PREVIEW: Stephen R. Reed

I'm going to restate my thesis for the episode, which is that zooed people zoo people.

And that when you go to the zoo and like the rhinoceros looks sad,

it's because the zookeeper himself is not getting enough enrichment time in his enclosure with his family and his home.

I love going out with my family

of a Sunday to see the Zookeeper exhibit.

Oh, yes.

That was, it's like the story about David Byrne getting mugged in Central Park and getting dragged into a voting.

Oh, yeah.

What happened is you cut out perfectly,

and then the last thing I heard was, oh,

you just went, what I love is,

oh no, and then you disappeared from the wall.

That's a great energy for today.

I think.

What I was saying before I got dragged into the bushes in this Bronx zoo by those rogue zookeepers that escaped is I love of a Sunday going down to the zoo with my family to look at the zookeeper exhibit and then the smaller animal exhibit in the zookeeper exhibit so we can watch the zookeepers.

Well, when you think about it, we're all kind of enrichment in the zookeeper exhibit that is our modern world uh-huh would you say that the modern world is a lot like a zoo

yeah and the big city's sort of like an urban jungle i would say those things you know but because i'm a you know tremendously stupid person but i would also say that in a more literal sense right that um

what's happening is when the zookeepers go home right to yeah that they are going to their enclosures right so we are in the zoo that encloses the the zookeepers also, you know?

And what encloses us?

I don't know.

God, probably.

There's that guy in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books, like in the later weird ones, who lives in an inside-out house.

Yeah.

Like, that's what's going on here.

That's true.

I like the idea of

Foucault really, really, really wanting to go out for a nice day of a Sunday, being like, yeah, school is great, but have you considered that society actually resembles a zoo rather than a prison?

Foucault going for a nice day out at the zoo.

He's got a balloon.

Do we know the Borges short story, Inferno 132?

No, but before you say that, can I just real quick say Zuko?

But go on.

Thank you, Maddie.

Very, very, very good.

Michelle Zuko.

Interesting.

Michelle Zucco.

Wasn't she in the greatest show, but

from Avatar, The Last Avant?

Yeah.

From the French dub of it.

The Bojes story is

a little two-paragraph thing.

I did it as like a side of calligraphy one time,

which is a good time, even though the calligraphy wasn't very good.

But so the thrust of it is about how presumably like a real leopard existed sort of functionally so that Dante can write a leopard into the Inferno as like a kind of symbol of one of the sins or whatever.

And it plays a sort of a part in a larger thing that surpasses its own understanding.

And you just have to kind of accept these reasons.

And that's very much how I feel.

Except instead of, you know, a leopard, I'm a podcaster.

And instead of Dante's Inferno, it's podcasts.

Yeah.

And instead of calligraphy, it's speaking.

Yeah, that's true.

I would say also, that's a beautiful little aside there, but I will say no more negative self-talk about your calligraphy skills on the podcast.

Oh, well,

I won't hear it.

I'm your new therapist.

And I won't hear it.

We have the five immortal precepts, and now we are adding not a sixth immortal precept.

No.

We are now assembling a,

what would we call it?

Those are the immortal precepts.

The behavioral standard.

Yeah, behavioral standard.

Okay.

Yeah.

This is that we have the three.

How about this?

The three behavioral ideals.

That's pretty good.

That feels like something that like people were getting beaten to death with shoes over during the Cultural Revolution.

So, yeah.

Is the Immortal Precepts that movie where the countries are moving around on big wheels?

I saw that.

Should we start with that?

It's It's concepts moving around on big wheels eating one another.

That's right.

Yeah.

Infinite respect for the country of Albania has just chomped up that Sarah Palin had asked.

This is basically like the 2012 Olympics opening thing.

Do you remember the giant respect for Albania float?

That's right.

I will say at some point I will make...

The Mortal Engines is kind of a municipal film in a lot of ways.

And I am going to make us watch it at some point because it's one of the better movies ever made.

It's part of the municipal cinematic universe.

It's like that, The Brutalist, Kayanakatsi.

Well, of course, don't forget The Town starring Ben Affleck, obviously.

It's about a town.

That's true.

It's literally about a town.

Hard to argue.

It's literally about a town.

Yeah.

Should we?

Megalopolis, because it's about Annopolis.

Megalopolis for real, actually, at some point.

It's a really mare-heavy film that

I can mount a seven to eight-hour defense of if we've heard of an episode about it.

First live show is a sort of like borderline intolerable watch along Megalopolis that we don't have any legal right to do, and the cops come in and break it up.

But like we all protest like we're Lenny Bruce, just like, oh, you're afraid of freedom of speech.

We all protest like we're like the, you know, the goers to of stone of the Stonewall Inn, you know, and we create a kind of like new rights movement for podcasters.

As the cops are dragging me away, I'm yelling that this would never happen in Megalopolis.

You fear Caesar fucking, I don't remember his his name,

Caesar Catalina.

You fear Caesar Catalina's genius, right?

I really do.

I really don't think the MIPD are equipped to deal with Caesar Catalina's genius.

No, they're not worthy of his Emersonian mind.

No, no.

You think one year of police academy entitles you to plow the riches of his Emersonian mind?

Yes.

Years.

I still haven't fucking seen it.

So

it's good.

We'll watch it.

Let's be fun.

Let's all fly to New York and do a megalopolis watch along.

That sounds great to me.

That's the sort of thing I'd be doing even if you weren't coming.

Doing the thing where I can't get like a visa to do the Well, There's Your Problem live shows, but I'm like, I get in for this one because I'm like, no, no, I do not anticipate making any money off of this.

This is functionally tourism.

Four people are coming.

You're mostly just coming to my house to watch Megalopolis.

We're doing a live show watch along of Megalopolis for an audience of Maddie's partner.

That's right.

And that's Like a common performance.

Yeah.

Okay.

We're going to start with the first time.

Okay, all right.

Plan.

That's one of the plans.

That's the plans.

Yeah.

That's the plans.

Item.

Okay.

We got stuff to talk about.

We got mayors.

We have so many mayors and ex-mayors, current mayors.

Yeah, we got mayors to talk about.

I want to start with a little, a thing we keep mistiting, but is officially called the Municipal Roundup.

What have we been saying?

We've been saying municipal update, which then doesn't make any sense when Sam beautifully puts in the fucking whip in it.

It's a round update.

So, what do you want?

Like,

cowboys love giving updates.

That's one of the main things they did to each other.

When you come riding a horse through the pass to be like, you know, the cavalries are coming.

That's an update.

That's a municipal update.

Hey, partner, how are you doing on your KPIs?

This is how everyone in Austin talks.

Yeah.