Carolina Snowflakes Podcast

This week on the Carolina Snowflakes Podcast we’re taking a hilarious journey into the Amazon.com jungle. Rich in a variety of purchasing options for consumers and unmatched store-free convenience, this one website has become more than simply “a place to shop”. It’s a regular destination for us Snowflakes, but sometimes we wonder if Amazon’s gettin’ too big for its britches.

Indeed you might even be wondering what Axl Rose has to do with Amazon.com. We can explain! When discussing the good v. bad of Amazon.com, it struck us that many of the positive attributes of this giant marketplace are covered in the lyrics of the Guns n Roses song “Welcome to the Jungle”. Now we know that Axl wasn’t actually singing about Jeff Bezos’ baby, but he might as well have been. We’ll break it down for you in this episode.

And for all the good things Amazon.com has going for it, there are more than a few less-than-stellar things happening as well. If you thought Wal-Mart was bad for small “mom n pop” businesses, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Likewise, all the conveniences afforded by Amazon.com to its consumers have made a sticky situation in terms of privacy even within our own homes. We willingly let Bezos’ baby into our homes and now it’s running everything.

What will the future look like when Amazon.com is handling our banking, our shopping and our healthcare? Those ideas may not be fully developed realities yet, but what’s stopping it from happening? Spoiler: nothing.

How did we get lulled into trusting such a massive corporation? We here at the Carolina Snowflakes Podcast wager that politics are at play and it might not be what you’re thinking. Yes liberals, we’re taking a critical look at our own kind. We’re ridiculous sometimes.

This week we’re poking, prodding and laughing at ourselves, Jeff Bezos’ baby, and even old Axl Rose. Hilarity lies within.

Bonus: stick around until the very end of the episode to hear some one-star reviews from our own Amazon.com order histories going back to 2008.

This week on the Carolina Snowflakes Podcast we’re giving a nod to Mike Winkelmann, better known as Beeple, who used something called NFT technology to sell the most expensive piece of digital artwork in history. This recent sale was a first for digital art, a first for Christie’s Auction Company in London and a first for Beeple himself.

Why does this matter? Well, because it’s interesting for starters. Especially considering digital art has been a difficult market to monetize and track in the way that other art is handled. Plus, an NFT or Non-Fungible Token is a brand new system of buying and selling media in a way that has never been done before. This could very well change the way art, in particular digital art, is bought, sold and how records of provenance are maintained.

What makes it even more interesting is the story of the art that was recently sold as well as the artist himself. Beeple hails from Charleston, SC and has designed works for a variety of famous musical acts, plus a slew of big name brands such as Coca-Cola.  His work has been described as sci-fi meets pop culture meets politics. Additionally, for the last 13 years, Beeple has created a new and original piece of digital art each day. This monumental task became known as his “Everydays” collection and at the end of 13 years, or nearly 5,000 days, Beeple combined each piece into one larger mosaic.

Just a couple weeks ago the mosaic was assigned an NFT and sent to Christie’s Auction where the opening bid began at $100. No one knew what might happen and it was a risk for all involved. But boy did that risk pay off. To the tune of $69 million.

Tune in to learn about this new NFT technology and to discover more about the South Carolina artist called Beeple.

References:

White, Avery. (2020, January 3). “Beeple on Creating a Zombie Mark Zuckerberg and Flesh-eating Baby Yoda to examine the times”. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/3/21046790/beeple-mike-winkelmann-interview-everyday-post-apocalyptic-baby-yoda-zuckerberg

Von Baldegg, Kasia Cieplak-Mayr. (2011, October 7). “Creativity is Hustle: Make Something Every Day”. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/video/archive/2011/10/creativity-is-hustle-make-something-every-day/246377/#slide15

Business Insider. (2021, March 12). “Beeple Explains the Absurdity of NFTs/So Expensive” [Video]. https://youtu.be/nTmF26NUZTA

Christie’s. (2021, March 11). “Watch Beeple react to the Historic $69.3 Million sale of his digital work at Christie’s”. [Video] https://youtu.be/S8p1B8NHLFQ

Beeple’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beeple

Beeple’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beeple_crap/

This week on the Carolina Snowflakes Podcast we’re celebrating Biden’s massive package. No not that package, the other massive one involving cash. The $1.9 trillion stimulus package was recently signed into existence and most Americans, us Snowflakes included, are set to receive a $1,400 check. Grandpa Joe is makin’ rain!

We begin this week’s episode with how we each intend to spend our Biden checks and Jason poses a question for our listeners to help him decide how his money is best spent. Be sure to listen to hear the options because you get to vote. We’re a democracy, dammit!

As we mulled over how to spend our government cash, we found ourselves wondering what else Biden included in his massive package. It wasn’t all just payments to individual Americans like us.  We’ll give you a quick and dirty breakdown of who the other recipients of this $1.9 trillion are, as well as what the republicans in congress thought of these additional recipients.

Spoiler alert: despite being adamant supporters of reopening our country’s schools, republicans would rather save money than spend an extra buck to keep our children safe. Why are we not surprised?

This week also marks 9 months of the Carolina Snowflakes churning out weekly episodes. When we began making this podcast we weren’t sure anyone would care to hear what we had to say, but we’ve had far more support than we could have ever imagined. This past year hasn’t been easy, but having a weekly “outlet” for our thoughts and musings has been a beautiful experience and we want to say “THANK YOU” to our listeners. We have a lot in store for future episodes and some new marketing ideas to get the word out that we’re here and we’re Snowflakes. Did we mention NEW STICKERS?! Stay tuned!

We wrap up this week’s episode with a segment we’re calling Covid Confessions. Now that there appears to be light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, we’re choosing to reflect on the past 12 months with honesty in terms of the not-so-bad (dare we say good?) things to come from life in lockdown. For starters, this podcast exists in large part due to the Covid-19 pandemic. There have been several ways in which the pandemic has improved different aspects of our lives and we’re willing to share those with our listeners. We’re also willing to bet we aren’t the only ones to experience some glimmers of light within the darkness.  Feel free to share with us your own Covid Confessions and we’ll read them in an upcoming episode.

P.S. check out our 'Forged in Fur' parody video on YouTube:  https://youtu.be/P55C7KkNtTs

Well those pesky Dems have gone and done it again. RUINING EVERYTHING GOOD IN THIS COUNTRY LIKE THEY ALWAYS DO! Now they want to take away our precious and beloved Dr. Potato Head. The nerve!

This week on the Carolina Snowflakes Podcast we’re exploring the intersection of politics and cancel culture. For starters, what even is a culture of cancel? To be honest, we’re perplexed by the whole thing. Who sets the rules on what gets cancelled? And what exactly is cancellation supposed to achieve? Is redemption even possible (or desired) after someone is effectively cancelled? Who is in charge here?

We do our best to answer these questions plus more as we satirically examine the ins and outs of recent “cancel culture” targets. To us it seems the chosen targets and corresponding efforts often don’t make much sense. Is Eminem deserving of the same “cancellation” as someone like Bill Cosby? Does removing “offensive” episodes of popular sitcoms like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and The Golden Girls somehow fix our country’s very real problems of racism, sexism and transphobia? What happens when we remove everything deemed offensive? Is it possible to go too far?

Better yet, what are the political consequences of the far right now using the term “cancel culture” in lieu of “fake news”. In case you hadn’t noticed, that’s what they’re doing these days. The rest of us know that neither Mr. Potato Head nor Dr. Seuss have been cancelled by anyone, but tune into Fox News and you’ll hear a very different spin. It seems to us that the perceived culture war is the only thing unifying the splintered Republican Party. That’s all they’ve got. The good news for us lefty lefts is that while the conservatives are ranting about injustices towards plastic potatoes and cats in hats, we’re getting things done in Washington.

So tune in and prepare to have a chuckle as we share our Carolina Snowflakes musings on our own interpretations of cancel culture and the fallout it often creates.

This week on the Carolina Snowflakes Podcast we examine the captivating world of the psychic medium. What exactly is a psychic and how do they just seemingly know so much? Most importantly, is any of it real or is it all a sham to make a quick buck?

To begin this epic journey, we take a trip back to the mid 90s (a pivotal time for our impressionable young minds) to visit our pals at the Psychic Friends Network and along the way give a nod to tarot-reading, Jamaican-accent-wielding Miss Cleo. Call me now! We take a look at what happened to these “psychic networks” and where are they now.

Not only did the 1990s witness the rise of the telephone psychic hotline, but also the ever-present TV celebrity psychic. For a while it seemed talk shows went hand-in-hand with psychic guests. In fact, The Montel Williams Show regularly featured famed psychic Sylvia Browne. Browne was a no-nonsense kinda psychic who gave readings to members of Montel’s audience. Her career spanned multiple decades and at one point during the early 2000s, her telephone psychic readings boasted a 4-year wait time!

One of the things we quickly discovered when digging into the world of psychics is that for every psychic there exists an equally skilled and determined group of skeptics chomping at the bit to take them down. Folks like Houdini and James Randi practically made careers not only out of their own feats of magic and illusion, but in proving psychics to be frauds. Hear how today’s technology and social media have influenced methods used by these groups of skeptics in their unique “sting-style” missions to debunk and take down their psychic targets.

While venturing into the mysterious and freaky worlds of psychics we decided to stop by a notorious place called the Dolphin House. In the 1960s NASA funded a bizarre study involving teaching dolphins to communicate with humans, both verbally and telepathically. Aided by a sensory deprivation chamber and a few dozen hits of acid, Dr. John C. Lilly attempted to communicate with a curious dolphin named Peter. What happened instead was an embarrassment to science and downright weird.

We wrap up this crazy journey, with a short clip from an episode we recorded and published back in November 2020 called Parler Tricks. In the Parler Tricks episode we made a handful of predictions about what we thought was going to happen with the censor-free, Trump-loving “safe space” of a social media app, plus we shared insight into what we thought users of the app were capable of.

Turns out our predictions were right.

How did we know what was going to happen? Were our predictions simply good guesses or are we actually…Psychic Snowflakes?

References:

Hitt, Jack. (2019, February 26). Inside the Secret Sting Operations to Expose Celebrity Psychics. The New York Times Magazine. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/26/magazine/psychics-skeptics-facebook.html