Episode 7: Zombie no go think, unless you tell am to think (Zombie)

sam thielman 00:48

OK, yes. And yeah, so I'm going to go totally arbitrarily in the order these were listed. Your pieces were listed on the email Joe sent me. So Luke, we're going to start with you. Thank you for releasing Pinkerton 2. We appreciate that. No, it was good.

Luke O'Neil 01:04

I don't. Thank you for reminding me I almost forgot I was like, what did he even write this week? Yeah, no, that's something I mean, that's it's kind of silly but you know as I explained in the piece I'm a big Weezer guy and I think most of you follow me on Twitter and this group here. So you've probably seen me posting about Weezer thousands of times over the past couple years and Yeah, you know, like I said, I think there's this thing lots of people and maybe a lot of you were like, Oh, yeah, we made a couple good albums and then they sucked for the past, you know, 20 years after that. It's actually the 30th anniversary of the Blue album this year, which definitely makes me feel pretty old if I. Yeah.

sam thielman 01:51

Everybody, we're not doing video for the podcast obviously, but everybody's making the same face, which is, oh God.

Jonathan Katz 01:52

Oh.

Luke O'Neil 01:57

Yeah, like, wow. But, you know, but obviously the first two Blue Album and Pinkerton are, you know, they're like 10 out of 10s for me. And but they still put out tons of great music over the years. It's just maybe only like two songs per album. And, you know, that's I think that happens to a lot of bands, you know, once you get 30 years into a career, you could nobody can keep making. Perfect albums forever, you know.

julianne escobedo shepherd 01:57

you

Luke O'Neil 02:26

So the idea was just to kind of put together what all the songs, a bunch of songs that would have been like a natural next album after Pinkerton, you know. I mean, it was fun.

sam thielman 02:37

Yeah. You, um, you mentioned that, uh, Rivers has, did Rivers Cuomo, the front man of Weezer has a bunch of different modes. Um, and that he, he kind of just cranks out like a, what used to be a rock radio hit every now and then. And it's funny, I was wondering if you feel like he does that for different eras. Cause I feel like there's sometimes you hear like a seventies Weezer rock radio hit, and sometimes you hear like a nineties Weezer rock radio hit.

Luke O'Neil 02:46

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah, they put out this one. They've been putting out a really kind of been prolific the past few years. They put out this one van Weezer a couple of years ago, and it was like sort of their homage to like Van Halen, obviously, and Kiss and that kind of like big glam rock type of stuff. So that was definitely his like 70s type of thing he was going for. And then there was this this.

four EPs they put out in the past year or so where they were each one was supposed to be sort of reminiscent of a different, you know, era or genre or a couple of them were sort of 90s ish. So I think ultimately the point is he's like a songwriting pervert and he, you know, may also be a regular pervert, but he's just a machine. And I think he literally probably does use some sort of computer.

sam thielman 03:47

the Yeah.

Luke O'Neil 03:58

stuff to like generate lyrics and chord progressions and stuff like that which obviously is kind of questionable but you know as long as as long as I keep getting two two good songs you know every album I'll be happy with that.

sam thielman 04:13

Yeah, I liked Fanweezer. That's one I play all the way through.

Luke O'Neil 04:18

Does anyone else in the group even care at all about the band?

sam thielman 04:22

Yeah.

Jonathan Katz 04:22

So I have a new Weezer moment in my life. My almost four -year -old is very into Frozen. And I don't know if you've seen Frozen 2, that's how into Frozen we are. And like in the middle, so Kristoff, the sort of semi love interest, Princess Anna's like bow, who like is the one who like talks to the reindeer.

Luke O'Neil 04:34

Mmm. No.

Jonathan Katz 04:51

At the in this in the second one out of nowhere, there's this like yacht rock banger that like it comes out and it's just like he's it's called Lost in the Woods. And I was like and I was like, this is like a this is like a much better song than like belongs in like the straight to streaming sequel to Frozen and it's Weezer Weezer Weezer Weezer both wrote it and then and then.

Luke O'Neil 05:00

Yeah. Oh wow.

Jonathan Katz 05:20

I think it's just credit credited to Weezer so I don't know how many are all the original members still in it but they they they recorded the the prop the the pop cover in the credits of Lost in the woods

Luke O'Neil 05:31

That's funny. Yeah, they you got to watch with your kid cars to next because I was just watching the video yesterday. They weasel does a cover of the cars you might think. And I think that kind of stuff is corny. Right. I mean, I mean, it's kind of corny, but it also explains like they really do have multi -gen like they still they're still picking up young fans now. You know.

sam thielman 05:56

My kid makes me play him constantly. There's a cover of Paranoid, Black Sabbath's Paranoid, that he just, he wanted me to push it. We have a little swing hanging from one of the door jams in our house. He would make me push him on the swing to, yeah, to the Teal album cover of Paranoid by Black Sabbath. He also, Backflip, the theme song to the Green Eggs and Ham show on Netflix is a Weezer track, yeah.

Luke O'Neil 06:03

Oh, the Weezer does? That's funny. Oh yeah, that would be a fun thing for you guys who are parents to do to do like kids movies songs that are surprisingly good, you know.

sam thielman 06:29

Yeah. Yeah.

Jonathan Katz 06:31

I mean, they kind of have to like they like that songs for the day. That was for me. That was for that was for like older millennial dad driving kid to school. Yeah. I loved it.

Luke O'Neil 06:35

Yeah. Right.

sam thielman 06:39

Yeah, he calls it the daddy music.

Luke O'Neil 06:42

Yeah, it's like how, when we watched, when we were all young, you probably watched Warner Brothers cartoons and stuff, and they had all these insane references that none of us got, you know, like these really old show business type, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you gotta put, I mean, I don't have kids, but you gotta put a little, you gotta put a little something to make it go down easier for the parents, you know. Right, right, parent service.

sam thielman 06:54

Yeah, stuff from the 50s. Yeah.

Jonathan Katz 07:07

parent service.

julianne escobedo shepherd 07:11

Yeah, I was gonna say my three -year -old nephew's father loves Weezer and this child is constantly forcing us to listen to the Blue album. And like we, I have this, you know, this urge to give this child some music made in this century because it seems like, you know, it might make him cool later on. But.

Luke O'Neil 07:37

I don't think you, despite your best intentions, and again, I am, you know, I'm not a parent, but I'm a prolific uncle. You can't get your kids to, like, if you try to set up your kid for being cool, you know, it's not gonna work out the way you want it to, you know.

julianne escobedo shepherd 07:55

Yeah, no. No, I mean, at the very least, though, like, it would be nice to just have him be a little more current. But he I would. But it's it's very cute. But I as someone who listened to the Blue Album when it came out obsessively, I'm like, all right, I've heard these songs.

sam thielman 08:03

Just give them cigarettes.

Luke O'Neil 08:05

Hahaha. Yeah, that's enough.

sam thielman 08:21

Well, Julianne, you wrote about a different aspect of music, which I thought was absolutely fascinating. And because I'm a dude and also somebody who's not as entrenched in the industry as you are, I don't think about it at all, which is the way, like the pretty tacks, I guess you called it in the piece, which I thought was wonderful. I was wondering if you could explain it a little bit to us.

julianne escobedo shepherd 08:45

Yeah, so basically for decades, it's been harder to get more mainstream women musicians and femme musicians in especially R &B and rap because of the cost that accompanies that. Labels are a little more reluctant to pay for things like makeup artists and hairstylists and clothes stylists because it costs so much money. And so when you're developing, if you're like a major label executive and you're developing, you know, a 22 year old like genius musician, you also have to factor in that developing her is going to cost much more than it would be a young man because of this idea of what we expect.

women and femme pop stars to look like. So.

sam thielman 09:48

So even if you're like a Billie Eilish tier, like genius songwriter, you can't sleaze in looking like Post Malone.

julianne escobedo shepherd 09:56

Yeah, basically. I mean, Billie Eilish is such an interesting example because obviously she's kind of rebelled against that by wearing clothes that obscure her body and like dressing like I did in 11th grade, except Gucci. But even with Billie Eilish, you know, she's got...

sam thielman 10:15

Yeah.

julianne escobedo shepherd 10:22

someone on her payroll to pull the Gucci. She's not buying it herself. And she's presumably got makeup artists. But where it really impacted the mainstream music industry was in like the early 2000s when there were like basically no, you know, there could only be one woman rapper at a time. And a lot of that was like just bare misogyny. But the misogyny beneath that was that it was more expensive. And also,

I mean, along with major labels thinking that the primary consumers, I guess, because that's what they are to them, of hip hop were men and wanted to hear men. It was just so hard to get, until Nicki Minaj came along, it was so hard for them to develop women rappers.

Luke O'Neil 11:14

I thought that piece was really interesting because obviously we all know that there's different expectations for women in show business than there are men, especially when it comes to looks. That's stuff that anyone would know instinctually. But that was an aspect of it that never occurred to me. They're like, okay, because labels are businesses and they're making money decisions. Okay, it's going to cost us $100 ,000 more a year or whatever.

if we put any effort behind this woman musician as opposed to this man who's just gonna wear his ratty fucking, you know, vans or whatever. Yeah.

julianne escobedo shepherd 11:52

Yeah.

sam thielman 11:55

I am a new girl.

julianne escobedo shepherd 11:56

Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, I think it's shifted a bit, but it isn't because, you know, major labels have been like, oh, we got to get more women musicians up in here. It's because women musicians have been pushing harder, sort of gaining steam in the underground, which obviously has everything to do with social media. Like, you know, Megan Thee Stallion and had a fan base. Cardi is a different story because she was on a reality show. But like, but, you know, these these women are developing their own fan bases before now. So, yeah, it's, it's been, I've been thinking about it for a long time. And like, a lot of people just wouldn't talk to me about it. But this billboard story put some of the numbers down. And it's like,

celebrity stylists making like $12 ,000 a day and, you know, which they deserve, but it's also a sort of microcosm of the music industry in decline because, you know, there are fewer, all the music, all the major labels are like laying people off and losing tons of money and blaming TikTok. And it's really because they, were so late to the internet and actively hostile to the internet. But anyway, that's another story.

sam thielman 13:26

I'm curious about it though. I mean, if you have a moment, I'd love to hear sort of more and how you think women artists are changing as the music industry changes.

julianne escobedo shepherd 13:32

Yep. I mean, you know, I think because artists in general can develop their fan bases so easily now compared to independent artists the way that they used to, I think it's just made a lot more room and it's obviously proven that there's a huge desire to listen to women rappers and women, you know, R &B singers. and musicians in general. But yeah, it is made it so they can make their own money and don't have to rely on so much major label. I mean, like a lot of people just have, I think, don't quote me on this actually, I have to look it up, but I think Megan Thee Stallion just has a distribution deal now because she got so fucked over by her label. Yeah.

sam thielman 14:31

Really? Huh.

julianne escobedo shepherd 14:34

or maybe her last album was her last label, like contract fulfillment album. I have to look that up. But yeah, I mean, it's just that for so long, these labels have been exploitive and now there are other avenues to make money. And A &R is that major labels looking to TikTok to find the next new like... hot thing because TikTok has surpassed their ability, I think.

sam thielman 15:09

I mean, that used to be like a godlike position. You know, the, the, you know, these like a, like a baseball scout or something, the guy who like rolls into your high school and is like, you, you're going to be a star. And then, you know, you were, um, and that, that, that has now been seated to these sort of invisible things, like whatever people are watching on Jonathan Katz's platform, Tik Tok. Um, I have to have to abuse Jonathan a little here. Um,

julianne escobedo shepherd 15:11

Yeah. Yeah.

Luke O'Neil 15:36

He's a, Katz is a, he's a Generation Z influencer, aren't you?

julianne escobedo shepherd 15:38

I'm going to go to bed.

Jonathan Katz 15:41

I'm an influencer. I influence. I can't control. I can't control who I influence.

sam thielman 15:41

Yes. Yeah. Before we get to Jonathan's social media success, the only music segue I have here is that, David, you wrote about a kind of blue. That's the best I can do. I'm sorry. There's the blue album as well that we talked about. But yeah. OK.

julianne escobedo shepherd 15:41

Yes, you are.

David 16:03

Whoa.

sam thielman 16:08

Tell me about Blue, tell me about the hard problem and how they kind of, how they do that.

David 16:14

Sure, so this week I was interested in looking at, so the experience when you're standing in front of a painting and you're looking at it and thinking about it, how does that sort of illustrate what's going on in there basically, right? What's going on in your head and how does that illustrate this problem and this like, you know, obviously centuries old problem. philosophy, which is what's the relationship of the brain to the mind. And so like you mentioned, so it was sort of specifically, there's one painting at the Museum of Modern Art here in New York by Yves Klein from 1961 that's in sort of distinctive blue color. And it's been used by philosophers to sort of illustrate this problem in like papers over the years, which is, it seems like there's a sensation going on in the mind. And so how is your brain creating that? How much does it matter that you're like the physical stuff of the brain?

is creating this sort of awareness of looking and this sort of all the feelings around it. I wanted to, so I wanted to sort of give one update on what some of the latest sort of news is around this, because it's really interesting. And then I want to throw it actually back to others to ask them for their quick input on a long running philosophical question. So the update, right, of sort of what's the latest on...

sam thielman 17:13

Oh, yes. Yeah.

David 17:25

this question of the hard problem of consciousness, as the philosopher David Chalmers called it in his sort of groundbreaking speech, is philosophers are getting into some really wild territory. So in terms of studying brain imagery and then understanding how it relates to the mind, but then also just in sort of in philosophizing around artificial intelligence and stuff like that, philosophers are getting into some territory.

Um, that's sort of like close to panpsychism, which is the idea that the entire world is a little bit, um, which is the entire world is a little bit conscious, which obviously has some roots in some different, um, thought and so spiritual practices or borderline on borderline and religions. Yeah, sure. And then there's a, then there's also these like hardcore physicists who have been developing a theory that so far is some people would consider fringe. I don't know if maybe we're going to start getting like letters from.

sam thielman 18:04

It's avatars about that.

David 18:19

from the adherence of this consciousness theory, but it ties the sensation of what's going on in your brain to something called like a quantum collapse that happens in your brain tissue, which is wild. And this is like, you know, being actively debated. So I wanted to, I want to let people know that in the last graph of my piece, that there is some links to articles about that, that sort of catch people up on what the latest is in this wild area of thought.

sam thielman 18:35

quantum. So like the So like the waveform collapses when you think? Yeah.

David 18:48

It's a wave function collapse. Yes, that there is, that between the, yeah, I mean, I could sort of summarize, but that there's actually like a little quantum mechanism that happens in the brain that people think is the sensation of being, some people think is the sensation of being conscious, which is why.

sam thielman 19:08

OK, now, because I just saw that it's just like a little exclamation mark, like, interjection there. But yeah, that's really, really, really interesting. Yeah, please ask your questions.

David 19:15

Yeah. But hold on, I wanted to ask other, so here's a question for the flaming hydro round table this week. Can you have a conscious zombie?

sam thielman 19:33

conscious zombie?

David 19:35

That's right. Can a zombie be conscious? Or another way of thinking about it is like what's happening at the end of Blade Runner.

Joe MacLeod 19:38

Yes.

David 19:43

when one of the sort of, well, I don't want to spoil Blade Runner for anyone, but. So can you have a content? Can you have a content? Yeah, yeah, that's a good one.

sam thielman 19:49

It's even older than the Blue Album. Go for it.

Luke O'Neil 19:53

My instinct is to say no, because this isn't a zombie imply the opposite of consciousness, you know, just sort of a mindless physicality to it.

Joe MacLeod 20:07

But a zombie can also be something controlled by something else, like those mycelium things that zombify the cicadas, those funguses.

Luke O'Neil 20:16

Mm -hmm.

Jonathan Katz 20:17

So it's an outside consciousness. So Luke, as Luke knows, because he ran the excerpt from Gangsters of Capitalism about zombies. So the Haitian roots of the zombie, the zombie is controlled, it's controlled by a bokar, so it's controlled by a sorcerer. So that is the sort of outside consciousness. I mean, the...

Joe MacLeod 20:20

Yeah, well, I mean, the question of his conscious.

Luke O'Neil 20:28

We out.

Jonathan Katz 20:45

the humanities reading of the Haitian zombie, which is not necessarily the philosophical or the science reading is that it's or the historicized reading is that it was a, it was a, it was an allegory. It was a, it was a way of processing the, the, the, the trauma of slavery. So in so far as the zombie is a slave who then can be rescued from zombie hood by either taste, tasting salt or meat. That would imply that there's still consciousness in there somewhere, but the consciousness has been subsumed. It has been perhaps made into a double consciousness to use Du Bois. So that's my answer. I mean, there is a bit like in the zombie, qua zombie there, there is, there's a consciousness somewhere in there, but it is, but it is, it is very much forcibly, violently repressed.

Luke O'Neil 21:40

I was just going to say I was going to tell a similar story to that like I without remembering that you were the person who wrote that story from as a guy. I read that something somewhere. Yeah, that's a good point about and then I mean, they're different, but there's this trope for vampires. You know, a vampire, a zombie is different. I would say vampires have consciousness, but there is this thing where, you know, you kill the head vampire, the head monster.

sam thielman 21:48

the

Jonathan Katz 21:51

You

Luke O'Neil 22:10

all the people that have been enthralled to these, you know, to the main guy, they snap back into their own consciousness. So that, you know, what you're saying there, like that consciousness is deep down in there somewhere. And if it's able to be brought back, you know, that what does that.

Jonathan Katz 22:29

I mean, the zombie in American and thus world culture is, it's a product of Matheson's, in the book version of I Am Legend, he basically marries the zombie to the European vampire. Because zombie, because in Haiti and in all zombie literature, basically until the 1950s, like you couldn't, a zombie couldn't make somebody else a zombie. Only a sorcerer could make somebody a zombie. But Matheson, sort of made it a parasitic relationship. Thus marrying antisemitism with racism. But, and that's, so the zombie as we understand it, we're like, we're getting bit by a zombie makes you a zombie. That's vampirism. So that also fits in the zombie as we understand it.

Luke O'Neil 23:07

Classic combo.

sam thielman 23:21

There's a good essay by China Meeville, who's another sci -fi writer who where he kind of runs down the history of zombie behavior, like alongside contemporary contemporaneous news stories of what immigrants are doing. And he just pretty clearly couches it as like this is just a way to make somebody seem other like just this is just putting them outside personhood into this realm of like animals. need and hunger and that's it. That said there have been really interesting short stories about zombies developing cultures. There's a good Alan Moore comic about that and some other stuff. David, I'm curious why you asked the question.

David 24:05

Well, I think it's interesting to, well, I wanted to get some of the other hydras to chip in more thoughts, but that's one of the.

sam thielman 24:15

I also want to know what Julieanne thinks. I'm sorry I jumped out. I cut you off. Yeah.

David 24:18

Yeah, I'll the meet me too. Me too. But the it's it's one of the differentiating questions in the philosophy field where there is one camp that says, you sort of can't really have a conscious zombie for a bunch of complicated reasons, but that there is basically something different happening in there and another rival camp called that are often called physicalists that say, well, you can find you can get a zombie that's pretty close to a person and like exhibits a lot of the same behavior and until you can

until you can design an experiment that falsifies it, it looks like it's about the same to us, and we think we're going to get there eventually. So.

sam thielman 24:58

Julianne, are you a physicalist or you're muted? You're muted.

julianne escobedo shepherd 25:08

Okay. I don't know I could do that. I thought I was being muted. I am a physicalist, I think. I don't know how we would know if the zombie is conscious in the same way that we don't know necessarily if a person in a coma is conscious in their way or I could see the body of the zombie being, you know,

Jonathan Katz 25:09

You're back. You're back from the dead.

sam thielman 25:11

You're back.

julianne escobedo shepherd 25:36

operating independently of its consciousness in the same way that like we can't control a charlie horse or a muscle twitch. But I also don't think zombies are real. And so this is a really and so it's an

sam thielman 25:56

Consciousness as Charlie Horse is a paper I'd read.

julianne escobedo shepherd 25:59

Yeah, it's an interesting question. I like the premise.

Jonathan Katz 26:00

Well... There's also a fellow kuti's answer, right? And in zombie, the song, he says, zombie not gonna go, unless you tell them to go, zombie not gonna think, unless you tell them to think, which implies that a zombie can think, it just can't choose to think, which may also be true for all of us because the insofar like the zombie, again, it's just an allegory for a human experience. Zombies are all human. So, you know, even at a physical level, like your brain, you know,

You can, your brain can be turned off. Your brain can be put back into action. Your brain can be influenced by an influencer, perhaps. A social media star. So it's, so yeah. So I mean, so even, so I guess the question then becomes like whether the act of thinking is itself proof of consciousness if the thinking is not initiated by the being who's doing the thing.

julianne escobedo shepherd 26:44

You

Luke O'Neil 26:47

Big time.

sam thielman 27:03

So tell me about Oppenheimer. Influence me about Oppenheimer. We talked about quantum waveform collapse. So now we're almost there.

Jonathan Katz 27:08

I'm gonna influence you about Apple, never. So I feel like all of my hydro pieces, cause Maria basically told me like, write what you wouldn't put in your newsletter, write something unexpected. And so I'm drawing from my other wealth of experience, which I have found is entirely based on being a parent. Now that's just all I have left is just, that's it. I'm Michelle, I'm a zombie. I'm just a shell of a person who can only go if my children tell me to go.

Luke O'Neil 27:38

Yeah.

Jonathan Katz 27:42

So I sat down to watch Oppenheimer because I had been meaning to watch it since it came out and it came out just before just around the time that my second child was was born. And I made it 42 minutes into it and then had to stop watching and then the rental ran out. And so that's all I watched. So I was like, this would be a fun. This would be a good hydra piece. I'll just review the first 42 minutes that I saw.

And my summary of the first 42 minutes was that it was a Christopher Nolan movie whose main purpose was to draw attention to itself as a Christopher Nolan movie to great success and critical acclaim that worked. You know, gotta saw what you got.

Luke O'Neil 28:26

Sure worked.

Jonathan Katz 28:34

It was it. I wasn't really drawn in. Honestly, I if I had been sitting in a movie theater, I would have not stopped watching. And so maybe there are things in the later two thirds of the movie that it's like a three hour movie. So I didn't even get a half. I didn't even get a third of the way through. And the and the main my my my main takeaways in addition to it just insisting upon itself to quote Peter Griffin was.

sam thielman 28:49

It's very long. It's very long.

Jonathan Katz 29:04

Uh, that, uh, I was just so incensed just like the pedant and me that like they have this big showy line about marks that wasn't marks. They just that what is like, what the hell, man? Like could like go to Wikipedia, just Google the quote.

sam thielman 29:14

Yeah.

julianne escobedo shepherd 29:17

You

sam thielman 29:18

It's.

Luke O'Neil 29:20

What was the line? I still haven't seen it.

julianne escobedo shepherd 29:21

Yeah.

Jonathan Katz 29:24

So they're at a Marxist party in Berkeley in the 1930s, which by the way, if there's any, there are a few scenes in history that I wish I would have loved to be in, but like a Perry Spanish Civil War party in Berkeley in the 30s with fellow travelers would have been just awesome, especially since everybody apparently just hooked up afterward. And then quoted the Bhagavad Gita in the middle. But I...

So so what happens is they they basically try to they're like, you're not a communist Oppenheimer. And then Oppenheimer is like, I well, but I've read all three volumes of Das Kapital in German. Does that count? And then they're like, he just says, I've read all three volumes. And then he says something like, you know, ownership is theft. And then Florence Pugh responds, property is theft. And then he goes, well, I read it in the original German. That's not, F 'ing Marx, that's Proudhon, and it was not even written in German, it's written in French. And Marx hated that sentiment. Like he was like, he gave that a very bad review. And it's just like, really? Did you like do your research on like brainyquote .com? Like where'd you...

sam thielman 30:31

I'm written French.

Luke O'Neil 30:46

Yeah.

Jonathan Katz 30:48

You had a hundred million dollar budget. Like you had access to everyone. You could have, you could have paid like I paid for fact checkers for my book out of my, my most recent book out of pocket. Like Christopher Nolan couldn't like hire like a grad student to like for free. I would like, I'm sure a lot of people would have just done it for free, especially Marxists.

julianne escobedo shepherd 30:51

Hahaha! I'm going to go ahead and close the video.

Luke O'Neil 31:04

All right.

julianne escobedo shepherd 31:05

Hahaha!

Luke O'Neil 31:08

Yeah.

sam thielman 31:08

Did you ever, there's a good documentary about, this isn't Nolan, this is James Cameron, but there's a good documentary about Titanic where he, or maybe it's about, maybe it's about Avatar because he sits down with a bunch of people, a bunch of like oceanographers. And he's like, I need you to tell me everything I got wrong in Titanic. And they do. And then he just contradicts them and yells at them. So I think there's something about being a big practical effects loving auteur director. Yeah.

julianne escobedo shepherd 31:31

God.

Jonathan Katz 31:35

Well, according to Oceanography, two people could have fit on that door.

sam thielman 31:39

Yeah. I think I'm always depressed that.

Luke O'Neil 31:39

Yeah, yeah.

julianne escobedo shepherd 31:39

I'm sorry.

Jonathan Katz 31:41

If you run the numbers.

Luke O'Neil 31:44

I was going...

julianne escobedo shepherd 31:44

Someone just bought the door for like $350 ,000 at auction. Just FYI. Fun Titanic fact. Yeah.

sam thielman 31:53

That's I want to know who that is and I want to visit their house. I want to sit on the door with them.

Luke O'Neil 32:00

Yeah, they people people shouldn't be, you know, people should speaking of marks, you shouldn't be able to buy props for $350 ,000 something's going on there. I believe that was a. I'm.

julianne escobedo shepherd 32:09

Yeah.

sam thielman 32:10

property generally is ownership but whatever led to their their ownership is generally theft but that seems to indicate.

Luke O'Neil 32:18

Yeah, that was a direct quote actually from Marks. You shouldn't be able to buy a $350 ,000 door. I have to buy a door right now, by the way, and it's not gonna be $350 ,000, but it's not gonna be cheap either. The fucking door is broken in the wind.

Jonathan Katz 32:21

Yes.

sam thielman 32:22

That's don't buy a fucking door for 350 grand. Yeah. Yeah. Um.

David 32:22

I'm going to go to bed.

julianne escobedo shepherd 32:23

Ha ha ha ha! Fucking doors.

sam thielman 32:38

Do we think it's...

Jonathan Katz 32:41

Have you guys all seen, has anybody seen Oppenheimer?

Luke O'Neil 32:44

No.

sam thielman 32:44

Yes, it pissed me off because I love all of the really stupid Christopher Nolan movies. I really like the ones where people go back in time with their brains and cities turn upside down and stuff. That's great. That's just what I want. And then he gets rewarded for doing these middling biopics that Netflix funded because no one else would. I'm just...

julianne escobedo shepherd 33:08

I don't know, I've seen Dunkirk probably more than anyone that I've ever met. Like I fucking love Dunkirk and I realize that's whatever, but I fucking love Dunkirk. This movie, Oppenheimer, do not watch the rest of it. It is like so... Yes! Like...

sam thielman 33:22

You could also fit Dunkirk into it twice. Dunkirk is a trim 90 minutes.

Luke O'Neil 33:29

Dunkirk seems like a weird choice for like a comfort movie that you would rewatch all the time, you know?

julianne escobedo shepherd 33:34

It is really weird, I know, I don't know. I like what he does with the time thing. Obviously he's always messing with time, but the way that he structures it is really interesting. And like, I don't know, I just like Dunkirk, man. It's got great, the thing about Oppenheimer though, is that even though it's a terrible movie and it's fucking annoying and the shit he was doing to like...

Luke O'Neil 33:50

Hehehe.

Joe MacLeod 33:51

Yeah.

julianne escobedo shepherd 33:59

illustrate Oppenheimer's quantum physics shit in the beginning was like out of like a student film. It was so embarrassing. The sound design, like Christopher Nolan sound design person who he works with all the time, I can't remember his name, is fucking genius. Like there's one scene in Oppenheimer that's really good and it's towards the end and it's entirely because of the sound design. So yeah.

Jonathan Katz 34:05

Yes. Okay, I'll check, let's see if I can play that out.

Luke O'Neil 34:25

Speaking of.

sam thielman 34:26

Everything up to the bomb dropping is palatable. And then it's an hour and a half of a very wealthy British man lecturing you about mid -century American politics.

Luke O'Neil 34:36

Well, speaking of wealthy British men lecturing us about American politics or not, as the case may be, and great sound design, did anyone see Civil War yet? The Alex Garland film.

Jonathan Katz 34:36

Ugh.

sam thielman 34:48

No, I haven't seen it. I probably will.

julianne escobedo shepherd 34:49

Have you seen it? I'm dying.

Joe MacLeod 34:49

Yeah, I saw it.

Luke O'Neil 34:53

Yeah, we saw it yesterday.

Joe MacLeod 34:53

It's like a horror movie. No, it's not terrible. It's a B movie. I didn't think it was terrible. I really liked that there was an effort made to not have it be about the politics of either side, just about the insanity of war. But primarily, it was about reporters being war junkies.

sam thielman 34:54

Enjoy!

julianne escobedo shepherd 34:56

Was it terrible?

Luke O'Neil 34:56

It really is. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, and I was someone somewhat some review I read coming full circle here. They they called it like a zombie movie without zombies in a way. You know, it has a lot of the same familiar beats and the setups, you know, set pieces. Yeah, I. Yeah, yeah, he he wrote that one and he directed and wrote Annihilation, which I loved, which was also pretty controversial.

Jonathan Katz 35:31

Soldiers or zombies, feel free.

sam thielman 35:34

He wrote 28 days later, didn't he? Me too.

Luke O'Neil 35:46

The Civil War, I definitely recommend seeing it, especially in the theater, because it is loud and scary. And that's that's like one of the the sound is one of the best parts of it. Yeah.

Joe MacLeod 35:56

Good set, yeah, good sound design in that movie. Really good sound design, really added to the.

sam thielman 35:57

Mm -hmm.

Jonathan Katz 35:59

Jamal Jamal Bowie gave it four stars on his letterbox. His his he was basically I think he thinks that it was good that it didn't have the politics in it and that it was it was just sort of showing the pointlessness and horror of war. I mean these are part of it is that like I you know and this also goes for Oppenheimer. I mean it's just sort of funny to be having this conversation as like. World War three may be breaking out or like I don't know where we are. We're just sort of like in.

Luke O'Neil 36:23

Right?

sam thielman 36:24

Yeah.

Jonathan Katz 36:28

in like this like long phony war thing that could end up being World War Three or not. And I mean, I think it's good. I like if if it as if the point of it is to show Americans like how terrible war would be and how like a civil war would not be fun. I think that could be I think that could be a useful palliative. I don't know if I need to subject myself to that. I mean, I know like I'm.

Luke O'Neil 36:56

Yeah.

Jonathan Katz 36:57

I'm pretty well acquainted with how horrible violence and war are, but I don't know.

Luke O'Neil 36:59

Right. No, people are mad that there's no, they're not, he doesn't, it's like that thing, like, and then at the, you know, the end, the character turns to the camera and said, all the bad guys here are the people that you disagree with and all the good guys here, they all think that they all have the same politics as you do exactly. You know, like, they're expecting that to happen. Or like people say about Oppenheimer, it's like, that's why nuclear war is bad. You know, the final line.

sam thielman 37:29

didn't even think it convinced me that nuclear war was bad. That was the thing that bothered me the most about it, honestly. There's a wonderful documentary called The Day After Trinity that has all this footage from Hiroshima in it, and there's none of that in Oppenheimer. You have no idea what a nuclear bomb does to a human body, which I think is very important. I'm a pacifist and everyone disagrees with me.

Luke O'Neil 37:34

Mmm.

julianne escobedo shepherd 37:34

Yeah.

Jonathan Katz 37:46

That was like a lot of a lot of my take of the first 42 minutes was that it like it was it was it was play acting at politics, but there was no actual politics in it. And it's like and like like the pet like pedantry aside, although obviously that's very telling that they didn't actually take any of the politics in it seriously. But like.

julianne escobedo shepherd 37:46

Go.

sam thielman 37:58

Yeah. Penetrate aside from your 600 word piece on a line about how Marxism is quoted.

julianne escobedo shepherd 38:10

Hehehehehe

Jonathan Katz 38:13

Look, it is like, but like, it just like, it just, it was emblematic of like, of the fact that like, there was, there's no actual, like, there's no rubber meets the road politics. There's no higher level politics either. It was just sort of like, it was just, it was just throwing out quotes. It was brainy .com, like level politics. It was just, and like, you know, I think it would be good to talk about, you know, I mean, he, like, they get into it like a little bit, you know, they're just sort of like, well, it'd be really bad if the Nazis.

sam thielman 38:18

Right.

Jonathan Katz 38:42

Got the bomb which you know, that's a that's a fair political position But like there's not like a whole there wasn't like a whole lot of analysis about like well What about if the Americans got the bomb the Americans are pretty violent and then they we use it And I don't know how I don't know how they unpack I've seen clips of the scene with with Truman Gary Oldman Truman

sam thielman 39:06

Yes. Yeah.

Jonathan Katz 39:07

And, and I, but you know, do they get into any of the actual politics of like the dropping the bomb or like, or is it all just like the myth of we had to do this?

sam thielman 39:16

So the thing he does that's quite clever is the movie is structured like the double slit experiment. And the question is whether this is going to be like a great political choice that like preserves peace or something that like unleashes destruction and horror on the world. And then when the bomb goes off, that is like, it's probably to the second knowing Christopher Nolan, the exact center of the movie.

And then we find out what has happened. And of course, the answer is we've unleashed this kind of world ending force on the world that will sort of overshadow our politics forever after. And I think that is anyway, I'll stop talking about it. But yeah, I think that is a fairly clever thing to do with the screenplay structure. I think it's not three hours clever, but I thought it was, I think that's probably why people, that makes you feel like you understand the double slit experiment.

Jonathan Katz 40:01

No. get interesting.

sam thielman 40:16

Yeah, which is how you win an Oscar. I want to be respectful of everyone's time, including our listeners. And I also want to thank everybody for coming on. This has been really, really good. It's amazing that everybody wrote about art this week and we had a big art, a flaming hydro cultural gab fest. I'm just gonna go through and thank each one of you individually. David Moore, thank you for being here. Julian Esquivel -Shepard, thank you for being here. Jonathan Katz, thank you for being here. Luke O 'Neill, thank you. On three, let's all say goodbye. One, two, three. Goodbye. Okay. And then don't leave because we gotta wait for everything to upload.

Luke O'Neil 41:00

Goodbye!

Jonathan Katz 41:00

Goodbye.

David 41:01

Bye!

julianne escobedo shepherd 41:01

Goodbye.

Joe MacLeod 41:01

Bye, but don't go, but don't go, but don't go. Just hang out.

Jonathan Katz 41:04

I'm not going.

julianne escobedo shepherd 41:06

I'm going to go to bed.

Joe MacLeod 41:08

One sec.

sam thielman 41:12

We're at 99 % and Joe's gonna give everybody the thumbs up when their feed is loaded.

Joe MacLeod 41:17

This thing just, I don't know why it does this. It's like everybody's at 99%. Everybody has stopped talking. Yeah, I'm gonna call it. Thank you all. Thank you all so much.

Luke O'Neil 41:26

So wait, do I, I think I felt like I messed something up last time. Do I have to do anything else? Can I just close out of this?

Joe MacLeod 41:32

Yeah, you can just close. It doesn't, yeah, yeah. If there's any kind of a problem, I can email out of Riverside to get you to reconnect to finish your download, but it shouldn't be a problem.

sam thielman 41:33

I think you're good.

Luke O'Neil 41:42

Okay, I'll just leave it up for a minute.

Jonathan Katz 41:43

I think we just leave this. We hit the leave button, but then we leave the...