Speaker 1: Hello the Internet, and welcome to Season to fourteen, episode
Speaker 1: two of Days in production of My Heart Radio. And
Speaker 1: this is a podcast where we take a deep into
Speaker 1: Americans share consciousness. Of course, it is Tuesday, December seven,
Speaker 1: World Trick Shot Day. We've all been waiting for, folks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is finally here. Nothing else happened on December seven.
Speaker 1: That's that's all I got. Did you have something? Oh right, right?
Speaker 1: National cotton candy deck um And I was like, a
Speaker 1: date that will live in in National Harbor, remember, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what it was. Yeah, yeah, someone has a birthday
Speaker 1: like today. And I was like, I said, today that
Speaker 1: will live in infamy, and it went straight over their head.
Speaker 1: I remember one of the first times I met them.
Speaker 1: Ever since then, I secretly judged them for their lacks
Speaker 1: of like historical recall, especially if it's your birthday. How
Speaker 1: how do you not have that just at the top
Speaker 1: of mind. Maybe that's how good a birthday they have,
Speaker 1: Like they're able to completely block out everything, just like everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just a traveling parade of birthday. Yeah, alright, Well,
Speaker 1: my name is Jack O'Brien. A K whoa I shaved
Speaker 1: up there? Whoa no more lip hair, your kids safe.
Speaker 1: I'm not a creep. I swear whoa no more lip
Speaker 1: hair And that is from Adam Dodd and it will
Speaker 1: be at the last time mustache based I shaved a
Speaker 1: week ago. I think it's probably time to stop singing
Speaker 1: about my mustache. But thank you Adam DoD had to
Speaker 1: had to let that one out. Well done, sir uh,
Speaker 1: And I'm thrilled to be joined as always by my
Speaker 1: co host Mr Miles Grass Miles Gray, the great lover
Speaker 1: of holiday films a k A. Dubes McDuck a k A.
Speaker 1: It's a Wonderful Leaf a k A. How the Grinch
Speaker 1: Smoke Spliffage a k A. Miracle krawn four twenty Street
Speaker 1: a k A. The Christmas chron Nickels a k A.
Speaker 1: Reefer Games starring Budd hash Fleg and Shard Trees there
Speaker 1: Stone Alone and Stone Alone too, based in New York. Yeah, wow,
Speaker 1: has there ever been? I mean, I'm assuming there's Oh,
Speaker 1: Harold and Kumar like Christmas movie, right, there's one of those?
Speaker 1: Is there another? Did Chi and Chong ever do a
Speaker 1: holiday Maybe they did? You know, the generationally, I only
Speaker 1: know like the big hits for them. So if there
Speaker 1: was a deep cut Us and Chong my apologies. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like holiday themed, like like the way that
Speaker 1: great music artists all have their holiday album or not
Speaker 1: so great. You know, a lot of it seems like
Speaker 1: all directors should do a spin on their normal movie.
Speaker 1: We should have a Kubrick Oh Christmas movie. You know,
Speaker 1: everybody should get that. Yeah, because if artists in their
Speaker 1: management are allowed to do these lat in cash grabs
Speaker 1: were being like, hey, you know who he's a fucking
Speaker 1: Christmas album. Degrees, no they don't. They want to show
Speaker 1: some records then, yeah, like get fucking uh Dani vil
Speaker 1: Neuve to be like, okay, do do a Christmas movie
Speaker 1: right now? Christmas? Yeah, just make them all Lifetime or
Speaker 1: Hallmark Channel, just you know, they don't have to be
Speaker 1: anything special. Well, Miles, we are thrilled to be joined
Speaker 1: in our third seat by a voiceover artist, actor, and musician.
Speaker 1: But you can hear his Matteo on roundcom Pod Season
Speaker 1: one in his internationally acclaimed South Asian American punk band
Speaker 1: The Kaminas, and uh that they've been featured on I
Speaker 1: don't know, Rolling Stone, Garty and Papers and Mike and
Speaker 1: you know, no big deal. You can also hear him
Speaker 1: as the host of the acclaimed podcast King of the World,
Speaker 1: which is a seven part podcast about his journey as
Speaker 1: a Pakistani American Muslim teenager coming of age post nine eleven.
Speaker 1: Please welcome the brilliant and talented shout Hong Kong. So
Speaker 1: much pleasure to be here, guys. As I was mentioned,
Speaker 1: I think before we started recording from the floor of
Speaker 1: my parents bedroom. Yeah, northern Massachusetts, beautiful bedspreads. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: believe my mom, you know, put this thing together herself,
Speaker 1: so I love to see it. And I fumbled the
Speaker 1: pronunciation asun right con Yeah, like you know, you got
Speaker 1: some some stuck in your throat there there? Did you
Speaker 1: up the Massachusetts I did? Actually, Yeah, my parents have
Speaker 1: been here since just the mid seventies. I came rolling
Speaker 1: around in the early eighties. And yeah, I just I
Speaker 1: grew up. I was born in like in Boston, but
Speaker 1: I grew up in a extremely boring suburb called Boxboro, Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: Boxboro with a B, not Foxboro for the Patriots that
Speaker 1: I don't give a shit about play football, but yeah,
Speaker 1: box Borrow with a B. Yeah, I'm one of the rare,
Speaker 1: like I guess want to say not that rare, but
Speaker 1: I guess rare Bostonians that really doesn't care much about sports,
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's true. Like so you don't have, don't
Speaker 1: do any Celtic Pride red soccer, Just like, are you
Speaker 1: just generally not interested in sports? Because I see that
Speaker 1: also being a reason why you're like no, basically. I mean,
Speaker 1: my mom tells the story in the in the on
Speaker 1: the first episode of my show, the show King of
Speaker 1: the World, where she's like, you know, she's you know,
Speaker 1: it's a very serious conversation about like growing up in
Speaker 1: a very white town and stuff, and she was like,
Speaker 1: you know, it was a very high pressure environment. Our
Speaker 1: school mascot was like literally called the Colonials. That was
Speaker 1: that was the name of the whatever football hockey team.
Speaker 1: But yeah, she was she was like desperate for me
Speaker 1: to get into sports. I started figure skating, and I
Speaker 1: kind of wish I had stuck with figure skating, but
Speaker 1: that was really the only thing I was like, alright,
Speaker 1: and I was like, not I did. I did soccer
Speaker 1: and track, you know, kind of like you sort of
Speaker 1: do them because you're supposed to write. But yeah, figure
Speaker 1: skating is such a like that's just such a translatable
Speaker 1: like thing. I don't know. Yeh see, people who have
Speaker 1: a background in hockey or skating, like when they get
Speaker 1: out on a rink, like they're just something comes over them.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like when you say a bird that
Speaker 1: really enjoys flying and they're just like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: just like yo, they really like they do. I was playing.
Speaker 1: I was pretty good, but you know it's like I
Speaker 1: think about that a lot, and I feel like the
Speaker 1: reason I didn't continue with it, if I'm honest, was
Speaker 1: probably homophobia at a young age, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like because it was like me and maybe one other
Speaker 1: guy at the time in the in the team, and
Speaker 1: you know, all the like kids in acting in boxbor
Speaker 1: like whatever. It was like hockey and if you weren't
Speaker 1: into hockey. I was a frail, young, mushroom haircut at
Speaker 1: Pakistani teenager, so I wasn't really gonna be playing hockey,
Speaker 1: but I did. I tried to. I tried to like
Speaker 1: collect the hockey pucks in the rink to like pretend
Speaker 1: that you know, but come out here, yes again, are
Speaker 1: you weight? But when you get on a ring, do
Speaker 1: you ever do you have to get free? Like Jack's
Speaker 1: talking by like I need to feel the wind on
Speaker 1: my It's funny you mentioned that I didn't go for
Speaker 1: a long time, and then I think maybe five years
Speaker 1: ago might now partner my wife Lauren and I we went, uh,
Speaker 1: you can you can skate like in downtown Boston at
Speaker 1: like the outdoor frog pond in the winter. So I
Speaker 1: did that once. And then there's also like a rank
Speaker 1: by your house. And when you don't do it for
Speaker 1: like twenty thirty years or whatever, like it requires some
Speaker 1: balance and core strength and but it definitely came back
Speaker 1: to me, like I was able to, like I think
Speaker 1: that in that first hour, like start skating backwards and stuff.
Speaker 1: And at the time there was actually like a group
Speaker 1: of fifteen or sixteen year old whatever, like hockey's figure
Speaker 1: skating stars doing all the like axles and ship like
Speaker 1: all around us. So we were just trying to like hobble,
Speaker 1: you know, like around the thing without falling. So did
Speaker 1: it did come back to me, though, I like to
Speaker 1: think my life that had taken a different turn. For sure.
Speaker 1: I grew up playing hockey, and again I was just
Speaker 1: a bizarre black and Asian kid in the late eighties
Speaker 1: with a mushroom haircut, at a certain point. Okay, you
Speaker 1: know was it was it a middle part? Oh? Hell yeah,
Speaker 1: because it was like a surfer you know, because a
Speaker 1: surfer do happened. But then my mom wouldn't take me
Speaker 1: to get a haircut, so then that turned into some
Speaker 1: other ship like after a few wants in no haircut.
Speaker 1: But you know, with being on the ice, like every
Speaker 1: time I go to like someone's like roller skating party
Speaker 1: or like an ice skating party, half the time I
Speaker 1: ignore everyone just to skate as hard as I can
Speaker 1: when we're like, come on, little legs, you're not going
Speaker 1: to do this yet. Damn. I wish hockey did have
Speaker 1: I would probably watch hockey if it incorporated like axles
Speaker 1: and double axles and ships, like if that's how the thing.
Speaker 1: My wife the only sports she actually she's like a
Speaker 1: punk rock neuroscientist, but she she likes hockey. That's like
Speaker 1: the one sports she's like super into. Is she from
Speaker 1: the like New England as well, so she's from Nashua,
Speaker 1: New Hampshire. Got okay? Yeah, yeah. I took my kids
Speaker 1: to a like it's kind of like a children's science
Speaker 1: museum over the weekend and they had a skating rank
Speaker 1: set up for socks skating, which is just you take
Speaker 1: off your shoes and slide around on your socks. Oh.
Speaker 1: I thought you were going to say you like attach
Speaker 1: a skate to like your bare foot or like song
Speaker 1: And I was like, that's pretty it's way, but you
Speaker 1: had to pay to take off your shoes and slide
Speaker 1: around on the slippery floor. It's just made me feel
Speaker 1: very much like damn, l A, is this what we've
Speaker 1: come to? Yeah, I've heard of rooms that people pay
Speaker 1: hundreds of dollars and to sit and uh and meditate
Speaker 1: to you know that's true. You have skate though on
Speaker 1: that was it just or just a stupid quirky name
Speaker 1: for slippery ass floor? Slippery floor? But I mean people
Speaker 1: were having fun. Nobody was like it just seemed like
Speaker 1: people were, you know, like sliding around Nobody. You couldn't
Speaker 1: get up enough of ahead of a head of steam
Speaker 1: to like really break your arms. The night was a
Speaker 1: night called like glide or something, right, that would be
Speaker 1: all right, Well, we are going to get to know
Speaker 1: you a little bit better in a moment. You don't
Speaker 1: regret it. No, I can't wait, But first we do
Speaker 1: I want to tell our listeners a couple of things
Speaker 1: we will be talking about a little later on. We're
Speaker 1: gonna talk We're gonna do an Amicron update because initial
Speaker 1: numbers show that it might be less severe, which is
Speaker 1: something we were talking about last week. We're going to
Speaker 1: talk about Islamophobia and Washington d C. The Democrats seem
Speaker 1: unclear on how to handle it. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about there's just this NBC news headline that I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna read if Roe was gutted. Democrats are unlikely to
Speaker 1: make it law, but they'll run on it, so I
Speaker 1: just wanted to check in with that being the current
Speaker 1: Democratic party. We're gonna talk about how San Francisco suspended
Speaker 1: tax on cannabis to help dispense as compete with the
Speaker 1: good old, old fashioned drug dealers. And we'll talk about
Speaker 1: using Santa Claus to promote guns. It's been it's a
Speaker 1: long and storied tradition, shockingly, so we will talk about that,
Speaker 1: all of that and plenty more. But before we get
Speaker 1: to any of that, Ship shah Jahan, we do like
Speaker 1: to ask our guests, what is something from your search history?
Speaker 1: You know? I guess I can give a shout out
Speaker 1: to my a good friend of mine a rujaf Dab.
Speaker 1: She's a Pakistani American singer who recently has been nominated
Speaker 1: for two Grammys. So I just was I just was
Speaker 1: googling her latest whatever, you know, Pitchfork something said about
Speaker 1: her that was very nice. So yeah, I'm glad it's
Speaker 1: not something more embarrassing, like the thing that I did
Speaker 1: right down was the overrated underrated. So I was like,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say that raccoons are overrated because I
Speaker 1: was having this argument with somebody yesterday. So I guess, like,
Speaker 1: it's good that raccoons weren't in the search history. There
Speaker 1: is what I'm trying to Yeah, it's it's I was
Speaker 1: gonna say. It sounds like you were searching a fellow
Speaker 1: internationally acclaimed recording artists, and I just you know, Miles
Speaker 1: and I always talk about how like it's just good
Speaker 1: to have someone else who's internationally acclaimed on because sometimes
Speaker 1: we have a guest on who isn't internationally acclaimed like
Speaker 1: Miles and I are, and it's a little awkward, especially
Speaker 1: internationally acclaimed guests that are just like chilling in their parents,
Speaker 1: ye know. But like, honestly, you could pass off the
Speaker 1: background even though you are literally sitting with your back
Speaker 1: to your parents. But you could pass off that background
Speaker 1: as like a like fake background because it's the lighting.
Speaker 1: I've got three lights, I've got the natural light from
Speaker 1: the window. Take this ship seriously, absolutely. What is something
Speaker 1: you think is overrated? So overrated? I was saying, I
Speaker 1: think raccoons because I was having this debate with some folks,
Speaker 1: was it yesterday the day before, and they were trying
Speaker 1: to tell me that raccoons are cute and they're just rodents, right,
Speaker 1: the rodents with like little hands, and they're terrifying. So
Speaker 1: I think I think raccoons are overrated. It's a very
Speaker 1: new England appropriate the topic. Perhaps, I don't know. Do
Speaker 1: you guys have raccoons? You must have raccoons? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I see. I'm always cruising at night, you know, just
Speaker 1: like there's one in my like near my neighborhood who
Speaker 1: walks with so much confidence it's fucking scary, just like
Speaker 1: so slow, like are like almost hitting. It's always on
Speaker 1: the same street like around like later at night, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, here's that fucking punk ass raccoons raccoon whatever
Speaker 1: the opposite of rocket raccoon, like slow slow boat raccoon.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean like I feel whenever I
Speaker 1: see videos of like people who have like two hundred
Speaker 1: pet raccoons just chill with them. Part of me is
Speaker 1: like I would like to be able to enter their
Speaker 1: world and maybe soften my stance rather than I'm this
Speaker 1: thing that tries to fight my cats. I don't I
Speaker 1: don't need. I'm good. Do you have some that are
Speaker 1: working with you right now? Like are they not currently? Well?
Speaker 1: What's the root of this thing? What I realized also
Speaker 1: that I was I was having trouble distinguishing for some
Speaker 1: reason during this particular argument about rodents between raccoons and skunks.
Speaker 1: But I think I think I hate both equally. I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure there's there's a skunk that kind of roams
Speaker 1: around our street. We live on the coast in Boston's
Speaker 1: near the airport, on the beach. Yes, there are beaches
Speaker 1: in Massachusetts. Um, they're probably not as nice as yours.
Speaker 1: But then at night there's like raccoons like sound like
Speaker 1: little banshees basically, And the first the first couple of times,
Speaker 1: like I didn't know that that was a raccoon. I
Speaker 1: literally thought it was like a dying baby or I
Speaker 1: don't know it was was it was horrible. Well I
Speaker 1: drew you out. Yeah. Yeah. Also, bald raccoons are pretty
Speaker 1: scary looking. They're like little I don't know if you've
Speaker 1: seen any of these pictures, like a raccoon that has
Speaker 1: this parasite robs it of. It's a hairless racks mushroom cut.
Speaker 1: It looks like a hairless raccoon. Yeah, well it kind
Speaker 1: of looks like uh yeah, it's skin is like he
Speaker 1: fantine and god, it's just a scared like its face
Speaker 1: is really like mean looking without the fuzzy wuzzy's kind
Speaker 1: of hiding it back there. I'm not sleeping tonight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: check it out, everybody. Raccoon just like the bald slander,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like why we gotta go
Speaker 1: after the hair? What I mean, like we can't all
Speaker 1: help it. You know, I used to have a mushroom
Speaker 1: cut clearly right now you can see too. But all right,
Speaker 1: so you know, you know, genetics robbed me and now
Speaker 1: some animal to be compared to a raccoon, That's what
Speaker 1: I was getting at. I'm glad you guys. That's why. Hey, guys, checking,
Speaker 1: I just found a bald raccoon. I'm gonna send it
Speaker 1: the chat we think it. I'm like, this is my
Speaker 1: Twitter avatar? Is this I'm not trying to make a
Speaker 1: terrible joke. Yeah, I mean they are pretty like they
Speaker 1: can be tough to because they have the opposable thumb.
Speaker 1: They can be tough to and they're so fucking smart.
Speaker 1: Apparently they're like their capacity for problem solving memory like
Speaker 1: lasts for years. So like the second they figure out
Speaker 1: how to like open some ship or navigate some kind
Speaker 1: of obstacle, that ship isn't a hard drive, and it's
Speaker 1: like now anytime they're get in out of the same situation,
Speaker 1: it's like yeah, So I think that's probably why they're
Speaker 1: such a you know, nuisance to a lot of people,
Speaker 1: is because of their their hands and their their memories
Speaker 1: at night dreaming of this deviously intelligent bald raccoon tonight,
Speaker 1: thank you very much. In the lab, what is something
Speaker 1: you think is underrated? Underrated? Frozen kebabs from your parents? Freezer?
Speaker 1: M So, my mom has this, uh, this dude at
Speaker 1: a local um Pakistani market who she buys like, I
Speaker 1: want to say, two to three hundred kebabs at a
Speaker 1: time from him, and she stores them in a freezer.
Speaker 1: So anytime we come over, she she just gives us
Speaker 1: a bag of kebab's. So I had a couple before
Speaker 1: this podcast, not gonna like. I was trying to think
Speaker 1: of what to what to talk about, and so I wait,
Speaker 1: frozen Look, I love I love frozen food. I love kebab's.
Speaker 1: I like the combination of wars. Are they like pre
Speaker 1: grilled or it's raw? They are made? Yeah, they're all.
Speaker 1: You just throw them in the microwave for thirty or
Speaker 1: you can you can even like broil them or something.
Speaker 1: But they're fantastic. These are like chicken chicken kebabs like
Speaker 1: chicken to Newry kind of kebab's. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah
Speaker 1: for a place called Punjabi Grill. In framing him, Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: how many what's like? What's the like? Okay, envisioning three
Speaker 1: hundred at once? How many? How long does that last? Like?
Speaker 1: What's how many kebabs per meal? Per person? Are you
Speaker 1: thinking with? It depends how often I come over to
Speaker 1: get them, you mean like at my parents house or
Speaker 1: just in general, Like if you had three hundred on
Speaker 1: on ice, how long would that last year? If you
Speaker 1: like you are regularly, you know, in our fridge. If
Speaker 1: me and Laura are having those kebabs, they're not gonna last.
Speaker 1: I mean we we probably like we don't have space
Speaker 1: for the you know, we live in like one floor,
Speaker 1: you know, so we maybe grabbed I would say ten
Speaker 1: to twenty at a time. But they're so good, and
Speaker 1: there's such a perfect pre or post pretty much anything food,
Speaker 1: and they're like pretty healthy. So I'm gonna go ahead
Speaker 1: and say maybe like three to four days tops. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love it, get it, Yeah, I have. I should
Speaker 1: say this is kind of a belated sort of update.
Speaker 1: But we we talked a lot a while back, Miles.
Speaker 1: I think you talked mostly about that the air fryer
Speaker 1: being a good addition. Someone else did, but I voiced
Speaker 1: my interest in it. I'm because I'm I'm air curious. Okay,
Speaker 1: we we did get an air frier in the past
Speaker 1: few months, and the its ability to bring frozen foods
Speaker 1: of all sorts back to back to life is is
Speaker 1: pretty pretty I've heard some incredible things about French fries
Speaker 1: and chicken wings also using I also don't have an
Speaker 1: air fer Frozen chicken nuggets are Yeah, that's basically how
Speaker 1: many kids. Do you have none too? I love the
Speaker 1: dinosaur shaped ones though, yum yeah, yeah, shout out to
Speaker 1: the dino nuggets. Yeah. We when that mom talked about
Speaker 1: going through eight gallons of milk a week, I think
Speaker 1: it was actually more than that. I was like, just
Speaker 1: like that sounds excessive, But don't ask me about frozen
Speaker 1: chicken nuggets because we're putting up numbers. Oh yeah, man,
Speaker 1: you're just starting to feed your kids like and like
Speaker 1: tiger king, like just throwing back like like a fucking
Speaker 1: tractor trailer like here here. Did you ever find yourself
Speaker 1: in framing him Massachusetts? Walk in there and look for
Speaker 1: us her uncle and be like, yo, sha Jahan told
Speaker 1: me about these Yeah, these these chicken cobbs. You know,
Speaker 1: because I can drop that name, you're comfortable with that.
Speaker 1: You actually, you know, you should probably drop My mom's
Speaker 1: named Tina because she's the real celebrity. Okay, Oh shout
Speaker 1: out Tina. Shout out Tina. Yeah. I wonder if our
Speaker 1: listeners who live in that area, they're gonna go like, yeah, dude,
Speaker 1: shout out. She sent me here, like what he's like
Speaker 1: giving her all these cobbs, Like, yo, thank you for
Speaker 1: all the business like, oh yeah, I forgot to mention
Speaker 1: you'll have to pay for them. Yeah, not at all,
Speaker 1: not giving you like a free stamp. No, hell no,
Speaker 1: I don't expect any real business be like, oh, Tina,
Speaker 1: here's free food, but be like, damn Tina. Okay, keep saying.
Speaker 1: He is a very sweet man though, so you never know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it goes broke. He's like Tina, you know, I can't
Speaker 1: say no when you say, like bleeting me dropped, But
Speaker 1: don't put him out of business, Like, all right, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break. We'll be right back, and we're back,
Speaker 1: and all right, let's talk quick Amicron update. The newest
Speaker 1: flavor of the coronavirus is here. It is spreading rapidly.
Speaker 1: We talked last week about how the thing that everybody's
Speaker 1: keeping their eye on were the initial reports from the hospitals,
Speaker 1: right because so we knew it spread very fast, like
Speaker 1: faster than the delta variant, which spread faster than the
Speaker 1: the original, and so the everybody was kind of watching
Speaker 1: with beta breath to see what the what the initial
Speaker 1: reports were from the hospitals, and you know, fortunately they
Speaker 1: are following the path that we were hoping they would,
Speaker 1: like where a lot of viruses evolved to become more
Speaker 1: spread herble, but less like intense and less deadly because
Speaker 1: that is actually better for the life of the virus
Speaker 1: because if it doesn't knock you down or kill you,
Speaker 1: then it's able to be passed on to more people.
Speaker 1: So the initial findings were that it was very widespread
Speaker 1: based on the wastewater sample, which is gross, but you know,
Speaker 1: shout out to whoever did that work because it was crucial.
Speaker 1: But now the hospitals are reporting that the hospitalization rates
Speaker 1: are lower, the intensity and you know, length of stays
Speaker 1: is shorter, fewer people are dying. There was a very
Speaker 1: worrying report for especially for people with young children, that
Speaker 1: it was spreading, like they were seeing way more pediatric
Speaker 1: COVID units seeing patients. There's been no deaths in those
Speaker 1: pediatric units. So the initial indications are that it might
Speaker 1: be a less intense strain, which is great news, but
Speaker 1: also we're we're waiting to see because COVID has proven
Speaker 1: to be unpredictable and brutal. There still needs to be
Speaker 1: time to really fully see, like you know, how much
Speaker 1: we see from hospitalization, that time it takes from infection
Speaker 1: to hospitalization two then potentially death. But I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think most I think all the like epidemiologists are like,
Speaker 1: it's what we're seeing is good. But I'm not saying
Speaker 1: fucking relax yet, because at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: the plan is going to be the same no matter
Speaker 1: how bad this variant is, which is, be vaccinated and
Speaker 1: do as much as you can to keep yourself safe.
Speaker 1: And I think it's just you know, and I think
Speaker 1: the big worry now is that even though we're talking
Speaker 1: about O Macron, is that Delta is still the prevailing
Speaker 1: variant that's infecting Americans as we go into the winter
Speaker 1: and there's gonna be another surge and they're just saying,
Speaker 1: don't keep your are down. Still it's still the same thing.
Speaker 1: And you know, when you look at how much of
Speaker 1: a percentage of Americans that are still unvaccinated, like that
Speaker 1: still means millions of people as potential vectors and networks
Speaker 1: for infection to keep happening. So yeah, still, yeah, ongoing,
Speaker 1: but at least it's at least the first things aren't
Speaker 1: just abject screams of horror coming out of these other places. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's where we're at, Like there are millions
Speaker 1: of possible scenarios, many many, many, many of them were
Speaker 1: very bad, and this suggests that it we might have
Speaker 1: avoided some of the worst ones with this very specific variant. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the publicity around the omicron variant did seem to lead
Speaker 1: to a spike in people seeking the vaccine. So if
Speaker 1: we can keep that going. If you're somehow a listener
Speaker 1: of this podcast and haven't gotten the vaccine yet, ignore
Speaker 1: what we just said. Don't let that dissuade you go
Speaker 1: get the vaccine. Yeah. Yeah, using anecdotal evidence in a
Speaker 1: pandemic isn't the best analysis method that because I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are hesitant but would normally
Speaker 1: do something that's good for their own safety will say
Speaker 1: things like, well, the people I know, like, we're fine,
Speaker 1: And that's not the point if they were fine, it's
Speaker 1: to be able to stop infections from happening. And if
Speaker 1: you are, and if you're vaccinated, then you can prevent
Speaker 1: you know, the expanding infection rights. Yeah, it's killed more
Speaker 1: Americans than every US war combined. Like that's like, so
Speaker 1: to just try and get your head around that and
Speaker 1: still not take it seriously. Yeah, but it's sad it's
Speaker 1: still not gonna happen, you know, because there's even a
Speaker 1: there was this recent study that happened that the United
Speaker 1: the United States conservatives are the only group, only conservative
Speaker 1: political group on Earth who isn't like actively fighting against
Speaker 1: using masks. They're like, it's really strange, Like even you
Speaker 1: go to other conservative like political parties in other countries,
Speaker 1: they're not on like this, Like I'm not wearing no mask.
Speaker 1: It's like a very uniquely American conservative thing. We have
Speaker 1: a lot of uniquely American conservative problem. Yeah, let's talk
Speaker 1: about another one, because I guess this isn't uniquely American.
Speaker 1: But there has been a lot of Islamophobia lately in Congress.
Speaker 1: Lauren Bobert's comments about ilhan Omar over the Thanksgiving break
Speaker 1: have taken up a lot of attention. As you know,
Speaker 1: Democrats are trying to figure out, like what what to
Speaker 1: do do they cent your remover from committees by her
Speaker 1: a pink a R. I listen. It's you know, it's like,
Speaker 1: obviously I'm not just piping up because I'm like a
Speaker 1: Muslim person, but like I you know, we've heard so
Speaker 1: many of these kinds of things before, but like I
Speaker 1: bound myself the other day in the car just playing
Speaker 1: the message, you know, of like what whatever message was
Speaker 1: sent to to ilhan Omar, and it was just like
Speaker 1: it just made me really sad man that it was
Speaker 1: like And also, you know, obviously because for the last
Speaker 1: year I've been working on this show and stuff and
Speaker 1: we have, like we talked about Islamophobia and stuff a lot,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, it was just something about this one
Speaker 1: in particular, rows like, you know, it's still it's like
Speaker 1: still a thing. Yeah, and it's just so awful every
Speaker 1: time and sometimes you you know, you get desensitized to it,
Speaker 1: but you know, every now and then it's just it's
Speaker 1: just really kind of hits you there. Well, I think,
Speaker 1: if anything, democrats have become desensitized to it because there's
Speaker 1: a lot of like what do we what do we
Speaker 1: doing about Lauren Boberg. I think the most rational people,
Speaker 1: it's clear you address this bullshit and you do what
Speaker 1: you have to to make her account for her recklessness
Speaker 1: and her hate, her hateful words. That's what you do.
Speaker 1: That's all it is, because that's that's that should be
Speaker 1: everyone's response to hearing something like that is shutting it
Speaker 1: the funk down rather than being like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to make martyrs out of them or whatever.
Speaker 1: And you're hearing a lot of stuff from Democrats where
Speaker 1: they're saying, like, you know, the big, big, big problem
Speaker 1: here is they said they promised her italiate if and
Speaker 1: when they regain control of the House, so like, we
Speaker 1: gotta be real careful here. And there have been Congress
Speaker 1: people who are like, that's the dumbest fucking excuse to
Speaker 1: say we won't do what's right out of fear for
Speaker 1: the reaction of the ignorant and small, like that's if
Speaker 1: you're doing that, then what's the point of any kind
Speaker 1: of leadership. And I think the other thing too, is
Speaker 1: like the Democrats or the the g OP also knows
Speaker 1: that keeping this kind of stuff in the headlines helps
Speaker 1: to completely derail any kind of agenda, because every week
Speaker 1: the headlines have to be talking about how racist or
Speaker 1: hateful the GOP is this week, rather than like, hey,
Speaker 1: we have huge problems with income, inequality, with access to healthcare,
Speaker 1: with all these other things that should be getting American
Speaker 1: people's attention to for them to have again, because we
Speaker 1: have no imagination for anything to get people to realize
Speaker 1: their potential benefits if you know, there are certain certain
Speaker 1: kinds of policies that can be passed. But yeah, at
Speaker 1: the at the moment, they're calculus is we don't know
Speaker 1: how they're going to respond. We're afraid that if they
Speaker 1: get power then they're going to use it against us,
Speaker 1: or this idea that we can't give them more attention
Speaker 1: to campaign off of. And I think what what's hard
Speaker 1: is some Democrats, like I'm saying, have become desensitized because
Speaker 1: one of them said that, you know, I don't know
Speaker 1: if we need to be removing her from committee assignments.
Speaker 1: He said, For me, the line for censure is if
Speaker 1: you're fomenting political violence. And I think the voicemail that
Speaker 1: ilhan Omar play is pretty clear what has happened just
Speaker 1: in general Lauren Boebert or not just a general tone
Speaker 1: of like the low hum of islamaphobia that's in the
Speaker 1: background of the country, that it is causing this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. So it's and then like they pivot to
Speaker 1: things like this. One said, it just needs to become
Speaker 1: a campaign issue in the mid terms. Just to point
Speaker 1: across the island, say, Americans, do you feel like this
Speaker 1: conference is ready to govern. That's an actual congressman saying
Speaker 1: that the strategy just to be, like we have joked
Speaker 1: about this, just gesturing across the aisle as a as
Speaker 1: a campaign platform rather than leading, rather than introducing ideas
Speaker 1: or trying to create something you know, tangible. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that's it's just an interesting to think about the
Speaker 1: Conservative Party in America being unique and what has allowed
Speaker 1: them to be unique. And I think it's the lack
Speaker 1: of an option that is holding them accountable, right, Like
Speaker 1: they just control the entire agenda while the Democrats are
Speaker 1: happy to kind of eat off of them, you know,
Speaker 1: like just run as the not the Republicans option, and
Speaker 1: it's literally killing people. Yeah, it's like using this thing
Speaker 1: in your mind comparatively where you're like, well, at least
Speaker 1: I'm not the worst student in class. Yeah, and when
Speaker 1: there are only two students in class like that, that's
Speaker 1: a very yeah. But that's like, yeah, I get a
Speaker 1: d S, but this dude, these and fs more f
Speaker 1: than these, so both for me, Yeah, that's not gonna
Speaker 1: do anything. And I think that's what's really just looks
Speaker 1: really sad because you have a lot of members of
Speaker 1: Congress like Rashida Talib, who is also a Muslim, and
Speaker 1: saying you they've said they're gonna if they regained control,
Speaker 1: they do want a strip committee assignments for me because
Speaker 1: I don't back down from ship and she said, I'd
Speaker 1: rather get pulled from committee assignments and shut up because
Speaker 1: I'm not doing that. And yet you still have a
Speaker 1: lot of Democratic leadership that's not really coming out here
Speaker 1: being unequivocal about how they are going to address this,
Speaker 1: and it just, you know, it makes you sad because
Speaker 1: you're sitting on the sidelines while someone's out here clearly
Speaker 1: articulating hate speech about another member of Congress. And I
Speaker 1: mean we our next story is basically the exact same story,
Speaker 1: but with regards to Row like Rose on the verge
Speaker 1: of being gutted under a government with a democratically controlled
Speaker 1: Congress and White House, what's happened? I mean, I'm just
Speaker 1: I'm so used to saying the full Trinity of Congress
Speaker 1: just to keep showing them how much stay control got
Speaker 1: the j the Senate. Yeah yeah, And like you know,
Speaker 1: I guess you could argue the managers basically a fake
Speaker 1: Democrat and so they don't have the Senate. But you know,
Speaker 1: Collins has said she supports encoding Row's law, but we're
Speaker 1: not hearing about plans to work with her to filibuster
Speaker 1: to protect Row. They are instead talking about letting them
Speaker 1: gut Row and then letting people die and then running
Speaker 1: on that. That is the strategy. You know, people will
Speaker 1: die because this it is wildly unpopular politically to gut Row,
Speaker 1: but they will not do the thing that they could
Speaker 1: be fighting to do because it's too good for fundraising.
Speaker 1: But it's the thing, I don't know if it is right.
Speaker 1: It's I mean, I know that on a on a
Speaker 1: like a sensational level, like it's you can be like,
Speaker 1: we gotta do something, but more like more and more
Speaker 1: people are getting very frustrated to to say like, well,
Speaker 1: what are you doing? Rather than just saying like they're
Speaker 1: gonna go Roe v. Wade. We're controlling both chambers kind
Speaker 1: of and the White House? What are we gonna do?
Speaker 1: And it's it's I don't, I don't know, like it's
Speaker 1: just more disheartening, I guess for me, but I'm I'm
Speaker 1: maybe more I'm I know, I'm more politically engaged than
Speaker 1: the average person. But to see that and to try
Speaker 1: and trade off of that seems like not the best
Speaker 1: way to demonstrate like why you're going to like lead
Speaker 1: things well without at least showing some effort to do
Speaker 1: that first. Like it almost seems like we'll just throw
Speaker 1: our hands up and then campaign off of that because
Speaker 1: it is bad. But let's not. Let's not it's not
Speaker 1: put it in people's minds that we might be able
Speaker 1: to do something about it. Yeah, you know, Like and
Speaker 1: also just like and this, like the last stories about
Speaker 1: are like islamophobia in this country, and this one was
Speaker 1: just about patriarchy and misogyny and like uncompletely unable to
Speaker 1: even like articulate that. In the coverage around all of this,
Speaker 1: it's very just turned into horse race talk again, like
Speaker 1: on the news. Yeah. No, I think the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: is like in a death spiral. I think the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party is in the worst shape it's ever been in.
Speaker 1: I truly do. I believe that while they have the
Speaker 1: president and both houses of Congress, because like they ran
Speaker 1: as much as they could on like being the alternative,
Speaker 1: and now they're the alternative, they're not doing anything other
Speaker 1: than gesturing to the other side. Like people can't ignore that.
Speaker 1: And I think they're just locked into this losing strategy
Speaker 1: because because that's how the people who are in power
Speaker 1: came to power. That's all they know. And there's also
Speaker 1: this buffer of an entire industry of political strategists and
Speaker 1: political advisors who are based on understanding like fundraise, ng
Speaker 1: and all this bullshit. So they are entrenched and they
Speaker 1: are a hive mind of really intelligent people working to
Speaker 1: make sure that the politicians the Democratic Party doesn't realize
Speaker 1: this and doesn't doesn't like understand the danger of like
Speaker 1: this current strategy. Mhm. So yeah, like just you know,
Speaker 1: just like how Republicans they've they have like an evolved,
Speaker 1: accelerated evolution because they're doubling down on like their worst thing,
Speaker 1: which is just like hate, you know, like at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, like that's what it was all about.
Speaker 1: And with a lot of Democrats, their whole thing has
Speaker 1: been not really solving shit ever, so doubling down on
Speaker 1: that is just leading to like more this like diffuse,
Speaker 1: weird confused, Like where's the line with islamaphobia? Where's the
Speaker 1: line with reproductive rights or human rights and things like that,
Speaker 1: And they're just fighting like they're then they scratch their
Speaker 1: heads looking at polling numbers just like crater, rather than
Speaker 1: knowing that there's like an omni like there's that we're
Speaker 1: experiencing an omni crisis, just sucking pick one thing to
Speaker 1: start doing to lead people be like, hey, that's doing something.
Speaker 1: Whoa wait a second, Yeah the hell is this guy
Speaker 1: talking about? Yeah, some reason, I just had a flashback
Speaker 1: to um, the first season of Handmaid's Tale, you know
Speaker 1: which part part of it like takes place in Massachusetts also,
Speaker 1: but just kind of like watching that and thinking about,
Speaker 1: you know, knowing that these things have been in place
Speaker 1: for so long that there's been you know, little efforts
Speaker 1: to chip away with this kind of stuff, and seeing
Speaker 1: it in a way like come to life, like you
Speaker 1: guys said before, very ises not the greatest feeling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it makes you feel really uneasy when you have
Speaker 1: a supposed party who's like, you know, oppositionally or maybe
Speaker 1: logically opposed to it, and they're just watching the tidal
Speaker 1: wave of come in and like not even saying anything,
Speaker 1: and like, because you know, I think traditionally it's been
Speaker 1: like the party of like the good and the right,
Speaker 1: or at least the party of like not upsetting the
Speaker 1: dinner table with a hot and then unfortunately, we're in
Speaker 1: the worst situation where we need people to speak up
Speaker 1: and it's just crickets. And I think that's why The
Speaker 1: Atlantic this week is like put out a huge sort
Speaker 1: of series of articles about like, hello, fucking democracy is
Speaker 1: about to get just skull fucked by the amount of
Speaker 1: partisans that are being put into electoral board positions for
Speaker 1: the Republicans to be able to do their very like
Speaker 1: clearly articulated plan, which is to negate election results that
Speaker 1: they don't like. And like Joe Biden has been like,
Speaker 1: oh man, that's a that's that's scary, Like what, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought up the himaids. We we talked
Speaker 1: about that, particularly Season one a lot, because that's the
Speaker 1: season that's actually based on the Margaret Atwood book. And
Speaker 1: that book is a collage of details from historical like
Speaker 1: society's how history goal societies have oppressed women. It's not
Speaker 1: it's not like far fetched imagining. She's said, like, no,
Speaker 1: I just did research on how history has done this
Speaker 1: and use that to build a scenario and North America
Speaker 1: basically yeah, no, I I mean my I think the
Speaker 1: thing I liked the most about it was the the
Speaker 1: three kind of time periods that they were sort of
Speaker 1: seamlessly going between, you know, as far as like yeah,
Speaker 1: this is what ship was like before, right before she
Speaker 1: got like really fucked up, and now we're here in
Speaker 1: the president and yeah, yeah, and it's like yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like not that far from where we're at. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: really I don't know, it's weird that like I wouldn't
Speaker 1: feel it was like, well, they were clothes that are
Speaker 1: different than how we actually that it just goes over
Speaker 1: like noah, okay, so we can't even do metaphors or
Speaker 1: like very heavy handed ones for people to sort of
Speaker 1: get the picture. Yeah, but again, I mean like that's
Speaker 1: why it's we keep finding ourselves in a position where
Speaker 1: a lot of people are like this is bad. Why
Speaker 1: aren't people doing something about it? And rather than just
Speaker 1: letting it end there, I think you should look at
Speaker 1: this data to say, there's gonna come a time and
Speaker 1: for most people, there already is a time where you're
Speaker 1: going to have to rely on other people that you
Speaker 1: may have to be a person to provide assistance to someone,
Speaker 1: to uplift them or give them offer them safety. Because
Speaker 1: as it looks like legislatively speaking, there isn't much to
Speaker 1: protect people indeed, And I think that's I think that's
Speaker 1: another scary realization people I don't want to make, is
Speaker 1: that there there is a lot more of like relying
Speaker 1: on each other that we're gonna have to be doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like for anybody who's of the just vote, like variety
Speaker 1: of Democrats are liberals, Like this is why I think
Speaker 1: people are frustrated with that with that answer like that
Speaker 1: that doesn't make sense anymore because we did that how
Speaker 1: many times in a rown. Yeah, all right, let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break and we'll come back. Can talk about
Speaker 1: weed a and we're back in San Francisco has announced
Speaker 1: that they're spending attacks on cannabis to help dispensaries compete
Speaker 1: with drug dealers, which Miles you like, we'd read, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: accord it. So I don't know, I find this interesting,
Speaker 1: like because it's the you know, unofficial black market putting
Speaker 1: pricing pressures on like the official market. And I feel
Speaker 1: like that's happening more and more. Like we saw the
Speaker 1: like stunks subreddit caused like big swings on Wall Street,
Speaker 1: which isn't exactly the same, but like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it has the similar like unofficial moving the official. And
Speaker 1: it also made me think of that. I saw a
Speaker 1: sign on like the side of a road which is,
Speaker 1: you know, that's where we're getting our news from this
Speaker 1: uh second rate podcast, so just just in case, but
Speaker 1: it was like, you know, how miles in l A.
Speaker 1: There's like the signs of like phone number and it's
Speaker 1: like for houses for cash, buy houses for cash, I'll
Speaker 1: help you put up your Christmas lights, and like it's
Speaker 1: just a big phone number. I'm starting to see ones
Speaker 1: that say they will give you cash for diabetes testing strips. Oh,
Speaker 1: I've definitely seen a bunch of those where I'm at too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can think of one in particular at this in Revere,
Speaker 1: Revere mess right on the road either yeah, because they're
Speaker 1: you know cheap to people with some insurance or you know,
Speaker 1: cheaper and then criminally expensive to people without. And it
Speaker 1: seems like the black market is taking advantage or like
Speaker 1: you know, filling that need right. So, I don't know,
Speaker 1: this is more of like a zeke gang. Be be
Speaker 1: interesting to hear about other examples of that happening, because
Speaker 1: I feel like it's going to be happening more and
Speaker 1: more as you know, financial inequality continues to expand, and
Speaker 1: like the corporate world and you know, their governmental benefactors
Speaker 1: or employees, I guess get more and more out of touch,
Speaker 1: like black markets will contain to play a more and
Speaker 1: more important role. It feels like because like a lot
Speaker 1: of these like I know they say they're trying to
Speaker 1: compete with like illegal drug dealers or like illegal cannabis businesses,
Speaker 1: which they have those all over California. Those are typically
Speaker 1: spots that are going you know, extra legally, not regulated
Speaker 1: and aren't collecting taxes, so they're usually way cheaper than
Speaker 1: like the flashy like med men dispensary that looks like
Speaker 1: an apple store, because you know, at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, when you add all those taxes up, it's
Speaker 1: almost like, wait, weed is more expensive than when I
Speaker 1: was like just buying it from someone else. I mean,
Speaker 1: the packaging is wonderful, but I know that also to
Speaker 1: to grow legally, I mean there's a lot of bureaucratic
Speaker 1: loopholes and and fees and licenses to pay or that
Speaker 1: keep a lot of like sort of old old school
Speaker 1: growers who are creating like helping the illegal market. If
Speaker 1: it's it's not helping them transition to a llegal business,
Speaker 1: so you're going to have these other things because people
Speaker 1: are like priced out of doing business legally. And then
Speaker 1: on top of it, you see that you know there's
Speaker 1: a cheaper product. Yeah, it's uh, it's it's like it's
Speaker 1: a very familiar thing that I think a lot of people,
Speaker 1: especially in l A, like buying legal weed for the
Speaker 1: first time. Like it's like really expensive. Yeah, I've heard
Speaker 1: that so many from people. Yeah and yeah, and I mean,
Speaker 1: but it's funny this this this story is being used
Speaker 1: in so many different ways, Like on Fox News, they're
Speaker 1: like San Francisco's like the weed robberies are so out
Speaker 1: of control. They gotta stop their cannabis tacks and stuff
Speaker 1: because there have been some like you know, dispensaries being robbed.
Speaker 1: I think that's that happens in many cities that have dispensaries.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a target with a probably a lot
Speaker 1: of cash and you know other goods that you might
Speaker 1: be able to resell. But yeah, it's funny when you
Speaker 1: search this headline, like the many different dimensions that people
Speaker 1: are saying. The Fox News San Francisco crime seurche prompts
Speaker 1: city just to spend cannabis tax to help dispensaries versus
Speaker 1: drug dealers. Yeah, I mean that, but I think they
Speaker 1: have to compete with it is a little bit hard
Speaker 1: to compete right now, I think. Yeah. And I feel
Speaker 1: like this is like one way, the like cutthroat American
Speaker 1: way of like finding this is like not not that
Speaker 1: this is dual power in any sense, but it's like
Speaker 1: there are going to be people finding alternatives to the
Speaker 1: official way of doing business because that has become so
Speaker 1: in humane and just fucked so unfortunately, it's usually just
Speaker 1: to like make money. It always it never ceases to amaze.
Speaker 1: So I don't know that it's still there, but there's,
Speaker 1: you know, pretty big a prison on the mass have
Speaker 1: kind of Roxbury Line called South Bay Bustin and right
Speaker 1: when kind of wanted when when all this stuff was
Speaker 1: starting over the last few years, you would see kind
Speaker 1: of right across the street, it's just heavily sort of
Speaker 1: gentrifying area where they're trying to you know, where a
Speaker 1: lot of the homeless services are, where um, a lot
Speaker 1: of the methadone stuff is too, and we're obviously the
Speaker 1: city is literally trying to just like kick all those
Speaker 1: people out and stuff. But I remember seeing those the
Speaker 1: signs for those very big kind of corporate you know,
Speaker 1: corporate cannabis like up there literally just across the street
Speaker 1: from the prison, and I always thought that was just
Speaker 1: such a like ridiculous kind of that kind of thing there.
Speaker 1: And as somebody, I'm so I've been in recovery myself
Speaker 1: for about going on eleven years, but you know, as
Speaker 1: someone who doesn't use cannabis anymore, I'm definitely not one
Speaker 1: of the like I support that like wholeheartedly to me
Speaker 1: as far as like, you know, if it comes to like, hey,
Speaker 1: you're not trying to do albeits and so you're like
Speaker 1: using cannabis and stuff like for by all means, go
Speaker 1: for it. Yeah, Yeah, absolutely, I'm just generally like rooting
Speaker 1: for anything where the thing people are doing to you know,
Speaker 1: get around whatever like capitalist obstruction there is is like
Speaker 1: actually not hurting anyone because you know that they're definitely
Speaker 1: other ways people can go about it. And was it
Speaker 1: l A or was it San Francisco? Forgive me if
Speaker 1: I am remembering this incorrectly that decided to retroactively commute
Speaker 1: the sentences of people that were in car Francisco did
Speaker 1: it first, is l A doing it as well or so?
Speaker 1: Back in September, the DA said they were going to
Speaker 1: dismiss about sixty thou past convictions and continued, I think
Speaker 1: go through because I mean, I think that was also
Speaker 1: part of you know, I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: pushing for it in the state saying like if if
Speaker 1: you're going to do this, like you have to address
Speaker 1: all of the people that have been put in prison,
Speaker 1: that if it's now legal, and like fucking address that
Speaker 1: because it's been disproportionately affecting people of color. And then
Speaker 1: now you look at the people who are from primarily
Speaker 1: profiting off of the legal cannabis industry, and it's not
Speaker 1: people of color. Yeah, yeah, alright, Well, let's talk about
Speaker 1: how the right is using Santa Claus to promote guns.
Speaker 1: This has been a headline over the weekend. Thomas Massey,
Speaker 1: congressman from Kentucky, posted a family Christmas portrait in which
Speaker 1: everyone is posed with an assortment of like assault rifles
Speaker 1: and smiling and it says, Merry Christmas, PS, Santa please
Speaker 1: bring Ammo. Yeah, which is cool. No magazines in their
Speaker 1: gun and the guns so maybe that's why they're maybe
Speaker 1: they just want to be really safe. Yeah, there you go,
Speaker 1: see and direct you right, Although I like how Thomas
Speaker 1: Massey is holding a fucking M sixty and for my
Speaker 1: little girl, see, you can't get a big gun, you
Speaker 1: hold this oozy. Yeah, the woman in the picture is
Speaker 1: holding a Newsy. But El Paso County Sheriff's Office tweeted
Speaker 1: a photo of Santa Claus apply for a concealed handgun permit.
Speaker 1: God to run that back issue an apology. Yeah. People
Speaker 1: were like, I don't think the idea of Santa needing
Speaker 1: a handgun is as uplifting as you think it is. Yes,
Speaker 1: we had originally envisioned and so they had to be
Speaker 1: like our bead. Sorry, I'm surprised. The text of that
Speaker 1: tweet was like, you know how fucked up it is
Speaker 1: out there, right, even Santa is trying to get a CCW.
Speaker 1: This wow. So wild West folks, stay strapped your local
Speaker 1: police of force. Episode intended to highlight our staff in
Speaker 1: the Concealed Handgun Permit Office. Not to be insensitive, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: Sam correlates to the month of December, and we thought
Speaker 1: he would help to recognize our hard working staff. That's
Speaker 1: all you can just say. Thanks, to our hard working
Speaker 1: staff in our office. Yeah yeah, but hey, guess who
Speaker 1: came to receive this concealed handgun permit today? It was
Speaker 1: the text that they tweeted with the picture. So this
Speaker 1: has been like a long term thing. Actually, the idea
Speaker 1: of a gun toting Santa is like pretty deeply entrenched
Speaker 1: in America's relationship with Christmas. Like there's this early twentieth
Speaker 1: century add from a gun manufacturer with Santa holding a
Speaker 1: that appears to be a rifle and told parents that
Speaker 1: Santa would be speeding over rooftops loaded down with Steven's
Speaker 1: firearms for the youths of the land. So it's not
Speaker 1: just like a fun juxtaposition of like this fun Christmas
Speaker 1: thing with deadly guns that triggered libs like this is
Speaker 1: Santa giving kids guns? Like right, yeah, I'm trying. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to think of the Muslim equivalent, like you know,
Speaker 1: after after Rama don or something on ed like you sometimes,
Speaker 1: you know, we would traditionally give I mean, to keep
Speaker 1: up with American capitalism. Yes we do presents and stuff now,
Speaker 1: but that's not really what you would do with box
Speaker 1: thun or you know, wherever. But like you would you
Speaker 1: would you. There's this thing called e D so you
Speaker 1: give cash and envelopes. So in my head I'm thinking, like, oh,
Speaker 1: what are you just giving a little like bullets or whatever?
Speaker 1: I don't know, right, and then imagine the outrage, right
Speaker 1: because a lot of people Poe pointed to the fact that, like,
Speaker 1: imagine that Christmas photo, but it's a family of color,
Speaker 1: a Muslim family, a black family. Like, then what's what
Speaker 1: are the headline is going to be about that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Oh my god. There's a guy, John Snyder, who's a
Speaker 1: gun lobbyist who would routinely send out Christmas cards featuring
Speaker 1: Santa brandishing a firearm, threatening burglars and poised a gun
Speaker 1: down a dynamite wielding quote terrorists who for some reason
Speaker 1: is attempting to take out a single Christmas tree dynamite. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: even as supporters were a little bit put off by
Speaker 1: a card in which Santa Neale's next to a slumbering
Speaker 1: baby Jesus holding a rifle, and then sent out a
Speaker 1: card featuring the archangel Michael shooting a drug dealer and
Speaker 1: an alley lit by a Christmas star. We were just
Speaker 1: where I was in Connecticut visiting someone for over whatever
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. When when I was there and you know,
Speaker 1: going to one of these like Super America gas station
Speaker 1: stops or whatever. I'm sure people are familiar with taking
Speaker 1: a road trip. And I remember one of the licensed
Speaker 1: plates we saw it was kind of like that it
Speaker 1: was like a family gun thing and it literally just
Speaker 1: had like all of the guns from just small just
Speaker 1: like yeah, yeah, dude, yeah, but you look that guy
Speaker 1: actually just anthropomorphized his own guns. Here's my baby, Callie.
Speaker 1: Is it just like I guess I was talking about
Speaker 1: road trips a little bit, but is it just a
Speaker 1: total I think it's irreconcilable, right, that whole thing. I
Speaker 1: don't know, like thinking about all of the road trips
Speaker 1: I've done, touring through the country, just especially you know
Speaker 1: when you leave the city's like, yeah, it's like it's
Speaker 1: such a big This country is such a huge place,
Speaker 1: and it's like, I don't know, when you're in the
Speaker 1: middle of like Wyoming or whatever, I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a very specific type of you know, cognitive I
Speaker 1: don't even know what to call it, but I think
Speaker 1: it's basically that we it's one of these like freedoms
Speaker 1: and quotes that we have. You know, our lives are
Speaker 1: not actually free in America, even though we define ourselves
Speaker 1: as like the home of the Free, and it's like
Speaker 1: this is one of the freedoms that they have like
Speaker 1: grafted there, you know, identity as Americans onto because you know,
Speaker 1: and there's probably part of them that recognizes that, well,
Speaker 1: the fact that you work for a corporation that doesn't
Speaker 1: care if you live or die, and that you need
Speaker 1: to work for them to avoid dying because of like
Speaker 1: the way health insurance works in this country, Like they
Speaker 1: probably recognized that that's not actually like a free society.
Speaker 1: So like that that's where I think the just outright
Speaker 1: kind of mania around this comes from, and kind of
Speaker 1: the inability to recognize like why people would be offended
Speaker 1: or like put off. I remember, I mean not too
Speaker 1: long ago, had at one there was like a birthday
Speaker 1: thing for my my wife. Again she's from Nash Winging, Hampshire,
Speaker 1: and you know, she's been she's pretty like I don't know,
Speaker 1: not a fan of guns. But like a friend of
Speaker 1: hers that was there just it wasn't even like he
Speaker 1: just was like oh no, no, it's it's just it's
Speaker 1: just different where we're at, Like it. It wasn't even
Speaker 1: like it didn't become necessarily like as maybe antagonistic as
Speaker 1: I would have normally intended it too, because at that
Speaker 1: at that moment, the way that he said, he was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, we have two kids at home, we got
Speaker 1: a couple of guns, and none everybody has guns on
Speaker 1: our plot. But like in that moment even saying this
Speaker 1: now like I can't believe I didn't say, but at
Speaker 1: that time, I just was like, Oh, it's just a different,
Speaker 1: different way of being. I don't know, Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm not a fan. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: different people have different relationships to weapons. You know, especially
Speaker 1: there's the people who like there's white people who are
Speaker 1: living in fear of like a brown America, and that's
Speaker 1: a motivator. You have a lot of minorities who realize,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure law enforcement will protect me. So I
Speaker 1: see no reason to just look at these maniacs who
Speaker 1: are you know, gooned up with guns and wait for
Speaker 1: a you know, a law enforcement agency that I'm not
Speaker 1: really entirely sure will protect me. That drives another one.
Speaker 1: I think, so that everyone has so many roads towards it,
Speaker 1: but yeah, like to the point of, like I think
Speaker 1: people swap out their lack of freedom with just saying, well,
Speaker 1: at least I could have a gun, yeah, and like
Speaker 1: if it all goes to hell, the gun will make
Speaker 1: things better. If I have no health insurance, I can go.
Speaker 1: I've seen a movie where a dad used a gun
Speaker 1: to get their kids like treatment at a hospital. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but I remember seeing. I feel like that
Speaker 1: was a movie, like what's a big time actor, not
Speaker 1: like it's like I think that not produced by Ben Shapiro. Right.
Speaker 1: The moral of this is that, like see what happens,
Speaker 1: Like that's an actual lack of recourse that is driving
Speaker 1: people to certain directions. And I think that's what's really
Speaker 1: frightened too, is that rather than being fixated on whether
Speaker 1: or not you can have guns, like really sort of
Speaker 1: trying and understand the stresses that you're experiencing, because it
Speaker 1: might not just be this bookieman that you've made up
Speaker 1: in your head or you've got the dude he's on
Speaker 1: the street next to me who has that fucking terrorist
Speaker 1: hunting permit h one sticker on his truck, right, you know?
Speaker 1: And when I go for runs and I passed that thing,
Speaker 1: Like what am I supposed to I don't know. Yeah, wow,
Speaker 1: your neighbor, Oh yeah, yeah yeah. There was actually in
Speaker 1: our town over the summer. This was not a story
Speaker 1: man in the news like it may have been for
Speaker 1: twenty four hours. There was a twenty eight year old
Speaker 1: pH d student named Nathan Allen who stole a plumbers
Speaker 1: truck with the intention we found out later of crashing
Speaker 1: it into the Jewish temple that's at the end of
Speaker 1: our street. He didn't make it there. He crashed into
Speaker 1: like a house. He got out of the truck with
Speaker 1: a with a like whatever handgun he like, and yet
Speaker 1: he didn't have shoes on or something. And he like
Speaker 1: this is two pm on like a Saturday. He walked
Speaker 1: past everybody else, shot and killed the two the only
Speaker 1: two black people that were like on the street corner
Speaker 1: where I like go for runs all the time. And
Speaker 1: then like the you know, and and they found later
Speaker 1: they found like a backpack with guns and m O
Speaker 1: and like he basically who knows, who knows what the
Speaker 1: hell he was going to do. But this is like
Speaker 1: a white supremacist terrorist attack in Winthrop, Massachusetts, And like
Speaker 1: it was my parents here and where I'm sitting in
Speaker 1: bill Rick didn't even care about it. Yeah, wow, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that's the again, always part of
Speaker 1: like a pattern we're seeing the news is to say,
Speaker 1: like when there are like clear hate attacks that are
Speaker 1: perpetrated by white people, it's they'll find many reasons to
Speaker 1: either cover it very in such a nebulous way that
Speaker 1: you're missing the point, or just in a very reduced
Speaker 1: way because you know, it doesn't feed into I think
Speaker 1: what a lot of American people think white terrorism could be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and just back to the gun thing that you know,
Speaker 1: there's this like trend apparently very popular of staging photo
Speaker 1: opposite gun clubs where kids can get their picture taken
Speaker 1: with santah while holding an instrument of mass death. Like
Speaker 1: it'll be interesting to see how the Michigan school shooter
Speaker 1: and his parents being on trial for manslaughter, Like, will
Speaker 1: these people like come to their defense because they bought
Speaker 1: their kid a gun and like that's basically what they're
Speaker 1: on trial for. Like, I don't, I don't know. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a weird one because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: mistakes along the way, and I think they'll just point
Speaker 1: to I don't know, I mean, you know, we'll see
Speaker 1: what they start saying. But and I think just this
Speaker 1: whole Santa thing, it's just kind of funny because it
Speaker 1: just made me realize, like even in I think you
Speaker 1: should leave Tim Robinson, there was a whole fucking bit
Speaker 1: about Santa being a gun toting election. Yeah, well Santa
Speaker 1: plays a gun to murder. He's not. Actually, it's like
Speaker 1: that's it's like you're it's a cosmic gumbo, right, It's
Speaker 1: kind of a cosmic gumbo the way that he, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, he inhabits the role. You'll forget it Santa
Speaker 1: when you're watching the movie. It's actually pretty don't refer
Speaker 1: to me as Santo. Okay, I'm a fucking actor. It
Speaker 1: is a theme. Yeah. Well, shan Jahana, it's been such
Speaker 1: a pleasure having you on t d Z. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for having me. Really appreciate it. Where people
Speaker 1: find you and Folly. You can find me at at
Speaker 1: shah Jian s h h j I s t A
Speaker 1: N on Instagram. I just made a Twitter. It's not
Speaker 1: very good. I mean, you can go there if you want.
Speaker 1: You can also find me atajan Khan dot com and
Speaker 1: please subscribe to our series King of the World. Anywhere
Speaker 1: you get podcasts, do it go now, right now, right now,
Speaker 1: We'll wait. Is there a tweet or some other work
Speaker 1: of social media you've been enjoying. I actually there's this
Speaker 1: tweet by my friend Tarun. He's a kind of a
Speaker 1: prolific electronic musician out in Vancouver and lately what he's
Speaker 1: been doing. I'm sure you guys seem like you use
Speaker 1: the Internet from time to time. Maybe you've seen this
Speaker 1: where people put like sensors um and putting it in
Speaker 1: the chat here on on plants and like make music
Speaker 1: out of like the signals that they get from playing.
Speaker 1: It's super nerve. So he like through some stuff, this
Speaker 1: particular one. I think he put them on a couple
Speaker 1: of mushrooms and just like turned it into some like
Speaker 1: weird crazy ship. So he's an awesome dude, Taroun. He's
Speaker 1: out in Vancouver. He's he started this band Delhi to
Speaker 1: Dublin and stuff and really cool guy. That's super dope. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll link off to that in the footnotes. I like that,
Speaker 1: you know, it was. It was nice and nice and peaceful.
Speaker 1: It's been it's been a fucking crazy ast year, So
Speaker 1: I it was just zoning out to some some mushroom
Speaker 1: plant music. Yeah, Miles, where can people find you? Is
Speaker 1: their tweet you've been enjoying. You can find me on
Speaker 1: Twitter and Instagram at Miles of Gray and also the
Speaker 1: other show four twenty Day Fiance where you know I
Speaker 1: talk about nine and we too with Sophia Alexandra have
Speaker 1: some tweets I like. First one is from at Solo
Speaker 1: Death One. It says nothing in life will radicalize a
Speaker 1: person faster than a medical diagnosis in America, which it's true.
Speaker 1: We see a lot of memes on the internet too,
Speaker 1: of people getting like bills and just posting their medical
Speaker 1: bills to like help people understand, like, yeah, I had
Speaker 1: a panic attack and now I could have bought a
Speaker 1: fucking Maserati, So what the funk is this? Another one
Speaker 1: is from at the Hype with four Wise tweeted so
Speaker 1: did you make or come? Nah? Man, I don't make
Speaker 1: women do anything. I'm not controlling, all right? Sorry? And
Speaker 1: you were taking you were taking your your love of
Speaker 1: all things reality TV to the stage, to the stage,
Speaker 1: coming to the stage, Yes exactly on December ninth, this Thursday,
Speaker 1: gonna be doing a will you accept this Rose live show.
Speaker 1: You you might recognize people like Gareth Reynolds or Paget
Speaker 1: Brewster or Carl Tart there as we compete for Arden
Speaker 1: Marines Heart and you can get tickets at Moment House.
Speaker 1: So look for the will you accept this rose link?
Speaker 1: There will have it in the footnotes. So you know,
Speaker 1: come through. Watch it gonna be you know, like Anna
Speaker 1: has put into work. It's gonna be a production. Okay,
Speaker 1: you can be all kinds of bits, segments, coverage. You're
Speaker 1: gonna love it. So come check us out and come
Speaker 1: see me in a very interesting outfit. And I will
Speaker 1: be there talking ship in the comment section. And so
Speaker 1: you're like, where's Jack, But what's going on? Why is
Speaker 1: at Jack? O'Brien keep saying Where's Jack? I feel like, dude,
Speaker 1: change your handle if you're gonna troll. Uh. You can
Speaker 1: find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore o Brian Uh
Speaker 1: some tweets I've been enjoying. Kylie Braakman tweeted me signing
Speaker 1: a PDF document. This is exactly like the TV show
Speaker 1: succession like Doctor signed exactly identified with that. Oh, Jim
Speaker 1: McNabb our writer Jam McNab tweeted podcasters please stop pausing
Speaker 1: to collect your thoughts. That makes me think I'm getting
Speaker 1: a phone call. I was just good advice I do.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I get a little my my heart rate
Speaker 1: rises a little bit every time there's like just dead air.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, someone's calling. I'm getting a tech I
Speaker 1: just talked to a real person and not just stay
Speaker 1: bathed in a pair of social relationship. Oh and trash
Speaker 1: Jones tweeted, I live in constant fear of being asked
Speaker 1: to share a fun fact about me. I think that's
Speaker 1: about You can find us on Twitter at Daily Zeitgeist.
Speaker 1: We're at the Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram, we have Facebook
Speaker 1: fan page and a website, Daily zeitgeist dot com, where
Speaker 1: we post our episodes and our footnotes. We link off
Speaker 1: to the information that we talked about today's episode, as
Speaker 1: well as a song that we think you might enjoy. Myles,
Speaker 1: what song do we think people might edjoy it? Okay?
Speaker 1: This is a really interesting like reggae dub sort of
Speaker 1: remix of Erica Badu's On and On by this artist
Speaker 1: called Red Astaire. Uh. And it's funny because if you
Speaker 1: look at the album cover looks like a stripe beer label,
Speaker 1: but it says red Astare, But this is red Astare
Speaker 1: with Rollman Stone and it's just kind of dope when
Speaker 1: you it's just I love hearing mashups like that where
Speaker 1: the vocals like absolutely work, even though if it's a
Speaker 1: little like like forward thinking, but you're like, oh ship,
Speaker 1: this is this goes. Did you ever see the mashup
Speaker 1: of Vanessa Carlton with rage against the machine feeling in
Speaker 1: the name that's when that, yeah, it does. They didn't
Speaker 1: even change the pitch. Yeah, alright. Well, The Daily Zeygeis
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio from more podcast
Speaker 1: from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or you know wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: paperite shose I was gonna do it for today's episode,
Speaker 1: but we are back this afternoon to tell you what
Speaker 1: it is trending and we will talk to young man. Bye.
Speaker 1: By