The Daily Zeitgeist - Weekly Zeitgeist 302 (Best of 12/4/23-12/8/23)
Episode Date: December 10, 2023The weekly round-up of the best moments from DZ's season 316 (12/4/23-12/8/23)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....
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What happens when a professional football player's career ends,
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Hello, the internet, and welcome to this episode
of the Weekly Zeitgeist.
These are some of our favorite segments from this week, all edited together into one
nonstop infotainment laughstravaganza. Yeah. So without further ado, here is the weekly Zeitgeist.
Well, Miles, we're thrilled to be joined in our third seat by the author of the new book, The Power of Conscious Connection, a Harvard fellow who holds a master's in education and counseling psychology.
Welcome to the show, Talia Fox!
Talia!
Hi!
Welcome, welcome.
What's going on?
How are you?
Well, I'm good.
I'm thinking about Raphael from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles because because every time i hear about that i have this desire for pizza yeah and i'm not eating it anymore so thanks
thanks for that yeah yeah and every time i hear about gravy i have the i want to get some pizza
that's oh i should try that yeah this is the thing when you have this much gravy you can experiment
yeah i'll put it on vanilla ice cream i have not tried that and pretend it's like caramel sauce. I might try that. I have enough time to do that.
Last week, you were talking about mashed potato pancakes and using the gravy as syrup.
Yeah, exactly.
Sounded pretty good to me.
I mean, yeah, however you want to look at it.
you want to look at it you know i'm gonna chime in here as a little bit of a guru already is if you have too much gravy this is a time in life we need to let it go i don't know miles what it's
going to take for you to change that behavior but sometimes in life if it's overflowing you need to
just let go and surrender um well talia you render to our need for gravy yeah right so release the
need for gravy release the need for all of these extra things.
I mean, I'd hate to show you my garage because you'd be like, wow, you have a lot of paint left over from different house projects.
I'm like, no, that's gravy from years past.
I will not let them go.
Why is the part of your face below your nose so shiny?
No reason.
Turkey grease, probably.
All the rendered fat from the gravy. I don't know. I know i don't know your shirt sleeve becomes translucent as you wipe it yeah maybe i will you know what it is i think it's
just like a waste thing you know but the thing is i'm this it's it's gonna be gone within the next
36 hours i know this this i do know so i think we'll okay. Or maybe I get ill and then I have to stop eating it. We'll see.
What is something from your search history?
I will just present to you the actual last thing that I Googled, which is verbatim.
Why is it called constant comment tea? Do you know the tea constant comment?
Constant. comment tea. Do you know the tea constant comment? Constant? It's this like, it's a tea blend. It's kind of a black tea with a little orange rind in it. They serve it at this coffee shop that I,
that I often work at that I was working at this morning. And I really love it. It's, it's wonderful.
It's been like year, a couple of years of me being really into it. And then I finally stopped and
just looked at the actual name and I, and you know, it's got me thinking a lot about,
I've come to really be a believer
in like a good name is really, really powerful.
And it's a fantastic name, Constant Comet,
because it sounds normal, you know,
it rolls off the tongue.
It's got some nice, like nice hard consonants.
And then for, and then today for the first time,
I was like, wait, what does it actually mean?
And I think that's a really nice thing about a name that it could just kind of immediately just be its own sort of universe of meaning.
Whatever it means, whoever created it was an SEO master.
So probably studdled in the school on Google's campus for many years.
Go ahead.
Who created it, you ask?
Well, Ruth Campbell Bigelow in 1945.
She created constant comment tea.
She was unhappy with the variety of teas on the market,
so she created a blend of black tea and orange rind and spices
inspired by an early colonial era recipe.
The new flavor was so popular among her friends
that it received, quote, constant comments,
therefore giving the tea its name.
Wow.
Great backstory, Great tea.
Yeah.
And I like just sort of like the cleverness of the naming.
It reminds me of like how they name weed.
It's like, yeah, this one, dude.
It's like constant giggles, bro.
Because when you hit that shit, everybody's been fucking laughing the whole time.
Oh, that's a very nice blend you have here of indica and sativa.
Yeah, it's so funny that you mentioned this.
I randomly just came across like on Twitter or something,
an ad from Bigelow Tees.
It was like a message from the founder of Bigelow Tees.
Well, you're about to turn 40 and they just, they come right for you.
Yeah, they know, they know.
They've got a clock on every one of us.
Yeah.
They're just like, they've got that clock at Bigelow headquarters.
They're like, take that Wu-Tang jersey off and here's a cup of Bigelow tea,
you old man.
In a warm sweater. Embraceelow tea, you old man. A warm sweater.
Embrace it.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
But I just, yeah.
So it's funny that now I'm having the Bigelow tea message be reinforced in multiple ways now.
Yeah.
If you have room in some future episode or even just when we're just chatting, not on a podcast,
one of the greatest stories I ever know is about the naming of a product.
And I will tell it at some point, or I can do it as a bonus at some point, but it takes
a little bit.
Bonus.
Okay.
All right.
The idea that teas were the original weed strain is interesting because didn't they
used to call weed tea?
Wasn't that a thing?
I think in one of those early 20th century novels, I think they keep referring to weed
as tea maybe
like on the road or something like that oh interesting so right the connection runs deep
yeah no it was yeah okay i have no idea well that all makes sense hot damn yeah there you go
what uh alex what's something you think is overrated? The guy Napoleon.
Way overrated. The guy?
Awful guy.
That guy?
I saw the movie yesterday.
The movie, I think, really doesn't like him.
And I really appreciate that about the movie.
They make him look like a weird jerk who no one should like all of the time.
It's great.
Wait, so what is your beef with Napoleon?
Because I'm actually pretty good friends with him oh what's your damage bro yeah like what's your fucking problem
no yeah right like he's moderating the discord and everyone's very mad at me typing right now
he is famous but mainly for being a general. And he basically just got everyone in Europe killed
for about 15 years for his own personal gain. He didn't really have goals beyond being an emperor.
And he kind of ruined the best parts of the French Revolution. He was a horrible guy personally.
He reinstituted slavery in France after the revolution abolished it. He should not have
any good reputation at all.
And the movie just treats him like he's a weird
guy who's bad. So that's very good.
The Joaquin special.
Yeah.
I recommend
seeing it just to see
how weird it is. It's not a good movie,
but it's a lot of just him shuffling around
being unpleasant and
also having a fully American accent.
I assume French people are really upset about this movie.
It's not a good Napoleon depiction.
Like, does it like fully American?
Like, does he have a regional accent?
Do they go like Bronx with it?
Or is it just TV English?
Hey, I'm invading here.
Yeah, sure.
You're fucking talking to Napoleon right now, dog.
Yo, you know who you're speaking to, bro?
Because I'll go get him.
He's about to head over to Corsica, bro, for his exile.
I'll do that shit right now.
Did he have syphilis, though?
He had, I think, more than 20 mistresses is the estimation and probably picked it up i just
always thought there was like a weird like historical myth or i didn't know if it was true
but i always for some reason people like yo he has syphilis was the thing i heard about napoleon
but yeah that could just be based on bad rumors that have lasted for centuries now yeah we just
turned him into like an angry short cartoon character like that's just how history worked they're like yeah he's like picture danny
devito try to get shorty but like more more angry and that's who he is but it it feels like he's the
first leader that is like similar to the leaders we had, like just a narcissist. That is what was driving the whole thing.
He was like, have you guys heard about this narcissism shit?
This shit goes hard.
This is a great way to go through life.
And everyone just was unprepared for it, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah, I read the long biography of him last year.
And even people in France were kind of unprepared for him because he was very from Corsica, which a lot of French people thought was like separate and different.
And they even thought he had a weird regional accent from Corsica.
Like people would talk about how he spoke funny from a French perspective.
And yeah, I think he just decided he was going to be the military dictator of the earth.
And that's not like a great goal i think heroes should have better goals yeah you heard it here those bad ideas to have like inception in your brain that you can't shake yeah like god i
just can't get rid of this notion that everybody should be bowing to me in the whole world yeah
oh that's not good for anybody, man.
Well, let me finish.
Under the threat of death.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, that's what I've been saying.
That's what I've been saying, man.
Shit works.
Shout out to Ridley Scott, though.
He's just on a heater of making highly watchable, not good movies.
That seems to be where he's at that uh house of gucci thing
was like what a great time at the movies and you just like walk away and you're like man that wasn't
good what the fuck was that but like what a blast yeah i like i'm very intrigued i'm always
yeah i always come with people are like it's not good
but like you should definitely go see it and that was like definitely my review of
house of gucci too it's like not not a good movie but check it out but check it out you better go
it's gonna make time disappear and stick with you in weird ways didn't he also do a Columbus movie with Gerard Depardieu?
That 1492 film.
Was that him?
Or did he write?
I know he's.
He,
Oh,
he directed it.
Yeah,
dude.
So he's on a fucking tear.
I'd be like,
yo,
and this guy is fucking,
he was just trying to figure out the new world for everybody,
man.
Complicated.
Really weird guy.
Yeah. This movie made me re-appreciate
gladiator where he could just make up a exciting guy yeah you have to like depict a guy who's
horrible you know right it's great yeah did gladiator have syphilis though you you asked
that like a gotcha question when you asked i know i did it i did it
as if everything i said that was preceding it was meaningless because it was mainly just to get to
the point now that i read it they were suspecting that's what was that's what led to his death
potentially like the symptoms that he was displaying they're like plus his you know his
habits of having many partners like yeah it may have been syphilis that took
him down. Yeah. And he was, like,
devolving towards the end, supposedly,
like, making bad military decisions.
Right. But that could also just be power
and being fame. Famous.
Being fame.
What, uh, what's something you think is underrated?
Alright, alright, get ready.
This is more breakfast talk, and actually
probably related. Just, like, a straight up salad for breakfast. Nothing. Just leaves. No, alright, get ready. This is more breakfast talk and actually probably related. Just like a
straight up salad for breakfast.
Nothing. Just leaves.
Yeah, no nod. Well, like
or whatever, like salad, but
no nod towards
like there's an egg in it. There's no like
kale with a runny egg or anything. Just like
just a normal ass depressing
bag salad if you got it.
That's what this is. Yeah, I literally had a even worse. I had a V depressing bag salad if you got it that's from tj's what uh this is yeah i
literally had a even worse i had a vaughn's bag salad for breakfast yesterday and i was like this
is not ideal it was mostly because it was like probably gonna it was near the end of its you
should eat this like yeah when the leaves are looking real sad in there but i weirdly did feel
more good than i'd like to admit yesterday because yeah
than if you ate like a pile of eggs yeah exactly the the eggs that are gonna kill you
and so did you put it on a bagel jack no just a toast it? Did you put salad on a stack of flapjacks?
Jack, no, no, man. Just a regular.
I did actually. My nod to breakfast
was I had like a
fucking cranberry
kale and broccoli stem salad from
Vons and a cup of black coffee.
There you go.
There you go.
That was my breakfast.
That's grim
that feels grim
but I'm on a
black coffee kick too
grim as fuck yeah
I've been doing this thing I got
this is just based off of like 25
seconds of YouTube advice so I don't even
know if this is good but I've been doing
because it's just myself in here pour over coffee
one cup of pour over in the morning
and then the thing that I saw that I've been trying that I think is working a
Cold bloom on the grounds instead of a whole
So for the bloom usually you put a little bit of their hot water on the beans
Let that kick it for like 30 seconds a minute and they're saying just to put cold water first
Like like room temp. I've been putting like, kind of like, let's see.
It's all in fucking centigrade.
So I'm trying to, like about a, like a.
How do I translate this for a 60?
Wow, you're on that coffee shit to the point that you went to centigrade?
Wow.
It's probably 60 some, 60, 70 degree.
No, 80 degrees, maybe something like that.
Okay.
So it's not like cold.
Cold, but it's not like cold. Oh, okay.
But it's not hot.
It's not hot.
What do you do it at?
205?
205 Fahrenheit?
That's exactly what my kettle is set to, 205.
I know y'all.
I know.
I know how y'all move.
And so the cold bloom, but bloom for longer, like two minutes, it's been tasting pretty good.
Really?
It might be these new beans too.
Think about it.
Are you so sort of thinking about the flavor that are you like hand grind?
Like,
are you taking a lot of steps to like that?
I got a nice ish grinder.
Okay.
Damn.
Like,
like one of those,
but not,
I do have a hand grinder,
but I guess I could go back to using it.
I threw that into my camping stuff because.
Oh yeah,
that's good.
It makes sense there.
Now, I know what a
cold and hot bloom are,
but for the listener,
of course, it would be helpful.
When you're doing pour-over, right,
you have, you grounds,
and you put it in the little fucking funnel thing,
and this is like if you're at a fancy coffee shop
where they, like, you see them pour
out a little kettle, like measuring little scale.
The bloom is at the beginning where you put in, yeah, usually three times the amount of water as weight compared to the beans.
So if you have 15 grams of beans, you put 45 grams of water and just let it sit.
And what the bloom does, and that's the time when all the carbon dioxide comes up.
So the little, like,
looks like a...
Little foam.
The coffee, yeah, grounds are blooming.
And so most people do that at boiling hot,
and just throw it out there, you know?
Try it cold-ish.
Colder, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Yes.
Yes.
Summer pool temperature.
That's right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's right.
Yeah, exactly.
Like, cool but not cold.
Yeah, because if you're living out, like, in Chicago right now, then you open up your tap. Not that. Not that. No, that's right. Yeah, exactly. Like, cool but not cold. Yeah, because if you're living out, like, in Chicago right now,
then you open up your tap.
Not that.
Not that.
No, no, no, no.
That's true.
I do.
I put the kettle on, and I just, like, kind of in the middle of it,
grab it out, do the bloom, and then put it back on the warmer.
It's like you first hear that little cough of, like,
that's, yeah.
Yeah.
Anyway, that's what I went up to.
Damn. Breakfast advice. Breakfast salad. Yeah. Anyway, that's what I went up to.
Damn.
Breakfast advice.
Breakfast salad.
Cornstarch in your eggs. It's because it just happened.
The only reason I can tell you this is because it just happened.
And also, mason jars.
Also underrated.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
My phone.
I'm loving my phone.
I'm loving this candle from Costco that's on my desk.
I don't think I'd be able to get used to
where you pour the milk over the salad like it's cereal.
Jack, no, bro. No, Jack.
And also this Bugs Bunny in Space Jam toy from the 90s that a
Yoastus Racist listener sent.
Wow. Wow, that looks like some shit
you'd win at Magic Mountain, like, back in the day.
It feels like...
I can't remember why we were
pretty convinced it was, like, official-ish.
Yeah, it does look pretty
official. It also looks like
he has, like, he's about to...
Or, like, he's just suffered a headshot.
There's something about his like facial expression.
Like he's kind of looking up and his mouth is agape.
Yeah.
His eyes,
his eyes are,
let's just say they were,
they were not,
they seem like they were,
it's a toy from the nineties.
So I,
no,
dude,
it looks like people are selling it.
Oh no.
The eyes are just as fucked up.
Okay.
Nevermind. I was going to say, I thought mine might be the result of...
This one has a tag, though, on this eBay list.
All right, about $20,
$10-ish. I thought mine
might be the result of, you know, the
we'll say undercompensated
labor who was...
Right, right, right.
Has no need to give a fuck
what the eyes look like when they're putting it on.
Might be perspiring while he puts the eyes on.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
In some kind of shock.
Yes.
All right.
Let's take a quick break.
We'll be right back.
I'm Dr. Laurie Santos, host of the Happiness Lab podcast.
As the U.S. elections approach, it can feel like we're angrier and more divided than ever.
But in a new, hopeful season of my podcast, I'll share what the science really shows,
that we're surprisingly more united than most people think.
We all know something is wrong in our culture, in our politics,
and that we need
to do better and that we can do better. With the help of Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki. It's
really tragic. If cynicism were a pill, it'd be a poison. We'll see that our fellow humans, even
those we disagree with, are more generous than we assume. My assumption, my feeling, my hunch is that
a lot of us are actually looking for a way to disagree and still be in a relationship with each other.
All that on the Happiness Lab.
Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
In 1982, Atari players had one thing on their minds.
Sword Quest.
This wasn't just a new game.
Atari promised $150,000 in prizes to four finalists.
But the prizes disappeared.
And what started as a video game promotion became one of the most controversial moments in 80s pop culture.
I just don't believe they exist.
I mean, my reaction, shock and awe.
That sword was amazing. It was so beautiful.
I'm Jamie Loftus. Join me this spring for The Legend of Sword Quest,
a podcast about the fall of Atari and the disappearing Sword Quest prizes.
We'll follow the quest for lost treasure across four decades.
It's almost like a metaphor for the quest for lost treasure across four decades. It's almost
like a metaphor for the industry and Atari itself in a way. Listen to The Legend of Sword Quest on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president was the target of two assassination attempts separated by two months.
These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts
on his life in less than three weeks.
President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today.
These are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate
a U.S. president. One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson. I always felt like
Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover
for the FBI in a violent revolutionary underground. Identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore, the story of one strange and violent summer.
This is Rip Current,
available now with new episodes every Thursday.
Listen on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
And we're back.
We're back.
We're back, baby. And so is the COP back. We're back, baby.
And so is the COP conference.
We're at COP 28.
Oof.
Yeah.
It's the initial headlines.
I don't know.
There was like points during earlier this year where people are like, we've turned a corner.
And then the initial headline.
I feel like it's a good metaphor for the climate discussion where it's like you'll get some good headlines some positive seeming things happening and then like once you take a closer
look like people are like it's it's not good yeah because like the whole point is to get you know
the all of the 125 countries together and be like all right y, y'all, how are we going to unfuck this thing?
And we all got to agree on something before we leave. Yeah. Like for real this time,
we got to do some real heavy lifting in the beginning. Like you said,
there were things that made it feel positive, like commitments to seriously cut like methane
emissions and like increased funds for countries that are being affected by climate change who are
otherwise unable to help themselves because of, you know, the economics of it all. But like you're saying, you start zooming out and the optimism,
like fucking vanishes, like almost instantly, like for starters, right? The event is taking
place in Dubai. Okay. The UAE is a nation built on fossil fuel profits. And the man leading the
talks in Dubai is this guy, Sultan Al-Jaber, who he is the head
of the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. And he is the one sort of presiding over these
like climate talks. And then so like, and I can add even more to this. Prior to the conference
beginning, he said out loud at another conference that there was quote, no science that indicated
that a phase out of fossil
fuels is needed to stop temperatures from rising above one and a half degrees Celsius. One more
thing. Who are you going to believe? Who are you going to believe, Miles? Are you going to believe
the scientists or are you going to believe the head of Abu Dhabi oil company?
A state-owned oil company. And not only that, there were leaked documents that showed that
a lot of these
people representing different state owned oil companies in the Emirates were planning on using
the talks to generate more business for fossil fuel extraction. They were like, yeah, bro,
it'd be great because a lot of people are going to be in town for this. So it's hard to imagine
anything significant will be done against this backdrop, especially when the biggest negotiation
at the conference that everyone is paying attention to is, are we going to actually start articulating
a phase out of fossil fuels? Or as some lobbyists would rather say, how about phase down? Because
at least down doesn't indicate out forever. Can we say phase down? Can we say phase out?
There's a lot of back and forth of forth that Saudi Arabia has flatly said that anything
resembling a fossil fuel phase out in an agreement, they will just they will be it will be rejected by
their delegation. And the way this the talks are structured, it all takes is one party to fucking
scuttle the whole thing. So you're dealing with a lot of fucking variables here that don't spell
their you know, a good time for Earth in the near future. And then
you have the record number of lobbyists of like from the oil gas industries that are there. Last
year, we talked about when it was in Egypt, they set a record for lobbyists that were in attendance,
like how there are more lobbyists than like people who are from like a single country.
For example, like the combined amount of lobbyists that are out actually registered as lobbyists,
because there's a ton of people who might not be outwardly saying that they're there to lobby for something. They are basically they outnumber every country's delegation except for Brazil's. And Brazil has more because they are going to be hosting it in like a year and a half or something. So like, that's why they have more people. But also, they fossil fuel lobbyists outnumber in official indigenous representatives by seven to one.
And that means like they have more passes lobbyists than the combined total of delegates
from the 10 most climate vulnerable countries combined, including Somalia, Chad, Tonga,
the Solomon Islands and Sudan. And this quote from David Tong of Oil Change International sums it up
pretty well. He said, quote, you would not invite arms dealers to a peace conference.
And that's kind of what we have now
it's just arms fest at the peace fest depends on how lit you want your peace conference to be but
yeah yeah i mean i was one i was sort of wondering and reading about this whether this is like the
new davos you know and this is the new just kind of like we're gonna go party we're gonna make
ourselves feel important and we're gonna kind of cut some deals and ostensibly there's this other
project that's not actually gonna accomplish anything, and we're going to kind of cut some deals. And ostensibly, there's this other project that's not actually going to accomplish anything.
Right, right. And they're like kind of protecting against something being accomplished. We've had
climate experts and environmentalists on the show describe this as an energy industry trade show.
Right, right. So I went back and looked at, because, you know, COP 28, that's a big number,
right? So I went back and looked at like COP 1 and 2 and 3, right? And so, you know, COP 28, that's a big number, right? So I went back and looked at like COP 1 and 2 and 3, right?
And so, you know, the planks and the things, the basic, you know, things that were being discussed at those in the mid 90s into the early 2000s were basically the exact same, right?
COP 2, right, in Geneva,itzerland was basically about do we want uniform policies
or do we want flexibility do we want legally binding midterm targets or do we want larger
principles upon which we will all adhere you know cop three was the big kyoto protocol one
cop four was like we need we are pledging for a two-year plan of action right right you know and
that's like a you know two-year plan of action two-year plan of action i right? And that's like a two-year plan of action, two-year plan of action. I mean,
and then you look at like COP 6, 7, 8, 9, this question of financial assistance for developing
countries and this question of kind of how developing countries need to use carbon in
order to advance their economic principles, but also they're going to be affected by...
That is just like year after year after year after year. It's just comes up.
People say some things that doesn't get fully resolved. So it is kind of remarkable.
And it wasn't until last year where they're like, all right, I guess we can put some money together for these other countries.
And so, I mean, you know, I think.
27 tries.
Right.
And it does feel like in this first, the fact that that got accomplished on the first day of the conference did sort of surprise some climate activists and, you know, probably also then like let everyone at the conference be like,
well, we did a good thing on day one, so we can just, you know, lobby and party for the rest of
it. But can I, can I ask a sort of bigger picture question to the two of you for something I've been
thinking about with climate activism and sort of, you know, what needs to get done, which is, I think we've moved so far
past the point where like a single solution or even like a single kind of group, like,
oh, the people are going to get together in Kyoto at COP three and kind of like governments are
going to figure this out. We've moved so far past that idea of like a couple of central answers to
this that weirdly it feels like now we're in a,
well, we might as well try everything moment. Right. And I think talking to folks who are
active in climate change circles, like that is where we're at. Right. It's like no one solution,
no one political process, no one country is going to solve this. We just kind of have to try
everything. And I weirdly find a little solace in that,
in that like the guardrails, the abdication of responsibility is sort of off for most people.
And it's just kind of like, well, we got to try everything. And so, you know, maybe this is just,
maybe this is a sort of me giving up in some way, but I'm like, if COP accomplishes a, you know,
2% of something great, because over here, someone's going to accomplish 2% over here.
And that's the only way this is going to happen is just like a million different things nudging progress a little
bit forward as opposed to what we were doing for i think for a long time which was sort of saying
like well world leaders need to get together and get their act together i think that you know idea
is long gone right yeah like it kind of the thing kind of reminds me of like those like scenes and
like a like a superhero comedy film where someone's trying to get away in a car and the superhero is just lifting the car from the back so the wheels can't
move right and like that's what this feels like the car is like it could go forward if these
assholes let the like let go and let it move forward and then so we get these little incremental
changes that like are absolutely heartening i think it's just and then but looking at the totality of it
it's like god there's still so much energy and investment to basically offset whatever gains
there are to continue like the profitability of the extraction but i think like to your point
it is better to think of like that there are many ways to potentially achieve this whether it's
through like how fucking like the dairy industry is working or agriculture these other things and if many of these things can come together that
we may find a way here but the biggest thing is it's it's these nations it's these state actors
who are really have a lot of control over like the sheer volume of emissions and when you know
that like they're like hey we're bringing our lobbyists to cop 28
to represent our gas industries like you're just like oh like how serious are we so i'm i'm less
nihilistic and i'm maybe i'm just more deeply frustrated yes that's that's kind of where where
i'm at i would say. cops. Top 28 cops. Here we go. 26.
I'm just wondering because it feels like
putting a
meeting together, a meeting of the minds
with this as a
as the central goal
is a good idea in theory
once it becomes a
place for various companies
to strategize in the presence of people talking
about things that are specifically meant to hem them in, like then it almost becomes
like you're building an institutional means for just skirting all the laws and all of the things
that we're trying to do. Because, yeah,
I totally agree. Like, it's not going to be one silver bullet. It's going to be a lot of things.
But those all of those things are going to be avoided with precision and legal, you know,
just millions of hours of legal arguments and contracts and things like that
put in by these companies because that's what they do. Like sending companies that are focused
only on profit for the most part, like focused only on profit to be the solution to climate
change. It just seems so, it seems not like, you like you know well we might as well try everything
and more like this is actively doing harm like it's the it's going to be the thing that
will allow us to continue down the road that we've been going down is my concern yeah it's like
it's like that that quote that homer says and like about beer except it's like that quote that Homer says about
beer, except it's like fossil fuels.
The cause of and solution
to all life's problems. You're like,
how? Because there's so many...
What if we throw some gas on it?
That is a huge thing. You hear how the
lobbyists are speaking about the industries
they represent, and they're like, we have to
do this in a humane way.
And it's really talking about humane to their company's bottom line, but they're, but they couch it in this thing,
this argument of like, well, we were going to need fossil fuels to help these other economies get
online to get to that point. But really, and I think that's what makes it really difficult is
because they're, it's easy to do this sort of double speak. And then from that extract, like a
good headline,
if you are in the more greenwashing sector of this conference,
or you can extract a good headline if you're there to protect the
investments or whatever.
So it is just kind of wild though,
too,
because we're in this like liminal space where like the rich and powerful
are still doing their old school shit.
Like,
you know,
like just self-dealing in full view of the public,
but because they were used to like a public that was just uninformed or apathetic and now people like
what the fuck yeah hold on who's running the conference how many lobbies and they're like
what the fuck what's well it's a reality check where i think you know over the last year or two
in the u.s you know i think you could probably tell yourself a story that like oh you know the
sort of capitalistic market incentives
and the energy
and climate change
have kind of moved a little more in parallel
and are maybe working a little more in sync
right over the last year and I think you know
Biden's bill has a big part of that
and that was the sort of calculus there and then
you just you know to your point
you get this like wake up call where it's just like a Qatari sultan who's like, the fuck are you talking about?
Yeah, I'm an oil guy. Let's just let's do it.
Yeah, I brought the guess what? I just brought the entire global oil industry to my backyard.
And then we can kind of like side plan stuff based on whatever else is going on. So yeah, it's, yeah. One little tidbit,
just that I noticed here from this guy
that you shouted out, Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber,
which is like, he spent his first,
his talk at the climate on his first day,
his major address,
like complaining about how the media
had misinterpreted him about his climate,
about his comments earlier
about how we'll never be
able to divest from fossil fuels and it's just such a like hallmark powerful person application
of responsibility to then like just get their backs up about being misquoted and then spend
their whole time i feel like that's like if you're president of fifa that's all you do
is you complain about media coverage you don't actually address all the things but it's like
it's like it was it's just such a classic, classic move.
And it was just in a classic keynote.
You want to open open the conference by talking about your own petty bullshit.
And that's how people get everybody.
Yeah.
The keynote address for the conference of the parties to help tackle the issue of Earth
death.
And you kick it off with, to all my fucking haters.
You're like, oh, shit.
No, no, no.
This is, this is a completely gone off the rails.
Yeah.
Amazing.
All right.
Let's move on to the boring black mirror episode that young people today.
I'll share my rankings of the top cops on the discord okay
top cops commandant lasage from police academy
and that's it yeah yeah that guy rules just completely oblivious completely senile yeah
that's what we need was he henry from punky brewster or do i just
is he just that guy in my memory no way to know i said lasarge lasard uh i don't know
uh george gaines that's what was the actor i mean we can was he we can well we'll sidebar
we'll sidebar we'll side anyways henry We'll sidebar. Anyways, Henry Punky.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
He was.
He was.
Hey, look at that.
He was Henry Warnemont on Punky Pursuit.
There it is.
All right.
There was an article on Axios a couple weeks back that is basically just saying we're going to be living with roommates until we're 50.
That is on average. The average age of people who can rent solo is 50 now because everyone
under that age is too poor and the rent is too damn high. It also mentions the baby boomers have
quote, ditched homeownership for low maintenance apartments, which makes it sound like a breezy
lifestyle choice. This one easy hack. Yeah. Find out about this one easy hack. Real
estate agents don't want you to know about. Sell your house to them. Sell your house to a corporate
entity. Yes. The one that really jumped out to me, 87% jump in the number of Americans aged 25 to 34
living at home in 2021 compared to the previous decade. Meanwhile, the typical repeat home buyer is
currently 58, according to data from the National Association of Realtors. And, you know, there's
been a lot of reporting from there's a New York Times article from last year. There's a Scripps
article from earlier this year about how more and more single family homes than ever are being purchased by investors, which ties into our special episode about private equity companies from earlier in the year.
I think who killed the free ambulance?
Was that what it was called?
Something along those lines.
Just industry by industry, just hollowing it out.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
those lines. Just industry by industry, just hollowing it out. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And there's this one quote in the Scripps News article that I just want to read to you guys word for
word. There are billions of dollars, trillions of dollars just sloshing around in the economy,
looking for places to go. Where do we go? What are we going to invest in? Real estate is a really,
really good investment, said Mike DelPrete, a global real estate tech strategist and scholar.
It's definitely an issue worth paying attention to.
So from his perspective, it's like an issue worth paying attention to.
Yes, he's a real estate tech strategist and scholar at the University of Colorado Boulder.
I wonder if that was like a description he gave to them.
He's like, yeah, you can describe me as this.
Yeah, that's spelled S-c-h-o
i'm a scholar of making that bank yeah oh no it's s-c-a-l-l-e-r i'm a shot caller
that's what i meant by that yeah yeah scholar if you will s-caller i'm sorry did you not get it
i'm a shot caller baby tell y'all what to do with these Did you not get it? Yeah, I'm a shot-collar, baby.
Telling y'all what to do with these houses.
You can get the fuck right out of here.
I'm a shot-collar.
That is ultimately where the term scholar came from.
Of course. It's just the original shot-collars.
But yeah, I don't know.
First of all, very infuriating.
When most people's lived reality is check-to-check,
that the investor class's problem is like what how do we unburden ourselves from all these trillions of dollars that came our way during the pandemic just that that that fucking metaphor it's
so it's just so wild right because it's like you're like you're acknowledging a finite resource like
money and many people don't have it and like you're likening it to like having like a
kiddie pool of just like fucking water sloshing everywhere while people are like dying yeah i got
money problems too man dude it's sloshing everywhere how the fuck am i doing all this
shit yeah like i get it but yeah i don't know and there's always like an industry person who's like
guys that private companies buying up single-family homes not a big deal like we're actually not that
big of an industry like i i barely matter i suck okay like none of don't even you don't like why are you even talking
to me i suck i there's nothing here which is usually a bad sign when like an industry group
just keeps trying to be like guys i like i'm i'm shit why are you right no there's there's this is
a non-story but i don't know it just seemed like when you talk to, like the New York Times article from spring of last year was just looking at an individual, I think it was Charlotte, real estate market. And it's just, and I found this to be true, anybody who is thinking about like trying to buy a home or, you know, like this is the number one thing they mentioned now is that like you are going to get scooped by some company.
Like they talk to this woman who is trying to buy a single family home in Charlotte, instead forced to downsize from a rental home to an apartment.
And, you know, the car that or the home that she wants to buy is bought by Ticon residential who owns 1600 homes and yeah this got
me thinking about a kind of bigger sort of story i feel like in my life and i'm curious how you
think about kind of home ownership and how i've thought about it you know because i do think like
i'm of a generation where i did push back or you you know, kind of, there was a, I thought a really important conversation about like, well, is homeownership the sort of goal, you know, and our parents, that was's not the fit for everyone, you know, and maybe it's not the fit for me. And, and I wonder if we were kind of sold
while we were kind of being sold that idea. They're like, no, it's not, you know, it's not,
yeah, it's the American dream anymore. There's other ways in the meantime, you know, that option
was just being ripped off the table to begin with. And that I think is the real sort of tragedy here.
It's not just that like everyone should own a home and
that is the most, you know, that is still the sort of definition of the American dream, but just
the lack of options. And everyone I know, you know, and all the people in the reporting here,
the pervading feeling is just constriction, you know, and the inability to even make a choice
and have agency and sort of figure out what's best for yourself.
And I think that's like, you know, that's incredibly tragic.
And I will say like, you know, this may be taking us a little bit far afield, but I will
say like when I think about this kind of big conversation that's happening and it will
only build going into next year about the disconnect between people's economic feelings
and the actual economic indicators that are out there.
And, you know, Biden has built a pretty good economy, but people still think the economy
is terrible.
Yeah.
Housing is the answer to me.
Right.
Yeah.
You can look at every other metric about wage growth and inflation going down and all these
other things.
But if you just like.
Can't.
Get from here to there, if you want to own a home like I don't think any of those other
metrics matter.
Or if you feel like that's like a big part of it i think yeah you're on the verge of not making rent like
that yeah then yeah homelessness is like you know something that hangs over a lot of people who are
still might show up on that as like employed and you know but being employed and the precarity of
like being in a gig economy, you know,
role is like,
that's not a comfortable place to be.
And a lot of these things are things that have just changed generation to
generation,
you know,
you know,
it does,
it does tie into that sort of gig economy overall,
like gig effication of our lives that like,
Oh yeah,
you know,
yeah.
If you're under 40, like the way you want to live your life is just like like, oh yeah, you know, yeah. If you're under 40,
like the way you want to live your life is just like improvising every day, you know,
like you just move around and you rent and you figured this out, you figured this out,
you have all this. It's like, I don't think so. I think people like stability.
Well, and I think like the cop, what, what happened to the cop conference is a,
I thought you were going to say the cop on the slide.
the COP conference is a... I thought you were going to say the COP on the slide.
What happened to the COP on the slide
happened to the
U.S. economy.
No, we thought it would be a good time
hopping in there, and it just fucked us
up on the other end. When you have
corporations and private
equity companies as the major
decision makers and
designers of
an entire civilization for for decades which it
seems like we've had for for a while now and like really being the power that politicians have to
you know push back against and often like listen to like this is kind of what you end up with where
it's just like their flexibility is the thing that ends up being, you know, unshakable and not as a problem in the sense that they what to do with
all this money being the problem that they're trying to solve. Like when those are the only
people making the decisions, like you end up with subtle fissures in like day to day life of people
who aren't making those decisions that don't don't look great, don't feel great. And, you know,
there's a Senate bill
that would close legal tax and regulatory loopholes
that allow private equity firms
to capture all the rewards of the investments
in real estate while insulating them from risk.
And it has sat in committee since Elizabeth Warren
and Sherrod Brown introduced it in October of last year.
So it's, yeah, it's. There's there's like yeah i think rokhana also
has a bill about banning corporate landlords because like when you look at it i mean it's
this problem is only increasing and you know jeff bezos just put like a ton of money into
this like new company this is like an investment company called arrived that basically allows people to like
like become sort of uh small time landlords it's like well you can get you can own a property for
as little as a hundred dollars by like crowd crowd fucking people like that and that's sort
of like this new like we're just seeing all these entry points to sort of either because i see
something like this a lot of people that are defending this company it's like well they're
not like one of these institutional corporate landlords like invitation homes that owns 80,000
single family rental homes or like blackstone they're like this is actually allowing people
just a way to have that kind of security or those aspirations in a way that's realistic for them and
really it's just more like they're being like, you could be a landlord, dude.
Like, you're not going to live here, but you can you can fucking maybe profit off of this
situation.
They're not a blackstone, more of a gray stone, which is also a massive corporate.
More of a gray stone.
Yeah.
How many colors are left?
Yeah.
White stone.
Hey, we're good.
Brownstone.
Yeah. Mr. Brownstone.
All right. Well, let's take a break and we'll come back and talk about less depressing things, maybe.
Maybe.
Maybe. We'll be right back.
I'm Dr. Laurie Santos, host of the Happiness Lab podcast.
As the U.S. elections approach, it can feel like we're angrier and more divided than ever.
But in a new, hopeful season of my podcast, I'll share what the science really shows,
that we're surprisingly more united than most people think.
We all know something is wrong in our culture, in our politics, and that we need to do better
and that we can do better.
With the help of Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki.
It's really tragic.
If cynicism were a pill, it'd be a poison.
We'll see that our fellow humans, even those we disagree with, are more generous than we
assume.
My assumption, my feeling, my hunch is that a lot of us are actually looking
for a way to disagree
and still be in a relationship with each other.
All that on the Happiness Lab.
Listen on the iHeartRadio app,
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In 1982, Atari players had one thing on their minds sword quest this wasn't just a new game
atari promised 150 grand in prizes to four finalists but the prizes disappeared and what
started as a video game promotion became one of the most controversial moments in 80s pop culture.
I just don't believe they exist.
My reaction, shock and awe.
That sword was amazing. It was so beautiful.
I'm Jamie Loftus. Join me this spring for The Legend of Sword Quest, a podcast about the fall of Atari and the disappearing Sword Quest prizes.
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It's almost like a metaphor for the industry and Atari itself in a way.
Listen to The Legend of Sword Quest on the iHeartRadio app,
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This summer, the nation watched as the Republican nominee for president
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These events were mirrored nearly 50 years ago when President Gerald Ford faced two attempts on his life in less than three weeks.
President Gerald R. Ford came stunningly close to being the victim of an assassin today.
And these are the only two times we know of that a woman has tried to assassinate a U.S. president.
One was the protege of infamous cult leader Charles Manson.
I always felt like Lynette was kind of his right-hand woman.
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The story of one strange and violent summer.
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And we're back.
And yeah, so first of all i'd just be interested in hearing because i think some of the stuff from the world of recovery can be like i i won't like bring it into my day-to-day life
because i'm like well that's like a different thing and like people who aren't in recovery
won't necessarily understand that at the same time that I feel like people are talking about
like problems that could be serviced from just like, you know, some of these things that we're
talking about. So I'd love to hear more about like the power hour idea or just like ways that
you have seen just, you know, structurally getting people to interact with one another more or, you know,
doing that for yourself, how you specifically get yourself to interact with people on a more
humane, active, active listening level? Well, you know, it's interesting in the
context of recovery. It's when you share your experience, strength and hope.
And it's OK not to have to share the entire story of your struggles, but the experience, the strength,
and the hope is how you live your life on a regular basis that works for you, right? And so
a big part of the listening is number one, being able to have some reflective time to be able to
know what that is, right? What do I actually, I think about this a lot is what do I do
on a regular basis? I meditate. I do do some journaling. I think a lot about how I'm treating
people. You know, I'm really gentle with myself when I make mistakes, but I try to make amends
when I do that. And then being able to share that with other people, but also ask questions to
create space for other people to share things about their lives. And a big part of this is when we're connecting with people, there are phases of, we don't have to always share the entire war story,
right? If it's not appropriate, if it's not the day, if it's not the right venue,
but sometimes we throw the baby out with the bathwater. We can still just share little bites
of like, you know, I see that you're having this struggle with, I don't know what it
is, maybe getting up and going to the gym the way that I, this is my strategy for when I don't want
to do things, right? I make a call or I get a part, I get someone that holds me accountable
or just kind of sharing some wisdom that might be supportive for each other. And so even if we can
kind of infuse that into some of our conversations, that's really important. It's interesting during the power hour, one of the things that I do is I
listen so intently to this, in this case, my uncle speaking, that I'm able to repeat and summarize
almost everything that he said in the entire 45 minutes. And people always find it to be some kind
of superhero power, but it's not. I literally am just fully engaged
and fully listening, and I'm not allowing my thinking to interrupt my ability to take in the
wisdom that he's sharing. And so there's an actual process and strategy to be that good of a listener
so that you can get the value out of the experience and the strength and the hope that other people have. So we really miss out when our listening is tainted.
How would you say we, like, we're most normal,
like not normal, but most people
who aren't being conscious of this
are quote unquote listening, right?
Because I'll be like, yeah, when people talk,
I'm hearing what they're saying.
And then that's it.
But yeah, what are those sort of finer points
that are different about these ways of listening?
So this is almost like a personality test. You have listening personalities, right?
So there are people that listen in a very specific way.
So, for example, I know some people, I'm trying not to mention names here, but I know some people that they are what I call a plugger,
which means that like no matter what you say, I don't care what kind of story you tell,
they're always going to kind of plug something in about themselves or even plug something that
benefits them. Then you've got the fact checker, right? That's called podcasting. Okay. Yeah.
Podcasting, right? So then you have someone that's like the fact checker where every single time,
like you say something, they stop you. And you're just trying to tell a story that like,
whether or not it happened in, you know, 1873 or 74 is not the
point, but they will stop you and say something like, are you sure that happened then? What I
read was that it happened in, and it's like, that's not the point of the story.
That's called being a podcast listener.
This is all part of the podcast.
And my favorite one is The Helper, which I have to be careful about not being that person,
but I watch it. And, you know, again, we're gentle with ourselves, is when you're a person
that someone is maybe telling you a story or they're trying to get some support and you just
jump in there without knowing the full context. And you're like context, all you need to do is
just, just get up and go to the gym every day and just run a mile. You heard it, right? Just,
just eat. Someone told me, I was like, cause I I've, I've struggled with, I'm always trying to
figure out what to do with weight, you know, up and down and just trying to always eat healthy. And, and it's, it's always
been a struggle. So when I ask certain people, they're like, I don't get what the problem is.
Why don't you just eat fish and vegetables and then work out every day? It's so simple.
Oh, just like that. Yeah. Yeah. Just, just do that. And then they, then they go and they start
like eating their, their, you know, donut with like a six pack abs. And I'm like, yeah, thanks.
Thanks for the advice. But, but he's not really listening to the context. Like the most important
thing that I said in that particular instance was that this is hard for me, right? As opposed to,
I don't need the solution per se, but I need maybe a listening ear to work through why I think it's
hard specifically for me. Right. Right. And, And again, that's what people want some support.
They want you to understand the struggle.
They want you to just get their stories
and so that they can feel validated.
And after they're validated,
then maybe they can be open for solutions.
Right.
In a way, it just sounds like we're basically
de-centering ourselves in these interactions.
So whether it's our own urge
to demonstrate our knowledge of a topic,
or our own urge to find a way to make this topic be relevant to me, or our own urge to
share some kind of wisdom, even though that's not what our person is, the person we're speaking to
is asking for. It's sort of this. Yeah, I don't know, it feels like it feels so contrary to like
how we normally communicate with each other, too.
It's like, OK, what you say the thing about you now.
OK, now I say the thing about me and I heard the thing you said.
And now it's time for me to see the thing I said rather than just like this much more effortless version of like, OK, so you just voiced a thing that you are dealing with.
And now I can add to that by asking you to continue going along that rather
than like, oh yeah, I've been through that thing too. And then this would have happened. And then
that's that. Okay. Now what? We don't have anywhere to go from there. Jack said it. It's
our urge to be the one. We've got to be the one. We've got to be the center of attention. And we
all do it in some ways, but if we can be a little aware. Yeah. Yeah. And i do feel like we might be seeing a generational shift with this
like with younger people like i feel like it might have peaked with like baby boomers being like
you know self-centered just like very focused on the self and everything and all the systems
were like sort of designed around that and And while mental health is not getting better for
younger people, I do feel like in some of the things like the polling that you see,
they are kind of acutely aware, like they're more likely to have like socialist leanings,
like they're more interested in like, like even like in the growing interest in psychedelics which are like
medicines or drugs like depending on how you use them that kind of dissolve the ego or like take
you out of like the self-centeredness of like that way of perceiving the world i do feel like
there are some like glimmers of hope but i think a lot of the mental health problems that we're seeing is like younger people existing in a world that is designed for this completely different paradigm that has been shown to be very, very bad for the continued survival of the species. But I don't know. Yeah. I feel like there's a rise in consciousness,
but a decline in connection. Yes. Right. So it's like, we're really conscious about what's going
on. I think people are, I mean, the knowledge you have access to so much knowledge, you have access
to, to ideas and technology and innovations. I mean, on, on so many levels, but then the question
is what's going to be the impact long-term of us really being able to kind of connect and feel interdependent? Because really, I mean, you can put me out in, I like to
watch those shows like Naked and Afraid. We were out in the woods. And I would say if they gave me
the tool, if they said, well, bring your cell phone and your charger, you wouldn't need the
matches. You wouldn't need anything. You just have your cell phone and your charger. You can
just arrive out there and just look it up, right? You can just put it. How do you keep warm without matches?
I mean, it's like, I, you know, do you want to take your cell phone or do you want to
take somebody with you?
I probably would just take my cell phone.
I feel like I could have light.
I feel like I can know stuff.
I'll be good out in the woods, but that is a rise in my consciousness, but it'll be,
you know, I will underestimate the impact of the loneliness of being in the woods by myself. more of like these sort of, you know, fleeting distractions we have that have probably taken
the place. But like, it is kind of, I'm always surprised when I when I really look back and I'm
like, Oh, yeah, we've, we really don't, like, we really don't put that much stock into that
anymore, when that really was the lifeblood of our human, like our this species for millennia.
I think it depends on who you have surrounding you,
because it can feel better, but it also can feel like a big hassle. It can feel worse.
You have a lot of people that are very self-conscious. You really, you know, if you
feel like you're being judged constantly, you have people that will just make comments randomly
about things. It was funny at the, you know, at the end of the pandemic and a lot of people were
going back to work and there were these comments that we came in and did some support. There are these comments
that people were making, wow, I didn't know you were so short. They're like, wow. I mean,
people were just saying these random things. They're actually considered in some ways,
they can be insults, they can be microaggressions, but it's like in that particular case,
why did you just say that? Right. Well, why are you, why are you just spewing these things out of your mouth that are causing you to alienate yourself or alienate somebody else?
And so, again, there's the quality of those connections that I think is really important.
Right.
Human contact is great in theory, but have you smelled some of us?
Like, it can be.
Yeah.
It's true.
I had a firefighter put his respirator on while he was in line with me at the supermarket earlier this week.
Did not feel good.
Really?
Yeah.
He's like, this guy is ripe.
Yeah.
Oh, he put his.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sorry, that joke did not land.
And you know what?
That's OK.
That's why I embrace failure and I cannot be harmed.
Yeah, there you go.
And have you read the research around all this stuff?
They say that there's bad stuff for you in toothpaste, bad stuff in deodorant. I have
decided that I'm keeping the bad deodorant in the bad toothpaste, but apparently it's not good.
I just use crystals. You just wrote crystals on your body.
Don't do anything! I've decided I am not doing crystals and I'm not doing
natural toothpaste either. No, Miles, I smell good. Tell her.
I smell great.
Oh, yeah.
You smell so good,
we haven't done the show in person in years.
I do feel like one thing that I've noticed in myself
is that the psychology of how we interact with one another,
modern interactions are much more curated.
Like, just in comparison, in comparing, like, my day-to-day life with people in the past,
like, where the being, being in communities where, you know, now I have kids, now I'm
just interacting with other parents.
And it's not like, well, I choose their top of my list of
people to hang out with. They're my kids, friends, parents in some cases. Or in recovery, you're just
thrown into a room with other people who have the same problem as you, but they are in a lot of
cases not the person who you would have ever found yourself in the same room with. And in a lot
of ways, I feel like that is mimicking how people used to live, right? Like you knew your neighbor
and interacted with them, whether you liked them or not. And like your friends were based on who
was on your, I don't know, bowling team. I think they used to bowl a lot. It's just, you know,
team i think they used a bowl a lot it's just you know but i i do feel like part of my problem at least is like trying to be like all right is this the perfect interaction is this like you know
putting a lot of pressure on these interactions like finding the right people to surround myself
with is first of all can be beneficial for the reasons that you're mentioning
like you don't want to surround yourself with toxic people but at the same time i think i can
also like overly curate like in the in the way that a lot of like media now is just like me
scrolling through 400 movies to figure out like what the best movie is when some of my favorite
movie watching experiences were just like back in the day,
scrolling or flipping past TNT,
and a movie's on,
and you're like,
well, that's the movie you're hanging out with
for the next hour and a half.
I guess I'll watch two-thirds of this movie.
Yeah, exactly.
So, yeah, I just wonder if
being a little more willing to spend time with people, whether or not,
and I guess that's kind of by necessity, if we're spending time with other people,
like on a regular basis, that's going to happen, right?
Yeah, I think one of the things, if you watch children and animals play together,
they seem to have like a system. You know, you'll see little kids, they just go up and
they sort of either like, they kind of tap each other and run. They just start
running. And it's almost like we're in the same world and we're just going to run. Or like the
dogs, they come up and it's like they have a little sniff going on. And it almost seems like
all the dogs know and you know, you're supposed to like, you know, they kind of communicate with
each other. I feel like human beings, we don't really have a system. And we think we do because
we just say hello and give these greetings. But I think we just need to embrace the awkwardness.
There is just some interactions that are more awkward than others, but that's okay.
If you stay in there for just a little bit longer, you might have, as you were talking about, Jack,
you might create a friend that you never thought you knew. This is why we gravitate too much
toward people just like us.
We're trying to run away from any feeling of discomfort, any feeling of awkwardness.
So if you have a room of people, you're going to gravitate toward someone.
You know, you need a starter.
They're from your hometown.
They might look like you.
And we kind of just deprive ourselves of so many relationships that would be nice, but
you just have to kind of get past this initial awkward moment of, I don't know what to say. I don't know what questions to ask, but if you've ever
had those experiences, it takes just a couple minutes to get there. Then all of a sudden,
you know, those people can end up being some really great friends and great connections.
Yeah. Especially if you're different, if they're different from you and you're focusing on like
what you can learn from them, like then the more different they
are from you, the more you can kind of learn from them. Right. Yeah. And in the book, you just have
some questions that you ask people, but we have to learn this art of just engaging, putting people
at ease and being comfortable with ourselves. Yeah. Cause I, to your point, like I was at a
event like a couple of weeks ago and I was just standing next to a person who was like seemingly I was like, I don't know what I would have in common with this person.
But we realized there was like a mutual connection there and just started talking by the end.
This person who if I was just going off of the sort of same thing, I'm like, are they from L.A.?
Do they kind of like do we look like we kind of fuck with the same stuff?
No, not really and then by the end of it they were like super into comedy super into basketball like super into like similar art
and that all just happened from just just embracing just sort of like the awkward momentum of being
like oh what else like oh yeah yeah and then just kind of seeing where the conversation leads and
yeah like almost it proves my own instincts wrong where you're like i i got
everybody figured out mostly and then like oh no like and then to the point i was talking to my
partner her majesty i was like we should kick it with them like his partner seemed cool too
like what where did that happen from and i i don't know i think it's it's because like i think i've
fully let those skills of like being curious about other people just kind of
die too i think as i think it just comes along with age and i hope everybody listening look jack
and i are not just sitting in like dark and like a dank cave not talking anyway i mean sometimes we
do but yeah there is like there is just like this other i don't know very basic part of being a human that I realize I've really let kind of disintegrate in this to a certain extent because of how much like all these things that are at my disposal, whether that be through social media or technology.
And I'm forgetting about the, you know, the good old fashioned analog stuff, you know, talking to people.
the good old fashioned analog stuff, you know, talking to people.
Yeah. I spend a lot of time really selling this concept because here's the deal, right?
You have a limited amount of time.
It's just easier to watch Netflix.
It's easier to be on the phone.
It's easier not to connect.
And so what's in it for you?
Why, why move through discomfort?
Why, why?
Because it does take a little bit of effort and work, right?
To connect to different people.
It's the answer to so many challenges. And I think one thing that we miss in life is that we have these problems. We have these challenges, even in like addiction, like the
answer is the connection, right? It's connecting to a higher power. It's connecting to other people.
But the answer is like, you have to work it. You have to work it, right? But the benefit is,
oh my gosh, look what, look what happened. I surrendered
something, life got better and life continued to get better. And now like, you know, I'm transforming
my relationships. And at the end of the day, I am much happier because I put in this effort.
And so that is the core of this is we have to learn the skills. And so they're habits that
you do every single day that helps us to recover from disconnection. Right. Yeah. All right. That's going to do it
for this week's weekly Zeitgeist. Please like and review the show if you like the show.
Means the world to Miles. He needs he needs your validation folks. Uh,
I hope you're having a great weekend and I will talk to you Monday. Bye. Thank you. In California, during the summer of 1975, within the span of 17 days and less than 90 miles,
two women did something no other woman had done before,
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