I’ll Dip Into Her Dark Waters
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Hey, girlies. Our summer tour starts in just a few weeks. I can't believe it. Summer has come up on us real quick. I'm ready for it. Okay, but we're going to get ourselves together and get ready for the road. Boston, you're up first. Friday, June 7th, we will be back at WBUR City Space. Last year, we had a great time, and we can't wait to see you all again. Yeah.

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Hey, ladies. That's my best Scarlett Johansson AI voice. Lead me into the AI future, Sam Sanders. I will say it was your best. Anywho, anywho, I am not Scarlett Johansson. I'm Sam Sanders. Sorry, that was so funny. I'm Sayid Jones. And I'm not Joaquin Phoenix from the movie Her. I'm Zach Stafford. And you're listening to Vibe Check. ♪♪

We're about to make the biggest pivot. We're going to talk this week about these videos that have kind of stopped the Internet. Listeners, you've probably seen them. We're talking about Diddy. After multiple allegations of domestic abuse, sexual abuse and sex trafficking, Diddy has released an apology video this past weekend.

This comes after CNN released a video of Diddy beating the R&B singer Cassie in a hotel hallway. Truly brutal. We're gonna talk about both of those videos and why the reaction to all of this is surprisingly mixed. So that's first up, but then after that we're gonna talk food. You've probably felt this, whether it's McDonald's or Outback Steakhouse, the cost of fast food and fast casual food has gone up a lot.

And now some big chains like Red Lobster are filing for bankruptcy, even after a Beyonce shout out. We grieve. It's dark out here. It's dark out here. Anywho, Zach will lead us in trying to get to the bottom of what's going on with big food right now. But before that, let's just check in. Ladies, how are you feeling? Zach, you go first. What's your vibe?

My vibe is kind of hopeful. And it's hopeful because, I mean, it's twofold. So one, I spent a lot of the past 12 hours prepping for our conversation today. One, because we always want to show up as our best selves. But two, we're talking about fast food, and I had to get really up-to-date on private equity, so I'm ready to share those skills. But when I was looking at private equity, I was like, wow, everything's so dark. Like, the world feels so, like...

bleak when it comes to capitalism. And then as I was doing that research, I had to leave and go to a conversation I had last night at Soho House with Alok, the poet, who's a dear friend for many, many years. But we were talking a lot about grief and death, but we talked a lot about it as hope. And it's kind of made me feel better after that.

the conversation because a loke reminded me that you know life is so precious and that everything around us can disappear at any moment and because of that we should treat everything and they said like god like that everything is holy and everything should be treated with respect and dignity and that helped give me like a moment of personal freedom from all this private equity and all this capitalism all these systems that i never created and it reminded me to take refuge in like

Taking care of people I love, showing love, reaching out, being there. So I'm feeling hopeful because I get to see you both today after being in a little dark spiral with the Diddy stuff and everything where I'm like, okay, all of this is a lot, but I got y'all, I got my man, I got family. And so I'm feeling better this week. So this week has been a really good week of friends pouring in as the world has felt dark. So that's where I'm at.

Hearing you talk about that, seeing beauty in all of it, I do not know how much of my church upbringing I actually hold on to. But one of the tenets of Christianity that I can still enjoy and that gives me hope in the time you're talking about, this idea that if there is a God and we're made in the image of a God, then there's a little bit of God in everybody. And our job is to see it.

to honor it, to respect it. So like, I like that. There's beauty everywhere and we can find it. Yeah. And it's also that like heaven, heaven is here, can be here on earth. You can make it right here. And that's why we should fight for justice and equity and all these things. It's possible now. You don't have to wait. Yeah. It can be here now. So that's what I'm thinking. I don't want to wait anymore. Love can be here now. That's beautiful. Saeed, what's your vibe?

My vibe is good. You know, the world continues to spin, but spin perhaps out of a moral orbit for all kinds of reasons. And so, yeah, I do feel that I have been honing this sense of my job as a poet, as a writer, you know, in many ways is the height of my powers.

And so when I feel a loss of control, because, yeah, there's so much that I, you know, I wish I could get President Biden to respect the ICC proceedings. That would be nice, you know, but I don't have his phone number. It's so weird. I lost it a few years ago. So instead, I have to focus on what I can do. And I do sympathize.

I see the value in my work. I think it's worthwhile. I think when I take my time and craft and that it's a valuable contribution. And so I've been trying to like find the beauty in that and really in the humility and appreciate it. And something I've noticed as I've been working on this chapter of all this research –

It's really cool when you're doing this work and you're like, damn, it would be really nice if I had a book on X subject. Often that means I'm going to a library. I'm going to the Schomburg in New York or reaching out to different resources. But it's been a hoot. Y'all see in the Zoom, I'm surrounded by books. The frequency with which books I purchased five years ago, 10 years ago,

15 years ago have just been sitting on my shelves patiently waiting waiting for you it makes me so happy like I was just like damn I wonder if Elizabeth Alexander and I was like I have her book The Black Interior and then I open it and it's like a chapter on Langston Hughes I said ah

Elizabeth knew she'd need, you know, I would need her. So I think when you can hone your appreciation for what you can do, it enriches, you know, your appreciation for the beauty of what you're doing and all of the little, the breadcrumbs you've been leaving for yourself, you know? And so, yeah, there's this sense of capability and purpose that I feel really appreciative of. Yeah. Like there's beauty in the finished product, right?

But there's also beauty in the act of doing the work to make the product. And I just, I don't know. I'm just like hearing you talk about your process. That is just as exciting as like what we'll get from Zayi when the book is done. Yeah. Sam, what's your vibe? So my vibe is Texas. I sent y'all some images over the weekend. You know, it was my first trip home since my mother's funeral last summer. And I was very worried about how it would go, but it went well. I was there for my godson's

eighth grade graduation. - Wow. - We love. - He graduated from St. Pius Catholic School. He is a star athlete who plays basketball, baseball, and football. - You showed us pictures. - Yeah, yeah. - He's in the eighth grade?

I thought he was in high school. We have the same shoe size. I thought he was graduating high school. I said, that's a young man. Wow. That's wild. Bless genetics. Shout out to Isaiah. We are also proud of him. His parents, Marcus and Aaron, were dear friends of mine in college. Dear friends to this day. I was his dad's RA. And...

His mother, Erin, and I were both RAs together. Best friends in college, thick as thieves, messy as hell. And his parents met at one of my RA programs. Wait, Sam, have we talked? You were an RA? I was texting about it. I was an RA. I was an RA. Saeed, were you an RA? I was absolutely not an RA. Which all tracks. Sam and I are big RA energy. Yeah. I would teach my boys how to iron while we watched Grey's Anatomy together. Oh, that's cute.

I would shame my students when they would have alcohol and they were underage if it was really bad alcohol, as I confiscated it. I'd be like, you want to know why you feel bad? This isn't plastic. Why are you kicking daddy life? I was the best shocking no one. I never got in trouble with my RAs, but I was breaking all of the rules. So I was very polite. Yeah.

very presentable, but I was breaking, I was like, oh, how interesting. We can't sneak girls into our dorm after midnight. We can't have girls as guests, but we can have boys, 'cause it's an all boys. - Gay rights exist somewhere. - There you go. And so on top of just being surrounded by friends and loved ones all weekend, I was also having these moments with my godson where I was like, oh, the kids are all right. We were able to catch up and talk one-on-one.

And he's just becoming a really well-rounded human being. He talked about, you know, being an ally to certain folks in his life. He talked about, I mean, he's just like, he's

He's got a good head on his shoulders. And I think of the three of us, I am the most likely to kind of doomsday the plight of the youths. But he reminded me that the kids are all right. And I'm just so proud of him and his family for, you know, raising a good kid. So my vibe is, you know, heart is full. Isaiah, we love you. All right. Walk tall, young man. Tall is the word. Stop growing, Isaiah. You cannot be taller than me.

Anywho, before we get into this episode, I want to thank all of you who sent us fan mail and a special shout out to those of you who subscribed to our Patreon. If you want to join that group chat, you can find us at patreon.com slash vibe check. All right, with that, let's jump in, shall we? Let's go. Let's go.

All right. Over the weekend, after two days of silence following the release of a graphic video of Diddy beating Cassie Ventura, you might know her as R&B singer Cassie, in a hotel hallway in 2016, Diddy, the rap mogul, posted a video to Instagram apologizing for an incident that, until now, he has vehemently insisted never happened at all.

In fact, as of this afternoon, his pinned tweet is still his denial of the allegations from December. And he, as far as I could tell, you know, the apologies on Instagram, which obviously millions of followers, but he also has millions of followers on Twitter. And I did not see that video posted there for what it's worth. Mm-hmm.

Now, listeners, we are not going to linger on the disturbing details of the video or the extensive allegations of abuse detailed in the 35-page lawsuit. It is noteworthy that the lawsuit was settled within 24 hours. That's interesting.

And that was before this explosive video, which was recorded in March of 2016, was made public. And the video is just, I would say, however the average reader felt about the lawsuit, if you then saw the video, you'd probably feel much more strongly. Mm-hmm.

But we really want to use this truly developing story at this moment. Diddy, for example, has not been arrested. His homes have been raided. It's clear there's an investigation in process, but it is still very much developing. But we wanted to talk about and really continue our conversation about misogyny in hip-hop, the contrast to Hollywood's Me Too movement, and most importantly—

How conversations about accountability regarding this misogyny play out in our living rooms, our barbershops, our group chats, and our family reunions. Okay? Let's talk about us. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about us. So to begin, listen, again, Cassie's 35-page lawsuit is the first legal document I have ever seen with a red-stamped document.

trigger warning on its cover. And now we have this video in which Diddy is seemingly so comfortable in this position at the time in March 2016 that he's assaulting her in a hotel hallway, which is, say, a shared space, and an elevator brink where he sits down at one point while wearing a bath towel. Like, that says a lot about how comfortable someone feels while doing that. And not just outside the door of their room. He beats her up and down the whole hallway. Several doors. Passing other doors. Yeah. Yeah.

And then an elevator bank, which is to say, this is basically in plain sight, right? And with knowledge that there are cameras. Of course. Everyone knows there are cameras in elevators. Of course. And so with that in mind, we have, of course, that video from 2016 and then his apology. I guess I wanted to start with asking you, what have you noticed about the various reactions in the days since? Sam, you said they were mixed, right?

Yeah. So I followed the journalist and creator Garrett Kennedy, and he was posting about this Diddy video and then posting some reactions from Black people, from Black women that were on Diddy's side. And I saw other parts of the internet where people I would never think would support Diddy after that kind of video, they were.

And I guess I was naive and hopeful. I thought that given the last several years of quote unquote progress on issues like Me Too, that we got into a certain place. But it was so wild in 2024 to see Black folks still caping for Diddy after all the allegations and after seeing him beat Cassie horribly. It really surprised me. And I guess I'm mad at myself for being surprised, but I was surprised. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I agree. I was shocked to see that people were still willing to give him many benefits of the doubt, even as he's, you know, acknowledging that he did something wrong without acknowledging that weeks ago, he called all of these people that came out and said that he had hurt them in various ways. So they were only looking for money. They're looking for fame. They're using him like totally denounced everything, but now was doing a turnabout.

and was acknowledging that, yeah, this was a dark time of my life. I'm really ashamed of all of these things. And people were still rationalizing it. And it just made me sad because our entire lives, all three of us have seen people rationalize men's bad behavior. And it just continues and continues.

It felt so similar to the initial reactions to Chris Brown beating Rihanna. I said to myself, well, once you see these mugshots, what else can you say? And yet, there were still folks who were like, well, what did she do? Did she deserve this? Yeah.

It's wild to me. I saw several, and it's sad that I would say more nuanced reactions that still disturb me because the tone of a lot of reactions I saw, some of these were in the form of op-eds or serenely toned TikToks where they're still saying fucked up things, where it was kind of like, well, now that we've seen the video, wow. Wow, we really need to reflect. We, oh, Cassie. And I was like, we? Yeah.

We, you know, because... I do love how Saeed always questions the we. I think it's so important and so telling, you know, because that says a lot about what that person assumes. Thank you for pointing that out. I do have a visceral reaction. You do, every time, and I love it. Because it's, you know...

The lawsuit, it's 35 detailed pages. Again, I'm not going to go, but I mean, just the rich specificity is so stunning. And I don't even know if I needed the lawsuit. I think she could have just said he abused me for this year to this year. And I would have been like, I believe women. It's not that complicated. But when people are like, oh, well, this meets my level of jurisprudence, it disturbs me, you know?

Well, and this is what I find that we never want to talk about when these women come forward. So, Saeed, you recommended this documentary On the Record, which I watched last night. It's beautiful. It's so good. It's so good. But when Drew Dixon, a former hip hop executive who came forward talking about how Russell Simmons raped her and other black women. And L.A. Reid. Yeah.

She said, when you come forward as a woman, when you come forward as a Black woman, you're defiled all over again. Yeah. You're defiled all over again. And that's why when any woman comes forward, I'm going to try to believe them. Yeah. Because they're taking such a risk and they know it's not going to help them. It's going to hurt them. And we're going to get more into that too in terms of specifically Black women. But I'm glad you're pointing this out because...

I think hate actually has so many nuances and people can be hateful for like all kinds of reasons. It doesn't have to be just one part of it is. Yeah. I think there is like a, I find a bizarre allegiance to these male celebrities, but also I sometimes just think, I think they hate these women more than they actually care about these men. And the example I use is Tory lanes. Like, however,

you feel about Diddy or someone like Russell Simmons, those guys are part of the infrastructure of what we've come to think of as hip hop. Someone who's been with like Dr. Dre, like they're a part of the history. They're part of the culture in such a seminal way. Tory Lanez, can you name a song? It was so weird to see people though, not that this is better to be clear, but I was like, I just think y'all hate this woman.

I think you hate Megan. I think you hate Cassie. I think you hate Drew Dixon actually more than you actually care about any of these men because the outpouring of what you're saying is like empathy doesn't actually make sense.

Yeah. And I think, I'm so glad you said that, Saeed, because for days, one of the things I've been thinking about a lot is bell hooks. The feminist scholar who passed away a few years ago because she was such an important voice in the 90s with the rise of gangster rap and the conversations around gangster rap and violence and women and how white people and media were pointing the finger and saying, look at these black people glamorizing, beating women, hurting women, selling drugs and all these things. And she was like, yeah, girl.

That's true, true. There is misogyny in hip hop. There is violence. These men are men. And one of the rules of manhood that they are taught is to subjugate women. That is as old as time itself. However, hip hop exists within a larger system called capitalism, called the patriarchy, called the music industry. And those systems are built on the subjugation of women.

and the buying and selling of women and hurting of women and Black people and all of these things. So sure, you can point to Black people trying to survive within these systems and follow the rules that have been built for them, but who built the rules? Who created the environment? And that's what we're reckoning with right now. And that's why Diddy, who is a billionaire, was able to do this for so many years because he played by the capitalistic rules and was protected the whole time. And that is the problem.

Thank you for taking it there, because at one point in the documentary, Dr. Kimberly Crenshaw, who coined the term intersectionality, we get this term from a Black woman, she has many contributions. She says, for example, you know, in our culture, many people believe that you can't rape a Black woman because there's nothing a Black woman won't do.

That if this white supremacist conception of black women as the Jezebel, the Venus Hottentot figure, you know, continues to be so pervasive, one of the consequences is they can't be victims in the way that a genteel white woman would be.

It's wild you mentioned that because there's a moment in the documentary where Drew Dixon is laying out like, yes, there's misogyny in hip hop, but all genres do this. Then they play a clip of a Rolling Stones song where Mick Jagger sings, well, black girls want to fuck all night.

He sings that. There's a Beatles song in that montage. I can't remember the song, but I was like, not the Beatles. It's wild. And I was really interested in the way Drew talked about hip hop and how it works in this doc. She's talking about being abused by these executives.

and talking about working in this industry, putting hip hop on. But she said over time, she realized the language of the music set a tone. She said that, quote, and it's got me reflecting a lot on what we allow these black men to say about black women in these songs and what we dance to. I remember as a youth in college and high school, you'd always say, well, they ain't talking about me. They ain't talking about her, but they're talking about somebody.

And like Drew says, this normalizes behavior and allows for behavior. I'm willing to accept responsibility for...

Before the homophobia got too much to me, and that's the other thing, everyone's fine with it until it starts to feel too personal for them. We're like, yeah, but they're talking about women and I'm not. They're talking about me. When I was younger, I think I bought into this idea that they were using the music, let's say the sexist lyrics in the early 90s in particular, that's what I'm talking about as a kid, that this was them letting off steam.

And that it was better for them to let off steam in their songs than to do it in real life. That was the mental gymnastics I was doing as a young person. And then, as I said, when as I started to get more in touch with my own sexuality, and then I remember in particular, I can't remember the name of the song, but like a Nas song where Faggot, and I think he's like dragging Jay-Z.

Oh, yeah. That slur comes up over and over. All of a sudden, I was like, they're not letting us, you know, when it felt like a clear and present danger, I couldn't accept it anymore. And I want to acknowledge that. So I want to, I mean, as we begin to move toward the end of the conversation, you know, it's clear that the Me Too movement in Hollywood was primarily benefited white women of means. It's significant that the language of Me Too comes from a black woman, Tarana Burke.

So even if Me Too didn't do much to benefit Black women, Me Too benefited from Black women's thinking and ideas and work, right? What role do you think race plays

plays into the continued pervasiveness of misogyny in hip-hop. Yeah. What I found very interesting, and just to take it back to this doc, and Saeed, thank you for having us watch it. It's excellent. And I have to thank my friend Tanya, who's been mentioning this documentary for weeks. Yeah. So, Drew Dixon, who was assaulted by Russell Simmons, by L.A. Reid...

She talked about being afraid to come forward and not just afraid, but like she basically said, I know how this plays out. And she said, I saw Anita Hill speak out against Clarence Thomas and did her career. She says, I saw Desiree Washington talk about Mike Tyson raping her and

And then Black folks shamed her out of public life. So she said, I know this script. History tells us how Black women will be treated if and when they come forward. And I hope that what's going on now with Cassie represents a shift for people of color. But I don't know. Zach, what do you think?

I'm thinking a lot about this term bell hooks uses, which is patriarchal violence. She asks us to stop saying domestic violence when talking about situations with Cassie and Diddy and rather label it patriarchal violence, meaning that Diddy through his actions are,

is maintaining or trying to maintain his manhood. That he's invested in the project or the religion of masculinity, and part of that project is herding and subjugating women. And I think race is definitely interwoven into that. He's a Black man having to exist in a very white world and is following rules that have been set up for him that say...

As a black man that's a billionaire, you have to treat women like this, but white women like that, black women like this. And there's all this stuff stacked up. And I think we do not need to give him any grace whatsoever, but I think we have to have that intersectional conversation. You brought up that word intersectionality to actually understand how violence here is incredibly pervasive and it flourishes in all the systems that we hold dear and that we have to deconstruct it all to get through this together. Yeah, yeah.

And it is incredibly complicated. You know, one in four women are survivors of domestic violence and abuse. I know so many women in my life who have faced so much violence. I know so many queer people, men, and you know, a lot of us have felt too stuck or frozen by our own trauma

to do anything for other people. And I would say, you know, you don't have to let your experiences stop you from helping others. You don't have to expect that the world is going to be this violent all the time. It can break and we must move to a place where we should break it. If white supremacy was responsible for situations in which

False accusations of sexual violence led to the murder of kids like Emmett Till and many men, right, where specifically lynching had a direct connection to Black men being accused of sexual violence. If that legacy then leads us into the 90s and 2000s and now where we are in a new century where, as someone in the documentary says, this is Dr. Kimberly Crenshaw again, you feel your responsibility is to muffle your screams.

That that responsibility is greater than his responsibility not to do it in the first place. If that's where we ended up, the lesson is not, my loves, the lesson is not we must protect Black men who are doing harm. The lesson is we have to dismantle white supremacy. That its legacy is far more toxic and poisonous than we give it credit for.

I'm so glad you brought that up because I wanted to bring up a term that that film brought to me that sums it up, this idea of race loyalty. I got to be quiet so I can protect these Black men because society is so harsh to these Black men anyway. We got to get over that. Race loyalty will have you dead. So I don't know. I'm hopeful for change. I'm hopeful that this represents a moment where we look at these things and change behavior. But

We shall see, huh? Yeah. I mean, yeah, just this is an ongoing conversation that, you know, if you haven't listened to our conversation about Kendrick and Drake, please do, because I do think it's all connected. But it's striking. You know, I'm like, wait a minute. He wasn't loyal to you. Right.

Right. Like you, you are a member. You too are a member of this history and race that deserves to be protected and honored. And you have been disrespected. He was not trying to be loyal to you and you are a part of us as well. So we'll leave it there for now. But again, I cannot recommend enough. Thank you to my dear friend, Tanya Menendez, who is a media scholar for recommending the 2018 documentary on the record.

It's a perfect follow-up to this conversation. Okay, we'll leave it there for now, but stay tuned and we'll be back to talk about food. Food. We do the big turns on this show. We be 180, 360, all of it. Yes.

This message is brought to you by McDonald's. Did you know only 7.3% of American fashion designers are Black? Well, McDonald's 2024 Change Leaders Program is ready to change the face of fashion. The innovative program awards a monetary grant to five emerging Black American designers and pairs each with an industry professional to help them elevate their brands.

I know specifically and distinctly how McDonald's can support and empower not just black Gen Z, but black people. My first job was McDonald's. I learned a lot there about customer service and how to relate to people. I still love that place and go there very often. Look out for the change of fashion designers and mentors.

at events like the BET Awards and the Essence Festival of Culture. And follow the journey of the 2024 McDonald's Change Leaders on their Instagram page, We Are Golden.

Here's an HIV pill dilemma for you. Picture the scene. There's a rooftop sunset with fairy lights and you're vibing with friends. You remember you've got to take your HIV pill. Important, yes, but the fun moment is gone. Did you know there's a long-acting treatment option available? So catch the sunset and keep the party going. Visit pillfreehiv.com today to learn more. Brought to you by Veve Healthcare.

Listeners, we are back and it's time to talk the state of fast food. So over the past year, if you're a lover of TikTok, you may have noticed a trend. People are rushing to Red Lobster for their all-you-can-eat shrimp special, which was from my childhood. Was it from you guys' childhood too? Shrimp feast. The shrimp feast. Yeah. Huge thing. I was there mostly for the biscuits, I'll be honest, but I do remember it when I was a kid. And those biscuits were and continue to be incredible.

So Red Lobster's iconic. Beyonce made it iconic again. But it wasn't until the past year that they tried to do this all-you-can-eat shrimp thing again. And it was to save their business. And it did work, kind of. They saw a huge spike of customers because TikTok was driving so many people there for a TikTok challenge of how many pieces of shrimp you could eat. And people were going crazy on that. However, it created millions of dollars of losses for them. And the total for that loss over the past year has been $11 million. Wow.

That has led to them filing for Chapter 11 protection and shuttering many of the restaurants across the country this week, leaving hundreds of people without jobs. However, while you may be seeing headlines that all-you-can-eat shrimp, meaning you going there and eating all-you-can-eat shrimp, may have caused the demise of this company, doesn't feel right. It feels like there's something off with that thesis there.

And we want to dive into that today. What's going on with food? Why are all these fast casual restaurants we grew up with that are the only options for people in food deserts either disappearing or becoming so expensive that no one can afford them? So to begin, I'd love to hear, Sam, you're not on TikTok. Have you been watching this stream? I've been looking a little bit. I've been looking a little bit. What do you think of this like rise of the all you can eat buffet? And was that a big part of your childhood for you?

I remember going to Red Lobster for like birthdays. It was like a nice fancy thing. And I remember loving Outback Steakhouse as a kid. And like when we got to go there, the Blooming Onion was like, wow. But when I think of these places now and when I've been to them in adulthood, I've noticed the quality of the food is just dramatically worse.

Foods that used to taste like they were cooked over a stove or in an oven. They tasted microwaved. Smaller portions, worse ingredients. And so part of me sees some of these fast casual chains experiencing a decline and I'm like, well, I see why the quality's down. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah, I think of, particularly when I was growing up in North Texas, but Memphis too, certainly, you know, Memphis was like chains like Piccadilly's Cafeteria. My grandmother and I would go every Sunday after church.

Or, you know, in North Texas, it would be like El Phoenix, the Tex-Mex chain or Spring Creek Barbecue. My mom and I loved going to Spring Creek Barbecue. These fast, casual places, I think for so many families are like a place of joy, right?

- Mm-hmm. - Dignity, frankly. And you are having like a night out. - You're served. - You're served. You know, you have a good time. You're around other families and other people. And I think poverty or being working poor, one of the ways it really weighs on you, and I can speak to this from growing up, is it's isolating. Much of what you're having to deal with is the things you can't do. And so you're contracted.

into your life. You're contracted into your little apartment until you're broke down car. And so when you are finally able to go to a Red Lobster and have like a nice dinner, it's not just like what's happening at your table. It's also like we're back in. We're part of the world again. And I do think it's a real loss to see like the quality and like the dignity and the literal closures happening with these places.

Well, and like another thing I was reading about these fast casual restaurants that might be part of their problem right now and why a lot of them are shutting down. You know, we're seeing Applebee's shut down its doors. Every fast casual chain is shutting down locations. Yeah, all of them are shutting. All of them. Yeah.

But Quartz has reported that it's just gotten more expensive to eat out, period. So inflation has affected all of us. But Quartz found that food inflation in the U.S. has impacted food away from home prices more than food at home prices. So the cost of food is up, period. But Quartz is saying the way it's done in restaurants, that's even more inflated. Right.

And that's causing part of the problem too. Yeah, I'm so glad you're bringing that up because that fact is directly connected to Red Lobster. And this is how I'm going to lay it out. So, you know, you have in 2015-16, that was the last big era, if you remember, of the value meals of fast food restaurants. Like the five for four at Burger King, the three for four, all of those. 99 cents for five nuggets at Wendy's. All.

All of that. Man. And the reason why all of that really peaked in 2015, 2016 was because restaurants like Chipotle and Panera were rising. And those are kind of in between the Chili's, Red Lobster, McDonald's is this other medium, which is like a fast casual, but it's like you're not needing to sit down with a waiter, but you get nicer food and all that. So those were booming. People love Chipotle and we've seen Chipotle continue to flourish.

So these restaurants began fighting for their rights to have profits with these really cheap meals. However, around that same time, if y'all remember, do you remember what was bubbling at the surface in fast food in 2016, 2017? The fight for 15 minimum wage.

So you have the, as they're doing these value meals, workers are like, I'm overworked, I'm underpaid, and, you know, I'm having to shell out all these hamburgers all the time. So they're lowering prices while they have to pay their workers more. Exactly. So they argued that the

The fight for 15 is what's cutting into their profits. So they have to jack up these prices of food to pay. So they're transferring the weight of paying people equitably to us as the consumer. And then it's create the situation where Red Lobster is now cheaper than McDonald's, which in Connecticut, certain parts of Connecticut, for example. Wow, that's pretty shocking. Yeah, a Big Mac is $22 for a meal in certain parts of Connecticut. Yes, exactly.

So... Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Yeah, yeah. McDonald's, Big Mac, like with the fries and a drink? Oh, yeah, the full meal. I can send you, it was like in the New York Post last week, I think, but it went viral because a guy went to a truck stop and they started at $18 for the meal and it went up from there. And that's for the burger, the drinks, and the fries. That is wild. Yeah. And let me tell you this, my first job was...

was McDonald's. Employee of the month, twice. I can tell you what Big Macs tasted like when I was working there in high school. They tasted twice as good as they taste now. This is the thing, it's like while all the prices have gone up, and I get having to raise your prices,

All this food tastes worse. I remember when McDonald's stopped using actual chicken chunks to make their nuggets and went to pink slime. I could tell the difference. And I'm seeing all of those differences happen across fast, casual food all over the country.

And so what we've seen, and this is going to lead us into the private equity part of this performance piece today of Zach being a financial advisor, which you should never hire me as your financial advisor. Art! But yeah, art. This is art. So you have this culminating thing. You have, you know, Chipotle is rising. McDonald's is trying to catch up. They're raising the prices. Minimum wage is being passed in places like California. So McDonald's does have to pay more profits. All this stuff's happening. And then the pandemic hits.

Pitchforks.

Pitchforks. And I'm going to tell you why I feel, and I've railed against this before on the show, I think the era of private equity and the era of shareholder primacy is,

has affected for the worst so many parts of most Americans' everyday lives. When private equity comes in, the incentive moves from making customers happy to maximizing profits for executives and shareholders, and that changes everything. Yeah, I guess what I would say is based on, and this is based on my experience as a consumer, but also like someone who's worked in media, my sense is that I feel that venture capital pops up

And says, hello, company, you're doing something really interesting. We are going to throw way more money at you than you would ever actually need or be able to sustain so that we can hold you to impossible standards. And then here comes the layoffs. Here comes everything falling apart just a few years later. And then private equity kind of ends up in the same place but in the opposite. Like I feel like private equity tightens the screws immensely.

immediately and again sets really, really high expectations. So for example, I know that like the private equity company that messed up Red Lobster is behind Chicken of the Sea. Chicken of the Sea wasn't doing so well. And so suddenly all these Red Lobster places are having to pay rent on their own restaurants, which... Yes. Wait, let me use that example. You just said pay rent on their own restaurants. That's a great segue to explaining very quickly what private equity is.

So private equity is, what Saeed just said about VCs and PE is very true. Private equity, how it works here. Let's use Red Lobster as an example. Red Lobster is battling these wars of, you know, higher wages, all this stuff in 2016. They finally bring in a PE firm. Firm buys them and they're like, hey,

We don't have the money to buy you. You're valued really high. I think 100 plus million dollars or something really high. But we have, you know, let's call it 60 million dollars on hand. So we're going to do 60 up front to you. And then when we acquire Red Lobster, we're going to use Red Lobster's valuation of, let's say, 120 million dollars to raise the other 60 to pay the owners. So once they do that, they have...

the $120 million and they give it to the original owners of Red Lobster. They're like, you're good. So now the new owners of Red Lobster had $60 million, and this isn't the right number, but I'm using it for the example, $60 million of debt that was leveraged to buy for Lobster that they now need to pay off.

And what their bet is that if Red Lobster was $120 million in acquisition, they think they can flip it for $700 million. Wow. Which means in the next few years, if they're able to flip it, not only will they make their money back and also pay themselves yearly fees for overseeing the business, they will then

quadruple their profits very quickly. And what they do immediately, most of the time, is a lot of these businesses have assets that make them valuable, like owning their own restaurants. Red Lobster owned all of their locations. Immediately, the first private equity group came in, said, sell off the restaurants. They sold most of the restaurants, and then they made $64 million off that. So they paid back that original debt that they took out, and they were good. They're at zero. Who did they sell them to? Sorry, just to pause.

to another firm... Gotcha. ...who then made all of those franchises start paying rent, which they had never... They hadn't paid rent like this in forever. So that's a cost on top of just being open that wasn't there before. It's impossible. Yeah, it's impossible. So then that ran it down, and then they had no more, you know, little...

moves to save themselves, but they made their money back. They made their 60 million back. So they're cool. Pass it on to another private equity group. They pass it on to a Thai company that specializes in seafood. So they brought back all you can eat shrimp so that they could sell their fish to Red Lobster. It made Red Lobster buy all the fish, which sunk them into even greater debts. And now we're at the moment where all

All avenues have been exhausted by private equity firms who've come in, leveraged assets to make more money, but also put debts on the asset that is Red Lobster. And now Red Lobster has Chapter 11 bankruptcy. And that is private equity. And this is why I don't like private equity, because when you look at this Red Lobster example...

All of the people who made money flipping Red Lobster left and right, to and fro, aren't at all attached to food, aren't at all attached to your human experience when you go into a Red Lobster. And Red Lobster store owners and workers, to keep up with these new demands, they probably had to work harder, longer hours, use cheaper ingredients, and give customers a lesser experience. Yeah.

So we have this scenario that happens a lot where private equity makes a lot of money for people not even tied to the product while the people who are tied to the product and making it get a worse experience. We're actually seeing this happen right now in the world of veterinary care. Yeah. Private equity is buying up a bunch of vet offices all over the country. And what it's leading to is higher costs for basic services for your pets. It's not making it better for us. It's making it worse for us.

Zach, the way you were able to explain something very complicated in a very concise way with that example was really great. But it's also like in the meantime, like, you know, impossible situation on top of impossible situation, you have customers, right?

and employees being turned against each other. And what we see in the news is not a conversation about private equity and the impossible burden it puts on all of us. It's a conversation about how paying people a living minimum wage is to blame for all of this. And that's not the case. It's not minimum wage. I've even seen the ways in which these acquisitions and mergers happen.

make the jobs of the actual employees untenable. I remember when Whole Foods got bought by Amazon. All of a sudden, Whole Foods went from being people's favorite place to work to their least favorite place to work because on top of just keeping the store going, Amazon introduced this intricate delivery system.

So they doubled the work of all the employees and didn't double their salary. This is the thing. It's like when we see fast food customers get mad about

bad quality food or fast food employees, you know, being stressed. It's because they've been given untenable situations from owners who will only see profit. Right. Which is why you should treat those people working with dignity and respect. It is not their fault. It is not their fault because we're just at this point with late capitalism where we're seeing capitalism cannibalize itself. There's no new innovation.

Right. Like that the only way to make money is to eat other people's money, basically, is I think what we're seeing now. Yeah. The big takeaway here is whenever you see private equity into the picture, statistically, that company is going to fail in the next few years. The New York Times has reported a ton on this.

So be wary when you see PE enter, because what that company is doing is they're flipping it for profit really, really fast. And sometimes that works out. Burger King had this happen to them and they became a global leader. But most of the time, it doesn't work. So again, we say this a lot. Don't trust capitalism. It's never going to look out for you or your family at the end of the day. And private equity is capitalism. Well, with that, we're going to take another quick break. But don't go anywhere. We'll be right back with some recommendations. ♪

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All right, we're back. And before we end the show, like we always do, we're going to take some time to each share something that's helping us keep our vibes right this week. Let's start with Zach. I'd love to. So my recommendation this week is a new book that comes out today called

The book's called A Great Gay Book, Stories of Growth, Belonging, and Other Queer Possibilities. I love that title. I know, it's a great title. It's edited by Ryan Fitzgibbon, who is the founder of the magazine Hello Mister, which I believe was Sayu Jones' first cover of a magazine back in the day. It was my first magazine cover.

Yes. Yes, and Saeed is in this book. They reflect on that moment in the culture. If people aren't aware, Hello Mister was an iconic queer magazine that launched in about 2013, I believe, by Ryan. I was a part of the launch in the beginning as a friend and an advisor, and it became this staple within a lot of coastal cities, especially. It was very sexy. It's very sexy. And smart, which I liked. Yeah, so smart. They're so smart, they put Saeed on a cover. Really smart move.

The magazine closed due to how the magazine business goes. But this book is a, you know, a reflection on its history, but also with new work. Sam, your name is in it too, because when they talk about Saeed, they talk about us. Vibe check, which is very nice. But what I really love about the book is that my boyfriend Craig is in the book.

He has an essay in it. He has a really wonderful piece in it. Yeah, they commissioned him to write about Mormonism and porn and all these other things. And it's really juicy. It's very sexy. I love it. I'm very proud of him. And it's been like, to point to my earlier statement about just feeling friends pouring in and loving my community, I loved opening that book and seeing Saeed, seeing Craig, seeing Ryan, seeing Fran Torado, seeing so many people I've known since I was in college, you know, in a book. It's

so exciting I love that I just pulled up Saeed's cover you giving face baby oh I was giving face the doll was giving face to be clear oh yes

Oh, yes. And Fran Tirado wrote the article about me, and I remember that was really beautiful. Oh, we love Fran. I've come to, again, have such appreciation for these kinds of books because this is an example of a contemporary archive. And 10, 20 years from now, think about how valuable it will be to have this book that it's like it is a slice of life for really a decade of queer culture, particularly in New York City. And those books become really important. So thank you, Ryan, for doing this work.

All right, Saeed, what you got for us? So I thought I would read a moody poem from one of my favorite moody books. It is Meadowlands by Louise Gluck. I think this was my introduction to her work and made me fall in love with poetry in all kinds of ways as a college student. It is based on the myth of Penelope in Odysseus and everything they kind of go through. But she sets it in a like...

contemporary family's husband and wife drama. So it's kind of, we're going back and forth. And if you remember, Odysseus goes off to war and he's gone for what he thinks is going to be like, you know, a few months, maybe a year. He's gone for 12 years and he leaves his wife and his son, who's like a teenager by the time he comes home, you know, so just a lot happens. So this is kind of going back and forth between those two stories. Departure. The night isn't dark. The world is dark.

Stay with me a little longer. Your hands on the back of the chair, that's what I'll remember. Before that, lightly stroking my shoulders, like a man training himself to avoid the heart. In the other room, the maid discreetly putting out the light I read by. That room, with its chalk walls. How will it look to you, I wonder, once your exile begins?

I think your eyes will seek out its light as opposed to the moon. Apparently, after so many years, you need distance to make plain its intensity. Your hands on the chair, stroking my body and the wood in exactly the same way. Like a man who wants to feel longing again, who prizes longing above all other emotion.

On the beach, voices of the Greek farmers impatient for sunrise as though dawn will change them from farmers into heroes. And before that, you are holding me because you are going away. These are statements you are making, not questions needing answers. How can I know you love me unless I see you grieve over me?

That's the poem. Departure. It's, you know, Louise Gluck did not play. She never played. She never played. She won the Nobel Prize for a reason before she passed away. Yeah, just incredible. And again, the book is Meadowlands. You can get the book. You can also read it in her collected poems. Just incredible.

I was reading along with you as you were saying it out loud because I love to do that and I saw that last line coming and I was like get ready get ready get ready buckle up I was like it's like when the roller coaster gets up to the top before it falls I felt that way before that last little stanza Louise Gluck was such a um

Actually, let me find, there's another quick line in another poem that I love so much. And you don't even need the context. But again, it's kind of before Odysseus goes off. And this is the last couplet of the poem. The title of the poem is Quiet Evening. She ends the poem by saying, from this point on, the silence through which you move is my voice pursuing you.

know her there's such a there's such a toughness to her work it's haunting and it just feels like like it's always like I don't know she makes me think of like the mom in Salt Burn like beautiful gowns and everything but she might have a knife you know what I mean yeah

It's very Joan Didion. Yes, yes. This is a perfect setup for my recommendation. Oh, good. All right, what's your recommendation? Moody with a punch. Okay. I have been devouring the new Billie Eilish album called Hit Me Hard and Soft.

I'm going to be honest and say I'm not sure I love the whole album, but there is one track on this album that is a sucker punch, and it builds and grows on you. The song is called Chihiro. It's the Japanese name. C-H-I-H-I-R-O-N.

And it starts off as a very kind of typical Billie Eilish-Phiineas collab, mid-tempo shuffle, soft bedroom pop Billie Eilish vocals, Phineas synths. It's like a groove that you expect from these two at this point. But something happens, and it builds, and about two minutes in, they...

the synths hit this crescendo. It's like the orchestra of synths starts screaming at you, and then you hear Billie start to scream herself, but she's screaming like she's 20 feet away from the mic. It is magical. I love it when pop songs use dynamics and get louder and softer and give you peaks and valleys. There's a drama in there that I love.

It's also so great to see the working relationship between Billie and her brother Finneas grow deeper and deeper and deeper. On this song in particular, you hear what happens when musicians work together for a very long time.

They know each other so well. They know how to make the sense work with the vocals, work with the vocals, work with the sense. And it's a partnership that gets better the longer they keep doing it. So I just love it. I have played this one song in the last three days probably 25 times. It levitates. It puts me in a trance. Listeners, believe me when I say it. Chihiro. It's a great song. Check it out. I'll dip.

I'll dip into Billie's Dark Waters. I like her little dark waters. She does this thing where she makes this really accessible pop, but it still feels really dark and moody and ethereal in this haunting, glorious kind of way. All right, listeners, what are you feeling or not feeling this week? What's your vibe? Check in with us at vibecheckatstitcher.com. Vibecheckatstitcher.com. ♪

You said dynamic pop. This was a dynamic episode of the podcast. We were turning.

We were pivoting. Pivoting. Let me get these girls out of here. Listeners, thank you for tuning into this week's episode of ViCheck. If you love the show and want to support us, please make sure to follow the show on your favorite podcast listening platform. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts and leave a review. And most importantly, tell a friend. Huge thank you to our producers, Chantel Holder, engineers Rich Garcia and Brendan Burns, and Marcus Holm for our theme music and sound design.

Also, special thanks to our executive producers, Laura Ritchie at Stitcher and Brandon Sharp from Agenda. That's my AI voice.

It was creepy. Okay. It was creepy. Chat, chat, GBT, Sam. Bad vibes. Didn't like it. Yeah. Didn't enjoy it. Anyway, listeners, as always, we want to hear from you. So don't forget, you can email us at vibecheckatstitcher.com. You can keep in touch with us on Instagram on our new page at vibecheck underscore pod and our Patreon, where for $5 a month, you get direct access to our group chat. And that link is patreon.com slash vibecheck. So,

Stay tuned for another episode next Wednesday. Goodbye. Bye.

Damn.

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