2025.09.12: Take J2 And Shove It

Children's admiration is important to you.

Hey!

We're recording the podcast!

Gut up!

Good morning to you, wherever you are, because it is

for September 12, 2025.

My name is Bertie Burns.

Sing right over there.

She's smiling ear to ear.

It's Ashie Burns.

Say hi to Ashley, everybody.

What's not to love?

It's Friday, baby.

You want to hear something adorably cute?

Well, it's Alex Walter that sent that in.

Look, I'm all about this whole family shout business.

Let's get in on it.

Listen, do you because the music was playing?

Because the music was playing, you didn't hear the end of it.

Listen to this.

Okay.

Listen, we're going to play it again.

Morning Somewhere.

Listen to that kid.

Fantastic.

I love everything about it.

How does that not just fill you with endorphins?

You know, that little laugh, that little mischievous laugh.

We got here together.

Okay.

Morning Somewhere.

You know what it reminds me of is

one of my favorite little kid videos on the internet is

the little toddler who gets her mom's phone and then

she goes, did you take my phone?

She goes, nah.

And then runs off just absolutely cackling and yet somehow keeps herself framed just perfectly, right?

Just perfectly enough to not be all the way in the frame.

And you get the wobble, but it's like, like this, this kid is going to be a director of photography someday just it's an innate skill has that innate skill i've known people that have had that i'm really jealous of that too look i i mean and it's it is something that needs to be appreciated because generally when a kid points a phone at themselves like for you know if they're video chatting with grandpa something like that uh what grandpa sees is their forehead right uh or their chin like that there's there's really no skillful framing my children they're not destined for the greatness of director of photography not right but so when you see it you got to appreciate it.

Yeah.

The uh, the, we played a game one time on the RT podcast.

I was just talking to Jordan Spears about this, where we would play viral, like vines and tick tocks and things like that.

And then I would stop it.

Like there's a bunch of deer in a yard.

And we stop it.

And we go, okay, a guy's about to sneeze.

What's the name of the guy who sneezes?

Hold on.

Is it?

Hold on.

Is it?

I'll lead you into it.

Oh, nice one.

I want to say Bill, Frank.

No, hold on.

Trevor.

No.

What is it?

Ron.

Ron.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, I can't sneeze.

Tyler Stabb.

If I recall correctly, Tyler Stabb on the RT Podcast Crew was incredible at this game.

He could name everyone's name.

Oh, nice one, Ron.

Oh, what?

I'm not allowed to sneeze.

So do you remember the name of the little girl who grabs the phone?

No, I can hear, in my head, I can hear everything around her name.

Sophia.

Everything around.

Okay.

I believe her name is Sophia.

I'm going to say that I have, I must have some kind of queer name blindness because I can hear the entire quote around people's names a lot of times, but not the names themselves.

Can we talk about this?

My name blindness?

Can we talk about this because it is really difficult how good I am at remembering people's names and how bad at it.

How much you are at it.

We even have little signals.

You're in social situations.

When you're in a couple, sometimes you're like, hey, I'm not going to know.

this person's name and I know that I should know it.

So I need you to figure out what the name is.

And Ash is like on it.

Then she goes to talk to her and she comes back and I go, what's her name?

She goes, I forgot.

And it doesn't, that doesn't always mean that I forgot to find out.

It might mean that I found out and immediately forgot.

No, that's what happened.

You know what I'm doing right now is like, I've got, so

for Finn, right, with his school, he's got his friends at school and then they all have parents.

And I basically have flashcards where I'm trying to associate kid at school, parent.

Kid at school, parent.

This is the parent that goes to this child.

It's, and I do need the flashcards.

Like I drill it as I'm driving to pick Finn up from school.

I'm like, all right, this kid has this mom.

This kid has this mom.

Because I just, I don't want to get in the situation where you're in the, the, you know, the group of moms that are all milling about, waiting for their kids to come out of school, chatting, and then call them the wrong name.

Names are bad.

Oh, my God.

Can I just climb?

I'm going to find the nearest manhole cover, tear it off, and disappear into the sewers forever.

How many know if that's going to come through or not?

God, I could listen to that all day.

I could listen to that all day.

Hey, while we're talking about like TikToks and stuff like that and stuff that we love,

I have discovered a, I got to get the name right here.

It was one that I saw that was a viral one, but I had reposted.

And then I tried to find it in like five or six different ways.

And I finally found the person who makes these videos.

Her name is, this will be your

fun weekend thing that you can look at.

Put it on flashcard.

On Instagram, her name is singing teacher Girl, and she makes songs about.

Basically, it's like a Wikipedia deep dive on like something you're curious about, but she makes songs about it.

And I saw one that was how train couplers work.

That's how you probably know it.

Yeah, I've absolutely seen the train coupler.

And here's her talking about air conditioners.

Always been curious about the principle of how an air conditioner cools.

Turns out it doesn't blow out cold air directly.

The principle of air conditioner refrigeration is actually quite simple.

It's like having a basin of water in the the room.

The water evaporates and absorbs heat.

I can listen to her sing about anything.

Look, if she opens for the wiggles, I'm there.

It was tremendous.

The whole one I watched, I watched an entire video where she explained how trained couplers work.

Everyone watched that video.

Everyone now knows how trained couplers work.

You know what the weird thing is?

I looked on her Instagram and her Instagram, that has like 12,000 views on her own Instagram, which is crazy to me because I think that the one that I watched, which was a repost, had something like 6 million views.

That always seems a little bit unfair, right?

Like someone will like, will like, just they'll go repost it with their face in the corner going, oh, and then that one has like millions and millions of views.

And it's like, well, but the original one, I don't even know how this person found the original one because it's only got like a couple of these views.

How did you find it?

And then how is that fair?

Did I tell you that I was trying to go look for what was the most viral

RT YouTube video of all time?

And it wasn't even on the RT channels.

It was

Bruce and James talking about ponytails.

I believe in the background.

And someone just clipped that and put that up.

And that's got like something I want to say, like 50 million views.

So it's funny to me that the most popular one on YouTube for the entire ecosphere is not on the Russia T channels.

Well,

you know what?

We need to start doing bump those numbers up, do some acquisitions, Bernie.

No, thanks.

Look, I'm serious about this.

This is how you get the numbers up.

Hot on the heels of the Sky Dance Paramount merger.

You know what they're doing now?

They're like, let's go after Warner Brothers.

Warner Brothers Discovery, which was interesting.

This is the headline.

They're going after Warner Brothers Discovery, which Warner Brothers and Discovery have already said they're splitting up.

So are they trying to acquire them pre-split up?

And what, like, stop the breakup?

Keep the family together?

That's kind of weird, right?

It's weird.

It's weird.

It's also weird that didn't this Sky Dance Paramount merger, it just went through.

Yes, I think it just got approved.

It was, it's been in the works for a really long time but they finally got federal approval to do it so it just seems like a lot i mean what's the name gonna be it's gonna be skydance paramount warner brothers discovery what happens when like they add like disney to the mix right like like how long is this name gonna be are we gonna have to start acronyming the name this is gonna be discoverer warner mount dance

And also, like, what, like, what is it that they want?

Are we just in this huge, crazy consolidation phase?

Yes, we are.

Yeah.

And that, you know, that stuff is cyclical where it's like companies break up, companies get back together.

I thought we were in a divesting kind of cycle, and now it looks like we're in still in a big roll-up.

This is like the lamest will they, won't they of all time?

I don't know, man.

This is big implications for media in general.

Um, you know, it's, it's, think about all of those companies all under one roof, all controlled by one group of people.

That doesn't seem like a great thing to me long term.

Not only that, but it seems like the most sugar-coated way to say that.

That doesn't seem great.

Kind of an uninteresting as well, right?

Like if you get one of the things that's really cool about having a lot of different companies do well in the media sphere, run by a lot of different people with a lot of different philosophies is that you get so many different types of content.

Right.

And one of the big concerns, I remember when Warner Brothers and Discovery were merging all their stuff

and David Zaslav was taking over was everyone's like, he's just going to make HBO into like another discovery and we're going to get all this reality bullshit because that's the way he sees the media landscape.

Those are his priorities and that's what we're going to end up with.

And people in a lot of ways, you know, were right.

There was a lot of lean towards the reality programming, hyper profitable content.

And it's very, it's this one philosophy.

And then you have on the like other end here, you've got like, you know, the A24s of the world that are like, let's get weird, motherfuckers, right?

What happens when they all get consolidated under one sort of group with one

philosophical outlook on what the business should be like optimally?

Then you're going to get a lot less varied content.

It's going to be boring.

Hope you like sequels.

More of the same, basically.

What works?

Yeah, no, here's, yeah, you say that, but the thing is, people do love a good friend.

Especially if you look at like super independent channels like YouTube has been that for the last 20 years now, plus.

And yeah, I always get disturbed by you look at that where it's all these independent creators and they're completely and totally driven by a computer algorithm.

Like one or two people, it feels like in a back room somewhere flip a switch or make some variable more heavily weighted and suddenly everybody falls in line with that.

You know what I mean?

So I don't know what's the, what's the solution?

And Rushdieth, you know, with our website is a good example.

There is such a resistance too of like.

This is the monopoly I like.

This is the monopoly that I'm okay with, that gives me shit for free.

So don't try to work against it.

Don't put anything anywhere else.

I'm not going to your stupid website.

I'm not doing your dumb thing.

I'm happy on YouTube.

I'm happy on Steam.

Don't try to do anything different.

You're just making things more difficult on me.

But you got to kind of try to do those things and go against the grain every now and then.

Otherwise, everything ends up the same.

It's like one big blended mess.

Yeah.

And I just feel like the more options people have, the better.

Like then we all benefit, right?

Then there's, there really is then something for everyone.

But it is an option at that point, right?

And at some point, it is up to consumers, I think, to to flex those options and support those things.

And I think a lot of people do.

And we've seen that with like Patreon, you know, and direct supporting of creators as well.

It's just that what a wide gulf it will end up being if you have a whole tier of people that are supported by a handful of people, and then you have this no man's land where there's nothing, and then giant organizations that are making media, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Although that said, I will admit that I'm in some regards, very basic.

And the people who look at the, you know, like sort of like the algorithm of like yeah people will like this thing it's franchise we're gonna add the explosions all that when it comes to me tragically a lot of times they're right i watched the new tron aries trailer and this is not a uh this is not a movie that i would say i've been super excited about like it's been on my radar um and I like Tron Legacy and I want to like the film, but it hasn't really, I haven't been hyped about it.

And then I saw the new trailer, this, uh, this Flynn Lives trailer that they put out.

It's like three and a half minutes.

It was pretty long.

I started counting the number of explosions and was like, oh, you know what?

I think I might be into this movie.

So we started watching it together.

And I pointed out that, oh,

once again, Tron is the franchise where I like the franchise, but I can't say that I like any of the individual movies.

It's so unique for me.

Do you like the franchise more than any particular movie?

I like Tron in theory.

It's the weirdest thing to me.

And I love it.

I love it.

But it's like, do you want to watch a Tron movie?

I'm like, absolutely.

I don't want to do that.

Not in the mood.

And so we started watching.

I was like,

we started playing it.

At first, I had this kind of a weird feeling.

And the first part of the trailer is all about the first two movies and like drawing them together, like the legacy of Tron and then leading into Tron Aries, which I think was really smart.

It drew me in.

And then I watched it.

I'm like, okay, okay.

Against my better judgment, I'm on board with this.

I'm excited about Tron Aries.

I really am.

I really am.

I don't.

I don't get it.

They have been talking this entire time, the entire franchise, about the computer world coming out into the real world.

And I think that's really kind of a cool thing to explore at this point in time, like in our actual real world.

You know, and it does seem like it's a huge departure, but it's not because they've been trying to do this the entire time in Tron.

It's like how to affect the real world.

Even the Master Control program was talking about that back in Tron in 1982 or whatever.

Yeah, see, you're going way too deep into this.

I was like, man, that looks pretty.

Yeah, yeah, it does.

It does.

It looks cool.

It looks cool and i forgot how cool some of the early shots were like the helicopter in the original tron and like showing that as part of this trailer was pretty cool so i'm like uh i'm cautiously optimistic and i and i i'm gonna i'm gonna go all in on tron i'm gonna enjoy tron and well and the the trailer did uh

remind me 30 days

but it's funny because uh until this trailer came out i guess i didn't realize that it's coming out as soon as it is it's like coming out in a month they said i think they even said the trailer like hey you guys are aware this movie's coming out like really soon right but there's a couple couple of other things taking me by surprise too I saw I was scrolling on Instagram and saw one of those sort of fake commercials that that they like to do in promoting the boys franchise you know they'll have like a fake like the with the Aquaman guy the deep doing some sort of like infomercial right or whatever and those have always been very popular and I saw one of the kids from Gen V doing one and I was like oh yeah that's really interesting and then I go I wonder when like I know Gen V season two is coming out at some point when is that go tech tech tech tech tech oh god it's coming out in like a week that's why i'm seeing this thing is like they're rolling out their advertising campaign and it's going to be here in like five days do you remember when we said september was going to be packed and we didn't realize how

prescient that statement was we're september we're a third of the way through september slow it down yeah we're

got long walk coming out today which brings up another thing uh i've been hearing about which is i guess work is once again moving ahead on a bioshock movie movie.

This was weird.

They made some kind of announcement that they had locked the story for the Bioshock movie.

They're making weird announcements for this movie that weird in the sense that they don't usually make these kind of announcements for other movies.

Well, here's why I think this is coming out now is because the guy who's directing The Long Walk is directing the Bioshock movie now.

I thought it was Gore Vrbinski.

I did.

Well, that was back in, what, like 2008 or something.

They announced that the Gore Vrbinsky, the Pirates of the Caribbean guy, was going to be directing the Bioshock movie.

And then it's been in development hell ever since.

Minecraft was that way too.

Went to a lot of people.

At one point, Rob McElhenney was directing

the Minecraft movie, yeah.

But I guess they're, they're finally moving ahead.

Somehow, I missed this, but in 2022, Netflix got the right to it.

And now they've locked in.

I know, right?

I missed that somehow.

But Francis Lawrence, who is directing Long Walk, is, I guess, his next

commitment is the next Hunger Games movie.

You know, they've been doing the sort of like Hunger Games prequels, and so he's working on the next one on that.

And then after that,

he's free to work on Bioshock.

Okay.

So it's still going to be a while.

Yeah.

And it's like,

even when I hear that Netflix got it, even in my head, I have this knee-jerk reaction that's like a step down, but it's not.

It's, you know, it's not.

This is the modern movie environment.

Netflix makes Oscar award-winning movies.

It does.

Although, I mean, I can, I can understand the sort of like knee-jerk on that because you can think of, once again, the, if you have that variety of studios to choose from, right, that are all, they all have their different way of doing things and their different expertises, you'd be like, oh man, this would be...

absolutely gorgeous on like HBO or something.

Right.

Like you get that, you get that going, oh man, you picture the underwater environments of Bioshock and there's just the lush production that something like HBO, lush, that's right, puts into a lot of their productions, right?

They're just visually very rich.

Whereas you get Netflix and people complain that a lot of things, a lot of projects look kind of

plasticky.

You know, we've been doing, we've talked about the media server, been like ripping some of our Blu-rays to the media server.

I've always hated.

the like in Game of Thrones, when you, there's a lot of darkness in Game of Thrones.

So like the edges, when there's no torch, you have a lot of black on screen and all the blacks are like horribly crunchy.

They're kind of like artifact-y, right?

Like Like you see, like the little, yeah, you see, like, the blocks of different blacks, yeah.

And it's just like, and you just don't get that on Blu-ray.

And I've heard people talk about it for years, and it's like, I never solved this problem for myself.

Just the crunchy darkness on like streaming compression is just, I'm glad to get away from that.

You were, uh, you got me thinking about something over here, though.

Okay.

So you were talking about when Zaslov was taking over HBO and like made things more reality-based.

I don't know why I never made this connection before.

Is White Lotus essentially like the narrative equivalent of a reality show?

Because every year there's a different cast, right?

Kind of.

They go to a different location.

I've never seen it, by the way.

So I'm really going to upset a lot of White Lotus fans here.

But yeah, now, like, the way I hear people talk about the White Lotus franchise, it does feel like the same way people talk about a reality show.

Kind of.

I think the White Lotus is specifically, it's got like it's very specific lanes.

It's murder mystery.

It's slow burn, uh, and it's a little bit soapy, as I understand it, like all the characters and like the drama around it.

It's got a lot of like slow burn hyperdrama.

So in that regard, kind of, except, you know, less, less of the hair pulling and probably like more of the like bitchy talking behind each other's backs.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

All right.

I found something else, too, that like I like.

Weird pockets of the internet.

I fell into one just recently.

What happened?

Tell me about your pockets.

I'll just tell you what it is and you can see if you can explain to me what you think it is.

Okay.

I found on Reddit, I found a I'm actually kind of a little reluctant to talk about this.

I found a subreddit called overemployed.

What do you think that is?

Okay, I'm going to assume that that's like people

who have to have what it's either people who

practice that like four-day workweek or I'm four-hour workweek, or it's people who have to have like three jobs just to pay rent.

Okay, you're close.

You're close.

It's kind of a combination of the two things.

It's essentially people who are leveraging the work from home environment where they are working multiple 40 hour per week jobs because they're not spending 40 hours per week on any job, but they're not doing it to make ends meet.

They're doing it for financial freedom.

It's like this movement, this like secret movement that is taking advantage of the work for home environment where some people are making hundreds of thousands of dollars working as many as like three jobs at a time.

You know how I do that?

I just do this lotto.

This powerball.

That's my guaranteed success.

It's kind of fascinating.

And then it's like very dramatic too, because they're like, hey, I'm at job one.

And then I got called to a meeting in job two because they think they might know about job one.

Luckily, job three isn't aware of this yet.

It's like they even have all these abbreviations like J1, J2, J3.

And what apparently LinkedIn is a way that a lot of these people get busted.

Like because they don't have a LinkedIn is now a way that companies are rooting these people out.

They're like, you have to make a LinkedIn with your name and your photo.

And it's just something I was not aware of.

By the way, Reddit, also, by the way, they changed the way that they

show you how many subscribers a subreddit has.

It's now just how many people visited.

Like in the last that's a new change, right?

It's like how many, like they're focusing more on what active users

and weekly contributions.

Right.

This subreddit, this subreddit

has 850,000 viewers, I guess, in the last week.

Visitors.

That's almost a million people that are visiting this and curious about this.

And I had never heard about this before.

I can't assume they're all doing it, but there's definitely a curiosity about doing this.

I had never heard of this.

I mean, I've heard of people moonlighting and maybe having double jobs, but an entire movement where some people have three jobs at a time and are able to do that.

I don't know.

It's kind of, it's compelling.

I'll just say.

You know what that sounds like to me?

Is that sounds like people who have too much hustle?

What I don't read too much are people who are like, there's no negative feedback of, like, hey, I'm trying to get a job and I can't get a job.

And then these people have three jobs at a time.

Crazy.

I don't know.

It's just fascinating to me.

I just discovered this.

I'm going to spend a lot of time reading the overemployed suburban at this week.

I want to, I want to, I feel like that could be a reality show, right?

You get the drama of that being like, I've been, I have a meeting at 2 p.m.

for J1,

but I also have a check-in, my weekly check-in with my manager for J2 at 2.30.

How am I going to juggle this, fam?

And this is why I was reluctant to talk about it.

I almost don't want to shed light on these people because I don't want to cause them any problems.

Not that, you know, us talking about it when a million people are already visiting.

Here, let me read you one of the dramatic ones here.

Coworker at job two applied to my J1.

So I recently found job two and everything seemed great so far.

I thought to myself, oh, I will definitely be able to do this for six months at least, which was my original plan.

I found out that my coworker at job two applied to a position in my J1 and is the top candidate.

The odds of them being hired are very high based off the comments I saw on the system.

I think there are two ways this will go.

Either they are also trying to overemploy or they will quit J2 when they go to my J1.

The second option, of course, concerns me because they might mention it to someone.

I don't know what to do.

So dramatic.

You know what, though?

It is, it's interesting because it's been

almost like cliche for decades, right?

You have a desk job and how much of that time do you actually spend being productive, right?

You'd be like, I work maybe 20 hours a week, but I'm at my desk 40 hours a week.

So if you can actually work the 40 hours a week and then have the double jobs, who's not winning here, right?

If you're still doing all the jobs and the companies are getting what they want out of you, right?

Isn't everybody winning here?

Dude, there are people like on this that are, they are riding the wave of modern corporate culture.

There are people who have up to three jobs, and they might even have technically a fourth job, definitely a source of income, because what they do is they go to work at companies and get laid off, and then they're stacking one job after another.

And they already have another job when the first job lays them off and gives them severance or a package of some kind.

Sometimes they have as many as two or three other jobs while they're riding severance on something else.

It's pretty wild to read this stuff.

Do you think you risk burnout with something like that?

Yes.

That seems like you're just, that seems like that candle is burning very fast and very bright.

You know, you know how you have the problem with parents' names in the school courtyard?

Imagine having that with the name of the place where you work.

Can you imagine that?

We start calling the manager by the other manager's name.

Oh, man.

Yeah, like things are really tough here at Paramount.

Like, dude, we work at Warren Brothers.

What happens when all your jobs have a merger?

Oh, shit.

Which one of you gets gets laid off?

J1 or J2?

Dude, I get burned down sending an email to more than four people.

Like, whose name do I put in the two field?

Who do I put in the CC field?

Now I'm worried about I sent like a report to the wrong fucking company.

It's crazy.

It's crazy.

All right, Ashley, who is helping us keep independent and free of the corporate machine today?

All right.

I'd like to say a big thank you to our J1s and J2s.

McGrady and Hagen Hubert.

Thank you both so much for sponsoring this episode of our show at patreon.com/slash morning somewhere or roostertees.com.

I hope to find out that you're not supporting other patreons in your spare time.

Actually, I hope you are.

I hope you are.

Thank you so much for your support.

All right.

Also, if you've, if the singing teaching girl is AI, just don't let me know.

I know, I can't, I can't deal with that this week.

It's too cute.

It needs to be real.

Let me live.

All right.

That does it for us this week ending September 12th, 2025.

We will be back to talk to you on Monday.

We hope you will be here as well.

Bye, everybody.