzled media. We're gonna talk about just mid term stuff. We're gonna circle back if we can remember what happened during the mid term, and then we'll talk about breaking bad, the move, the why every tabloid editor just came really hard, uh, and the most googled Thanksgiving recipes by state. But first, Jason, we like to ask our guest, what is something from your search history that is revealing about who you are? The phrase what is post Malone? That is because somebody on slack like asked if I had seen the scathing rite up of post Malone in the Washington Post, and I was not sure, like what the relation was between the Washington Post and post Malone. It got confused, So it turns out it's a musician. Yes, But this follows the pattern with me, where the very very first thing I read about a phenomenon is an article saying stop paying attention to it. This is over. Did you guys see the Washington Post like the scathing Okay, it was a scathing thing saying basically that postmone was everything wrong with music and so everything wrong with America because I guess, I guess he's something of a conservative or or something. But anyway, yeah, it was like saying all right, we need to stop giving this guy attention. And so I was like all right, yeah done. When he said like something about how he's not he doesn't do R and B or black music or something, I was like, oh, okay. Culture Vulture like go, hey, what's your bad self? Interesting has a lot of tattoos, Jason's we'll see. That's the thing. When I googled like pictures of him, it looked like a fake person the Internet had made to play a prank on me for being out of touch. It's like, oh, it's this white guy with facial tattoos and he does like it was like trap music. I don't know what how you would describe his genre. Acoustic trap music, Yeah, you know, because that country trap. Yeah, it's a weird like sort of R and B rapping country. But ironically, he actually can sing when he's not doing his other thing, Like he can play guitar and sing a little bit. I thought it was completely talentless at first when White Iverson came out his first hit, and then it turned in my favorite song, Yeah I'm sagging. I'm gonna make you play every time I enter a room. So if I go and look on YouTube for his videos. I'm gonna find at least one that has like a billion views on it, right, Like I'm literally billion with a bee, Like I'm going to find out this is the most popular musician of the decade. At one point, he was like one of the most streamed artists for one month when he had like a couple of songs out at once and people were going wild for was it congratulations? Yeah, of course he was. Why what do you look kind of music do you like? Jason? It's not I don't know. I don't listen to much music. I because I'm never in the car because I worked from home and then I have I'm listening to audio. I'm listening to podcasts because they come out much much more quickly than what But I'm a strange person because I can't. I have trouble thinking when music is playing. So because I have multiple jobs, it's like the luxury of just being able to zone out and play music. I don't get to do it very often, all right, But when you do, what do you what do you blasting on your speakers? I let's see on my phone. The last thing I played was Run the Jewels three, Okay, And you just have the whole album on there. But that's I think probably Jack recommended that to me or I don't know. God it okay, there you go. Uh what is something that is overrated? I apologize in advance if I'm out of line here, but I'm gonna say Twitter as a platform for discussing important issues doesn't work. No, it's okay, we can believe that. Uh yeah, yeah, let's take it. Let's do another take. What's another You're not out of out of line. I kind of kind of sense that history books are actually going to talk about Twitter a lot when it looks back on this era, because I think that that platform it obviously not by design. They just thought, well, you know, it's you. You limit the link to the messages. That will be good for people with phones who don't like to type a lot with their thumbs. But it's like, no, actually, it was the perfect machine for encouraging really bad takes and like the most like it encourages you to be like, be dismissive and to oversimplify. And the fact that Trump like took to it like a fish to water, like that's just it's amazing. How I don't know, it was like the perfect platform for the era. It's a perfect platform for spreading like false outrage, like something where everyone's mad about something that didn't even occur. It's almost I think there will be much written in the future about how the medium of these platforms altered the tone of these platforms, Like just that character limit does so much. Yeah, this is one of my special greatest hits things that I bring up on this podcastle up. But the guy who invented the loudspeaker blamed himself for the rise of Nazis. But I feel like if he existed today, he'd be like, loudspeakers are changing the world. This is why you need to get with loudspeakers and our angel investors. Uh yeah, But they all say up front that they want to change the world in like a vague sort of do did he feel good? E? Way? But then when they actually changed the world, they seem entirely unprepared as companies and as people to take responsibility for that because they just look at like the immediate thing it can do, where it's like communication connecting people, and then they don't see the fallout of that, which is like, oh, you're organizing like radical hate, ideology and things like that. I'm sure the same thing with people who got down with fire the first time. They're like, oh, this is warm. I liked this, Like, oh, should we burn the whole fucking village down? And what is something you think is underrated? YouTube as a place to discuss and cordant issues. Now this I was not expecting because YouTube has a bad reputation, both because the comments on YouTube tend to be just an utter sewer, also because there's so much publicity about like all of the Nazis on YouTube. But the thing that I think the world, like Jack, you vividly remember meetings we had at Cracked where people were telling us if a video is more than three minutes long, nobody's gonna watch. I do remember that. And now you go on YouTube and the big thing is these long form reviews two hours long, two and a half hours long, digging into some subjects, so where you know whereas I think that like Twitter encourages like the worst possible white if you know where to look on YouTube, you can find like fantastic videos doing deep dives into stuff that I don't think would have been possible anywhere. I guess, stuff that never would have made it on TV it's but I mean I can we can list channels. I like in the footnotes, there's one called ContraPoints that contract. Yeah, it's a trans woman who has a philosophy degree, and she digs into all sorts of stuff like Jordan Peterson and and in cells and like where these things come from and the mindset. And it's done from a very like a sympathetic, thoughtful point of view. Um, and she's a genius. But it's also hilarious. But and we could or Cody Johnston has now taken his show Independent that he was doing on Cracked. But there's a lot of that. You know, these are long form shows. They'll be forty five minutes or an hour, and they will dig into a subject. They will link their sources in the description, like they will go point by point and break down a subject. Like they will take these the stuff that like the Nazis put out there and they will break it down point by point. It's the exact opposite of Twitter. Again, if you know where to look, there's plenty of garbage. But the point is on Twitter, there's like no such thing as good in depth political content because it's kind of not possible on YouTube. If you know where to look. That's as it's more thoughtful than probably any other platform. Yeah, it's almost like it's a new genre of film or video that that exists on YouTube, the sort of explainer video. And I've seen it used to brilliant effect. I've also seen it used to make people not believe that nine eleven. Yeah, or I mean it's it's a very easy way to get radicalized too, I think on either end. But I think, you know what, to the genre thing, the people who really made YouTube what it was were people who just didn't who weren't using the same sort of like rules of making video or film or TV. And I think, yeah, that that just sort of gave way to this whole other genre video, I guess. But yeah, there's there's so much good stuff on there, there's also a lot of bad stuff. I know they're in the process of trying to figure out how they limit a lot of the sort of shitty, problematic racist channels that are out there. But you know, it's like anything, it cuts both ways. Yeah, but I mean a YouTube that was curated by really smart people who and also fact checked would be an amazing platform. Yeah. Yeah, but this is where like the place to criticize YouTube is in their algorithm that wants to because their whole thing is in like total minutes watch, so they want to deliver you directly into another video. So it's extremely easy to be watching, Okay, here's a video about video games, or you know, it's criticizing something in the game. But guess what this game critic is something of an al right personality, so it takes you directly into his next video, which is about cultural Marxism, which, because of the way their playlists is just an algorithm, right, Like all they know is people who watched this also tended to watch this, and it's very agnostic that way. So you're like four videos away from an outright like actual Nazi with a swastick on the channel, just by following the trail from you know, God of War sucked to this game shouldn't have had black people in it, to the great replacement theory in Europe and how white white genocide like you're you're not that far away at any given moment. That's the part they haven't solved. But that's the whole thing. There's no like humans behind it. For the most part, it's just a series of algorithms, and it's like, hey, as long as you're watching, who cares if you're a twelve year old kid who literally is now watching a two hour long video on why all non white races must be exterminated because you started half hour ago watching something about minecraft. Right, Yeah, and you say they haven't solved it yet, as though it's a thing they're trying to solve. But right, that's not at all clear to me. No. I think, Yeah, as long as they can get people with like mouth a gape k hole watching habits, that's all they want. And finally, Jason, what's a myth? What's something people think is true that you know to be false. The thing that is been out there for the last three years now or however long we've been in the Trump era, going back to when he first announced is the idea of everything that is happening now is new and uncharted territory. Okay, give an example of something where you see people kind of misunderstanding this. This goes back to kind of Twitter as a platform, because they're the tone very much has been. America was born in seventeen seventy six. We had freedom for two hundred and thirty years or whatever, and then fascists took over the government. Yeah, it is really hard because there's so much more attention now and we'll get into like they had massive turnout in Tuesday's elections, Like there's so much more attention now. You know, politics has taken over the culture that You've got lots and lots of people who are getting into politics for the very first time, some of them just because they're they're young, like they they're just now old enough to be aware in For people like that, it's really really hard to tell the difference between this is something unique to Trump, which some of this is versus this is just kind of the patterns, the rhythm of how things work in America. So, for instance, the thing with the midterms, the opposing party gaining a bunch of seats after the other party won the White House, that always happens, like this is just a cycle. It's you know, it happened with Obama, happened with Clinton. In many ways, lots of the things that look weird to us are just kind of part of patterns that play out in the same way that if we have a really strong economy for the next two years, Trump will be a strong favor to be reelected. That's not due to anything unique Trump has done. If it happens, it's not due to America is now under the thrall of an authoritarian It's just due to the fact that we tend to elect the guy when the economy is strong, because most people don't pay super close attention to politics. Like that's what's easy to get lost in with all the apocalyptic talk on Twitter? Is it for the most part, everyday life kind of looks the same for most people. Yeah, And I do think there are some things that are new in the Trump era, but I mean, yeah, and you know, America, just whether the economy is good or not, America tends to re elect the person who's in office when they run a second time, or even like when Hillary was running, it's like, oh, like we're going to do two terms of a Democrat and go into another administration of Democrats like that was already that was a little bit of an uphill battle too. Yeah, very rare. Yeah, you we usually change parties after that, and that's why, like Trump, you know, and we had this discussion two years ago, Jack, but you know, Trump underperformed generic Republican like you know a lot of people hated Hillo, Like I think that if let's say Marco Rubio had come out of the primaries, I think he actually beats Hillary much easier than than Trump. Dead um, But a lot of Trump's vote was yeah, it was just them voting generic Republican Like that's That's the thing is, when you follow the stuff every day, it's very easy to get like you have a memory of all these hundreds and hundreds of scandals. But I think you'd be very surprised if you grabbed a random person off the street and said, well, what do you what do you think about about you know, this Michael Cohen stuff? And they would be like who right, yeah, or what do you think about that? New York Times op ed from that Trump and sider. It's like, what the hell are you talking about? Right? Well, all right, let's get onto stories that are truly unprecedented improved that the world is crumbling around us. So Sessions has been fired or you know, asked to step down. Essentially, Rosenstein is off the Mueller probe. He's no longer running shit, And the person who is is a loyalist who has openly questioned the validity of the Mueller investigation. Well, it's funny because you know, normally you have an attorney general leave or whatever. Normally the deputy attorney General in this case, Rod Rosenstein would step in. But of course these is different times. So you know, Trump wanted somebody who was literally someone who may have written an op ed about how the Mueller probe is bullshit, and he found it in the form of Matt Whittaker, who was Jeff Session's former chief of staff and avid cross fit guy and football player. Uh so, yeah, I mean, in a way, Trump may have found his little attack dog for now. But when he he basically wrote an op ed just like I think, months or weeks before joining the d o J, and he wrote in his op ed about the Mueller investigation, just have an idea of what where this guy is coming from. He's a Deputy Attorney General. Rod Rosenstein's letter appointing Special Counsel Robert Mueller does not give Mueller broad far reaching powers in this investigation. It does, uh, And then he goes on to say it is only authorized to investigate matters that involve any potential links to and coordination between two entities, the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and you're like, no, okay, well that seems like a good resume as uh for someone who is supposed to shield him from the Democrats essentially. Now, But isn't that something that Mueller kind of insulated himself against by kind of sending all of the investigations into Trump's sort of fraudulent financial practices to the south of New York, the Southern District. Yeah, I mean, he's definitely diversifying the ways that Trump can be gotten, uh, you know, because for this exact reason, because I think they knew if it gets too hot, it'll probably activate what is it, Wednesday night massacre or whatever you want to yeah, Wednesday afternoon massacre. But it's funny when you go through his tweets, he has some fucking weird just things he would tweet stuff like Monuraja tweeted something that said Lindsay Graham also says he's drafting legislation to insulate the Special counsel from White House pressure, and then Matt Whittaker's response, this would be a mistake. Cannot have anyone unaccountable, and Executive Branch already protected enough. Then talking about Paul Manafort, when the FBI rated his home. Do we want our government to quote intimidate us? M uhm. FBI's manafort, right, included a dozen agents designed to intimidate. And he goes on, I mean, this guy is reading from the script that Trump would want if he's going to be the person looking over the Mother investigation. And I just want to say he does love Dave Matthews because he did tweet this was back January. Dave Matthews is the Jimmy Buffett of our time. M wait is that is that are those words of support? I don't know. I mean you have to I mean you have to establish a universe of bad taste and music too. Assumed that that was a compliment, right, But I feel like someone would probably like you'd have to be pretty savvyed us to you. Is Jimmy Buffett as a slander? I feel because he looks like the kind of guy who would be stoked to go to Margaritaville? Right? Okay, Yeah, that toast Malone is the Jimmy Buffett. And yeah, I mean we don't we still don't know what Matt Whittaker is going to do as a g if he's gonna totally can the probe if he's just gonna try and hamstring in in as many ways as possible to just have the appearance of this investigation going on. But I mean, yeah, there's there's really no way to know because we don't We've never had to deal with this before, Right, what happens if he does like just say ship can the Mueller probe? Like do we know what? What would happen? Or if he says, okay, the Muller probe, Like whatever the um investigation is, we don't want that report going out to people like and then the House subpoenas that document, then we just don't know what happens after that. No, because this is a political process, not a legal process. Trump is not going to go to jail. They're not gonna arrest Trump. This is what you're talking about, is like, for instance, impeachment, it goes through the House, which it could because it's controlled by Democrats, but then you need two thirds of the Senate. Well, that wouldn't happen unless they decided it was advantageous, Like if they thought whoever they put in instead of Trump had like a really better chance of winning in Trump did, then they may do it. But it's a political decision, and and that's the way it should be. They you know, it's generally been agreed upon that you don't want your president to be marched out of the White House and handcuffs, because that's how it works in like Banana republics, where it's like we just invent a reason to arrest the president. So in general, the whole idea is like, well, you can remove them from office and then he can face whatever consequences, or if you find him guilty of something after he leaves office, if he loses the election, you could prosecute him because then he's just a private citizen. But between now and this is a political process. This is about how the Democrats want to do this to try to damage him politically. This is about the house holding hearings on TV. It's all about like affecting the vote in I don't think anything's going to happen. They would remove him from office unless Trump decided that like leaving, like quitting the job, resigning and like a very grandstandy way, and then like at that same press conference like announcing the launch of Trump TV, like if he decided that that was like the ultimate viral advertising for his new venture, like I was too honest for America, Like the deep state ultimately had to get rid of me. But I'm going to now devote myself to taking that down the deep state. Like if he judged that it was to his advantage to step down, then he would do it. But otherwise we're all talking about setting up like this is all political, right, So I mean, I guess we'll we'll see how it goes. Keep our eyelanding if I can offer, if I can offer a prediction, I think, if the economy goes in the tank in the next two years, and it could, we're due for a recession. But obviously no one knows when recessions are gonna show up or else any day. You'd be super rich if you magically knew exactly when they when they were going to arrive. But if if, for instance, you get a downturn six months from now, you get bad jobs reports, the stock market goes in the tank, I can easily see Trump come twenty nineteen announcing he's not going to run for re election because he's already accomplished everything that can be accomplished as a president. He has already saved America. He has already he wants to go out on top as the best president ever. Like like, if he sensed he was gonna lose, I don't think he would go through with it, and I think he has instincts for that. But I think if he sense that there's going to be like a humiliating defeat in twenty I think he would bail out rather than suffer through it, because then he can do it on his own terms, say like, look, America, I've already accomplished more in my four years than every president combined prior to me. Honestly, at this point, I've accomplished too much. But I'm going to return to my businesses because you know, they're suffering without me, without my genius. Like he would find some face saving way to not run again. Although the one thing that I I think he thought he was going to lose in humiliating fashion ahead of the two thousand and sixteen election, like a lot of people in the media thought. So. I just wonder if he's going to be too fooled by his own success to ever truly believe that he's out of it in in an upcoming race. But it'll be maybe, But I think the whole rigged election thing was going to be the basis upon which he was going to launch his new TV show or book or whatever likes like, this is why they you know, the system is rigged against regular folk like you and me. Uh, regular regular people. Can I point out that the Jeff Sessions his sad undated resignation letter that he clearly had had written like a year ago and just had in his desk for the day, Like, that's the one thing to remember from this. Robert Mueller and another seven billion people on Earth knew this day was coming, mainly because Trump every forty eight hours would go on Twitter and say, I'm gonna fire Jeff Sessions soon. What piece of crap? So this is not no Mure. This everyone knew this was coming. He took many steps to insulate himself. This would be much more ominous if the Democrats had not just won the House because see that the House has investigation powers, oversight powers, subpoena powers, Like if Trump fired had him fire Mure tomorrow, the House could subpoena every document Muer's report. They could have Muller on National TV testifying in January like, so this does this does nothing? Other than what Trump wanted it to do, which was to take the mid terms off the headlines. There's no reason I had to be done today other than to take over the news cycle. Yeah. Well, when you watch did you see his press conference the post mid terms melt down that he had where you can kind of tell that it seemed that he realized he might be in a new era right now, just the way he was responding to some questions about whether it was his rhetoric or what he might do with other policy things, Like there was an air about him where he really just felt like he looked like just cheap Kroger brand mobster talking a bunch of ship. But I think that is Trump's comfort zone in my opinion. I think he likes conflict for for conflicts sake, and I think that's why he's the man for this era, is because we were just a psychopathically board society and he was the one who came along and just made it all interesting and like the worst possible way. But you know, that's goes back to Twitter, It goes back to social media in the way it highlights conflict and that only outrage bubbles to the surface. Well, that's Trump's like that's he's from the world of reality TV, the world of I'm not here to make friends. Like that's that's his whole thing is he loves that that tone. That's how he lives his life. He likes you know, and that's how he ran his businesses. He likes people to be fighting. He he feels like it's productive. I mean, that's why he's allows the politician. He's not good at getting legislation pushed through. He's not good at crafting legislation slation that will like survive the courts or anything like. It's just yeah, it's well unless your goal is to be a media figure and you're just using the presidency as a tool to become too, to expand your profile and on the media landscape, in which case he's a master at it. He knows exactly how to take over a new cycle, maybe better than anybody in the world. Right. I like to think of like all these maneuvers of like the president firing his attorney general while he's being investigated for you know, colluding with Russia as just the you know, equivalent of a real housewife like stage whispering something shitty about someone else in that person over here and just like completely staged, like set up conflicts from reality TV, because it's true, he's just like a reality TV producer. He's not comfortable unless there's some manner of conflict that he's involved in going on on camera. I mean in profiles of him. I think there was that New York Times profile of him during his first year where they said he gets really uncomfortable when he's not in the headlines for a day and fire like, what I do, What I do? What I do? How do I piss people off? Just eat a burrito? Real weird? That's right. That worked worked for us. All Right, we're gonna take a quick break. We'll be right back, and we're back. And I wanted to talk about college education because I was listening to a report on my drive into work today where somebody was using that as an explanation. They were saying, like, college educated voters were, you know, ex more likely x percentage points more likely to vote for Democrats. And when you break it out by white voters who don't have a college education, bus white voters who do have a college education, Uh, it's even more stark. And this reminded me of something that Jason, you and I talked about on an old episode of the Cracked podcast this idea of America having a class system that we as Americans don't really recognize in terms of how it operates in our day to day lives. And one of the interesting sort of re contextualizations that I took away from uh that discussion on class was this book talked about how universities and colleges are actually more about socializing you to act in accordance with your class in America, like the upper class in America, the gentry class in America. That's the main thing you learn at college more so than you know, whatever your major is. It gives you friends, It gives you a friend group that is in that upper class. It teaches you what your beliefs are supposed to be. And so I mean, viewed from that perspective, it kind of makes sense that college degrees are so starkly defining what side of the country you vote on or what party you vote for, and just to the point that it's almost like different classes just perceive things in completely different ways. They'll see the same press conference and perceive it in completely different ways. Right. Well, I think in are you know, entering the workforce. Now, if you want a job that could actually sustain a family and all that, you you almost certainly need a college degree to get that kind of employment too. And I think also that could be one of the reasons why there's such a I don't know if the the animosity towards education and things like that too, because if as it if it does become the sort of marker of classes, then you would be like, well, those are the fancy college people, while I might not have a degree and have a sort of you know, cynical viewpoint of that, right, And when you listen to NPR talk about that's what I was listening to. An NPR was talking about like, well, these college educated voters versus not college educated, and they were using it. I mean, it would have totally changed the context of what they were talking about if they said college socialized as opposed to but they were focused. They really emphasis is always on the educated, because I think they want it to be. You know, they're talking to the people who went to college. They want you to think, well, I'm the more educated person, and by being smarter, I therefore and making the right decision. And these poor dumb SAPs just don't know how to vote for what's best for them. And you know, I think you know, Jason, you've spoken to the fact that people who you know, you grew up with, who are part of Trump Country are not any dumber and in fact a lot smarter than a lot of the people you've met since coming to our world. But it's just it's sort of different class conventions that we adopt. Yeah, and even now, without recapping that whole episode we did, it's when you say class, most people listening to this think you're purely talking about income, because in America, that's usually the only way we talk about it. You're a middle class, lower class, upper class. And what that discussion was about, and we've got links we can throw in for the people who want to do further reading on it, is that it's almost more like a map of different classes. Because the whole deal with the recent Trump appeals to certain classes is that he is worth a billion dollars, but he has demannerisms and the tastes and the point of view of someone from a completely different what we would consider like a working class. He has the he has the accent. He is involved in w w E wrestling, which is which is more of like seen as it's more associated with the working class, whereas you know, and an example of it being divorced from money on the other side is think about a college pre essor. A college professor does not make good money like they are, you know, meal to meal, but college professors, or at least a lot of college professors, but they are part of that upper class. They have the correct values, they carry around the correct NPR tote bag. So this is something that's very apparent in other countries. Other countries are very aware of it that you know, there's money, but like you don't get to just earn your way to like a higher class. It's all about what you've been socialized and what you've grown up around. And I think just America has a real blind spot when it comes to how just class oriented our our society is. And a lot of the things that you hear in the mainstream media and on the left when discussing you know, parts of like rural America really ring a little more kind of leave a bad taste in your mouth if you're paying attention to sort of class dynamics. And it's not that hard to see in other parts of especially in pop culture because when I wrote the big article about this, that suddenly became a much bigger deal after after Trump won. My example I used the touchstone was like the Hunger Games, because when you watch that movie, the hero is a rustic, rural hunter living in like a shack who hunts for food and you know, works with her hands, and she's kind of dirty or whatever. And then the evil people live in this fancy city. They wear ridiculous, gaudy clothes. They're very pretentious, you know, they put on airs, and without having to be told, we automatically hate those people. And we automatically like Catanus because she's salt of the earth, she's tough. It's more masculine values, right, because she's a hunter. Where in the city, in the capital, it's all of these pressy guys and their sequined clothes. So even among all the rest of us, like that code for the snooty upper class versus the assault of the earth heroes, it brings true. You know, let's Luke Skywalker living on the desert planet, you know, I mean, farming humidity or whatever the hell they did for the farmers. Yeah, and then whereas like Darth Vader, they lived on the State of the Art Death Star, and that automatically that code says urban versus rural. Rural is the good guys. Urban is the people who are out of touch, wealthy. Well, that's that's all it is. It's the way they see everything that's symbolized in like urban people, the education level, the income level, the people talking about, oh have you seen Hamilton's yet, Oh, you've got to go, It's amazing. It was like the rest the other cent of America who did not have access to Hamilton's in any capacity, got real sick of seeing sitcom episodes where all of the characters are trying to get Hamilton's tickets. Like you get these signals that like they're living on a different planet and it's a different planet where they are detached from real problems, you know. And again that's obviously us on this podcast think that's unfair, But it shouldn't be that hard to grasp because it turns up in pop culture everywhere. Well yeah, that idea though, too, that we live in these separate and almost planets within a country. I could kind of see that sort of being amplified when I was I was looking at like how a lot of the Q and on. People were so disheartened by the results of the mid terms because they were promised a red wave by Q and they were fully invested, like Okay, this is our time, and when that didn't happen, they became so disheartened, and the talk just became to like, oh, man, one of the mo abs going to be dropped on their city. Like this idea that like the military needs to come in. That there's this view that there are all these people who are you know, part of I guess support this deep state or whatever force their diametrically opposed to is, you know, exists in this other part that is like so well defined that you could just drop bombs on it or send the military in as if it's like this other were like, I don't know, a rogue army or something that's like gallivanting around the country. Yeah. Another thing I was just thinking about is that, you know, when you look at the endowments of these universities. Harvard University has a thirty eight billion dollar endowment, Yale has a twenty six billion dollar endowments, Stanford billion, Prince, these are universities that still charge people, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars for a four year in education, Like, what are they do? Why would they do that? They don't need the money, so you're gate keeping, Yeah, gate keeping into a certain extent. It's insane. It came up in this Supreme Court case about affirmative action, and it was just kind of I hadn't really thought about it in a while, but the fact that colleges still use legacy is insane that that, Why would you in a society where you know, this is a huge part of the sorting process and we're supposed to be a meritocracy. And I know that might seem like willfully naive to think that America isn't meritocracy, but it's just colleges, I feel like, are very complicit in this whole thing and this whole divide. Yeah, well, I think again, like you know, with Harvard, the Ivy leagues, to even go to one already puts you in another class, another culture of people. And I think the more you can, the more obstacles there are to attain that. That's how they protect that class of people. And I think just with even when you look at education, it's increasingly harder and harder to be a not do not have a lot of uh like cash at your dispose and still try and get a college education without you know, having to work multiple jobs at once or rely on like you know, predatory loans or something. It's just yeah, it's just sort of set up in a way that's really just kind of making it harder for people to sort of move into that right by design. And this is something that it's a subject that you rarely here discussed, which is the idea that you have classes that specifically are built to keep other people out of that of that class, of that social class. It's a subject we don't like to talk about much at all. We love to talk about economic class like that's you know, we love to talk about race. But the idea of like social classes and how much of a role it plays in terms of what opportunities are available to you. Uh, it's almost like the people who are most invested in that have the power to make us not discuss it. Right, And it's not a conspiracy theory. It's you look at the schools that you know, remembers of Congress went to, or that you know C. E. O. S went to. Yeah, it's there's you know there's entire sections of the economy or of the of society where which school you went to and which fraternity you're a member of is everything that's part of what gets you on the door. I remember when Trump was determining who his final list of Supreme Court nominees were going to be, that they distinguished Amy Coney Barrett as like being different because she went to Notre Dame and didn't go to Yale. It was like, seen as weird to have not gone to one college Yale. They were like, and she's very different in addition to being a woman. She didn't go to Yale as opposed to every other member on the list. But Trump might want more of a Yelle guy. It's like, what the funk are you talking about? What does that mean? But those are the optics to someone like that, who was just like, oh, this is a It's a signal to him, Okay, Yale equals this thing. And it's like sort of my topic, what can and Trust's relationship to class has always been very complicated. He was a queen's guy who always wanted to break into the island of Manhattan, and you know, he claims to hate the New York Times, but he always wanted The New York Times to write about him, and you know, so there's also some degree of you know, aspiration even I think probably embedded in him even now that he's the President of the United States. We're gonna link off to Jason. Included in our duck a something called Clarita's Prism, which is a list marketers created of the sixty eight different classes in America as defined by marketers. So yeah, you can get real specific in particular. But these are the sorts of things that people who sell us stuff know about us that we don't think about ourselves. They're like, are you a money in brains person or a winner circle kind of person? You're like, oh, this is getting very nuance. Oh you can find yourself on the list. No one, no one likes to think of themselves as just a type. But yeah, to these marketing firms, trust me, they can take one look at the type of shoes you where, they can take a look at where you ate lunch. It's like, ah, you are an whatever whatever they're cutesy name for. Just one other real quick statistic that I've seen kind of thrown around about how the midterms went down, is that the you know, if you want to look at just overall the mood of the nation, then the House vote is probably the best way to do that, since there are House elections everywhere in the country and it's not you know, one personality that is defining how an entire state votes, but uh, you know, it's a bunch of different individual opportunities for people to vote in line with their their values. And so Democrats one the House popular vote by more than any party has won the House popular vote in many years, I think, since two thousand eight was the last time. But it's like more than these legendary red wave elections like when New Gang Rich like took the House away from the Democrats. And it's you know, more than the two thousand ten election that was supposedly this huge referendum on Obama. And it's not. The numbers aren't final yet, but they're thinking it's going to be in that range where it would have been a way of election were it not for these institutional things like jerrymandering and also just the bad luck of the draw when it came to Senate seats. Yeah, so I don't know, I guess I'm curious why because I do see a lot of mainstream media covering this as though, you know, why did the blue wave fail to materialize? Is and it's like, yeah, I mean that's that's definitely a way of interpreting it. Um. It's also you know, the people voted in record number and it was a pretty pretty strong directionally in terms of like where people how people move. Yeah. Well, a lot of the coverage has sort of been like letting the perfect become the enemy of the good in terms of how they look at the race, because it's like, well, it wasn't a total blowout and meltdown, so therefore was shady and it's all expectations. Yeah, And I think you know, that's where you also let people know, like this was a really good year for all kinds of progressive candidates, for women, LGBTQ, people of color, Like there there was there were many gains being made in that department. And I think there's you know that we can also take a second and say this was a hard fought mid term and despite a lot of the voter suppression or jerrymandering and a lot of other things that we do up against that there this there was you can look at this in a very positive way and not get too down because you know, the Senate stayed read you can just get down because you're paying attention to the w W E. Villain press conference that went down today. Get down about that instead. Uh. And I think the fact that the media excused a little bit liberal, I think helps us along because they take it so hard, like there's so much harder, Like they declare every little Republican victory is like massive. And even if if Democrats, i mean Democrats flipped six or seven governors so far, some are still out of the time this is being recorded, like that's huge. They like you have state legislatures that have flipped, and that helps dictate like voting policy, all sorts of things. They were profound things that happened, like a lot of the state level measures and and there was like five thousand people gained healthcare because of states that now will expand medicaid because like you know, in because he flipped the governor because the you know, they were it was a ballot measure. Like there was a lot that happened. But I think it's similar to where the media acted, Like again, the whole concept of like the fascist takeover of the government, as if Trump just swept into power just overwhelmingly, when again it was votes across three states, he lost the popular vote. If you replay that election ten times, Trump probably wins three times and Hillary probably wins seven. But it's like, oh my gosh, this is there. There are now two eras in America pre Trump and after Trump, like like everything, like we've lost the country. It's like yeah, but see here we are two years later and the supposed authoritarian fascist who utterly took over the government now cannot pass a single bill. He now cannot pass any legislation. He's gonna be harassed on or I say harassed, like he's going to be investigated in very humiliating ways every week. His taxes are going to become public, like two months from now. He will hate that, like he already I don't think enjoys being president all that much. Like he's going to hate this, right, yeah, this is not going to be fun for him. I don't think, no, no, not with a little thing called oversight, right yeah, And that's because that's built into the system. That's why we have midterms. This system is built so that one madman cannot take it over. It is the system is broken on purpose to make that not happen. That's why we haven't had one party maintained like both branches of government for four consecutive years since nineteen. We elect one after two years, we get so disgusted we throw out. We throw them out right and put the other party in. And it's it's checks and balances. This is the system working. If he if the outrage of the country for two years, then guess what, he loses a bunch of his power. This is how it's supposed to work. Although, yeah, I'm worried about how the Senate ends up looking years from now as people begin just moving to like the same fifteen states and then you know, I think we already have there's that's a lot of the debate I've seen spring up from the elections. We're basically talking about, all right, what are we gonna do about the Senate now? Because you have places like Wyoming who have the fraction of the population of something like a California, yet they're still getting the two Senate votes, and where where do we go? But I think that's something that Democrats are gonna have to ask themselves if they can ever fully control Congress, right, it's uh, not totally clear how that's going to be changed. I hadn't realized before Red Wave that wasn't even as big as the you know, democrats victory yesterday. Probably that people just assumed that Democrats would never lose the House, like that was just an assumption. It was taught in political science classes like the Democrats are permanently in control of the House, and you know, the Republicans might get the Senate here and there, but it's never going to change. And like Mike Pasco, the host of the Gist podcasts on Slate, was talking about how in he took a political science class where they taught that Democrats, Um, so, you know, stuff that seems structural and insurmountable one year can can always flip with a you know, very charismatic person like Newt Gingrich coming to power. Well, and in two thousand and eight one Obama got it like that. There were plenty of articles about how, okay, well, is this the end of the Republican Party forever? Because clearly now it's a more diverse country, We're only getting more diverse, right, and so clearly like the the party that's based on you know, like all of the coded racial stuff and immigration and being tough on crime and all that, like that's all over. So it's it's like any time you try to project a hundred years into the future, and this even goes to the Supreme Court, you know what it's like. I completely understand the fear of like a conservative court for the next forty years. But one of these steadfast liberals was a Reagan appointee, like you know, like Kennedy was appointed by Reagan, and then Suitor was appointed by was a Bush senior, Like these were appointed by Republicans and then they became liberals after they sat on the court. This is not as straightforward as you think. These guys tend to lean leftward as they get older in many cases or in some cases, they're not just partisan hacks, like they are actually trying to do like what they're following the Constitution. Like it's not strictly you know, we we talked about like Republican Supreme Court justices that historically, actually it hasn't necessarily worked that way. We will see with having On because he, on one hand, does seem to be the most I don't know, his hearing was the most partisan that we've ever seen a Supreme Court justice. But all right, we're gonna show another quick break and we'll be right back with some lighter stuff. And we're back and a couple of quick things here. Yes, breaking bad, breaking news, breaking news about breaking bad. There may be a movie. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if we need a breaking bad movie, but I like, better call saulce. I'm still I like that universe. But yeah, the rumors now that the rumors are grumbling that Vince Gilligan has been working on a feature like script titled Greenbrier, which would center possibly around Jesse Pinkman's character, and I mean it looks I mean a lot of people reporting on it like Okay, this is definitely moving somewhere. And then Brian Cranston was recently asked when he was on The Dan Patrick Show, and he was like, Hey, I haven't read a script, but he's like, but if if it's happening, and Vince asked me, He's like, I'm I'm there, I'm kis and barging it up. This is something that fans always go crazy about. I even went crazy about the fact that there is now a Deadwood movie that is in production because I that specifically was a TV show that just kind of left on an open plot point and I'm excited to see how they close it up. And I just loved that show. But TV shows that the creators of that TV show then like expanded into a movie. What what is the successful precedent for that? I have know what? Like there's the X Files movies that were like didn't do great, not great? Um what else? I mean? They even managed to funk up the Simpsons movie. I mean, it wasn't bad, but it was just like an hour and a half length episode of The Simpsons. Yeah, Like I mean, I I'll love anything made mine, but yeah, I'm trying to south Park. South Park movie was probably my favorite example of this succeeding. Yeah. Well, I mean and also I feel like the Star Trek films were able to kind of take their people you saw on TV and then put them into a movie and it wasn't that jarring. That's the example that I was looking for, and that is probably what they are thinking. They're like, that's it's the next star star Trek. We're gonna star Trek this, Uh, spin it out, You're gonna Star Trek breaking Okay, Well, I mean because when you look at the other films too that have like been based off shows, they're never really the original cast. Like there's like a Bewitched movie or like the flint Stone right exactly where they're just like, Okay, let's take that I p and then turn it up like times a hundred of Superstars. So I don't know, I'm interested in breaking bad movie. Yeah, look why not? You know, Look, if I got a reason to bust out my old sweet blue prop meth, take it to a movie theater and I'd say it's props. Also, I think from like the creator's point of view, I think this is always less about the story they want to tell and more just Vince Galagin would like to work with Aaron Paul again, and he's got that. He's got that crew in Albuquerque he likes working with. I think a lot of it's just like and of course they'll amc Will will be behind whatever the hell he wants to together. So I think it starts because like when they made the decision to make Better Call Saul, like he at the first thought it was gonna be like a half hour wacky sitcom where it's like every every week they would have a new wacky case, and they later decided, oh no, that's the worst idea anyone's ever had. But like, the vision for the show wasn't anywhere. All they knew was like, we'd love to work with Bob Odin Kirk. We would love to, you know, keep this crew together, keep filming here, you know, keep this creative team together, and then you kind of come up with the story after that. I think from the audience's point of view, you always assume it's all about out. You know, there's more to the story to tell, But in reality that's often the last thing. They're like, wait, so, what the funk are we gonna do? Um No, it's literally that like it's it's you get the band back together. It's like, all right, let's sit down, get in the meeting room, and well we'll have fun, we'll come up with something. It'll be it'll be fine, it'll be it'll turn out that uh, that that was all a dream, that that Heisenberg was having, the part where he died. He'll like sit up in bed, like, oh thank god, that was just now. Well I had to go back to a cooking meth. My theory has always been that Vince Gilligan's idea was to try and escape, like because Brian Cranston was so good as Walter White and he was like really attached to the character. I think Better Call Saul was like his chance to like go back and work on that show without the attachment of Brian Cranston's attachment to that character. Because I think the end of the series Breaking Bad like went off in a weird direction that wasn't true to like how they had written it and directed it up to that point. Um, So I just wonder if that relationship was too complicated for Vince Gilligan to navigate, and so he you know, if you see interviews with Bran crasting towards the end of the show, he's like talking about Walter White like with pride as as like someone whose decisions he's validating. And I said, I don't know, it's it's a long, convoluted theory, but I'll be interested to see what they do with this. Uh, We're not going to spend too much time on the Pit Joe Lee divorce other than to say that you'll be hearing a lot of it because it is coming up on December four, and man, the tabloids will do anything to talk about that couple. I know they've spent the last one, I think eight months just making stuff up and making literally photo shopping their faces onto other people's bodies to get a story. But Miles, let's go out on this Thanksgiving recipes by state. Yes, uh, you know over on the takeout Food blog I love to check out. Uh. They apparently got a map from a company called Satellite Internet and they're like a service provider, and they sort of i think, trawled the data they had of people on their network and then put that up against Google trends to see what the top searched recipe was for Thanksgiving by state, And when you look at it, it's it's I mean, it seems pretty par for the course. I think people in California don't know how to make turkey, so they're gonna google turkey. Actually, because we've had examples from the Takeout of maps where each different state had a different like top search result and it was like too good to be true, this one actually seems like it's true because half of the states are just like searching turkey. But then there's some interesting ones, like Jason, you are currently in Tennessee, so that's sweet potato. But you are from Illinois and their number A one searched term is Popeye's Cajun Turkey. I love that. Yeah, they're also what is that? North Carolina was also looking at it. Yeah, there's three different states that have specifically Popeye's Cajun turkey. Is that a thing? Where where would that have come up? That that many people would be? Like? Do they serve that on things? Yeah? It's Illinois, Virginia. My bad, sorry started North Carolina. Yeah, Illinois and Virginia were like the top two Popeyes and then Maryland Is that the yeah? I think so, yeah, I don't. I don't know what it must be. Yeah, because there's I don't see any other like restaurant type recipe on here. It's weird that that specific one that's the one that jumps out of like the most confusing. I mean it sounds good. I like if Popeyes was serving the Cajun turkey turkey, I'd certainly try it. And Connecticut's just Thanksgiving desserts just that broadly. Louisiana also Popeyecasian chicken, the cornbread dressing. Oh are they yeah? Yeah, that's the boot shaped one. Sorry, it's Mississippi. That is Popeye's Cajun chicken. These maps always test our ability to identify states based on the shape. Green being cast role in Texas is sounds good. It's also the entire like the Midwest is pretty uniform and green being castrole being there dish. Yeah, for some reason, Utah is jello. Wasn't somebody saying in the in our mentions that jello is like really big in Utah? I think in just in general, like, yeah, jello as Yeah, it's just been used all over the place in Alaska pumpkin cheesecake. Okay, alright, Alaska doing something different. I like it, Jason, anything that you're really looking forward to. Uh, I don't like sweet potatoes. I like just all of the butter and the sugar that you put on them. Like the sweet potatoes are kind of just a vessel to to hold the butter and the sugar together. Like it could literally be anything. It could be a piece of fish, and I'd probably get the same experience out of it. Um. I So I like the way they make sweet But if you just hand me a sweet potato that you've baked for the grocery store. Yeah, no, I'm not gonna eat that. So what I'm saying that because I want to clarify when I say I like sweet potatoes, I like the stuff that you use to hide the taste of the sweet potatoes. So you're a big butter guy, Yeah, kind of like the same way I enjoy coffee. It's like, yeah, it's it's coffee with with a half pound of sugar in it. Right, So yeah, my mom makes a sweet potato cast role that is just that it has this crust on the top of it that is like pecan and so much. It's like a it's a dozen glazed donuts worth of sugar in every bite serving. Yeah, and every bite it's just like rock solid. But it's real good. Anyways, Jason, it's been great being on a podcast with you again. Man, Where can people find you? Follow you? I'm on the Crank Podcast, not every single episode, but they're they're always good. The the episodes that I'm not on, some would say actually better than the ones I'm on. If you want to read, if somebody wants to read my books, the novel that made me put me on the map as an author is to ninety nine this whole month, John Dyes. At the end on Kendall is they've got it on sale, and then there's sequels to it if you like that, but they will all cost you more because that's how we get you awesome. And is there a tweet that you have been enjoying? Yeah? Really anything from the Joel Dongstein Twitter account. Um, that is a Yeah. That is a bot that takes televangelist Joel Ostein tweets. You know he is famous pastor and it's simply the bot automatically replaces the word God with the words your dick too too strangely inspirational effect. So here's an example, and again this is taking something Joel Ostein tweeted and then it automatically posted this account as the real victory is not when your dick does everything you want or takes away every frustration. The real victory is when of those things happen, but you are at peace. You know your dick is still in control. Another example, sometimes we forget the good things. We remember the hurts, the disappointments, the mistakes. But look where you are now. If it had not been for the goodness of your dick, you wouldn't be here, and that I find those oddly inspiring every day. I don't know why, but it's like, yeah, that's right, And so every day it's some because you know, Joel Ostin, he's got some intern tweeting out this general greeting card stuff. But for some reason, when it becomes look, you need to stop worrying about what other people want from you, and you need to start worrying about what your dick wants, it's like, yeah, that's right. I should. They have not been sued yet. I don't know if this it's actually if the Joel Ostein Corporation would be able to take this down. I'm sure someday they will, but after right now it's my favorite Twitter. See this is what Twitter does well. Twitter bad for discussing politics for like two sentence jokes. It's magic. Yes, yes, I'm getting a lot of meaning out of this account. Actually, I mean it's so. I mean the Bible in a way is just a you know, ah inspirational book for toxic masculinity, especially if you read it like this. There you go, miles, Where can people find? You? Find me? On Twitter and Instagram at miles of Gray and a tweet I like was actually brought to my attention by one of the zeke Kang. This one was from Robert Hernandez Jr. On Instagram. I see you. You know, we were talking about flow states yesterday and the Onion and posted something It's just a guy on his couch just like housing a bunch of pistachios and it says pistachio eating man achieves flow state because yeah, you in a way man. Yeah, when you get the rhythm going on those pistachios, you can vanish into thin air. Uh. I like to tweet from Neil Brennan where he said America downgraded from extremely racist two very racist. Neil Brennan's funny dude. You can find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore O'Brian. You can find us on Twitter at Daily Zeitgeist for at the Daily zeit Geist on Instagram. We have Facebook fan page on a website Daily I Guys dot com where we past our episodes in our footsover we link off to the information that we talked about in today's episode, as well as the song we ride out on. You can also find that information in the show notes right on h miles What song are we going to write out on Oh man, you know with legal Sniegel kind of having to pack his bags, you know, farewell to you, my man. Yes, Jeff Sessions, Sorry, it was just you don't it puts us in a very weird space. We don't know what's going on. And super producer Nick and I were talking about dub music at lunch and we were just he was talking about Scientists and he put us onto a track for today. This is from the artist Scientists called Taxi to Baltimore and it's y'all, look if you like that dub, if you just need that deep head nod, and you're be coming in all the three uh, strap on your headphones for thirty seconds. Alright, we're gonna write out on that. We will be back tomorrow because it is a daily podcast. We'll talk to you, guess. Just to leave. Got my sister Sandy and my little brother pray. Yeah, yeah,