Welcome to the Parenting Roundabout podcast. I'm Terry Morrow.
And I'm Catherine Hoileco.
Every Thursday, we're bringing you a library find, a pick from our archives, and a parenting or pop culture tidbit or two. Let's start with Catherine's library find of the week.
So this book came past me at work, and you know, the cover definitely caught my eye, and especially the subtitle. The title is the minimum Method, and the subtitle is the least you can do to be a stronger, healthier, happier you.
Yes, what we need?
Okay, okay, I like this self help you know, weight loss blah blah blah, and this guy says less really can be more. Discover how to maximize your sleeping, eating, exercising, even thinking and breathing with minimum effort. See.
I would think that would include not buying books to tell you what.
To tell you what to do.
Yes, no, well I'm.
Just giving it away for free, right because you got to do the minimum?
Yeah, they certainly aren't giving away the book.
And learn from it. Then you do the minimum?
Yes, so you have to start by buying the book.
Apparently or checking out the library.
Yeah.
See, then you don't give this guy extra in his pocket.
Yep, yep, yep. So, yeah, that's interesting, he says, you read it.
What he says is the truth is most people don't actually need grueling, extreme workouts or aggressively limited diets to lose weight and feel proud to flaunt their bodies in bathings.
Yeah, what they need is.
Some ozempic and they'll be oh no, no, he doesn't talk about those something. They need a plan that is focused on efficiency. Okay, you'll learn a wealth of practical advice, simple nutrition truths, minimal effort.
Recipes, and how to exercise smarter.
Or not harder.
All right, Joey Oh sure, sure, sure.
Yeah, Okay, why has no one thought of that before?
Yeah, and this book came out two and a half years ago.
Why haven't we all?
Yeah, if that's all we.
Need, Yeah, I should see how often it's been checked out from the library and.
Whether Yes, that would be very interesting. So yeah, I mean, I agree, it's very hard to do a lot for a long time. Yes, Yes, anything I've talked about in terms of habits and restrictions on myself on this podcast have already gone by the wayside. And oh, by the way, last week how I talked about how it was we strict with my daughter with the credit card. Yeah, I already gate in on that lasted a few days. Yeah, and then I realized that we pay for her brother's haircuts, so.
But anything else.
Yeah, his haircuts doesn't cost doesn't cost fifty dollars. But yeah, yeah, so yeah, I said, I mean this makes sense, but somehow I have trouble, Yeah, believing it is quite this easy.
Yes, we need.
A suspicious saie to be.
Like, what, that's right?
Cool?
We think the author is compromised.
Easy for you to say Joey Thurman personal trainer. Uh but yeah, I mean yeah, whether it was the author or his quote contributor, which usually means ghostwriter, or it was the publisher whoever came up with the least you can do for a subtitle was brilliant, brilliant.
That is very smart, Yes, because that's what we all want.
Yep.
Easiest. Well, well, I bet there's.
A lot of people who want to do the most and show off, but average civilians, how can I do this easily? And the fact is, I don't know what this guy's got up his sleeve, but he can't right exactly, It's not possible.
Well, it's just we'll have the same critique as we have of parenting books. You know, yes, you can say that this is the way it will work all you want. You are not living in my house with my children.
So yep. It's just like Michael saying, we'll go through the jungle. We'll we'll get them. They're just simpletons living in rags.
Yeah easy, Yep, he's a Dharma brown cake.
Well that's interesting though, but that, Yes, kudos to whoever came up with the least you can do. A tip of the hat to that person sitting in a cubicle writing writing subheads for a publisher.
We see you, We salute you.
It's the least we can do, yes, exactly, And that's probably what they said when they give that person a paycheck.
Well, oh you wanted a percentage. No, at least literally the least we can do.
Well, speaking of the least we can do, I do not have so much of a random recommendation this week as I have maybe what will be a recurring feature called explain it to Me. Okay Grandma, Here, old person wading through the uh hellscape of the Internet, trying to understand the way things work, and feeling sometimes a little dumb because maybe I'm not getting it. So I've talked here about the fact that I can easily get ensnared
by Facebook reels. You know, I'm just gonna watch this one clip from Georgie and Mandy's first marriage, and suddenly it's an hour later. And I've watched clip after clip after clip of all sorts of different things, And lately I have been seeing a lot of these clips. I'm
guessing they're from TikTok and then just recycled onto Facebook. Yeah, and there's a ton of different ones, some of them with different actors, some actor overlap, but different characters, different scenarios, but they're all the same basic morality play, which is rich person who's full of themselves being horrible to somebody they perceive as a poor person, just rude, loud, awful, awful, awful, awfullest possible, and then it turns out that that person
is not a poor person, but an even richer person. And then there's a comeuppance. Now the come upance they usually the come upance is, in short, is not in frequent rotation. You get a lot, a lot of the horrible, horrible, horrible treatment, and I think they want you to click to get the come ups and I ain't gonna click, right so I but you don't want to keep You keep watching them thinking, Oh, is this the one where there's gonna be a come up? And no it's not.
It's just more awfulness and just over the top stupid awful us, you know. And there's so many scenarios of it, so many sort of looked like, wasn't that the actor who is the heiress in disguise and the other one is now the mean person in this one? Or it's got to be a thing.
Yeah, thing?
Have you ever heard of this?
I have not heard of this, and I have not afraid.
To any of the links, you know, link in comments or Lincoln here click And I don't want to click because I don't trust you. But on the other hand, I do want to know what is this? Is this like does some production company just make these little you know, and to only get like a tiny little segment at a time, and then you see another segment with the same characters. Oh, is this gonna be the come up? But it's no, it's more awfulness. No, it's still more awfulness.
Awfulness here awfulness there. This person's awful. That's person's awful. You know. The lady runs out of gas and somebody says, well, with my car, I have so much gas, but I'm not giving you any because you're a pathetic loser. And then, of course later on it turns out that that's their boss or something. There's a lot of bosses, there's a lot of My father is the richest man in New York City? How dare you talk to me that way?
And then it turns out that really that girl that that you're yelling at, her dad is the richest man in the world. I can't wait for the cum up ands, but I can never see the cum up ands?
Where's the cup up ands?
I don't want to pluck for the come up and no, don't click.
Occasionally I see a come up and and it's delightful, but it's so formulaic and it's so stupid.
Why does it?
I can't help but watch it, which is why I am seeing more and more and more and more and more of them. If anybody knows what that is is on our website, what is this? Explain it to me. Gradma is confused, and I would think it was just like part of our zeitgeist now that we hate rich people, but the heroic people are even richer people, right, they just for a moment looked disadvantaged. Right, And the awful
rich people are just stupid. I guess they can't google, you know, take a picture of this person and ask roc to identify them. No, they just assume if you are a random young person in my car dealership, you can't possibly afford this maserati. Well I just sold my you know, just just inherited a million, ten million dollars. Yeah, it's just it's just so silly and so stupid. And there's so many of them. It's like a mini little soap opera, just like a thirty second soap opera.
Right, that's bizarre.
So I really want to know. You've never heard of this, You've never.
Know, I've only ever seen like it'll be like all text. So you see the preview, you know, and you don't.
Yeah, I've seen those two and it's just.
Text and it's like you wouldn't believe what this mother in law said, you know, or whatever, And I'm.
Like, this is so fake, you know, I really want to know. So yeah, I'm not going to click on any of this stuff. But it's kind of irresistible to watch it. But that people are so hateful. I need to see them get the come upance, which is what they want to do. So there's maybe it's a psychic experiment. Maybe it's like another one of the others, the others, the others, that's what it is.
It's explained, it's.
The others behind it.
That makes sense.
Oh well, the Internet it is a treacherous place for an old person.
You see things, not just an old person. Yeah. Yeah, it's stretcherous for everybody.
Young people too.
Oh well, what do we have from the archives?
Is it's safe? Will it confuse me?
Well, we back in twenty twenty one, which is somehow four years ago, we were talking about the parent portal. You know how at school you have the parent portal.
Loved the parent portal.
I did not like the parent portal, especially because in the last few years of my son's high school, I could check the portal and I could see his grades and I could either be relieved or concerned. But yeah, it meant nothing because they could change drastically at the end of the semester, and so there was no point
in looking at them. It's like, you know, if you ever turn on a basketball game and it's the beginning of the game and one team might be winning by twenty points, but it seriously doesn't matter, because the only thing that matters is what happens when what the score is when you know.
Time runs out.
And that's that was what the very portpol was for me.
So yeah, it was some people just want the score at the end of the game, and some people want to watch every up and down of the game, every hold their breath through, every every basket thrown, every that that was me.
I want to know.
I want to know everything. Tell me everything. I did not tell me every every time. I how many times do my son, you know hiccup today? Tell me everything. Did you put a camera in the classroom and put that on? Because I would watch it?
I was.
But as I I mentioned the last time we talked about this, parent portals came very late in my kids seling, so but I was all over them. And in college my kids did not do anything with their own portals. I ran their portals, took care of them, and if they needed to do anything, I would tell them. But it was wonderful I would be the one where fresh refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh.
Yeah.
In both of my kids, like there was there was a two tiered parent portal in college, there was here's the parent portal that lets you pay the bills, oh yeah, and then there was another portal that foreseeing the grades and so, and your child would have to give you access to that. And you know, there's there's definitely parents who say, like, look, i'm paying for it, you will give me access. But with my daughter, I was like,
I don't need it. She's she's totally like you just don't even have to think about it with her, like and then with my son, I was I was like, I'm not going to go through four more years of this like s service. Yeah, I will find out on a need to know basis.
On that one.
Yeah, But I still wish that the parent portal concept could be extended into all parts of a young person's life.
That's right.
That's where it would the job job portal, where the boss would put up a nice little comment every day how your kid did.
Right, there's a problem.
You know, little ratings every day everywhere, every week, how they're doing. And you know, maybe their friends could have a portal where they would report in on you know, how the social life was going, all the things that I would worry about. There could be a portal that what's in the car could be connected to a portal. How many miles did they drive?
What was their average?
Out every aspect of my young people's life like to have easy access to data, because it has always been true throughout their lives. They don't talk about things much, so I need to I need to have the information. And now that they are not, there's not a paraprofessional who can tell me things. I am in the dark and I do not enjoy the dark. I need to know. I need to know things so I can make them right, you know, so that I when somebody asks me to
tell me them about my kids, I am not like you. Right, You're not fumbling for answer, and I can tell you this last week and they have not appeared anywhere. They're not supposed to be right.
But it's just it's the decline.
In data available to a parent after college. Yes, unsettling. And somebody could make some money if they could find a way to discreetly surveil your children.
Yeah, the problem is that the children have to consent to this, and.
That's where you're going to have a problem.
I have a tracker on one kid, but if she leaves her phone home, that doesn't help me any The other kid doesn't seem to be working on his phone, and he won't let me access the phone to try to make it work, even though I pay for the phone. Well he bought, he bought the device. I pay for the thing, but he could pay it if you wanted to. So I don't know. I just would like reassuring information, right, And where am I going to get that.
From them?
Yeah?
No, I should just you know, just somebody.
The other day was we were talking about tracking, and the discussion turned to the possibility of micro chipping our family members, including husbands, right, and just so you know, just so you know where they are.
Yeah, I mean we do it with our pets.
We do. You know, it's important.
I mean, like there was the time that I my husband. I don't know if I talked about this on the podcast.
I think I did.
He went to into New York City to see his sister, but he took a wrong turn and suddenly he went through a tunnel and then he was in Queen's and he didn't know where to go or what to do. But fortunately I had we had an AirPod in the car at the time that had been in the dogs collar,
so I was able to find an air AirTag. Yeah, we had an air tag in the car that had we had taken out of the dog's collar, and I was able to use that to find him and look at a map because he doesn't have GPS in the car or in his possession at all, And I was able to talk him back to his sister's house. So that was very useful. Wouldn't it be nice to have that all the time. He has a flip phone, so I can't put a tracker on it, but but you.
Could take an air tag and scrape it onto the flip phone.
Yes, I guess I could. The air tags are temperamental.
Yeah.
The thing is the air tag is meant to like be on your keys, so when you can't find your keys, you can get them to ding. It's not meant to be driving around. It has a limited range. Yeah, and
also apparently it just sometimes beeps for random reasons. And fathers we had in the dog's collar, but then when the dog was staying with family while we went away, it started just beeping, and probably because somebody else had an air tag on their dog and it was they were like trying to play it, and it was the upset the dog. So that's why it came out of the collar and was loose in the car. But I found them to be undependable for long range. Right, Sometimes
they work and sometimes they don't. They have to be near a tower, I think, or a near a They have to be near somebody.
Else's phone, which means.
That all of our phones are being used to locate track other people. Yes, which is you know, concerning. But I don't know how much you could a microchip. How much trouble could a microchip?
Yeah, they say it's painless when they inject it into a dog.
A dog, right, right.
I just want to know what's going on. You just want to be constantly informed.
Is that too much to ask? Really?
Not too much to ask. I do good things with the information, you know. I help navigate I uh, you know, instead of nagging where are you why aren't you home? I could go see oh she went to target. So yes, we need I need an immediate and constantly working portal that will just allow me to spy twenty four to seven. Seems like the logical mixed up.
It's not a big doesn't sound like a big ask.
Doesn't sound like a big ask. No that I could, you know, see what they're doing at work and possibly you know, text them little. Your boss seems upset, maybe you should do something different, or maybe you should do this or that, or you know that doesn't look very clean what you just cleaned there. Maybe you should go already again so you don't.
Get in trouble.
I could, like you, like maybe if if they had a chip in their ear, gonna have a little speaker on it. Yeah, just the possibilities are endless. The next the next wave of portals are going to be extremely invasive.
And and you're here for it.
Made four moms who need to know. See if Michael had had access to that technology, he wouldn't look like such a bubbling idiot. Listen to our lost episodes to know what we're talking about. Anyway, they could listen to our podcasts through the microchip. Also, we could just forcibly play them, and then they'd have to listen to the boy. We'd have to take out all the parts where we're talking about them.
Yeah, that would that would take a lot of time.
What's that portal?
Tight?
Yeah?
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