Episode 130: TC Technology
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Transcript
Time Crisis, back once again.
Well, here we are.
So much to discuss in the dog days of summer.
Jake and I reunite to discuss literature, music, and of course, technology.
All this, plus Brian Jones and his new instant cover album.
This is Time Crisis with Ezra Koenig.
They passed me by, all of those great romances
They were a value of me, all my rightful chances
My picture clear, everything seemed so easy
And so I dealt to the blow, when a bus had to go
Now it's different, I want you to know
One of us is crying, one of us is lying
Even only me
Time Crisis, back again.
Jake, how the hell are you?
Pretty good. It's hot as f*** out here.
Are you in an air-conditioned environment?
I am currently, but I was just in the backyard for the last three hours
doing a socially distanced acoustic guitar hangout with a friend of the show, Aaron.
Oh, tight.
But it's like 95 out, and the sun kept creeping at different angles, so we kept having to move.
In LA, it's all about shade, you know?
Yep.
I mean, there have been some articles written about it.
It's like one of the harshest deprivations for the have-nots in LA is to not have shade.
Because they planted all these non-native palm trees all over.
But you know, even if you've got to build something, even if you've got to do a Home Depot run,
build your own pergola, and lay out various sticks, or I don't know, whatever it takes,
I'm all about the shade.
I've always felt that way, like, on a hot day, anywhere, not just LA, but LA's a hot place,
you can go from hell to heaven in a second.
You round a corner, and suddenly the sun's out of your eyes, and you enjoy a nice freeze,
and the temperature drops, you know?
You're preaching to the choir here, bud.
Well, what happened to all these trees you planted?
What happened to trees?
You're listening to Tree Talk.
We got Jake Longstreet, Los Angeles, California, on the phone.
This guy planted some trees about two months ago.
How are they holding up?
They're doing great, yeah, but believe it or not, they're not 40-foot tall shade trees quite yet.
Didn't we talk about-- I feel like maybe it was off-air we talked about that expression of,
like, you plant trees now for, like, future generations' shade or something?
Oh, yeah. No, we talked about that when we did a socially distanced hang at my house.
Right.
We were talking conceptually about things that span generations, and how, yeah,
is there a specific phrase, but basically that you plant a tree not so that you can enjoy the shade,
but so that future generations can because a really big tree,
you're not going to get to see it reach its full height in your lifetime.
I think I found the quote that that originates from.
"A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit."
Yeah.
Ah. Is it attributed to somebody?
It's just a Greek proverb. No attribution.
Let me get that one more time.
Let's hear that s*** back.
"A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit."
It's really a beautiful sentiment.
A little wordy, but, yeah.
Sitting in the backyard trying to avoid the sun.
Were you guys just jamming, or were you, like, working on some mountain brews or Richard Pictures?
We were brewing. We were working on, uh...
[laughing]
We were brewing. I love that.
Like, we've been writing songs together kind of high school style.
Mm-hmm.
Just like, "Dude, you got a chorus for that?"
Have other people ever significantly contributed lyrics to a mountain brews song?
Because it is just such a specific voice.
Kyle Field has a little bit.
Oh, yeah. I could see that.
But not really. So this one, yeah, like, Aaron's coming up with song titles.
Chords.
Yeah. Definitely chords and stuff. Yeah.
Yeah.
Flushing it out. Fleshing it out?
Uh-huh.
Yeah, fleshing it out.
Wait, actually...
Fleshing.
Not fleshing.
Yeah, you flush something out, like, when you get chemicals in your eye in a laboratory.
I feel like in chemistry class, there's always, like, a station that said something about flushing your eyes out.
Yeah.
Which is the only place I ever heard that.
And I guess you could...
You don't flush out a toilet. You just flush it.
But you flesh out an idea because it's meaning, like, you got the bones and now you're throwing some flesh onto it.
Whoa. Kind of gory a little bit. I don't like that.
It's like some weird futuristic movie where there's, like, a 3D bioprinter and it's like, "Here's the skeleton."
Wait, Seinfeld, let me get a linguistic crunch. What's the deal with fleshing out?
Fleshing out also sounds like it could be in, like, some cyberpunk future when people never see each other IRL anymore and live, like, logged in.
That fleshing out could be, like, once a decade hanging in real life.
Bro, we're fleshing out.
I unplugged my neural transmitter and we fleshed out.
Just got in the backyard, just, like, IRL humans. It was so f***ing weird.
I'm on vocabulary.com.
Great website.
Love it. Love it. It's bookmarked.
And it says, "Flesh out is believed to come from the idea of adding flesh, physical substance, to a skeleton or a frame."
You nailed it.
Whoa. That just seems so futuristic.
It really seems like Westworld or, like, you know, in the Fifth Element, do they, like, 3D print a body?
Yeah.
I guess they're imagining, like, the Lord God adding flesh to a skeleton.
Like, there's no time in life where a human adds flesh to a skeleton.
I'm looking into 3D printing, like, body parts in movies and apparently there's, like, this can actually be done in real life.
What?
I have an article here on BBC that's, like, the headline is "The Firm That Can 3D Print Human Body Parts."
Gross.
This is the future, man.
I start to feel old when I hear stuff like that.
When you just hear about a bunch of kids having flesh out parties where they order just ears and arms and eyeballs off of, uh, what's the company called?
Cellink. It's a Swedish company.
There's a disturbing new trend on TikTok called "fleshing out" where Zoomers buy a series of 3D printed body parts off Cellink and use them for gross TikTok pranks.
This hilarious kid put an actual human—a 3D printed human ear in his dad's iced tea every day for 365 days.
Here's a supercut of it.
Jesus Christ, Brendan! Not again!
Yeah, I mean, this is the kind of sh*t that's, like—I think this is gonna increasingly happen as we kind of continue to live in this, like, weird nothing happens,
everything happens kind of, like, frozen world's falling apart, but also it's so slow and boring.
It's a slow apocalypse that we're kind of, like, living in. I just had, like, a weird feeling for a second where, you know, we've been hearing about the genetic
engineering our whole lives.
Like, I feel like I was a kid when they, uh, cloned Dolly the sheep.
And I even feel like in my biology textbook in high school, there was, like, a picture of a human ear growing off a rat's back.
I guess it's basically, like, it's hard to keep up with what's going on, so I could almost believe, like, I had, like, a slight Rip Van Winkle feeling where I'm like,
"Yeah, that—it makes sense that they'd be able to just 3D print body parts now."
And yet that seems like such a game-changing thing that I feel like I would have heard, like, you wouldn't need organ donors anymore.
That you wouldn't hear this stuff, like, where somebody on Twitter is like, you know, "Oh, my cousin's dying from a rare disease."
"For the love of God, if you're from this ethnic background, could you check your blood type or your bone ma—" You know, you still see stuff like that.
I would imagine if they can 3D print stuff and, like, they've mapped the human genome, I thought maybe they could do some of this stuff.
But anyway, I guess when I'm talking about this, like, slow apocalypse feeling, I could kind of picture, like, us hanging out or perhaps even doing TC in, like, 20 years.
And just like, "Wait, can they clone people?"
Dude, remember Sam? No, Sam's a clone.
Do you remember? Like, six years ago, dude.
Oh, right. No, it's funny, man. You know, time feels so weird these days.
No, no, I knew that. I guess I knew that intellectually, but, like, I could just picture, like, all these—
As, like, the world falls apart, but also science reaches this, like, weird fever pitch of just, like, new bullsh*t.
I could just imagine sh*t like that happening, like, where, you know, already think about how bewildering life was for, like, our grandparents' generation who
watched the whole world change.
And for us, it's just going to be even weirder and just be like, "Maybe we won't even make it to this sh*t." I just think more of that sh*t can happen.
You're so right, too, about it not really sinking in. Like, for some reason, the way information is now, like, it's all just a wash.
So, like, you'd be like, "Dude, yeah, there was, like, a really controversial bill in Congress for them, like, to, like, allow UPS and DHL and FedEx to employ clone."
Remember? It narrowly passed, and, "Oh, yeah, dude."
It feels very Amazon Prime to me.
Yeah, Bezos implanted his 70-year-old mind into a 25-year-old body and is still running the company.
Very, like, Lex Luthor or something.
Oh, full-on.
Are there clones walking among us? Are there? Yes? Seinfeld's not as—
I don't think there's human clones walking among us, but who the hell knows, man?
You know, and we're both reading the Tom O'Neill book.
Oh, yeah, I finished it last night.
You finished it? Well, I gotta catch up.
So, actually, I wanted to talk about this on the show because we kind of inadvertently did a TC book club.
We've been talking on the chain about various books we're gonna read and got a little bit out of order, but Jake—
We were just talking a while ago, and Jake told me that he was reading this book, Chaos, which is by Tom O'Neill, which is about the Manson murders.
He's a dude who started writing a magazine article for the 30th anniversary of the Manson murders around 1999.
And next thing you know, his three-month magazine assignment turned into a 20-year obsession.
And he wrote one of, like, probably, like, the deepest book ever about Manson, challenging and definitely disproving elements of the official narrative,
finding crazy connections between the CIA, all sorts of weird inconsistencies, the FBI, various secret programs.
It's truly a wild book. He's a great writer.
And, yeah, so anyway, I feel like it was, like, about a week and a half ago, Jake, you texted me just like, "Dude, did you crack that book yet? I can't put it down."
And I actually hadn't yet, but then I got really excited. I wanted to finish this other book that I was reading.
And then once I got in, I was off to the races. Couldn't put it down.
All of the CIA stuff with, like, them running those, like, safe houses in the cities where they were dosing people.
Right.
And all of that, like, was Jack Ruby, a Manchurian candidate. There's so much crazy stuff in that book that I'm just like, yeah, maybe there are.
I mean, and that was, this is stuff he's, like, writing about 50 years after the fact. Maybe there are clones walking among us right now.
This is not a spoiler because this is, I'm sure a lot of our listeners have heard of this in other scenarios.
Maybe they don't know how it may or may not relate to Charles Manson, but there's a very famous CIA operation starting, I believe, in the '50s called MK-ULTRA.
And that was essentially about using acid, hypnosis, and I'm sure other techniques to try to, various forms of mind control.
Whether it's making people have false memories, changing their memories, make them do things that they didn't remember.
As Jake said, the Manchurian candidate stuff.
So, again, definitely recommend the book and we should definitely try to get Tom O'Neill on the show, but that was a real program.
Right.
Obviously, the American public never got all the details. It's the CIA.
And the CIA also took great pains to be, to kind of say, like, yeah, man, you know, we were trying that MK-ULTRA shit for a while.
Here's the thing. Really didn't work at all. Egg on our face.
Right.
You know, we had a few wacky scientists among our ranks. We were just a bunch of weirdos, man.
We were trying all sorts of crazy shit. Yeah, no, it didn't work at all.
Which is like, could be true, or it's exactly what you would say if you did kind of crack the code on it.
Picture that, it's Cold War.
The idea that potentially the Soviet Union might have a leg up on the US in terms of mind control.
Picture like a hardcore, like, American Cold Warrior, lived through World War II and all this shit.
Somebody be like, our national security depends on us f***ing like dosing random Air Force dudes with acid and figuring out how to do this s***.
Like, whatever it takes.
I'm sure there's all sorts of stuff that we don't know about. There's two schools of thought.
One is that that was a unique time. The post-war Cold War era was a unique time in the history of this country.
And you had this weird power vacuum in the world. People terrified of communism.
People desperately trying to assert American power, you know, using the momentum after World War II.
And believing that they had to do whatever it took.
And then eventually in the 70s, a lot of this stuff got found out in their congressional hearings.
And that was that. Some of the, you know, the bad old school people were dead or lost their jobs.
And you can believe that that was a uniquely psycho era of American history.
It's possible. I don't know. Maybe that was a crazy era that made people were doing wild s***.
And that since then, other bad s*** happened. It's just not the same.
Or that could have been the start of something even more sophisticated.
And there are clones walking among us.
Reading the book, it occurred to me I hadn't really read that many books written as a first-person account of a journalist.
And I loved how it was so kind of informal.
And like in terms of his own first-person account of like, "Well, I took this person to lunch.
I tracked down this person that was the neighbor of the guy that owned the house in CLO Drive.
And they were living out in Palm Springs. And I took them out to lunch.
And then they told me, 'If I tell you what I want to tell you, they're going to kill you.'"
Like, it wasn't this like objective floating eyeball telling us what things happened.
It was like his experience subjectively and like how his life changed over the course of the 20 years writing this book.
Which makes it so much more readable because you're there with him.
And you don't feel like you're just being presented with information.
You're really going on this journey with him where he's like, "Yeah."
And he always says where he took them out to eat. A lot of Denny's.
Oh, yeah.
I know you love that, Jake. Just like, "Yeah. So then I f***ing drove 300 miles to Northern California and took this dude out to Denny's."
It's like the most stressful. Like he had so many stressful phone calls where he's like calling people knowing that they don't want to hear from them.
And like knocking on doors, expecting people to like spit in his face, basically.
And just the fact that he stuck with it for 20 years.
And even then, he's not the type of dude to be like, "And I cracked the case."
He's just saying like, "I diligently worked on this and I found many inconsistencies in the main story."
You could draw certain conclusions from it. I'm not saying that those are correct.
He's like too serious to ever be like, "I proved it, man."
But he draws some really shocking connections, perhaps not conclusions.
And one thing about it that's, I guess, comforting to kind of feel like you're watching somebody competently research.
That's a comforting feeling. The kind of unnerving feeling of it is that it reminds you that serious research to actually get at the truth, right?
Which is kind of like the subject of our time, certainly the last four years, is what is truth.
And so many people feel like we're slipping into this kind of like, as Adam Curtis would say, this like hyper normalized existence.
But basically, it's the story of our time. What can you trust, right?
The internet drives us crazy. Our president drives us crazy.
Even the Democrats drive us crazy sometimes. So it's like, it's truly infuriating.
And then you read a book like this, which is maybe why it's hitting so hard right now,
is that it makes you realize that sometimes to really, even when you're looking at 20th century stuff,
where the modes weren't sophisticated, people sent each other memos on paper, people made phone calls.
There were computers, but there wasn't the internet being used by everybody.
It makes you realize just like sometimes to get to the truth takes like an eternity.
It's like an eternity of a lifetime of like digging in and also staying calm.
And not always like jumping to conclusions and checking and double checking.
And yeah, flying to Idaho and going to Danny's and then going back to your little research office
and listening to that tape over and over again to see if you can come up with, you know, find an inconsistency or something.
And then, you know, writing Freedom of Information Act requests over and over again and making phone calls.
Anyway, it's all like in a world where a tweet could literally like change the course of history in a millisecond.
There's something about this that's just like, it's almost like Zen-like.
And I bet he wouldn't, clearly it was very stressful for him.
It was no cakewalk. The dude's like running out of money throughout the book.
Oh my God.
Wondering if he's fully insane for doing this.
So he might find it funny to describe it as Zen-like, but it's like craft, you know, it's like dedication and craft.
There's so many times where he probably had just enough information that he could have like churned out like a sensationalist airport book.
That's like the Madsen murders redux, what you didn't learn in Helter Skelter.
Right.
And think about how much financial pressure there was on him or anybody just to be like, dude, this was supposed to take three months.
You psycho, you can't take 20 years to write this book. But it's a very fascinating book.
Highly recommend for the TC book club.
This is the TC book club and we'll try to get him on the show. And whether or not we do, we recommend it.
So if you guys read it over the next couple of weeks or months, we can talk about it again.
I'd love to try to crack a case with you, Jake.
Ooh, detective.
I don't think I could do Tom O'Neill style solo. Although on the cover of the book, it says he has a co-writer, their name's a little smaller, named Daniel Peipenberg.
That must be one of his research assistants or something.
You know what it was? Tom O'Neill was on Rogan last or this year and I had re-listened to the episode when I was driving up to my parents' house.
The publishers brought in this younger guy, Dan, to help him write it.
Like he had so much information that needed to be narrowed down and kind of put into a coherent sort of streamlined book.
Okay, that guy's more of an assistant, but I don't know what kind of thing we could research or if either one of us really has the kind of investigative skills.
Yeah, I'm not sure we have the gumption. I mean, I'm bad with like conflict with people.
I'm very like conflict-averse. To write something like this or to research something, you need to be like very willing to like piss people off and have really
unpleasant phone calls constantly.
And that's tough. That's not my style.
Yeah, that's going to be hard on the nervous system.
Yeah.
I especially picture that. It's like, you know, whatever we're getting into, it's like we feel like we finally got somebody on the phone after months of chasing them
down.
We got all our notes there. They're on speaker. And then like it's ringing. And we're just like, if this dude hangs up on us, we're screwed.
We're at a dead end.
Well, listen, sir, with all due respect, you know, me, I don't know what it's like, we're calling like Steve Miller or some s***.
With all due respect, Mr. Miller, Jake and I have here in our hands a document obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, which does prove just like get the f***
out of here, man.
No, I'm done with you guys.
No, okay. Well, sir, sir, click.
Yeah.
Almost heaven, West Virginia, Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River.
Life is old there, older than the trees, younger than the mountains, growing like a breeze.
Country roads, take me home to the place I belong.
West Virginia, mountain mama, take me home, country roads.
Hey, I also don't want to air any like TC Dirty Laundry, but speaking of the book club, I do feel like I have to say we had all made a decision on the thread that we were going
to read another book.
And so Seinfeld and I started the book. And then 24 hours later, you said, well, actually, Jake and I started reading this book. We don't have to get into it now.
I wasn't going to mention it. I wasn't going to bring it up, but it did cross my mind.
No, I like this. This is a good arc for the show is TC Book Club Civil War.
That also seems like a movie that could be marketed towards like retiring boomers, almost like an exotic Marigold Hotel type thing that's called Book Club Civil War.
I have no idea what the plot is. It's just Book Club Civil War.
But all right. Well, to be fair. Okay. So the book that you guys started reading, we could talk about it.
Don't you can't start it. It wasn't like we started reading it. We said on the thread that we're all going to start reading it together.
That we started reading. We said, Oh, we're all going to order this.
Although, yeah, I will say, yeah, go ahead.
I'll say that. I'll just say that I abandoned the book as soon as like the book club went off course.
I was on page like 60 or something. I was like, oh, and I got busy and I was like, well, we're not even doing this book anymore.
So I got to I got to pick it back up. I'm ready to read that book.
How far did you get, Nick? I'm like on page 100 because I had the similar thing to Seinfeld when it was clear on the thread that like basically and that this that this
episode is really been the nail in the coffin.
I mean, you're just we're not reading a book. It's fine. I mean, I was enjoying it too.
But I do think it was a short maybe the TC book club. It's more about encouraging literacy and support for the publishing industry.
So really, we're just gassing each other up to read books. I consider anybody who reads a book in the TC book club.
It's just a club of people who read books. And every time you read a book and you can prove that you read it.
I think all the other guys chip in and get you like a jumbo Butterfinger or something like that.
We can be reading all different books, man.
So would a meeting of this book club then be everybody just talking about the individual books that they read?
No, man. It's everybody just sitting around eating Butterfingers.
It's more like a party. It's really the candy club.
Well, it's like it's like it's more of a candy club. But it's like if you go to a graduation party with everybody who went to school together,
you know, and you graduate from high school, you don't you don't have to everybody sit down and say, what was your favorite class?
Like, we're here just to relax. We all accomplished something. We all did it in our own way.
You know what I'm saying? Like some people got good grades. Some people played sports.
People chose different electives or whatever. Some people took AP chemistry.
Other people took regular chemistry. But I'm saying once we're having the party,
it's basically a group of people who all accomplished something in different ways,
coming together just to revel in that sense of accomplishment. And that's what a book club is all about.
The idea that you have to come and discuss the book, that seems really boring.
It kind of seems like raining on the parade of just having finished a book.
So I think this is more of a new I think, especially when you consider that apparently that people read less books than ever.
People spend so much time on the damn Internet. They don't have time to read books anymore.
So I think let's take it back to like first grade is like you and a bunch of adults just kind of gas each other up with stickers and candy to say,
just did you read a damn book? And if you did, you can come to the party.
I like how we've spent so much time just talking about like the like the book club, but we haven't even mentioned what the other book is.
I don't even know if we should. Maybe it's just a mystery.
We should. The book that we were going to read was Charlie Kaufman, the director's new book,
that he wrote a novel that was published sort of, you know, about him in quarantine.
And we had all sort of been talking about the TC highbrow challenge and dipping back into some Kaufman movies.
And then Seinfeld said, oh, hey, there's this. He's got a novel.
And Ezra, you followed up saying, great, we should all read that for the DC book club.
And I said, oh, yeah, I got it in the mail. That sounds perfect. And Jake said, I'm in.
Did I? Yes. And then the next day you said, I'm reading chaos. And as we said, great, I'll get it right now.
No, because I didn't. I don't know what happened. No, that's not what happened.
That's that's a great distortion. Let me get Tom O'Neill.
When Tom O'Neill's next book needs to be investigating the DC book club.
I had already received an ordered chaos from Skylight Books, supporting an L.A. independent bookstore.
And I got it. Exactly. I ordered the paperback from Skylight.
I got it in the mail the same week that we were texting about reading the Charlie Kaufman novel.
This is like Bad Stern when they get into like inter-office politics.
And then Gary said, OK, and then so I started reading chaos because I was there.
And then I posted this is getting so dark office politics.
I posted on Instagram, OK, dude, a picture of me reading chaos.
And I was like, has anyone read this? And like, you know, a few TC heads responded that they had.
And then Ezra hit me up. Maybe I'm wrong. I think this is right.
Ezra hit me up and DM was like, oh, I just I just ordered that.
That sounds right. No mention of Charlie Kaufman book. No mention of dissing the TC book club.
It just organically happened, man.
I also just want to point out, wasn't Ezra the one who first brought to our attention that Charlie Kaufman had written a novel?
I feel like that actually wasn't me. I could be wrong.
I think it's possible. The timeline is a mess. There's obvious inconsistencies and omissions.
We really need to get to the bottom of this.
Also, at some point I told you guys that I was reading Dark Star, an oral biography of Jerry Garcia.
Yeah, that's why I didn't start chaos immediately.
So I ripped through Dark Star. Then I read chaos. And now I'm going to read the Charlie Kaufman book.
So, you know, you guys are going to owe me three, three butterfingers pretty soon.
So I'm looking back at the thread and it says you sent a picture to the thread.
Jake reading out back, say my current vibe picture of chaos.
OK, as we go, it's just bought that to you say it's a very fun read.
First 100 pages flew by.
And then Seinfeld chimes in. I'm 46 pages into this Kaufman book.
You go to book club versus book club.
And then and then Ezra tries to make everyone feel better.
He goes, oh, I bought the Kaufman book to going to try to read both.
Wow. Oh, and then also got Dark Star.
Can you go back, though? This is actually great.
I mean, can you take it back to who first identified the Kaufman book?
Just for my own sanity, I have the worst memory.
Jake, you didn't even remember that clones walk among us, man.
Oh, I forgot about that. Oh, yeah, man.
So Matt just sent me a screencap where Ezra introduces.
This is as we're starting the conversation. Charlie Kaufman.
What's the date here? The date is August 1st, 204 p.m.
Ezra, Charlie Kaufman has a new book out. Right.
Curious about it. Me. Yeah, I just started it because I ordered it.
Enjoying it a lot so far. Seinfeld. I didn't know about it. Looks great.
Now, this is where it gets. This is where it gets interesting.
Jake, maybe this could be a legit first.
So the idea of having all of us reading it came from you.
God, I'm getting just look like an ass here.
Well, I also want to point out, though, that this whole conversation you said was August 1st.
Yes. Jerry Garcia's birthday. It's also National Mustard Day.
It's Jake and I are both big fans of mustard beer.
Yeah. So I think it's very possible that for me, we had this conversation.
I was thinking about I think that, yeah, I want to read this Charlie Kaufman book.
But maybe it hadn't dawned on me yet that we were about to enter the days between August 1st through August 9th.
And so I think probably I didn't realize because it was just, you know, day one of the days between.
I bet the next couple of days there was just something in the air.
And I was like, you know what? I want to read because people have been telling me about this oral biography, Dark Star, for a long time, which I also think is great.
So I think I wanted to read that. And by the way, I also want to draw another connection.
This is pretty freaky. But check this. There are two very significant events.
I'm sure you could add others that are in a way the true end of the hippie era and they're decades apart.
One is, of course, the Manson murders that happened in 1969.
And, you know, Joan Didion famously said something like that was the end of the 60s.
It freaked people out in L.A. and I've talked to people who lived through that era in L.A.
And it really is just like, man, we used to be everybody's partying together and hanging out and really felt like we were entering the age of Aquarius.
Doors were unlocked. All this the chill it sent over the Los Angeles area and the whole nation was serious.
And of course, when you read chaos, you'll think about that a lot.
Although he does dispel that a little bit.
He dispels it a little bit, but it definitely there's a lot of information just to say that it freaked people out.
Yeah, for sure.
Much later, I would say the death of Jerry Garcia was also in 1995 was also something that truly felt like the end of an era.
And I think the death of Jerry Garcia, even though I was only 11, then I think the reason that his death more than obviously there are the deaths of Hendrix and Janis
Joplin, all these people in the 60s, Jim Morrison in the early 70s.
But part of the reason that his death was so meaningful to people is because the Grateful Dead had kept a type of hippie universe alive long after the 60s, long after
taking acid and being a hippie had ceased to be fashionable.
The Grateful Dead were this last bastion of it, keeping that ember alive.
So there was something really sad and meaningful to people.
I think when Jerry died, it wasn't just the tragedy of his death, which of course is sad, but he represented something.
Anyway, that's all to say these two events that were 26 years apart, both August 9th.
There's something about maybe just because I have to be reading those books back to back and I was just like, man, that's freaky that they both were August 9th.
And increasingly, obviously this year, the whole year is crazy.
But I was like, August is a fascinating month.
In some ways, it's a very chill month.
You relax.
It's the dog days of summer.
If you're a kid, you're not in school.
So maybe you take it easy.
If you live somewhere where it's really hot, the heat's so oppressive, all you can do is just hang out.
In some ways, it could be a very placid, chill month.
But it's also, you know, there's a lot of heavy energy in August.
So I think that there was something cool, the Dark Star and Chaos was a good combo.
But now I am gonna move into the Charlie Kaufman book.
And I hope that there's also some parallels in that book,
cuz that's a real interesting trifecta.
Who's gonna join me in the trifecta?
That's what I wanna know.
This is the real book club, all three books.
>> Damn, well, I have Dark Star, I haven't cracked it yet.
I have to pick up the Kaufman.
>> [LAUGH] >> You're way ahead.
>> You never even ordered the Kaufman book?
>> No.
>> I think you'll enjoy Dark Star, Jake.
There's many references to the Mill Valley Whole Foods.
>> Really?
>> Later in life.
So you know those guys after the late 60s,
they all seem to be living in various parts of Marin County.
>> Sure. >> Always moving around, but
Mill Valley was a place that it seemed like a lot of people converged on.
And there's a quote in that book, which I almost feel like I saw in another book
before, but basically a guy's talking about Jerry's duality, his dual nature.
And he was saying, cuz obviously people were very concerned with his health
in his latter years.
He had gone into a coma in the late 80s.
He was unhealthy, and yet he was a very strong person.
And sometimes it's hard for people to tell what was going on.
And one person says, yeah, man,
people are always spotting Jerry in the Mill Valley Whole Foods.
But a lot of times you'd see him there at lunch,
eating all healthy at the Mill Valley Whole Foods.
And then that same day, you'd see him at the 7-Eleven crushing Slurpees and
hot dogs.
And that was his way of saying he's a dude who would try to be healthy, but
he also had this side of him that was kind of just wanted to eat junk or whatever.
And they're trying to almost use that as a metaphor for the two sides of him,
like the kind of mystical dude, and yet also the earthy guy,
the guy who wanted to expand his mind, but also the guy who's addicted to heroin.
But anyway, that got me thinking, man,
there was a popping Whole Foods in the Bay Area in the early 90s.
It made me realize I don't really have a good handle on the Whole Foods timeline.
Have you been to this one, Jake?
>> Yeah, many times.
I actually used to deliver groceries out of there.
>> You've talked about your job delivering groceries for Whole Foods.
But I always pictured that being in the city, in San Francisco.
>> It was both.
I worked out of the store on California and Van Ness,
which is where I would see Kirk Hammett sometimes.
>> Yeah.
>> But then sometimes I would get sent up to deliver out of the Mill Valley Whole
Foods, and I remember, so I'd go there and pick up these grocery orders,
kind of like an early version of Instacart.
And so there were some people who had been working at that Whole Foods for
a long time.
This would have been '05, so I guess only ten years after Jerry was dead.
'05, '06 is when I was doing this job.
And the people that have been working there the whole time that were like,
a couple people were like, man, I saw Jerry in here the day he died.
>> Whoa, heavy.
>> I don't think I had any Grateful Dead t-shirts or anything at that time.
I don't know what.
>> [LAUGH] >> People are just like,
wanting to talk about Jerry in that Mill Valley Whole Foods.
>> That makes it so much funnier, because yeah,
I can totally picture you just being a fan, wearing a shirt, or
just making small talk, and being like, I don't know, or dude being like,
I noticed you had an acoustic guitar in your car, man.
Just be like, yeah, what kind of, but it's also way funnier just to picture
like a kind of burned out old gray ponytail dude.
And you're just kind of like, I'm here to pick up the Johnson order.
And he's like, here you go, man.
Hey, I saw Jerry in here the day he died.
You're just like, all right.
>> [LAUGH] >> Cool.
Jerry Garcia, right?
Yeah, man.
Garcia.
Okay, all right.
I wonder what the vibe was, because obviously Whole Foods now,
it's owned by Amazon.
People have an expectation that it's gonna be, it's a giant chain.
They want it to be exactly the same, more or less, wherever you go.
But I gotta imagine that in early 90s, Mill Valley Whole Foods
probably did feel kind of local.
Whole Foods doesn't feel local anymore.
>> Right.
>> Yeah, my understanding, there's a big fan of the show,
a friend of mine, Emily Alexander, who's from North Carolina.
Her dad ran an organic grocery store.
And I think around the time of the expansion, what they would really do is
they would just sort of go to local, successful organic grocery stores.
And they would sort of put their name on them, but
they would still operate really local businesses.
>> Finding local partners.
>> Yeah, so it wasn't sort of homogenized the way it is now.
They would be local partners, and they would sort of buy them out and
put their name on, but let them keep operating.
>> I feel like this isn't talked about enough, is that, obviously,
there's a lot of conversation about the way that the Internet, and
before the Internet, big box stores were kind of crushing independent
record stores, and obviously some have still survived.
And COVID is yet another challenge,
independent record stores can't catch a [BLEEP] break.
But people often talk about the fact that independent record stores,
even though they would have a lot of the same music, they had certain personality.
I was actually just, I gotta shout out the Other Music documentary.
I think I appear in it briefly as a talking head.
I did the interview a few years ago, but
it's a documentary that's totally about this one store in New York, Other Music,
which is a legendary record store, very small, truly a tiny record store.
But it had vibe, the way they organized the music,
the people who worked there, it was just cool.
I went there for the first time, I think, when I was 14, and
it really made an impact on me, that store.
So we talk a lot about the way that record stores used to provide a sense of
community or a sense of vibe, and it's a real loss that we have less of them now.
But I think a less discussed phenomenon is the independent organics store,
cuz that is a real thing.
And Whole Foods, I mean, Whole Foods probably has provided access to certain
types of food in other parts of the country that maybe were harder back in the day.
But I have really fond memories of growing up and
going to the dude with the gray ponytail, just ramshackle,
almost like used bookstore energy, organic health food store.
I love those places, always playing jazz.
[LAUGH] That's my memory, that they're always playing jazz.
And just the smell of it, and the funky feel, and the characters you'd see,
the community, what would you call it?
>> Bulletin board.
Those places had such vibe, and of course, they still exist in some pockets.
But I feel like similar to record stores, it's a bit of a dying breed.
>> For sure.
I wonder, because when I went to that Whole Foods a lot in '05 and '06 in
Mill Valley, it felt like a pretty straightforward Whole Foods.
It didn't feel like it had traces of any sort of more local or unique origin story.
>> It was corporate at that point.
>> Fully, I mean, I wonder if there was a market that would have been a good place
to expand into in the early days for Whole Foods,
then Marin County would have been primo.
It probably would have been one of the first.
I'm just guessing, but I bet it's one of the first-
>> That's a great question,
is was that, how much had Whole Foods expanded outside of Texas at that point?
Was that one of the first in California, first in the whole nation?
>> I believe the Mill Valley store is the 12th store.
>> That's early.
>> It's early, and what I'm reading right here that's interesting is
the current co-CEO, Walter Robb, he got his start
in that they had him open the Mill Valley, which was the 12th.
So he- >> Wow.
>> Sort of his storied career,
the current CEO started by opening the Mill Valley one.
>> He probably- >> And that's early, that's 89.
>> He probably brushed shoulders with Jerry a lot.
>> He must have.
He worked there for, I think, eight years from 89.
So yeah, he definitely did.
>> Wow.
>> I mean, I'm just looking, I'll read while we do this, maybe for another day,
I'm gonna read this Whole Foods market history.
But when you see the photo of the original Whole Foods market,
it's real crunchy.
>> I think I've seen that, cuz it was a house, right?
>> Well, this one, it's like some of the employees aren't wearing shirts.
>> Right.
>> Wow. >> They're just hanging.
I mean, it's really, it's a vibe.
>> Remember on the show we talked about,
was Willie Nelson hanging at the original Whole Foods much?
>> Right. >> You know what actually could be
a TC project?
This could be it, Jake.
I think this could be our chaos.
We do an oral history of Whole Foods.
>> Whoa.
>> Obviously, it's a bit of a pipe dream.
For us to do it right might take a long time.
Maybe if we do it as an oral history, that's a little bit easier.
I mean, I'm sure it's still very difficult to make an oral history readable and
stuff, but if we get a good editor, they could help us.
But we roll out to Austin for two weeks, just conducting hours of interviews.
And then we kind of follow the early Whole Foods, and
then we get into the Amazon era.
We're interviewing people in corporate, the lawyers who brokered the deal,
employees.
>> Weirdly, I bet the last ten years of Whole Foods would be much harder to cover.
>> Well, we could have some color that's like,
we put in the request to interview Bezos in 2023.
By 2032, we couldn't believe that we were still working on this book, but
then the call finally came.
Bezos is ready to talk.
You guys have ten minutes on Saturday.
Jake and I looked at each other like, holy [BLEEP]
We let our lives fall apart for this Whole Foods book.
Jake stopped painting, I stopped making music.
Could this be the key to unlock it all?
The Bezos interview.
Like then, like Saturday morning, he canceled, no reason was given.
>> His assistant insisted that we stop calling.
>> Dejected, we walked back to the Winnebago that we'd been living in for
the previous five years.
Well, let's head to Mill Valley one more time, see what we-
>> [LAUGH]
>> Let's sniff around.
Maybe that's too ambitious, but I like the idea of doing an oral history.
What if we try to get Willie Nelson for the first interview?
Willie, so great to talk to you, huge fans of music anyway.
What are your memories of the first Whole Foods in Austin?
Okay, well, we buy groceries there, good healthy groceries.
There's a lot of interesting stuff happening in that area in Austin.
Willie, please keep it focused on Whole Foods.
So how did you feel when you heard about Amazon buying it?
Amazon bought it?
I didn't know that, good for them.
>> [LAUGH]
>> Did you ever personally meet John Mackey?
Who?
>> Wait, who's John Mackey?
I don't know who John Mackey is.
>> He's the founder/CEO.
I mean, he founded it with a few other people.
But he emerged as the sort of guy that was willing to
ratchet it up from local health food store to corporate behemoth.
>> Is he alive?
>> He's alive.
Yeah, he's still involved in the company, I'm pretty sure.
>> He's still the CEO.
>> Okay, so just for the hell of it, let's reach out via TC and
see if we can get John Mackey on the show.
>> There's absolutely no way in hell that's happening.
He was the guy that, remember a few years ago, there was a story,
he was going on message boards and
posting under a pseudonym about how awesome Whole Foods was.
>> Are you serious?
>> Or there was a Whole Foods, I forget the details.
>> You're absolutely right, Jake.
>> Yeah.
>> The headline is, Whole Foods CEO admits to message board posts.
And then the kicker is, says John Mackey of his Yahoo Finance forays,
quote, I had fun doing it.
>> I mean, that's cool.
If he wants to, a lot of people post anonymously on the Internet.
I guess he has every right to too, I mean, I don't know.
>> Good for Mackey for just coming out.
>> I've got a long list of real good reasons for all the things I've done.
I've got a picture in the back of my mind of what I've lost and what I've won.
I've survived every situation, knowing when to freeze and when to run.
Regret is just a memory written on my brow, and
there's nothing I can do about it now.
>> I just wanna say, to be clear about Mackey, when we're talking about,
he went on, this is just because I think you guys will appreciate this.
When he went on to the Yahoo message boards,
he was trolling the Wild Oats Market, which is their rival.
>> Sure. >> Whoa.
>> And so he would go on to, this is, quote, the writing is on the wall.
The end game is now underway for Oats.
And then this is great, cuz obviously this is someone that works there and
not just some dude on a message board.
Quote, Whole Foods is systematically destroying their viability as
a business.
[LAUGH] >> My God.
>> Market by market, city by city,
bankruptcy remains a distinct possibility for Oats.
IMO.
[LAUGH] >> That's [BLEEP] up.
>> So I think that it's actually illegal.
I think he was sued because you can't have a CEO trying to hurt
the stock of another company.
>> Yeah, that kinda seems like, it's not quite insider trading, but-
>> But that seems so
tame compared to the disinformation on Fox News or any political campaign.
I mean, I don't know, some guy on a message board saying Wild Oats is-
>> And also- >> Oops, I mean-
>> Isn't that what happens on,
it's funny, I've never watched CNBC.
My main understanding of it comes from watching billions or
movies, TV shows or movies.
But that seems like he would be allowed to publicly go on Jim Cramer.
And Cramer's like, well, listen,
you're gonna have a hard time in some of these markets, Mackey.
You got Wild Oats.
Mackey's like, we are systematically destroying Wild Oats' business.
They are not viable.
I think they will go bankrupt within a year.
Strong words from John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods.
Wow, okay, well, I buy it, and then the stock goes up.
That's what happens every day, right?
CEO's just going on Squawk Box just to talk [BLEEP]
>> I guess it's like Trump saying, Russia, if you're listening,
give me those emails.
But if Robert Mueller had found an email from Trump that was like, hey,
Vlad, let's collaborate with WikiLeaks and get me those DNC emails.
If he had done it secretively, I guess that would have been worse.
>> Well, look, clearly this is gonna be a great book.
I mean, it would be way more like chaos vibe if it really was like an expose on
Mackey, sounds like a complicated figure.
I mean, that might be less fun, but that's literally like we're going to his
hometown, interviewing childhood friends, family, teachers.
>> I heard a radio, like an NPR piece or something,
like a podcast years ago that was on this topic.
And they interviewed, this is kind of a fuzzy memory, admittedly, but
they interviewed some of Mackey's co-founders of Whole Foods,
the sort of local health food market guys.
And they were like, yeah, no, John was always very focused on growing the business
and being bottom line.
He never sort of like idealist hippie that betrayed his values.
He was like that from the beginning.
That's my memory of this.
>> Well, if we actually get Tom O'Neill, author of Chaos, on the program,
maybe you could give us some tips.
Maybe we do have to spend like ten years creating our oral history of Whole Foods.
And then finally, we can prevail upon Mackey to be like, sir,
we'd love for you to say your piece.
Because right now, we have tens of thousands of hours of interviews
with thousands of people, many of whom are talking about you.
And we just want to be fair here.
And it'll just be like, we're considering wrapping this up and
publishing the book next year.
And we'd love just to get your take.
And then he's like, all right, Mackey's going to sit down.
>> He's on his deathbed.
>> [LAUGH] >> And he's just like, okay.
>> Bring in Ezra and Jake.
>> He finally admits that he was a CIA asset.
>> [LAUGH] >> Whole Foods.
>> [LAUGH] >> Destabilize.
I mean, man.
>> No. >> After eating chaos.
>> Dude, the CIA and the intelligence community started Whole Foods as a way to
make the left in this country complacent and turn them into consumers.
>> Wow.
>> [LAUGH] >> Get on Twitter with that.
Whole Foods CIA front.
>> [LAUGH] >> Okay, wait, we gotta move on shortly.
But just to see if there's anything here.
Seinfeld, let me get a quick Google.
Whole Foods CIA.
>> Someone's already uncovered this.
>> There's a lot of Reddit stuff where it's kind of like-
>> That's a valid source.
>> [LAUGH] >> I guess what I'm seeing is some Reddit
type of stuff that's like, Amazon is the CIA.
So when Amazon bought Whole Foods, it's like the CIA bought Whole Foods.
So I think it sort of ladders up into some sort of Amazon CIA conspiracy theory.
But that's all I'm seeing.
>> That's a little less interesting.
>> Yeah, cuz Amazon was always very just baldly capitalist and brutal.
>> It's much more interesting if the CIA tricked all the hippies into-
>> It's way better if it's like-
>> Getting the olive oil.
>> Amazon refused to ever collaborate with the CIA.
And finally, the CIA was able to Trojan horse their way into the organization
through the purchase of Whole Foods, which they had owned since 1972.
>> [LAUGH] >> Which they've been a front since 1972.
All right, if anybody, let us know if you think that's a good idea.
Would you cop?
And look, it's gonna be a serious book.
It's not gonna be the kind of classic TC banter, our flights of fancy.
This is gonna be a serious, you're not necessarily gonna have me and
Jake's voice that much in it.
Cuz I think that might discredit our research a little bit,
if we make it too personal.
>> Right.
>> Anyway, we got a special guest coming up.
Coming back to the show is Brian Jones, Vampire Weekend guitarist,
musician extraordinaire, tie dye guru.
And you might recall that he was on the show a few months ago talking about his
love of NSYNC, specifically the album No Strings Attached.
Well, guess what?
He has now recorded a full song by song tribute to No Strings Attached and
it's out now.
So we're gonna check in with him.
>> Now, let's go to the Time Crisis Hotline.
[SOUND]
>> What up?
>> What's up, Brian?
>> Hey.
>> What's up, man?
>> Right off the bat, I got a question for you.
>> Let's hear it.
>> What's your earliest memory of Whole Foods?
Did you have a local one growing up in Virginia?
>> No, we did not have a local Whole Foods.
I think, I don't know my earliest memory is, I just remember hearing about it and
knowing it was expensive.
But I didn't really ever go to Whole Foods until I was in my early 20s.
>> So you don't think there's one anywhere near where you grew up?
>> Not that I know of.
>> Where'd you grow up?
>> Like outside of DC.
There's one there now.
Like there's one in my town now, like in Ashburn, like there's one there.
>> So you probably wouldn't be interested in reading an oral history on
Whole Foods, would you?
>> I don't know if I would at this particular point in my life.
But I got a lot of time left on the clock.
>> Did you know that the first Whole Foods outside of
Austin, Texas was actually in Virginia?
>> No way.
>> Wait, what town does it say?
>> Langley, Virginia.
>> That's really- >> No, no, we're trying to uncover if
the CIA has any connections to Whole Foods.
>> Jesus Christ.
>> Could be.
Wait, it's actually, before we talk about N'Singh and stuff.
So growing up close to Langley, Virginia,
did the CIA like loom large in your like town or your imagination?
Or did it seem kind of mundane just because you knew that it was nearby?
>> There were a lot of people whose parents had like mysterious jobs, for sure.
>> Wow.
>> Like mysterious government contractor, whatever you wanna call it, jobs.
But certain people, it's like they go to Thanksgiving with their brother and
they have to blur out their brother's face in the pictures on Facebook,
like that kind of vibe.
>> [LAUGH] What?
>> I remember that distinctly from growing up.
It was only like two people I saw that happened with, but it did happen.
>> Interesting.
>> I think like post 9/11 with all the new homeland security jobs and
stuff like that, my town just kind of like became a hotbed for people and
government.
>> I actually remember you telling me that once,
cuz how old were you in 2001?
>> I was eight.
>> Yeah, cuz you said like when you were growing up, so
from like eight to 18 or whatever, you watched your area get way more built up.
And it was partially because of the post 9/11 boom?
>> I think so, yeah.
I think a lot of people, and also the Internet was a big thing in my town too.
Ashburn, Virginia hosts a lot of the,
like a significant percentage of the Internet servers of the world.
Like a lot of the Internet traffic runs through there and
they keep building data centers and stuff like that.
Going there now, the drive from the airport to my house is like so
many data centers, it's crazy.
>> Well, and I'm sure that's not a coincidence that all the servers
are in that part of the country.
>> Yeah, I can't imagine.
It's not related.
>> Well, anyway, how you been, Brian?
How's the 2020 treating you?
>> I think Justin Timberlake was a little off when he was talking about
the 2020 experience.
>> [LAUGH] >> No, it's cool.
I kind of just called it with this year.
I was like, anything good that happens this year is a bonus.
I'm just gonna be in my room and eat breakfast every day and do yoga.
And I've been doing a lot of yoga, that's my new thing.
>> Tight.
>> Feeling very limber these days.
>> And a lot of tie dyeing.
>> A lot of tie dyeing, yeah, it's going good.
Just staying real busy.
>> So what's been the journey with the No Strings Attached album?
Now I can't even remember, the first time you came on Time Crisis,
were we just talking about the album or had you already begun this project?
>> I think I'd already begun it, cuz that was while it was shut down, I think.
Cuz I started it right before stuff shut down.
>> So this wasn't like a COVID, let me cook up something just to
go deep on while I'm at home story.
This is already something.
>> It kind of became that because at the beginning of it,
before shut down, I was just messing around with it.
The 20th anniversary was coming up and I was like, that'd be fun to do three or
four songs from the album and put it out.
That would be just fun to do.
And then everything shut down and I was like,
well now I have a chance to actually produce this.
So I was like, expand it to five songs and then the eight songs.
And then I set a deadline for myself and then I missed it because I was too
focused on the protests and all that stuff when that was going on.
And once I found a little sense of normalcy back in my life,
I just decided to expand it a bit more to ten songs and then just finish it.
>> So first of all, for anybody who wants to listen,
it's on all the DSPs, streaming services.
>> Yep.
>> Is there gonna be a physical release?
>> You know what, I was fully planning on doing a vinyl.
I had everything figured out.
And I ran into some licensing issues that I'm still attempting to resolve.
But one of my roommates is deeply into the vinyl game and
he's on a mission to get me to make a vinyl, so I think it'll happen.
>> I'd love a copy of this on vinyl.
>> So in the end, this album came together in a way that you sing a lot,
but you also had a bunch of guests.
>> Yes, it's mostly people I went to college with who are musicians I really
respect and collaborate with a lot.
And then also Starchild, who I met a couple years ago when-
>> Yeah, I know him.
>> Yeah, yeah, exactly, I think, yeah, exactly.
>> Great guy, yeah, love him.
>> We played a show together at the Terragram.
He was playing with that band Chairlift, Caroline Polachek's old band.
And I was playing with Muna and we were opening up and
we kind of hit it off pretty immediately.
So we've stayed friends over the Internet over the years.
We run into each other now and then, but
this is our first music thing we've done together and I'm stoked about it.
>> Who's singing lead on Space Cowboy?
>> It's my friend Alex, but he's going under his name from
another project we did together called Whisperfish.
You might recognize him from the Contest Williams Universe,
this other project that I have.
Yeah, he's just one of my boys and he's my go-to guitar player for everything.
And we do a lot of music stuff together.
And he just wanted to do it.
And he's like, yeah, I used to sing this on the bus on the way to camp.
And now I want to record it.
So he did a great job.
>> He was specifically a Space Cowboy?
>> Yeah.
>> How did you approach each song?
Because it's not exactly like a note for note cover.
Is there a range of faithfulness or did you want to give everyone a little tweak?
Or there's some that are pretty similar to the originals?
Or how did you negotiate that?
>> I just knew I wanted to hear some of them as more modern interpretations.
Like Bye Bye Bye is a little bit more of modern production.
And I Thought She Knew, which is the acapella one on the record.
Instead of doing acapella, I did the Bon Iver Harmony Engine type thing.
That he does, the vocoder thing.
Just to update it all a little bit.
But some of it, I just make this, my go-to thing is just to make really funky,
like clean strat, punchy drums, like old school drum kids play bass on it.
That's my bread and butter sort of.
And a lot of the record is that, like Space Cowboy.
And it makes me ill.
And No Strings Attached is also kind of like a throwbacky one,
like the actual song itself.
I kind of try to make it sound like an Earth, Wind, and Fire song.
And there's like horns and scatting on it.
>> Nice.
Real horns?
>> Yeah, yeah.
My friend Henry, who REL uses a lot for production stuff.
And I went to USC with him.
And Henry Solomon, he played a bunch of them.
>> Oh, yeah.
>> He plays on Summer Girl by Haim.
>> Yeah, right, right.
>> He's in the video and everything.
>> I've heard a lot about him.
>> Yeah, he's great.
He played on that, and he played on This I Promise You, too,
which CT is also on.
>> Oh, really?
>> Yeah, CT.
>> On what?
On drums or vocals?
>> I had him do, so you know like when we do Hold You Now Live,
he does like that kind of like pedal steel thing?
>> Yeah, yeah.
>> So I had him do some of that.
And then I just wanted him to do that.
And then he sent me back a version of it where he like sampled these two chords
in the chorus and just like repeated them a bunch at the end.
And he's like, dude, I don't know if you want to do anything with this, but
like I made this thing at the end.
And he just like played drums over it, and he played this like crazy guitar solo.
And I was like, hell yeah, I gotta use this.
So- >> Which song is that again?
>> This is on This I Promise You.
>> So the This I Promise You on your no strings attached has an extended CT
guitar solo at the end?
>> Yes, the song is seven minutes long.
>> [LAUGH] >> I really wanted one to break seven,
and it's 6.59, and I'm a little sad about it, but whatever.
I could have just made the master a little longer, but-
>> You'll jam it out live.
>> [LAUGH] Yeah, exactly.
>> Do you shred any solo on the record?
>> I do shred a little solo on one of the ballads at the end,
That's When I'll Stop Loving You.
And then my friend Alex ripped a nice little solo on Space Cowboy as well.
I didn't really make it too nerdy music-y, which maybe was a mistake, but-
>> Well, you can always do, when you put on the concert for it,
you can jam stuff out and- >> Precisely.
>> Wait, now I'm thinking, the NSA is based in Fort Meade, Maryland.
That can't be too far from- >> [LAUGH]
>> Ashburn, Virginia.
So you can do something that's maybe next year, if there's more live music,
NSA 2021 performed live at NSA headquarters, Fort Meade, Maryland.
>> That would go extremely hard.
I definitely wanna do a live show at some point, but I might do another, I mean,
who knows how long we're gonna be doing this.
I might have to do another BRJ and
Friend situation with a different album or something.
>> That was my next question was, is your instinct to go,
if you do another one, to stay in sync?
>> I'd almost wanna jump around.
I mean, there's obviously, obviously,
you know I could be very inspired to do a lot more of the NSYNC discography.
But I might switch gears a little bit.
Maybe I go Britney, or maybe I do something else.
I don't really know.
There's a lot of options out there.
>> I love Britney being a big gear switch.
>> [LAUGH] >> No, well-
>> Real, real big.
>> No, no, I know.
>> [LAUGH] >> No, not really, but you know.
When you've been on before,
obviously we talked so much about this album in particular.
But this era of your life, when you were,
what year did this album come out, 2000?
>> 2000, so I was seven at the time.
>> I think that's the age where most people, around seven,
you first start to really be aware of new music or something.
Kids love music, but when you're really little,
it's like you're not gonna have this perception of necessarily, I like that band
NSYNC and I like their new album or something.
So what are the other things from that era that are real hallmarks for you?
Is it the first Britney Spears album or?
>> I don't think her album cuts are as strong as maybe the NSYNC ones.
So there was never really any big Britney albums, but
I mean, I was consuming all boy band content I could get my hands on.
>> How deep would you go?
Would you get like 98 degrees?
Was that a bridge too far?
>> I wasn't into 98 degrees, but I was into O-Tone.
If you remember O-Tone.
>> They were put together on a TV show?
>> Yes, they were put together by Lou Pearlman, I believe,
on Making the Band, which is hilarious.
But if you don't know Liquid Dreams by O-Tone, that's an incredible boy band song.
That is beautifully horny 2000, one energy song.
That's essentially about a wet dream and some weird fantasy woman that these guys
are combining with different parts of different celebrities' bodies and
personalities.
>> We gotta listen to this for a second.
Can you throw on Liquid Dreams by O-Tone?
>> The music video has those CGI waterfall, like 2000s, yeah.
>> Jake, you know this song?
>> No.
>> Man.
>> She's not your average girl.
>> Yeah, I know this.
>> All right, and then this is where they list, not dominatrix,
supermodel, beauty queen.
And this is where they list all the different parts.
>> Let's just break down that chorus.
So that's, you're saying you got a mix of Destiny's Child,
Madonna's wild style, Jen Jackson's smile, a body like Jennifer?
>> Lopez?
>> It's unclear if it's, I mean, it's probably Jennifer Lopez, but
there were a lot of Jennifers at the time,
I feel like, that it technically could have referred to.
>> Wait, isn't there a whole song called Jennifer's Body?
>> I know there's the Megan Fox movie.
>> There was also Jennifer Love Hewitt.
>> Jennifer Love Hewitt.
>> Yeah, she was a very big star at the time from,
I Know What You Did Last Summer.
Yeah, Jennifer's Body is a whole song.
>> So I think he was really trying to obliquely set up Courtney Love.
He wanted to grow as a mix of Destiny's Child,
Madonna's wild style, Jen Jackson's smile, and
somebody with a kind of a lyrical wit of a Courtney Love.
And he's saying, you're the star of my liquid dream?
>> Yes, which I believe is like the fantasy woman he's
created in his head in order to pleasure himself.
>> This is like some weird early incel kind of anthem or something.
Wait, am I misreading this?
The opening line is posters of love surrounding me lost in the world of
fantasy.
It's not even like that NSYNC song.
What's the one that's about- >> Digital Ghetto?
>> Right.
>> Digital Ghetto.
It's not even like, well, we're separated by space, but
we can still kind of have cyber sex.
This is literally a dude being like, I'm alone in a room surrounded by posters.
He's like an otaku.
He's just like, I've got my anime pillows next to me.
And every night, a weird Frankenstein woman that I've created in my own mind.
That reminds me, there's a classic old tweet that was something about,
maybe you guys have seen it.
It was kind of making fun of just a kind of misogynist dude ranking women on
the Internet when he's a huge loser.
And it was kind of like, Rihanna's forehead is too big,
he typed as he wiped the Cheeto dust onto his sweatpants.
>> Yeah.
>> Does that sound familiar?
That idea of people on the Internet just being super harsh and just being like,
no way.
I like Janet Jackson's smile, but
you need to throw that on a body like Jennifer's.
Now that is a hot chick.
It's so dark and weird, just this picture, just somebody alone.
It doesn't even have the, at least so far in the song,
it doesn't even have the eventually we're gonna meet in real life.
Maybe you didn't get the girl yet, or you're pining after her,
you're separate.
It's very weird for a big boy band single just to be like,
I have a lot of posters.
And at night, sometimes I have wet dreams about a Frankenstein woman.
That's it.
>> [LAUGH] >> What a difference 20 years makes,
right?
I mean, at the time, people were like, dude, that's so awesome.
That's so funny and cool that you thought of that.
No one was like, man, this is pathetic.
>> Yeah, well, I feel like I need to bring up the bridge.
Let's get that.
The bridge is an interesting turn.
Morphorotic.
[LAUGH]
She's got a good personality, guys.
She's not like the girls at my school, guys.
She's actually got a really sweet personality.
>> That line about my mama thinks I'm lazy, I mean, that's early incel.
That's the death star.
>> Yeah.
>> No one understands me.
>> This is when incel culture really started.
O-Town was created by the CIA to infect a bunch of Americans with the incel curse.
Well, that bridge that you're talking about, let's just break it down.
Looks ain't everything, she's got the sweetest personality.
And then this is hilarious, like Halle B, so like Halle Berry.
It's like, that's even more like psycho, just like weirdo on the Internet,
just being like, unless anybody think that I'm shallow and only care about looks,
I'd also be willing to throw in a touch of Halle Berry.
[LAUGH]
And no, it's not because she's beautiful.
It's because of her personality.
It's like in this song, they couldn't even, I mean, I don't even want to be mean
by trying to think of somebody who's known to have a good personality but
be unattractive.
But it's like, they still have to throw in somebody who's known far and
wide as a beautiful woman, even for the personality.
You'd really have to give them props if also in this super heteronormative song,
they just like throw in a dude for personality.
[LAUGH]
This was also like early 2000s.
Who's considered a cool guy then?
Just like, looks ain't everything.
She's got the personality of a Carson Daly.
[LAUGH]
Of a Craig Kilmore.
The personality of a Tom Hanks.
Just a cool dude to hang out with.
>> Shaq.
>> She's got Shaq's personality.
[LAUGH]
My mama thinks I'm lazy.
His mom is from a previous generation being like,
all you do is stay up there with your anime pillows.
You spend all this time on the Internet obsessing about this Frankenstein woman
who doesn't exist.
Get out there and meet a real girl.
And he's like, shut up, mom.
My friends all think I'm crazy.
They're like, dude, it's actually cool to come hang out in real life.
And he's like, no.
And then this part that we just listened to, it's kind of quiet.
He said, liquid dreams, my liquid dreams.
I do kind of love this line.
Waterfalls and streams, these liquid dreams.
[LAUGH]
>> Mm-hm, mm-hm.
>> Yikes. >> It's a great one.
>> Okay, now I understand.
At first I thought he was saying, you are the star of my liquid dreams.
But it's even weirder.
He's not even addressing the Frankenstein.
You is like us, the listener, or his buddy.
I dream about a girl who's a mix of all these things.
Throwing a body like Jennifer's.
And guess what, buddy?
You got the star of my liquid dreams.
And look, a lot of times we like to break down songs and
talk about what they're going for.
Obviously, for me as a songwriter, me as a music fan,
I don't believe that every song has to be hyper specific.
And there can be layers of meaning.
And as much as I sometimes bring a lot of rigorous logic to our song breakdowns,
I don't believe all songs need to adhere to rigorous logic.
However, one thing I'll say, in pop music, and especially like boy band music,
usually the people who write songs,
there is a conversation about just what is the song about.
That doesn't happen in slightly more abstract forms of songwriting.
People might talk more about mood or is that a cool line?
But with a song like this, that is pretty straightforward,
there 100% must have been a moment where somebody was like,
it was discussed in the room.
Well, so what's the song really about?
And somebody was like, this is about either masturbating and
picturing this Frankenstein woman or just literally having a wet dream.
And somebody else was like, that's awesome.
Definitely.
And nobody stopped to think, none of the other big boy bands really go that route.
Another thing you could say about boy bands from this era is that
everything about them was usually designed to appeal to-
>> 14 year old girls.
>> To 14 year old girls.
>> Right. >> And if the music and
the dancing was good enough, you might get people of all genders and
ages interested in them.
Cuz Backstreet Boys and NSYNC,
everybody got at least their song stuck in their head here and there.
But still, a lot of their songs would be about heartbreak and
a lot directly addressed to a person they love, to a girl.
This song is so weird because, again, the you is not the girl.
I bet if we look through the whole No Strings Attached album,
almost every you is about either the girl that they are split up with,
the girl they're pining after, the girl they're with.
The you is almost always the girl.
>> Right.
>> It's so weird who this is supposed to appeal to.
Is it supposed to appeal to the fellas just kind of being like, hey guys.
[LAUGH] That feels like such a thing.
>> When you're up late at night and
you're trying to craft that perfect scene to send you to sleep.
>> That was a classic weird energy in middle school when you and
your friends start talking about sex.
And everybody's so trying to be mature and cool and
talk about stuff as if they know what it's all about.
And there's that classic dynamic of some kid in the crew being like, no, totally.
And when you just start freaking thinking about, and they say something so
weird, and everybody's like, what the is wrong with you?
You know what I mean?
That's that classic middle school.
That kind of sounds like somebody being like, hey guys,
you ever look at hot girls on the Internet?
Yeah, man, I found a playboy in the woods.
Dude, this girl was so hot.
Really?
Man, I'd love to see that.
And then when a kid's like, you know what my dream would be?
Would be to take various parts of celebrities' bodies and put them together.
You're like, whoa, yo, too much, too much.
>> How successful was O-Town?
>> They had that song that was big, and then they had another one called All or
Nothing, which is like a quintessential boy band slow jam in my opinion.
But I think they still do some stuff every now and
then, they kind of stuck around for a little bit.
>> I'm on the Wikipedia page for Liquid Dreams.
And first of all, in the opening paragraph, it's very straightforward.
It says, it's a song by American boy band O-Town, released in December 2000,
reached number one in Canada.
What's going on in Canada?
Number 10 in the US, number three in the United Kingdom.
The song is about wet dreams, filled with sexual innuendos and
pop culture references.
But also in this article, it's talking about how one of the people,
Ikaika Kahoano was one of the five members selected for making the band.
But he and his family decided he should go to med school instead,
causing him to back out, making way for Dan Miller.
>> Yeah. >> Wait, so
I'm curious about this dude who was like,
I guess he was in a different boy band called Element, and then he was-
>> No, Element was later.
Element was like other people, people who didn't make the band,
if that makes any sense, I believe.
>> I wonder if this dude who was almost in O-Town is a practicing doctor right now.
>> That is a great thing to look up.
>> We should have him on.
>> We should have him call in.
>> It says he's an American military officer and an actor.
Sounds like he's got an interesting life.
Well, thanks so much for coming on, Brian.
Everybody needs to go stream No Strings Attached.
So is this just under Brian Jones and Friends?
>> It's under Brian Robert Jones.
>> Brian Robert Jones.
>> Yeah. >> All right, well, thanks so much, Brian.
>> Of course, thanks for having me on.
>> No, thanks for putting us on to that disgusting song, Liquid Dreams.
I haven't thought about that in a long time.
>> Sorry about that, yeah, it's a bit of a doozy.
>> Let's catch up soon, Brian.
Good to see you.
>> Absolutely, man.
I'll talk to you soon.
>> See you. >> Peace.
>> Peace. >> See you.
>> See you, man.
>> All right, should we get into the top five?
>> It's time for the top five on iTunes.
So this week's top five, we're comparing the top hits of 2020 versus 2000.
I think I actually know why.
I usually forget why we choose every year.
This one, it's very obvious.
2000 was the year that No Strings Attached was released.
Wow, this is interesting, because we're straight up doing a full 20 year comparison.
>> Mm-hm.
>> 20 years, people talk about a lot as being a type of cultural cycle.
I feel like now that everything's out of whack and clones walk among us and
nobody cares, that some of that 20th century cultural cycle stuff might not apply.
But people always used to say 20 years, that's a cycle.
In the 70s, there was a nostalgia for the 50s that came back in the music,
in the 80s and 60s, whatever, people say this stuff.
Is it true now?
Probably a little bit.
Definitely in fashion, you can see people hearkening back to some of the buffer
styles of the early 2000s and kind of recontextualizing them in interesting ways.
Well, let's get started.
The number five song this week in the year 2000 was Joe, I Wanna Know.
>> Yeah.
This song's tight.
>> When I first saw the title, a song called I Don't Wanna Know came to mind first.
>> Tasteful acoustic guitar.
>> Yeah.
>> I like that really quiet, woo, woop, woop.
That guitar tone is very Hell Freezes Over.
>> Have we done a joke about Joe Walsh's recording a solo album in the next studio
where he's like, anonymously rip some nylon string leads over an R&B song?
>> This also could be like, cuz this is a little bit after the massive success
of Santana Supernatural.
>> Right. >> It'd be hilarious if somebody was like,
we should do this with Joe Walsh.
And then it's like, they just bring all these finished R&B songs in.
And they're just like, all right, Joe, just throw down some licks in there.
Not too much.
We want this to be a hit.
It's the year 2000, Joe.
We don't need a full Hotel California solo.
And he's like, all right.
And they just put this out.
It's just like, Joe Walsh featuring Joe, I wanna know.
And just all these classic rock heads are in there just like, okay.
>> I bought the CD single and I don't know, man.
>> [LAUGH] >> This song's also kind of the opposite
of Liquid Dreams.
He's saying, I wanna know what turns you on, so I can be that for you.
>> This is a much more mature songwriter.
>> [LAUGH] Yeah.
The number five song in our era in 2020, 24K Golden featuring Ian Dior with Mood.
>> This is new to me.
>> Yeah, me too.
This person, 24 Golden is from San Francisco.
>> Cool.
So I'm reading the notes about this song.
The song kind of blew up on TikTok, classic story in these days.
And it says 24K Golden cited the music on Lego Rock Band as how he was introduced to
a lot of punk, emo and rock music which influences sound.
Bands that were included on the Nintendo DS version include Good Charlotte, Sum 41,
The All-American Rejects, Queen and Vampire Weekend.
>> Hell yeah.
>> Wait, so Matt, you wrote up these notes.
So basically, there's a quote somewhere where this person said that video game
influenced them and then you looked and saw who was on the video game.
>> Correct, yeah, the Nintendo DS version specifically is what he mentioned.
So there's other bands on the more Xbox version,
but those bands are specifically on the Nintendo DS version.
>> And he was specific about which version he played?
>> He was.
>> Not the bands.
Just to be clear, not the bands.
He was just clear about the Nintendo DS version.
>> Yes.
I was thinking that that riff kind of had like a Modest Mouse vibe or something.
>> I can kind of see that.
The funny thing is, it's hard to keep all this [inaudible] straight.
Is Rock Band and Guitar Hero the same company?
Is that like the same umbrella of like games?
>> I have no idea, dude.
>> I couldn't have told you that we were on Lego Rock Band.
I know that we were on Just Dance 2 because that was like a really big one
and that's come up like a million times.
So I've been reminded many times that we're on Just Dance 2.
But Lego Rock Band, see also, I feel like in this era,
when Guitar Hero came out, there was a very specific songs on it.
And you still can see sometimes if you look at like streaming numbers or YouTube or something,
you can still see that there are specific songs that were on Guitar Hero,
like Paint It Black by the Rolling Stones or something.
Obviously, that was already a big hit,
but it's like a whole new generation got into that song specifically.
I'm sure way more of the younger generation knows Paint It Black than like,
let's spend the night together or something because Paint It Black was on Guitar Hero.
But I feel like later on, there were expansion packs and I remember people like,
"Are you cool to be on Guitar Hero?"
I think eventually, it wasn't like every song with a guitar available on all these platforms.
Wait, Jake, have you ever played any of these games?
>> I think maybe once, was it out like 15 years ago?
>> Just about.
>> 2005 was when Guitar Hero started.
>> Oh, yeah.
>> You nailed it.
>> 15 years ago.
>> I remember a buddy of mine, I think had it and it's like,
it's like a plastic guitar with four keys on it, right?
>> Yeah, and then you hold this like-
>> Four buttons?
>> Yeah, four buttons and you hold this thing in the middle that's like,
you don't hold a pick, but you hold this just handle to go up and down like, [MUSIC]
>> You're trying to rhythmically sink in with the song, right?
>> Yeah, because the notes are coming at you.
>> Right.
>> So it's like two greens coming down like,
Have you played a lot of it?
>> Yeah, I feel like when that was big, we were touring a lot.
So it's be like hanging out in backstage areas or in a van playing it.
Yeah, I always liked Guitar Hero.
I never really played rock band.
What made it Lego rock band?
Just like it looked like Legos?
>> Yeah.
>> All right.
>> Lego rock band.
>> The number four song in 2000 was the aforementioned Destiny's Child,
mentioned in the O-Town song, Liquid Dreams.
Their song, Jumpin' Jumpin' was number four this week in 2000.
Classic.
Jumpin' Jumpin'
>> That part is crazy.
>> That like ascending part?
>> Yeah, like that bridge or whatever.
>> Yeah, it's funny.
>> Pretty prom.
>> It's always reminded me of something.
>> Like Mozart or something.
>> Yeah, I was going to say like Beethoven.
>> Can I also just say that the phrase, like the lyric, what is it?
Pockets full grown?
>> Their pockets are full grown.
>> I just feel like that also fits into a lot of what we've been talking today about
like the Frankensteining and the 3D printing of the body parts.
Like there's something kind of Cronenberg about full grown pockets.
>> Is it a double?
>> Like body horror, you know?
>> Is there a double meaning?
>> It's body art.
Well, the double, I mean, well, if your pockets are full.
>> Is it about, it's their money?
>> Yeah, if your pockets are full grown, they're stuffed with money.
>> I also wondered if it was, obviously the money,
but maybe it was also the pockets were full grown.
>> Is it an innuendo?
>> I don't know.
I mean, that's kind of a weird vibe.
Like, look at that dude.
He's got a huge [BLEEP]
>> His pockets.
>> There's some precedent for that.
>> Yeah, it doesn't quite.
>> Both pockets.
>> Yeah, two.
>> It's not like they said like his fly or his like zipper is full grown.
Pockets is not quite the right place.
>> Yeah, it's true.
>> Wait, but what's the whole line?
>> The club is full of ballers and their pockets full grown.
>> It's basically saying, listen, we know everybody's got boyfriends and girlfriends,
but you should leave them at home because the club is so fun.
Why can't everybody go and have a good time?
Or basically it's saying, listen, you're gonna cheat on your significant other tonight.
>> [LAUGH]
>> Spare them the embarrassment.
>> Well, it's-
>> And keep them at home.
>> It's ladies night.
It's ladies night and there are a lot of eligible bachelors on the dance floor.
>> They're dressing the men and the women.
Ladies leave your man at home.
Don't they also say fellow leave your girl with her friends?
>> Yeah, well, okay, so it cuts both ways.
>> This is very like Shakespearean.
>> [LAUGH]
>> Destiny's Child is like the magical forest nymph.
Or what do you call it?
Like the naughty little half man.
>> Sure.
>> Is that Pan or-
>> Pan, I think it's Pan.
>> He would show up and try to break up couples and rearrange people.
>> I mean, it sounds like this song is really setting up like a Shakespearean comedy of
errors.
Where the ladies and the men who are both thinking that they're leaving each other's
significant others at home, wind up reuniting in the club.
Where unbeknownst to one another, they weren't expecting to find each other again.
>> In Shakespeare, they'd be wearing masks and they wouldn't know who they were talking
to their significant other already.
>> Imagine, Jake, that I know that you guys have a strong marriage and stuff.
But if I send a little forest nymph over to your house and I said, Jake, there's a very
interesting club night tonight.
And I think you're gonna enjoy it quite a bit.
>> [LAUGH]
>> And you're like, well, dude, me and Hannah, we're gonna hang in the backyard.
And I'm like, no, no, no, tell Hannah, leave her with her friends.
And you're like, all right, hey, Hannah, you down to hang out with your friends tonight?
I'll drive you over to their house.
And then I'm like, all right, great, Jake.
Now you head to the club.
And you're like, okay.
And then I go over to Hannah's friend's house and I'm like, hello, ladies.
>> [LAUGH]
>> I've got a very interesting club night I'd like to bring you to.
And Hannah's like, well, I'm supposed to just hang here with my friends.
And I'm like, don't worry about it.
Jake will never find out.
Just come to the club night.
That's what's happening here.
>> The number four song in 2020 is Pop Smoke.
Although, rest in peace, Pop Smoke.
I don't want to horse around too much with the recently deceased person's music.
>> Wait, the last song was called Mood, right?
Mood to Mood Swings.
>> Whoa, yeah, Mood and then Mood Swings.
That's interesting.
>> This is one of those songs where it almost feels like this still could be one long chorus.
>> Yeah.
Has there been a chorus?
>> I guess this part.
>> I think that's it.
>> The number three song in 2000 is Matchbox 20 with Bent.
>> That's a pretty sick title, Bent.
I don't know if I know this.
>> This song eventually went to number one.
Yeah, I'm not sure if I know this.
Of course, I know Matchbox 20, but.
>> Pretty heavy.
>> Yeah, heavier than I expected.
>> Oh, this is a little more familiar.
>> Nasty.
>> Nasty town.
>> Jake, are you super familiar with Matchbox 20?
>> I don't know that one.
I know the hit.
What's the other one?
I wanna.
>> And there's Smooth, Santana featuring.
>> I hate Smooth.
>> That chord change, I'm not totally sure what it is.
I'd better sit at the piano.
That reminds me of,
It's the move that wouldn't have been happening very much in 2000.
It's a very interesting mix of vibes.
Because it's all minor and then it's.
It really sounds like a 70s AM type song.
>> Yeah, there's a lot of chords.
>> Yeah, I mean, he's a sophisticated songwriter.
I've always thought Rob Thomas seemed like an interesting person.
Whether you're a fan or not,
he's just a true songwriter in the old school sense.
>> Yeah.
>> So I was like that about him.
And I have some vague memory of once going deep on him on Wikipedia.
And he came from a hardscrabble background.
I was like, all right, hell yeah, Rob Thomas.
Did he have some big beefs with somebody?
Did he and Fred Durst ate each other?
Rob Thomas beef.
>> While I look, I'm very curious about what Jake doesn't like about Smooth.
Because I know that song has a smash mouth level of internet.
It occupies an interesting space in the internet.
>> Does it?
>> Yeah, I feel like it was a thing where people would change their Twitter names to
Santana featuring Rob Thomas Smooth, one of those really long.
>> Right.
>> It was one of those.
>> The Grammy winning.
Yeah.
Actually, Brian Jones loves that song.
Maybe it's a generational thing.
There's been a few times that he teased it in a Vampire Jam live.
[LAUGHTER]
>> The riff.
I think probably we're doing New Dorf or something.
Because it's like.
Then you go into a solo.
>> I did find one beef, Stephen Jenkins.
I guess he's the lead singer of Third Eye Blind.
>> Sure.
>> That makes sense.
They're jockeying for position.
>> Yeah.
>> Contemporaries.
>> It seems like Stephen Jenkins made fun of Rob Thomas's weight gain at some point.
>> This is familiar on the show.
>> Not cool, man.
All right.
Well, sorry, Jenkins.
I don't know if there's any other evidence that might make you look a little better.
But we're very influenced by the wisdom of Jim Morrison on the show.
And we've got to say to you, what's so odious about being fat?
We're on Rob Thomas's team.
And that's a real low blow.
And Stephen Jenkins and Third Eye Blind, they were very successful as well.
But I'll tell you what Stephen Jenkins never had.
He never had a smooth.
So I can imagine he's probably feeling a little bit salty.
And he wanted to come for Rob Thomas.
And did Rob Thomas at least get a good zinger back at him?
>> Yes.
Thomas eventually fired back saying that Jenkins has, quote, no soul whatsoever.
[SOUND]
>> Damn, he went nuclear.
[LAUGH]
I prefer the music of Third Eye Blind to Matchbox 20.
But I'm gonna side with Matchbox on this one.
[LAUGH]
I wonder if Stephen maybe reached out to Joe Walsh and be like, hey, man.
[LAUGH]
Let's do our own collab.
[LAUGH]
>> Never, the label canceled it.
He wanted to have his supernatural moment with Joe Walsh.
[LAUGH]
The Joe Walsh record.
>> Joe Walsh featuring Stephen Jenkins.
[LAUGH]
Great idea.
>> The song's called Rough.
[LAUGH]
Also, I like Rob Thomas firing back that he has no soul.
Because I assume because they're both musicians, he meant the way musicians use soul,
like a particular kind of depth of character in the way you perform or whatever.
But I could also just picture him literally just being like, you're an empty vessel, man.
You're nothing.
You're nowhere, man.
You literally have no soul.
You're nothing to me.
You're pathetic.
You are an empty, nothing person.
You have no soul, even darker.
>> Yeah, because Rob's coming from this kind of bluesy, kind of hard rock,
wear your heart on your sleeve kind of thing.
Stephen's much more poppy and ironic.
>> Yeah, I wonder what their backgrounds are.
>> I don't want this art school crap.
[LAUGH]
>> Which one's the art school?
>> It's Third Eye.
[LAUGH]
Third Eye is like corporate indie.
[LAUGH]
Yeah, in the late '90s, you go down to a Cooper Union, a Parsons,
St. Martin's in London, you'd be hearing Third Eye Blind blasting out of every studio.
[LAUGH]
>> Yeah, you'd be hearing later period pavement albums going straight into,
do, do, do, do, do, do.
I mean, I went to college in that era, and absolutely,
people were blasting Third Eye Blind on the reg.
>> Third Eye and Matchbox, they both wrote some legitimate tunes.
>> Yeah.
>> You can't take that away from them.
It's just, you know what, Jenkins, we literally could have been here celebrating
both bands and their achievements.
But instead, you just had to say this mean [BLEEP] for no reason
about a guy who's, at bare minimum, you're equal.
You got something, Seinfeld?
>> Yeah, I'm on Rob Thomas' Wikipedia page, and his biography,
so there's a whole section called biography, and then there are sort of sub points.
And the biography is, it's in the chapters, and it's 1972 to '92, Early Life,
'93 to '95, Formation of Matchbox 20, '96 to '98, its first two albums, 1999, Smooth.
>> Wow.
>> In his biography, Smooth is just its own isolated chapter just by itself.
>> Yeah, I mean, it really is one of the biggest songs of all time.
And also remember, 1999, peak of the record industry.
>> A lot of CD singles.
>> And then Rob Thomas actually had a solidly successful solo career.
And I remember one of his solo hits got rewritten into a pop song years later.
He's really a talented songwriter who's had some real durable hits, some real contributions.
And am I correct, Seinfeld, that I feel like I've definitely been on his Wikipedia page before?
Am I correct that he comes from a hardscrabble background?
>> It appears to be that way.
I will say that he was born in West Germany and then moved to Florida.
>> On a military base?
>> Yes, he was born at, yes, that's right.
His father was a US Army sergeant.
>> You'd be shocked how many notable Americans were born in Germany.
Like Martin Lawrence.
>> Wow.
>> All on military bases.
>> Interesting.
Yeah, there's a whole paragraph, his home life was not stable.
I mean, I don't want to air all his business out here, but you're right.
He's definitely very hardscrabble.
>> And then one final question.
Am I using the word hardscrabble correctly?
>> I think we might have to ask Winter.
That's a scrabble joke for you.
>> Good one.
>> Hardscrabble.
Involving hard work and struggle is the definition of hardscrabble.
So I think so.
Struggle.
>> Seems close enough.
Okay.
The next song, Pop Smoke, For The Night, featuring Lil Baby and DaBaby.
>> I think we heard this last time, right?
>> Yeah, yeah.
>> He's what like a thief in the night?
>> He's real discreet, like a thief in the night.
>> I like this song.
It says the melody of For The Night is a recreation of an original composition by Swiss producer,
Wilo.
According to Wilo, French producer Cash Money, see this is, I don't know if it's Cash Money
AP or Cash Money App, stole the beat saying Cash Money App.
So basically a guy claims this, I guess they're all credited now, but the Swiss producer claimed
that a French producer stole his beat and made a new version of it and didn't credit him.
Interesting, there's all these Europeans working on this.
Also, what's the story with a French producer being named Cash Money App?
I wonder if it is Cash Money App.
That also just sounds like something you get a weird ad for.
>> Yeah.
>> Download the Cash Money App today.
Don't wait till payday.
>> Yeah, there's Cash App, right?
Cash App?
>> Oh, yeah, there's Cash App.
>> It's like Venmo?
>> DJ Venmo.
There's got to be a DJ Venmo.
>> DJ Venmo.
>> I mean, Venmo already sounds like it could be some type of pop star, rapper.
What number are we at for 2000, number two?
>> Number two.
>> All right, we got to pick up the pace here.
Cisco Incomplete.
I don't know if I know this song because of course I know Cisco, the Thong song, that was huge.
>> Because I figured it out.
It is Cash Money AP.
>> Okay.
>> Because the guy's name is Alex Petit.
So his initials are AP.
>> AP.
He's not trying to be like an app.
>> I don't, yeah, I don't think so.
>> Some solid wordplay in here.
>> That tasteful nylon guitar vibe.
>> Crucial part of the sound of the era.
>> This was the second single from Joe Walsh's 2000 comeback album.
Some fans were disappointed by how little guitar there was, but
Joe said, "Hey man, what I put in there counts."
>> It's the notes you don't play.
All right.
>> You know, solid classic sentiment about all the things that you might have in life
don't mean nothing if you don't have somebody to share it with.
Something that we've been told by the poets throughout the ages.
Even a rich man is nothing without love, a rich person.
Although I'm so haunted by O-Town Liquid Dreams now that I'm thinking about this guy who says,
"Man, I go to fancy restaurants, I got cars, I got money, but I've got nothing.
I'm incomplete without a special girl to share it with."
Now I'm picturing the O-Town guys taking Cisco, I'd be like, "Cisco, man, I used to be like you.
I used to think that life was nothing without a partner.
But we're here to introduce you to a new technique.
It's called Liquid Dreams.
Rather than wasting time and energy trying to pursue a romantic relationship, here's what you
do.
You list 10 hottest girls you can think of and write down the quality of each of them that you
like.
Then you combine them into a Frankenstein and then you go to sleep.
>> Then you fall asleep.
>> When you wake up, you will be pleasantly surprised to know that you had a wet dream
using our technique.
>> Is there a VR component or technology, guys?
>> No.
>> Well, I think it's more like, did you guys start watching this HBO documentary series
about NXIVM, which is what some people would call it cults, but it started as being almost
more like a self-help organization.
They had something called ESP, the Executive Something Program.
When you hear them explain it, you would probably say, "Well, there's elements of this that
are reminiscent of Scientology."
But the framing of it was a little less kooky.
There's a part in it where they're talking about their charismatic founder, who seemed
to be a very smart person, and he would present people this basically technique.
It's kind of like a way of thinking, almost like it looked like a flow chart or something
that would help people move past trauma and believe in themselves, all the usual self-help
things.
And there's a part in this first episode of the series, which was pretty compelling,
where they show this flow chart-looking thing, and they're like, "So our founder created
this.
This was his proprietary way for people to stop holding themselves back and unlock things.
It's a technique that you get through talking and thinking, whatever."
One of the people says, "And here's the thing.
It might just look like a bunch of words on a paper, but this, when he copyrighted it,
this was actually classified as an AI, because this concept is so powerful."
So anyway, when you picture Cisco being like, "Is this some sort of technology?"
I can totally picture the O-Town guys having a cult, where they're like, "Oh no, it's
a very powerful technology."
And he's like, "So is it like, do I need a CD-ROM?"
Or something's like, "No, no, no.
This technology is so powerful that literally I can hand you this photocopy, and contained
here on this piece of paper is something that's more powerful than all the supercomputers
in Langley, Virginia."
You know what I mean?
That's just such a classic, weird, corporate cult thing.
It's like, "This is technology."
- Well, yeah, I feel like Hubbard referred to Scientology as a technology.
- Oh, really?
So maybe there's a long precedent for it.
- There's definitely that term of this system of doing self-analysis with the E-meter and
all that is like a technology.
- Right.
- Or like, you know, like...
- I love that idea of just like...
- Thinking about different parts of different women.
That's a technology.
- This is a technology.
Like, it's just a good thing.
So is this like a VR thing?
Do I throw it on?
Like, no, no, no.
You're experiencing the technology as we speak.
Well, hold on.
It just kind of seems like you guys just have an idea.
What do you think technology is?
We have a trademark for this.
We have a patent in the U.S. Patent Office that will tell you that this is a technology.
- I will say that I could imagine there being like an Alex Jones-style supplement involved
in this that would guarantee a more liquid dream or something like that that you take
right before bed.
- But it's really just like some kind of like store-bought like potassium supplement?
- Oh, yeah.
It's a placebo.
- Where you just like change...
- Well, yeah, it's basically just like vitamin D.
- It's vitamin D.
- It's vitamin D.
- I could also like picture like if we ever take time crisis on the road and we have to
like, you know, create like an opening introduction or something, it would definitely be like
the video we play would just be like kind of infomercial and just be like, "Time crisis
is a technology.
It's a very powerful technology.
And you know what?
It doesn't involve fancy VR goggles or CD-ROMs.
But time crisis is a way of thinking that will change your life more than any high-pollutant
computer technology.
This is a powerful ancient..."
I think that's another like weird kind of spammer thing is like ancient technology.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Time crisis is an ancient technology.
- That's a great phrase, "ancient technology."
That is good.
-
What's the actual definition of technology?
- Great question.
- All right.
Merriam-Webster.
It's a three-parter.
The practical application of knowledge, especially in a particular area, pretty broad.
- There we go.
- Boom.
Time crisis is a technology.
- It is.
A capability given by the practical application of knowledge, a manner of accomplishing a
task, especially using a technical process, the specialized aspects of a particular field
or endeavor.
- Wow.
- It's really more that than like computer technology, like digital technology that we
sort of associate the word with.
- Yeah.
Okay.
You know what?
I'm sorry that we were hard on, you know, any of these calls because...
- On O-Town.
- We're hard on O-Town.
Liquid Dreams is a technology.
Yeah, I work in tech.
Oh, man, I could also picture that, just like a brutal like tech talk.
I'm like giving a...
I'm giving a TED Talk one day, and I'm just like trying to like win over some Silicon
Valley people, and I'm just like, "Now, you guys probably think I'm an American musician
radio personality, and you guys work in tech.
What do I have to tell you guys?"
Well, guess what, people?
I work in tech too.
I've created my own technology.
I actually work in ancient technology.
Let me break this down for you and just have this like weird, like self-aggrandizing thing
about like, "Now, you guys use coding to create your technology.
Me, I use a pen and paper and my vocal cords.
But what we're accomplishing is the exact same thing, technology."
All right.
Number two song 2020, a new Drake song featuring Lil Durk, "Laugh Now, Cry Later."
They filmed the music video at Nike's headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon.
- Oh, dang.
- Interesting.
This is the first single from Drake's upcoming album, "Certified Lover Boy."
That's a good title.
- ♪ The whole thing slow down ♪
♪ Baby, we took a trip, now we on your block and it's like a ghost town ♪
♪ Baby, where did these [ ] be at when they said they doing all this and all that?
Tired of beefing you up, you can't even pay me enough to react
Been waking up in the crib, but sometimes I don't even know what I'm making ♪
- I like that.
Yeah, it's a good beat.
I think with Drake songs, we usually hit our stride on the third list.
So let's not force it.
- I mean, I feel like this is one of the stronger pieces from him in a lot of pieces.
This is one of the stronger...
- Pieces of technology.
- ... from Drake in a while.
Yeah, some new Drake technology that I'm responding to.
- Each individual song is technology.
An album is a super technology.
- Drake just dropped...
It's like Drake released new technology.
- That really does sound like some musician who fully flips their lid.
- Let me do this.
Full Kanye.
- Yes.
- Well...
- Oh, I mean, you can see him being like, "I got this new technology."
- I can see Kanye referring to music as technology.
In fact, it wouldn't shock me a furty head.
But I'm talking about somebody who goes so buck wild that they're just like...
The person's like, "So on your new song, 'Technology'..."
"Oh, the song is called 'Technology'?"
"No, no, the song is 'Technology'."
"I'm a little bit confused here.
Please do not refer to my technology as songs.
That's a diminutive and that's demeaning to my technology."
"Okay."
Just absolutely refusing to call it anything.
Also, I love the idea that tech...
I think I'm kind of getting the vibe off of that very big first definition of technology.
That almost anything in the world could be technology.
Like you could probably treat it...
- Yeah, like a recipe in a cookbook could be technology.
I mean, it could be...
Yeah.
- It's all technology, baby.
- Have I ever made you guacamole before?
Because, I mean, my guacamole technology is unstoppable.
- Oh, man.
I could totally picture that.
Like Jake in...
We should make a fake YouTube ad.
That's Jake being like an entrepreneur.
That's like, "Hey, what's up?
I bet you're probably about to click 'skip ad'."
Hold on a second.
What if I told you that right now in Silicon Valley,
there's a lot of people making buttloads of money working in tech?
And you said, "Well, what does that have to do with me?
I don't live in Silicon Valley.
I don't know how to code.
I don't know the first thing about technology."
Well, hold on a second.
And then like custom Jake in the kitchen, "Have you ever made guacamole?"
(laughing)
Even what you're doing right now, watching me, is technology.
We are engaged in a technological conversation.
And I want you to know that you can make billions off your own tech.
- Guacamole technology, LTV.
- I patented technology will help you understand that everything you do is technology.
Why should the Silicon Valley fat cats take all the money
when you're performing technology every single day?
- I smashed the guts of my initial public offering of guacamole technology.
(laughing)
Set records that day on Wall Street.
- I love that there's some sort of an underlying, like, what's the word?
Like co-opting, like a little bit of a problematic thing about Jake disrupting guacamole.
(laughing)
And reframing it as technology.
- Yeah.
It's totally cool.
(laughing)
- Then Jake gets called out for people being like,
"How can you claim that you invented guacamole?
Obviously this dish comes from Mexico."
And then Jake does like, kind of like, mea culpa video where he's like,
"Okay, I messed up to some extent.
When I make guacamole, I am creating original technology.
However, I never said that my technology was not based on the ancient technology
of the people of Mexico."
(laughing)
- Ancient guacamole technology.
(laughing)
- For Jake, it's like real pedantic.
It's like, I see the confusion,
but what you are referring to is ancient technology.
- Guacamole is just your palate.
What you decided to do with that raw material, that's your IP.
- Precisely.
- The video of Jake standing in front of a guacamole green Ferrari.
He's like, "Hey, I see you.
You're about to skip this ad.
But I bet you're wondering how a guy like me
ended up with a guacamole green Ferrari."
(laughing)
And everybody's like, "All right, yeah, I want to know.
What's your story, dude?"
And he's like, "One word, technology."
(laughing)
Those videos are always like 45 minutes long if you don't skip the ad.
(laughing)
I feel like there's one I used to always see.
It was like a bodybuilder just like slamming like pancakes into your (beep)
and just basically being like, "Hey, what's up?
Have you guys been on (beep) diets that made you (beep) hungry all the time?
Well, guess what?
I eat whatever the (beep) I want."
(laughing)
I was like that being an element of Jake's thing.
Just like, "I drive a guacamole green Ferrari
and I eat whatever the (beep) I want.
You still want to skip this ad?
Nah, come with me."
(laughing)
All right, we got to wrap this (beep) up.
Number one song in 2000, Janet Jackson, "Doesn't Really Matter."
(dramatic music)
Produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.
This is from the Nutty Professor 2 soundtrack.
Oh, and it was also on your album, "All For You."
Yeah, this is a good song.
I remember this.
The music video features an AIBO,
which was the very first consumer artificial intelligence robot.
(dramatic music)
♪ Doesn't matter what your friends are telling you ♪
♪ Doesn't matter what my family's saying to you ♪
♪ It just matters that I'm in love with you ♪
This is a cool song.
♪ It just matters that you are in love with me ♪
Oh, this is cool, yeah.
♪ It doesn't matter if they won't accept you ♪
♪ I'm accepting of it, you and the things you do ♪
♪ Just as long as it's you ♪
♪ Nobody but you ♪
♪ Baby, baby ♪
The number one song,
which we've talked about last time,
I guess it's still controversial,
but, or maybe discussed, it's not really controversial,
but it benefits from the appearance of being controversial,
and that's "Waft."
Are you saying something, Matt?
The server just went down.
(beep)
All right, guys, we got some of this
newfangled computer technology has failed us.
I really, I've been telling Apple for years
they should start running it on ancient technology,
but I guess the stuff we use to play the music right now
isn't working, and I'm sure we could figure out
some other way to do it, but rather than that,
you know what, we're just gonna go out now and say,
this has been another episode of "Time Crisis"
with our famous top five countdown,
and we're leaving you folks with one last song,
and it's "Waft," by Cardi B, featuring Megan Thee Stallion.
Play it loud, play it proud, and we'll see you in two weeks.
So long.
♪ I said, certified free ♪
♪ Seven days a week ♪
♪ Wet and gushy ♪
♪ Make that pull-out game weak ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah ♪
♪ Yeah, you're chillin' with some wet and gushy ♪
♪ Bring a bucket and a mop ♪
♪ Put this wet and gushy ♪
♪ Give me everything you got ♪
♪ Put this wet and gushy ♪
♪ Beat it up, baby, catch a charge ♪
♪ Extra large and extra hard ♪
♪ Put this cookie right in your face ♪
♪ Swipe your nose like a credit card ♪
♪ Hop on top, I wanna ride ♪
♪ I do a kegel, I'm kinda wild ♪
♪ Look at my mouth, look at my thighs ♪
♪ It's wetter than sweat, come take a dive ♪
♪ Tie me up like I'm surprised ♪
♪ That's role play, I wear disguise ♪
♪ I want you to park that big Mack truck ♪
♪ Right in this little garage ♪
♪ Make me dream, make it stream ♪
♪ Out in public, make a scene ♪
♪ I don't cook, I don't clean ♪
♪ But let me tell you, I got this ring ♪
♪ Time Crisis with Ezra Koenig ♪
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