Lindsey Weber

Thanks for having us back for such a good reason.

No. It also seems like a thing that people doesn't really seem to care about. They get scrutiny every single year for these reasons, but they don't really ever change anything. But why do you have to pick someone so boring? The more I think about it, the weirder it seems.

He's been in sexy movies. John Krasinski has not been in sexy movies.

You scroll through the Sexiest Man Alive cover list on people's website, and it's like, throughout the 90s, it's like, oh, right, when movies were sexy. And as you scroll up, and then you get to, like, Blake Shelton, it's like, I think we've lost the plot.

Hear Me Out. Oh, yeah.

Well, the projects that they're in, for one thing.

Challengers is a sexy movie.

Monkey Man has a scene.

Dev Patel takes off his shirt to shower and everyone starts watching him and kind of cheering. And I'm like, movies aren't sexy anymore. We don't have sexy stuff anymore. And it was like, oh, they're leaning into this fun, sexy stuff that used to be prevalent everywhere. And it was such a fun throwback.

He directed himself in that. He was like, you're going to film my body this way. It's just like, that's fun.

I want to say that I was shocked and appalled. But after you think about it for one second, you're like, that makes perfect sense.

A bunch of Emmys.

All you have to do is watch Shogun to be like, oh, this is a show filled with sexy people. Why isn't it getting that coverage? And that's like just something that's going to be happening in legacy media forever.

And that's almost why I think that Monkey Man was an even bigger deal because in a way it almost feels like Dev Patel is asserting this aspect of himself that like a lot of people refuse to acknowledge or celebrate. And he's like, I'm gonna have to take it into my own hands and direct a movie where I get to like tell everyone that I am sexy and I want to be called sexy.

I want to be considered sexy. And I also know that everyone thinks I'm sexy anyway. But for some reason or another, they're not writing about it and they're not like broadly accepting this fact in the culture.

People is going to John Krasinski. Yeah. Yeah.

What's going on with the hot daddies? The internet sexualizes daddy in a really fun way that I'm not sure people is willing to contend with.

Even though they will put a daddy in the list without ever really referring to him as a daddy.

That's why I'm looking at the- Put Luke Evans on the cover. You know?

If you don't look at people, if you don't look at the people cover, then I think yes. And I think that that's just, that's a factor of, you know, people casting not the same type of person in every single movie. And as long as that continues to happen, then I think that sexiness is going to, like, continue evolving or keeping up with, like,

what people actually like and what people actually, like, desire, you know? But if you only put Glenn Powell in every movie, then we're going to have a problem. Then, like, the sexiness reaches this kind of stasis. And I do think Glenn Powell is sexy. I don't mean to sound like I'm being mean to Glenn Powell. I think he's sexy.

Imagine thinking you could be mean to Glenn Powell.

it's the scrolling it's tiktok it's reels it's like yeah it's like if that thing isn't sexy to do do one to three flips and you will find something else that's sexy and like the next flick flick sorry it's just like one to three flicks and you will get something sexy in your feed because there's just like sexiness everywhere totally totally

Thank you.

It was fun.

You know, I just have a lot of really useless trivia ping-ponging in my brain, and occasionally I get to trot it out for people.

Yeah, this is great.

Sure. Conspiracy theories offer a sense of certainty in a very uncertain and very random world. When you believe that there is a dark cabal plotting in the shadows to personally ruin your life, it explains a lot of things. It explains why maybe you couldn't get ahead in business. It explains maybe why you got sick or maybe why you got saddled with a medical debt you can't pay.

We were very uncomfortable sitting in the answer, I don't know.

Yeah, it really does. And I think that's why we saw so much conspiracism blooming during lockdown, when suddenly the entire country, the entire planet was confronted with this catastrophic event that forced all of us into our own very private communities, sometimes just our own house with nobody to talk to and nothing to do.

And they went looking for explanations, and some found them in the worst possible places. Hmm.

Hillary Clinton really was sort of the perfect opponent for him because Trump was able to pick up a baton that a previous generation of cranks and conspiracy theorists had already left for him. The early 90s were absolutely consumed by an industry of Clinton conspiracy theories. You had Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate, Vince Foster, cattle futures, all of these countless things that –

seemed crazy to people on the left. But for people like Rush Limbaugh and the growing right wing talk radio industry, the very earliest embers of the internet, this was a huge driver of commerce and culture. So Trump really was just stepping into a role that had already been laid out for him.

And he was able to push it out to people who were really desperate for ways to stop Hillary Clinton from becoming president.

And there's also a general feeling of don't trust anyone that has become a real currency in the conspiracy theory world, regardless of party affiliation. There's this idea that the media is lying to you, the politicians are lying to you, the doctors are lying to you, the banks are lying to you.

What do you say, Mike? I think statistically, given the size and age of the universe, it seems pretty likely that life has existed somewhere at some point. Now, does that mean they're here and flying around and dueling it with F-16s? Seems unlikely, but you never know.

And only these certain influencers are telling you the truth, whether that's InfoWars, whether that's any number of TikTok influencers. There's a belief that everyone's lying to you, but I'm telling you the truth. Trust me. Oh, by the way, if you want to subscribe to my podcast, you want to buy my T-shirts, you want to buy these brain pills, it's going to help you become just like me.

So it becomes this enmeshment of trust and commerce and paranoia to where most people just end up where they don't know up from down or left from right, and they just want someone who isn't lying to them.

We are hardwired to seek patterns. We are hardwired to be afraid of things that are unknown to us. And there will always be people who exploit those fears through books, through pamphlets, through political movements. So we're never going to leave behind the underlying reasons why people flock to conspiracism.

But what we can do is confront conspiracism in our own lives and in the lives of the people closest to us.

Thank you.

Yeah, I want to say it was Cats as well.