What's old is new. It's one more thing.
I'm one more thing.
We're gonna talk about summertime for kids coming up in a little bit, and a hot new phrase that everybody's discussing thanks to the New York Times. See if you agree or disagree. But we'll get to that in just a little bit. We don't. We don't do what Katie why. It was show's favorite catchy new words. Yeah, catch a new phrases.
Used to be they would have to like reach you naturally. Now some wise ass little thirteen year old punk can come up with a phrase in Bayonne, New Jersey, and I'm it's inflicted on me by the next afternoon.
I don't want it, not in the market. So we don't usually do breaking news on the podcast. He's here. He will be listening to this days or years later. I don't know when. But this is pretty good.
It really is something, And if you're listening in the future, this will remind you of Trump's crazy style of communicating. So it's as we as we speak on the seventeenth, Is that right? A June twenty twenty five. The whole israel Aron thing is that it's peak and whether we're going to rub out the Iyatola's question in the air, and Trump tweets out, we know exactly where the so called Supreme Leader is hiding. He is an easy target, but as safe there, we are not going to take
him out kill in parentheses with an exclamation point for now. Yeah, we know what you mean by tak him out. We didn't assume we meant take him out for dinner. We knew you meant you're gonna.
F and kill him.
Kill. Well, look, kill, We're not going to take him out, kill chains. We're not going to take him out kill at least not for now. But we don't want missiles shot at civilians or American soldiers. Our patients is wearing thin. Thank you for your attention to this matter. No, that's actually the end of it for you for your attention Appy email.
Yeah, a little of his old CEO days slipped in there at the end.
Wow.
Hey, we noticed your dues for the Bedminster Golf Club have been overdue now for a week. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
People are using too many paper cups at the water dispenser, please try to cut back. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Exactly that's like after Israel blows up a building Iran and says, we apologize for the inconvenience, all right.
Or yeah, destroyed Turan. Good luck in your future endeavors. Mm hmm.
If you have any questions about the coming power vacuum, please feel free to email our team at customer service at Israel bombas dot com.
Thank you for your attention to this matter. Was he trying to be funny? I don't know.
I mean, obviously he's got to understand how horrifically funny that is.
You think, all right, well, we'll see where that goes. I'm gonna skip the other thing we're gonna do right to the hot phrase for summertime. I don't know if you read this article in the New York Times. It caused many tongues to wag and columns to be written all around the world. Really, as New York Times unleashed upon us the term kid rotting for the summertime and rotting as is, your kids are rotting, And it's ended up going back and forth with a lot of people.
I don't know where I am on this, but uh, the idea of not having a whole bunch of planned camps and activities for your kids, and they just hang out on the couch doing nothing all summer, to which a lot of people the kid rotting, to which a lot of people have replied, that sounds like what my summers were like, And I freaking loved them. Yeah, just hanging out doing nothing with no plans whatsoever. I remember
those days. You get up, you had no idea what you're gonna do today, and and it was just a variety of things and are kind of nothing or whatever. And it was awesome. The sense of freedom was awesome.
Was the modern version of that staring at a screen. Well, that's where it gets interesting. None of that stuff you said will happen. It'll just be staring at screens, he says.
But and I'm I'm I you know, I lean real far toward that is it's not only it's not just a waste of time. It affects your brain and your attention span. But that aside, if the if, the if. The alternative is all kinds of camps and planned activities versus just hang out and do whatever all day long. And I don't know why I've got this weird resistance since I got to do that a lot as a kid, my my oldest, my high school son. He is not into video games and stuff like that near as much.
He does a lot of bike riding with his friends and all that sort of stuff. But man, I picked him and his friends up yesterday. He texted me and said, we are just too worn out. We're over at my friend Zach's house. Could you come pick us up and bring us over to our house. We're just we've been riding and it's hot, Okay. I said, give me twenty minutes. I got a couple of things that could do. But I went and picked them up. And I hadn't been
around this vibe in forty years, but fifty years. But just the level of happy, relaxed the world is our oyster these three fifteen year olds had with their bikes. He loaded them up in my truck and they got in. They were just joking and laughing and they were just doing nothing all day long and they're gonna do nothing the rest of the day but just hang out and be teenagers. And it just looked fantastic.
Well I love that, Katie.
Yeah, I love that too. But I'm wondering if parents are.
Signing their kids up for so much stuff because they don't want them on their screens all summer. You know what I mean, because I, as a kid, I got signed up for stuff, but my parents didn't have to worry about that.
Yeah. Well right, Sometimes signing kids up for stuff is your daycare for the summer since the school is out, and you need to put yeah yeah, and that's fine.
Although the you know what's happening around those schedule activities have changed. Back in the day, it was what Jack was describing. There's nothing scheduled. You're just free to do what you want, or you can invent or hook up with your friends, be bored together. Invente gave blah blah blah. Now the you know, the surrounding of the scheduled event
is many more scheduled events. And as a fierce advocate of free range parenting, I totally agree with you in principle, Jack, is just the screen thing.
What would you wing out? What would you do? What would you recommend?
Because I carefully scheduled free time, you will absolutely show up on time ten a m. For the do whatever you want.
Man. I go back and forth with this, my thirteen year old all the time. I've gotten to the point where I say, I can't say it again. I can't say it for the eight millionth time because I tried it to limit his screen time. I don't like I'm not as disciplined on it as a lot of my friends are, where they've got like a timer on their Internet or you know, their stopwatch going on it or whatever,
and they limit to that however many hours. But I just like, when I feel like it's been enough, to say, Okay, that's that's enough screens, So find something to do with that. But what will I do? And I always say I can't. Now I say I can't say it again. I just can't. I can't. I can't list the things again. Walk the dog, ride a bike, write something, play a musical instrument, draw, run, exercise,
I swim, we got a pool. Just I can't list the million things you could do that aren't looking at his But do one of them, you know.
One of those four hundred and eighty five.
Videos you just watched. Do one of those things, those like the things. You're the guy in the video, not the guy watching the video.
You know, asking that question that way is as natural as like your fingernails growing.
Well, what am I supposed to do. It's true.
I remember asking my mom that, Yeah, George Washington's kids, we're asking him, what.
Am I supposed to do? Kids? Get out of the cave, your mom and I need to make your brother.
Right right, Go play with the other you know, pre syllabic, non language speaking, grunting cave kids.
But there's dinosaurs out there. I don't care. Get out of the cave.
Jack, when the kids were in the backseat the car, did you tell them that life goes downhill?
And it's just all that I have had that conversation. Yeah, you're happy. Now enjoy it while you can, because life is nothing but a big disappointment.
Grind it out as you work for some bastards you don't like, You don't respect that. He hasn't care.
About I have said that day I bed year old. Like me, I have said to my son which I probablyhouldn't say, because he wants, he wants to get Next year he'll be able to get a job at a variety of places that he wants to go, because you have to be sixteen. But anyway, I say, and then you'll start working, and then you will work until you're sold and nearly dead, that none of this will matter anymore.
I mean, you'll never stop ever again. And it's true, but I don't know if you need to lay that out when you're sixteen years old.
Oh that's so funny. We just got an email from some pr group pitching a guest who wants to talk about the kid rotting.
It's the hot phrase, man's thing. Kid rotting is a hot phrase. So New York was really on the time on the side of uh, you know, we used to call we didn't used to call it rotting. We used to just call it summertime. And then there's been the pushback, obviously with the screen stuff, and so yeah, it's become a whole thing. But I do even if you eliminate the screens, I know a lot of parents who would think it would be horrible if their kids just hung
out with no plans every day and did nothing. Using my finger quotes, it's impossible, as my son always points out, to do nothing. Even if you're doing nothing, you're doing something, and you lay around and do nothing for a while, but you'll come up with something because you just out of necessity.
So it's interesting this guest pitch is actually a woman with Campfire. I think it used to be Campfire Girls or whatever, but it's Campfire. It's a youth development organization. And she believes the conversation misses the real distinction. Not all boredom is created equal. There's a huge difference between head down boredom, head down boredom zoning out on screens, disconnected from others, and head up boredom that sparks activity, problem solving, and self discovery.
That's an interesting turn.
And then she pitches that camp boredom isn't a problem. It's a portal drift. What becomes a fort, seashells become currency, and a toilet paper roll becomes binoculars.
No, it's not gonna help you see anything up close.
It's just ineffective binoculars.
Certainly, yes, the distance will seem exactly the same. I don't think these are working.
Jack could have just said, you know, kids, sometimes I feel like just taking this car and driving it off a cliff.
No, no, no
Well, I guess that's it.