Speaker 1: Hello the Internet, and welcome to Season to thirty five,
Speaker 1: Episode two of Day Nice. It's a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, and this is a podcast where we take
Speaker 1: a deep dive into America's shared consciousness. It is Tuesday,
Speaker 1: May third, two, which of course means is National Teacher
Speaker 1: Appreciation Day. Yeah, do you have a teacher that you
Speaker 1: want to show? I feel like we've talked about this
Speaker 1: a lot, but I always say my history teacher, Mr. Woolery,
Speaker 1: because he gave me the appreciation for history and I
Speaker 1: ended up studying that in college. But also I got
Speaker 1: to shout out one of my first music teachers, Judy Clawson,
Speaker 1: who was like really made me like feel good about
Speaker 1: being good at an instrument, Like was made it like
Speaker 1: a connected the pathways in my brain if you're like
Speaker 1: like it was very encouraging. And you know, I would
Speaker 1: say that I'm not into music as much as I
Speaker 1: would be today with I heard shout on this class day,
Speaker 1: you go, I think I shout out Ms McDonald last time,
Speaker 1: my seventh greg writing teacher. I'll go with Professor Wexel,
Speaker 1: the first philosophy professor who was really in the star
Speaker 1: truck and got me and made you insufferable. That made
Speaker 1: me the worst guys. You know, I can believe what
Speaker 1: I heard my philosophy class. Uh well, my name is
Speaker 1: Jack O'Brien, a K. Potatoes O'Brien, and I'm thrilled to
Speaker 1: be joined as always by my co host, Mr Miles
Speaker 1: Grag out the window. I'm gonna crawl, even though always
Speaker 1: way too small out this bust a fall. Okay, shout
Speaker 1: out to Fighter of the ninth Man on Discord, because yes,
Speaker 1: the last time we were racking our brains over who
Speaker 1: closes the school bus door? You know when the drivers done?
Speaker 1: Because are we crawling out the window? Are we just
Speaker 1: reaching our arm? And are we releasing the hydraulics? There's
Speaker 1: so much simpler answer, but again it inspired a great
Speaker 1: yin Yang twins. Yeah, one of the best and it
Speaker 1: and the answer was just like that, you can just
Speaker 1: open and close those doors. Yeah, just turn off when
Speaker 1: the hydraulics are turned off, you can release the hydraulic
Speaker 1: pressure in the door and then just close it manually
Speaker 1: when you get it. It wasn't some you know, magic
Speaker 1: trick or new fingled instrumental. Yeah. My theory that all
Speaker 1: bus drivers are shape shifters turned out not to be true.
Speaker 1: I think we edited out of the episode, but one
Speaker 1: on for like twenty five minutes. Yeah, when you're like,
Speaker 1: how did they get that thin like paper a little
Speaker 1: the little schism in between? Well, Miles, We are thrilled
Speaker 1: to be joined in our third and fourth seats by
Speaker 1: the hosts of the podcast What Could Go Right from
Speaker 1: the Progress Network is Zachary, Carabelle and Emma Arba Luca Emma, Wow,
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna have to learn, Emma, to amp
Speaker 1: up the energy level on our usually sedate and measured
Speaker 1: set of interviews. Clearly we've we've lost um descible level
Speaker 1: that we need to incorporate. So if nothing else, we've
Speaker 1: learned that from the conversation so far. My last name
Speaker 1: was made for that. That was that was perfect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's got like good syllables. It's musical, four syllables in there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It gives you some time to like get REVVD up
Speaker 1: a little bit. The you know, the Barba gets you
Speaker 1: gets you ready for Lucas. Thanks guys, It's a change
Speaker 1: from middle school. I'm into it. I know, all right,
Speaker 1: you're getting teased. You're getting teased, Barbara Mucus. That was
Speaker 1: the one that kind of issue you could go back
Speaker 1: like as an adult and be like, guys, these are
Speaker 1: the worst insults I've ever heard, Like like, and I
Speaker 1: know they're cutting at my at this age, but y'all, like, really,
Speaker 1: this was not this is not a great showing you
Speaker 1: could do better. Yeah, well, going through the eighties and
Speaker 1: early nineties with the name Jack was and like not
Speaker 1: a lot of Jack's out there, so there was a
Speaker 1: lot out of a lot of fun stuff going on.
Speaker 1: I feel your pain. We all have our cross Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also not the highest quality material, believe it or not.
Speaker 1: But how are you guys doing? Where are you coming
Speaker 1: to us from? I'm in New York City, I've heard
Speaker 1: of it. Um, I'm in Athens, Greece. Okay, now I
Speaker 1: have not heard of that, you know. I How how
Speaker 1: are things in Athens, Greece? What time is it there?
Speaker 1: It's almost ten o'clock at night. Yeah, you're just starting
Speaker 1: to think about dinner and that is the Greek schedule.
Speaker 1: I ate it like nine you're not okay? Yeah? Nice?
Speaker 1: Al right, Well, well, thank you guys so much for
Speaker 1: joining us. We're going to get to know you a
Speaker 1: little bit better in a moment. First, We're gonna tell
Speaker 1: our listeners a couple of the things we're talking about today.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about this New York Times article.
Speaker 1: There's basically like the Democrats have found themselves with a
Speaker 1: conundrum for the mid terms, and which is that the
Speaker 1: vibes all fucked up. It seems to be. I mean,
Speaker 1: we we've like run into this before in the history
Speaker 1: of the Democratic Party where that seemed to be the
Speaker 1: like what what people diagnosed the late seventies with was
Speaker 1: like America's just like sad or and I think it
Speaker 1: was malaise. General malaise was one of the descriptors. But
Speaker 1: that seems to be kind of what they are what
Speaker 1: Democrats are asking themselves heading into this midterm election. So
Speaker 1: we want to dig into that. We wanna look at
Speaker 1: the Great Resignation as it's demographics are shifting. We are
Speaker 1: going to talk vampire culture, all of that plenty more.
Speaker 1: But first we like to ask our guests what is
Speaker 1: something from your search histories? So one thing from my
Speaker 1: search history recently was are there any female Greek rappers? Okay,
Speaker 1: the answer was there's exactly one. I couldn't find any
Speaker 1: her music, just her name because I really like Greek rap,
Speaker 1: but it's like have be misogynistic, And I was like,
Speaker 1: come on, there's got to be like a badass Greek
Speaker 1: lady out there that wraps just one. I can't find
Speaker 1: her music, so that's where we're at. What's her MC name?
Speaker 1: I think it's a sent dosignia or something like that.
Speaker 1: Didn't get her name down directly. That's how Barbara Lucas Yeah, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: coming through another lifetime? Yeah, is that are you? Are you? Like?
Speaker 1: Do you did you listen to a lot of hip
Speaker 1: hop in general and and like when you're like living
Speaker 1: in Greece or like let me check on Greek hip
Speaker 1: hop or did you suddenly been like I'm suddenly into
Speaker 1: Greek hip hop and now you're looking for the female mcs.
Speaker 1: What's what's your relationship to? You know what? If my
Speaker 1: friends could hear that question, they would laugh really really hard.
Speaker 1: I love her friends read to hip hop and wrap
Speaker 1: in New York And I was living in New York
Speaker 1: for ten years and I was always the one that's
Speaker 1: like not up on the culture, like at all at all.
Speaker 1: But for some reason, when I moved here, when you
Speaker 1: go to the clubs or bars here, they just they
Speaker 1: just play Greek music like they don't play American music
Speaker 1: at all. So I had to get into the Greek thing,
Speaker 1: and I was learning Greek, and I don't know, I
Speaker 1: just started to vibe with Greek rap for some odd reason,
Speaker 1: maybe parly because they tend to be from the United States.
Speaker 1: They tend to be Greek Americans to wrap here, interesting,
Speaker 1: which really answers a lot of unasked questions. How rap
Speaker 1: paime degrees in the first place? Right? Right? Yeah? What
Speaker 1: about you, Zachary, what what's something from your search history? Well,
Speaker 1: I did a piece last week for Time on billionaires
Speaker 1: owning media properties for the past hundred years in light
Speaker 1: of everybody's favorite billionaire maybe buying Twitter. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to mention the name just because I feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: if you don't know it, then So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of in my search history about about billionaires and media
Speaker 1: ownership for the past hundred and twenty years of American media.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. And how what are your what are your
Speaker 1: feelings about that trend and the continuance? You know, I
Speaker 1: knew that, I knew that lots of billionaires have bought
Speaker 1: contemporary media properties like Mark Benny Off and Time, like
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos in the Washington Post, like Glori and Pal
Speaker 1: Jobs in The Atlantic, I wasn't as acutely aware of
Speaker 1: just how completely all media for most of American history,
Speaker 1: well most of American history from the late nineteenth century
Speaker 1: through the present, has been owned by wealthy individuals and
Speaker 1: usually wealthy men. Right. It's pretty hard to find any
Speaker 1: media newspaper, TV station, magazine that has not been owned
Speaker 1: by wealthy private individuals, which makes Musk's bid for Twitter
Speaker 1: seem much less of a new thing, even if it's
Speaker 1: a big deal. M that, Yeah, that our current media
Speaker 1: has been under billionaire control for quite some time and
Speaker 1: for we're at where we're at now, including my heart
Speaker 1: just saying no, I mean people I heard his own
Speaker 1: people were like, we're like the Green Bay Packers of
Speaker 1: media outlets. No, it's definitely true. I mean everything is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it was Clear Channel before. And you're like,
Speaker 1: that's true of like every everything, like the everything in
Speaker 1: American culture, maybe with the exception exception of the Green
Speaker 1: Bay Packers. Right, Like, there's not much that is not
Speaker 1: owned by extremely wealthy people. I mean there's I mean,
Speaker 1: there is independent media but not to the levels of
Speaker 1: what we're talking about, I guess, you know, in terms
Speaker 1: of pervasiveness, right, like you know that, but even even
Speaker 1: even what what people like to think of as the
Speaker 1: countercultural or alt media, like The Nation and Harper's, you know,
Speaker 1: also owned by very wealthy individuals whose politics com police
Speaker 1: skew left. Yeah, I wouldn't. I don't know if I
Speaker 1: would love them in there, but yeah, like I mean
Speaker 1: like more like at the extremely local and like where
Speaker 1: we have like weeklies and things that were at some
Speaker 1: point felt like they embodied something of like oh no, this,
Speaker 1: this is this is ran by like human beings that
Speaker 1: you can identify, rather than where is the c suite
Speaker 1: that makes all the decisions for this entity kind of thing?
Speaker 1: What what's something you guys think is overrated? Oh? Other
Speaker 1: than the Green Bay Packers? Um well, I mean on
Speaker 1: that line, I'm sort of repeating myself. I think the
Speaker 1: concern that wealthy individual's owning media platforms is a threat
Speaker 1: to three speech. It's either we've never had it or
Speaker 1: we've always had it, and it has been neither here
Speaker 1: nor there to the ownership structure of these organizations. Mhm.
Speaker 1: So are you less concerned about Elon Musk doing it
Speaker 1: because I think I'm assuming like part of the concern
Speaker 1: that a lot of people, including myself for feeling is
Speaker 1: like how how brazen and also like popular he seems
Speaker 1: to be, Like I it's the first time I could
Speaker 1: see like a billionaire coming through and being like, no,
Speaker 1: you can't write that about me, and like a bunch
Speaker 1: of people being like, yeah, you can't write that about
Speaker 1: Elon Musk. Whereas the zos like tried to kill a
Speaker 1: story about Amazon publicly in the Washington Post that would
Speaker 1: probably be very unpopular. That said, I just feel like
Speaker 1: those stories never get to the front page of the
Speaker 1: Washington Post, right And you certainly have to wonder if
Speaker 1: there had, if there were multiple ongoing instances of criticism,
Speaker 1: you know, of Musk himself or anything that Tesla did
Speaker 1: or anything that Twitter did being routinely shut down, and
Speaker 1: then that having other reverberations. You know, one can set
Speaker 1: up a new social media platform of information, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: doesn't have the network effect. But Trump was able to
Speaker 1: set up truth social and now the fact that he's
Speaker 1: running it really badly is neither here nor there in
Speaker 1: terms of the ease of actually creating one. So even there,
Speaker 1: it's not as if Twitter as like the soul and
Speaker 1: only public sphere of very sharp and often pungent commentary. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you guys, general thesis on the podcast and
Speaker 1: on like it seems to be that like not enough
Speaker 1: and I agree with this, and in a lot of
Speaker 1: ways that like a lot of the good news doesn't
Speaker 1: get reported, and so it's like kind of goes into
Speaker 1: this like we we just hear the problems in the media,
Speaker 1: but then like this feels like one of the problems overall,
Speaker 1: like overarching that like we don't hear about, which is
Speaker 1: that things are generally being vetted by a billionaire class
Speaker 1: that like goings all these things that are supposed to
Speaker 1: be talking to us, Like would you agree with that
Speaker 1: or you think that like this is just a kind
Speaker 1: of a misreading of the current I think, I think
Speaker 1: and and Emma has a kind of aversion to the
Speaker 1: idea of good news as opposed to news that points
Speaker 1: in a more constructive direction. But for profit news demands
Speaker 1: attention that can be measured in real time compared to
Speaker 1: other people getting the same eyeballs. And that's the same
Speaker 1: incentives for Netflix as it is for a newspaper. So
Speaker 1: the issue I think is less who owns then the
Speaker 1: structure of these things have to generate a profit, and
Speaker 1: what generates a profit is what is most immediately emotional
Speaker 1: and intense and outrageous and fearful and hot emotions rather
Speaker 1: than cool emotions. And that is as much the issue
Speaker 1: irrespective of the ownership structure. Yeah, do you feel like
Speaker 1: something's changed with social media and like as compared to
Speaker 1: you know, some of these legacy media's that, like the
Speaker 1: New York Times was not running the sorts of headline
Speaker 1: that now make a tweak go viral, right like they
Speaker 1: there there was some sort of difference or diminished heat,
Speaker 1: like for through the editorial process, right, I mean, Emma
Speaker 1: does a lot more of our you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of the progress social media she kind of manages. And
Speaker 1: so the flip side of that is it's also been
Speaker 1: an amazing tool to have people find information and perspectives,
Speaker 1: right Ema, that are but they were they have a
Speaker 1: hard time finding otherwise, you know, the connective tissue that
Speaker 1: these platforms still provide. I think that the difference between
Speaker 1: social media and legacy media is just that the rules
Speaker 1: haven't been figured out yet, Like the rules of journalism
Speaker 1: have been around with legacy media for a really long time.
Speaker 1: So what's considered, you know, good editorial practice and bad
Speaker 1: editorial practice. What the rules are in relationship to ownership
Speaker 1: for instance, those are pretty set. And if you know
Speaker 1: the mary and public doesn't know what they are, they
Speaker 1: should know what they are. Social media is still quite
Speaker 1: new verse STI figure out the rules are trying to
Speaker 1: figure out, like what does the space look like where
Speaker 1: it's kind of a public square, so issues a free
Speaker 1: speech or there, but it is also a privately owned company,
Speaker 1: so what does that mean? Who's responsible legally for the
Speaker 1: stuff is published on the platform. It's just I think
Speaker 1: we're going to work ourselves into a better place with that.
Speaker 1: Is just that we're in the messy middle at the moment.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Yeah. What is something you think is overrated? Him?
Speaker 1: I was gonna say the five day work week overrated?
Speaker 1: Overrate in the sense that we're all doing it right
Speaker 1: that what do you what's what's ideal? You think? What's
Speaker 1: the balance here? I would love to see us move
Speaker 1: towards four. I think that would be better. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's there are a few countries that are piloting that right,
Speaker 1: it seems like it's that so far, it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to be throwing economies into like a downward spiral. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess I would say that. The only
Speaker 1: thing I would say to that is like it's a
Speaker 1: really small amount. Is like, of course I can't remember
Speaker 1: which countries now exactly, but it's like the government of
Speaker 1: Iceland I don't know, or like this one company here there.
Speaker 1: But but that's not to to damper the enthusiasm about
Speaker 1: the pilot projects super into it. I hope it goes well.
Speaker 1: I hope there's absolutely no economic downturn and that productivity
Speaker 1: stays high so that it'll just can the four day
Speaker 1: work we creep will continue to creep. Mm hmm. I
Speaker 1: thought the rub on Mediterranean countries was that they had
Speaker 1: essentially been piloting the four day work week generations between
Speaker 1: May and September, even if nominally it was a five
Speaker 1: day work week. Okay, this is a sad thing about
Speaker 1: Mediterranean culture is, or at least about Greece in particular.
Speaker 1: When I was younger, my grandparents would always have a siesta,
Speaker 1: you know, after lunch. That has disappeared, So the Mediterranean
Speaker 1: culture is getting infected by the five day work week,
Speaker 1: causing cultural situation in my view, right right, that back
Speaker 1: on track, Yeah, I love that. I'll bring that culture
Speaker 1: back into it. What's something you guys think is underrated?
Speaker 1: So I have a serious one and a not so
Speaker 1: serious one, my honest answer. The first thing that came
Speaker 1: to mind with the what's underrated was Bridgert in season two,
Speaker 1: a discussion topic that I'm not sure it is gonna
Speaker 1: hit with this particular I know, but it's been we know,
Speaker 1: we know, it's been taking people by storm. I haven't seen.
Speaker 1: I saw the first season and I was like, it's
Speaker 1: better than the season on. It's way better than the
Speaker 1: season one, although it was I think I just found
Speaker 1: myself waiting to see what the Duke would do in
Speaker 1: the bedroom all of season one. But now we've had
Speaker 1: a little more texture to this season. Now it's the Vicount.
Speaker 1: Where where do you see what the Viscount is going
Speaker 1: to do? Oh? Okay, right right right, big big difference.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Everyone I talked to you said they
Speaker 1: didn't like it, and I'm like, listen, this is trash
Speaker 1: TV at its finest. Let's appreciative for what it is.
Speaker 1: What's your serious one? My serious one was community. I
Speaker 1: think community is underrated, especially in the United States. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, the decline in religion in the United States,
Speaker 1: decline of various civic institutions has meant that people haven't
Speaker 1: formed new communities yet in the way that they should
Speaker 1: to replace some things that have been lost. And I
Speaker 1: think that that's uh causing a lot of loneliness. It's
Speaker 1: causing a lot of anui on a on a societal level. So, yeah, community,
Speaker 1: what do you see is the most like promising like
Speaker 1: way to progress towards a solution to that? Because yeah,
Speaker 1: we talked about that a lot on the show. I
Speaker 1: think honestly, it's it's people making hyper local communities and
Speaker 1: things that they totally dig. My friends and I New York.
Speaker 1: We're putting on a pole dancing show every month. That
Speaker 1: became a pretty big event in the pole dancing world
Speaker 1: in New York, and it's like this tiny, little niche,
Speaker 1: underground community, but it did a lot for people. So
Speaker 1: I think that people just follow in the direction of
Speaker 1: things that they like to do and create community or
Speaker 1: on that that that will work. That we don't need
Speaker 1: a bigger idea than m zach What, Zachary, what is
Speaker 1: something you think is under it? Zacher? Zacher is fine.
Speaker 1: Anything with the Z will do. I think the vitality
Speaker 1: of cities is being underrated, kind of o proposed on
Speaker 1: Emma's point, and the glee of reporting on the demise
Speaker 1: of cities both during COVID and now. I think the excessive,
Speaker 1: sort of strange, rubber necking, obsessive look at crime in cities.
Speaker 1: It's also it's very selective. I mean, crimes rising in
Speaker 1: Miami just as it is in New York, but you
Speaker 1: don't hear about it because people feel differently about Miami
Speaker 1: than they do about New York crimes rising in London.
Speaker 1: I mean crimes rising in every big set of post
Speaker 1: COVID as things sort of you know, fitfully return or
Speaker 1: resume or pick up a thread. And I think hope
Speaker 1: is underrated as a as a thing that is vital
Speaker 1: to the human experience about being able to shape our future.
Speaker 1: And the very fact that you can't say that without
Speaker 1: a certain internal cringiness like oh, you know, that's gonna
Speaker 1: land like a thud and a cynical forest is part
Speaker 1: of the problem. But that doesn't mean that it's not
Speaker 1: absolutely essential and vital to all of us, to our futures,
Speaker 1: the relationships we want to build, to the world we
Speaker 1: want to live in. Yeah, for sure. Like I I
Speaker 1: we've talked a lot about the over reporting of crime.
Speaker 1: Like I've had to like mute various like promoted tweets
Speaker 1: in the past couple of weeks that are just like
Speaker 1: watching police tackle criminals essentially, Like I don't know where
Speaker 1: they got the idea that, like that's what I wanted
Speaker 1: to see, But it seems like there's like a resurgence
Speaker 1: of that agenda item being pushed and maybe like that's
Speaker 1: based on people being receptive to it. But what would
Speaker 1: you say, are like the like positive sort of ignored
Speaker 1: aspects of like what's going on in in cities when
Speaker 1: you talk about the vitality and we're all somewhat product
Speaker 1: of the lens and where we are. But in the
Speaker 1: past few weeks, I've been in Los Angeles, have been
Speaker 1: in Paris, I've been in New York. I've also been
Speaker 1: in Miami, you know, in the past couple of months,
Speaker 1: and there is a real sense and palpable sense of
Speaker 1: people kind of being out and living their lives. Now. Yes,
Speaker 1: there remains an unspecified and ever morphing threat of COVID
Speaker 1: and what that means. But it's also clear that people have,
Speaker 1: as human beings have from time immemorial, recognized that the
Speaker 1: needs of the living have to be met right and
Speaker 1: and some of that unfortunately carries with it x risk
Speaker 1: of harm as it always has, disease being one of
Speaker 1: the more primary ones, but so as crime, and so
Speaker 1: are accidents, and how you navigate that is both individually
Speaker 1: and collectively incredibly variable over time, but it, you know,
Speaker 1: it does matter of like what what do you see
Speaker 1: in the picture when you walk out? What is your
Speaker 1: eye focus on? And I'm not saying you should ignore
Speaker 1: real human suffering. I'm saying that laser like focusing only
Speaker 1: on that and not on the life around it is
Speaker 1: as imbalance is only focusing on Hey, things are great.
Speaker 1: It's like only focusing on Miami being a a tech
Speaker 1: pro crypto haven and not looking at the fact that
Speaker 1: its infrastructure is strained and you know it too has
Speaker 1: rising crime. Like that's just part of the mix. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the other thing, especially with the
Speaker 1: crime stuff as it relates, there's you know a lot
Speaker 1: of people have pointed to that they not all violent
Speaker 1: crime has increased and a lot of the crimes have
Speaker 1: gone down, but a lot of there there has been
Speaker 1: an increase in the gun violence and things like that
Speaker 1: that have sort of that these more sensational aspects of
Speaker 1: it that helped feed this narrative. While we've also seen
Speaker 1: that there's a huge push from like, you know, lobbyists,
Speaker 1: whether that's like you know, the Chamber of Commerce and
Speaker 1: things who are very much focused on like turning this
Speaker 1: into like a local thing about district attorneys and like
Speaker 1: how new sentencing guidelines are brought out. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: I think there is there. There's so many ways to
Speaker 1: look at an issue, whether it's yeah, there are very
Speaker 1: some specific crimes are going up as a whole, though
Speaker 1: we're not looking at something like two that's arriving quite
Speaker 1: at the level of like certain articles we see, especially
Speaker 1: like in the like l a magazine or the New
Speaker 1: York Times or like the sources are just the police
Speaker 1: and then there's like no other source of like any
Speaker 1: information and it's merely like yeah, and that's sort of
Speaker 1: what's going on. Take it away. But we lose some
Speaker 1: of that because we're not able to like because we're
Speaker 1: so focused on that, we're not able to actually acknowledge
Speaker 1: the one thing, which is a lot of crime has
Speaker 1: gone down. But for you know, for whatever reason, the
Speaker 1: focus is on everything. It's a it's like a runaway
Speaker 1: crime spree at the moment. And it's also it's lous
Speaker 1: the use of statistics. I mean in New Art there
Speaker 1: was a ABC News I mean this is actually put
Speaker 1: out by multiple news sources saying transit crime is up
Speaker 1: fifty or sixty year over a year. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's fifty or sixty or sixty five. It
Speaker 1: was something a lot, it was a big percentage number,
Speaker 1: without recognizing the ridership is up a year over a
Speaker 1: year because a year ago people were sold. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're not fully fully back at work and there's kind
Speaker 1: of an informal three day work week. But you know,
Speaker 1: if your ridership doubles and your absolute number of crime
Speaker 1: goes up, your way of looking at that should actually
Speaker 1: look at it as a per capita reality, not just
Speaker 1: as an absolute one. I mean, ten crimes out of
Speaker 1: a million riders and you know, twenty two crimes out
Speaker 1: of three million riders riders is still a hundred and
Speaker 1: increase in crime. But it sure is it's a completely
Speaker 1: different reality if you looked at it in context. But
Speaker 1: nobody does that, right, I mean, the media does that
Speaker 1: a lot, where the attract things a year by year
Speaker 1: where it's like it's almost meaningless. You know, you have
Speaker 1: to look I feel like five years in either direction
Speaker 1: to really understand I've tried is going up or down?
Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, crime just broadly is down, right, like
Speaker 1: where as compared to the nineties and yeah, or the
Speaker 1: early two thousand's right. I mean I try to talk
Speaker 1: to people about this thing. Oh my god, I'm you know,
Speaker 1: New York used to be so safe or l A.
Speaker 1: You know, Downtown l A, like Downtown l A. You know,
Speaker 1: it was safe for like a nano second between twenty
Speaker 1: eight and you know for the thirty years before that,
Speaker 1: it was the place you dared not go. I mean,
Speaker 1: like I'm being hyperbolic, I get it. But but the
Speaker 1: fact is, you know, yes, human beings, we all live
Speaker 1: at our our highest set point, right. We always remember
Speaker 1: the most amount of money we have, the most we're earning,
Speaker 1: in the least we were paying. And that's just kind
Speaker 1: of human nature. And we don't deal well with our
Speaker 1: set point going down. We're great when our set point
Speaker 1: goes up, right, Like, no problem, I'm doing I got
Speaker 1: more money tomorrow than I did today, or you know,
Speaker 1: I feel better today, or I lost weight. We have
Speaker 1: a much harder time. Arthur Brooks talks a lot about this.
Speaker 1: We did a great podcast with him, and he's got
Speaker 1: this wonderful new book he has out. But you know,
Speaker 1: we don't. We don't do well with with one step back.
Speaker 1: We're we're fine with the two steps forward. And and look,
Speaker 1: that has always been human nature. I don't think that's
Speaker 1: a social media phenomenon, but it certainly gets amplified and
Speaker 1: echoed in a way that doesn't do any of us
Speaker 1: much good. Yeah, well, I think yeah. I think the
Speaker 1: hard part is that people who want to influence policy
Speaker 1: realize that and sort of employ that tech dick pretty
Speaker 1: cynically because we see, I mean we see it constantly.
Speaker 1: Whether that relates to seating this idea that like crime
Speaker 1: is completely out of control every single place you go,
Speaker 1: or that the pandemic is over, you know, there's like
Speaker 1: so many versions of this, and the prime thing is,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a it's a swat of a pernicious
Speaker 1: boomerang from the Black Lives Matter summer, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: it is a way for some people politically to use
Speaker 1: this as a cudgel of you know, the four people
Speaker 1: who actually did want to defund the police, saying well,
Speaker 1: it's all because of that that we now have this right,
Speaker 1: when there's also no evidence that they were actually defunded too,
Speaker 1: because every time there was a little bit of talk
Speaker 1: for a little bit of time. Yeah, but just talking
Speaker 1: about it was enough to the criminals and make them
Speaker 1: right and armed the police that they're really nice talking
Speaker 1: for and they're like, we're sorry, We're just sorry. There's
Speaker 1: there's an actual robbery happening, but all right, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break. We'll be right back. And we're back.
Speaker 1: And so Democrats find themselves in the like the New
Speaker 1: York Times called it democrats Mystery how to brighten up
Speaker 1: presidency and a national mood. It basically seems like, you know,
Speaker 1: just the moods down, and the article also seems to
Speaker 1: you know, take them at sort of face value when
Speaker 1: it comes to like what the mystery is here, Like
Speaker 1: they're like, I don't know, like should we emphasize the
Speaker 1: small gains we've made or try to make larger gains,
Speaker 1: and it just feels, I don't know, it feels weird
Speaker 1: and disingenuous to treat people's feelings about this administration like
Speaker 1: it is a mystery illness that like they they don't
Speaker 1: know the cause of, and they're just trying to figure out,
Speaker 1: you know, they're floating some weather balloons up to see
Speaker 1: how this works and how that works. But I don't know.
Speaker 1: We talk a lot about like sort of a disconnect
Speaker 1: between the reality is people live it and experience it,
Speaker 1: including on like social media versus the reality that I
Speaker 1: feel like the mainstream media and the mainstream Democratic Party
Speaker 1: seem to exist inside of or at least like sort
Speaker 1: of message from the planet of But I don't know,
Speaker 1: I think it like comes back to sort of an
Speaker 1: unacknowledged like I think two thousand eight like probably and
Speaker 1: the financial collapse like kind of ties a lot into this,
Speaker 1: and just the fact that that there hasn't been like
Speaker 1: sort of a reckoning in the mainstream video or with
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party with what happened there, and you know,
Speaker 1: you had like Bernie Sanders as an insurgent candidate who
Speaker 1: wanted to address that, and Trump addressed it in his way,
Speaker 1: and the Democratic Party was kind of still in the middle.
Speaker 1: And I don't know, it just feels it feels very
Speaker 1: much like, well, there there are concrete things people are
Speaker 1: asking for. You kind of said you were going to
Speaker 1: do something with that or around that, and have not
Speaker 1: done those things. But like, so, why is it be
Speaker 1: being treated as like are they depressed? Like what's what
Speaker 1: are you so upset about? What? Why is everyone sad?
Speaker 1: How do we make them happy? I was just curious
Speaker 1: that what would be the you know, top three list
Speaker 1: of things that they said that they were going to
Speaker 1: do that they haven't done. I think voting rights is
Speaker 1: a huge one. Yeah, I think I'm honestly like looking
Speaker 1: at things like the unemploye an insurance uh, like the
Speaker 1: weird math that happened around things being like two thousand
Speaker 1: dollars and like, well, if you add this from over here,
Speaker 1: you carry the two that adds to two thousand, the
Speaker 1: child tax credit, lapsing student debt, like you know, student
Speaker 1: loan debt. There's a I mean there's a lot talking
Speaker 1: about like law enforcement reform, not necessarily about defunding the police,
Speaker 1: but looking at that with a real clear eye and
Speaker 1: thinking things, looking at things like qualified immunity, like these
Speaker 1: are things that we're talked about. I never in a
Speaker 1: million years would think Joe Biden would ever touch anything
Speaker 1: with the qualified immunity, but a lot of gestures were
Speaker 1: made in that direction. And I think especially for you know,
Speaker 1: black people, well, we look at something like voting rights
Speaker 1: as being completely at threatened, being threatened, and we see
Speaker 1: countless laws like in places like Georgia, Florida, Texas, where
Speaker 1: it's becoming increasingly difficult to vote even for fucking you know,
Speaker 1: the people that they want to vote for. So I
Speaker 1: think those are like big things that feel very existential
Speaker 1: for people. I think, like one, if we're if we're
Speaker 1: meant to believe that if this sort of equation here
Speaker 1: is to vote the representatives into Congress that represent you know,
Speaker 1: the values that we have. That if we can't even
Speaker 1: do that, what what is the point here, Like we're
Speaker 1: not even looking at like that should even I'm surprised
Speaker 1: that wasn't the big one of the biggest things democrats
Speaker 1: even so, just like in the cynical game of staying
Speaker 1: in power, which is like, hey, they're trying to take
Speaker 1: away the their ability to vote for us. But that's
Speaker 1: been you know that we've seen, We've seemed to let
Speaker 1: the obstruction happen like within the party and just kind
Speaker 1: of keep it moving. I mean, look, part of it
Speaker 1: is that Biden was unpopular by the fall of last year,
Speaker 1: within six months of being in office, when it wasn't
Speaker 1: even clear that those things weren't going to be passed.
Speaker 1: And there was some effort. There was a you know,
Speaker 1: a voting rights bill that the House had passed that
Speaker 1: was at the Senate, and there was also the Build
Speaker 1: Back Better omnibus, you know, was going to retain the
Speaker 1: child tax credit, was going to provide universal pre k
Speaker 1: and and more time off for working women. But he
Speaker 1: was on popular even before those things didn't pass amongst
Speaker 1: a wider swath of the public than one would have thought.
Speaker 1: And what's odd is the lesson that government, including Republicans,
Speaker 1: learned from two thousand and eight two thousand nine, was
Speaker 1: that if you don't bail out people who are actually working,
Speaker 1: and you just bail out institutions, you're gonna create a
Speaker 1: lot of ill will. So there was you know, four
Speaker 1: trillion dollars of money during COVID, both in and then
Speaker 1: in February, a lot of which did go toward It
Speaker 1: was the first time in forty years that the lower
Speaker 1: quintile people saw some income growth larger because of transfer
Speaker 1: payments from government. And you know, that did not engender like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're doing well. You know, I mean there is a
Speaker 1: degree of you mentioned malaise at the beginning, Jack, that
Speaker 1: there is that aspect of what's going on that that
Speaker 1: isn't purely about I think something one can point to
Speaker 1: specifically that doesn't an undiagnosed illness. It just means, first
Speaker 1: of all, it's almost impossible to do anything right now
Speaker 1: other than those two stimulus bills during COVID that has
Speaker 1: anything resembling bipartisan support, and there are actually things that
Speaker 1: have bipartisan support, like weirdly enough, criminal Justice Reform was
Speaker 1: the one bill passed that had genuine bipartisan support during
Speaker 1: the Trump years in December that actually for the first
Speaker 1: time moved away from like a lot of the draconian
Speaker 1: sentenc saying that have become commonplace in federal courts. Right
Speaker 1: doesn't do anything for state systems, which are which are different,
Speaker 1: but it you know, it does speak to and part
Speaker 1: of why M and I are trying to do this
Speaker 1: our own, our own show of getting people to look
Speaker 1: at what what people are trying to do to solve
Speaker 1: things is the United States definitely is in a culturally
Speaker 1: massive question mark, verging on kind of despair and cynicism
Speaker 1: in a way that would have been really familiar in
Speaker 1: the mid seventies. You know, It's not like we haven't
Speaker 1: been here before and would have been really familiar in
Speaker 1: the mid nineteen thirties. You know, it would have been
Speaker 1: really familiar in the mid eighteen seventies. At best, these
Speaker 1: are like cyclical things where we we we snap out
Speaker 1: of our somewhat illusionary view of us of being the
Speaker 1: greatest of all nations that has solved everything right, as
Speaker 1: a comforting narrative that's never been true, but which we
Speaker 1: buy into really easily for long periods of time. And
Speaker 1: then it's like something happens and we wake up and
Speaker 1: we're like, wait a minute, right, no, we're not all
Speaker 1: those wonderful, hyperbolic Hosanna things that we said that we were.
Speaker 1: We've got real problems and we've got real issues, and
Speaker 1: the challenge, of course is to is to have that
Speaker 1: clear gimlet eye to awareness of what's going on without
Speaker 1: sinking into despair and cynicism, you know, without that then
Speaker 1: trending into the other direction. And we're we're clearly whether
Speaker 1: you're on the left or the right, easily heading in
Speaker 1: those directions. And I think that it's partly reflective of
Speaker 1: the fact that, you know, no political leader has anything
Speaker 1: resembling a majority approval, let alone much of a plurality.
Speaker 1: I just add really quickly, Miles, I agree he like
Speaker 1: about the child tax credit. I think that was a
Speaker 1: really you know, that was terrible that that lapsed. One
Speaker 1: interesting thing about voting rights is that it is a
Speaker 1: very serious issue. There are several states where they're they're
Speaker 1: rolling back, you know, they're making it harder to vote.
Speaker 1: But it was interesting is that the Brennan Center also
Speaker 1: put out a report about all of the new pathways
Speaker 1: of voting that we're open during the pandemic with mail
Speaker 1: and voting, and what with all the hup of about
Speaker 1: mail and voting during the last election, there's actually like
Speaker 1: states that made it easier to vote. They took the
Speaker 1: new pandemic pathways that had put into place about voting,
Speaker 1: particularly around around mail and voting and they kept them.
Speaker 1: So this is just this is just aside to it
Speaker 1: that is not often discussed. And you know, it's think
Speaker 1: what Zachary is saying that we're not we're not trying
Speaker 1: to paint like you know, let's look at everything through
Speaker 1: rose colored glasses. It's just a balance question. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I do think too that you know, there are
Speaker 1: some things that Biden is at fault for, like the
Speaker 1: massive cash transfers that went into place during the pandemic,
Speaker 1: like Sachary mentioned, were massively beneficial for people. It also
Speaker 1: seemed to have kicked up inflation. I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: much we can blame Biden for, you know, gas and
Speaker 1: gas places coming up and up and up with the
Speaker 1: war right now. So I think some of them malaised
Speaker 1: does have to do with like the Democrats are not delivering,
Speaker 1: and I think that they're particularly not paying attention to
Speaker 1: votos concerns about working and wages and worker power compared
Speaker 1: to corporate power. But some of it too, I do
Speaker 1: think it is kind of like there's a bad vibe
Speaker 1: right now, and I'm not sure that the Democrats are
Speaker 1: all are all to blame for that. I don't think
Speaker 1: that they are all to blame because this is this
Speaker 1: is censure. He's built up where now like the lived
Speaker 1: experience of an American US and as such, where the
Speaker 1: American dream is you know, not very accessible to most
Speaker 1: people anymore, and that the feeling that people have is like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, all that like post World War two
Speaker 1: glow is completely faded away and we're looking at like
Speaker 1: crumbling infrastructure, stagnant wages, and like really massive societal issues
Speaker 1: where it looks like the leadership in the country can't
Speaker 1: really like really address the elephant in the room, which
Speaker 1: I think for voting people is equal inequality and like
Speaker 1: broadly tackling that issue to say, we absolutely hear you
Speaker 1: that being able to live in a city has become
Speaker 1: it's prohibitively expensive, even if you're just trying to if
Speaker 1: you're a single parent, like good luck like trying to
Speaker 1: do that. We hear you, We understand that that is
Speaker 1: something that societally feels like we need a realignment to say,
Speaker 1: what is the minimum that an American deserves, you know,
Speaker 1: like many other countries have that defined where it's like
Speaker 1: will not go broke because you you know, because you've
Speaker 1: got into medical debt or things like that, if you
Speaker 1: want an education, here go at it. Here you go.
Speaker 1: We could we were there's a there's a place for
Speaker 1: you to attain that, and I think we're by by
Speaker 1: not really getting into that part. I think it's probably
Speaker 1: messy for both parties because at some point they have
Speaker 1: to acknowledge their connection to it. And I think that's
Speaker 1: what makes it a little bit difficult is that the
Speaker 1: you know, the both parties in this country have been
Speaker 1: so entangled in that inequality that it's like they're finding
Speaker 1: it very difficult to a acknowledge that they're the policies
Speaker 1: that they were supporting. And with the hopes of thinking like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is the way too, like have all
Speaker 1: of the abundance flow to many people isn't working And
Speaker 1: to really acknowledge that, to really say that that is
Speaker 1: completely failed and we actually need to think about I
Speaker 1: think that's what some people are waiting for, is like,
Speaker 1: can we just acknowledge that this has failed? Because it's
Speaker 1: failed so many people at this point, it's hard to
Speaker 1: say that this is us moving in a beneficial direction. Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean I have too pushbacks on that one is
Speaker 1: I think it's not about inequality as much as it's
Speaker 1: about what you just talked about. I mean, you could
Speaker 1: reduce inequality the amount of inequality, and still have people
Speaker 1: not be able to afford living in cities and going
Speaker 1: bankrupt for medical debt. It's the abundance part. It's the
Speaker 1: non proliferation of sufficient abundance to enough people in it
Speaker 1: in an otherwise highly affluent society, and inequality per se
Speaker 1: is not reducing an equality doesn't solve those issues. Just
Speaker 1: like you know, as we see with inflation, right, expanding
Speaker 1: incomes doesn't do you much good if the cost of
Speaker 1: things is rising more quickly than your incomes are expanding.
Speaker 1: If costs went down, which was somewhat happening with the
Speaker 1: declationary effects of technology, then you wouldn't necessarily need more income,
Speaker 1: right because net net would be the same thing. Your
Speaker 1: dollar would be buying more if the costs were going down.
Speaker 1: If costs you're going up, your dollars buying less. So
Speaker 1: I think it's more about the non sharing of that abundance.
Speaker 1: And one of the real opts was for the United
Speaker 1: States is the set point of the mid twentieth century,
Speaker 1: which we look at as some sort of normative moment
Speaker 1: where everything worked, but so many stars aligned in that
Speaker 1: moment that we're both of our own doing and also
Speaker 1: global right, World War two ends the United States is
Speaker 1: more than that, Actually, all global industrial capacity, the entire world. Right,
Speaker 1: We were this engine because we hadn't been bombed, you know,
Speaker 1: we were the one bombing. We weren't the ones getting bombed.
Speaker 1: We had emerged victorious. There was some degree of collective
Speaker 1: unity that that had to do with white America, right,
Speaker 1: And the g I Bill was great, but it didn't
Speaker 1: extend to African Americans, that certainly didn't extent to women.
Speaker 1: And yet we hold that up as the validation of
Speaker 1: a system that worked. And I'm really of the mind
Speaker 1: that we we hamper ourselves more by thinking that we
Speaker 1: had a formula that worked that we are now failing,
Speaker 1: rather than recognizing that we never really had the formula
Speaker 1: we think we had and it never worked the way
Speaker 1: we idealized it having worked. You know that we were
Speaker 1: always much more flawed than we like to tell ourselves.
Speaker 1: We're always more just like a group of humans who
Speaker 1: had an interesting formula for social organization that did allow
Speaker 1: for things a lot of other societies didn't, and still don't.
Speaker 1: But I think the fact that we looked to that
Speaker 1: moment in the nineties, forties, and fifties and sixties as
Speaker 1: this is when it worked and now we failed, I
Speaker 1: think that's a false story of who we were. I mean,
Speaker 1: who looks to that though? Who who are you talking
Speaker 1: about when we talk about looking to the forties, fifties, sixties,
Speaker 1: and seventies. I don't think that's who we're talking about. Well,
Speaker 1: when I even say that post war glow, I think
Speaker 1: that's that that I'm not. That's not to say that's
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't idealize any moment in American industry. No,
Speaker 1: I'm not atting you guys are, But I think are
Speaker 1: a lot of our public debate speaks of a kind
Speaker 1: of something worked and then we got off track. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Republican Party and Fox News certainly do, right, but
Speaker 1: the Democrats do as well. This is a time when
Speaker 1: there was more democracy, or more egalitarian nous, or more
Speaker 1: rights that are being you know, I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's just one side here. What I see is
Speaker 1: that the media, like when I say this post war glow,
Speaker 1: is that that that's those that that is like you're
Speaker 1: saying that is looked at is like something you know
Speaker 1: that like we were doing okay or whatever. But again
Speaker 1: you look at even as you as you lay out,
Speaker 1: not all those benefits were distributed equally. In fact, you know,
Speaker 1: most people, especially if you are not in like the
Speaker 1: white mainstream, there really hasn't been a great time for
Speaker 1: for those people in this country. And to say that,
Speaker 1: like whether it's thinking that something worked and then failed
Speaker 1: or just saying that like nothing is going right, I
Speaker 1: think what we're saying is that the same thing is
Speaker 1: that we're not We're not we're not actually arriving at
Speaker 1: a moment we're trying to actually reckon with what's going on.
Speaker 1: We have ways to kind of shroud the discussion and
Speaker 1: something else then just silo it off into like a
Speaker 1: separate thing and just make it about Okay, well, let's
Speaker 1: look at uh, let's look at how we can help
Speaker 1: out student loan like people with student loan debt, or
Speaker 1: maybe we can look at how pell grants are distributed
Speaker 1: and how that's working. But again, all of these issues
Speaker 1: are sort of part of this larger problem that we
Speaker 1: have is that most American people on some level have
Speaker 1: these like feelings of like, I don't know if I'm
Speaker 1: going to have enough to make it or to be
Speaker 1: have a level of financial stability. I look at that
Speaker 1: with my friends who are in their mid thirties who
Speaker 1: work at grocery stores so and talk about the stress
Speaker 1: they have from doing like smaller jobs because it was
Speaker 1: harder for them to go to college. They didn't they
Speaker 1: weren't taking out student loans and things like that. And
Speaker 1: there's I I see firsthand a lot about how ground
Speaker 1: down people get. And that's my concern is that I think,
Speaker 1: you know, even in a past episode, you talk about
Speaker 1: this idea of nostalgia that we have this idea of
Speaker 1: the return of the king and someone will come to
Speaker 1: right all the wrongs, and it's really not that simple.
Speaker 1: And I know people still think that's like possible, But
Speaker 1: we we have to sort of on a put all
Speaker 1: of that ship out of our mind and say that
Speaker 1: there has to be this basic reshifting or really looking
Speaker 1: at the things that we're saying what is the minimum?
Speaker 1: And I think that's I think that's an easier place
Speaker 1: a conversation to start for in general, to talk about,
Speaker 1: this is what's the minimum an American deserves by being
Speaker 1: a citizen. What is that? What is that? How does
Speaker 1: that enable you to live a prosperous life? Yeah, that
Speaker 1: I totally agree with. You know that there should be
Speaker 1: some baseline understanding of what is an affluent society provide
Speaker 1: as its contract to itself, because it's the basics of
Speaker 1: you know, healthcare, education, shelter, food, you know, not not
Speaker 1: not a particularly high bar or shouldn't be a particularly
Speaker 1: high bar of security that once we've established that, then
Speaker 1: everybody's lives can go and all the different directions that
Speaker 1: everybody's lives go. And one concern I have with the
Speaker 1: malaise like storyline is, you know, the last time the
Speaker 1: Democrats got like blamed for a nation with malaise, like
Speaker 1: you know that that ended with or that led to
Speaker 1: eight years of Reaganism and Republicans like just sort of
Speaker 1: staying hyper focused on like the wealthy and like, you know,
Speaker 1: America is great because of this small part of what
Speaker 1: is happening in America. And I just I feel like
Speaker 1: that tends to be I don't know, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't want to see that dynamic again. But if the
Speaker 1: Democrats continue to be just like the holding the holding
Speaker 1: bag for like everything that's negative, and the Republicans can
Speaker 1: just you know, invent new versions of themselves, Like are
Speaker 1: we going to just be like yo yoing back and
Speaker 1: forth between you know, just insufferable like Republican leaders who
Speaker 1: are saying wild shit about what they're going to do
Speaker 1: and you know, threatening horrible things and you know, being
Speaker 1: horrible leaders back to like a you know, sane democratic
Speaker 1: alternative that then everyone's like yeah, but like this problem
Speaker 1: is still there. Like I feel like that's the dynamic
Speaker 1: we're currently at, is that whatever you diagnose the problem being.
Speaker 1: And I think that there's a a huge unacknowledged like
Speaker 1: wound from two thousand eight that like the end from
Speaker 1: like you know, corporate you know what when we talk
Speaker 1: about like Biden not getting things done in office and
Speaker 1: like it's stopping with like mansion and cinema like that
Speaker 1: was they are like heavily influenced by like dark money
Speaker 1: and corporate interests, and you know, it just feels like
Speaker 1: we're like the Democratic Party and like that mainstream has
Speaker 1: chosen to be the sort of holding bag for like
Speaker 1: all of this malaise, but like they don't have like
Speaker 1: some alternative that they're they're they're not choosing to offer
Speaker 1: an alternative. I guess I definitely hear you about like
Speaker 1: the wound from two thousand and eight. I talked about
Speaker 1: this with my friends. A lot some ammennial and a
Speaker 1: lot of us got really screwed going into college, during
Speaker 1: college and coming out of college, and it did lead
Speaker 1: to a lot of us, you know, sort of getting
Speaker 1: behind as far as not being able to settle a
Speaker 1: life for ourselves with enough money to buy a house,
Speaker 1: particularly in a city that's rehatively expensive. But I also
Speaker 1: just think like the Democrats are not working with the
Speaker 1: things that they should be working with. Like Miles brought
Speaker 1: up the child tax credit, they were that also is
Speaker 1: something that has biperasion support. There are Republicans who support
Speaker 1: various versions of that. They should be going straightforward towards that.
Speaker 1: Why aren't they The whole discussion around student loan debt
Speaker 1: I find really odd because once you cance allow everyone's
Speaker 1: student loan debt, you're still left with the undiscussed problem.
Speaker 1: Like you guys are pointing out that it's prohibitly expensive
Speaker 1: to attend a lot of practic colleges, So you might
Speaker 1: have solved that, you know, in a moment in time. Okay, great,
Speaker 1: everyone who has you know, a lot of debt is
Speaker 1: free from that, but a lot of the students leaned
Speaker 1: it that's being hold held in the United States from
Speaker 1: from for profit colleges, and like I said, it's not
Speaker 1: going to solve the situation of people entering into college
Speaker 1: just going to graduate with him with more debt. And
Speaker 1: again the you know, the Democrats are also not focusing
Speaker 1: on healthcare. So techo that, Yeah, there were things that
Speaker 1: the Democrats could have done in that because of the
Speaker 1: party's sort of maximums position about a lot of these
Speaker 1: things didn't happen. You know. Even Jim mentioned had a
Speaker 1: voting rights bill that he had helped craft that he
Speaker 1: would have supported that was far less than the voting
Speaker 1: rights bill that was passed in Congress, but was far
Speaker 1: more than no voting rights bill and would have given
Speaker 1: the federal government much more teeth to take on some
Speaker 1: of these restrictions some of these states. There was also
Speaker 1: a series of social spendings that could have passed through
Speaker 1: through the Senate. Emma talked about the child Task Credit,
Speaker 1: but there was a kind of a maximums position and
Speaker 1: I think in many ways, you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: what is disparaging about the Democrats is the degree to
Speaker 1: which by trying to govern as if there was this
Speaker 1: huge mandate without recognizing that. Look, I mean, there's a
Speaker 1: whole series of Democrats in swing districts, in non urban
Speaker 1: areas of the country. You know, people like Alyssa Slakin
Speaker 1: in Michigan and Tom Malinowski in New Jersey who's an
Speaker 1: old friend, and Abigail Spansburger and Virginia and Cindy Asney
Speaker 1: and in Iowa who support all these things, you know,
Speaker 1: and and and feel like they have a constituency that
Speaker 1: would support them, but not at the most. You know,
Speaker 1: we're gonna remake society allow what more urban you know,
Speaker 1: younger educated voters want. And by not taking the half loaf,
Speaker 1: you know, the proverbial like not taking the deal that
Speaker 1: was the table and going for the wish list, I
Speaker 1: think that's I mean, it is almost impossible to overstate
Speaker 1: what a mistake that is. And it changes the narrative
Speaker 1: in a way that didn't have to be. You know,
Speaker 1: there's more support for a lot of these things because
Speaker 1: they affect a lot of humans lives, irrespective of what
Speaker 1: party they affiliate themselves. With and uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: think that's going to be part of the real challenge
Speaker 1: for the Democrats, other than the fact they've done a
Speaker 1: really effective job counter Gerryandering well. And I think the
Speaker 1: issue though two is right like they'll come out with
Speaker 1: these maximalist solutions on the campaign trail to court the voters,
Speaker 1: and then when it's time for the rubber to hit
Speaker 1: the road, the lobbyists step in and completely derail everything.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a huge part. I think that's
Speaker 1: why for me, I'm not sure how the current set
Speaker 1: up is equipped to actually take on these issues because
Speaker 1: they're so systemic. I used to be a lobbyist for
Speaker 1: a four offit education institution, and the work I did
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with education and had everything to
Speaker 1: do with exerting pressure on, you know, politicians, to convince
Speaker 1: voters that this politician was using X policy to benefit
Speaker 1: them when they weren't. And my whole existence was predicated
Speaker 1: on a wealthy donor wanting to make sure that his
Speaker 1: business was doing well. And I think that's a huge,
Speaker 1: huge blind spot in the discussion, is that it's it's
Speaker 1: it's not just Joe Manchin sat down and looked at
Speaker 1: the Build Back Better Infrastructure bill and said, you know,
Speaker 1: cutting it back at trillion dollars every couple of months,
Speaker 1: which coincides with I think why Biden's numbers by the
Speaker 1: fall hit hit such a weird point because we started,
Speaker 1: we started off the spring thinking this, this bill is
Speaker 1: gonna work. Then slowly you got to see that a
Speaker 1: lot of the like sort of more corporative elements of
Speaker 1: the party, but you could see where their interests were.
Speaker 1: People suddenly are now voting to block bills that we're
Speaker 1: going to bring prescription costs lower and lo and behold,
Speaker 1: it's coming from people whose biggest donors are from the
Speaker 1: pharmaceutical industry. And I think, yeah, like well and all
Speaker 1: of that is pretty disheartening. But I think if when
Speaker 1: that's completely absent from the conversation, we're gonna keep we're
Speaker 1: gonna keep getting stuck in this like abstract version like
Speaker 1: what's really going on without again reckoning with what this
Speaker 1: how the system is actually operating and who who actually
Speaker 1: can you know, pull those levers that a certain points
Speaker 1: when they want to Yeah, I'm with you about healthcalth
Speaker 1: health care for sure, Miles, I mean coming to Greece
Speaker 1: and and living in uh that's probably one of the
Speaker 1: worst European countries as far as health insurance goes. The
Speaker 1: dramatic difference between here in the United States is like
Speaker 1: it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. I feel like I should recommend
Speaker 1: everyone if they can, like go live in Europe, if
Speaker 1: you can, for sometimes see what the health care is like,
Speaker 1: then come back. You'll have a crystal clear idea of
Speaker 1: how much better it could be in the United States. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, too many people just living the version where
Speaker 1: they're experiencing the worst kind ever without any idea of
Speaker 1: how much how good it can be, and we're just
Speaker 1: grinding people down to like nothing. I feel like that's it.
Speaker 1: It's like meant, it's like I've gone through periods where
Speaker 1: I ignore my mental health and just like grind myself
Speaker 1: and then like you know, there there are negative consequences,
Speaker 1: but if you just like don't take that as a
Speaker 1: as a factor into consideration. But like the the reality
Speaker 1: of like living in America in a place where like
Speaker 1: getting sick or hurt can like bankrupt you is so
Speaker 1: fucked up, like so dark, and the fact that like
Speaker 1: you know, you would have to like that you feel
Speaker 1: like you need to suggest to people like you guys
Speaker 1: have to see this ship. It's crazy like over there
Speaker 1: you can get hurt and not be bankrupted. Is like
Speaker 1: that that feels? I don't know. I think there are
Speaker 1: a lot of things that we kind of lose track
Speaker 1: of because we're so used to them, as you guys
Speaker 1: have kind of talked about, but that need to be
Speaker 1: improved and are the thing that is like grinding people down,
Speaker 1: like you were saying, well, I mean I will say
Speaker 1: to you that there's pros and content everywhere, So I
Speaker 1: would be remiss to say that if you're on public
Speaker 1: health insurance here in Greece, part of your medical experience
Speaker 1: is not going to be bankruptcy, but it is going
Speaker 1: to be bribing the doctors in the hospitals that they'll
Speaker 1: actually take care of you. So yeah, I mean health
Speaker 1: insurance is hard. Let's just say that. Yeah, because again,
Speaker 1: like I think it speaks to the this perversion of
Speaker 1: like certain industries where we're not taking certain things saying
Speaker 1: that's not a thing where you need to go and
Speaker 1: you know, exploit and extract trillions of dollars out of
Speaker 1: Like that's that's that's that's at a minimum, a thing
Speaker 1: to keep people healthy and alive. Like, don't don't begin
Speaker 1: to to mix that up with growth and shareholder value
Speaker 1: and those kinds of ideas, because yeah, we've we come.
Speaker 1: When we do that, we complete reduced people to just
Speaker 1: shoot on a spreadsheet abstract numbers, and at a certain point,
Speaker 1: one person being like I need to crank this up
Speaker 1: by half a percent means tens of thousands of people
Speaker 1: going to bankruptcy. And we're like, we're completely I think,
Speaker 1: divorced from like the humanity of it all, which I
Speaker 1: think is just unfortunately that happens a lot of the
Speaker 1: people who are the most vulnerable. We forget about it
Speaker 1: because it's not necessarily maybe presents the greatest threat to
Speaker 1: the most people all the time, but it's simmers and
Speaker 1: it ends up, you know where eventually that that rot
Speaker 1: touches all of us. Although I had to say one
Speaker 1: of the things that really startled me in pandemic time,
Speaker 1: the heart of it was like a fair number of
Speaker 1: us I looked to Western European national health systems with
Speaker 1: a degree of admiration of some sense that this is
Speaker 1: a public good right it should be channeled through private industry.
Speaker 1: It should be a product of a profit motive per se.
Speaker 1: It should be about Look, every person in a society
Speaker 1: should be able to get the health care they need
Speaker 1: for the lives they want to live. But those national
Speaker 1: systems were no more able to cope with the demands
Speaker 1: of of a pandemic for the most part, and showed
Speaker 1: in many of the same fissures between sort of haves.
Speaker 1: Have not that the United States did hardly because their
Speaker 1: own budgets had been investrated over the prior years, because
Speaker 1: people didn't want to really pay taxes to support that
Speaker 1: collective good, and they were susceptible to the same mantras
Speaker 1: of efficiency. And efficiency means you know, you don't have
Speaker 1: spare beds, it means when a crisis hits, there's no slack.
Speaker 1: Slack costs money. All I'm saying is like, it is
Speaker 1: true that we have massive structural impediments to delivering some
Speaker 1: of the goods that you talk about, But it is
Speaker 1: eye opening to see the degree to which it's very
Speaker 1: hard to find a human assemblage on the planet that
Speaker 1: does this particularly well, other than some you know, smaller
Speaker 1: homogeneous societies. You can say, look and Mark does this
Speaker 1: pretty well, but Denmark's like, you know, Manhattan plus queens.
Speaker 1: And I mean, and that's not said with any pejorative, right,
Speaker 1: It's just I think it's easier when there's fewer people
Speaker 1: and they're all somewhat related. I do have to say.
Speaker 1: I bribe all my doctors just to get better reports,
Speaker 1: better like which put from my height there, doctor dropped
Speaker 1: like twenty pounds from the weight and that cholesterol needs
Speaker 1: to come way down. Bro. You can bribe people here
Speaker 1: to get a driver's license to which is why it's
Speaker 1: really scary to drive here. Wow, all right, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break. We'll come back and talk for like
Speaker 1: five minutes about vampires and then we'll let you guys
Speaker 1: go and we're back, and yeah, let's talk vampires. Vampires
Speaker 1: are back. I mean, I guess we should. We should
Speaker 1: start off with the most important question, him rights most
Speaker 1: important question for our guests, Emma and Zachary. Our vampire
Speaker 1: fangs hollow like straws, so they can drink the blood
Speaker 1: through the fangs or are they sharp pokers to create
Speaker 1: a wound to drink from. Okay, I feel like there's
Speaker 1: only one answer to this question, is the right answer,
Speaker 1: and that they must be like straws. Otherwise the drinking
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense to It doesn't work. You basically
Speaker 1: have to like rip open a massive wound. You couldn't
Speaker 1: have just like two pincers and then what lap up
Speaker 1: the blood? It would be like a little trickle. It
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense. It's like an artery though, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. They're going for the jug deler maybe
Speaker 1: so you get good, good pressure, good good blood pressure
Speaker 1: coming out of there. But I do. But okay, I
Speaker 1: like that. Now I agree. I'm going with them here.
Speaker 1: This is huge because so we Miles and I like
Speaker 1: came up in the vampire game thinking that was how
Speaker 1: things worked, but like then and were made to feel
Speaker 1: stupid and like up until you guys just said that
Speaker 1: I had felt stupid. But maybe not. Maybe this is
Speaker 1: the truth. Maybe we were right all along, Miles. I
Speaker 1: guess the thing the Devil's Advocate is that, like capri Son,
Speaker 1: you know, you can just punch a puncture hole and
Speaker 1: then just suck that thing dry, like you don't need
Speaker 1: your teeth to uh. But there's one of the problem.
Speaker 1: There's one of the problem with that picture, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, if you ever see a vampire, and of
Speaker 1: course we've all seen real vampires, not just the movies.
Speaker 1: If they were just two puncture wounds, you'd have to
Speaker 1: first puncture and then you'd have to move your mouth
Speaker 1: because you have to move your mouth up to the
Speaker 1: puncture for suction. And that would be a totally different
Speaker 1: That would be a two steps process on the neck
Speaker 1: and right. And you don't. That's not how it works.
Speaker 1: It's one and then it's a latch. And the latch
Speaker 1: doesn't work if if the puncture is like significantly towards
Speaker 1: your nose right and it's like plus, it's blocking the
Speaker 1: hole in which the blood would be flowing from if
Speaker 1: the fangs are still in there. Yeah. So I'm just
Speaker 1: saying thank you, Okay, I mean, I guess we have
Speaker 1: a We also have a less important update from the
Speaker 1: world of vampires and Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly
Speaker 1: have talked about liken to occasionally drink each other's blood.
Speaker 1: Apparently m g K will cut his chest open with
Speaker 1: broken shards of glass so that Fox can drink the blood.
Speaker 1: And the vampire community was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,
Speaker 1: whoa Sorry, what did you say? Yeah? Yeah, real quotes
Speaker 1: from vampire one man bel Fazzar Ashen Tuissan, the co
Speaker 1: founder of the New Orleans Vampire Association. It wasn't sucking around,
Speaker 1: he's saying most vampires again, it's just saying, you can't
Speaker 1: just drink somebody's blood. What are you sick? You gotta
Speaker 1: if you gotta know whose blood you're drinking. He says,
Speaker 1: vampires to extend of research on their blood donors before
Speaker 1: using even the slightest drop. And it says it took
Speaker 1: him six months to get to know his blood donor
Speaker 1: and feel comfortable before he would ingest the blood. Another
Speaker 1: and then so and to the shards of glassing. Another
Speaker 1: vampire father Sebastian, the founder of the Endless Night Vampire ball,
Speaker 1: said you gotta be careful, You gotta you you. You
Speaker 1: gotta use like medical procedures to perfect have the blood
Speaker 1: withdrawn properly. Otherwise it's you're you're looking at a terrible,
Speaker 1: terrible mistake or you know, potential harmful issues. So I
Speaker 1: just like that the vampires came out to them and
Speaker 1: we're saying, this ain't some fucking movie where you just
Speaker 1: starts sluck sucking on a bloody wound get real. You
Speaker 1: need to have the You need to have someone like
Speaker 1: maybe phlebotomist on standby to properly do that. I love
Speaker 1: the fact that there is a sufficient sub community that
Speaker 1: has created and delineated a set of really strict and
Speaker 1: and clear rules of engagement when it comes to how
Speaker 1: you drink, what you drink, and from whom you drink
Speaker 1: that It never really occurred to me to spend time
Speaker 1: and energy mapping out the parameters of And that's the
Speaker 1: really cool thing about subcommunities, right. You we go about
Speaker 1: our lives thinking at such a point as you decide
Speaker 1: that you want to actually drink someone's blood, it's a
Speaker 1: pretty simple, basic transaction, kind of like Angelina Jolie and
Speaker 1: Billy Bob Thornton. You know, you just you put a
Speaker 1: little bit of a viol and your show up with
Speaker 1: the oscars and and there you have it. But indeed,
Speaker 1: you know there's some real serious expertise and complexity there.
Speaker 1: Maybe we can talk about cannibalism and the next the
Speaker 1: next time we talked, because I'm sure there too. You
Speaker 1: know thermometers, temperature, you know minimum which cuts are better
Speaker 1: storage seculents? Right? How do you how do you make
Speaker 1: sure they don't reach for the wrong thing and the
Speaker 1: cooler you know whatever. I'm sure it's all out there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's all about community, you know what I mean saying
Speaker 1: about building community is very important one New Orleans hit
Speaker 1: up nova let Balfazzar, No, you're here for his safe
Speaker 1: technocratic form of vampire ing. The is there like a
Speaker 1: vampire name generator? Because like is bel Fazzar Ashton? Is
Speaker 1: that his? Is that this person's legal name? Or do
Speaker 1: you when you fall into vampiresm you're like holding now
Speaker 1: this is my like confirmation saint name belfaz goan Rice
Speaker 1: Corpus and try to find you know your spirit, your
Speaker 1: spirit vampire name. It might be his legal name if
Speaker 1: he changed it, but it's certainly not his given name.
Speaker 1: There's no one unless he comes from a line of
Speaker 1: New Orleans Vampire Association. True, true, Well, guys, it's been
Speaker 1: a pleasure having you on t d Z. Where can
Speaker 1: people find you? Follow you all that good stuff? So
Speaker 1: you can listen to our podcast called What Could Go Right?
Speaker 1: We're on you know, any podcast platform you can think of.
Speaker 1: We're at progress and t w r K on Instagram, Facebook,
Speaker 1: Twitter and linked and if you're a linked in person. UM.
Speaker 1: You can also sign up for a newsletter which is
Speaker 1: also called what Could Go Right, and that's on the
Speaker 1: Progress network website, which is the Progress Network dot org. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and think about it as kind of a
Speaker 1: yen to this yang. Yeah right, balance in the force.
Speaker 1: And is there a tweet or some of the work
Speaker 1: of social media you've been enjoying? Um, so, not quite
Speaker 1: a tweet, but a tweet to an article which was um.
Speaker 1: Kevin Kelly, he was one of the founding editors of
Speaker 1: wire ad magazine. He turned seventy last week and he
Speaker 1: put out this list called hundred and three Bits of
Speaker 1: Advice I wish I knew. It's really great. It's completely random,
Speaker 1: there's absolutely no order and just like gems throughout. So
Speaker 1: I recommend that it's on his website called SECNOI UM,
Speaker 1: I think, okay, how about you use Degrey so just
Speaker 1: for for funny tweet land. Yeah, there's a woman named
Speaker 1: Eden Dranger who as a hilarious set of ever new
Speaker 1: Twitter feeds. One of our recent ones is whenever I
Speaker 1: feel ugly, I just remember that I'm a terrible person too.
Speaker 1: There you go. Uh, and the others we should have
Speaker 1: to answer like five security questions before making any late
Speaker 1: night online purchases. Yeah, wise words. I gotta identify which
Speaker 1: square has the boat in it before you make it,
Speaker 1: and I'll leave you. I'll leave you with the final
Speaker 1: one of hers. If I was a marriage counselor, I
Speaker 1: just let the couple log onto any dating app for
Speaker 1: two minutes. There you go. Miles, where can people find
Speaker 1: you with the tweet you've been enjoying? Uh? Find me
Speaker 1: on Twitter and Instagram at Miles of Gray. If you
Speaker 1: like basketball, check out Miles and Jack Got Mad Boost.
Speaker 1: These are basketball podcasts. Since we're you know again, we
Speaker 1: talked about the world here. We celebrate the NBA over
Speaker 1: there and if you like, check out four twenty day
Speaker 1: Fiance with your Boy and Sophia Alexandra. A tweet I like.
Speaker 1: First one is from Natasha Leone because I've been watching
Speaker 1: a little bit of Russian Doll the new season, and
Speaker 1: so whenever I see her tweets, I can't help but
Speaker 1: hear it in her voice at and Leone tweeted, holcome,
Speaker 1: no one talks about WAP anymore? You guys used to
Speaker 1: love whap Random Natasha leon And tweeting uh, and then
Speaker 1: another one from a Sante's in Fronto tweeted, I love
Speaker 1: that when British people sing they cut out all that bullshit.
Speaker 1: That was like when I heard like like an interview,
Speaker 1: like like led Zeppelin the first time ever as a kid,
Speaker 1: I was like, wait, what what? But sometimes you know,
Speaker 1: Green Day adds back in from our from our end
Speaker 1: Sudden we were British again tweet I've been enjoying jin
Speaker 1: Marco SORESI tweeted, Oh you don't like cargo shorts, let
Speaker 1: me check my forty six pockets for a funk to give.
Speaker 1: That's good. You can find us on Twitter at daily Zeitgeist.
Speaker 1: We're at the Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram. We have a
Speaker 1: Facebook fan page on a website daily zeitgeis dot com,
Speaker 1: where we post our episodes on our footnotes where we
Speaker 1: like the information that we talked about in today's episode,
Speaker 1: as well as a song that we think you might enjoy. Miles,
Speaker 1: what song do we think people might enjoy it? We're
Speaker 1: gonna do an instrumental version a cover by this group
Speaker 1: Soul Supreme of the track by most Stuff called Umi
Speaker 1: says a lot of people know that song, and he
Speaker 1: said s I that I don't know world, but this
Speaker 1: is a great instrumental cover of it, even more soul.
Speaker 1: So this is souls some dreams, the version of whom
Speaker 1: he said, alright well. The Daily Zeitgeist is a production
Speaker 1: by Heart Radio. For more podcast for my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows. That's gonna do it for
Speaker 1: us this morning, over back this afternoon to tell you
Speaker 1: was trending more Tarkia than by eight