[00:00:00]
Claire: The kids were talking about downloading, what is it, RedNote?
Quinn: Jesus Christ, the one that just like full up front says it's Chinese propaganda.
Claire: But also TikTok was that, TikTok is that like, why are we acting like this one is worse? Like we already did this, it's like trading a metal gun for a 3D printed gun. You're still shooting something.
Quinn:Welcome to Not Right Now, the podcast about parenting through all of this.
Claire: We'll be talking about slash crashing out over topics like
Quinn:Soccer snacks and sea level rise.
Claire: While the Arctic melts? Question mark?
Quinn:Cleaning out uneaten lunchboxes again at 4 PM or 10 PM every day.
Claire: Youth sports and other camp signups you forgot about and won't get into anyways, and is there such a thing as unstructured time anymore? For anyone? For me?
Quinn:It's not an advice show.
Claire: It's a you're not alone and you're also not crazy for screaming in the shower kind of show. I'm Claire Zulgi from Evil Witches.
Quinn:And I'm Quinn Emmett from Important Not Important.
Claire: You can find details on anything we talk about in the show notes or at our website notrightnow.show.
Quinn: And if you like what you hear today, please share it with a parent who needs it or who might laugh and tell their kids to be quiet and then drop us a nice little five star review.
Claire: And reminder, you can send questions or feedback to questions at notrightnow.show.
Quinn: We've actually come up with a name for this show. We're calling it Not Right Now.
Do you want to talk about maybe why that's meaningful to you, that phrase?
Claire: I mean, I think you were talking about that, because you were actually saying that to your kids numerous times. And we all say that as parents, like my kids will be asking me to look at something or help them while I'm already doing a task that's usually for them.
So that is a saying Not Right Now, but also I think as parents, we feel that about the world in general, like I just unfollowed a [00:01:00] bunch of social media accounts because, Not Right Now, I don't have time to get, let myself get depressed or obsessed or distracted by various things that keep us from whatever we need to be focusing on at the time.
And yet, at the same time, we have to be sort of cognizant about things like climate change and AI and people's rights. And so I think that's modern life, modern parenting, that there are so many distractions, so many big and tiny problems, and they all matter. And at the same time, we are just trying to, like, finish our, you know, crossword puzzle on our phone or to finish our workout.
Quinn: Or literally just to sit on the toilet, it's can I, what, you, please stop standing outside the door.
Claire: Yeah, yes. A hundred percent.
Quinn: There's nothing more pressing, and truly, if one of your siblings is hurt, how hurt? Because I need five more minutes. They're not going to get more hurt.
Claire: Yeah. What are your feelings on Not Right Now?
Quinn: It's a hundred percent what you're saying, and I can't remember what exactly your response was, but you were saying [00:02:00] it's something like a statement and a hope or a statement and like a promise or something where it's like not, it's the fundamental parenting thing. Ignore everything else in the world.
It's the fundamental parenting thing, especially if you have more than one, but even then, like you said, you are actively doing something with your hands and probably your brain for one of them that they just asked you for. And either or another one asks you to do something at the same time.
They didn't bring a towel into the shower for a world record 7,000th fucking time in a row. Or the same one asks you to do something else with the same level of impatience that they asked about the first thing that you're actively doing for them. It's some version of, Not Right Now.
It's some version of like, you understand that I cannot do both of these things at the same time, right? And it's, like sharks, their eyes are fucking glazed over.
But it's also fighting for your space.
Claire: It's the texts that we're getting from politicians I've never heard of before saying we've got to fight Trump. Please send me money.
Not right now.
Quinn: Day one. I truly almost threw my phone in the fucking garbage.
Claire:Yeah. No, I’m almost like we'll vote against you if you [00:03:00] text me right now. And no, Not Right Now. I can't sign up to help with Catholic School’s Week providing the teachers lunch. I do intend to, but you know, Not Right Now. Cause I also have to sign up for spring sports and make the grocery list.
So it is everything that comes and it's not just people with kids. You know, I think part of what we both care about is that we want people who don't have kids to know what we go through. We want people with kids to understand that this conversation is not just about us as well, but if we can all understand each other better and the constant stream of distractions, tragedies, priorities, if we could at least have a laugh about it and have a discussion about it and you know, carry on.
That's the best we can do.
Quinn: And it applies, like you said, it's such a wide range, it's not just like any version of parents, its coaches and band teachers and grandparents and aunts and uncles. I remember, I have three wonderful siblings. I’m the second, older brother who has a couple kids, me, and then younger brother and then [00:04:00] younger sister.
And obviously she's everybody's favorite, as she should be. But it was during COVID, early COVID, and we had just come to the East Coast. And, I guess it was like Julyish, so then, what had it been, four months or whatever? Teaching preschool and all that shit, and my brother, very kindly, he's in Brooklyn, and he locked himself in an apartment for two weeks, and he's like, I'm coming to see those kids, but they're not going to get it from me, and so he shut himself up, and then he drove all the way down, and he's a huge part of their lives, like when my siblings roll in, it's like Justin Bieber, my kids are like kill my dad, can I come live with you?
Again, I get it, but he rolls in, and again, none of this was a surprise to him, but I guess I had been expressing just how tired and defeated I was for three months straight, and, he got there, I think, in the afternoon, and saw the whole afternoon, the evening, and of everything, and getting ready for our completely fake, failing homeschool the next morning. And I remember they finally went to sleep, and he poured me a glass of [00:05:00] something strong back when I was still drinking, and he just looked at me, and he goes, Why are you so tired all the time? And it was because in two hours, he was like, this is every day?
And it's that. It's that.
It's on a good day. Again, if you're a coach, a grandparent, an aunt, or an uncle who we always joke that grandparents and aunts and uncles, it's great because you can blow in and give them sugar and presents and then leave and it's like, yeah but, it’s still a lot.
Claire: That's why I think you start wanting grandkids because you're like, Oh, it would be so great to just have the fun parts and then just, you know, go home to your house and have quiet time after that. It's not because I really want my kids to procreate. I also want revenge. You know, I want them to know, especially, I want my younger son to have five boys.
So he can still know what it's like, but yeah as my parents said, I said, what's more fun being a parent or being a grandparent? And they said a grandparent because it's like parenting without all the BS. So yeah, the BS is the Not Right Now. I remember one of those weird moments of feeling like I had crossed a threshold in a good [00:06:00] way of parenting where we have a finished basement and the goal was always like, that's where the kids play.
And my kids were probably like maybe two and five and we had a friend over and her kids were at the same age and we were doing that thing where the kids are constantly creating chaos at this level, you know, at the atmosphere.
You know, they're trying to kill themselves and they're asking you for things and you somehow are having, your patchworking a conversation above that, even though you're both grabbing kids and saying stop that and Not Right Now and just like I have transcended a certain level here and that is, I can tell in a weird way, like how it will be strange when the kids maybe grow up and move out one day.
Cause you'll be like, what am I going to do with all of this extra skill set and energy that I was able to carve out? And now what? Like now I have a hobby. How is that going to work?
Quinn: The maybe of them growing up and moving out was really doing a lot of work that you threw in there. But also, it's not just, forget I miss them. They've been a part of my life. What the fuck am I supposed to do with these skills? Like, how are they [00:07:00] applicable to anything? Anything else than just managing? Yeah, it's yeah. So Not Right Now. And it's just also just fighting for, again, your space and your sanity so that you can be a better parent or grandparent or whatever it might be. I see it again, we got so lucky, we have both grandmas down the street for however long we get it and it's amazing to watch them come over and be amazing and they're both so amazing and then you'll just look around and you go where'd grandma go?
And you realize she just fucking left. Cause she still has the Not Right Now thing, and she's like, and in addition, I don't have to do this. I'm just fucking leaving and, but also take me with you.
Claire: Right.
Quinn: Fuck.
Claire: Yeah, a hundred percent. No, it was funny. We, my mom, you know, we could talk about aging some other day and she's a different kind of person than she used to be in various ways. But she's way more indulgent to the kids than she was to my brother and me. And like, for one thing, I had to learn how to use a [00:08:00] knife and fork a very certain way as if the queen might come over any moment, you know, and if she caught you buttering a whole piece of bread instead of a tiny piece of bread, like, forget it. You're going to jail. And so my kids, meanwhile, they can do whatever they want, but she, I don't know if she was tired or whatever, but she, my younger son was tipping up his plate to drink melted ice cream after dinner. And she said, stop eating that way. And I was like, you better fucking listen.
Like she brought it out like the old school and I was kind of glad too.
Quinn: This is what I was talking about. you didn't fucking believe me. It's still there.
Claire: Yeah, exactly. That's why partially I'm so mad because I learned from the, I learned from the best.
Quinn: I know, I yeah, I'm working on, I don't know, I guess you can call it being less of a dick, but it all comes back to the the Not Right Now thing, like every morning I wake up and go, okay, have 20 minutes with my oldest before he's got to go because middle school starts earlier. How do I maximize that 20 minutes with him, for him, and the other ones, like, how do I survive and [00:09:00] do it and 20 minutes into it, every time I'm just like, no wonder they hate me! But also what could I get for them on the market today? I don't know.
Claire: I mean, I just find it amazing that you try to maximize that time versus we just, I don't know, we hit the things that we have to hit, which is like, are you dressed? Have you eaten? You know, do you have your stuff? Go. And if we happen to have a little laugh along the way, or time to pet the dog, or something like that, and we're not mad, like, then that's good.
Quinn: Yeah, and we do that too. Every, everybody in my life. Everybody in my life fucking hates my checklist so much. Every time I'm like, did you do your list? They're like, forget if I did your list, old man. Let's just talk about how much I dislike your whole thing. And I'm like, but if it didn't, how would you know what to do? Because you still stare at that list like someone else wrote it. I made them write in their own hand. And like, it's not the same list every single day. Little check marks. I got it off Etsy. It's great. I'll put the link in the show note things. It's actually great, but every day, it's apparently new [00:10:00] information. Every day it's an affront to their values and how they could possibly do everything. So we try to get through it, too, but I don't know. I don't know.
Claire: We could talk forever about systems, and the hopes and dreams that we put in the systems,
Quinn: I guess that's, maybe that's my just to finish, because you were saying you were surprised we don't just try to get through it, and I think one of my biggest issues, which I'm pretty open about, but is clearly still just partially buried and partially out there, is my best friend died when he was 30 and didn't get to have kids, and, I'm not dealing with any of that well. My brother almost died from a thing and I was a huge dick to him for the first 20 years of our lives. This and this. And so I am, I'm fully the Hamilton, like, why do you write like you're running out of time guy? Except it's about parenting in 20 minutes when everyone's exhausted and really doesn't want to fucking unload the dishwasher. And so I'm trying to both make it the most loving 10 minutes and also yell at them to empty the dishwasher. It's not working for anybody. And that's, I think, why I should stop being surprised every [00:11:00] day but also…
Claire: Well, that surprise sounds so magical. I mean, why stop? Well, I want to go back for a second to the Not Right Now of it all as well, because as we're talking and who knows when this will be heard or by whom but there was an inauguration this week and I think a lot of us are maybe rethinking, we're older, we're more jaded, we're more experienced, how we can be good people and make change in the world as these years go ahead, but also be strategic and not be suckers with our time and our energy. And like, I know now from experience that I can't parent these kids, and by which I mean parents I mean not lose my shit or be depressed. Like I'm not saying be magical or fun or anything, just function, if I'm distracted and distraught and anxious and depressed. But I'm also smart enough to know that, like, I don't need to post, make a post on Instagram stating for the record that I support trans people's right to exist.
I do. [00:12:00] I'm hoping that my time on this earth and record so far speaks for itself. And just trying not to get distracted by the ways that we're messaging or the actions that aren't really actions to demonstrate that we resist. And instead letting our, I don't know, that's, I guess, part of the, the Not Right Now is like the Not Right Now of like, I'm not going to let that throw me off course if I can in any way.
I'm trying to use my lessons.
Quinn: I fully get it. I, unfortunately, it's both been four years, we've all aged, at least I've aged, 4, 000 fucking years, and not well. At all. In any capacity. In the meantime, I've made changing the world my job, which as my wife has told me repeatedly this is a choice you made, bud. You're not some person that was born on the front lines of something terrible.
Look at you. So it's an elective. I need to learn how to deal with it better. I've really gotten better. And then, this happened again. And, like, stay off all the shit, because the one thing we were all addicted to last time is now [00:13:00] like a Nazi rally, basically, with a live feed. So not that one. There's 10,000 other ones. That's a whole different discussion of Not Right Now. Don't do it. And by the way, Not Right Now I really don't want to waste our energy on that specific subject. It's more, like you said, this moment. We realized fuck, our kids are old now. They're learning about the three branches of government, where, last time, 2015 or whatever, they were babies. So we had to sit them down that morning and be like, hey, if you see kids getting fucking bullied because of this stand up and tell somebody and this and that and this is what's gonna happen. You're gonna be fucking fine, this and all this, but I was like not only am I 10, 000 years older like that grail knight at the end of Indiana Jones who just falls over, but Not Right Now like, but we don't have the space to just fall over, because now I'm like these kids are about to find out some real shit, and how do we keep our heads about us?
Claire: Yeah. No, that's 100 percent what we are all talking about. And that again, we have to contain all that at once. And I just had therapy, we've had three forms of therapy this week as a family, we had family therapy, I had my talk therapy, [00:14:00] and I had my medicine therapy. And the medicine therapy lady, I feel like her job is always telling me that I'm doing a great job and to keep going, which is fine.
Like, that's great. Just keep prescribing me what I need. but she was like, did you, last time you get your blood checked, did you get your vitamin D levels checked? And I was like, I don't think so. But also I'm like, I'm doing the best I can. You know, I think I'm fine. And then she laughed and she was like, yeah, I agree.
I'm like, you know, I can't, it's like, I don't know about you. It's like protein. That's the new thing is like, are you eating enough protein? Where's your protein coming from? I'm like, in this economy, I can't think about that.
Quinn: It's two things. For me, right over there, I don't keep any snacks in my office. I talk to my kids all the time. Self awareness hacks, because I'll just eat them all. Except a huge pile of protein bars, which is 90 percent of my diet, because I don't make time to eat real food otherwise. Sure, I guess I'm getting my protein, but by default, because I just bought four fucking boxes of these things. But on the other hand, it's like, no, I hide in the pantry and eat fucking trail mix for dinner.
I don't know what my vitamin D levels are. Are you fucking kidding me?[00:15:00]
Claire: Yeah, my son was, we were laughing because my older one was, he was feeling nauseous. And my husband, who was like much nicer than I am, was like, should we take him to the pediatrician? And I was like, for feeling nauseous, not throwing up? I was like, that's not like, that's a waste of time, of everyone's time.
And then I pointed out, I was like, he's been eating a diet of bagels and Lunchables, I would say. So it's also possible he hasn't had like a good shit in a week and he hasn't been outside. So no, we're not going to the doctor. Let's just hang out on that.
Quinn: Yeah. Congrats. I'm a doctor. That's the answer. I know. Here's some coffee. Go run around.
Claire: Yes here, have a cigarette and enjoy. Yeah, so we are all containing multitudes like that.
Quinn: It is. And that is. What also makes Not Right Now so meta is because it is holding off all these different things while actually trying to do something for yourself, or your kid, or your partner or all three at once, but also this hope, it's like an active hope, Not Right Now.
Claire: Yeah, and the other thing too is like Not Right Now,[00:16:00] again, with this administration is like not knowing what is real, for instance, like there are these executive orders basically saying that people are not people and things like that.
And I did think about telling my kids about that at dinner the other night. Because they do have friends who are trans and gender queer, but also I was like, you know what? I don't even really know what this executive order does. Like, it's certainly sending a message. I get it. Like, loud and clear.
That's not new. Like, we knew that was coming. And so, I was like, let me not just start popping off angrily when we don't even know what it is.
Quinn: No, you're right back down that road again. And it's as everybody says, and I think it's at least partially true, which is that's the point, is to just completely fucking distract you with this and just wear you out.
Claire: There's a woman I know I used to work with at the AV club and their house burned down. So people started a GoFundMe and they put it on Instagram and I donated money and I've donated, you know, I've done Direct Aid and World Kitchen so far, and then this woman, she put up another GoFundMe cause I'm a friend of theirs.
This is horrible. It sounds like I'm making chit chat and it's not chit chat. This is simply the world we live in. They're like, our friend's kid has leukemia and can you fund this GoFundMe? And I kind of was like, no, I can't. I mean, I, God, I hope these people do okay. I can't, but I was like, this is like a world that we're living in right now where it's like that Simpsons where there's the cute lamb and then they're like, get out of the way. Cause there was like another cuter lamb behind it, you know?
And, and that's how it is with like emergencies right now.
Quinn: It's funny, funny is the wrong fucking word, I had to explain what gallows humor was the other day, they were like, why would you do that? I'm like, look [00:19:00] around! In the context of Not Right Now, a big part of my work these past four or five years, especially with COVID stuff and everything else, has been really just focus on control what you can control, you know, all you can do is all you can do in the sense of if there's something that you can contribute or control in your own life or whatever it might be like maximize that because that's as effective as you're going to be.
And it'll feel good and you'll have an impact in whatever you're choosing to do or need to do. But everything else like you can't do it all, and you're not gonna fix the fucking jet stream, you're not gonna make the forest fires stop happening, you're not gonna make leukemia stop happening, but it always feels like Not Right Now.
I think, is it the GoFundMe CEO? I don't know, something a few years ago, the guy was like, you know that we can't sustain the American health, that's not the point of this. It's supposed to be complimentary at best, and it turns out that's what we've got, and it's an incredible tool that wouldn't have existed 20 years ago, but at the same time, it just shows you, very quickly how, at best, [00:20:00] how porous the systems are for these things, if not dysfunctional, if not made to be that way in a lot of ways, that in one week you would get a forest fire and a leukemia one. It's like why would someone have to, why would someone have to do that?
Claire: Yeah. I'm wondering in the meantime, I'm like, I wonder if she also has to report on the Oscars right now because she is an entertainment reporter.
Quinn: Of course she does.
Claire: Yeah. Last night, my husband and I were laughing because our ADHD son, I think, is going through a new phase of his ADHD. I don't know about you guys, but these things kind of go in waves and the waves are very deeply felt by everyone in the house.
And so we are on a new regime of sleep planning. And our therapist, our family therapist, I don't know about you, sometimes you come up with a solution that you're so, you're amazed that you're like, how did we not think of this before? Our kid would always use the bathroom as a way to like, get out of bed, and our therapist earned her fee and said, why don't you stop letting him have a cup of water next to the bed, you know, and it took us like four years to be like, Oh yeah.
So I was at guitar [00:21:00] class last night and my husband put the kids to bed and the cup was taken and our son, I guess, spent several hours pounding on the wall saying these rules suck. These rules can go to hell. These rules suck. And we were laughing so hard. I mean, and because I think I'm sure to our kid that was like the worst thing you could say, you know?
Quinn: Yeah.
Claire: I don't even know why it's funny.
I mean, it's funny because I wasn't there. If I was there in it, I would probably be writing, spilling my guts out on some anonymous Reddit thread, just being like, I don't know how we're going to get up in the morning and go through this. But sometimes like when you put it out, like when you say it out loud, it just makes you laugh.
And cause that's all you can do.
Quinn: And it's, throughout this and thinking about this and how valuable, at least if no one ever listens to this, it's just therapeutic for me.
Anyways I always think my kids, and again I try to put myself in their shoes, and then get out of there as fast as possible, but I always come back to, you've seen Stepbrothers?[00:22:00]
Claire: Yeah.
Quinn: When they are finally friends and they're sitting on the couch like watching TV and they get in trouble for some shit? And the parents come and turn off the TV and tell him no TV for a week, and they're like this house is a fucking prison! This fucking sucks! Like, all this, and I'm like, that's my kid's reaction to most things. As if it's a jail, and I'm like, am I causing that? Probably, in part. But also pounding on the wall.
Claire: Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, and it's funny cause like to him, that was the most transgressive thing you could do. And you're like, you know, stories about kids who are deeply troubled and you're like, well, I'm glad he's not like cutting off a piece of the dog's tail.
Quinn: Yeah. Or himself. Because that shit happens all the fucking time.
Claire: Yeah, and I consider myself like enlightened because I am beyond wondering if this is normal. I remember once I made the mistake, because I found my people and I think it takes a while to, not everyone has their people close by, which is a real shame, but I put it on Facebook once that this kid in particular, because he liked to roam the [00:23:00] house at night and turn on lights and wake people up that we put a lock on his door. And I made the big mistake of putting that in gen pop, as we say on Facebook. And some woman said, I would be worried about if the house was on fire, if he would not be able to get out of his room. And I was like, well, how do you feel about him walking out the front door and walking into the crowded street?
So yeah just these little tiny, you're like, well, at least he's not that like, at least he's not on the HBO doc about the girl who went missing and then came back and was possibly possessed by the devil or not who she said she was. So these rules do suck and these rules do need to go to hell, but you know.
Quinn: Many things can be true at once, it's fucking hilarious. That's where we have fucked up the most and it's so hard not to when one of the children is like really upset and they say something funny or the way it comes out or they mispronounce something or they state again like these rules suck but so eloquently as if they're like Che Guevara and you let a laugh slip out.
Claire: Oh, yeah.
Quinn: And you [00:24:00] know you're like, I just fucked up, and you can see the horror on their face, and you're like, they're never gonna forgive that.
You've just trivialized their whole fucking thing, but also it was really funny.
Claire: I feel like I gave them misogyny by accident once because I was...
Quinn: Wait, I think it is communicable, actually. Anyways.
Claire: My husband was traveling out of town which was like, you know being single parent is I know it's own state of mind. You could do a whole, do a whole season of the podcast on that. Not a single parent. I'm sorry. Parenting solo when you normally don't. But they, my kids were both indignant about something and I think they were both naked and they were both complaining, like, you know airing grievances to me in stereo.
And I just like looked at them and their little naked selves. And I just started laughing and they both, it was like that saying about women fearing murder and men being feared laughed at and they both got so mad at me for laughing and that made me just laugh [00:25:00] harder and I, yeah, I was like, they are, this is going to be taken out on some poor woman someday.
Quinn: You gave them misogyny. That reminds me, last year we walked out of Barbie, like this incredible movie that it came out. No not, we walked out. Like it was over. Sorry. No. We came walking out at the end and it was my wife. And I think the kids had a few friends there and my daughter, everyone loved it and the songs and this and that.
And my daughter had a question about it. And my son turns around and literally goes, Actually that's not what the movie was about. My wife was like, that's what the movie was about, is what the movie is about. Go the fuck back inside. Clearly you didn't get the message, motherfucker.
Claire: Yeah, no, a hundred percent. My kid had to use the bathroom during the America Ferrera monologue. And part of me was like, well, you missed the whole thing. Like you would have gotten it, the whole woman experience, but you drink too much pop.
Quinn: No, that was it. We were in the car going, He just mansplained Barbie to her as we're walking out of Barbie. Like, Holy shit.
Claire: Yeah, [00:26:00] maybe we got to see it again.
Quinn: My son, he's learning about probabilities. And I just immediately went off on a tangent about how we don't know enough probabilities and everyone needs to take those classes on top of civics and sex ed and all this. And he was like, why? I was like, I yell at them all the time about how dangerous driving is. And, I'm always like, let me give you an example. Even in our dumb little historic small town, you pull up to a regular four way intersection, I am like, I'm running like, Neo level probabilities about, yes, I know the rule is that I was here first, and I'm supposed to be then the first to go. Do I trust these other three fucking people? Of those three people, which one do I trust? That's not gonna go first. Or is not looking at their fucking phone. Or this and this and this. He's like, you're doing all that while you're driving? I'm like, it's terrible.
It's terrible, but I was like, I know you understand, in school, and we all do it, and a lot of it's true, like, when am I gonna use this in life?
I was like, this is something that you will inherently use for the rest of your fucking life, in every [00:27:00] situation. All the time. I sniff, I open a salad, and I smell it, and I'm like, it's probably fine.
Claire: Or you might get salmonella. Yeah, you never know. But the thing that's a killer is knowing that you were gonna let them go for like a good 10 or 15 years with that brain that's not formed. I was telling my friend who has two boys also, my son woke up on the wrong side of the bed and my husband also woke up on the wrong side of the bed.
So he was doing the old pile on like, geez, what did I do? I didn't do anything, you know, just like the kind of thing you're like, you're not going to get the kid to be like good point, dad. And my friend Christina was like, remember the frontal lobe, Steve. And like, yes. You know, too, that your kids are going to learn to drive someday and because we were that age, they are going to be so stupid, they're not going to be like, well, dad pointed out, like my dad, who's cool, told me about driving, like, you know, they're going to do all the dumb shit that we did, you know, and have even more ways of doing it.
Quinn: So fucking dumb. Some of the shit, you're just like, [00:28:00] Oh, how am I not dead? How am I not dead? Forget prison. Sure, that's accounted for. But, like, how am I not dead 20 times over?
If my kids did one of those things, I'd be like you're never leaving the house for the rest of your life.
Claire: The kids go to school on a street where it's a side street that has stop signs and no lights. And I was with some friends in high school and we were driving around fast because that was like, all you could do was drive around fast. And I must have gone around some car or I don't remember, but some other driver got mad at how recklessly I was driving and began tailing us and speeding behind us.
And we drove up to the beach and did one of those things where you'd like a quick U turn and a quick turn. And just the kind of thing where I'm like, I could have been dead, I should have been dead. I could have been arrested, any of these things. I made it through and like, and that was, I was like a good kid.
So if I was going to be that dumb, my kids who are no offense, our boys are going to be much dumber than that.
Quinn: So much dumber. Yeah. No. It's truly, I can see in [00:29:00] my wife's face, like, when my two boys, the girls between them, when they beat the shit out of each other. First of all, the younger one, it's all he wants in life, is for the older one to pay attention to him, especially with bodily contact, and 90 percent of the time, it's great fun. But she gets stressed by it, and I'm like, it's their love language, it's fine. And I can see her wrestling with that, because she didn't grow up with multiple boy siblings. But also I can see in her face, and I see it in my daughter's face all the time. And again daughters, their own complications. But, I can see in their faces, like, what's wrong with them?
What is wrong with boys natively? And I'm like, I don’t know.
Claire: Yeah, I think that's why I get sad sometimes, because I am, I have no sisters, I have no sisters in law, no daughters, no nieces, and I don't really have a relationship with my mother in law, so every now and then I just get very, like, lonely that I don't have someone in my family that I can be like, you know, make those eyes at and that's why, you know, it's good to have my friends, I hate that the boy moms stole the term boy mom because it was just a really good like quick way of saying [00:30:00] I have boys, but now it just means like I want to marry my son, which is not not it. But you need those people. But I swear I have this theory that dads are harder on their sons because they're so dismayed like they hate thinking that they were ever that dumb and they need to like grind it out of them because it just reminds them of how stupid they once were and how few steps there are between being that way and being the way they are now.
Quinn: So few steps. I definitely think that's part of it for sure. I'm going to think about that.
Claire: Okay.
Quinn: I'm going to have to get back to you on that one. I think there's definitely, at least for me, there's a bunch of other shit. Again, I try to come back to when, I think I might've said it last time. We went on a little London trip right after Christmas and I was trying to get him to pick stuff up off the floor and I just said, I was trying to just keep it positive. And I was like, Oh, I'm really having such a great trip with you. And he's, yeah you're a control freak. And I was one, sure, [00:31:00] I'll take that hit.
But two like right now? I just asked you to pick your towel up, man. And yeah, I'm still working on where all that's coming from and how I can do better with the checklists and all that stuff. But I'm sure part of it is looking back and going Jesus Christ, like I give my mom like blanket apologies all the time.
And she's like, for what? I'm like, everything. Everything. Are you fucking kidding me?
But it's so funny what you just said. My sister, again, the golden child. When I married my wife and a year before my older brother married his amazing wife. The velocity with which my little sister never, basically never talked to us again, because she was like, fucking finally. Are you kidding me? Yeah and who can blame her? Are you kidding me? Like why she ever interact with us ever again?
Claire: I know sometimes I think about how great it would be if my boys if they do end up with girl partners, like how great it would be to, you know, have a pal like me in the house, but also I feel like karmically I deserve [00:32:00] to have a really bad relationship if I have daughters in law, because that's just like what I deserve based on how little I try to like have a good relationship with my mother in law, but we'll get there someday.
And maybe they'll never leave the house based on, you know, how great they are right now. Like my son, part of my, this was really cute. My older son, he is young for his age. He's not on TikToK. We didn't even touch on TikToK. We should maybe talk about that just real quick as another not right now. God, doesn't that feel like that was like eight months ago?
Quinn: Fully eight months ago.
Claire: Because he doesn't have a phone, he has to make his own funs, you know, and God bless him for that. And he's very innocent. And he and his friends have been making their own trading cards lately. They have some system called Bobbert cards and he hand writes them and he got himself a laminating machine, which was so thrilling for him.
And they're selling these cards somehow. And I said, why don't you print that like use a computer to have the text [00:33:00] instead of your handwriting and he just has that kind of, I'm beyond caring about it. I know that you can get through life with bad handwriting, but he acted like, you know, it was my dad telling me to get out the encyclopedia, you know, to work on a, just like okay, sure, whatever mom, like flapping in the wind, but I'm like, okay, good luck selling, scaling your business. You know, what do I know? But yeah, that's what kids are doing now who are not TikTok. Are your kids on TikTok?
Quinn: No. Remember. Control freak, Claire. Control freak. No. My kids are definitely gonna be the kids, apply screens, TikTok, whatever, alcohol too, whatever you want. They're gonna get to college and immediately binge the whole thing because they weren't allowed any of it.
Tale as old as time.
No, we like to say out loud to our friends, we don't demonize screens because there's some good things and they're really helpful and then I go home and demonize them.
Claire:You’re a better parent than those other people.
Quinn: I know that. No, I, there's no social media. They only have iPads, they're at [00:34:00] home, they can basically only text each other.
I did tell you we got a landline. I'm so fucking stoked about that and already it's amazing, speaking of like generational things. It's like in the middle of the living room, which is not advantageous to them, which any of us would have rebelled against and in the middle of this morning, like a Thursday at 10 o'clock one of them called my sister who's in the middle of her workday And I'm like she's working and they're like fuck you And the look on her face was the same look on our faces from the 80s and 90s when someone would be like get off the phone and you're like, I hope you die.
And so that's their version of TikTok. So no, I'm sure they see it with their friends and all that and whatever, what are you going to do? But it hasn't been this existential thing for us. We'll have that, whatever the fucking next thing is. But it sounds like it's been chaos there?
Claire: Well, I don't know. I mean, yeah, my kids are not. First of all, we could do a whole side conversation about how we're both congratulating ourselves about how offline our kids are, and yet they also have iPads and laptops and iMessage, you know, [00:35:00] but just like, you know, wooden blocks.
Quinn: Yeah, whatever you need to tell yourself.
Claire: Yeah. And a wooden hoop.
And but he, my son sent me a screenshot of the kids in his class pre TikTok ban saying like, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm literally crying right now. And his screenshot was, these kids are crazy. And I thought it was kind of cute. He had darkened out the kid's names as if I'm going to be in like, I don't know, putting them on blast.
And also he did a bad job. So I was like, I know Lindsay, whatever said that, but that's fine. But I, you know, there was a part of me that was like kind of proud of him for being like, these kids are messed up. But also I was like, I bet there's a part of him too that had FOMO. I feel like that's a sweet spot of my life, is like judgey FOMO.
But yeah, and then I was talking with the other moms because there was that brief ban and the kids were talking about downloading, what is it, RedNote?
Quinn: Jesus Christ, the one that just like full up front says like it's Chinese propaganda.
Claire: But also TikTok was that, TikTok is that like, why are we acting like this one is [00:36:00] worse? We already did this, it's like trading a metal gun for a 3D printed gun. You're still shooting something. And then my son was saying they're gonna download VPNs.
And there's a part of me, I mean, if we're talking about GIFs, it's that, you know, Anchorman, where he's like, I'm not even mad, I'm just impressed.
Quinn: Why can't you apply this problem solving to when I ask you to empty the dishwasher, and you say you can't reach the shelf for the 42nd time, but you can figure out the best VPN to use to download your Chinese app?
Claire: Yeah, you can’t hold a fork, but you like, are, you know, I mean, my friend, I have a friend who's a teacher who said that they had an issue with their school. This is like last year. This is even before everything happened where some kids, I think they were like fourth, they were so young, maybe fourth grade, fifth grade.
These girls made a deep fake of another girl saying the N word and put it on social media to like, cause they were mad at her. And it was just chilling because this is like when the dinosaurs learn how to open the door, you know, and you're like, just imagine if they had these skills and apply them to something good.
Quinn: But, that's [00:37:00] also the Not Right Now thing, where you're like, Whoa! I am fully unprepared and too busy to deal with deep fakes of that? No. I'm still dealing with all the other shit.
Claire: I still, I'm dealing with COVID. Like imagine being a teacher and being like, I'm trying to tell these kids to write their name on their homework and they are doing deep fakes. And again, I was so not surprised it was girls doing this than boys. Those girls are so much more intelligent and devious.
No, like, no offense to the girls or compliments to the girls. Like boys would never, again, my kid is doing these dumb little homemade Pokemon cards.
Quinn: No, the boys are like the Zoolander, the files are in the computer.
Claire: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like the nice thing about my boys is I never have to really wonder what they're thinking too much.
Quinn: Because the answer is not much.
Claire: Seventh grader, sometimes I have to double check.
I'm like, are you sad or are you just 12 and I think usually it's the latter, so the TikTok thing, I think the thing that I'm low key worried about, but Not Right Now, I don't have time to think about this, especially cause my kid isn't on it, but it's [00:38:00] like, I kind of worried that there are these kids who are going to think that Trump is the hero for, I'm like, please don't be that stupid that you think that Trump is good for bringing it back.
But I can't think about that.
Quinn: No, you can't think about it. It's Not Right Now. It's also just like a spectacular self own by the Democrats to schedule it for the day before he came back. And just the whole thing. Soup to nuts, fiasco.
Claire: Yeah, embarrassing, sloppy.
Quinn: Like when you see a terrible op ed in like the New York Times or whatever, and you're like, twelve people approved this.
Are you fucking okay, you just fucking blew it.
Claire: Yeah. The only thing that made me happy was just reading like on the gossip sites, which is like, I think my plugin to current events was like people being like, I just deleted it and I'm not going back. Cause it's too stupid by now. And I'm like, it's like when you're, when your mom starts using some tech, there was like a Reductress where it was like mom getting on TikToK finally, like the day before the ban.
Quinn: Fucking Reductress is incredible.
The Reductress is like my social [00:39:00] media version of Evil Witches, where I'm like, there's a camera inside my house.
Claire: Yeah, yeah, I can't even be, like they had one about boy moms and I'm like, I can't be mad at it because it's accurate, you know, like there's a reason behind this. Speaking of Evil Witches, I'm just curious how you have been doing your newsletter lately because I find it really hard to be productive and try to put out a good product and make people want to pay and support me when I'm feeling deeply depressed and demoralized.
Like I put out something very silly today because I was like, no one needs to hear another like depressed message because we've all, no one is, that is a flooded market. So I'm just curious how you've been doing your thing.
Quinn: Not well, not, what's the Mad Men, not great, Bob. It helps that at some point we really consciously pivoted to like, and we don't do this well all the time, nor fully all the time, but, really saying like how is this a gift? How is this an opportunity? How do we say, okay, this, but what's the solution?
What is something you can actually do, even if it really doesn't feel like you can, even if the answer is get the fuck [00:40:00] offline. Throw your money at this. Here you go. It's hard. We have our sort of top of the funnel newsletter, which we call now It's Called Science. Science for People Who Give a Shit. It's really like, rundown on the most important news and here's like a potpourri of action steps about it. It's our big free thing, and that was supposed to come out Monday on Inauguration Day, and my number two, Willow, she writes that now.
She is, as we call her, production director, and she's Canadian, which, good for her, Jesus Christ. Not that it's perfect up there, either. But, she was like, Does anyone want to read this on Monday? And I said, Do whatever you want. Make it about Martin Luther King, make it about fuckin romance, beach reads don't care. Don't care. Cause the answer is like our usual shit, nobody's interested in that right now. So I think it's time and place, but, we've got so much other shit going on, but it's funny this is such a big part of that, because for a long time it was okay. If we're going to expand, knowing we're extremely limited in resources and bandwidth and wanting to [00:41:00] keep this prism of what we do and now everything needs to, in some way, come back to helping people answer the question, what can I do? There were a few different versions of expanding that we've considered over the past year or so. One version was vertical wise, but within the things we cover. Climate, which is obviously 400 different things. Energy, water, immigration, whatever it might be, right? Public health, medicine, where you know there's definitely a market for those things and that market's going to be very engaged, but it is pretty, relatively small. The other version we considered was, okay, doing what we do, but a different version for each continent. At least, right? What is the version of It's Called Science that's like Africa specific? Which is obviously a huge collection of 80 plus countries, but it's inexcusable there isn't a version of this with everything they're going through and the way they're growing.
And we can still do something like that. Same thing, like, how do we find like charismatic hosts [00:42:00] that don't involve me at all from Southeast Asia? A billion people, whatever it might be. To do a show that's specific about being on the front lines there, this and that. And then, two things happened, and they weren't surprising, because again, we don't really shy away from like the political side of it in the sense of not we don't talk about politics, more people have to understand how the sausage is made, like it's great to be an idealist, but some candidates, in some places, are just going to fucking lose, and it doesn't matter.
And some are just going to win, and you shouldn't spend your money there or elsewhere. It needs to be in the make or break places that will overturn a chamber that will be able to guarantee fucking whatever, or turn on Medicaid. We have to be realists about it too. And so we've always been very clear about that.
We also don't, like we said, we don't categorically endorse any party or person or whatever. It's are you actually doing the right thing? Are you doing a bad thing? I don't care what the letter is. We're going to support you or come after you. So AOC had this quote a few [00:43:00] months ago before the election. And I am a big fan. And she's such a great communicator. And she said, we can't just be right. We have to be effective. And, you can extend that in a lot of different ways, but it's that same thing of, look, if we want a child tax credit or baby bonds, or something like that, free lunches, you can say the co benefits of universal free lunches, even if they're not healthy, or at least, look, kids are eating, which means their grades are going to be better, they're going to sleep better, their grades are going to be better, which means they might be able to go to a community college or a college, jobs, all the way down the line. But none of that matters if every two or four years you're back out of power and it gets cancelled again. You're not really building long term effectiveness. And, you can argue with that. And you can be like, oh, we shouldn't go back to courting white guys and leave everybody else behind, and we shouldn't leave everybody else behind. We can walk and chew gum and ignoring the biggest voting bloc in the [00:44:00] country, which you can take the name off of it, right? Could be anything. Ignoring it means you're going to lose, which means you don't actually get to help those other people if you keep losing. It's just math. So we try to take that lesson and go, okay, instead of another clean energy or transmission podcast or a scientists, but just in Eastern Europe type of thing. It was looking at, as they talk about, the Rogan and the right wing message machine and all this different stuff, which, again, you can totally take the wrong lessons from that. Where, yeah, Rogan endorsed Bernie a few years ago, and now it's this and that, and, it's all funded and they all talk to each other and all that. Okay, but what's the real thing here, which is really reaching people in their everyday lives? Because they've really, even people like me, almost especially people like me, or if you work in transmission policy or public health, you don't want your vegetables all the time. Sometimes you just want to listen to the [00:45:00] parasocial version of people who get your everyday life. And if you can slide the vegetables in there as like a baseline part of it, and maybe not even every time, you might not have a bunch of progressive radicals. But you probably have a better chance of eventually radicalizing many more people. If you instead step back and go, What about a show about parenting in these times?
What about a show about food in these times? What are the major groups who just want to hear someone turn on, it feels like a pair of friends, they can turn on and off. Who mostly align with their values that they didn't realize. Oh shit, fuck, some kids don't even get lunch whatever it is.
Or should I check my fucking house insurance? Hold on a minute. Or that's not what it's about at all. And it's just shit talking mistakes you've made this week. Because we all do it. And then you realize that some parents don't get time off. Which is completely insane. That is the long answer to we've really taken a step back and all that and gone like, How can we be most, what's fun for us?
What are we able to do? We don't have the [00:46:00] resources to produce Radiolab, which is so expensive and so complicated. But also, those don't really show a return on your time as much. They're really hard to get right. And more people listen to this kind of thing. And so we're trying to look at everything we do.
Yes, everything has to come back to what can I do? Which is obviously different now than it was a week ago in a lot of ways. But there's also a lot of things that haven't changed. State houses and stuff that's on the local level or internationally, even though democracy got crushed everywhere across the developed world.
That stays true. Everything we make, the newsletter, essays, the main podcast has to come back to what can I do. Just recorded on bird flu. Very different from this conversation.
Much more okay, what's the deal? What can I do? But, we can make it broader and make it fit into people's lives in a more cohesive and organic way, I think.
And I think that has the chance to be much, much more effective. I think they're just more fun to engage with for us and people. So that's [00:47:00] how the past week and a half has gone, really. You know, I was re-looking at the top of the funnel and going, it can be, you don't want to say, the marketers is worst nightmare is when you're like, It's for everybody!
It's not.
This show, you and I have gone back and forth on subtitles for a month, because we're like, How do we say it's for millennialish young generation X parents who have kids between 5 and 17 right now?
How do you define that in five words? Cause that isn't everybody. But, at the same time, it's a lot of people, and a lot of those people didn't fuckin vote even if it's against their best interest, or whatever it is, or I don't think it's gonna affect them. That's how it's going.
Claire: Well, that's good. I mean, I'm glad that you have, I don't know, that you have a strategy and you know what you're doing and have a mission going ahead. And I think we can talk about this more some other time, but, you know, I think especially we talk about the hustle and how, you know, when you're done and things like that, but especially in the newsletter world.
At least with me, it started off as an experiment, and it gets very quickly, if you [00:48:00] do it well, all of a sudden you're faced with, this is a business, I guess and how am I going to optimize this?
Quinn: Or as one of my college friends said, congratulations, you signed up to write a term paper every week for the rest of your life, and I was ffffuck!
Claire: And best practices, and someone called me last week because he found my phone number on his billing statement and he had an issue with his billing. And I was like, how did you get this number? And it like, and it worked out totally, totally well. But I was like, I didn't realize I was IT, you know, and I didn't realize I was the billing department.
And there's always a part of me that's like, well, this will go away sometime and or my kids are gonna get too old for me to like to have much to say. But, you know, I've worked my career in terms of like, we'll do this until it doesn't make sense anymore or whatever.
At least I think in a woman's world, especially mom's world, but maybe dads are the same way you live your life, hoping that you'll find a system, a meal planning system, a calendar system, a list making system that you're like, once I lock into this system, a laundry [00:49:00] system, then everything will fall to the way side.
And maybe it'll even be fun because we'll just like click off these satisfying little boxes. But like, I think coming to realize that no system is meant to last forever and it shouldn't have to last forever is very liberating and freeing.
Quinn: It is. And it's a hard place to get to, though. And the other side of it is, what was it? It's some fucking meme. It's adulting is saying everything's gonna get easier after this week, over and over again, and then you fucking die. And it's the same thing as the system thing. Where you're just like, oh no. It isn't.
And that's by the way that, I have fucking productivity systems, I've got it up the wazoo and I used to be so obsessed, but that 4000 Weeks book is really good about that. It's not happening. It's not happening. Here's your time, make it meaningful. And we're trying to do the same thing. If these are our resources, if this is what I'm choosing, I'm lucky to choose to do with my time, how do I make it a little more enjoyable to me, but also, each thing is very intentional.
Like the main podcast, we're changing the name of it. Instead of just conversations about [00:50:00] these different things, we're going to call it The Most Important Question, which is, what can I do? And that's two fold. It's like, why are you doing this work? But also what can I do if I'm trying to get into it, or to support it, whatever it is.
It's just making it slightly more intentional along the way after 200 of these things. And we've built this app, and the app is both for the power users who don't need the parenting pod, they don't need 3,000 words about this and this they're like no, I know shit, I'm gonna get in there and do this and I want to collect it all. But there's also a lot of people who, and I've been there, and I wrote a whole essay about why we built the app, which I didn't realize why, it's often the middle of the night, and you're racing, and you're like, What the fuck do I do right now?
For good or bad. And we wanted that to exist. And so that's very different than this, but it does all fit together. And the same people aren't going to use all the things, but we want to reach more folks who are looking around this week going, uhhh.
Claire: Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, immensely like, I unfollowed a lot [00:51:00] of accounts, some of which I am sad to unfollow, but I just was like, I don't need to get pulled into this. And then, of course, I saw the post from someone else on Substack saying I know, I've seen a lot of you saying that you're pulling back, but like, there's something to be said about helping your fellow humans and staying in touch, you know, and you're like, okay, fuck you.
Quinn: Fuck you.
Claire: I mean, and I know where she's coming from but I don't need that , and I was like, well first of all, you know we're all like guilty liberal progressives who are always thinking this anyway to begin with, so, like, we didn't really need to you remind us .
Quinn: What's helpful? That's not it. It's like putting the black square on your Instagram four years ago. Congratulations.
Claire: I didn't do it. And I'm a real one for that because I saw the bullshit from a mile away.
Quinn: Fucking nailed it.
Claire: Nailed it.
Quinn: But it's also, but the black squares, people going Not Right Now. Okay. This is what people are doing. Okay, hold on let me figure it out for 10 seconds.
Claire: Yeah, no, I did that with the safety pins with Trump's first term and I didn't, there's some other things. Some bracelets I heard about after the second [00:52:00] one. I was like, not, you can't get me this time. I'm not going to wear something. And I know because you're all going to whatever, plus, you know, that there's going to be, if we all wear some band or some bracelet or whatever, then we're all going to get like, there's going to be the system, the AI system that will capture us wearing it, and then we'll all get pulled over.
Quinn: Oh, now you're dead. No. Pink Pussyhats 8 years ago was like, the tech wasn't there yet. Now, that's it.
Claire: Yeah, no, you are at the very least, you'll get, you know, extra bad ads for, you know, the super muscular Trump.