Speaker 1: Hello the Internet, and welcome to this episode of The
Speaker 1: Weekly Zeitgeist. These are some of our favorite segments from
Speaker 1: this week, all edited together into one NonStop infotainment laugh stravaganza.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, without further ado, here is the Weekly Zeitgeist. Well, Miles,
Speaker 1: we are thrilled to be joined in our third seat
Speaker 1: by the author of the new book The Power of
Speaker 1: Conscious Connection, a Harvard fellow who holds a Masters in
Speaker 1: Education and Counseling Psychology. Welcome to the show, Talia fully,
Speaker 1: Well it's going on.
Speaker 2: How are you well? I'm good.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking about Raphael from the Teenage Mutan Ninja Turtles
Speaker 3: because every time I hear about that, I have this
Speaker 3: desire for pizza. Yeah, and I'm not eating it anymore,
Speaker 3: so thanks, thanks for that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And every time I hear about gravy, I have
Speaker 1: the I want to get some pizza.
Speaker 2: Oh, I should try that. This is the thing. When
Speaker 2: you have this much gravy, you can experiment. I'll put
Speaker 2: it on vanilla ice cream. I have not tried that
Speaker 2: and pretend it's like caramel sauce. I might try that.
Speaker 2: I have enough time to do that.
Speaker 1: Last week you were talking about matted potato pancakes and
Speaker 1: using the gravy as syrup.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, And I mean, yeah, however you want to
Speaker 2: look at it.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm going to chime in here as a
Speaker 3: little bit of a guru already, is if you have
Speaker 3: too much gravy, this is a time in life we
Speaker 3: need to let it go. I don't know, Miles what
Speaker 3: it's going to take for you to change that behavior,
Speaker 3: but sometimes in life, if it's overflowing, you need to
Speaker 3: just let go and surrender.
Speaker 2: Well, Talia, you want to our need for gravy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, So release the need for gravy, release me
Speaker 3: for all of these extra things.
Speaker 2: Yeah what I mean. I'd hate to show you my
Speaker 2: garage because you'll be like, wow, you have a lot
Speaker 2: of paint left over from a different house projects. I'm like, no,
Speaker 2: that's gravy from years past. I will not let them go.
Speaker 1: Why is the part of your face below your nose
Speaker 1: so shiny? No reason, turkey grease. Probably the rendered fat
Speaker 1: from the gravy.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 1: And you're sure sleeve becomes translucent as you whip it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe I will. You know what it is? I
Speaker 2: think it's just like a waste thing, you know. But
Speaker 2: the thing is, I'm it's it's gonna be gone within
Speaker 2: the next thirty six hours. I know this, this I
Speaker 2: do know, so I think will be okay, or maybe
Speaker 2: I get ill and then I have to stop eating it.
Speaker 2: We'll see.
Speaker 1: What is something from your search history.
Speaker 4: I will just present to you the actual last thing
Speaker 4: that I googled, which is love It verbatim. Why is
Speaker 4: it called constant comment?
Speaker 1: Tea?
Speaker 4: Do you know the tea? Constant comment?
Speaker 1: Constant?
Speaker 4: It's this like it's a tea blend. It's kind of
Speaker 4: a black tea with a little orange rind in it. Uh.
Speaker 4: They serve it at this coffee shop that I that
Speaker 4: I often work at, that was working at this morning,
Speaker 4: and I I really love it. It's wonderful. It's been
Speaker 4: like year a couple of years and me being really
Speaker 4: into it, and then I finally stopped and just looked
Speaker 4: at the actual name, and I, you know, it's got
Speaker 4: me thinking a lot about I've come to really be
Speaker 4: a believer and like a good name is really really
Speaker 4: powerful and it's a fantastic name. Constant comment because it
Speaker 4: sounds normal, you know, it rolls off the tongue. It's
Speaker 4: got some nice like nice hard consonants. And then for
Speaker 4: and then today, for the first time, I was like, wait,
Speaker 4: what does it actually mean? And I think that's a
Speaker 4: really nice thing about a name that it could just
Speaker 4: kind of immediately just be its own sort of universe
Speaker 4: of meaning.
Speaker 2: Whatever it be.
Speaker 1: Whoever created was an SEO master, so it probably studtled
Speaker 1: in the school of on Google's campus for many years.
Speaker 4: Go ahead, who created it, you asked, well, Rudy Campbell Bigelow.
Speaker 4: In nineteen forty five, she created Constant Comment Tea. She
Speaker 4: was unhappy with a variety of teas on the market,
Speaker 4: so she created a blend of black tea and orange
Speaker 4: rind and spices and inspired by an early colonial era recipe.
Speaker 4: The new flavor was so popular among her friends that
Speaker 4: it received quote constant comments, therefore giving the t its name.
Speaker 2: I like the backstory great ta yeah, and like just
Speaker 2: sort of like the cleverness of the naming. It reminds
Speaker 2: me of like how they name weed. It's like, yeah, this one, dude,
Speaker 2: it's like constant giggles, bro, because when you hear that ship,
Speaker 2: everybody's being laughing the whole time. Very very nice blend
Speaker 2: you have here of Indicansativa. Yeah, it's so funny that
Speaker 2: you mentioned this. I randomly just came across like on
Speaker 2: like on Twitter or something, an ad from Big Eelots,
Speaker 2: like from like it's like a message from the founder
Speaker 2: of big elod.
Speaker 4: T you're about to turn forty, and they just they ca.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they know, they know.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, they've got a clock on every one
Speaker 1: of us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, They're like, take that Wu tang jersey off and
Speaker 2: here's a cup of big old T. You old ones.
Speaker 2: Embrace it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But I just yeah, So
Speaker 2: it's it's funny that now I'm having the big load
Speaker 2: T message. We reinforced in multiple ways.
Speaker 4: Now, Yeah, if you have room in some future episode
Speaker 4: or even just when we're just chatting, not on a podcast.
Speaker 4: One of the greatest stories I ever know is about
Speaker 4: the naming of a product. And I will tell it
Speaker 4: at some point, or I can do it as a
Speaker 4: bonus at some point, but yeah, take bonus.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right.
Speaker 1: The idea that tea's where the original weed strain is
Speaker 1: interesting because then they used to call weed tea, Like,
Speaker 1: wasn't that a thing? I think in one of those
Speaker 1: like early twentieth century novels. I think they keep referring
Speaker 1: to weed as tea maybe like on the Road or
Speaker 1: something like that.
Speaker 2: Oh, interesting, so the connection runs deep? Yeah no it
Speaker 2: was Yeah, okay, I did have no idea. Well that
Speaker 2: all makes sense.
Speaker 1: Damn. Yeah, there you go. What Alex, what something you
Speaker 1: think is overrated?
Speaker 2: The guy Napoleon?
Speaker 1: Way guy, awful guy, that guy.
Speaker 5: And I saw the movie yesterday. The movie I think
Speaker 5: really doesn't like him, and I really appreciate that about
Speaker 5: the movie. They make it like a weird jerk who
Speaker 5: no one should like all of the time.
Speaker 2: It's great.
Speaker 1: Wait, so what what is your beef with Napoleon? Because
Speaker 1: I'm actually pretty good friends with him? Oh what's your fials, bro? Yeah, like,
Speaker 1: what's your fucking problem?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 5: Yeah, they right, like moderating the discord, and everyone's very
Speaker 5: mad at made typing right now. He is famous, but
Speaker 5: mainly for being a general and he basically just got
Speaker 5: like everyone in Europe killed for about fifteen years for
Speaker 5: his own personal gain, Like he didn't really have goals
Speaker 5: beyond being an emperor, and he kind of ruined the
Speaker 5: best parts of the French Revolution. He was a horrible
Speaker 5: guy personally, he reinstituted slavery in France after the revolution
Speaker 5: abolished it, like he should not have any good reputation
Speaker 5: at all, and the movie just treats him like he's
Speaker 5: a weird guy who's bad. So that's very good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Joaquin Special, Yeah.
Speaker 5: I weird recommend it seeing it just to see how
Speaker 5: weird it is. It's not a good movie, but it's
Speaker 5: a lot of just him shuffling around being unpleasant and
Speaker 5: also having a fully American accent. I assume French people
Speaker 5: are really upset about this movie. It's not a good
Speaker 5: Napoleon depiction.
Speaker 1: Mm, like does he like fully American?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Does he have a regional accent? Do they go like
Speaker 1: bronks with it? Or is it just it just get
Speaker 1: TV English?
Speaker 6: Hey, I'm invading, Yeah that's yeah, sure, fucking talking to
Speaker 6: Napoleon right now?
Speaker 2: Dog yo, you know you're speaking to him, bro, because
Speaker 2: I'll folk I'll go get him. He's about to head
Speaker 2: over to Corsica, Bro, for his exile. I'll do that
Speaker 2: shit right now. Did he have syphilis?
Speaker 7: Though he had?
Speaker 5: I think more than twenty mistresses is the estimation, and
Speaker 5: probably picked it up.
Speaker 2: I just always thought that was like a weird like
Speaker 2: historical myth or I didn't know if it was true,
Speaker 2: but I always for some reason, people were like, yo, ye,
Speaker 2: list was the thing we've heard about Napoleon, But yeah,
Speaker 2: that could just be based on bad rumors that have
Speaker 2: lasted for centuries.
Speaker 1: Now, yeah, we just turned him into like an angry
Speaker 1: short cartoon character, like that's just how history worked. They're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's like picture Danny DeVito trying to get shorty, but
Speaker 1: like more more angry, and that's who he is. But
Speaker 1: it feels like he's the first leader that is like
Speaker 1: similar to the leaders we had, Like just a narcissist
Speaker 1: like that, that is what was driving the whole thing.
Speaker 1: He was like, I he has heard about this narcissism shit,
Speaker 1: this shit goes hard. This is a great way to
Speaker 1: go through life. And everyone just was unprepared for it, you.
Speaker 5: Know, yeah, yeah, I read the long biography of him
Speaker 5: last year and the like. Even people in France were
Speaker 5: kind of unprepared for him because he was very from Corsica,
Speaker 5: which a lot of French people thought was like separate
Speaker 5: and different, and they even thought he had a weird
Speaker 5: regional accent from Corsica, like people would talk about how
Speaker 5: he spoke funny from a French perspective, and yeah, I
Speaker 5: think he just decided he was going to be the
Speaker 5: military dictator of the Earth. And that's not like a
Speaker 5: great goal. I think heroes should have better goals.
Speaker 1: Yea, hear those bad ideas to have like inceptioned in
Speaker 1: your brain that you can't shake. Yeah, Like God, I
Speaker 1: just can't get rid of this notion that everybody should
Speaker 1: be bowing to me in the whole world. Oh, that's
Speaker 1: not good for anybody.
Speaker 2: Man, Well let me finish under the thread of death.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I'm saying, man, it works. Man, Child's Ridley
Speaker 1: Scott though he's he's just on a on a heater
Speaker 1: of like making highly watchable not good movies. Let's be
Speaker 1: like where he's at that House of Gucci thing was
Speaker 1: like what a great time at the movies and you
Speaker 1: just like walk away and you're like, man, that wasn't good.
Speaker 1: What the fuck was that? But like what a blest Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like I'm very intrigued. I'm always yeah, I always
Speaker 1: come with people are like it's not good, but like
Speaker 1: you should definitely go see it. And that was like
Speaker 1: definitely my review of the House of Gucci too, It's like,
Speaker 1: not a good movie, but check it out. Check better
Speaker 1: you better go. It's gonna make time disappear and stick
Speaker 1: with you in weird ways.
Speaker 2: Didn't he also do a Columbus movie with Gerard dep
Speaker 2: Pardue that fourteen eighty two film. Was that him or
Speaker 2: did he write rhythm He? Oh? Yeah, he directed it. Yeah, dude,
Speaker 2: so he's on a fucking tear of being like yo,
Speaker 2: and this guy is fucking he was just trying to
Speaker 2: figure out the new world for everybody. Man complicated ude,
Speaker 2: really weird guy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this movie made me reappreciate Gladiator, where he could
Speaker 5: just make up an exciting guy. Yeah, I have to
Speaker 5: like to pick the guy who's home.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Gladiator of syphilis. Though you asked that like
Speaker 1: a gotcha question when you ask me.
Speaker 2: I know, I did it.
Speaker 8: I did it as if everything I said that was
Speaker 8: preceding it was meaningless because there's mainly just to get
Speaker 8: to the park. Simple, That's what now that I read it,
Speaker 8: they were suspecting that's what was what led to his
Speaker 8: death potentially, like the symptoms that he was displaying there,
Speaker 8: like plus his you know, his habits of having many partners.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, you may have been that took him down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he was like devolving towards the end, supposedly like
Speaker 1: making bad military decisions that could also just be power
Speaker 1: and being fame famous, being fame? What h what's something
Speaker 1: you think is underwritten? All right?
Speaker 2: All right? Get ready?
Speaker 8: This is more breakfast talk and actually probably related. Just
Speaker 8: like a straight up salad for breakfast. Nothing just no
Speaker 8: like yeah, no no nod well like or whatever like
Speaker 8: salad but yeah, no, no nod to. It's like there's
Speaker 8: an egg in it. There's no like kale with a
Speaker 8: running egg or just like it's just a normal ass
Speaker 8: depressing bag salad.
Speaker 2: If you got it, that's what this is. Yeah.
Speaker 8: I literally had a even worse. I had a Von's
Speaker 8: bag salad yesterday, and I was like, this is not ideal.
Speaker 8: It was mostly because it was like probably gonna it
Speaker 8: was near the end of its you should eat this
Speaker 8: like there, But I weirdly did feel more good than
Speaker 8: I like to admit yesterday because if you ate like
Speaker 8: a pile of eggs, yeah exactly, the eggs that I
Speaker 8: got to kill you?
Speaker 1: And so did you put it on a bagel? No,
Speaker 1: just a regular salad, bro salad on a stack of
Speaker 1: flat flat jacks.
Speaker 7: Jack.
Speaker 2: No, no, man, just a regular I did.
Speaker 8: Actually my nod to breakfast was I had like a
Speaker 8: fucking like cranberry like kale and broccoli stem salad vons and.
Speaker 2: A cup of black coffee. Like there you go. That
Speaker 2: was just like grim man.
Speaker 1: That feels trimm. I'm on a black coffee kick too.
Speaker 2: Grim as fuck.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I've been doing this thing I got. This is
Speaker 8: just based off of like twenty five seconds of YouTube advice.
Speaker 8: So I don't even know if this is good, but
Speaker 8: I've been doing because it's just myself in here. Pour
Speaker 8: over coffee, one cup of pour over in the morning.
Speaker 8: And then the thing that I saw that I've been
Speaker 8: trying that I think is working a cold bloom on
Speaker 8: the grounds instead of a whole bloom.
Speaker 2: So for the bloom, usually you put a little bit
Speaker 2: of your hot water on the beans. Let that kick
Speaker 2: it for like thirty seconds a minute, And they're saying
Speaker 2: just to put cold water first, like like room tap.
Speaker 8: I've been putting like like kind of like let's see,
Speaker 8: it's it's all in fucking centigrade.
Speaker 2: So I'm trying like like about a like a.
Speaker 8: Wow, you're on that coffee ship to the place that
Speaker 8: you went to to centigrade. Wow, it's probably sixty sixty
Speaker 8: seventy degrees, no eighty degrees maybe something like that. Okay,
Speaker 8: so it's not like cold cold, but it's not it's
Speaker 8: not yet five fair.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what my kettle is set to to five.
Speaker 2: I know, y'all.
Speaker 8: I put in and uh so the cold bloom, but
Speaker 8: bloom for longer like two minutes.
Speaker 1: It's been tasting pretty good.
Speaker 2: I can't wait to be this new beans too. Yeah,
Speaker 2: think about it. Are you so sort of thinking about
Speaker 2: the flavor that? Are you like hand grind? Like are
Speaker 2: you taking a lot of steps to like that, got
Speaker 2: a nice ish grinder? Okay, damn, like like one of those.
Speaker 8: But not I do have a hand grinder, but I
Speaker 8: guess I could go back to using I threw that
Speaker 8: into my camping stuff because oh yeah, that's good.
Speaker 2: It makes sense there.
Speaker 1: Now I know what a cold and hot bloom are
Speaker 1: for the listener of all right, so it will be
Speaker 1: helpful were you're doing pour over right, you have your
Speaker 1: grounds and you put it in the little fucking funnel thing,
Speaker 1: and this is like if you're at a fancy coffee
Speaker 1: shop where they like you see them pour the little
Speaker 1: kettle like measuring little scale.
Speaker 8: The bloom is at the beginning where you put in yeah,
Speaker 8: usually three times the amount of water as weight compared
Speaker 8: to the beans. So if you have fifteen grams of beans,
Speaker 8: put forty five grams of water and just let it sit.
Speaker 8: And what the bloom does. And that's the time when
Speaker 8: all the carbon dioxide comes up. So the little like
Speaker 8: looks like a little the little coffee. Yeah, grounds are blooming.
Speaker 8: And so most people do that at boiling hot and
Speaker 8: just throw it out there, you know, try it, Try.
Speaker 2: It cold ish, colder yeah, ok, yes, yes, summer pool temperature,
Speaker 2: that's right. Yeah, that's right. Cool but not cold. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because if you're living out like in Chicago right now,
Speaker 2: then you open up your tap not that not no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: that's true. You gotta I do.
Speaker 8: I put the kettle on and I just like kind
Speaker 8: of in the middle of it, grab it out, do
Speaker 8: the bloom, and then put it back on the.
Speaker 1: Warmer you first, that little cough of like.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, anyway, that's what.
Speaker 2: I'm went up to.
Speaker 1: Damn.
Speaker 2: Breakfast advice breakfast salad because it just happened.
Speaker 8: The only reason I can tell you this is because
Speaker 8: it just happened.
Speaker 2: And also, uh, Mason Jars. Also uh my phone loving
Speaker 2: my phone handle this candle from Costco that's on my desk.
Speaker 1: I don't think I'll be able to get used to
Speaker 1: like the where you pour the milk over the salad
Speaker 1: like it's cereal which.
Speaker 2: Breakfast salad.
Speaker 8: And also this this bugs money in Space jam toy
Speaker 8: from the nineties that a us this racist listener sent.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Wow, that looks like some ship you'd win at Magic
Speaker 2: Mountain like back in the day. It feels like I
Speaker 2: can't remember why.
Speaker 8: We were pretty convinced it was like official ish, but yeah,
Speaker 8: it does look pretty official.
Speaker 1: It also looks like he has like he's about to
Speaker 1: or like he's just suffered a head shot. There's something
Speaker 1: about his like facial expression like he's like kind of
Speaker 1: looking up and his mouth is a gape.
Speaker 8: Yeah, his eyes his eyes are let's just say they
Speaker 8: were they were not they seem like they were. It's
Speaker 8: a toy from the nineties, so I'm not dude, it
Speaker 8: looks like people are selling it. Oh No, the eyes
Speaker 8: are just as fucked up. Okay, never mind. I was
Speaker 8: gonna say I thought mine might be the result of
Speaker 8: a tag though in this eBay al right.
Speaker 2: About twenty ten bucks.
Speaker 4: Ish.
Speaker 8: I thought mine might be the result of you know,
Speaker 8: the we'll say, undercompensated labor who was.
Speaker 2: Eye has no need to get on what the eyes
Speaker 2: look like when they're putting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, might be perspiring well he yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and in some kind of shop. Yes, all right, let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break.
Speaker 2: We'll be right.
Speaker 7: Back, and we're back.
Speaker 2: We're back.
Speaker 1: We're back, baby. And so is the COP conference. We're
Speaker 1: at COP twenty eight. Yeah, it's the initial headlines. I
Speaker 1: don't know, there was like points during earlier this year
Speaker 1: where people are like we've turned a corner, and then
Speaker 1: the initial headlines. I feel like it's a good metaphor
Speaker 1: for the climate discussion, where it's like you'll get some
Speaker 1: good headlines, some positive seeming things happening, and then like
Speaker 1: once you take a closer look, like people are like
Speaker 1: it's not good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because like the whole point is to get you know,
Speaker 2: the all of the the one hundred and twenty five
Speaker 2: countries together and be like, all right, y'all, how are
Speaker 2: we gonna unfunck this thing, and we all got before
Speaker 2: we leave, Yeah, like for real this time, we got
Speaker 2: to do some real heavy lifting. In the beginning, like
Speaker 2: you said, there were things that made it feel positive,
Speaker 2: like commitments to seriously cut like methane emissions and like
Speaker 2: increased funds for countries that are being affected by climate
Speaker 2: change who are otherwise unable to help themselves because of
Speaker 2: you know, the economics of it all. But like you're saying,
Speaker 2: he starts zooming out and the optimism like fucking vanishes
Speaker 2: like almost instantly, like for starters. Right, the event is
Speaker 2: taking place in Dubai, Okay, the UAE is a nation
Speaker 2: built on fossil fuel profits. And the man leading the
Speaker 2: talks in Dubai is this guy, Sultan al Jabet, who
Speaker 2: he is the head of the state owned Abu Dhabi
Speaker 2: National Oil Company, and he is the one sort of
Speaker 2: presiding over these like climate talks and and then so
Speaker 2: like and I can add even more to this.
Speaker 6: Prior to the conference beginning, he said out loud in
Speaker 6: another conference, said there was quote no science that indicated
Speaker 6: that a phase out of fossil fuels is needed to
Speaker 6: stop temperatures from rising above one and a half degrees celsius.
Speaker 1: One more thing, who are you gonna believe? Who are
Speaker 1: you gonna believe? Miles, You're gonna believe the scientists, or
Speaker 1: you're gonna believe the head of.
Speaker 2: State owned oil company. And then only that there was leaked.
Speaker 2: There were leaked documents that showed that a lot of
Speaker 2: these people representing different state owned oil companies and the
Speaker 2: Emirates were planning on using the talks to like generate
Speaker 2: more business for fossil fuel extraction, Like they were like, yeah, well,
Speaker 2: it would be great because you know a lot of
Speaker 2: people are going to be in town for this. So
Speaker 2: it's hard to imagine anything significant will be done against
Speaker 2: this backdrop, especially when the biggest negotiation at the conference
Speaker 2: that everyone is paying attention to is are we going
Speaker 2: to actually start articulating a phase out of fossil fuels, or,
Speaker 2: as some lobbyist would rather say, how about phase down?
Speaker 2: Because at least down doesn't indicate out forever. Can we
Speaker 2: say phase down? Can we say phase out? There's a
Speaker 2: lot of back and forth of that. Saudi Arabia has
Speaker 2: flatly said that anything resembling a fossil fuel phase out
Speaker 2: in an agreement. They will just they will be it
Speaker 2: will be rejected by their delegation and the way the
Speaker 2: talks are structured. It all it takes is one party
Speaker 2: to fucking scuttle the whole thing. So you're dealing with
Speaker 2: a lot of fucking variables here that don't spell their
Speaker 2: you know, a good time for Earth in the near future.
Speaker 2: And then you have the record number of lobbyists of
Speaker 2: like from the oil gas industries that are there. Last
Speaker 2: year we talked about when it was in Egypt, they
Speaker 2: set a record for lobbyists that were in attendance, Like
Speaker 2: how they were more lobbyists than like people who were
Speaker 2: from like a single country for example. Like they're the
Speaker 2: combined amount of lobbyists that are out actually registered as
Speaker 2: lobbyist because there's a ton of people who might not
Speaker 2: be outwardly saying that they're there to lobby for something
Speaker 2: they are. Basically they outnumber every country's delegation except for Brazil's,
Speaker 2: and Brazil has more because they are going to be
Speaker 2: hosting it in like a year and a half or something,
Speaker 2: so like that's why they have more people. But also
Speaker 2: they fossil fuel lobbyists outnumber in official Indigenous representatives by
Speaker 2: seven to one, and that means like they have more
Speaker 2: passes lobbyists than the combined total of delegates from the
Speaker 2: ten most climate vulnerable countries combined, including Somalia, Chad with
Speaker 2: the Solomon Islands in Sudan. And this quote from David
Speaker 2: Tong of Oil Change International sums it up pretty well.
Speaker 2: He said, quote, you would not invite arms dealers to
Speaker 2: a peace conference, and that's kind of what we have now.
Speaker 2: It's just arms fest at the peace.
Speaker 1: Fest depends on how lit you want your peace conference
Speaker 1: to be.
Speaker 4: But yeah, yeah, I mean I was one. I was
Speaker 4: sort of wondering and reading about this, whether this is
Speaker 4: like the new Davos, you know, and this is the
Speaker 4: new just kind of like we're going to go party,
Speaker 4: we're going to make ourselves feel important, and we're going
Speaker 4: to kind of cut some deals and ostensibly there's this
Speaker 4: other project that's not actually going to accomplish anything.
Speaker 1: Right, right, and they're like kind of protecting against something
Speaker 1: being accomplished. We've had climate experts and environmentalists on the
Speaker 1: show described this as an energy industry trade show.
Speaker 4: Right right. Yeah, So I went back and looked at
Speaker 4: because you know, COP twenty eight. That's renumber right. So
Speaker 4: I went back and looked at like COP one and
Speaker 4: two and three, right, and so you know, the planks
Speaker 4: and the things, the basic you know things were being
Speaker 4: discussed at those in the mid nineties into the early
Speaker 4: two thousands. We're basically the exact same, right. Cop Cop
Speaker 4: two right in Geneva, Switzerland was basically about do we
Speaker 4: want uniform policies or do we want flexibility? Do we
Speaker 4: want legally binding mid term targets or do we want
Speaker 4: larger principles upon which we will all adhere.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: Cop three was the big Kyoto protocol one. Cop four
Speaker 4: was like we need we are pledging for a two
Speaker 4: year plan of action, right right, you know, and that's
Speaker 4: like us, you know, two year plan of action, two
Speaker 4: year plan of action, I mean. And then you know,
Speaker 4: you look at like Cop six seven eight, this question
Speaker 4: of financial assistance for developing countries and this question of
Speaker 4: kind of how to you know, developing countries need to
Speaker 4: use carbon in order to advance their economic principles, but
Speaker 4: also you know they're going to be affected back like
Speaker 4: that is just like year after year after year after year,
Speaker 4: it's just comes up. People say some things. It doesn't
Speaker 4: get fully results. So it is kind of remarkable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it wasn't until last year where they're like,
Speaker 2: all right, I guess we can put some together.
Speaker 4: For these other right, And so I mean like, oh,
Speaker 4: I think it's right. And it does feel like in
Speaker 4: this first the fact that that got accomplished on the
Speaker 4: first day of the conference did the sort of surprise
Speaker 4: some climate activists and you know probably also then like
Speaker 4: let everyone at the conference be like, well, we did
Speaker 4: a good thing on day one, so we can just
Speaker 4: you know, lobby and party for the rest of it.
Speaker 4: But can I can I ask a sort of bigger
Speaker 4: picture question of the two of you for something I've
Speaker 4: been thinking about with climate activism and sort of you
Speaker 4: know what needs to get done, which is I think
Speaker 4: we've moved so far past the point where like a
Speaker 4: single solution or even like a single kind of group
Speaker 4: like oh, the people are going to get together in
Speaker 4: Kyoto at COP three and kind of like governments are
Speaker 4: going to figure this out. We've moved so far past
Speaker 4: that idea of like a couple central answers to this
Speaker 4: that weirdly it feels like now we're in a or
Speaker 4: we might as well try everything moment, right, and I
Speaker 4: think talking to folks you know, who are active in
Speaker 4: climate change, like that is where we're at, right. It's
Speaker 4: like no one solution, no one political process, no one
Speaker 4: country is going to solve this. We just kind of
Speaker 4: have to try everything. And I weirdly find a little
Speaker 4: solace in that in that, like the guardrails, the abdication
Speaker 4: of responsibility is sort of off for most people, and
Speaker 4: it's just kind of like, well, we got to try everything,
Speaker 4: and so you know, maybe this is just maybe this
Speaker 4: is a sort of me giving up in some way.
Speaker 4: But I'm like, if cop accomplishes a you know, two
Speaker 4: percent of something, great, because over here someone's going to
Speaker 4: accomplish two percent over here, and that's the only way
Speaker 4: this is going to happen. Is just like a million
Speaker 4: different things nudging progress a little bit forward, as opposed
Speaker 4: to what we were doing for I think for a
Speaker 4: long time, which was sort of saying like, well, world
Speaker 4: leaders need to get together and get their act together.
Speaker 4: And I think that you know idea is long gone.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, Like it kind of the thing kind of
Speaker 2: reminds me of like those like scenes and like a
Speaker 2: like a superhero comedy film where someone's trying to get
Speaker 2: away in a car and the superheroes just lifting the
Speaker 2: car from the back so the wheels can't move right,
Speaker 2: and like that's what this feels like. The cars like
Speaker 2: it could go forward if these ass holes let the
Speaker 2: let go and let it move forward. And then so
Speaker 2: we get these little incremental changes that like are absolutely heartening.
Speaker 2: I think it's just and then but looking at the
Speaker 2: totality of it, it's like, God, there's still so much
Speaker 2: energy and investment to basically offset whatever gains there are
Speaker 2: to continue like the profitability of the extraction. But I think,
Speaker 2: like to your point, it is better to think of
Speaker 2: like that there are many ways to potentially achieve this,
Speaker 2: whether it's through like how fucking like the dairy industry
Speaker 2: is working, or agriculture these other things, and if many
Speaker 2: of these things can come together that there we may
Speaker 2: find a way here. But the biggest thing is it's
Speaker 2: it's these nations. It's these state actors who are really
Speaker 2: have a lot of control over like the sheer volume
Speaker 2: of emissions. And when you know that, like they're like, hey,
Speaker 2: we're bringing our lobbyists to to COP twenty eight to
Speaker 2: represent our gas industries. Just like, like, how serious are we?
Speaker 2: So I'm less nothlistic and then maybe I'm just more
Speaker 2: deeply frustrated. Yes, that's that's kind of where I'm at.
Speaker 1: I would say I'm curious when in looking back at
Speaker 1: the past cops, do you, like, would your sense be
Speaker 1: if there was some way to quantify like the actual
Speaker 1: beneficial ideas or you know, progress that came from each
Speaker 1: one of them, Like, how do you think if we
Speaker 1: were to rank the top twenty eight cops?
Speaker 4: Okay, top twenty eight, how long do you have?
Speaker 1: Twenty six? But I'm just wondering because it feels like
Speaker 1: putting a meeting together, a meeting of the minds with
Speaker 1: this as a as the central goal is a good
Speaker 1: idea in theory. Once it becomes a place for various
Speaker 1: companies to strategize, like in the presence of people talking
Speaker 1: about things that are specifically meant to hem them in
Speaker 1: like then it almost becomes like you're building an institutional
Speaker 1: means for just skirting all the laws and all of
Speaker 1: the things that we're trying to do. Because yeah, I
Speaker 1: totally agree, Like it's not going to be one silver bullet,
Speaker 1: It's going to be a lot of things. But those
Speaker 1: all of those things are going to be avoided with
Speaker 1: precision and legal you know, just millions of hours of
Speaker 1: legal arguments and contracts and things like that put in
Speaker 1: by these companies because that's what they do, like sending
Speaker 1: companies that are focused only on profit for the most part,
Speaker 1: like focused only on profit to be the solution to
Speaker 1: climate change. It just seems so it seems not like
Speaker 1: you know, well we might as well try everything, and
Speaker 1: more like this is actively doing harm, Like it's going
Speaker 1: to be the thing that what will allow us to
Speaker 1: continue down the road that we've been going down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: is my concern.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like that. It's like that that quote that
Speaker 2: Homer says and like about beer, except it's like fossil
Speaker 2: fuels the cause of and solution to all life's problems.
Speaker 2: You're like, how because there's so many gas on it?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean that is a huge thing.
Speaker 2: Like you hear the people how the lobbyists are speaking
Speaker 2: about the industries that the industry they represent, and they're like,
Speaker 2: we have to do this in a humane way, like
Speaker 2: and it's really talking about humane to their company's bottom line,
Speaker 2: but they are, but they couch it in this thing,
Speaker 2: this argument of like, well, we we're gonna need fossil
Speaker 2: fuels to help these other economies get online to get
Speaker 2: to that point. But really, and I think that's what
Speaker 2: makes it really difficult is because there it's easy to
Speaker 2: do this sort of double speak and then from that
Speaker 2: extract like a good headline if you are in the
Speaker 2: more greenwashing sector of this conference, or you can extract
Speaker 2: a good headline if you're there to protect the investments
Speaker 2: or whatever. So it it's just kind of wild though too,
Speaker 2: because we're in this like liminal space where like they're
Speaker 2: rich and powerful, are still doing their old school shit,
Speaker 2: like you know, like just self dealing in full view
Speaker 2: of the public, but because they were used to like
Speaker 2: a public that was just uninformed or apathetic, and now
Speaker 2: people are.
Speaker 1: Like what the fuck? Hold on? Who's running the conference?
Speaker 4: How many lobbyists? And they're like, what the Well, it's
Speaker 4: a reality check where I think, you know, over the
Speaker 4: last year or two in the US, you know, I
Speaker 4: think you could probably tell yourself a story that like, oh,
Speaker 4: you know, the sort of capitalistic market incentives and the
Speaker 4: energy and the climate change have kind of moved a
Speaker 4: little more in parallel and are maybe working a little
Speaker 4: more in sync right over the last year, and I think,
Speaker 4: you know, for sure the Biden's bill has a big
Speaker 4: part of that, and that was the sort of calculus there.
Speaker 4: And then you just you know, to your point, well
Speaker 4: as you get this like wake up call where it's
Speaker 4: just like a Katari assaultan who's like, what the fuck
Speaker 4: are you talking about? I'm an oil guy, Like, let's
Speaker 4: just let's do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I brought the guess I just brought the entire
Speaker 2: global oil industry to my back yard. And then we
Speaker 2: can kind of like side plan stuff based on whatever
Speaker 2: else is going on. So yeah, it's it's uh, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's one.
Speaker 4: One little tidbit just that I noticed here from this
Speaker 4: guy that you you shouted out Sultan Ahmed al Jabart,
Speaker 4: which is like he spent his first his talk at
Speaker 4: the Climate on his first day his major address, like
Speaker 4: complaining about the media had misinterpreted him about his climate,
Speaker 4: about his you know, comments earlier about how we'll never
Speaker 4: be able to divest from fossil fuels, and it's just
Speaker 4: such a like hallmark powerful person abdication of responsibility to
Speaker 4: then like just get their backs up about being misquoted
Speaker 4: and then spend their whole time. I feel like that's
Speaker 4: like if you're president of FIFA, that's all you do.
Speaker 4: You complain about media coverage. You don't actually address all
Speaker 4: the things. But it's like it's like it was, it's
Speaker 4: just such a classic, classic right move and it was just.
Speaker 1: In a classic keynote. You want to open open the
Speaker 1: conference by talking about your own petty book ship, and
Speaker 1: that's how people you get everybody investiate.
Speaker 2: The keynote address for the Conference of the Parties to
Speaker 2: help tackle the issue of Earth death. And you kick
Speaker 2: it off with to all my fucking haters, You're like,
Speaker 2: oh shit, no, no, no, this is this is completely
Speaker 2: gone off the rails.
Speaker 1: Amazing. All right, let's move on to the boring Black
Speaker 1: Mirror episode that young people today.
Speaker 4: Of the top Cops on the discred Okay Cops, Top.
Speaker 2: Cops, Lessarge from Police.
Speaker 4: Academy, and that's it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that guy rules just completely oblivious.
Speaker 2: Completely senile. Yeah, that's what we need.
Speaker 1: Was he Henry from Punky Brewster or do I just
Speaker 1: is he just that guy in my memory?
Speaker 2: No way to know, I said, Lessarge Lassard George Gaines,
Speaker 2: That's what was the actor?
Speaker 1: I mean, we can we can well.
Speaker 2: Wait, we'll sidebar, We'll sidebar.
Speaker 1: Anyways, Henry Punky.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, he was, he was, Hey, look
Speaker 2: at that. It was Henry Warnemont. I'm Punky par.
Speaker 1: It is all right there. There was an article on
Speaker 1: Axios a couple weeks back that is basically just saying
Speaker 1: we're going to be living with roommates until we're fifty.
Speaker 1: That is, on average, the average age of people who
Speaker 1: can rent solo is fifty now, because everyone under that
Speaker 1: age is too poor and the rent is too damn high.
Speaker 1: It also mentions the baby boomers have quote ditched home
Speaker 1: ownership for low maintenance apartments, which makes it sound like
Speaker 1: a breezy lifestyle choice.
Speaker 2: This one easy hack.
Speaker 1: Yeah, find out about this one easy hack. Real estate
Speaker 1: agents don't want you to know about. Sell your house
Speaker 1: to them.
Speaker 2: Sell your house to a corporate entity.
Speaker 1: Yes, the one that really jumped out to me eighty
Speaker 1: seven percent jump in the number of Americans age twenty
Speaker 1: five to thirty four living at home in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one compared to the previous decade. Meanwhile, the typical repeat
Speaker 1: home buyer is currently fifty eight according to data from
Speaker 1: the National Association of realtors, and you know, there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of reporting from There's a New York Times
Speaker 1: article from last year. There's a Script's article from earlier
Speaker 1: this year about how more and more single family homes
Speaker 1: than ever are being purchased by investors, which ties into
Speaker 1: our special episode about private equity companies from earlier in
Speaker 1: the year. I think who killed the free ambulance?
Speaker 2: Was that?
Speaker 1: H what it was called? Something along those.
Speaker 4: Lines, just industry by industry, just following it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And there's this one quote in
Speaker 1: the Script's news article that I just want to read
Speaker 1: to you guys word for word. There are billions of
Speaker 1: dollars trillions of just sloshing around in the economy looking
Speaker 1: for places to go. Where do we go? What are
Speaker 1: we going to invest in? Real estate is a really,
Speaker 1: really good investment, said Mike Delpre, a global real estate
Speaker 1: text strategist and scholar. It's definitely an issue worth paying
Speaker 1: attention to. So from his perspective, it's like an issue
Speaker 1: worth paying attention to.
Speaker 2: Scholar.
Speaker 1: Yes, he's a real estate text strategist and scholar at
Speaker 1: the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Speaker 2: I wonder if that was like a description he gave
Speaker 2: to them. He's like, yeah, you can describe me as
Speaker 2: this and.
Speaker 1: That about s h oh, I'm a scholar of making
Speaker 1: that bank.
Speaker 2: Yeah oh no, it's s C A L L E R.
Speaker 2: I'm a shot caller, that's what.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, s collar, I'm sorry, did you not get it?
Speaker 2: Tell y'all what to do with these houses? You can
Speaker 2: get funk right out of here. I'm a college.
Speaker 1: That is ultimately where the where the term schott came from,
Speaker 1: of course, just the original shot colors. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: For first of all, very infuriating for you know, when
Speaker 1: most people's lived reality is check to check that. The
Speaker 1: investor classes problem is like what how do we unburden
Speaker 1: ourselves from all these trillions of dollars that came our
Speaker 1: way during the pandemic?
Speaker 2: Just that that that fucking metaphor. It's so it's just
Speaker 2: so wild, right because it's like you're like you're acknowledging
Speaker 2: a finite resource like money, and many people don't have it,
Speaker 2: and like you're likning it to like having like a
Speaker 2: kiddie pool of just like fucking water slashing everywhere while
Speaker 2: people are like dying.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I got.
Speaker 1: Money problems too, man, dude, it's just slashing everywhere.
Speaker 2: The money problem. Shit, yeah, like I get it, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. And there's always like an industry
Speaker 1: person who's like, guys that private companies buying up single
Speaker 1: family homes not a big deal, Like we're actually not
Speaker 1: that big of the industry, Like I barely matter. I suck, okay,
Speaker 1: like none of don't even you don't, like, why are
Speaker 1: you even talking to me? I suck. There's nothing here,
Speaker 1: which is usually a bad sign when like an industry
Speaker 1: group just keeps trying to be like guys, I like,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm shit. Why are you you know there's there's
Speaker 1: this is a non story, But I don't know. It
Speaker 1: just seems like when you talk to like the New
Speaker 1: York Times article from spring of last year was just
Speaker 1: looking at an individual I think it was Charlotte real
Speaker 1: Estate Market and it's just when it and I found
Speaker 1: this to be true anybody who is thinking about like
Speaker 1: trying to buy a home or you know, like this
Speaker 1: is the number one thing they mentioned now is that
Speaker 1: like you are going to get scooped by some company,
Speaker 1: Like they talk to this woman who is trying to
Speaker 1: buy a single family home, in Charlotte instead forced to
Speaker 1: down from a rental home to an apartment. And you know,
Speaker 1: the the car that or the home that she wants
Speaker 1: to buy is bought my tricon Residential, who owns sixteen
Speaker 1: hundred homes.
Speaker 4: And yeah, this got me thinking about a kind of
Speaker 4: bigger sort of story I feel like in my life.
Speaker 4: And I'm curious how you think about kind of home
Speaker 4: ownership and how I've thought about it, you know, because
Speaker 4: I do think like I'm of a generation where I
Speaker 4: did push back or you know, kind of there was
Speaker 4: a car it was I thought a really important conversation
Speaker 4: about like, well, is home ownership the sort of goal,
Speaker 4: you know, and our parents that was the thing for
Speaker 4: our parents coming, you know, and I was like, to
Speaker 4: buy a home and effort. That is the American dream.
Speaker 4: And I, you know, I think I became convinced and
Speaker 4: I kind of probably spouted language along these lines of like, well,
Speaker 4: you know, that's not the fit for everyone, you know,
Speaker 4: and maybe it's not the fit for me. And and
Speaker 4: I wonder if we were kind of sold, well, we
Speaker 4: were kind of being sold to that idea. They're like, no,
Speaker 4: it's not you know, it's not Yeah, it's the American
Speaker 4: dream anymore. There's other ways in the meantime. You know,
Speaker 4: that option was just being ripped off the table to
Speaker 4: begin with, and that I think is the real sort
Speaker 4: of tragedy here. It's just it's not just that, like
Speaker 4: everyone should own a home and that is the most
Speaker 4: you know, that is still the sort of definition of
Speaker 4: the American dream, but just the lack of options and
Speaker 4: that everyone I know, you know, and all the people
Speaker 4: in the reporting here, the pervading feeling is just constriction,
Speaker 4: you know, and the inability to even make a choice
Speaker 4: and have agency and sort of figure out what's best
Speaker 4: for yourself. And I think that's like, you know, that's
Speaker 4: incredibly tragic. And I will say, like, you know, this
Speaker 4: may be taking us a little bit of far afield,
Speaker 4: but I will say, like, when I think about this
Speaker 4: kind of big conversation that's happening, and it will only
Speaker 4: build going into next year about the disconnect between people's
Speaker 4: economic feelings and the actual economic indicators that are out there.
Speaker 4: And you know, binding has built a pretty good economy,
Speaker 4: but people still think the economy is terrible. Yeah, housing
Speaker 4: is the answer to me, right, Yeah, you can look
Speaker 4: at every other you know, metric about ways growth and
Speaker 4: inflation going down and all these other things. But if
Speaker 4: you just like can't get from here to there, if
Speaker 4: you want to own a home, like I don't think
Speaker 4: any of those other metrics matten or if you feel
Speaker 4: like that's like a big part of it, I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're on the verge of not making rent like that,
Speaker 1: then yeah, homelessness is like, you know, something that hangs
Speaker 1: over a lot of people who are still might show
Speaker 1: up on that as like employed, and you know, but
Speaker 1: being employed and the precarity of like being in a
Speaker 1: gig economy, you know, role is like that's not a
Speaker 1: comfortable place to be and a lot of these things
Speaker 1: are things that have just changed generation to generation.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: You know, it does it does tie into that sort
Speaker 4: of gig economy overall, like a gig ification of our
Speaker 4: lives that like oh yeah, you know, yeah, if you're
Speaker 4: under forty, like the way you want to live your
Speaker 4: life is just like improvising every day, you know, like
Speaker 4: just move around and your rent and you figured this out,
Speaker 4: you figured this out, you have a I think I
Speaker 4: don't think so. I think, yeah, likes the building well.
Speaker 1: And I think like the cop What what happened to
Speaker 1: the COP conference is a.
Speaker 4: I think you're going to say, a cop on the slide.
Speaker 1: What happened the slide? Happened to the US economy?
Speaker 2: No, what would tipping in there? And it just fucked
Speaker 2: us up. On the other end, Well, you.
Speaker 1: Have corporations and like private equity companies as like the
Speaker 1: major decision makers and like designers of an entire civilization
Speaker 1: for for decades, which it seems like we've had for
Speaker 1: for a while now, and like really being the power
Speaker 1: that politicians have to you know, push back against and
Speaker 1: often like listen to like this is kind of what
Speaker 1: you end up with where it's just like their flexibility
Speaker 1: is the thing that ends up being you know, unshakable
Speaker 1: and not like people's security at the end of the
Speaker 1: day and feeling secure. So it just feels like any
Speaker 1: anywhere where they have fully where like massive corporations or
Speaker 1: private equity or you know, the people who view money
Speaker 1: as a problem in the sense that they what to
Speaker 1: do with all this money being the problem that they're
Speaker 1: trying to solve, Like when those are the only people
Speaker 1: making the decisions, like you end up with subtle fissures
Speaker 1: in like day to day life of people who aren't
Speaker 1: making those decisions that don't don't look great, don't feel great.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's a Senate bill that would close legal,
Speaker 1: tax and regulatory loopholes that allow private equity firms to
Speaker 1: capture all the rewards of the investments in real estate
Speaker 1: while insulating them from risk. And it has sat in
Speaker 1: committees since Elizabeth Warren and Searrod Brown introduced it in
Speaker 1: October of last year. So it's yeah, it's.
Speaker 2: There's like, yeah, I think Rocana also has a bill
Speaker 2: about banning corporate landlords because like when you look at it,
Speaker 2: I mean, this problem is only increasing, and you know,
Speaker 2: Jeff Bezos just put like a ton of money into
Speaker 2: this like new company. This is like an investment company
Speaker 2: called Arrived that basically allows people to like like become
Speaker 2: sort of small time landlords. It's like, well you can
Speaker 2: get you can own a property for as little as
Speaker 2: one hundred dollars by like crowd crowd fucking people like that.
Speaker 8: And that's sort of like this new like we're just
Speaker 8: seeing all these entry points to sort of either because
Speaker 8: I see something like this, a lot of people that
Speaker 8: are defending this company. It's like, well, They're not like
Speaker 8: one of these institutional corporate landlords like invitation Homes that
Speaker 8: owns eighty thousand single family rental homes or like Blackstone.
Speaker 8: They're like, this is actually allowing people just a way
Speaker 8: to have that kind of security or those aspirations in
Speaker 8: a way that's realistic for them.
Speaker 2: And really it's just more like they're being like, you
Speaker 2: could be a landlord, dude, Like you're not gonna live here,
Speaker 2: but you can you can fucking maybe profit off of
Speaker 2: this situation.
Speaker 1: They're not a Blackstone, more of a gray Stone, which
Speaker 1: is also a massive corporate.
Speaker 4: How many colors are left white Zone.
Speaker 1: Brownstone, Yeah, mister Brownstone, all right, well let's uh, let's
Speaker 1: take a break and we'll come back and talk about
Speaker 1: less depressing things. Maybe we'll see maybe maybe we'll be
Speaker 1: right back and we're back and yeah. So, first of all,
Speaker 1: I'd just be interested in hearing because I think some
Speaker 1: of the stuff from the world of recovery can be
Speaker 1: like I won't like bring it into my day to
Speaker 1: day life because I'm like, well, that's like a different thing,
Speaker 1: and like people who aren't in recovery won't necessarily understand that.
Speaker 1: At the same time, that I feel like people are
Speaker 1: talking about, like problems that could be serviced from just
Speaker 1: like you know, some of these things that we're talking
Speaker 1: So I'd love to hear more about like the power
Speaker 1: our idea or just like ways that you have seen
Speaker 1: just you know, structurally getting people to interact with one
Speaker 1: another more or you know, doing that for yourself, how
Speaker 1: you specifically get yourself to interact with people on a
Speaker 1: more humane, active, active listening level.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, it's interesting in the context of recovery.
Speaker 3: It's when you share your experience, strength and hope. And
Speaker 3: it's okay not to have to share the entire story
Speaker 3: of your struggles, but the experience, the strength, and the
Speaker 3: hope is how you live your life on a regular
Speaker 3: basis that works for you, right, And so a big
Speaker 3: part of the listening is number one, being able to
Speaker 3: have some reflective time to be able to know what
Speaker 3: that is right. What do I actually I think about
Speaker 3: this a lot is what do I do on a
Speaker 3: regular basis. I meditate, I do do some journaling. I
Speaker 3: think a lot about how I'm treating people. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm really gentle with myself when I make mistakes, but
Speaker 3: I try to make amends when I do that, and
Speaker 3: then being able to share that with other people, but
Speaker 3: also ask questions to create space for other people to
Speaker 3: share things about their lives. And a big part of
Speaker 3: this is when we're connecting with people, there are phases
Speaker 3: of we don't have to always share the entire war story,
Speaker 3: right if it's not appropriate, if it's not the day,
Speaker 3: if it's not the right venue. But sometimes we throw
Speaker 3: the baby out with the bathwater. We can still just
Speaker 3: share little bites of like, you know, I see that
Speaker 3: you're having this struggle with I don't know what it is,
Speaker 3: maybe getting up and going to the gym. The way
Speaker 3: that I this is my strategy for when I don't
Speaker 3: want to do things right, I make a call, or
Speaker 3: I get a part, I get someone that holds me accountable,
Speaker 3: or just kind of sharing some wisdom that might be
Speaker 3: supportive for each other. And so even if we can
Speaker 3: kind of infuse that into some of our conversations, that's
Speaker 3: really important. It's interesting during the Power Hour, one of
Speaker 3: the things that I do is I listen so intently
Speaker 3: to this, in this case my uncle speaking, that I'm
Speaker 3: able to repeat and summarize almost everything that he said
Speaker 3: in the entire forty five minutes, and people always find
Speaker 3: it to be some kind of superhero power, but it's not.
Speaker 3: I literally am just fully engaged in fully listening, and
Speaker 3: I'm not allowing my thinking to interrupt my ability to
Speaker 3: take in the wisdom that he's sharing. And so there's
Speaker 3: an actual process and strategy to be that good of
Speaker 3: a listener so that you can get the value out
Speaker 3: of the experience and the strength and the hope that
Speaker 3: other people have. So we really miss out when our
Speaker 3: listening is tainted.
Speaker 2: How would you say, We know, like we're most normal,
Speaker 2: like not normal, but most people who aren't being conscious
Speaker 2: of this are quote unquote listening, right, because I'll be like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm when people talk, I'm hearing what they're saying, and
Speaker 2: then that's it. But yeah, what's sort of like the
Speaker 2: what are those sort of finer points that are different
Speaker 2: about those these ways of listening?
Speaker 3: So this is almost like a personality test. You have
Speaker 3: listening personalities, right, So there are people that listen in
Speaker 3: a very specific way. So for example, I know some
Speaker 3: people I'm trying not to mention names it, right, some
Speaker 3: people that they are they're what I call a plugger,
Speaker 3: which means that like, no matter what you say, I
Speaker 3: don't care what kind of story you tell, They're always
Speaker 3: going to kind of plug something in about themselves or
Speaker 3: even plug something that benefits them. Then you've got the
Speaker 3: fact checker, right, yeah, podcasting, right, So then you have
Speaker 3: someone that's like the fact checker, where every single time,
Speaker 3: like you say something, they stop you and you're just
Speaker 3: trying to tell a story that like whether or not
Speaker 3: it happened in you know, eighteen seventy three or seventy
Speaker 3: four is not the point, but they will stop you
Speaker 3: and say something like are you sure that happened? Then
Speaker 3: what I read was that it happened in And it's like, that's.
Speaker 2: Not the called being a podcast listener.
Speaker 3: This is ACA And my favorite one is The Helper,
Speaker 3: which I have to be careful about not being that person,
Speaker 3: but I watch it and you know, again we're gentle
Speaker 3: with ourselves. Is when you're a person that someone is
Speaker 3: maybe telling you a story or they're trying to get
Speaker 3: some support and you just jump in there without knowing
Speaker 3: the full contacts, and you're like context, all you need
Speaker 3: to do is just just get up and go to
Speaker 3: the gym every day and just run a mile if
Speaker 3: you heard it right, Just just eat. Someone told me.
Speaker 3: I was like, cause I've struggled with I'm always trying
Speaker 3: to figure out what to do with weight, you know,
Speaker 3: up and down, and just trying to always eat healthy,
Speaker 3: and it's it's always been a struggle. So when I
Speaker 3: ask certain people, they're like, I don't get what the
Speaker 3: problem is. Why don't you just eat fish and vegetables
Speaker 3: and then work out every day. It's so simple, and yeah,
Speaker 3: just just do that. And then they then they go
Speaker 3: and they start like eating their their you know, donut
Speaker 3: with like a six pack abs, and I'm like, yeah, thanks,
Speaker 3: thanks for the advice. But but he's not really listening
Speaker 3: to the context. Like the most important thing that I
Speaker 3: said in that particular instance was that this is hard
Speaker 3: for me, right, as opposed to I don't need the
Speaker 3: solution per se, but I need maybe a listening ear
Speaker 3: to work through why I think it's hard specifically for
Speaker 3: me right right. And And again that's what people want
Speaker 3: some support. They want you to understand the struggle. They
Speaker 3: want you to just get their stories and so that
Speaker 3: they can feel validated. And after they're validated, then maybe
Speaker 3: they can be open for solutions.
Speaker 2: Right In a way, it just sounds like we're basically
Speaker 2: decentering ourselves in these interactions. So whether it's our own
Speaker 2: urge to demonstrate our knowledge of a topic, or our
Speaker 2: own urge to find a way to make this topic
Speaker 2: be relevant to me, or our own urge to share
Speaker 2: some kind of wisdom, even though that's not what our
Speaker 2: person is, the person we're speaking to is asking for.
Speaker 2: It's sort of this, yeah, I don't know if it
Speaker 2: feels like it. It feels so contrary to like how
Speaker 2: we normally communicate with each other too, where it's like, okay,
Speaker 2: what say the thing about you? Now? Okay, and now
Speaker 2: I say the thing about me, and I heard the
Speaker 2: thing you said, and now it's time for me to
Speaker 2: see the thing I said, rather than just like this
Speaker 2: much more effortless version of like, okay, so you just
Speaker 2: voiced a thing that you are dealing with, and now
Speaker 2: I can add to that by asking you to continue
Speaker 2: going along that, rather than like, oh, yeah, I've been
Speaker 2: through that thing too, and then this is what happened
Speaker 2: and that's that. Okay, now what we don't have anywhere
Speaker 2: to go from there.
Speaker 3: Jack said it it's our urge to be the one, right,
Speaker 3: We've got to be the one. We've got to be
Speaker 3: the center of center of attention. And we all do
Speaker 3: it in some ways, but if we can be a
Speaker 3: little aware, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I do feel like we might be seeing
Speaker 1: a generational shift with this, like with younger people, Like
Speaker 1: I feel like it might have peaked with like baby
Speaker 1: boomers being like, you know, self center, just like very
Speaker 1: focused on the self and everything and all the systems
Speaker 1: were like sort of designed around that. And what While
Speaker 1: mental health is not getting better for younger people, I
Speaker 1: do feel like in some of the things, like the
Speaker 1: polling that you see, they are kind of acutely aware,
Speaker 1: like they're more likely to have like socialist leanings, Like
Speaker 1: they're more interested in like like even like in the
Speaker 1: growing interest in psychedelics, which are like medicines or drugs,
Speaker 1: like depending on how you use them. That kind of
Speaker 1: is all of the ego or like take you out
Speaker 1: of like the self centeredness of like that way of
Speaker 1: perceiving the world. I do feel like there are some
Speaker 1: like glimmers of hope, but I think a lot of
Speaker 1: the mental health problems that we're seeing as like younger
Speaker 1: people existing in a world that is designed for this
Speaker 1: completely different paradigm that has been shown to be very,
Speaker 1: very bad for the continued survival of the species. But
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like there's a rise in consciousness but
Speaker 3: a decline in connection. Yes, right, So it's like we're
Speaker 3: really conscious about what's going on. I think people are.
Speaker 3: I mean the knowledge you have access to so much knowledge,
Speaker 3: you have access to ideas and technology and innovations, I
Speaker 3: mean on so many levels. But then the question is
Speaker 3: what's going to be the impact long term of us
Speaker 3: really being able to kind of connect and feel interdependent.
Speaker 3: Because really, I mean, you can put me out in
Speaker 3: I like to watch those shows like Naked and Afraid.
Speaker 3: You're out in the woods, and I would say, if
Speaker 3: they gave me the tool, if they said we'll bring
Speaker 3: your cell phone in your charger, you wouldn't need the matches.
Speaker 3: You wouldn't need anything. You have your cel phone and
Speaker 3: your charger. You can just survive out there and just
Speaker 3: look it up right right right, you can just put it.
Speaker 3: How do you keep warm without matches? I mean it's like,
Speaker 3: I you know, do you want to take your cell
Speaker 3: phone or do you want to take somebody with you?
Speaker 3: I probably would just take my cell phone. I feel
Speaker 3: like I could have light, I feel like I can
Speaker 3: know stuff. I'll be good out out in the woods.
Speaker 3: But that is a rise in my consciousness. But it'll
Speaker 3: be you know, I will underestimate the impact of the
Speaker 3: loneliness of being in the woods by myself.
Speaker 2: Why is it, though, do you think from your perspective,
Speaker 2: why it's become so easy to let go of the
Speaker 2: connection part because the connection feels so much better, you know,
Speaker 2: And I get that there's probably a lot more of
Speaker 2: like these sort of you know, fleeting distractions we have
Speaker 2: that have probably taken the place, but like it is
Speaker 2: kind of I'm always surprised when when I really look
Speaker 2: back and I'm like, oh, yeah, we've we really don't
Speaker 2: like we really don't put much stock into that anymore
Speaker 2: when that really was the lifeblood of our humand like,
Speaker 2: are this species for millennia?
Speaker 3: I think that depends on who you have surrounding you,
Speaker 3: because it can feel better, but it also can feel
Speaker 3: like a big hassle. It can feel worse. You have
Speaker 3: a lot of people that are very self conscious, you know,
Speaker 3: if you feel like you're being judged constantly. You have
Speaker 3: people that will just make comments randomly about things. It
Speaker 3: was funny at the you know, at the end of
Speaker 3: the pandemic and a lot of people were going back
Speaker 3: to work and there are these comments that we came
Speaker 3: in and did some support. There are these comments that
Speaker 3: people were making. Wow, I didn't know you were so short,
Speaker 3: but like, wow, people were just saying these random things.
Speaker 3: They're actually considered in some ways. They can be insults,
Speaker 3: they can be microaggressions, but it's like, in that particular case,
Speaker 3: why did you just say that?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Why are you Why are you just spewing these things
Speaker 3: out of your mouth that are causing you to alienate
Speaker 3: yourself or alienate somebody else. And so again there's there's
Speaker 3: the quality of those connections that I think is really important.
Speaker 1: Right. Human contact is great in theory, but have you
Speaker 1: smelled some of us, like it can be.
Speaker 2: A yeah, it's true. I had a firefighter put his
Speaker 2: respirator on. Well, he was in line with me at
Speaker 2: the supermarket earlier this week. Did not feel good. Really yeah,
Speaker 2: he's like this guy is right, yeah, And I was,
Speaker 2: oh he put it yeah yeah, yeah, Sorry that joke
Speaker 2: did not land, And you know what, that's okay. That's
Speaker 2: why I embraced failure and I cannot be Yeah, there
Speaker 2: you go.
Speaker 3: What And have you read the research around all this
Speaker 3: stuff into you know, they say that there's bad stuff
Speaker 3: for you in toothpaste, bad stuff and deodorant. I have
Speaker 3: like decided that I'm keeping the bad deodorant, the bad toothpaste.
Speaker 2: But apparently she's good crystal.
Speaker 1: You just wrote crystals, crystals don't do anything.
Speaker 3: I've decided I am not doing crystals, and I'm not
Speaker 3: doing natural toothpaste either.
Speaker 1: But I smell good, tell hell smell Yeah, you so good.
Speaker 2: We haven't done that. We haven't done the show in
Speaker 2: person for years.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I do feel like one thing that I've noticed
Speaker 1: in myself is that the psychology of like how we
Speaker 1: interact with one another, modern interactions are are much more curated,
Speaker 1: Like I just in comparison in comparing like my day
Speaker 1: to day life with people in the past, like where
Speaker 1: the being being in communities where you know, Now I
Speaker 1: have kids, Now I'm just interacting with other parents and
Speaker 1: it's not like, well I choose their like top of
Speaker 1: my list of like people to hang out with. They're
Speaker 1: you know, my kids friends' parents in some cases and
Speaker 1: or you know, in recovery, you're just thrown into a
Speaker 1: room with other people who have the same problem as you,
Speaker 1: but they are in a lot of cases not the
Speaker 1: person who you would have ever found yourself in the
Speaker 1: same room with. And in a lot of ways, I
Speaker 1: feel like that is mimicking how people used to live, right,
Speaker 1: like you knew your neighbor and interacted with them whether
Speaker 1: you liked them or not, and like your friends were
Speaker 1: based on who was on your I don't know, bowling team.
Speaker 1: I think they used to bowl a lot. It's just
Speaker 1: you know, But I do feel like part of my
Speaker 1: problem at least is like trying to be like, all right,
Speaker 1: is this the perfect interaction?
Speaker 2: Is this?
Speaker 1: Like you know, I am putting a lot of pressure
Speaker 1: on these interactions, Like finding the right people to surround
Speaker 1: myself with is first of all, can be beneficial for
Speaker 1: the reasons that you're mentioning, like you don't want to
Speaker 1: surround yourself with toxic people. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: I think I can also like overly curate, like in
Speaker 1: the in the way that a lot of like media
Speaker 1: now is just like me scrolling through four hundred movies
Speaker 1: to figure out, like what the best movie is when
Speaker 1: some of my favorite movie watching experiences were just like
Speaker 1: back in the day, scrolling or you know, flipping past
Speaker 1: TNT and yeah, you know, a movie's on and you're like, well,
Speaker 1: that's the movie you're hanging out with for the night.
Speaker 2: I guess I'll watch two thirds of this movie exactly.
Speaker 1: So Yeah, I just wonder if you know, being a
Speaker 1: little more willing to spend time with people, whether or not.
Speaker 1: And I guess I guess that's kind of by necessity.
Speaker 1: If we're spending time with other people, like on a
Speaker 1: regular basis, that's going to happen, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think one of the things if you watch children
Speaker 3: and animals play together, they seem to have like a system.
Speaker 3: You know, you'll see little kids they just go up
Speaker 3: and they certainly either like they kind of tap each
Speaker 3: other and run. They just start running and it's almost
Speaker 3: like we're in the same world and we're just going
Speaker 3: to run. Or like the dogs they come up and
Speaker 3: it's like they have a little sniff going on, and
Speaker 3: it almost seems like all the dogs know and you
Speaker 3: know you're supposed to like, you know, they kind of
Speaker 3: communicate with each other. I feel like human beings we
Speaker 3: don't really have a system, and we see we think
Speaker 3: we do because we just say hello and you know,
Speaker 3: give these greetings. But I think we just need to
Speaker 3: embrace the awkwardness. There is just interactions that are more
Speaker 3: awkward than others. But that's okay. If you stay in
Speaker 3: there for just a little bit longer, you might have,
Speaker 3: as you were talking about Jack, you might create a
Speaker 3: friend that you never thought you knew. This is why
Speaker 3: we gravitate too much toward people just like us, as
Speaker 3: we're trying to run away from any feeling of discomfort,
Speaker 3: any feeling of awkwardness. So if you have a room
Speaker 3: of people, you're going to gravitate towards someone you know
Speaker 3: you need, you need a starter. They're from your hometown,
Speaker 3: they might look like you, and we kind of just
Speaker 3: deprive ourselves of so many relationships that would be nice.
Speaker 3: But you just have to kind of get past this
Speaker 3: initial awkward moment of I don't know what to say,
Speaker 3: I don't know what questions to ask. But if you've
Speaker 3: ever had those experiences, it takes just a couple of
Speaker 3: minutes to get there. Then all of a sudden, you know,
Speaker 3: those people can end up being some really great friends
Speaker 3: and great connections.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially if you're different, if they're different from you
Speaker 1: and you're focusing on like what you can learn from them, Like,
Speaker 1: then the more different they are from you, the more
Speaker 1: you can kind of learn from them. Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And in the book you just have some questions
Speaker 3: that you ask people. But we have to learn this
Speaker 3: art of just engaging, putting people at ease and being
Speaker 3: comfortable with ourselves.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I to your point, Like I was at
Speaker 2: an event like a couple of weeks ago, and I
Speaker 2: was just standing next to a person who was like
Speaker 2: seemingly I was like, I don't know what I would
Speaker 2: have in common with this person, but we realized there
Speaker 2: was like a mutual connection there and just started talking.
Speaker 2: By the end, this person, who if I was just
Speaker 2: going off of the sort of same thing, I'm like,
Speaker 2: are they from La do they kind of like do
Speaker 2: we look like we kind of fuck with the same stuff? No?
Speaker 2: Not really, And then by the end of it, they
Speaker 2: were like super into comedy, super into basketball, like super
Speaker 2: into like similar art. And that all just happened from
Speaker 2: just just embracing just sort of like the awkward momentum
Speaker 2: of being like, oh what else, Like oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and then just kind of seeing where the conversation leads
Speaker 2: and yeah, like almost it proves my own instincts wrong
Speaker 2: where you're like, I I got everybody figured out mostly
Speaker 2: and then like oh no, like and then to the
Speaker 2: point I was talking to my partner like we should
Speaker 2: kick it with them, Like his partner seem cool too,
Speaker 2: Like where did that happen from? And I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think it's it's because, like I think I've fully
Speaker 2: let those skills of like being curious about other people
Speaker 2: just kind of die too, I think, as I think
Speaker 2: it just comes along with age. And I hope everybody listening. Look,
Speaker 2: Jack and I are not just sitting in like darkened
Speaker 2: like a dank cave not talking anybody. I mean sometimes
Speaker 2: we do, but yeah, there is like there is just
Speaker 2: like this other, I don't know, very basic part of
Speaker 2: being a human that I realize I've really let kind
Speaker 2: of to disintegrate in this to a certain extent because
Speaker 2: of how much like all these things that are at
Speaker 2: my disposal, whether that be through social media or technology,
Speaker 2: and I'm forgetting about the you know, the good old
Speaker 2: fashioned analogue stuff, you know, talking to people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I spend a lot of time really selling this
Speaker 3: concept because here's the deal, right, you have a limited
Speaker 3: amount of time. It's just it's easier to watch Netflix,
Speaker 3: it's easier to be on the phone, it's easier not
Speaker 3: to connect. And so what's in it for you? Why?
Speaker 3: Why move through discomfort?
Speaker 2: Why?
Speaker 3: Because it does take a little bit of effort and
Speaker 3: work right to connect to different people. It's the answer
Speaker 3: just so many challenges, and I think one thing that
Speaker 3: we miss in life is that we have these problems,
Speaker 3: we have these challenges even in like addiction. Like the
Speaker 3: answer is the connection, right, it's connecting to a higher power,
Speaker 3: it's connecting to other people. But the answer is like
Speaker 3: you have to work it. You have to work it right.
Speaker 3: But the benefit is, oh my gosh, look what happened.
Speaker 3: I surrendered something. Life got better and life continue to
Speaker 3: get better. And now, like you know, I'm transforming my
Speaker 3: relationships and at the end of the day, I am
Speaker 3: much happier because I put in this effort. And so
Speaker 3: that is the core of this is we have to
Speaker 3: learn the skills and so with their habits that you
Speaker 3: do every single day that helps us to recover from disconnection.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, that's gonna do it for this week's weekly Zeitgeist.
Speaker 1: Please like and review the show if you like, the
Speaker 1: show means the world de Miles. He he needs your validation, folks.
Speaker 1: I hope you're having a great weekend and I will
Speaker 1: talk to him Monday. Byett