CAO Consigliere

Welcome to Nice Ashes, I'm Mike. And I'm Nate. What are we smoking, Mike? We are smoking a CAO Consigliere. Fancy. Very fancy. And it is a large robusto, I would say, which is, you know, pretty typical size for our show. And Mike's been wanting to smoke this one for quite some time. We've had a couple instances where we thought we were going to be recording an episode and it's always been this one that he has talked about. So I think he's been fairly excited.

But before Mike asks, I'm pairing this cigar with a Hop Valley Stashadelica IPA. Nice. I'm pairing mine with four roses, small batch in a glass with nothing in it, just whiskey. And then I'm gonna have a whiskey sour as a backer. This is quite spicy. Well it should be spicy. It's supposed to be like a mobster cigar, right? I mean, I guess. That's the idea. All right, let me light up here. Wow, that is quite, quite spicy. I like it.

I was not prepared at all for the amount of spice coming from it, but it's very tasty. It's very good. Very spicy. Yeah, very spicy. This is the spiciest one I've ever had. Well, that Hoya that we had was spicy. This is spicy. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. At the start, this is spicier. This is almost like breathtaking. Yeah. Well, at the end, the Hoya kind of increased in spices that went along. Yes. Yeah. As an afterthought, I really liked that cigar. Yeah. Yeah, it was great.

If this keeps increasing, this might be our last episode ever because we'll be dead. My goodness. My goodness. Just so everybody knows, if you hear some noises like that, I'm mixing a drink. Yes. I thought we'd talk about consent, Mike. Consent. Okay. Yes. Well, and I know what you're thinking. Well, I don't know, but I might know what some people might be thinking is, it's the sexy time all the time. Here we go.

But there's a new trend, especially within parenting where... One, when your children's grandparents or aunts and uncles and stuff come and visit, they always want hugs. Some of them, sometimes grandmas or grandmas are like, give me a kiss, do this and that. We've made clear to our kids that they're not expected to or required to do those things to family or friends or anybody, really.

But we have this other friends that have kids and their kids always ask our kids if they can hug them and stuff. So I guess that's kind of what spawned this is just me thinking about it and asking consent before you hug somebody, asking consent before maybe you touch somebody's shoulder. Is that taking away from some of the spontaneous first kiss experiences or first hug experiences or is it not? Is it really more giving those things more weight and more value?

But I thought we'd go through some of the consent stuff just so that we know. I did quite a bit of research on this, not as much as the circumcision, but the circumcision one started out longer and got a little shorter and this one was always the same length. Interestingly enough, I will have something to say about this because I just completed a course called SafeSport.

This wasn't around when we were kids, but if you are involved in any activity that has an organized activity and it has children involved, you have to become SafeSport certified and do a background check nowadays, which is probably a good idea. They should do that for Catholic priests. Right. Yeah. I was going to say Boy Scout leaders. Hey, you leave Scoutmaster John out of this. Oh my. My Scoutmaster was one of the kids' dad. They were all the people there were like the parents.

That's typically how it goes. That doesn't mean they're free from being abusers though. No, that's very, very true. Used by people they know. That is very true. Real quick cigar note before we dive head first into consent with your consent, of course, Mike. I've got a little bit of a loose leaf on the end of the wrapper here on the cigar. Really? Mine is... How did you cut it?

I just did one V cut and it's a little bit of a loose leaf on the end where I smoke from is raised up a little bit, but it's not drastic. It's just we talk about some of these things sometimes. I don't think it's a big deal. Oh, sure. Mine's perfectly good so far. I can see that maybe the cap will come off though. We're going to see. Now that you say it, I'm looking and it's like, yeah, there's maybe. The taste is still good. The taste is good.

I know we're only a few puffs in, but the spice has drastically diminished. Yes, still very spicy though. Still very good though and still spicy, but I just will say it's no longer overpowering. Yes. So with this consent, I broke it down as we do on these episodes because we have to find some way to talk about things that make sense. We can't just word vomit to you. I use a variety of sources, not as many as the circumcision episode, but a handful or more.

I figured we'd start with types of consent and I found basically the four main kinds of consent, types of consent. Okay. Consent is not necessarily related strictly to sex stuff. Okay. This is just consent in general. Right. We're going to kind of work our way through some of these things. Some of them will be with sex. Some of them will be with like the medical care. Some of them will be everyday stuff.

Some will be, it's kind of all over the board because consent is, is or should be everywhere. Right? Well, in an ideal world, yes. But unfortunately, because of certain fascist influences, a lot of times you're giving consent before you even enter the situation. So you don't really have a choice in most situations. You've already given consent by being married. Well, and we're going to talk about how to revoke consent as well. Oh, is this like sovereign citizen land?

And how to respond to revoked consent. And the answer to all of those things is send Mike or I $5 in the mail. We'll send you a special consent stamp. Yes. And it has to be signed by you with your name and all capital letters. Yes. But your zip code has to be in brackets. Very important. I can tell you how not carrots, not carrots, brackets, and not the wavy ones either. No parentheses. We have to be very careful. That's right. And quotations. Those are right out.

Okay. So the four, the four types of consent, I'm going to, I'm going to list them out and then I'll go back through and kind of explain what each one is. So we've got implied consent. We've got express consent. We have informed consent and unanimous consent. How many of these have you heard of Mike? I've heard those terms thrown around all of them. I think. Okay. Yeah. They, they're usually bandied about in the latest Disney Pixar movie, but no, I'm just kidding.

Actually their latest one was elemental. Very good. I quite like it. You did like it. Sarah watched it, but I did not. Okay. I watched a little bit of it, a little bit of it. I didn't like it the first time I saw it, but then I watched it again and I liked it a lot more. So it kind of grew on me. I'm going to start with implied consent. It is implicit, not explicit consent. And it's presented by an individual's actions or the situation.

So for example, physical contact in a hockey game, you don't ask somebody if it's okay to check them into the boards before you check them into the boards, right? The act of being there and playing and being a participant in that game gives implied consent to be hit football, right? Right. Baseball. You don't go to the bar and get upset because other people are drinking alcohol. Yeah. Yep. Bowling might be a little different because there's not really any touching in bowling.

You can correct me if I'm wrong, but I figured if I mentioned bowling first, it will save us later. Usually no physical contact. I have made physical contact with people before that. So that's how we met. You kept saying I was across the line and across the line and I didn't see the line. Anyway. And then also like a person unconscious at a car accident would also be kind of like implied consent if they're injured.

So and I know like the good Samaritan laws have been kind of like under fire of late where people are claiming that giving CPR is like battery or some of these life-saving things and people are concerned about, well, if I find somebody that needs CPR, can I or can't I give it to them? We're not lawyers. I don't know.

I'm just saying we're not lawyers, but I can tell you that in my personal life, when it comes anywhere near what is my career field, I generally avoid helping people because I do not want the liability associated with that. Yes. Right. I think I told you a very specific instance last week off of off of the show that I was like, no way am I stopping and helping this person right now.

And really I think in a lot of circumstances, and again, I'm not a lawyer and I'm not a medical professional, but in a lot of circumstances calling 911 is much, much better for aid, especially because you don't know what kind of tools or like life-saving devices might be required. You don't know if they're infected with something or whatever. I mean, if you've seen 28 days later, all it takes is one drop of saliva and bam, you're a zombie. So you know what I mean? Exactly.

One drop of bath salts and you're a zombie. Florida, how we love you. So implied consent also is predicated on a person's silence or non-response. That doesn't mean that if you say, hey, I want to like do stuff with you, then, and if they don't say anything, that it's a clear go. But you know, the silence or non-response would be if you come across somebody unresponsive on a hiking path, there's no cell reception or something. And it's down to say, well, do I save this person's life or do I not?

Or do I attempt to or do I not? It's kind of implied consent. Again, we're not lawyers, so please check your local jurisdictions or whatever your own morality or comfort level with liability might be. Right. And one of the biggest things with liability, when's the last time you took CPR first aid, Nate? I took it probably 2009, 2010 ish.

OK, so I've taken it every two years since probably 04, something like that, because it's a three year certification and I've taken it every two years because I've always had a job that required it and they want you more up to date. And the biggest thing is you cannot exceed your level of official training to be covered by the Good Samaritan law. That's the biggest thing. So if you're not trained on like how to put a tourniquet on, don't be putting a tourniquet on.

Yeah. More or less express consent is what we mostly think of is unmistakably stated. It's not implied. It's usually given in writing or speech or sometimes non verbally, as long as it's a clear gesture such as a nod. Right. Or whatever it is in your culture. Not every culture nodding isn't necessarily universal thing.

But the caveat or the thing to be aware of is nonwritten express consent not not witnessed by a person or audio or video could be disputed if the party then later decides that it was not given, which is why. What was the Europe you were saying? A lot of men are recording women saying yes, that they want to have sex. Yeah, that's a trend. That's a trend. Yeah, I don't know if I don't think it's in Europe. I think it's a trend generally, especially culture, which I never was a part of.

But that's pretty scary world. Hookup culture. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like the Tinder and the and the grinder and whatever else there is out there. Yeah. The lipstick lesbian dating app, whatever that exactly. Yeah. So yeah, so that's express consent. It's basically when people say consent, I think it's usually what people think of like, hey, do you want to hug? Yeah, bro. Sure. Like that's express consent. Like consent would be, hey, bro, do you want to hug?

And then the other person goes in for a hug. I mean, that's kind of like implied. Right. So informed consent. That is usually medical. It's used for medical context and social scientific research and stuff like that. But it's consent given by a person who has a clear appreciation and understanding of the facts, implications and future consequences of an action.

I did come across a lawsuit in Minnesota here where apparently there's a woman who talked to their doctor, was going to have surgery on their left ear, went under anesthesiology. Once under the doctor realized that the right ear was in a worse shape than the left ear. I don't know what the condition was. Operated instead on the right ear, not the left ear, and then was charged with battery afterwards. And I believe lost the case because that was completely against the informed consent.

I can believe that. I mean, it's shitty that we live in a very litigious society at times. But you just have to remember that you have to stop when it's time to stop. And it's not your responsibility to go any further. In fact, it's exactly the opposite of that. Right. Yes. Well, in that case, it's do the left ear, like you said, then say, hey, the right ear is way worse. We got to get that next. Like once they're out of surgery and they're not groggy from the drugs anymore and all that stuff.

Right. And a lot of people like to say, because this is a huge media spin, right? It's a McDonald's coffee lady and everyone says, oh, she didn't know coffee was hot, but the coffee was so hot she had like third degree burns on her groin region. So that's not, oh, I didn't understand the coffee was hot. That's the coffee was hotter than coffee needs to be ever. Right.

I mean, when you brew coffee, it's supposed to be just below the boiling point as it hits the grounds and then it goes into the carafe and it cools down. And by the time theoretically, if you're making it correctly, by the time that it gets served, it should no longer be capable of damaging your skin, possibly your mouth, but not your skin. Yes. You can almost drink it right out of the craft.

I mean, it's a little hot, but it should be hot enough that you let it cool down a little bit and then you're fine. Right. But implied consent can also pertain to non-medical things such as sex where the other partner needs to be made aware of any positive statuses like for sexually transmitted infections or diseases that they might be exposed to.

Yes. So that's another little wrinkle in the express informed consent, at least with sex, because if you are positive or something and you don't tell the other person, then you didn't get that informed consent. Wasn't Charlie Sheen having women sign waivers to have sex with him after he was HIV positive? I heard a story like that. That does not surprise me if that were true. It would not surprise me at all. All right.

And then unanimous consent is where this is really the only time we're going to talk about this. Sometimes it's called general consent, but it's by a group of several parties, like an association or something, sometimes in the government. It's consent given by all parties. So it's like a procedural act where no member present or no member presents an objection. So it's not necessarily that everybody voices the affirmative, but nobody opposes. Right. It's like at a meeting with Robert's rules.

Yes. All right. And then I went down to what is consent and oh, so all that first stuff was all from Wikipedia. So just just pulling consent from Wikipedia. There were a lot of sexual violence sites that I ended up finding as well. And there was one that was really, I thought, really nice.

It didn't have a whole lot of super duper information on the at least the article that I found on there, but it had a big pop up when I got there and it said this site can be quickly X'd out by clicking this X over here and it would like send you I don't know if it would close that tab or if it would go to Google or something.

But that was for like people in an abusive relationship, if they're trying to look up resources, this website had a like a kill switch built in so they wouldn't be found to be researching their abuser. You know what I mean? Oh, sure. That's pretty wise. I thought that was, I thought that was pretty handy. So this one's just kind of going through. There was, there was one other called like everyday consent. So we've got like sexual consent and form consent, everyday consent.

These are similar in like the first four that we talked about, but I think these are more situationally specific in terms of when to ask for these consents instead of like what the consent you're getting back is, right? Whether it's implicit, explicit or express. So basically we talked about kind of sexual consent a little bit, informed consent. That's mostly the medical thing. And then everyday consent that is about choosing to respect personal and emotional boundaries.

So you practice consent in everyday situations, especially before like hugging, tickling or other kinds of touch. So you can ask sincerely and then you want to ask in a way that lets the other party know. It's okay to say no, because I feel like, I don't know if it's like leading the witness or like intimidating the other party, but if you ask in such a way where they think it'll be worse to say no, that's not really consent. You know what I mean? Right.

Also for people who have experienced sexual abuse, any unexpected touch can be scary and traumatic.

And this is true for some of the other things like I believe Asperger's and some other conditions where touch is like you need to pre warn people, which I guess I didn't really think about it in those terms because usually when people think of consent, at least in I guess the general population or when they talk about consent on news reports and things, it's usually like sexual consent and has nothing to do with this person might freak out or have a bad experience with a non-consensual touch.

Yeah. In general, I agree with that. And I think we've talked about this, but a lot of the conscious or conscientiousness that we're raising about consent as a culture, I think is a result of online dating and people's, I don't want to call irresponsible behavior, but it's risky behavior that they're engaging in meeting random strangers for dates and things like that. You know? Well, you know, yeah.

Meeting random people in random locations that don't have protections built in place, you know what I mean? Like that stuff is, I mean, there's a safe way to do everything. And I really like a date is meeting somebody you've never met before, or you haven't like been in that setting with before, right? And everybody's different at work and everybody's different at home and everybody's different on a date and everyone's different, you know.

Right. But I think that the danger level definitely increases when it's somebody that you don't know socially. You know that the majority of rapes happen by people that you know, right? That is true. But also it's got to be, it's inherently dangerous to go on a date alone with somebody that you don't know. Well, so, I mean, let's just put this in perspective and I don't know the stats on this. So this is not, this is just a thought experiment.

Let's say the majority of rapes happen by somebody you know. Well, 51% is a majority. So that means 49% could happen by people you don't know. So just by saying it's a majority doesn't mean that it never happens by the other subset, right? Right. And while the majority of rapes happen in like teenage to college age population, you know? Yeah. So there's definitely an element of the party atmosphere involved, I'm sure.

You know, it's been a long time since I looked up the stats, so I'm not 100% certain about it. Yeah. And I didn't want to get too deep into the stats on this one. But just continuing on with the everyday consent. There's another one here with the everyday consent, which is kind of respecting privacy. So it's not always just about touching. So you know, everyone has boundaries. Some people like to keep things private and other people are like an open book.

So this is just saying if somebody shares personal information with you, ask what their boundaries are with sharing that with other people. Right. Basically, don't be a gossip is kind of the thing. Like most of this stuff is don't be a giant asshole, I guess. But oh, for the most part, it's just most people are most people. Most people are not assholes openly, but there's a significant minority that are.

So yeah, and there's a lot that are assholes behind their back because they're trying to curry favor for somebody else by sharing some juicy tidbit, not necessarily trying to actively be an asshole to you. They're just being a passive asshole. Right. I mean, we all know people that the instant somebody leaves the room, they're talking shit, you know, about every person.

So yeah, yeah, I usually let people know like most things that get shared with me unless you unless you explicitly ask me to not, I will share it with my wife, just not like run to her and be like, Hey, guess what? Someone just told me. But if you're a friend and I genuinely care about you, and you share something with me that's like troubling you, then it also kind of troubles me.

And then I share it with Sarah because she helps me out with a lot of that stuff because she's a lot more emotionally intelligent than I am, I guess. I certainly don't. I don't do things. Yeah, I don't share things that people say, please don't share this with your wife. I don't share that. I usually just say, Hey, like, don't you know, they'll say, don't tell anyone. I'm like, Yeah, I usually tell my wife everything. If you don't want me to, I don't have to. That's not a big deal.

It's just, you know, we're usually on the same page and I don't I don't keep things from her. So I think most marriages are like that. They should be. They should be. I'm not telling other people what they should or shouldn't do. But yeah, yeah. Yeah. But you should bowl the right way even at open bowling with little kids. Oh, dude, I came unglued yesterday. That's probably if we have time for the end, you can tell us how you came unglued. All right. I definitely will.

Okay. And then the last one here for everyday consent is ask permission. So just like we have boundaries on touch and different levels of sharing things. And we're talking about like telling people things. The other thing is photos. So I usually try to never take photos of my kids with somebody else's kids, unless they've told me that it's okay to take those photos. And I don't share really a whole lot of photos of even my kids online at all. There's like a couple out there. But sure.

Yeah. This is just saying like always ask before posting or taking photos of somebody on social media. And the problem are the and this isn't just strictly with kids. This is with people who are in abusive relationships. If you share a photo, let's say with Facebook, and you didn't scrub the data, Facebook knows where that photo was taken. If it was taken with a phone or a Wi Fi connected device, like it knows where that photo was taken.

And we were talking about this and we were talking about like doxing people and like you can you can stitch together things in photos to figure out where it was taken. So depending on the circumstances or whatever it was at a park and you took a picture of somebody, they know where that park is. And then that park might be within walking distance of that person's home or that person's whatever. It might be a subway ride away or it might be so you know, there's that and the privacy thing.

It's like a double edged thing, right? This is an aside twice. But it's related. I feel like people our age who were Internet 1.0 users and we saw the dawn of social media after we became adults. I mean, social media really became a thing when I was in college, maybe late high school, but I didn't have a social media account until I was in college. And I had a Facebook when I was only college people. Right. Yeah, me too.

And I was very aware that I do not want to take pictures or be in pictures that were showing me doing things that I should not be doing. Number one, and all places where I should not be. Right. Right. Yeah, sure. The very simple here in college really, but I didn't do all that stuff I should be doing. I was very aware, you know, like I knew I shouldn't have a picture with a beer can in it when I'm 19 years old. Right. Like that's unwise.

It's unwise, but like at that, I think at that time, like the Internet was so new that a lot of people didn't know what to do with it. And by a lot of people, I mean kind of like law enforcement and stuff. I mean, if you remember like LimeWire and Napster. Oh yeah, of course. Like it was, it was like the wild west. So I don't know. I probably, I don't know. I don't think I have any pictures of me very explicitly underage drinking. I don't, I don't.

I have, I have pictures where I'm having fun at like other people's parties and stuff. But after college, my amount of posts like dropped significantly. And so now I have friends, I have one friend that will message me every once in a while. He's like, Hey, I haven't seen you post for a long time. Are you okay? How's everything going? And I'm like, yeah, I just don't post a whole lot because I don't really like, I don't have that. You know what I mean?

Like that's not one of my social validations in my life kind of thing. Right. I have not posted anything in, I don't know. I would have to look at Facebook to see the last post. I famously told you a story about Facebook and something that I had to do and I didn't even know how to do it. So Sarah had to do it for me because I just don't use it. I don't have a Twitter. I don't have an Instagram.

I, I don't know any other social media platforms off the top of my head, but I don't use social media at all for any reason. Yeah. Well, I mean like even, even YouTube is social media. Right. And I do YouTube and I do comments and I love reading comments and getting into flame wars like it's, you know, 2006 or something. And that's fine, I guess.

Yeah. So this last section was from the National Sexual Violence Resource Center with respect to privacy, consent with touching and asking permission for sharing photos and things online. And even to the extent of, even if it's not a picture, like, Hey, I want to post a status that we're hanging out having lunch. You know, if you're going to tag somebody else, you know, it's worth getting consent. Right. My Sarah takes me all the time, but I think she's the only one, my mother, maybe. Maybe.

Yeah. We're friends on Facebook, aren't we? Who? Your mom and you? Yeah. You and you and I, you and I, we're friends on Facebook. You and I are friends on Facebook. Your mom and I are not friends on Facebook. Right. Yeah. I'm guessing that, but. Although we could be now because, you know, I spent some time with her a couple of weekends ago with you and your dad, so not in an untoward way. Anyway. And then so sexual consent, there's three pillars of sexual consent.

So we're kind of like, there's four main types of consent you can receive back from somebody. There's three areas where you should be asking consent. And then there's three pillars of sexual consent. This says, the way we let others know what we're up for, be it a good night kiss or the moments leading up to sex. It's just, that's the, it's all in the same font, but that's the font that I feel like if it were red, that would be how it would be read. Right. The moments leading up to sex. Anyway.

Yeah. Bow-chicka bow-wow. All right. One is knowing exactly what and how much I'm agreeing to. You express your intent to participate and deciding freely and voluntarily to participate. So to obtain affirmative consent, rather than waiting to say or for a partner to say no, then this is affirmative consent. One gives and seeks an explicit yes. So the yes can come in the form of a smile, a nod or a verbal yes, as long as it's unambiguous, enthusiastic and ongoing. And then that's from Wikipedia.

So this newer affirmative consent is called enthusiastic consent. Enthusiastic consent means looking for the presence of a yes rather than the absence of a no. So it's not saying you're not giving them the opportunity to say no, but you're, you're trying to get them to agree enthusiastically with a yes, a nod, a smile instead of kind of like that awkward thing like, well, they didn't say no. So I guess we're doing butt stuff. Right.

I would say that in long-term committed relationships, there's not a lot of affirmative yeses. I don't know. You know, it's like implied consent rules the day. I think, well, okay, then is, is an enthusiastic consent. Right. Right. There's a certain level of implied consent. So I think it's a tricky line because just because you're married doesn't mean you have a blanket consent. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I know, I know, you know, that that's not what you're trying to say or imply.

I mean, this is a, this is a, can be a touchy subject or if people say, no, it's not a touchy subject, it's a respectful distance away subject. But we want to be very clear on just because you're buried to somebody or just because you're dating somebody does not give you the right to show up randomly and do things. So, right, right. Also this, you're not going to, are you going to address the power dynamics of consent?

Cause there's like a certain level of power differential where consent's not even possible. Right. Like for example, an employer and an employee there from a legal perspective, I don't think there can be consent because of the power differential. You know what I mean? I didn't look up any power differential.

I did come across something where people with cognitive disabilities and how to get, how to not get them to consent, but how to have that conversation about consent with them, especially if they're of age and all this stuff. Right. But I didn't want to get huge into that because that was more maybe like therapeutic or caregiving. I don't know. But some of that is with like college athletics too.

Cause like I say, I took the safe sport course and it's for college athletics all the way down to like, you know, grade school athletics, but they had a long course. A portion of the course was about athletes that were adults with their coaches, you know, and there's like a pretty hard rule of like two years past being a coach before any sort of like dating style activity can commence, which makes sense.

You know, you're talking, we're talking like 20, you know, 22 year old college senior, you know, that you can't date that person if you're their coach until they're at least 24 or something like that. Yeah. Past the term of coaching. So I've got a section here about what consent isn't. So consent is not refusing to acknowledge no. So just because you didn't say no, doesn't mean you give consent. Consent is not somebody, a partner who is disengaged, not responsive or visibly upset.

So if they're upset and choosing not to talk to you, that does not imply consent. Wearing certain clothes, flirting or kissing is an invitation. Assuming that wearing certain clothes, flirting or kissing is an invitation for anything more. So just because somebody's kissing you doesn't mean things will progress beyond that point. Just because somebody's flirting doesn't necessarily lead to kissing or doesn't imply that kissing is next.

And certainly wearing certain clothes, which I don't know, there was, I didn't go see it and I don't know if it came here to Minnesota, but there was a installation somewhere where victims of rape and sexual abuse displayed the clothes they were wearing at the time of the abuse and the rape. And to make the point that clothes weren't consent. Right. A lot of the clothes weren't even scandalous, which was the point, right? Right. I don't know about that. That's a very old school defense.

I don't know if I've ever heard anybody legitimately make that argument. I've heard the inverse of like, oh, wearing clothes doesn't give consent, blah, blah, blah. I've never heard anybody say, oh, well, such and such was doing such and such, so it's okay. I've never heard that in real life. Maybe it's because I grew up in a liberal area or something. I don't know.

I don't know that I've heard it like in real life, at least in any sense that I would take it seriously, but it's certainly a Hollywood trope for sure. Like, it's a societal trope. Like a bad, bad girl or whatever and stuff. But all right. Consent is not someone under the legal age of consent. And I've got a legal age consent thing coming up. Consent is not somebody who's incapacitated because of drugs or alcohol or by pressuring someone into sexual activity by using fear or intimidation.

So you know, and you hear this one a lot and you see this one a lot and man, there was just a story that came out and I wanted to talk about it and I forgot to add it in here, but it was a, it was some female and I don't remember if she was a teacher. She said she was going to like ride one of the males and stuff. And she got, she got off. She didn't get any jail time whatsoever. That's pretty common, at least in what I've seen, you know, anecdotal, anecdotally.

Yeah, and the problem is like the male population keeps that alive and keeps it going and like, hell yeah, I'd want to be raped by her. And it's like, you don't understand what rape is to say something as dumb as that, you know? Right. I mean, when I was underage, I never had any relationships with anybody who was in a position of authority. So I can't rightly say, but I have met a few guys who have been in that situation.

And as they've gotten older, like mid to late twenties, they have turned against that idea. You know, they, they have come to think of it as inappropriate as they have gotten older and more responsible. Yes. And the last one here, consent is not assuming that you have permission to engage in a sexual act because you've done it in the past. So past experience does not give future consent. Right. This is all from the rape abuse incest nation network.

So and then I wanted to talk about, so we talked about how to get consent. We talked about what consent isn't. We talked about how to give consent. And I wanted to, and I think I'm halfway through the cigar. So before I do this next section, what are our cigar thoughts, Mike? Well, I am over halfway. Just so you know, I have probably a quarter left somewhere in there. Okay. I'm, I'm slightly over halfway, but I'm not quite down to the quarter yet. I don't think.

Okay. The spiciness has really tamed down on my cigar. Still good. Still good, but it's really mellowed out and it's just kind of a rounder, mellow dark. It's dark. There is still some spice. I think, especially if you take a puff and you, and you're looking for it, you can still taste it there. It's not as prevalent or it's not in the forefront like it was at the very beginning.

Yeah. It's more of a back note cigar, but it is a back note, which is interesting because this isn't, I'm not saying like, Oh, this one's only going to be compared to the, the Hoya black, but that one built the spice and this one has, it started out real spicy and it has settled into a really dark and still quite spicy cigar, but it's, it's more nuanced now. More, I think it's a little more complex. I mean, it's, it's mellower, but there's a lot of different stuff going on here. And I, oh yeah.

Oh, it's, it's a wonderful cigar. Yeah. The, the, the front quarter of the cigar was like that front note of spice was like right in your face and it definitely was accentuated by the whiskey. Like you could, you know, you mellowed out with that sweeter caramel whiskey taste and it would really pop. So I did have to relight mine. I don't know that that's a cigar fault or just as is the Nate knows episode and I'm talking a lot. Right. So, all right.

So the, the next section here, since we talked about all those other ways of giving and receiving consent, this is how to respond to a no when asking for consent. If you really want to be consent conscious, you also have to learn to receive and respect people's knows and their maybes, right? Like no used car salesman would still be in business if they didn't learn how to respect the maybes and then close the deal. Can I say that?

I can say that as a used car salesman, I've never purchased a car from a used car salesman. We have, but we, the most recent one we purchased was from a dealership down here that does not do commission. Oh, okay. So basically the price is kind of the price. There's no commission and you can negotiate on the trade in. Sure. Yeah. The last three vehicles I bought, it was an F 150, a Honda Accord and a Chevrolet S 10. And that was all from the same dealer who's very reputable.

And the vehicles sell themselves really when you're talking about those particular, you know, cars or trucks, like it's not, you're there to buy it. You're not there to. Well, yeah. If you're an informed consumer, like the product sells itself regardless of if it's a car or like a cigar cutter, right? If you've done your research, you don't need somebody to sell you on it. Right. Necessarily.

If it's a difference between like models of the similar thing, do I need the extended cab or the extended bed or need both or whatever? I don't even know some of these car terms, but like that's where you might talk to a salesperson or you might like, if you trust a salesperson, like here's what I'm going to use it for. Which one of these two should I get? Right. And well, done the research online before that. So yeah, typically, well, like to say the last three times I bought a car.

Well, that's not true because I bought a Kia Soul as well. We went there to buy that vehicle. Yes. And we just want to test drive it and see the service record on the one or the two that were used. Two of them were new and two of them were used. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, so our reactions to somebody's answer can impact whether they feel comfortable enough to actually be honest with us and can impact future interactions with the person. So we don't want to be angry.

We don't want to appear hurt. And we don't even want to really show disappointment, even if it's something that we wanted, because we want to create that environment where they can say what they feel. And I think that's just like, that's kind of like people in 101, right? Like you don't, not everybody's going to like Brussels sprouts. So you know, or not everybody likes medium rare steaks. Not everybody likes whatever.

I mean, you know, we can, you can, you can remove it as far as you need to from like sex things to kind of get the understanding of it. Before this episode, I made dinner for myself and for Sarah. And when I started preparing her dinner, I'm like, I'm going to make this. Are you okay with that? And she's like, yes. And I'm like, do you want this and that and ask some details about how she wanted it prepared? And that's what she had then, you know, I, yeah, it's the same thing.

You know, like if you're like, well, you want it, you want it rare, right? You want this steak rare, right? Like that's not the right way to ask for consent. No, yeah. You want the kimchi and eggs with olive oil on top, right? Like, yeah. So we want, we want to be able, we want, we want whoever we're asking for consent for to feel comfortable giving the true answer. And one, that's just the right thing to do and the right environment to create with your friends, loved ones, what have you.

And two, it can prevent future liability as it were by them then rescinding or them feeling that they were pressured into giving consent when they didn't want to in the first place. Right. And I don't want to think about our feelings as being rejected because you're not really entitled to a yes to begin with. You know what I mean? Right. And we talked about this on the Barbie episode, like Ken is not entitled to Barbie's affections just because that's what he was made for. Absolutely.

And his desk here, it can be even helpful a practice responses to receiving a no. The first one here is thanks a lot and fuck you. No, I'm kidding. That's not the first one. The first one is, the first one is thanks for being honest. The second one is, okay, cool. And then the third suggestion here is awesome. Thank you for setting a boundary.

So you don't have to sound as cheesy as I do reading these off, but you know, like figure out what you would say if somebody says, no, I don't want to do that. Be like, hey, that's great. I just wanted to ask, you know, no, no pressure, no hard feelings, no worries. I say no worries a lot, like no worries. Right. A lot of times if I'm asking something, I try to give the person an out built into the question to take any pressure off.

You know, I'm not trying to pressure anybody into doing anything they don't want to do. Yeah. That's in our next, our next learning series, consent 102. Oh, okay. 201, what's the, I don't remember how the collegiate courses work. 101 is introductory. That's what this is. And then it's 201, isn't it? Okay. Then they have 202, 203, 204. They might, I don't, the 100 series is usually just a 101 and then they have the 301, 302, 304. Yeah. And then four.

Yeah. And then consent asking is our next course, which you can pay for and subscribe to right on our podcast page there. Yes. So this stuff, how to deal with the nos is from the Anti-Violence Project. All right. And I did find some notes about consent and then, which is good because I think we're, you know, I've got about a page left of notes here and I think that'll match our cigars pretty good and you can tell us how you came unglued bowling, but we're going to do notes on consent first.

Do you have any other advice for how to deal with a no? I mean, some of this sounds like selling, but I work, I do sales enablement. So a lot of it sounds like how to get the sales rep to go back out there and close the deal, but that's not really what this is. Like this shouldn't be seen as like selling, but a lot of it's kind of the same, like how to deal with rejection. A lot of times, well, so for my job, I deal with a lot of people who would be considered customers, right?

And from my perspective, I usually don't care what the decision is. I just need a decision to be made. And if I'm asking, it's because it's not my decision to make. And I try not to get tied to what I want the answer to be. I will give my opinion about what my answer should be, but then I give alternatives that are equally an option and then I leave it up to them and I just accept it because I don't really care. It doesn't really matter to me as long as a decision is made.

Like now it has to be made right now, but I don't care what the answer is really. It all comes to the end. I don't really tie my personal wellbeing or personal happiness or personal level of success to answers to questions, right? If I want to do something and I say, Hey, let's do this.

And somebody's like, no. Well, I might be disappointed for sure, but that doesn't, I don't go and think that I'm a terrible person and that I should never have asked that or nobody wants to do this thing with me or, you know, like I don't really tie that kind of mental health to those things.

It's kind of like you were saying, like, as long as there's a decision made at the end of the day, if everybody who has to interact with this thing is happy with whatever decision was made, I don't care because I don't use the thing. See, I'm way past that. I don't even care if people are happy or unhappy. Yeah. I usually take, yeah, the decision was made and I usually take meticulous notes. So if it's ever questioned, I can go back into my logs. I guess that's my corporate talk.

I haven't quite un-corporatized myself for the day. Right. As long as a decision is made and somebody's solution is out there that somebody somewhere is happy with, whether it's the people that are using it or just some higher up who never, it doesn't even understand what it's about. As long as somebody says something was done, it's fine with me. I really don't care. Yeah, exactly. Like, if it's within my power to make the decision, I will make it alone.

But if it is not, then I'm just going to implement and that is my job and it's not personal. It's just my job. So all right. So we're going to these notes about consent. This is from Indiana University. So this might be right in line with your consent sports or play sports or don't say people are playing sports. Okay. Yeah, safe sport. It's supposed to be, yeah. All right.

So consent is an agreement or permission expressed through affirmative voluntary words or actions that are mutually understandable to all parties to engage in a specific sexual act at a specific time. So of course, the university would be focused more on the sex things because you've got a lot of late teenagers who are generally no longer under their parents guidance 24 7. And it's a weird time. Like it really is a really weird time. Weirder for some than others, I'm sure.

But how about this one? I thought was very interesting to me because this is something that we see a lot of lawsuits about, but consent can be withdrawn at any time as long as it is clearly communicated. But I think, and that kind of goes back to the how to handle the no or how to handle the stop or how to handle the whatever is you have to, you have to have that environment where they feel comfortable doing so.

Because if I feel and you can correct me if I'm wrong, Mike, I don't know, because I'm not a lawyer and I'm not any of these things. But if consent can be a smile, then with the drawing consent could be a frown, right? Like the inverse almost has to be true. Yeah, I would say so. I mean, yeah, I am not a lawyer and I am not an expert in this topic by any stretch of the imagination. But for your own personal safety, if there is even a question of legitimacy in your mind back away.

Yeah, you know, in anything in life, I think that applies. Yeah. And I think it's probably important to reiterate here that while I have researched this, I'm not a consent expert. And a lot of the conversations on our show, we talk about a lot of different a lot of different things. And I would build them almost more as like philosophical and not really debates, but like philosophical conversations where in an ideal world, consent could be a smile and withdrawn consent could be a frown.

Does that stand up in a court of law? Don't know. This is a philosophical conversation. All right. You know, like we're striving to some sort of ideal that that simply doesn't exist. Right. Until lawyer AI AI comes out, we are not going to be able to answer these questions with any reliability. And then here, Indiana University again, reaffirms or reiterates that consent cannot be coerced or compelled by forced threat, deception or intimidation.

You can't force consent by threatening to leak naked pictures you got. Right. Yeah. Bribery consented to give you naked pictures doesn't mean you can then use those as leverage to gain consent for something else. Yeah. Coercion automatically nullifies any sort of concept of consent, I would say. Yes. Consent cannot be given by someone who is incapacitated.

And we talked about the incapacitations, drugs, alcohol, I guess, even if you're hiking and find somebody unconscious on the hiking trail that doesn't mean consent to sex. Oh, my God. Well, I sent you that one, right? I sent you that that news story about the the home and treater, the homeowner then like tied them up and like rigged them for like four hours. That happened. Something similar happened in Minnesota, where a guy knew that somebody was going to break into their house.

And it happened a couple of times. So he set up a trap for them, captured them and tortured them and then killed them in this space. OK. Oh, is this the Little Falls guy? The Little Falls guy. Yeah. Yeah. Funnily enough, he was a fairly big wig in the that region of Boy Scouts. Oh, really? I didn't know that. Yeah, I met him. He seemed like a psycho. I mean, reading the story, I didn't know him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I didn't know him.

I mean, like I met him, but I didn't like know him, know him. I had actually at the I think it was I don't know if it was the it wasn't the J.C.'s ice fishing thing, but we did a we did a Boy Scout ice fishing thing. And he like talked to me for quite a while on the lake. So it was it was interesting. He was an interesting person. Right. And he would have got away with it if he didn't video record it.

Yeah, I think that, you know, I talked to my brother about this because at the time that that happened, I was a little a little younger and a little more hot headed with things. And I was like, well, of course, like you break into somebody's house, like you forfeit everything basically, in my opinion. But Minnesota doesn't have the castle doctrine. So yada yada. I think I think he went way too far with everything, you know, and of course, recording it doesn't help.

Yeah. From a legal perspective, he definitely went too far. I mean, if he wanted to wait in his basement and shoot them as they came in, that's probably his right. You know, but you can't like fucked up. I think it's fucked up. I didn't say that. But capturing them and like video recording it. Yeah. Yeah. There's like layers and layers and layers of fucked up behavior that's way past. Yeah. And we're not we're not lawyers.

But I don't think it's within your right in a state that doesn't have the castle doctrine. I think if you're if you know they're coming and you have the ability to remove yourself from the from the situation, you have a legal obligation to remove yourself from the situation. All he had to do is set up a TV and a chair, you know, right in front of the window. Yeah. Just saying like, you know, not that I would do that myself.

But yeah, I mean, there's other ways you can prevent people from coming into your house, I guess. And if you know they're coming, I know we poopoo the the law enforcement sometimes on the show, but we also don't poopoo them other times, because it's kind of like a case by case basis. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, but sometimes you just have to write a society with a law enforcement is non functional. But yeah, criticism of authority is also paramount. So there's a balance.

Yeah. So yeah, that was a little that was a little fucked up situation. But yeah, I remember and this wasn't told to me by a lawyer. But if I'm in the house alone and I'm physically able to leave the premises when I hear somebody break in, then I have a legal obligation to leave the premises. I can't stay and defend my house in Minnesota. Some states are different.

However, in Minnesota, if you have people that are in the house that cannot flee, cannot leave the premises, then you are well within from what I heard. I'm not a lawyer. And you are well within your rights to stay in defense. Would that be animals included or just people? Nope, nope, not animals. I don't think just livestock. And that was your livelihood. Right. Because farmers can kill or even hobby farmers.

If you have chickens or something and there's like a fox or a neighbor's dog, you can just shoot it and say it was threatening my livestock. And I believe that's well within the legality. Yeah. Yeah. And if you're just a homeowner and there's a mean dog in your yard, you can't just go shoot it. I don't think it's kind of the same thing. So yeah, it's the same thing. Where you can act to stop a criminal act, but you can't take retribution after the criminal act has stopped.

The law is the law and the law is weird. And the law has to have clear cut lines in the sand, I guess, as it were. By the way, I am finger burning right now. I don't know how far you are. I've still got like two inches. So I'm going to hurry up. I'm sorry. I've been talking so much. I know. I know. I have backups. We don't have to get to it because I've only got a couple sections left. Also the last thing from Indiana University.

Consent cannot be assumed based on silence, the absence of a know or stop or the existence of a prior or current relationship or prior sexual activity. So that's, we've been talking about that. We've been talking about that. I'm going to smoke harder. This is Nice Ashes 2, smoke harder. Nice Ashes 3 is smoke hard with a vengeance. So who can give? Yeah. It's not Christmas until Hans Gruber falls from the tower. So who can give consent?

Age of consent in America, it ranges from 16 to 18 years old. And there are provisions for, there's a, I believe there's a year, a certain number of years from somebody who might be like 18 can still engage in acts with somebody X number of years younger than them. It varies state by state. It varies. Minnesota is three. I know that North Dakota is 18 hard line.

Okay. The last time, the last time you said stuff like that, somebody texted me, it was like, boy, Mike answered that question really quick. Well, I did, I was, I was, I was in safe zone. And when I was in high school, I did Minnesota enable and I'm involved with certain athletics with youths. So it's like, I know, I know that for good reasons. Yeah. It was just a funny joke because somebody was like, my God, Mike answered that fast as if you're hanging out at the bowling alleys.

Like, Hey kid, are you with an X number of years of me? Anyway, so who, who can't be, who can't give consent? So we talked about who can anyone of legal age of consent, which is different a lot of times than a legal age of majority, because we talked about, there's not really a legal age of majority because everything is spread across usually 16 to 21, you know, driving, smoking, voting, renting a car is 25 usually. So anyway, who can't give consent?

It would be a person incapable of doing so if they can't understand the facts, the nature extent or implications, which is kind of all the stuff we've been talking about. But the incapacitation can be due to drugs, alcohol, a mental disability, being asleep or unconscious or based on their age and intoxication, whether it's drugs or alcohol and impairment are not presumptive, presumptively equivalent to incapacitation. I guess. Yes. And power dynamics.

I don't know if they had power dynamics on there, but no, this is still from Indiana university. Okay. But just because you're intoxicated, that does not mean that you would be incapacitated, but it doesn't mean that you can also necessarily give consent. It's a level, like it's a spectrum. It's not a necessarily black and white thing. Yes. Although I suppose if you carry like a pocket breathalyzer. Sure. Yeah. I've probably heard of it.

There's probably some, I don't know, there's probably some legal BAC, right? Blood alcohol content for when you're no longer able to make legal decisions. I'm sure. The next thing is teaching children about consent. So this was kind of the thing that kind of spurred this whole conversation. I don't know. Do you know many, I know you've got like nieces and nephews, right? Yes. Are they asking for consent from other kids before they hug or like high five or stuff or? I don't think so.

I'm not aware if they do or don't, but I'm assuming not. I know that a couple of them are involved in athletics and typically like the high fives and all the celebration of sporting events is implied consent for sure. You know? Yeah. High five is either give the high five or you leave a homie hanging, which I guess is like saying don't leave a homie hanging is not creating that positive consent environment we were talking about earlier. Definitely not.

No. No. But you also kind of have to know your audience. And I was thinking about this today too. I was like, man, all of my guy friends and I hug. We hug when we see each other. We hug when we leave. Like it's just, but I don't remember asking consent. I think like, I don't know if it was me, but I feel like somebody went in for the first one and then we're just like, Hey, that's, I guess that's just what we do. But that's like, but that's fine because everybody seems to be fine with it. Right.

I think that's more of a modern man thing. Like my dad's not hugging anybody for sure. I mean, I tried and I tried, but he just won't. Right. Exactly. I'm just kidding. I did. But you know, I dev and I hug, I think. I don't know. I'm pretty sure we do, but he's older and my other buddy is eight years older than I am. And my other buddy is like eight or eight or so years older than I am. And we, we hug, but I guess that's still modern, modern ish.

They're not Vietnam vets or World War II vets or Korean vets or something. You know? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I like that. Some people don't like that. And I don't hug people that don't like to be hugged. I was just, you know, that was just something in my life where it's like, yeah, you know, most of my friends like to hug. Um, I, I, we have, uh, friends as a couple, right? And I never go to initiate a hug with the wife of one of our friends or something.

Right. Like I don't initiate that if they come for a hug, they get a hug, but I don't initiate that. I don't expect a hug. I don't, you know, that's just in my mind. I'm like, I will hug my friends, but I'm not, even if the wife is one of my friends, I'm not going to hug the wife unless that wife wants it. You know what I mean? Right. That sounds so bad, but it's, you know what it sounds, it sounds bad, but I don't know how else to put it. I don't know how else to put it.

I, I'm not trying to make it sound bad. It's just like, I'm not going to initiate it because I want them to feel comfortable. I don't want them to feel like they owe a hug. You know what I mean? Right. I don't usually hug people randomly. I don't really hug anybody. Yeah. You and I hug though, don't we? Yeah, we do. Yeah, we do. Yeah. I don't really hug. We don't see each other very often, you know? We don't, we don't. So Sarah's mother likes to, Sarah's mother likes to hug me, which is fine.

You're Sarah or my Sarah? My Sarah. Both is probably true. Both is probably true. I think I know I hug. My Sarah's mom is like the biggest hugger. Yeah. I've, I've hugged Sarah's mom before. I don't see her very often either. So. Yeah. I mean, I don't know many people that Sarah, my Sarah's mom hasn't hugged. I think that's a shorter list. My Sarah probably. Maybe. So teaching children about consent. And I think this is, this is important.

And I always, I always tell like, cause sometimes we have family, they might not be like immediate or they might be like distant or whatever. And they're like, Hey, you want to give me a hug to our, to our daughter? And I'm like, it's up to you. You can decide if you want to hug them or not. Right. I don't, I don't make a big deal out of it. You know, we've got the friends who say, well, before you can hug their child, you ask their child if they want to hug.

But it's like, it's an every time thing, which I guess is fine. You know, I'm not, I don't know. I'm kind of like, maybe that's the way it should be. I don't know. Right. I mean, I think it'd be weird if the adult like, uh, wanted a hug from your child, not like, you know what I mean? Like are you psychologically dependent on getting a hug from the child? They kept it. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Yeah. What this is, is like the, the parent is telling their child to ask consent from my child before giving a hug. Oh, sure. Like every, every time. And I mean, I guess like you have to teach consent. I don't, I don't know a hundred percent how I feel about that because it's such like an active thing and maybe, maybe it needs to be. I just try and, I just try and make sure that my child knows if they don't want to hug or if they don't want to fist bump or high five, they don't have to.

Right. Like everything else, it's a fine line. There's a great area. It's a fine line and I don't, I don't think there's anything wrong with like telling your kids to ask for consent. I think that's a big thing. And I think on the, on the counterpoint is letting your children know it's okay to not consent to things. Right. You know, I don't, I don't know, I don't know what age, like the idea of consent kind of like takes shape.

So I don't know that calling it consent initially is, I don't, you know, I don't know. It's tough. I think a lot of it's personal comfort level, like for me, let's say I am scoring at a bowling tournament, right? Yeah. Like a high five, I can do a high five. Typically I don't because you're supposed to be neutral. You know what I mean? But yeah, like I'm not looking for a hug, even if I know the kid's parents, which usually I do. Right. Typically I know the kid and the kid's parents.

It's not like we're strangers or anything. In some cases I'm friends with their parents, but yes. Yeah. I'm not even looking for a high five most of the time. You know what I mean? Yeah. Even if they're doing really well, it's like, it's not really like when you're like coaching kids or you're not coaching kids.

But if other kids, like if I were to go to a birthday party where people, where kids are bowling and a kid I knew or a kid I didn't know, uh, through a strike, I might be like, Hey, high five. Or I might just clap and like look at them and smile while I'm clapping to let them know. Good job. You know what I mean? Right. Like give them a thumbs up. I wouldn't necessarily be like, Oh, come in for a big hog. You know what I mean?

I mean, it's, it's a lot of this stuff is situational and, uh, very dependent on the relationship you have with the people involved. So when I was, when I was in the boy scouts as an adult, I wasn't ever a scout master, but I worked with the adult leaders. And so a lot of times I ended up at their scouting events. I didn't hug the scouts, you know, right? I could be enthusiastic and I could be supportive by smiling, telling them good job or giving them a thumbs up.

I did not have to touch kids who do things, you know, which a lot of Scott masters seem to forget, but, uh, not a lot, not a lot. That's probably fair. You can get a really enthusiastic when you see, well, in bowling, you see a kid bowl a 300 game. That's awesome. But that's an excited moment for them and their parents and stuff like that. Like I am not in that situation.

It can be an exciting moment for you, but it's not like I need to hug this child now kind of, I don't know what kind of moments that is. Like if it's my child, yes, I would hug them. Exactly. Hey, awesome job. I'm not hugging somebody else's child. Exactly. That's actually a warning sign in my opinion. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, which child is yours out there bowling? Oh, no, no. I just like to hug the 300s. Right.

Yeah. Well, the female bowling coaches get a little more huggy cause for reasons, I guess, but I, yeah. So the thing to remember about hugs with kids is that they're often the very first kinds of interpersonal touch that children learn to navigate on their own because everybody wants to hug them. You know, grandparents, aunts and uncles hug, kiss, that kind of thing. And this is all from Imagination Press Family.

They've got a book called like, Don't Hug the Cuoca, some kind of animal, I guess, that kind of talks about don't hug people unless they want to be hugged, which I don't know, it was probably a good one. You might put that on the old list for the kiddos, but you know, I think, I think the thing with kids is you want to meet them where they're at currently.

And so talking about consent and like the details that we've gone into on this show are probably more details than people need or than certain kids need at certain ages. Right. Most of it's common sense. I mean, a lot of it's common sense and you want to teach, you want to mostly, it doesn't so much matter about the words, right?

You want to have that environment where it's okay for people to say no, you want to have that environment where it's okay for your children to say, no, I don't want to give you a hug. Right. And so to you as the parent or to family or friends or anybody else out there, you want them to know it's okay to say no. And I think that's the biggest thing. I guess one last thing, because this was something that kind of came up in my research. Right on.

What people, people were saying, well, if I touch somebody, is that assault? Now we're not, we're not lawyers, but I went to Cornell law school and somebody was like, well, I hugged somebody and now they're claiming assault. And you know, it's just some internet person. So who knows? Who knows if it was truly a hug or what? Like the internet is cancer. Right? Well, yeah. But I thought like, Hey, that's a good like kind of counterpoint. Like we're talking about consent.

And if you do something and you didn't have consent, is it assault? I mean, obviously certain things are very definitely assault, right? But like a hug, right? Or a hand on the shoulder or what have you. And this is what Cornell law school says, and we're not lawyers. So do your own research if you're going to go randomly hug people on the street, I guess.

But assault is generally defined as an intentional act that puts another person in reasonable apprehension of imminent harmful or offensive contact. And we all know offense, offensive contact. I don't know every time my boss messages me, I think that's offensive contact, but we'll talk about the power stuff briefly before we're done here. No physical injury is required, but the act or must have intended to cause a harmful or offensive contact with the victim.

And the victim must have thereby been put in immediate apprehension of such contact. So would a hug be assault? If it was somebody who had a medical condition or a previous experience that triggered some PTSD or something, I can see that. If you give somebody a bear hug and refuse to let them go, I can see that might be assault. I don't know for sure if going for a hug and kind of being denied, but you made contact, but it wasn't like forceful contact.

I don't know if that's necessarily assault, but again, I'm not a lawyer. So a lot of the stuff we like to talk about in the show is like common sense stuff and philosophical like ideal world kind of stuff, not things as they necessarily are. Right. I mean, use common sense, which to the best of your ability. Yeah. I mean, I guess like in terms of consent, if you don't have really the explicit yes or like a smile and nod, then just don't, you know, like just don't.

That's probably the best advice. Now I want you to talk to me about this power stuff, people in power. I will say that this leaf now is quite unwrapped here at the end, maybe a full three quarters of an inch unwrapped at the end here and not even by the cap, but where I told you that leaf came up a little bit. Sure. See, and I smoked mine down to about a half an inch and the end flowered out, which is pretty typical and I did not have any unwrapping at all. So mine had held up really well.

But you know, they're from the same batch. We're in different humidor's, but you know, they're cigars. They're a handmade product. Every single one is not made the same. So it hasn't really affected the taste. It hasn't affected the taste. It hasn't affected my enjoyment other than I just wanted to mention that it's happened. Right. And that's because we typically have cigars in the same box, but we keep them in separate humidor's so our humidity is going to be different.

Yes. And things like that. So if one person has something happen, it's not really indicative of anything. Even if both of us do, it's not necessarily indicative, but it's a better correlation than just like one random thing happening. So yeah, and we just mentioned because we want to be good stewards of the cigars. So I don't want to recommend something and then have somebody say, well, it unwrapped on me or did this on me. And then for me to say, well, that actually also happened to me.

I just didn't mention it. Doing my due diligence as a person. But yeah, so you were talking about like employment and some other things where consent is not possible. Yeah. Typically if there's any sort of power dynamic, like a police officer arresting someone or a boss and an employee, you know, a coach and an athlete, anything like that, consent is not possible in those situations. Typically that's not necessarily legal.

Sometimes it goes to legal, but it's typically against any sort of organizational rules. So if you're working, it's against your ethics. So if you're working at a corporation, typically dating is allowed, but not allowed within the same hierarchy if those people are at different levels of that hierarchy. You know, and a lot of times they have like, you have to disclose that to somebody higher too, I believe. Right.

Yeah. Like you can't date the intern at your place of work, you know, something like that. If you work in a place that has interns or student workers or whatever, you mean indentured servitude servants. Right. Yeah. So if you work at a large organization and you are middle management, you can date a secretary, but you're not allowed to date your secretary. You know, that sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Even though that's, I mean, that's a trope too.

I don't know how common it is, but it's definitely a societal trope. Yeah. A lot of these tropes, like you see them a lot in movies and like TV shows and stuff, but I don't know how often they happen in real life. Maybe they used to, I wasn't alive, you know, in the before time of Mike. So you weren't alive. Yeah, I was not alive. I cannot speak to what happened at that time. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Back when people actually had like secretaries and they were called secretaries, like everyone saw, I'll get a corporate email saying like, it was from some big like C-suite person, but it was actually sent by somebody on behalf of that person. It's kind of like the dictated, not read. Right.

But nowadays, like in corporate America, a lot of people are just remote or it's like, even if you're not remote, you might as well be because it's not like the person, the big C-suite person actually knows who's sending out the thing. They just say, hey, I want some kind of communication to go out. Right. Well, secretary type positions are going away anyway, as pretty much everybody universally can type for themselves.

So sending out, leaving a page long email, what does it take, like 10 minutes? You know what I mean? It takes no time at all to do it yourself. And then you don't have to have a different person employed. Some of these higher ups, at least in corporate America, they need people to do that for them because they're really not as, well, we talked about this with like Trump, right?

Like he just says whatever he says and he would probably benefit from having somebody else write his speeches or following the script or whatever, because it makes you appeal to more people. And so a lot of these like big C-suite people probably draft it and say, I want something like this, but put the PC spin on it or whatever. Right. I know that- Because they want to be seen as competent and all caring and all knowing and the Lord and master of all.

So- Yeah. Trump traditionally has the bad side effect of implicating himself in whatever crime he's trying to deny or whatever. I shouldn't say it quite that way, but- This was the best crime anybody could ever commit and I did. Right. Yeah. It's like, oh, you can't prove that I did this bad thing because we covered it up the right way. You know, something like that. Yeah. Yeah. It's like- I covered it up just like so, so covered it up. It's like, oh, okay. Right.

In his denial, he's actually just admitting guilt. Yeah. Yeah. Admitting guilt, but in a way that makes it so that he's not legally liable, which makes it look bad, but you know. Yeah. Whatever. It's all what it is. Yeah. I mean, I'm not attacking the person who is Donald Trump for that. I think it's very entertaining, but it's not what we're typically accustomed to.

No. So Mike, I think we're going to have to save your coming in glued story for another episode, but let's lead off the other episode with that story. We can do that. We can do that. But any last thoughts on consent, Mike, before we wrap? No. I think that it was quite encompassing with the information. So. Yeah. I know I sent you a text when I was researching that it was kind of like a rabbit hole of nightmares. Yeah, it can be.

But most of those nightmares were from people who were in situations where the environment of consent was not there. And I think that's kind of the important thing is don't be a creeper. Don't be coercing people or threatening people or intimidating people into giving consent. And at the end of the day, no means no. And if consent can come in all sorts of styles and shapes, so can the no. So just read the room. And if in doubt, like Mike said, just back away. Right.

I mean, if you're trying to convince somebody to do something they don't want to do, you're probably a loser. So you're probably in the wrong. Yeah. Yeah. You're you're not doing the right thing. So there we go. Yeah. Final thoughts on the cigar, Mike. I liked it. I thought it was really good. It milled out towards the end. That's not a bad thing. Spicy. Really good. Mine is unwrapping. So I'm going to have to probably put this out. I can't get as far as you did. Yeah, no, mine's very good.

Yes. It started off with a very spicy head and it continued on the spice level, but it became rounder. I don't think it became less spicy. I just think the cigar got more full bodied as I think. I think I think it did get a little less spicy because I think there's quite a bit of spice on the cap. And I think that could be true. It was rough. Yeah. But it was still it was spicy throughout and more flavors became more prominent throughout as well.

So it was probably a little bit of both, but spicy throughout. Very, very spicy, like Mike said at the at the get go and great, great stick. I really like this one. Two thumbs up for me. Yes. The consular consigliere consigliere consigliere. Very nice. Very nice smoke. So I recommend that and recommend creating a safe environment for consent. Be safe. Have fun. Have a good week.