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