The Battle None of You Have Been Waiting For
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Greetings. Ladies, can you feel the disturbance in the force? I feel it. Our powers combined. Do not be alarmed. Listeners, you can't see it, but the three of us are in a studio taping Vibe Check together for the first time ever that y'all can hear it. In Vibe Check herstory. Don't bring you into this. We are all here in New York. Sam Sanders is here in New York. Saeed Jones is here in New York.

And Zach Seffert is here in New York, and you are listening to Vibe Check live. Yes. From New York. Ooh, feels good. I always have a great kiki with y'all. I wonder how crazy, off the rails, better, worse, this will be with us, like, in the same room. Yeah. I'm worried. Because to be clear...

We usually do this over Zoom, right? So the three of us are in different spaces. Zach and Sam are in L.A., but they're in their homes. And then I'm in Columbus in my office. So, I mean, so we're looking at each other on Zoom. We see each other's faces. I'm showered and wearing shoes. Okay, per. I never take that way. That's a good point. I never take that way. You're wearing shoes. I'm dressed. Famously works out before taping.

Wow. I didn't do it today. You didn't do that today? No, because of the New York time zone. All right. So we'll see how it goes. Anywho, New York, you're cute. The weather's fine right now. It's cute. It's very, truly autumnal. Yeah, yeah. I'm enjoying the fall jacket moment we all get to have. I had a nice steak last night. Oh. You know, we're doing all right. We're doing all right. Anywho, this week, we're going to talk about two very different topics.

But both quite interesting. First, Jack Harlow, his new song and the TikTok trend it has birthed called White Boy Winter. Oh, God. That's second. And listeners, if you can't tell...

Two of your hosts are very excited to talk about this. Extremely excited. One of our hosts has gracefully compromised. Gracefully, because last week they wanted to talk about it, and I was like, not on my watch, sweeties. Not on my watch, but this week we're doing it. But before that, we're going to talk about how...

LA has really just turned into Grand Theft Auto. It is not safe in these streets. If you haven't heard by now, a large portion of the 10, the biggest highway in LA, got burnt in a fire. Oh, man. A storage unit under the highway, beneath the bridge. Someone set that on fire. That set a big swath of the 10 up on the suspension bridge on fire. Now the 10 is closed. It's hard to overstate how big of a deal it is when the 10 is closed in LA, but we'll explain that in a bit. Zach, it's crazy out there.

It is. It's pretty bad. It's crazy. But we left right when it happened. Sure did, baby. And that, friends, is why I set that highway on fire. I said, you know what? You know what? I am sick of taping alone in Eastern Standard Time. Oh, baby. I'm bringing my sisters here by hook or by crook. Anywho, we'll talk about all of that. But first...

I want to let y'all know once more the book club episode of Vibe Check with Matthew Desmond about his book, Poverty by America. It's going to air next Wednesday. We took your questions to Matthew. We took our questions to Matthew. Saeed led a beautiful conversation. Y'all will love it. I know. It's really beautiful. It was brilliant. He is wonderful. Wonderful.

warm, detailed. I love where we're like, "Can you give us solutions?" And he was like, "How much time you got?" - Yes, let's go. - You know what I mean? He's so engaging. And also he was just really moved by your questions, listeners, as we were. - They were thorough and thoughtful. - Brilliant. - And it showed that our listeners, you know, do the work, baby. They're doing the work and we appreciate the readings. - Yeah. That's next Wednesday. We're gonna get into this episode right now. But first, wanna thank all of you who sent us fan mail, who reach out to us on social media. We love to get your messages.

We read them all. I think Zach reads them the most feverishly. No, it's Saeed. It's Saeed. We kind of take turns sometimes. I'm now locked out. I can't get out. I check it once a week. I say, thank y'all. And then I move on. But Saeed is like, did you see this email? Did you see it? I want to say just acknowledgement of one email that I thought was kind. One listener was like, you know, your comments about President Obama and TikTok.

she was like, in listening to how you talked about it, she was like, oh, I realize I've been engaging my kids in the same way when it comes to the way they talk about news and politics. And hearing that, she was like, oh, I don't want to do that. And so it was just like, you know what I mean? And look, you're allowed to feel how you feel, but it's always great. I think when based on one of the conversations, people go, let me come at this in a different angle. So love that. First, before we jump into the topics, I want to ask my sisters how they're doing and what's their vibe. Zach, go first.

i'm tired okay but i'm not speaking physically i am tired physically no spiritually existentially spiritually i'm tired because i have realized we do have an epidemic in this country that saeed had warned me about i am now experiencing in real time and that is the epidemic of speaker phones in public

People are answering phone calls and hitting the speaker button and talking very loudly. And it'd be the dumbest phone call. The dumbest phone call. It's never a state secret that I can hear or something. It doesn't. It's always some dumb shit. I don't want to hear. I don't need to hear. Why are you making me hear it? And this really came to a head last night as I flew into JFK. And this young man next to me, who I really enjoyed sitting next to.

lovely guy if he's listening the gel talk and he was so he was literally sitting right next to you not near you literally right next to me so lovely he lost his airpod at one point in the flight we had to like help him find it it was like a whole okay a little bit of community a little bit of community there's also a black man okay we're the only black men in our

I mean, shit, it's a 27-hour flight from L.A., so you better be getting along. I was like, I could go down with this person. Like, you know, if the plane goes down, I'm okay. That's the thing I never think on a plane. I go down all the time. Could I go down with this person to be next to me? That's a whole other thing. That's not where my brain goes. I fly so much that I'm like, hmm, is this person worth, you know, spending my last few moments with? He was. He was great. Until the end. We landed.

And someone called. I'm assuming his mother. I don't know. Because I blacked out. He answers the call and puts on speaker and starts yelling into the phone. On speaker. On speaker. In the plane. When? When, as you've mentioned, he has AirPods. He has AirPods. Oh, no. That you helped him find. Yes. I'm like, you have the ability to talk privately. And he's not. So we're all listening. So not only does he answer the phone to talk to, I think, his mother.

He gets up to go get his luggage, which is a few rows back. And it's on the phone while walking through all these. Was he attractive? Yes. All right. That's why I liked him. That might be part of it. And even that's when that moment I was like, it doesn't matter how fine you are, how nice you are. When you answer your phone in public like this, you are dead. Do you think this happens more now than it did say 10 years ago? 1000%. And Brandon Sharp, our dear producer on the show, mentioned that he believes that this is due to reality TV.

Which I do agree with. So when you watch reality TV, the Kardashians literally all show up. Well, because they have to have both voices to make the tape. Exactly. So they need that audio so you can pick it up. Because it's true. I've been complaining about this for now. Just two more examples. I was sitting at the Detroit airport at the gate.

An older black man, you know, nice guy sitting by himself, lived to be in his, I don't know, sixties. He wasn't even doing FaceTime. He was doing something else that feels related. Listening to music. - With no headphones? - And the only thing that kept me from fully losing it was that it was so cute to watch this older black man listen to "Part of Your World" from the Little Mermaid.

I was like, by the grace of Halle Bailey's voice, am I not losing my shit right now? 'Cause it's so rude. And then another example, I went to lunch, a place that I often go after we tape the podcast in my neighborhood in Columbus. It's what, 2:00 PM in the afternoon? It's lunch, it's a nice vibe. But someone was on their phone, on speakerphone, talking from the time I walked in to the time I paid my check. - I wonder if some of this is also, we lost our home training

being inside the pandemic. - I think that's part of it. - Our sense of what's indoor behavior and outdoor behavior has shifted. - And what it means to share space. - There you go. - I also think we live in an epidemic of main character energy. I used to like, you know, in the wake of Girls, which is an incredibly written show, Lena Dunham really was in her bag with that show. But it created, you know, what I think is one of the most famous main character energy shows ever.

But that has just created a whole generation of people. But she was parodying main character energy. And no one gets that. And everyone's just deep in it. So when people travel, they're even more of a main character and I'm over it. And I think I've hit my breaking point because I'm on planes so much. But now the speakerphone thing. And you were the first person to say it to me. And now I'm picking it up. And usually it's like across the plane or like in the lounge. You know what you gotta do? Jump in the conversation. Hey girl, it's Sam. What's up?

If I can hear you, we're talking. Hey, mama, let's go. Let's go. I'm truly fascinated. I think the reality TV show element is really interesting. Listeners, are you seeing that? Because truly, I'm like, this is a thing. It's a thing. I blame, then, ultimately, reality show producers. The easiest way to get a phone call on tape is through speakers. And you want to be able to kind of dramatize it. They are a major villain. They created this problem. They created Donald Trump. Listen, reality show producers...

y'all owe us. Anywho, next. Saeed, what is your vibe? My vibe is good. I'm in New York for the next couple of weeks. I'm here to be with y'all. We're doing a bunch of things together in person. I mean, literally, I keep kind of giggling just seeing you across the table from me. It's so fun, and we're getting to see our whole team here. It's just so fun, and Thanksgiving is coming up, and my birthday.

and so I decided I wanted to celebrate all of that. So yes, Sagittarius season is almost upon us, children. The light is coming. But yeah, my vibe is honestly, I'm just, I'm feeling good. I'm happy. Got a lot of cool things going on. Oh, I guess one little thing I can say. I think it's

public enough. I am joining the faculty of the Bennington College Writing Seminars to teach creative writing. I'm so excited. Can I go to your class? You can. If you get accepted. Oh, oh,

Where is Bennington? Where is this school? Bennington's in Vermont, Bennington College. I'll go to Vermont. Yeah, and it's cool because it's a low residency program. And so we will be on campus for like 10 days in January. And then the rest of the time it's over email. You know, students sending me their work. So I'm just really excited. And Vermont's cute in the winter. Vermont is cute. I've been there once before. Stay in Hotel Vermont. I'm going to stay on campus.

so yeah i'm just you know it feels good i love this time of year i'm excited to be with you and i'm excited to have you know some career stuff coming up are you excited for your students to be vibe check listeners and you better make them vibe check listeners you walk in the class and you say if you want to hear words that will change the world

I will be assigning classwork from my show. Oh, that's so funny. Actually, this is funny because yesterday I got my hair done. My girl Jamie, a friend and a neighbor, we're sitting in the kitchen as we do. And two of her friends were there, lovely black gay guys visiting from Seattle. And they happened to both be wonderful drag queens, one of whom just won a passion. And so we said hello already. But then, you know, we're getting into the conversation. And I guess I laughed. And one of them turned around and said, I recognize your voice. Are you...

And just like that, because even though we'd already said hello, that moment of connecting the dots. And then I looked and I realized, I was like, oh my God, you're wearing, you know, the breakup with your boyfriend shirt from The Read. So we just had a whole conversation. So we're out here. Yes. I love it. Sam, how are you? How's your vibe, my love? My vibe is good. The flight was okay yesterday. No one was on speakerphone.

It wasn't Southwest Airlines. Ooh, okay. And I slept really well last night at the hotel, so glad for that. But my vibe is still making sense of or peace with or shaking my fist at...

the Vogue profile that dropped this week of Jeff Bezos wife Did y'all see this against my will Logged on to the Vogue Instagram account just to in the comments throw a bunch of tomatoes If y'all don't know Jeff Bezos in the last few years has begun dating Lauren Sanchez

after his big and messy divorce from Mackenzie Bezos, who's actually become a great philanthropist. - I know she had a good laugh yesterday. - She sure did. But I don't know who paid Vogue to do this, but Vogue did the most fawning photo spread and profile of Lauren Sanchez.

makes your skin crawl the more you read it. It was bad. Also, the photo. Have y'all seen the photo? Oh, you read it? I read it, girl. Oh, you read it? I didn't even read it. So, the lead photo is Jeff Bezos in a cowboy hat and like a vintage SUV and then Lauren Sanchez in like a tank top. Clinging to him in like the weirdest. Laying on him in the seat and clinging to him so weirdly. It looks like a farce. Oh, yeah. And the airbrushing is doing work in that photo. Heavy work. And the bicep was enlarged. I don't think his arm is that big.

That looks in love. I guess, like, you know, it was funny to watch these really weird pictures. The listeners go Google them. But it was disappointing to see Vogue do the kind of cleanup job it did for that couple. Was it disappointing? I guess my expectations for how Vogue under Anna Wintour engages elitism are so low that I'm like, oh. But I think the thing with these legacy institutions, all of them, Vogue...

The New Yorker, New York Magazine, all these big magazines, when they want to do real journalism, they can. Even Vanity Fair, when they want to do real journalism, they can. And Vogue chose not at all to question power in this moment. They spent half the piece talking about how she's like this great philanthropist. And then there's like a line about how, well, what are they doing for carbon emissions? They have built a mega clock 10,000 feet beneath the ground.

They keep flying to space unsuccessfully. And at one point, the profiler is like, do you feel bad about all your carbon footprint? She's like, no, we're building the future. And that was it.

Push back against power. It hurt me that there was no pushback. I will say I cannot recall a moment in recent history in which Vogue has successfully pushed back against power in the pro-pop. Vanity Fair, though, I think does a better job of it. Vanity Fair, well. Vanity Fair gets catty. I agree. And they have the space to do it. It would be so, I mean, Teen Vogue is the example. Their summit is this weekend here in LA. I'll be there if you're in town. It's going to be great. But Teen Vogue would have pushed back. So it's sad, to your point, that why does Vogue have this opportunity when they're not saying something?

Also, I love Anna Leibovitz, but like, girl, break free of the grayscale or whatever you're doing with these photos. It's always just like, we get it, Annie. Well, frankly, well, at least based on the one photo that I endured. Yeah.

I actually felt her bias toward that kind of Grace Hill lighting worked with her ashy ass. It did. The problem is when she tries to shoot black people, I'm not disappointed because I don't have the expectation that this iteration of Vogue would push back against power. But I am surprised that Vogue would be like, but we'll do a cover shoot with you. You know, like it would be one thing for Vogue to just be like, well, we don't get into that. But also like don't give them the glossy. The profile was thousands of words. Oh my God.

Anywho, my vibe is laughing at the Bezos-Sanchez family. Okay, fair. That's my vibe. All right, listeners, before we get into this episode, we want to thank all of you who have sent us fan mail and reached out to us on social media. We absolutely love reading your messages, so keep them coming at vibecheckatstitcher.com. All right, with that, shall we jump in? Let's do it. Let's get into this mess. Let's do it.

All right. So to start off today, we want to talk about cars and our obsession with them and why Sam Sanders thinks they should be ended forever and ever. End them. Also, I realized as we were teasing the segment, Grand Theft Auto, the video game, which is one of the biggest video games of all time. They haven't released one in years. I forget, it's like over six to ten years ago. There's now one coming out right now. So this is perfect timing for us to talk about cars. It sure is. It sure is.

Alright, so for those who haven't heard, over the weekend, Los Angeles traffic became a lot worse. And when I mean a lot, I mean it was wild. Catastrophic. Because to be clear, that's what people are like, well, isn't it always bad? It's always bad. And the reason why it's always bad is because this highway called the 10. The 10 runs from the west side to the east side of LA County. It runs from the beach...

through like Texas actually it goes real far but it's kind of one of the main arteries of Los Angeles County which is the most populous county in the United States with 10 million people all those people drive cars actually this little geography breakdown is really helpful so like when you think of LA think of like the north part and the south part and the divide

The dividing line is the 10. And it's one of the biggest highways in the country. It goes through several states. But without fail, if you're going anywhere in L.A., at some point, you're on the 10. You have to go. You have to go to the 10. Okay, I got it. So, okay, the southerner in me is like, oh, okay, so this is I-35 in Texas. There you go. Which actually goes right up. Actually, Canada all the way to Mexico. Yes, yes. Or like I-65. Got it. So imagine that size of a highway, that big of a thoroughfare. Then imagine it catching on fire. And where it caught on fire is Washington.

wildly horrible for everybody. Like near downtown. Near downtown. So what happens in L.A., I live really close to downtown L.A. You live not too far. You live south of the 10, which the 10 is also a racial divide for the city as well. South of it is. That unusual for highways. Yeah, I always do that, which we can get into that later. So the 10 is kind of a main...

artery of all the interstates that hit in downtown LA. So it becomes this kind of cluster, and it's also considered one of the most dangerous intersections in the entire world. Oh, man. Because of how everything hits. So, on Saturday night around midnight, when the fire caught... And it's arson, they say. It's arson. Someone said it. They don't know who yet. It...

began to rage so badly that parts of the highway began melting. Yes, like literally melting. And this part of the highway is up like 20 feet. And it was on fire. Okay, that actually makes my question even. How does a highway catch fire? So here's the deal. It's concrete. But how can it be so bad that it's melting? Because there's a storage unit underneath this part of the highway. What the hell?

What the hell was in the storage unit? So for a large portion of the tin, it is elevated. Okay. And there are other streets going under it. Yeah. And some portions of the tin, there are things beneath it. Yeah. Like a big storage unit. People live there sometimes. But this part of the highway had a big storage facility on it that was set on fire. A lot of pallets were set on fire. And the fire kept growing. And because of the intensity of the flames, the metal railings of the highway began melting. Ah.

And signed. Then they were like, shut it down. You cannot be on this. And it got so bad that Governor Newsom of California declared a state of emergency for the entire state, just for everyone, because it was so bad. And we were already seeing it ripple. The mayor of L.A., she also asked people not to go to work.

Yesterday? Also, poor Karen Bass. She just got here. Karen Bass is going through it. The big controversy with this is that people were blaming unhoused folks for this fire. It was not an unhoused fire. And Karen Bass is a big advocate for folks dealing with homelessness right now. So it became this huge political issue that's going to spill over forever. But it has made L.A. horrible. Because 300,000 people every day pass that part of the tent. 300,000 every day.

So now everything is just screwed up. Everyone's on surface streets, which was already a mess. The one thing I know about this, just like I was saying on the way here, listen to other news podcasts, is that the last time this happened to the 10, it was like 1994 because of an earthquake. Yeah. I was like, oh, okay. Yeah. And like every few years, they'll shut down portions of major highways for like construction work. Uh-huh.

They get LA folks ready for months for like one day. They're like emotional. Let's come up with a plan. It was several years ago they had Carmageddon where one big highway was out just for a day. People were Y2King that shit. People were scared. So to see this happen unexpectedly, it is shaking the city. It is shaking the city. It is literal infrastructure. Well, before we get to more details around this, Saeed Jones, you've always said LA was hell. What do you think of this news?

I'd say I'd be knowing. I guess. I mean, no, I mean, it's infrastructure is no small thing. You know, look, if people cannot move, I don't know how L.A. works. It's a city. And this is I know what the kind of broader conversation we want to have around driving the future of transportation in this country. But the reality is that for now, L.A., like many other cities, but I think L.A. epitomizes a city that, first of all, if you don't have a car. You're right.

Or if you have a car and you can't get to where you need to go because of the situation on the 10, for example, the city breaks down. Yeah. And this is the thing that I keep thinking about when I think about this story. It is a story of so many cities. And it is a story of...

corporate greed that got us there. But a lot of major cities in America, all of their transpo eggs are in one basket. They're so reliant on cars that if the car and the highway doesn't work, there's no other option. Other developed cities across the world

have multiple options for people. A good bus system, a good train system, et cetera. Because LA has no other real infrastructure for transport on a wide scale besides highways and cars, we're screwed. If our metro system were more robust, this would be less of a problem, but it's not. - It's not. - It's not. - And we're also in the midst of preparing for the Olympics in 2028. - Hey now!

Hey now. Which they have said. Which they have said. No, sorry. This will make you crack up. This will make you crack up. Oh my God. You don't. Hey now. This is why I'm dragging away. Here's the kicker though. Here's the kicker. Can I tell you the kicker?

The powers that be on the Olympic organizing committees have pledged that the L.A. Olympics will be, quote, car-free. Girl. That's what they said! A mess. That's what they said! I love that beautiful home. It's a mess. The universe ain't car-free. Cool. Here's a test. It's a mess. Let's see how you like it. Oh, my God. The plan for the Olympics is to not actually have parking at the venues. So you're forced to ride-share, bus, subway.

But let me tell you something. We're not ready for that. And now we're definitely not ready when one of the biggest highways in the world has now. I guess I will. I'm sorry. I literally have tears. I guess I will say and

I really don't like the Olympics as an organization. There's so much corruption. I feel like the only, and I call this a thin silver lining for hosting the Olympics is it is an opportunity for cities to at least make the case or the attempt to rethink infrastructure in a grand way. I know Paris is doing a lot of stuff, for example, with the sin and like water, you know, and all that kind of stuff. You can swim in it now. Right. But, uh, but that's a tall order. It's pretty bad. It's pretty bad.

Just to turn from the Olympics, I'm thinking about some other larger issues around car transport in the midst of this tin catastrophe.

I was already, when I heard the news, saying, oh, there's going to be people fighting over this traffic. There's going to be rage around this traffic and this traffic jam and this highway shutdown. And I thought that first because that's been my experience as a Californian for the last few years. Road rage gets deadlier every year. Traffic incidents are up astronomically since the pandemic began.

Zach, you shared this data point. According to recent data, 92% of all drivers witnessed a road rage incident in the past year. And in 2022, somebody was shot and killed in a road rage incident every 16 hours. Every 16 hours. And to add to that, to make Saeed hate California even more. Not possible. So I guess how many out of the total percentage of car fatalities each year are in California? Out of 100. 100.

80 out of 100. Oh, wow. Okay, never mind. It was 10%. 10%. So one in 10. One in 10. One in 10. The producers are looking at me like, damn, girl. One in 10. One in 10. Oh, gosh. And it's getting pretty bad. I mean, I've told you all this privately, but months ago, I got in a road rage incident where a guy tried to run me off the road for months.

my neighbors almost got into a fist fight over an evie parking spot which was our

Was it a Tesla driver involved? It was a Tesla driver. Sure was. Sure was. Sure was. Elon Musk supporter was doing this. And this was hours after I was already at LAX picking up Craig from a flight where there was a fight in the arrivals over parking there. So it's just like everywhere is really tense right now. And so my second thought past road rage is like, oh, the thing that we think is the fix for driving is not the fix. Yeah.

We've all invested in this idea of electric cars saving the day. They're not going to save the day. It doesn't change the culture. It doesn't change the culture of driving, which is toxic and problematic. So that's the thing. This is really interesting because if cities like L.A. had a more diversified portfolio of transportation. Yeah.

Obviously, the highway, that would still be a problem, but it would be less of a problem. And it also just shows how dependent we are, not just on cars, but on fossil fuels, right? Because electric vehicles are doing something really essential. The point of that is to begin to move Western nations away from our dependency on fossil fuel. And that is huge and a huge undertaking. However...

That is not going to solve the broader problem, which is dependency on cars. And there's a mythology around electric cars that they're all so great and saving the world. It's not quite true. I want to quote from an L.A. Times op-ed by Michael Schneider.

And he just lays out how these EVs aren't actually going to save us all. One, this idea that electric cars don't pollute. They still pollute, just less. Because the things that you have to do to make them creates pollution, right?

Also, the chemicals and rare earth materials that are needed to make those batteries, they come from conflict regions. They come from bad labor practices. And those kinds of batteries in all kinds of things we use. Yes, yes. Well, and then when you think about California, a place where people have to charge their electric cars,

That is using a power grid that's usually strained all summer. And sometimes what's used to make the electricity to charge those cars is coming from fossil fuels. This idea that these cars will save us, it's so not true. And it's like what I would hope happens in this moment is that Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom and Joe Biden come out and say –

This proves the point. Yeah. Cars aren't sustainable. Highways aren't sustainable. We need some other things. But no one's doing that. They're just saying, here's an EV voucher. It's all good. No, it ain't, baby. No, it ain't. They're definitely been ramming the EV vouchers down everyone's throat. Yes. They're like, get EVs, do this. You can now get a Tesla with the rebates for less than $30,000. Less than a Camry. And what I think we have an opportunity to do, and then I'm going to throw to Saeed because you actually live in this world, but LA, due to this huge...

huge failure within our infrastructure. And what people should know is, you know, LA is going through a very special moment.

but they're not alone. Currently, the U.S. has a C- in the national ratings of infrastructure. So we don't even, as a whole, pretty bad. And Pete Buttigieg talks about this a lot in the sector of transportation. But what we have an opportunity to consider is what does a carless L.A. look like now that one of the biggest valves of the city are shut down? And I think that's a very frightening thing for Angelenos because we've never had to consider a walking city or a biking city just because it's so dangerous. But it's like you live in a city in which you don't drive. So what is life like

Yeah, I mean, I guess so. So it's it's rightfully, I will say, rightfully frightening for people in Los Angeles because the city isn't built for it. I mean, you know, I remember years ago being in L.A. for work and it was just a technically a 10 minute walk from my hotel to the office. And it was one of those moments when I've read about this, where like driver dependent cities are often designed to make walking difficult.

feel uncomfortable. You feel like you're violating a norm. You can notice a difference when the sidewalk is right next to the road or a few feet in. Is it tree-lined? Exactly. Is it wide? Does it cut off for no reason? Yeah, yeah. So I would say, you know, in Columbus, Ohio, I live in the city's one, and I want to be clear, one walkable neighborhood in a metropolitan area of about a million people.

people. So it's not that Columbus is exactly the model for this, but yeah, when I moved to Columbus in 2019, I've never actually owned a car in my life. I had a driver's license up until probably 2015 and then I finally was like, you know what? I was living in New York. But I've decided to stick with it because why? One, I

Frankly, it's trauma. You know, I grew up with a black single mother and her used sob. And I have so many visceral memories of either worrying about her car breaking down while she was by herself or it actually happening and the money. That I remember literally as a kid. There's an aha moment. We visit New York City for the first time. I'm in the eighth grade and I'm like, there are places you can live where you don't need a car. That was huge. But yeah, I think.

living in a walkable neighborhood, one, it's designed, you know, it's pleasant to walk about the neighborhood where I live. And it makes me more alert to my neighborhood and my community. I like how I engage it. It's possible. And so I guess what's interesting is

And this is why, for example, California seems to be focusing just on electric vehicles because to really take on – because really this is about climate change. Politicians, I think, are scared and they want to reach for the lowest hanging apple to go here's this. And I think they're like let's do this instead of acknowledging that actually we need to have a holistic transformation. And I think a lot of what's going on here – and Zach, you can attest to this –

People come to LA and come to Southern California and California to feel like they are the masters of their own domain They get their home in their compound in their backyard with this shrubs that hide everything else They're in their car and it's their palace while they're driving and

Asking Angelenos and Southern Californians to use public transit on a wide scale is asking them to change the way that they interact with other people. And it's asking a lot of times wealthier folks to have to be around poorer folks. Or another example, because I know this is a big conversation happening in Columbus, but you're also seeing it in cities like New York.

make it easier for people to ride their bikes safely. If you've spent time in Berlin and you ride bikes there, you see how again the infrastructure. I will never forget when I was living in Berlin in 2012, riding my bike at night

In a thunderstorm on the highway between two big old, like, what, eight-wheeler trucks or whatever? And I was fine. They gave me the right of way, you know, as it's supposed to go. Because the infrastructure and the culture there acknowledges that bikes and bicycle riders need to be treated safely. That's part of what needs to happen here. And I hear what you're saying is that this city and its infrastructure respects community and says we exist in community. Everything about...

Southern California's transit culture is not community-based. Very individualist. Individual-based. People don't take part in elections. They don't even know who their city council person is. They don't really think about it as a place in which you collaborate with people. When I moved to LA, I found it to be the loneliest place in the world. It's very lonely. Because you get in your car and you're by yourself and everyone is adversarial to you. You are in a battle. And then you get where you're going and you don't leave. Yeah, you don't leave. You sit in an office and you don't talk to people. So it's like the whole culture in itself is really

And also, LA is dealing with a class culture in which you have cities like Beverly Hills within the county who won't even let train lines open. They don't want a train in Beverly Hills. They fight it. They don't want their community to be more accessible. Exactly. They don't want it to be more accessible. So to your point, it's about building gates so that we can't have this access. And access means that it's walkable. The snobbiest rich folks I've ever encountered

have been West LA liberals. Let's go. Let's go. Well, with that, you know, if you're really interested in this conversation, there's a book I'll recommend and there's many other books I'll have to post about later. But one that came to mind was by Jeff Speck from Harvard. It's called Walkable City, How Downtown Can Save America One Step at a Time, which is a book about not

driving. West LA liberals, you heard me. Email me. We can talk. Can I share just one more example? In Columbus, something I will say I've noticed is the phenomenon, if you have all these cars, then you need a lot of parking lots. The frequency with which I'm seeing often historic buildings and sculptures and stuff being torn down so we can have more parking lots that are often empty all the time. And exasperating climate change. And last stat,

According to this LA Times op-ed, just keeping the highways and byways going in America is an expensive endeavor. In 2019, America spent $203 billion nationwide on highways and roads.

What if that money went somewhere else? Anywho, don't get me started. Maybe we'll do a whole episode on cars. Yes. And driving. I mean, it's interesting because there's a lot. You're right. It's about infrastructure, technology, climate change, behavior, individualism versus community. There's a lot there. And also my last note on this, Waymo, the self-driving car company that's become really popular in San Francisco. You see driverless cars everywhere going. I ain't doing it. They have drives in L.A.

And it is the most terrifying thing in the world. I see them driving down the 10 actually the other day and it was not for me. All right. Well, listeners, we're going to take another quick break, but don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

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Okay, we are back and friends, listeners, frenemies, this is the battle none of you have been waiting for. But Zach and I are very excited about it. We have been planning this. I know y'all have not been sitting at home being like, oh, I can't wait to hear Vibe Chat talk about Jack Harlow. But Syed and Zach have been... It would only be a battle if I had the energy to fight. And let me tell you a man I'm not going to fight over. Mr. Harlow.

No, no. Who? Who? Who said he's a... No, no, no. See, you take it too far. Save your life. You take it too far. I was channeling our sister Lil Nas X, who was treating him that way for many years. Okay, so... Well, first, explain who Jack Harlow is to folks who might not know. I also have to say that Jack Harlow's gone to number one on Billboard many times, and you treat him like he is not sharting at all. I sure do. Which is funny.

I just, I just. Jack Harlow's a rapper. He is white. Don't listen to Sam. Don't listen to Sam on this. This is like asking Al Roker to explain the most recent Alexander McQueen collection. You know, it's just, just, you know. And Al would say, Sonny. Yes, okay, okay. It was a lie, it was a lie. Okay, so what you need to know, Jack Harlow is a Caucasian rapper having the best raspinga of all time.

Just really just going down in history books as a legend on that front. You know, he is mediocre in face.

mediocre often in talent. His last album, you know, not so great. And had that Fergie song on it. Yeah, and if you heard it, you were definitely vibing more to the Fergie sample than you were to his lyrics. He's not, I will say, and this is very clear, he is not someone that I think is like, ooh, man, he's an incredible lyricist, incredible performer. However... To Saeed's defense too, this song we're going to discuss today, when Saeed first heard it, he predicted it wasn't going to be good. Right, right. Saeed is not a Jack Harlow stan.

I'm not a Jack Harlow stan. So a couple of weeks ago...

a new TikTok sound kind of emerged that Zach and I noticed pretty early. It's from the Now single that came out this week, Lovin' on Me, Jack Harlow's new single that has a great kind of 90s hip-hop sample feel. It's very flirty. It's very like the vibe of the song, and obviously we'll play a clip of it, but the vibe of the song is very like you meet that cocky guy at the bar, and he's stupid. He's like, whatever, you're rolling your eyes

eyes at him, but you keep talking to him. I'm vanilla baby. I'll choke you, but I ain't no killer baby. She 28 telling me I'm still a baby. I get love in Detroit like Skilla baby. And the thing about your boy is I don't mind no whips and chains and you can't shut me down, but you can whip your

I would say that's the vibe of the song. Perhaps best epitomized by the cringiest lyric ever. She's wearing cheetah print. That's how bad she want to be spotted with your boy. It's so bad. When I tell you I kicked my feet like a schoolgirl. Jack! Jack! Because those lines give the energy of when I was a single girl at the bar.

And the guy that would never have a chance comes up to you with so much confidence. Right. And you're like, what is happening? What is happening that you have to entertain? You were shooting up your pay grades. Here's another lyric where you're like, okay, Jack, he raps at one point in the song. If you came with a man, let go of his hand. And I, frankly, I cannot wait to be out with a guy and to do just that.

to do just that. Anywho. So here's the thing. So the song came out as a clip on TikTok. And there's a term that I've seen starting to take off on TikTok that I'm excited about. Snippet fishing. Where, you know, like an upcoming song comes out and you just hear like the best five seconds of it. And it gets you so excited about this song. You know, it goes viral on TikTok because let me tell you, Zach, our white boy correspondent, will give us context on this in a moment.

In a moment. We will get there. I love that title. But like white guys on TikTok who like to do thirst traps, they're like so excited about the song because they're like, this is perfect for me. So there's a portion of the sample in Jack Harlow's lyrics where it says, I'm vanilla, but I can still choke you. And so these white guys, these white guys in,

TikToks are just posting that portion. Oh, they're thrilled. They're so happy. But all they're doing is like looking at the camera seductively, maybe licking their lips, showing off their outfit, and maybe like touching their neck a little bit. Because the thing is... It's so lazy.

For most of those guys, unlike Jack Harlow, it's enough. Because most of their face cards don't decline. Jack, however, overdrawn. Overdrawn. Please contact your local bank. Here's my thing with the whole TikTok of it all and why I pushed back against talking about this last week. Because when y'all were like, it's a thing, it's a thing, it's a thing, I kept seeing them and I was like...

They're not doing anything, but they don't they're not dancing. They're not funny. There's no editing They're just looking at you while eight seconds of Jack Harlow plays. I'm a poet. I believe in art for art's sake We were noticing and why I was tracking it I guess that's now the resident white boy correspondent of speak on it and

give us your expertise dearly dearly darling served much interracial a lot of interracial content on the internet are you on are you on swirls because i am one interracial myself so i am the child of swirl and not by racial interracial

Whatever you want. The terms always switch for us as a community. We don't know what we want. I'm hot from laughing. But I also, you know, I have a partner who is white. So, like, you know, my TikTok is like, here, this is for you. So I saw it emerge. And one, I was disturbed by seeing so many black women. Some of them I knew. Some of them I love. Getting choked by their white partners on the Internet. Oh, I have not seen that. In some of the TikToks, the black partner has been choking the white partner. The white partner has choked the black partner.

Consensual choking, to be clear. Wait a minute. Not to yuck the yum. Not to yuck the yum. But that's a thing that was happening. There's one account I'll show you that I was surprised. They live in the suburbs. This woman typically doesn't do these things that she was getting choked by her white man. But I was like, whoa, what is happening? They said Jeremy O. Harris. Leave it in.

You better leave it in, Chantel. For those who don't get the reference. It's a reference to Slave Play. The play, Slave Play, that was on Broadway. That was all about racial trauma. But no, this is why I was thinking about it because right before Broadway shut down during the pandemic, which is still ongoing, but when it first hit,

There was a show on Broadway called Slave Play, which was about interracial love. Interracial relationships. That was about using pre-antibelum tropes to explore trauma. Sexually. It was a very controversial show, but it kind of set the stage on the internet for a lot of these things to emerge, and now Jack Harlow's written a song that feels like it's

- And on TikTok, it's gotten to the point that now the hashtag that they're running with is white boy winter. - Yes. - Which I find really interesting. - Okay, please break. Please, I wanna hear why you find this interesting. - I think that we have reached a cultural moment

where white people, and particularly white men, understand and acknowledge that they too are raced. Oh, that's interesting. When I was a kid, the default for man was a white guy. The default for woman was a white woman. Now with this TikTok trend, what I'm seeing is white men, in a relatively inoffensive way, acknowledging their white maleness.

That, even though it's lazy, I think it's progress. I think it's progress a little bit. I mean, yeah, because even in the lyric, it's like, I'm vanilla baby. Yeah, they're acknowledging their race. It's kind of like an understanding. And it's also targeting, you know, why I really wanted to talk about this, because I was at dinner with a dear friend. She was a black woman, lives in New York, and she's obsessed with the song. And she's like, wait a minute, this is making me feel certain ways. And that's become a big thing on TikTok with black women saying, maybe I will date a white guy now.

This is interesting because of this. And to think Jack Harlow started it all. I could not imagine hearing a song and being like, well, now I'll date a person that I wasn't interested in dating before. Take it to therapy, sis. Here's what I will say. I'm interested in the... Every time I look over and I see our producers cracking up. This is so fun being in the room together. This song is interesting to me because it's a collision. Mm-hmm.

I'll be honest. I think that if you like pop music, if you like particularly like 90s, early 2000s, you're going to enjoy the song. If you liked Big Pun, I Don't Want to Be a Player. If you liked Drake from 10 years ago. Drake from 10 years ago. I would even take it up to Truffle Butter. If you enjoyed those kinds of like, let's get stupid. Let's have a flirty fun. You're going to enjoy the song, but it often collides with a lot of the politics.

where you go, wait a minute, a white rapper? And so it's been, I don't know, I think it's fun seeing people, whether they go, wow, Jack is kind of cute, which not my vibe, or Jack is making these other people seem kind of attractive. That's an interesting kind of... And I think...

Jack Harlow is making danceable bops in a moment where most of the other male rappers are not. Drake is sad and angry. Kanye has lost it. No one listens anymore. Travis Scott is out there. Future. I mean, you talked with, I was thinking about this. I talked with Chance the Rapper. And he was like, the guys aren't happy. Yeah. The guys aren't happy. Women in hip hop are having a hoot.

Yeah. And so I think what happens, you have Jack Carlow, not a great rapper, release a song that's catchy, but not a great song. It gets all this traction because there's a hole there. There's a vac. Like, we have not had the dudes making us dance up a bop, Sam, years. So Jack does it on a minimal scale, and we love it. Yeah. This song reminds me of the motto and truffle butter, like you were saying, Saeed. Mm-hmm.

It felt like many years ago, all the male rappers, Lil Wayne included, were just making shit to dance to. - Right. - Making shit to dance to. - Don't you wanna have fun? - And I want that. And so Jack is doing that, and because no one else on the male side is doing it right now, he gets all this attention for this. - It also, you know, the relationship to Drake feels significant. - They're friends. - Right, okay, right. So it's not coincidental, because the music video even looks like

Drake music video from the kind of back when he was happy. Yeah. Yeah. Well, cause it feels, it's interesting. It feels like to me, Drake is curdling into male toxicity. He's an incel. He's an incel now. All of this is on the same continuum, frankly, but it's interesting that like to see Jack Harlow, cause here's the thing. I don't know if I think Jack Harlow is incredibly talented, but I do think he's savvy. And he's good.

And I felt like he was like, oh, well, if Drake doesn't want to be Drake, as we think of him, you know, with asterisks, I'll step into that void. Because you're right. What, the motto came out in what, probably 2010, 2011? And I felt like Jack Harlow was like, well, I'm happy to step right into it. We know it works. And I look, my expectations with pop music right now are so low. My two things are...

do I remember any lyrics by the end of this song? Like, can I even recall the hook? And it's wild how often I can't. Songs just go through like water, you know what I mean? And then two, do I smile? Do I have him where I'm going, oh, wait,

a minute you know what i mean that like where you kind of perk up and i gotta say the song does it it does it for me and i also i wanted to go back to what you just said it's giving me an aha and look at jack harlow give it feeding us feeding the conversation darling oh my god it's not a feast of crumbs

Can I tell you a thing I know? Can I tell you a thing I know? Yeah. Jack Harlow is a crumb, baby. He's a crumb. This idea of the racialized white guy, the white guy that realizes his own positionality within our cultural and racial landscape. Because I would argue that there is a moment in which that's happening. And the most famous person on the face of this earth that I would put in this box is Travis Kelsey.

Travis Kelsey has historically dated... He was in a very long-term relationship with a black woman. And we know, as people who've been in interracial relationships... She got him together. Yes. When you are in an interracial relationship... He dresses like someone who's dated a black person. Yes. Truly. And it's like when you're in interracial... That beard is too tapered. Oh, and I do have to acknowledge...

Madam Swift, because when they started dating, he still had that awful officer porn stache. Hey, now what's wrong with the stache? I was going to leave you out of it. I was going to leave you out of it. I'm kidding. I like your stache. But he has the beard again, and I would just like to thank Taylor Swift. I'd like to thank that. Thank her for that. But I think Travis is a Jack Harlow-like person for me, and they're having this moment right now.

where people are getting really excited about these white guys with a little bit of swagger who play football, who rap, who do these things. - And I mean, as much as I think the whole Jack Harlow TikTok trend is lazy, I will say it's like if the last decade plus has been watching straight men and white men reconsider their place in America and the world,

If this is how they reconsider it, it's a lot better than some nasty, trashy Reddit thread where they're becoming rattled. And I would say this is that. We do have the incel January 6th type of white masculinity that is flourishing right now. But I think we do have Jack Harlow, Travis Kelsey, white masculinity that's forming that is

conscious of blackness conscious of gender conscious of queerness like jack carlo's famously little sex's best friend yeah i rap with him and in time that people were being really awful to the law so they're like the woke white guys with some swagger and i'm willing to be thirsty for i will say though these woke these woke white guys on tick tock doing the eight second jack harlow challenge

Dance? I don't know when you're fine. They're just looking. Listen, darling, it's called being a model. When it works, it works. I'm curious, you know, let's see where this goes. It's a lead single, first of all, for a new album. His last lead single hit number one.

The Fergie song. Yeah, yeah. So he's a pivot. You know, I'm curious to see where this goes. I definitely think your point, Sam, about the way, you know, and look, white supremacy is the savviest of savvy. So I'm always like, well, damn, how are you going to weaponize this? But you're right. Like acknowledging that whiteness is a race is frankly a step up.

Yes, it's something. But, you know, we'll see where it goes. We'll see. He even says, you know, to those of y'all in the back waiting for the rest of the music, you know, cut your boys some slack. You know, we'll see. Yeah. We'll see. I do want to, before we close this segment, credit the artist who made the vocals that were sampled. Because they're good. His name is Cadillac Dale. Okay, Cadillac Dale. He did it. That song's Whatever, right? The song is a 1995 Cadillac Dale song called Whatever. Alright.

I ain't got no obsession. It's just one of those songs that makes you want to stick your tongue out. I love it. All right. Well, listeners, I was going to say, what do y'all think about the song? But I actually don't care. I really enjoy it. We're going to take a break. And when we come back, we'll give you some recommendations.

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All right, we are back. Before we end the show, we're each going to share something that's been helping us keep our vibes right this week.

Who wants to go first? I can go first. Do it. So I have to say, I have been so impressed by Amazon Studios. I'm not always impressed. You know, the streamers sometimes have moments and they go under and they're not that great. So you like Lauren and Jack. I saw that dagger already. I,

I didn't even think about that when I wrote this down originally. Walked right into his trash. Right into his trash. Well, I'm going to assume she had nothing to do with his editorial choice. But it's really good. And it is that Amazon has some of the best superhero content out.

Right now. The Boys is them, right? The Boys is their big show. What's the other one now? There's Gen V. Okay, I've heard good things about it. Which is part of the universe of The Boys. It's about high schoolers or younger people. Can I put in a little plug? Shout out to all my Wheel of Time girlies. I don't know. What do we call it? The Wheels? The Wheelies? Wheelies. We love Wheel of Time on Amazon Prime. That's a nice fantasy show. Actually, Zaynab Johnson's The Jobs. Yes.

The job's off. Her comedy special. They're doing things. But in the superhero world, they have the Boys universe, which includes Gen V, which is amazing. It's a new show that's out. It just had its first season. But they have this new animated show that also just came out called Invincible. And all of these are based off comics and books. And it's just, if you are tired of Marvel's obsession with the perfect hero, this is the opposite.

These are like really desperate, terrible people. Certainly the boys is pretty messy. It's like pretty grotesque. It's pretty graphic. But it just really shows you. It kind of all of them pose this idea of what happens if we lived in a world where there were superheroes and the superheroes didn't want to save anybody. What would happen next? And it's pretty amazing what they all explore. So definitely if you're wanting to get into superhero stuff and you're tired of watching Avengers Endgame, check out Amazon.

Well, and also Amazon had that movie that I recommended a few weeks ago, The Burial, with Jamie Foxx and Tommy Lee Jones and Johnny Smollett doing the work. Amazon's worth that. Amazon spends the money for the good stuff. Well, so what's interesting, and I wonder if it's just because they have so much money so they don't need it. But, you know, I got into Wheel of Time a couple of weeks ago. I started live tweeting it on Blue Sky. I love it. I'm very excited for season three. I think they have finished filming it. But I realized, I was like, it's kind of like Apple. They don't advertise.

They don't advertise. They don't. They don't put any effort into it. Is that why? Yeah. Like Apple makes money on the iPhones. You have to go looking for these shows. Yeah. And Apple doesn't actually make that many shows. Amazon, though, to your point, creates a lot of things. It's a lot of content. They put out a ton. And they kind of are known in the industry of being like too wide editorially. Like they don't want to focus. Oh, Swarm. Swarm is also on Amazon Prime. So they'll take every shot where Apple takes very few shots. Interesting. And Apple won't really do stuff that's too queer. Yeah.

Yes. Still. I've noticed that. But I will say, Severance and Bad Sisters on Apple TV+. Severance is good. Do you think we will ever get another season of Severance? No. Okay. No.

No. It was a perfect season. It was a perfect season. All right. Thank you, Zach. Saeed, what's your rec? My poem this week is by Solmaz Sharif. She is a Persian poet. She was born in Istanbul. And when I met her, I think she was living here in New York City. Solmaz has two excellent books out. The first was titled Look. And Solmaz's most recent book came out, I believe, in 2022 and is titled Cussing.

And I'll just get into this poem, Social Skills Training. Studies suggest how may I help you, officer, is the single most disarming thing to say, and not what's the problem. Studies suggest it's best to help reply, my pleasure, and not no problem. Studies suggest it's best not to mention problem in front of power, even to say there is none.

Gloria Steinem says women lose power as they age, and yet the loudest voice in my head is my mother. Studies show the mother we have in mind isn't the mother that exists. Mine says, what the fuck are you crying for? Studies show the baby monkey will pick the fake monkey with fake fur over the furless wire monkey with milk. Without contest.

Studies show to negate something is to think it away. I'm not sad. I'm not sad. Studies recommend regular expressions of gratitude and internal check-ins. Enough, the wire mother says. History is a kind of study. History says we forgave the executioner. Before we mopped the blood, we asked, Lord Judge, have I executed well?

Studies suggest, yes, what the fuck are you crying for, officer? The wire mother teaches me to say. While studies suggest, Salmas, have you thanked your executioner today?

That is the poem Social Skills Training by Solmaz Sharif. Again, her two critically acclaimed, incredible books, Look and Customs. Can't recommend her work enough. I also did the thing that Zach said to do, to read along while you read it. Wow. Is it okay? Wow. Actually, this was like a nice...

moment as I was going, you know, trying to decide and, you know, I don't have my, fortunately, I can't travel with all my books, you know, so I was like going through poems that were just kind of coming to mind and I was like, oh, I love this poem. This is familiar and I realized when I was at BuzzFeed and I was the culture editor, I published poetry and this is one of the poems I published. I love it. I was like, I kind of

I kind of recognize this part. You're working your range. I mostly kind of have kind of memory hold that part of my life, but it's nice to know. When I have moments like that, because I did this this morning, but these moments in which you like something is familiar or you like put your AirPods in your bag or something, or you published a poem that you need it later. I always say to myself, thank you past self for taking care of future me. Look at that taste. Look at that taste. Look at me. I really did, did,

They did the work. And just one more thing about this poem. You know, Salmaz has written about the war on terror, the war in Iraq, different specific histories that obviously intersect with, you know, America as, you know, the world's super cop world.

But it's, of course, I mean, not a coincidence, listeners. We know what's going on in the world in places like Israel and Gaza. And so the way in which art, even when written with specific contexts in mind, you know, this could be about the war in Iraq. This could be about places like Abu Ghraib. But, you know, of course, history lives in us and it lives through us. And so the way poems can then resonate in new light in terms of new stories, I always think is interesting. So that's my vibe. I love it.

What's your recommendation, Sam? Jack Harlow's new song, Lovin' On Me? Is that what it is? No? You see how tired I am? You see how tired I am? I thought you changed. You see the weight on me? You see the weight on me right now? My God. My rec this week is an op-ed by a journalist I truly admire named Lydia Polgreen. She wrote it for the New York Times this week. And she basically talked about a disturbing photo of

of six small children who had been killed in Gaza during the hostilities. And the whole essay is basically making the case for, you need to see this. You should see this. I'm going to read the first two graphs for you to give you a taste. After this, listeners, go read the whole thing. She starts the essay by saying, "If you don't look too closely, you might think the photograph is a dimly lit snapshot from a slumber party or a family camping trip."

Six small children lie in a row, their heads poking out from the white sheet that is casually lying across their small chest. None appear to be older than 10, though it is hard to say for sure. At first, you might not notice the smear of drying blood in the upper right-hand corner of the image. But then you do, and then it is impossible not to see that one child, second from left, appears to be missing a chunk of skull.

And when you now look with your full attention, the horror of this tableau takes shape and you see that only one child, a girl with a ponytail, probably eight or nine years old, looks even remotely as if she is sleeping.

Her head is turned slightly as if she had been drowsily whispering something to the girl beside her. And then you see the terse caption which reads, "The bodies of children killed in an Israeli strike lie on the floor at the morgue of Al-Aqsa Hospital in the central Gaza Strip on October 22nd." It is a shocking and stark display of the brutality that's happening right now.

And Lydia, in her role as a Times op-ed columnist, said, don't look away, don't look away, don't look away.

But she writes this essay and goes on to say how she wasn't allowed to share the entire image because the Times pushed back. Wow. So her even writing this is a profiling damage. I'm so grateful for Lydia. She was the editor-in-chief of Huffington Post for a while. She's a war correspondent from the New York Times many years ago. And I'm glad that she's returned to the Times to write because she was running Gimlet at Spotify for a while. Queer black woman. Queer black woman. She's amazing. But this piece is so, so important. And it echoes...

conversation I had on Sunday night with Dr. Darien Sutton on Good Morning America. Dr. Sutton, if you guys follow him on TikTok, we love. Another black queer sister of ours. And he was also echoing similar, you know, complications in being a medical correspondent and having to look at all of these images as they come in from the strikes and having to think about how do we contextualize this? How do we talk about this when at the end of the day, it's just so heartbreaking. I mean, you know, I spoke, I guess, was this just last week about how

how war and politics flatten human lives, that deep humanity into statistics and numbers. And even as you try to acknowledge the horror, it's hard, it's difficult. And another flattening is the way institutions, often under the violence of objectivity,

Do things like not even allow the accurate object. This is objectivity. Let's describe the image. I'm really grateful she did this. She has a hyperlink in the essay to take you somewhere else to see the actual image. And so I think it's important to ask ourselves why. Why would journalistic institutions

want to censor, flatten, derail, distract from what's actually happening in any situation. Well, and the essay is just so perfect. She's a brilliant writer. She closes it by saying, and so I ask you to look at these children. They are not asleep.

They are dead. They will not be part of the future, but know this: The children in the morgue photo could be any children. And why, to like really put a lot of support behind her in this reportage, is that some of the biggest photographic journalistic moments in the history of the world have been about children facing violence. So whether it's after the bomb drops in Japan, there's a famous photo of the civil rights movement in Mitz Hill, it's usually children that do move us to change.

I think that's the point of her piece. We do have to look at this because it moves us so much that we don't. The essay is called This Photograph Demands an Answer. Lydia Polgreen, thank you for your work. You know, it makes me think of Zora Neale Hurston. If you're silent about your pain, they'll kill you and say you enjoyed it. And so the way in which I just feel...

In particular, many people in Gaza, I feel, frankly, are being sacrificed. But children especially, there's no way they can advocate for themselves. And so for us to not even be willing to acknowledge the death of the children, how are you going to do this and not even be willing to look, you know, as a government, as a gatekeeper, as a nation? Well, it's like, yeah, what would you do if a child died next to you? What would you do?

You do something, right? These children die over there. We do nothing. Anywho, we could go down this road for a while. Wow. Lydia, thanks for the piece. Check it out. Thanks for your recs, everybody. Listeners, let us know what you're feeling or not feeling this week. What's your vibe? What's keeping your vibe right? Check in with us via email. Vibecheckatstitcher.com. Vibecheckatstitcher.com. Also, don't forget, I've already said it,

Our first book club episode will air next Wednesday. The book is called Poverty by America by Matthew Desmond. You can still read the book before next Wednesday. All right, my loves, thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of Vibe Check. If you love the show and want to support us, please make sure to follow the show on your favorite podcast listening platform. Tell a friend, tell two.

Huge thank you to our producer, Chantel Holder, engineers, Veronica Simonetti and Sam Kiefer, and Marcus Holm for our theme music and sound design. Also special thanks to our executive producers, Nora Ritchie at Stitcher and Brandon Sharp from Agenda Management and Production. And as always, we want to hear from you. So don't forget, you can email us at vibecheckatstitcher.com and keep in touch with us on Instagram at Sam Sanders, at Zach Staff, and at The Ferocity. Use the hashtag vibecheckpod as always.

Stay tuned for our special book club episode next week with Matthew Desmond. Until then, bye. Bye. Ben hadn't had a decent night's sleep in a month.

So, during one of his restless nights, he booked a package trip abroad on Expedia. When he arrived at his beachside hotel, he discovered a miraculous bed slung between two trees and fell into the best sleep of his life. You were made to be rechargeable. We were made to package flights and hotels and hammocks for less. Expedia. Made to travel.