Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - 171: What If The Day Was 12 Hours Longer? | Ear Biscuits Ep. 171
Episode Date: November 26, 2018Is there really “never enough time?” R&L explore what they would do with 36 hours in a day by examining their current priorities, goals, and desires. Sponsored By:Spotify: Download the free app an...d start listening to podcasts on Spotify (including Ear Biscuits!) today.23andMe: Visit 23andMe.com/EAR to order your 23andMe Health + Ancestry Service kitQuip: Visit GetQuip.com/EAR to receive your first refill FREE To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Now on with the biscuit.
Welcome to Ear Biscuits, I'm Rhett.
And I'm Link.
Today at the round table of dim lighting,
we ask the question, what if the day was 12 hours longer?
What would we do with ourselves?
What would we do with our lives?
What does that mean about, how could that even happen?
And if scientifically it were possible.
Oh it is.
If geophysically it were possible,
how would that change
our lives and culture?
I don't know how far reaching this conversation will go.
It could go anywhere.
But you know, we're hovering around, I mean it may go to,
it's about time, my friend, maybe time management,
maybe about desires and things we never get to, who knows?
I actually don't know where we're going with this.
And that's what's exciting.
The question came from another question
that we got on Twitter, which I'm not even gonna talk about
now because we'll talk about that in a second.
A question from a Mythical Beast
that made us think of this question.
But before we get into that, I feel it appropriate
to talk to you about an experience I had last evening.
That's why I'm gonna start talking.
You know one of the things,
do you notice like when you watch old movies
or when you like look at the writings of people
who lived like 100 years ago?
Well their days were 36 hours.
Yeah.
It was a different time.
They just spoken better, you know what I'm saying?
They just, they had, the way,
I wish to recall a tale of my last eve.
How did their brains work like that?
We're so just lazy in the way we speak.
I actually think it's more of just bad scripting.
It's like, they properized things when they scripted it
that did not capture. No, have you ever just read a Have you ever read? Did not capture.
No, have you ever just read a letter?
No, I have not read.
Okay, all right, well that explains a lot.
The way they wrote letters is not the way that they spoke
because letters were an art form.
It was a crafted thing that you sat there
and it was very eloquent.
You know, you didn't have casual conversation
like that way with your aunt.
I believe they did.
I believe they talked the way they talked
on Little House on the Prairie.
That's how everyone spoke.
And I miss those days, even though I was not even alive.
I don't know that I've ever watched an episode of that.
But I wanna talk to you about a piece of furniture
that I attempted to put together.
And I know this is.
In the previous eve?
Yeah, last eve, my friend Neil.
Piece of furniture?
Yes, I happened.
Are we about to have a Ikea conversation
because I hope you didn't.
I happened upon a porcel of furniture.
A parcel?
A porcel.
That's not a word.
A morsel.
Never was a word.
Part of a cookie.
A morsel of furniture.
No, this is not Ikea.
It could have been but it wasn't.
So.
I don't do that anymore.
Not that I don't like Ikea.
No, no, I haven't put together anything
in quite some time.
In fact, even.
I'm definitely beyond it.
No, some of the most simple repairs, now.
It's like having, I've had one near death experience,
I'm not gonna elect to have another one.
It's kinda what it's like.
You know, like in the early days of home ownership
and then in like the early days of, you know,
right after we got married, we bought a house
because buying a house in North Carolina was somewhat easier
than buying a house in North Carolina,
I mean in California.
And after we bought that house, after a couple years,
we moved into another house and started renting out
the original house and I found myself a landlord.
And at that point I was doing,
I had been kind of told by people who did this
that you got, the only way you can make money off this
is to do all the repairs yourself.
So I learned how to sheet rock walls
and to do plumbing repairs and I actually became
relatively handy for like a few years I was relatively handy.
Could do some electrical work.
Because your time wasn't worth squat.
Exactly.
To anyone else besides you.
I mean yeah, I would try to fix my truck.
I would try to.
Oh yeah I tried to fix the Intrepid one time.
I did all types of stuff, yeah.
I got the Hanes manual, is that what it was?
The Hanes auto manual that showed you how to fix things?
It tells you how to fix everything,
but it's never as simple as a manual.
I tried to change the timing belt on a Dodge Intrepid
and almost lost a limb.
I dropped a huge, I opened up the top of the engine,
I guess just to top of the engine,
I guess just to put oil in there, but I was trying to do something else,
and I dropped a huge ass screw in there
inside of the engine block.
You're the shakiest man I know under 75 years old.
You doing mechanical work seems like the worst idea ever.
This is, I remember, I think I told this story
in like Chia Lincoln or something,
but I panicked at that moment and I went to the advanced
auto and I found this like telescoping rod
that had a little magnet on the end of it
and here I am shoving this thing like a fishing pole
down into my engine block trying to fish out and here I am shoving this thing like a fishing pole
down into my engine block trying to fish out in the middle of all the oil.
That's how you fish, you stick the pole in the water.
Yeah.
We can talk about that later as well.
Trying to get the magnet to hook onto something
and I never did and then I was like,
I just put the cap on it and just drive it around.
I guess it just settled to the bottom.
It didn't get kinked up in anything.
It works its way up.
So anyway, yeah, I thought we were past this.
You know, it's better to invest in somebody else
who knows how to do stuff.
So at this point, I get.
Even building chest of drawers.
Very, very small repairs.
Jessie is like, can you do this?
And I'm like, nope.
But you know what, baby?
You can call whoever you want to do it.
I just, I don't wanna do it.
You get somebody to do it.
But it was my idea, so we've got this,
if you walk out of our kitchen,
you've got the basketball goal out there
and the kids are just, they're just animals.
I mean, they're just, I feel like I could just have
a herd of buffalo and it would be similar
to managing two boys.
Yeah, I was about to say, at least you don't have three.
Yeah, but your kids are much more
Like me. Organized.
And they clean up after themselves.
Thank you.
You know, I mean, your family's different, man.
And so I think that there's, not only is there dog crap
all over this area and it's Shepherd's job to clean it up
and he doesn't do it and I end up doing it,
we buy these basketballs and I buy the indoor,
outdoor basketballs and I say, if you leave this basketball
outside in the sun,
it will very quickly disintegrate into a very
non-pleasing sphere that no one wants to touch
or play basketball with.
It loses its bounce, it loses its grip,
because the sun just eats these basketballs.
You might as well be talking to the ball itself.
Yeah and so I said,
Jesse, we've been in this house for three and a half years
but I think we need some sort of sports bin,
a sports bin.
Okay.
To put balls in.
And I mean it's gonna make me sound a little bit
like a douche.
I also recently replaced, I have a one little spot
of grass. Hey, hey, hey.
Don't say it. I have to, I mean I have to talk about grass. Hey, hey, hey, don't say it.
I have to, I mean I have to talk about it.
The hot tub was a lot, man.
No, I have to talk about it.
We talked about the hot tub.
We talked to him about the security cameras.
It's already well established
how much of a douche I am.
Oh and you're going full.
Listen, I mean I haven't bought a Lamborghini or anything.
So I have a strip of grass that is literally 12 feet wide
and it's the only grass I have.
There's no grass on my property, I just despise it.
And I wanted to eliminate the last bit of grass.
And I was like, hold on, you know what?
I wanna put in some artificial grass
because you don't have to do anything to that.
You just put some artificial grass in there,
it looks great all the time, you don't have to water it,
it's great for everybody.
You're on a slippery slope now.
And then I was like.
Even though ironically it's flat,
what you're talking about.
If I'm going to do this, might it be a putting green?
There it is.
I'm sorry, I went there.
You commissioned the construction
of a putting green in your yard.
Here's what I'll say, and you're right in thinking this.
If you were to put 10 men in front of me,
and I'm just gonna say men, because I'm a man,
it could be 10 people.
If you were to put 10 people in front of me,
and you were to say one of these people
installed a putting green at their house
and then the second question is,
can you pick one person that you would not like
to be friends with?
I'd be like, well, the only thing I gotta go on
is the guy who had a putting green installed at his house.
I don't wanna be friends with him.
Eliminated.
But I am that guy, because I had that done.
Now my dog is using it as a pooping green.
And I'm trying to train her to do it in one of the cups,
but she hasn't figured that out yet.
That's a bad idea.
Anyway, it actually is really easy to clean the poop up
off of the artificial turf and I got a little hose
installed so I can like lift and squirt.
Little lift and squirt, which is what she's doing out there.
Well the petrified dog poop is kind of like,
what are those called? Fossils?
No, in golf terms, not a bunker but like an obstruction.
Bogey?
What's an, like an obstacle?
A hazard? A hazard.
Okay, yeah but it's a movable, you can move a turd.
Or in putt-putt it could be like bank shot.
I think if there's a turd on the green in golf
you can move it but if there's a turd on the green in golf you can move it but if there's a turd on the fairway
you can't move it.
Don't look around for help, we don't know.
I don't know the USGA rules.
Anyway, what I do know is that,
because now we've got a putter out there
and we've got golf balls.
You know what you need?
A sports bin.
Sports bin.
Yeah and so I'm all.
What a douche.
So I find myself.
Gotta have a sports bin.
Mr. Douche on Amazon looking at sports bins
and at this point, and I'm about to pull the trigger,
I'm about to hit one click buy it now.
Oh yeah.
And so my beautiful wife comes over my shoulder
and she's like, what are you looking at?
And I was like, I was gonna get a sports bin
for the outside.
She was like, well hold on.
She got an opinion on what the sports bin looks like.
Hold on a second, you're about to have just a random ass
plastic bin that you're gonna put out inside my house
that I just, you know I worry about every detail of this?
Yeah, yeah.
And I was like it's just a sports bin.
She was like well I want.
Did it say sports bin on it?
Or was it ugly?
No it was just a rectangular black sports pin.
Like lift the lid on it,
you could also sit on it as a bench.
You probably wouldn't do that, but yeah, you could.
Okay.
But the one I was looking at was like $49.99.
I mean, it was like great deal,
holds multiple basketballs.
Putter.
And I also bought myself an electric leaf blower
to get the leaves off of the putting green
before I douche out out there.
Before I go full douche mode and start putting out there,
I have to get the leaves off.
You could attach your putter to the leaf blower
and do them at the same time.
That's against the USGA rules.
So anyway, she decides on the one and I say,
you know what, I don't care, you buy it,
have it as long as it's shipped here.
And of course, she gets one that costs four times as much,
$200, and it's like bigger and cooler
and it's got like a weaved sort of wicker design going on,
I don't know.
Okay.
But I noticed that when I drive home last night,
I get to the bottom of the stairs to walk up to my house
and they have left the delivery
and I see this package that I know is the sports bin
and what do I notice about the sports bin package?
It's a flat box.
It's flat.
And if I recall correctly, a sports bin that's flat
cannot hold a basketball.
We don't live in that.
Hold a basketball, it cannot.
We don't live in math land.
What was that book that was all, everybody was 2D?
I don't read, I told you.
That's a great book, by the way.
It's like called Math Land?
I know what you're talking about vaguely.
We had to read it in middle school.
Everything was 2D.
Anyway, we don't live in that.
We live in a three-dimensional world,
depending on who you ask, and I knew that this was gonna be an evening of me putting something together.
So I take this thing up to the sports area,
and we really, we have a sports area now.
I mean there's basketball and a putting green.
I mean you have fun for hours.
And I open up the thing, and it's one of those things
that has what I would call international instructions.
And by that I mean wordless.
It's just pictures, anybody can do it.
And I begin putting this thing together
with just the tools that it came with.
And you know, you've got a little Allen wrench
that fits the very specific screw.
This was last night?
This was last night.
And 45 minutes into this process,
I'm a little bit upset because the way you have to turn these Allen wrenches
and it's up against this wicker thing
and I'm mad that we didn't get one that's preassembled
and that I'm decided to do this.
But once you just get your mind on something,
you just have to do it sometimes.
Well you don't wanna know what I did last night.
Okay, well we'll find out in a second, I guess.
It's pretty easy.
Not assemble a sports band, that's it.. Not a symbol of sports, Ben.
That's it.
Well you had a better night than me.
So then I get the.
So you couldn't use your cordless drill
to replace the Allen wrench?
Well.
I always do that.
Stand by.
Okay.
I didn't think it was worth the trip downstairs
because they were moving pretty good
but then when I had to get to the tightening phase,
I was like, and it says wait to tighten
and so I waited to tighten until I got the whole thing
together and I tightened it together.
Then I get the lid out and I put the lid on there
and let me tell you, there's a thought in the back
of my head right as soon as I opened this thing
and I was like, these two sides are identical
and it doesn't say there's a difference
but I have a feeling I'm gonna put this whole thing together
and I'm gonna have done it wrong
because I have a tendency to do these put this whole thing together and I'm gonna have done it wrong because I have a tendency
to do these things.
But that didn't happen.
I get the lid to the assembly point,
I screw the lid on and the last thing I have to do
is take the little hydraulic little things
that keep the lid up when you open it
and I move it down, I pull them down to.
Attach.
Attach them to the hole that is supposed to be right where I've pulled them down to
and then I look across the sports bin,
rather large sports bin but I can't see the other side.
The other side of the sports bin has the hole
which means that the sides need to be completely reversed
which means I had to take the whole thing apart.
Now at this point I was like, I wonder if I have
a drill bit, like a star drill bit that will fit
this particular Allen wrench.
You didn't explode at that moment?
No, no, you know what, I was very upset,
but I was like, I'm going to calmly go downstairs
and see if I can find a bit for this,
and I did have a star bit that perfectly fit it.
Okay, because that seems like a count to audible 10 moment.
But it was a 30 minute setback even with the new tools.
But let me tell you right now,
the sports pen has been put together,
there are three basketballs in there,
there's a leaf blower.
In there?
In there.
There's so many things ready to go.
I'm just proud of you that you didn't explode.
Like I would've, I mean, I probably would've taken
every sports thing that I had and whooped the tar
out of that sports pin,
because that stuff just boils my blood.
I was very upset about it just based on the fact that.
Because it's your fault and there's no one there to blame.
Well I blame the instructions.
Oh gosh.
I always blame the instructions because who else
is there to blame?
And how did they take it?
They did not respond.
They just flew away in the wind.
But I will say that if I were to write the instructions
for this particular sports pin, I would say hey buddy, make sure you do this side
on this side, because I read them again,
there was no indication.
What you had to do is you had to look through all the steps,
look at the last step, see where it was supposed to attach,
and then reverse engineer, go back to the first step
and know where to put it, and that's asking too much of me.
I'm just a dad who hasn't put together
a sports bin in years, you know?
Should've got somebody to do it.
Lesson learned, won't do it again.
I'm going back to being non-handy.
Well you're about to have a lot more time on your hands.
Lot of time to potentially put together sports bins
or whatever else we're gonna do
because I don't know if you heard
but days are gonna start to be 36 hours now.
I heard about this.
At least in our mental exercise that we're about to have.
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And now on with the biscuit. The reason we're talking about this
is because we got a reply on Twitter from Crystal Melody.
Right now I am thinking what the world would be like
if days were changed to 36 hours long
instead of just 24 hours.
I'd probably still procrastinate is what she said.
Thank you for that question, Crystal.
That has sparked some thoughts in our minds.
So I'm curious, listener, are you experiencing
an avalanche of things that you would do,
ways that you would occupy your life,
ways that you would change your life
if every single day from here on out,
it was 50% longer.
You had 12 more hours.
If I'm doing the math right.
Allow me to wrestle with that because
my first response is just.
Allow me to wrestle with that.
Oh my gosh, like it's not like yes, finally.
It's like trepidation.
Now I have more time to figure things out.
Maybe I'll just, so.
That says a lot about you.
Yeah it does.
I approach this from a very different standpoint.
So my knee jerk gut reaction is just sleep the rest of it.
Oh gosh, don't try to figure anything out. my like knee jerk gut reaction is just sleep the rest of it.
Oh gosh, don't try to figure anything out. Well okay, from a scientific standpoint,
just to get this out of the way,
because I don't want to talk about this too long.
But I am interested in this too, yeah.
A, you would sleep significantly longer.
Well hold on, I wanna go even more scientific,
like the geology of the Earth.
The Earth itself would be big, right?
Well, I'm getting to that.
Well, the size of the Earth is relative.
Well, it would have to rotate slower.
Right, but you know that the length of the day
is based on the time that it takes for the Earth
to completely rotate one time on its axis.
And that time is actually getting slower
with every year that passes.
I don't know what the exact fraction is,
it's like 1 75 thousandths of a second
or something like that.
But it's enough and what's happening is the moon
is actually causing, the moon is moving away slowly
which is causing the Earth to slow down over time.
Hearing that makes me sad, I don't know exactly why.
Well what this means is actually days,
I think again, don't quote me on the math,
but like a billion years ago,
so like before there was any people,
way before there was any people,
days were like hours different in length.
Like they were hours shorter
because the Earth is slowing down
so therefore the days are getting longer.
So I think it's like five hours longer
or something like that a billion years ago.
You can look up the specifics.
But it's pretty crazy that what we,
and first of all, life on Earth evolves
in the context
of the length of the day and the night.
And basically everything about our life cycle
and also the length of the year,
and we've kind of talked about that before.
But you sleep approximately the amount of time
that it's dark, give or take.
But that, on a planet out there where the day
is a different length, which planets even within
our solar system, the days are different length,
if you evolved, if a life form evolves on that planet,
your sleep cycle would be relative to where you're at.
So yes, if it was 36 hours and let's say,
so if right now it's 24 hours, you sleep eight hours,
so 36 hours you'd probably sleep 12 hours.
You'd sleep a third of the time.
So four additional hours would be you sleeping.
And biologically you would have evolved in that way.
But you still have eight extra hours.
You wouldn't be a lazy slog.
That would just be how you evolved.
Right but.
So I don't feel that bad about it.
And also our capacity for anything that we would do
during the day would be relative and we would fill the time
based on economic factors and all that stuff
and the length of the workday and our capacity for it
would be relative.
So I don't actually wanna think about that
because that's just basically stretching something to scale
and filling it with the same amount of time.
The more interesting exercise is to say,
what if all of a sudden you and me,
all of us had 12 extra hours during the day
that we would not be tired, and I think for me,
as a rule, I'm going to say,
I'm not just gonna fill it with more work.
I'm saying that I would work the same amount that I do now
and I would sleep the same amount that I do now and I would sleep the same amount that I do now
but I've got 12 completely extra hours.
What would I do with them?
But just to camp out on that for a second,
I am curious if yes, we snapped our fingers
and then all of us experienced this extra daylight
that could be working hours
would something about competition,
it's easy to speak about our jobs
but maybe we can extrapolate.
Is there something about competition
that you would just fill it with more work
because well you're not tired
and you can get more productivity
and you can be more competitive
and you can make more money. Of course.
Or you can get more productivity and you can be more competitive and you can make more money. Of course.
You can chase that devil.
Chase that devil of possessions
and fleeting happiness in what you can buy or conquer.
Or power-fy.
I mean I think that this is the case all over the world.
Americans are probably the, are one of the best examples
of people who have just filled their time
with as much trying to get ahead as they possibly can.
And I'm not saying this is a good thing.
I'm just saying it is a fact.
There are other cultures who have said,
you know what, we're gonna work four days
or we're going to work six hour days
or we're gonna work five hour days.
But we've pushed ourselves to the limit
and so we're kind of up against this wall
and this is how I feel and this is why this question
intrigued me so much is because even just recently,
and again, I'm not trying to do the whiny thing about
I'm so busy, I can't stand when people say
how busy they are and I end up doing it all the time
so I'm not talking about how busy I am.
I'm just talking about the fact that I have fallen
into the trap of sort of the American dream
and doing something I love to do,
doing this job, we're living the dream,
we're getting to do exactly what we wanna do
but I have, like that moment that I had last night
when I was sitting there incorrectly putting together
the sports bin, one of the reasons it was so frustrating
is because I was like I don't have this time.
I don't have half an hour at night to sit around
and incorrectly put together a sports bin.
I didn't have time to put together the sports bin
to begin with because I'm at home and I would actually
like to be spending the time with my family
or enjoying a television program with my wife.
You know what I'm saying?
Instead you build it twice.
Exactly.
Because I've already filled my time with.
You should've called me, I would've gladly come over
and helped you build it, but probably not.
I'm glad you didn't call me.
You know what, I tried to get you to help me
put the basketball goal up.
I actually, so remember we had that party in my house?
There were other friends there
and some of them were taller than me.
Yeah, well no, so I bought this new basketball goal
because the old one was too rusty.
Oh yeah, I remember.
And I was like, I looked at the package and said,
definitely do not try this without two people. And I was like, I looked at the package and said, definitely do not try this without two people.
And I was like, okay, crap.
And so I was having a party in my house
and when you guys got over there,
everybody's kinda like hanging out
around the basketball going, it's like,
hey guys, I got a new one, you wanna help me put it up?
It was like a barn raising.
Yeah, that's my idea of a party.
But you guys did not.
Hey, come to my party, oh.
You guys did not respond like the Mennonites.
Let me tell you right now, you were not helpful.
So.
A couple of them were.
It got up.
It didn't end up working because, anyway,
the, you know what happened?
The next day, I did it by myself
with a six foot step ladder and a broom.
And I was doing all these things, I was propping things.
No, it didn't.
I thought that Nick and Joseph helped you put it up.
They couldn't, we didn't do it.
Oh. It didn't work.
Well I didn't know that.
I ended up doing it myself and I almost died.
Thanks a lot.
So do you have a definitive answer about,
did something immediately pop into your head
or was it like yes, this is what I've been waiting for
12 more hours?
Well. Or we're talking about
four more hours of daylight, that's what we're calling it?
No I'm saying 12 more hours,
because I'm saying I'm sleeping the same amount.
Okay, okay, okay.
I don't have definitive answers of what I would do,
but okay, so I've plugged Josh Sundquist,
a friend of ours, a number of times in his,
he made that video where he talked about the germ method.
J-E-R-M, the things that he wants to do every single day.
He wants to write in his journal, he wants to exercise,
he wants to read and he wants to meditate.
In addition to all the other things that he's gonna do
and I was just like that's great because those are the things
that I like to fill my time with if I'm able to, right?
Both of us have kind of, we've gotten into meditation
on a, we're like meditation lite.
Like, we're like, we have an app, you know,
like we're the guys with the app and have been known
to like, dad's out next to the pool sitting
at Criss Cross Applesauce, what's he doing out there?
You know, everybody, you might have a similar experience
but it's not like you're a daily meditator, nor am I.
Oh no.
I have a journal, you know?
I mean, I actually, it's my Evernote.
I go in and I write ideas and I write things
that are happening in my life, but I do it how often?
Couple of days a month maximum, right?
I do exercise a few times a week, not every single day,
and I end up reading, but the vast majority of what I read
is just the internet, man.
It's not sitting down with a book.
That usually happens on vacation when I've got time off,
when I kinda sit down and get into a book.
So I don't do those things.
So the first thing that I thought is I was like,
okay, I would actually do those things.
And when you talk about exercising,
I know you go to the gym, I go to the gym.
Different gym.
Different gyms, one we call it dead at the same gym.
One gym is like for studs,
the other gym is for like tall guys with beards.
Yeah I go to an exclusively tall guys with beards gym.
They're all incredibly buff.
I was really trying to emphasize the stud part
and then try to be very clear who I was talking about.
Well I used to go to your gym and,
I'm not gonna say anything about it.
Studs is not how I would describe the clientele,
but it's cool, it's cool.
I mean, I'm glad you feel that way.
Look at me, man.
And so, one of the things, I thought about the way
that I approach my time at the gym.
Again, my time at the gym is like incredibly scheduled.
It's like, okay, I'm gonna go, I've got this class.
So if you had more time,
you would just go hang out at the gym?
Well, okay, yeah, stay with me here because
So if you had more time, you would just go hang out at the gym?
Well, okay, yeah, stay with me here because
in my gym, I know the studs gym, they don't have
like a locker room and a steam room
and you don't get a eucalyptus towel
when you get done with your workout.
I mean, in my gym, those are the kinds of things
that we have.
Oh, you're talking about a gym where people
who have putting greens at their home go to, okay.
Yeah, you know what I'm talking about.
But anyway, I have sort of made this decision
that when I get done with my workout,
I'm going to, if I have time, I'm gonna go
and spend like 10 minutes in the steam room
because I just love that feeling.
There's other people in there
and they are having conversations,
but I've kind of opted out of the whole gym friend thing.
And then I go back to my locker,
I'm gonna take a shower, then I go to my locker
and I'm changing clothes, and there's like a couple
of people who I have very, on a very surface level,
just they're an acquaintance and they maybe ask me about,
one guy was like, where'd you get those shoes one time?
And I told him, and because he's the where did you get those shoes guy, now if I get a locker next to him, guy was like, where'd you get those shoes? One time, and I told him, and because he's the
where did you get those shoes guy,
now if I get a locker next to him, I'm like,
what's up man?
And then he'll ask a question, I'll answer it,
but then not ask another question
because I don't want a gym friend.
You know what I'm saying?
Because I gotta get out of there.
This is about getting in there,
this is about working out a little bit,
getting some steam, and then going on about my business.
But one of the things I was thinking about
is if I had more time, I might develop a gym friend.
Like what if I were to ask,
where'd you get those shoes from, guy, another question.
Like, well where'd you get those shoes from?
Oh, now we're getting somewhere.
So with 12 more hours in the day,
you would ask a follow-up question about a dude's shoes
in the gym.
That's exactly what I'm saying.
You would turn the gym into like a social zone.
No, that might be overstating it.
What I'm saying is that I have made a conscious
slash unconscious decision to minimize conversation and relationship at the gym
because I see it as this little window of time
which I gotta get out and get here.
Yeah. To take care of business.
I don't have time.
And I can, okay, I'm sure you have an equivalent experience
because I know you're working out with people
who don't necessarily have to be somewhere
right after they finish working out.
I actually left, my class wasn't over today
and I had to leave and the instructor was like,
where you going?
I was like, I gotta take my son to school
and I gotta leave right now in order to do that
so I can get here for my call time.
Call time.
And you know, I feel like every second of my day
is scheduled, absolutely.
And yeah, I just, you know, I have this problem
in my brain that I feel like okay,
if I'm not efficiently using every second of my day,
I'm just not doing the right thing, you know?
I'm not being, I'm not aspiring to perfection.
And it's, you know, that's very unhealthy, you know,
to not allow space for surprise and experience
and relationship and learning about shoes.
But I mean, I don't think I could change that
without the extra time.
And in this case, 12 hours.
So I might have a one hour conversation just about shoes
with a half naked man at a gym.
That's the kind of thing that would start happening
in my life and who knows where that would lead.
Well when you talked about the meditation thing,
it's interesting that you started there.
I think our minds are in a similar place
because that is where, that is one of the first things
I thought of when I moved past anxiety.
And again, that's where the way that my brain works,
something so positive as extra time,
which is basically free unstructured time,
it's seen impulsively as a negative
because I don't yet know the perfect plan.
You're intimidated by the work you have to do
in order to fill the time?
Well, to know what the right answer is.
And again, that's the problem.
But with 12 hours, you can get things wrong.
The question about shoes with a half naked man
is an example of just wasting time.
That's how my brain works and at least I'm aware of that.
We're not talking about an extra hour, 12 extra hours.
It's a lot of hours.
So then my first answer is I think for at least,
and I would probably make up my mind at the front end
of this once I realize, wow, Earth is rotating slower.
I have approximately 12 hours every day
that I was going to spend X amount of hours every day
for six months in silent solitude.
How much time?
X amount of time, I don't know what that number is.
Every single day?
Every single day.
Well yeah.
For like, I think two hours a day for six months.
like, I think two hours a day for six months.
Why just six months? Once you do it for six months,
it's just part of your routine.
I don't know what would come of it.
Like I'm so far from knowing what that would do.
And that would be a form of meditation
or many different forms, I don't know.
Well let's talk. Meditation, reflection.
Let's talk. And then I think I might move on
to something else or decide to do something
or maybe I would have come to the conclusion by that point.
I need to set an end goal, I need to set a goal
but then perhaps I will have reached the conclusion
by then that like I need to increase that number.
I don't know. Well I wanna talk a little.
That's probably how I would. I wanna talk about meditation. That's how I't know. Well I wanna talk about meditation.
That's how I would approach it.
I wanna talk about meditation
because we both again have flirted with it
and again, let me tell you,
one of the things about being small town boys
from North Carolina who moved to California
is we're able to hear through the lens
of small town boys from North Carolina when people from California talk.
So again, that's why we qualify things with douche,
like douche qualifiers, and I understand that a lot of
people as soon as they hear things like,
they're talking about meditation,
what happened to these guys?
I acknowledge that there's this tendency to be like,
what are you guys talking about?
Fru-fru meditation?
But meditation's an incredibly old concept
that exists across many different traditions
and has been, it's unequivocal, it's completely scientific,
the benefits that you can get from it.
But I gotta say, it's very difficult to do
and to be good at it and to benefit from it.
And I think the average American,
and I consider myself the average American,
when you first kind of try it, you're like what?
What do you mean?
What do you mean sit here and focus on my breath?
What are you talking about?
And I can't do that.
I'm thinking about 55 different things at the same time.
And I know while we're different,
we're also very similar in the way we approach
things like that and the way we approach that kind of time
and I think the way that we would struggle with it
when we sit down to try to go through it.
But what I have found, and I think the longest
that I've ever like sat down and meditated,
again this is like a guided meditation,
so you've got somebody in your ears
kinda talking you through it.
It's probably like 45 minutes.
And again, that's not just one thing the entire time.
That's somebody saying, okay, now think about this
or focus on this or, but anyway,
it has this incredibly calming effect
and very rarely are you gonna meet somebody
who practices meditation on a regular basis
for long periods of time who's just an asshole.
Or on as much edge as I am.
Yeah, there's a reason that the people
who are able to spend, I mean there's some people
who spend hours a day
and you may be like, that's crazy, what a waste of time.
But the level of peace that those people have in their lives
and the level of peace that they're able to impart
to the people that they interact with.
Let me tell you right now, my wife and children
would love for me to spend more time in peaceful meditation.
Because the net effect would be that I would be
a more peaceful and meditative person
when I wasn't having a direct peaceful meditation.
So for me, the idea of being able to do that,
and first of all, if you're interested in it,
Headspace is not a sponsor, hopefully will be at some point.
They've got a great app for kinda getting you.
An introduction.
Yeah, and there's other apps as well,
but Headspace has been good in terms of guided meditation.
But for me, that's a big one.
I feel like the very first thing I would do
is I would find a comfortable place,
meditation cushion, the right environment,
and I would actually spend an extended amount of time
in meditation every single day to begin with.
Yeah, this is a great question
because it's a daily habit question.
It's not like, because I started thinking,
well, I'm gonna take a trip or I'm gonna walk the earth.
Well no.
I've got responsibilities.
I've got loved ones and interactions and a career
and you know, even friends.
But it's so it's not.
Even friends.
So it's not the type of thing that it's like okay,
what becomes a new party of my life?
I also have thought specifically about
having more time with the kids.
It's like being a part of their life.
You know, it's something that Christy and Jesse,
like they were homeschooling, they were so much, It's something that Christy and Jesse,
like they were homeschooling, they were so much
arguably the center of our kids' lives,
you know, and they're older now, they're in school,
but you know, who picks them up most of the time?
Who's there the moment they come out of school
and like whatever happened that day,
they're the ones that they experience that.
By the time I get home,
Christy's just telling me what they dumped on her
that they don't have the energy to explain to me again.
It's like, well, I told one parent, isn't that good enough?
Can't you guys just communicate?
And I totally relate to that. Like when something happens to me at work
or something good, bad, and different,
it's not like I wanna tell the exact same story
to every family member, even though I love each of them
and I wanna share my lives with them.
So that's something I've been thinking about
and talking to Christy about is,
you know, the times where I do hear
this is what happened today that you missed
or just appreciating the sheer volume of time
that they spend together that I don't get to,
I'm like wow, they're gonna be gone before I know it.
And if all of a sudden I had that much more time,
I think I'd very quickly be shifting my schedule
and saying okay, when more of their waking hours,
let's have an overlap so we can hang out
so that our lives overlap more than me just getting home
for dinner and then for the weekends.
I think there would be, and first of all,
not to get to the end of this, but I already have
in my mind where this conversation is going to lead
and to what the application is, and I think
it's pretty interesting, pretty interesting exercise.
But I think that what would inevitably happen
if you're a family person is that you would end up having,
there'd be family time.
It might be like the family hour or something.
You would end up naturally spending time,
you spend more time with your spouse.
The way that our time is divided up,
and this is probably true of many different couples,
but if you're married with kids,
how often do you go on a date?
Some people are really disciplined about this
and they have a weekly date night.
That's something that I know both of us have had at times
but never for too long because if you don't keep it
super consistent, you just don't end up doing it.
And so I think that having something like that
on a daily basis, it would be so much easier
to have that on a regular basis with this extra time.
You'd end up having this,
I'm gonna have a purposeful connection.
And this is interesting,
because in my relationship with my wife,
she is much more likely to be the one
to want to initiate like, let's have a conversation
that is solely intended
for us to connect, right?
And it's not that I don't wanna talk about those,
talk about that and talk about our relationship,
it's just I kinda gravitate towards like,
oh, if I'm gonna talk to you,
I'm gonna talk to you about something that happened at work
or some idea that we're working on or whatever.
And then she's like, but yeah,
but let's have a conversation about us
or let's have a conversation where the purpose
of the conversation is not to communicate information
or to solve a problem, it is legitimately
to connect with one another.
Mm-hmm. With one another.
And that doesn't end up happening nearly as much
as I would like it to and especially
as she would like it to, right?
And the same thing with kids, it's like,
you feel like oh, I'm gonna sit down at dinner
and I do usually eat dinner with the kids.
We all sit down and eat dinner together when we can,
which is multiple times a week, every week.
And I'll be like, tell me about school.
And you know the answers you get to that question.
Ah, nothing, so you have to find like a more specific
question where like was there something good that happened?
Was there something bad that happened?
Did you make a new friend?
Did you lose a friend?
Like you try to find ways to get your kids to talk to you
and like you said, well, they've kinda talked to mom
about that when she picked him up from school.
So I definitely think that relationships with your immediate family would be something
that would fill that gap.
But another thing is relationships with friends.
Now we've got some great friends and we,
in a lot of ways, share a friend group
that we end up hanging out with on a regular basis.
And in a very unusual,
sort of non-2018, non-Los Angeles way,
we actually found a way to connect with our friends
on a regular basis because we schedule time together.
Like we've actually regularly scheduled times
for us to get together and hang out.
Right.
Which is like been an incredible thing.
I know for both of us and for others in the group,
it's just been great to be able to have a group of friends
that you can hang out with on a regular basis
and actually get into each other's lives and.
It's a standing appointment.
Learn about each other and kinda get through life together.
That's been something that's been so beneficial
and so great but still it's scheduled
and it's like at best weekly and then I do my like,
my monthly game night that you and Christy are a part of
that is like a bigger circle of people,
like 25 people if they all come and they never all come.
Which is like, I love that, I instituted that time
and I told Jessie last year, I was like,
I want to do a game night because A, I'm super competitive
and I love to play games and B, I have this like
group of friends from all over the city
that I know from different parts of my life
and I think they would be super fun to bring together
into an environment and I just wanna hang out with them
on a regular basis and in Los Angeles,
monthly is a regular basis to see somebody.
That's seeing somebody a lot.
But I think that if I had 12 hours
and everybody had 12 hours,
some sort of connection with friends,
again, you can't fill it with more work.
Nobody's filling it with more work.
Nobody's sleeping more.
You'd end up spending more time with friends.
You'd end up filling that time with relationships.
Maybe the guy who likes my shoes at the gym.
But hopefully just the people I wanna connect with already.
Yeah, it's interesting to me that
it still comes down to scheduling. I think that anything worth prioritizing,
I don't know if this is just me or from the experience
you just described but I feel like even things
that are very important to me, if I don't schedule them,
they don't happen.
I mean, you talk about the date night
that we each have with our wives and like.
Do you currently have a scheduled date night?
No, but like we're almost about to get that going again
because it involves childcare and like figuring that out.
So having someone that you've said,
I'm gonna pay you to free me up to be able to do this, you know?
So we got that logistics,
we got those logistics figured out.
But it drifts, you know, like every,
life happens and things shift and all of a sudden something that you're so excited about
and that you totally want to prioritize
still doesn't happen.
So what I'm getting at is even when you have all this time,
I think it still has to be scheduled
and I think I still has to be scheduled
and I think I would even have to schedule
just the surprise time, just to go with the flow
and talk about shoes time.
Schedule surprise time?
Yeah, just like. Schedule spontaneity?
Spontaneity, schedule spontaneity.
And it's like what's gonna happen now?
Because. It sounds like a T-shirt
you should wear, I schedule spontaneity.
You know what, there's probably a lot of people
who would buy that.
Write that down.
Well I think, I know for me.
I've got an appointment for spontaneity.
It sounds funny but I think I need that.
Maybe that's not for everybody.
It's probably not but I know that's how it works for me.
And I'm so far from being able to afford
to just have scheduled spontaneity,
where it's like no plans, whatever happens happens.
Whatever I feel like at this moment, I can do that.
I don't know how that works.
That makes me think of, and I don't remember who this was,
so no one's gonna get in trouble.
Somebody who knew about another content creator's schedule
was talking to us about what they were doing
and trying to schedule something for them
or with them or something like that,
and they literally sent them their calendar,
and every single day had a huge chunk,
like at least four hours, maybe six hours on some days
and the chunk was labeled unstructured creative time
every single day and we heard about that
and we were like, I mean like what would that be like?
Like to say you know what?
Unstructured creative time?
You know what I'm gonna do?
Wow!
I'm gonna go to a museum. I'm just gonna walk around.
And I might invite a friend or a loved one
or a family member or just go by myself.
It's like there's so much of that here
but I haven't done that.
I think, you know,
this is my corollary.
Do you really have to have,
if that's the case that everything needs to be scheduled,
and maybe this is just for me,
if I, even if I had 12 more hours in a day,
well, isn't there a way for that to happen now?
You know, like isn't there some of the spirit
of what we're talking about that can be applied
to our actual real lives?
And so I, you have an idea where you wanna go
and so maybe.
That was it.
That was the inevitable conclusion of our conversation.
But I have a step along the way to get to that
because one of the things
I think we're talking about,
because we could talk forever about what we would do
at 12 Extra Hours, I mean I would read a lot
because I love to read.
I would write, I would write in a journalistic
like self-discovery sort of way.
I think I would spend time just sitting there thinking.
I would have unstructured creative time
that was not necessarily geared towards
contributing something to our business.
But like, there's a whole slew of things
that I would love to create
that would not be beneficial to us, as an example.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, if I told you that I wanted to go and paint,
you'd be like, how do we sell your paintings
at Mythical.store?
And I'd be like, well I just wanna paint.
I can't get to a place where I just paint.
You could call it bad paintings.
And, but if, but, I have,
of course I've thought about painting.
I've walked through craft stores
and seen the painting section and gotten this close,
12 times to buying a canvas and all the stuff
because I thought I might paint.
Now I haven't done that for a number of reasons.
But one of the reasons is because, well,
there's a whole list of creative things that I wanna do that are part of what we're doing
in Mythical Entertainment that we haven't gotten to,
let alone the things that I just wanna do just creatively,
let alone the things I just wanna think about.
You know what I'm saying?
And let alone, with that much time,
you have so much more capacity to do good.
You know, I mean, it sounds like an obligatory addition.
Oh yeah, bring that up.
But I mean, it is true.
Charitable works.
And it's one of those things that I think that
once you allow yourself to serve,
you gain so much more from it.
So I believe that service has a selfish component
that's justified, that like it's good for everybody.
Think about culturally.
If people who were at a loss with what to do with themselves
were more mobilized to serve together,
so I'm even building from just one person,
like for me, like volunteering,
to a culture of,
well we can't work, let's not sit on our bums
and fight depression, let's get active and serve.
That's an exciting thought that.
What we could accomplish.
I mean, if we just slow the rotation down a little bit,
all of a sudden we got all this service blossoming.
That would be amazing.
Of course, I don't know what other scientific repercussions
there would be that would make this whole thing
careen off of orbit.
Like I said, if it continues to happen at a slow pace
that it is happening, we're just gonna continue
to fill it with the same BS that we already
fill our lives with.
We're gonna continue on the same hamster wheel.
And it's hard to even have space to say
how can I engage my heart and my passions
in something that is outward focused
and that is not even about the exciting aspect
of expression, which by the way,
all those things could come together.
You know, your bad paintings could, I don't know,
somehow be in, result in a lot of good.
I don't understand how that would happen.
Socially.
You'd have time to figure it out.
Okay, so one of the things that I think
we've been flirting with as well
is we're having this conversation,
you've heard me talk about this a lot
because I've gotten it from other people,
but we're essentially Stone Age software
running on modern day hardware, sorry,
Stone Age hardware running modern day software,
meaning that we have the bodies and the brains
and the capabilities of people who did not have anything
to do with the modern society that we have now
but we're pushing ourselves through this.
But these bodies that we have for most of existence,
human existence, you go back to hunter gatherer days and they actually, they were in small groups of existence, human existence, you go back to hunter-gatherer days,
and they actually, they were in small groups of people,
about 150 or so or less,
and they had meaningful relationships
with not only their immediate family,
but the people who they were in a tribe with.
And yes, they spent a lot of time gathering food,
because when you're gathering and hunting,
you're spending a lot of time gathering food because when you're gathering and hunting, you're spending a lot of time gathering and hunting.
But it was pretty much taking the time to survive.
They spent most of their time surviving,
but they relied on one another.
They spent lots of time talking to one another,
doing good for one another.
They spent a lot of time killing each other.
I'm not trying to paint this.
Speaking of painting a picture,
yes, they killed each other in droves.
Humans have always done that.
But the time was structured so much differently
than our time now that we are in this capitalistic
modern society where we're constantly just pushing ourselves
to create and produce and make the pie bigger and bigger
and the population is growing and all the things
that contribute to modern society
and the hamster wheel that we're in.
That didn't exist because you basically lived a life
where you did exactly the same thing
that your mom and dad did, that their mom and dad did,
that their mom and dad did, that their mom and dad did.
It was the same technology, it was the same goals
for generation after generation after generation
after generation because technology changed so, so slowly.
There would be like one invention in like 100 generations.
I mean it was crazy how slow things moved for so long.
And even though the days were a little bit shorter back then,
not much, a few seconds probably or a few minutes,
life was a lot different and I think that a lot
of these things that we're talking about like
self reflection, like sitting there and thinking
or spending time with your family.
You didn't sit, hunter gatherer people weren't like
man I need to spend more time with my family.
They were probably more like I need to get away
from these people, they're the only people
I see all the time.
So I think that's part of our problem is that
we haven't changed biologically
but we're trying to adapt to this environment
and it's resulting in people getting incredibly stressed out,
depressed, getting all kinds of diseases,
being sleep deprived, all the things that happen.
But I was exactly on the same page
that you were, what you said a second ago,
which is if the first things that we talk about
when we say that we would have extra time is,
well, I would meditate every day, I would read every day,
I would spend more time getting to know people,
I'd spend more time with my family,
I'd spend more time with my friends,
I'd spend more time just thinking,
I'd spend more time creatively pursuing things
that fulfill me.
Well, we're not gonna get those 12 hours
but we have the power, you have the power
to make decisions that introduce those things
into your life on a regular basis.
It will not come without sacrifice
and I think the question is like,
well what are you willing to let go of?
You have an answer?
Link, I think I have to quit.
I think I gotta stop doing Ear Biscuits
because this is time I could be spending with my family.
Oh gosh, did he just say that?
No, I'm not gonna do that.
I'm not gonna give this up.
Not gonna stop making that internet show that we made.
Of course I'm not gonna do that.
Well, the thing that we don't like to do
on this podcast is be prescriptive
because maybe it's obvious over the course
of this conversation that we didn't know where it was going,
we did not talk about it ahead of time,
much less say this is the point we're trying to make for you.
You know, I could say, well, you're a student
or you're working a nine to five
or you're working a lot more than that
or you have these demands or these needs
or these problems and these restrictions on your life,
you don't have the luxury to say,
well I would just like to read more
so I'm gonna make an adjustment.
You know, we're not trying to read your mind
and be prescriptive to your situation.
We're just verbally processing ours, which, I mean,
we are in a very, I'm very grateful for the,
we're extremely fortunate for the position that we're in,
that we, you know,
it's, we run a business and we're creative
and we're, yeah, we're, things that we said before,
you know, we're living our dream, doing,
engaging our passions and doing, by and large,
what we wanna do.
Then when it gets down to the nitty gritty of it,
sometimes it doesn't feel like that.
A lot of times it doesn't feel like that.
It feels like an obligation that,
it seems like it's external forces,
even though it's something that we have set up
and that we're ultimately in charge of,
but once you set this thing in motion,
it doesn't feel that much different
than just something that's like.
Somebody else is in control.
Something we, someone else is in control.
And I think it's.
Our wives remind us of that all the time.
You're the boss. You can take the day off, no.
Yeah and then we're like well you don't understand
and it's like well, I don't think maybe we don't understand.
Well but no, I agree with your point
because we say it in a very privileged,
naive position in a lot of ways.
privileged, naive position in a lot of ways. You know, I met, we met a guy on this recent little
mini tour who was a truck driver and was like,
I listen to Ear Biscuits while I'm driving.
Met a guy who's a postal worker, he was like,
I listen to Ear Biscuits on my route,
thank you for Ear Biscuits because it fills this time.
And I think people who are doing,
some people are working 12 hours a day, maybe more,
to provide for somebody, for some people,
and they don't have the luxury,
in order to continue to pay to live, to pay to eat,
they have to continue working an incredible amount of hours.
I mean, that is the situation
that a lot of people find themselves in.
So they're not able to say,
I'd like some unstructured creative time
because, well, if I get unstructured creative time,
somebody's not going to eat.
We're not in that situation
and we recognize that a lot of people are.
So I think that really just highlights
a deeper problem with our society
and I don't, listen, I don't claim to be
an economic, socioeconomic expert.
I don't understand.
I have lots of different opinions about stuff
and how it should work but ultimately,
I don't know what the solutions are.
But I know for a fact, we've gotten ourselves
into a situation where people are doing things
and we've developed habits and we've made certain,
we've created obligations as a species
which are not healthy.
we've created obligations as a species which are not healthy.
And if you have the option to kind of step out of that,
step off of that hamster wheel and actually begin
to kind of chip away at some of the things
that you think you're responsible for,
you know I was talking to my therapist about this,
like when we talked about meditation,
I was like I just wanna make this. When we talked about meditation, I was like,
I just wanna make it a part of every single day
and he was just like, you just have to make the decision
that it's not negotiable.
But I'm still living in this world
where it's so easily negotiated away
because I can sleep a little bit longer
and I can justify saying I need to sleep a little bit longer and I can justify saying I need to sleep
a little bit longer.
Mm-hmm.
You know?
So I don't know what the process of chipping away
and getting some of that time back, you know,
besides actually making the Earth slow down,
which I think is gonna be very difficult
for us to figure out.
It's probably gonna take more time
than we have to figure that out.
We've got the time, we've got 24 hours in a day.
We have to be intentional in some way
to get some time back.
But today's 24 will never get back, Rhett.
Nope.
Well, thanks for hearing us out.
Yeah, good luck with that is a great mug to have
on the table because I think we've just highlighted
a big problem in our species, in our society,
in our own lives, and maybe your life,
and just said good luck with that.
We don't really know what you should do.
Maybe commiserating is the first step.
Let us know what you think or commiserate
using hashtag Ear Biscuits.
We can keep the conversation going
amongst all of you as well as with us
and we will speak at you next week.
Yeah.
Or maybe we won't.
I have an idea.
Maybe this is the last Ear Biscuit ever.
Let's take the last 10 minutes, for starters,
of every podcast and just have a mindfulness meditation.
We're gonna have to press play on the app
because we wouldn't know how to do that.
No, it'll just be silent.
Oh.
For the listeners and for us.
But it would force us to do it.
It's like, wow, we're monetizing our meditation?
That's a beautiful thing.
What if we did that?
That's the spirit.
What if we did that before we started recording?
No, I want it to be part of the show.
What if we just played ads while we meditate?
I think what would happen is we would just.
10 minutes of ads, it's worth it
because we're meditating.
We would just silently walk off.
Well there's a video version.
I was gonna say we silently walk off
and just run it for 10 more minutes, Kiko.
And just say that we're here meditating.
You can be there meditating.
No.
Okay.
So I could walk away like this.
You're basically just talking about
creating a guided meditation, I mean. Not guided, silent. So I can walk away like this. You're basically just talking about creating a guided meditation, I mean.
Not guided, silent.
That exists.
I mean, you're basically talking about creating nothing.
It's just that you're talking about creating
the absence of something,
which is not creating anything at all.
I'm talking about creating a 10 minute audio file
of silence at the end of whatever conversation we had.
But what if instead of creating a 10 minute file
of audio silence, you just said,
sit there for 10 minutes after this is over.
Then we wouldn't sit here for 10 minutes.
We would go off and work.
But we could and just not record it.
That's no fun.
Man, what a conundrum.
Look at all the time we've wasted
just trying to figure this out.