Latest / I Think Less of You Podcast / Stop selling me so hard

Transcript

Stop selling me so hard · I Think Less of You Podcast

0:00
[music]
0:15
SPEAKER_00: If you look behind me, this will mean nothing to people who are listening.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: I'm like an eight-track player.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: I got a rotary telephone from the 30s back there
0:28
SPEAKER_00: amidst all the random clutter.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: There's a Sonos speaker I got for like five bucks.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: I was really excited about it.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: It was at a random secondhand thrift shop.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: I found a secondhand thrift shops are great.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: And the seedier the secondhand thrift shop, the better.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: Because a lot of the big ones...
0:46
SPEAKER_00: What Goodwills are you?
1:02
SPEAKER_00: A lot of Goodwill's now are hooked into,
1:07
SPEAKER_00: there's a centralized system called ShopGoodwill.com,
1:10
SPEAKER_00: which is basically Goodwill's own eBay.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: So a lot of Goodwill's now,
1:17
SPEAKER_00: all the good stuff they're posting on ShopGoodwill.com so they can get more money.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: Now, it's better for them to get more money, certainly, don't get me wrong.
1:24
SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, most of the fun of shopping at second-hand stores is Right.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: And then being able to use this to get really good deals on things that flew under the radar.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: So if you go to weird seedy secondhand stores,
1:47
SPEAKER_00: a lot of the time you can get really interesting good deals on stuff
1:51
SPEAKER_00: because they're just taking stuff in and then dumping it out
1:55
SPEAKER_00: for whatever they think they can get for it.
1:57
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of the time they could have gotten more, but they don't know that.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: So there's a really nice Sonos speaker I got in a secondhand store in Carolina that
2:08
SPEAKER_00: for like five bucks and they didn't know what they had.
2:12
SPEAKER_00: It's like a $200 speaker.
2:14
SPEAKER_00: I was really excited about it.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: So you're here complaining about how like about all
2:18
SPEAKER_00: about your family members dumping off stuff on you.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, that's my dream.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: That's my dream to have people who just like give me old stuff to root through every day.
2:29
SPEAKER_01: This did start because I was complaining about how my parents will drive.
2:34
SPEAKER_01: My parents live in Arizona and they will drive up.
2:37
SPEAKER_01: They drive everywhere and they'll load their car up with random stuff
2:41
SPEAKER_01: and just leave it at my house like I'm the dump.
2:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, my parents go through things often.
2:50
SPEAKER_01: Every TV that we have was given to us from our parents,
2:55
SPEAKER_01: sound equipment, anything like that, everything comes from my parents.
2:59
SPEAKER_01: And not because we asked for it, because it just shows up.
3:03
SPEAKER_00: Dream life.
3:05
SPEAKER_01: No, but it's actually kind of hard to deal with.
3:08
SPEAKER_01: We live on a farm with all of my husband's grandparents' old things.
3:12
SPEAKER_01: A lot of things they inherited.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: Stop selling me so hard.
3:17
SPEAKER_00: We're already sold.
3:19
SPEAKER_00: You live in a magical fairy kingdom.
3:24
SPEAKER_01: If you saw the disaster that is my basement, you, well, actually, it would be your dreamland.
3:32
SPEAKER_01: We have like every National Geographic site.
3:35
SPEAKER_01: I think it was like a 60s model.
3:37
SPEAKER_01: Update.
3:58
SPEAKER_01: Update on the Vespa.
3:59
SPEAKER_01: It's actually older than 60s.
4:01
SPEAKER_01: It was from my husband's grandpa who got it in World War II in Italy.
4:11
SPEAKER_01: Update on the Vespa.
4:12
SPEAKER_01: We are working on the titling process for Colorado and it is being repaired.
4:18
SPEAKER_00: So you're getting it titled in Colorado right before you move away from Colorado?
4:22
SPEAKER_01: Before we move to Massachusetts.
4:26
SPEAKER_01: By we...
4:28
SPEAKER_01: This is my father-in-law's.
4:30
SPEAKER_01: It has not been given to us.
4:32
SPEAKER_01: I hope it is given to us, but it's his.
4:38
SPEAKER_00: That's beautiful.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: And that's the thing.
4:41
SPEAKER_00: You're not just getting random papers or whatever, like random old crap.
4:47
SPEAKER_00: Your father is like a big techie guy, so he's into all that.
4:51
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
4:52
SPEAKER_00: Computer equipment and audio equipment and stuff.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: So he's like giving you like high end stuff when he is offloading
4:59
SPEAKER_00: because he upgraded,
5:01
SPEAKER_00: which is seriously just my that is if I had a dream scenario,
5:06
SPEAKER_00: a dream world that I lived in,
5:07
SPEAKER_00: having someone give me their old electronic equipment would be a big part of it.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: Just I'd be so happy.
5:15
SPEAKER_01: You would love you would love my parents.
5:18
SPEAKER_01: They just do it nonstop.
5:20
SPEAKER_01: Although now that my brother's here,
5:21
SPEAKER_01: if Well,
5:24
SPEAKER_01: this is dependent on him getting a job in his own house since he
5:28
SPEAKER_01: and his family are currently living with my parents,
5:30
SPEAKER_01: but I assume they will become the dumping ground for a little while.
5:36
SPEAKER_01: Look, I'm not saying this against my parents,
5:41
SPEAKER_01: but it is kind of hard sometimes to be like, okay, I have...
5:45
SPEAKER_01: A million different people's crap that just gets deposited.
5:49
SPEAKER_01: We're drowning in crap at our farm.
5:52
SPEAKER_01: We just moved out.
5:54
SPEAKER_01: My husband and my son just packed up our moving boxes for our Boston apartment
6:00
SPEAKER_01: and are on the road.
6:02
SPEAKER_01: And now I have to deal with all of the crap That is all over our house.
6:08
SPEAKER_01: And like, we have enough stuff that I think we could furnish and outfit an entire city.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: Wonderful.
6:20
SPEAKER_00: None of this is sounding at all.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: I have no sympathy for you, only jealousy for your predicament.
6:25
SPEAKER_01: My mom is very, very, very anti-clutter and really is not sentimental about anything.
6:31
SPEAKER_01: And I I think I am way too sentimental about absolute worthless trash and trinkets
6:37
SPEAKER_01: because of that.
6:40
SPEAKER_01: We just have so much.
6:41
SPEAKER_01: We look like hoarders.
6:43
SPEAKER_01: We are hoarders.
6:44
SPEAKER_01: It's too much.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: My wife will vouch that I have an addiction to buying old speakers.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: Because, again, it's all about asymmetrical information to me.
6:55
SPEAKER_00: I don't insider trade in stocks,
6:57
SPEAKER_00: but I get out that masculine urge to acquire asymmetrical information on things
7:03
SPEAKER_00: by...
7:07
SPEAKER_00: I know a decent bit about the,
7:09
SPEAKER_00: like, vintage speaker market and the relative worths of various things.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: And I will, like,
7:13
SPEAKER_00: you know, wander around and find – so now I have way more – I have more speakers.
7:17
SPEAKER_00: I can't – I don't have anywhere to put all my speakers.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: I have, like,
7:19
SPEAKER_00: really nice old San Sui speakers that's shoved in a closet
7:22
SPEAKER_00: because they're really nice and I needed to get them.
7:24
SPEAKER_01: But – You should come visit me in Boston.
7:27
SPEAKER_01: You can – you – I will let you outfit our house with sound stuff.
7:32
SPEAKER_01: How about that?
7:32
SPEAKER_00: That is tempting, actually, yeah.
7:36
SPEAKER_01: Right now,
7:37
SPEAKER_01: so for the Boston apartment,
7:38
SPEAKER_01: we have a weird old TV
7:41
SPEAKER_00: that was someone's, I don't know.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: How old is it?
7:45
SPEAKER_00: Like, is it a tube TV?
7:47
SPEAKER_01: No.
7:48
SPEAKER_01: We finally got rid of the tube TVs because we moved too much.
7:53
SPEAKER_01: I had this one.
7:55
SPEAKER_01: We called it the world's first flat screen.
7:57
SPEAKER_01: It was a tube TV that was set into glass and It took four people to move.
8:27
SPEAKER_01: It was the heaviest thing on earth.
8:29
SPEAKER_01: It had a great picture.
8:31
SPEAKER_01: It was older than me.
8:32
SPEAKER_01: My parents had it my whole life.
8:34
SPEAKER_01: But they put a pane of glass in front of it.
8:37
SPEAKER_01: So it was like technically a flat screen, but it was just glass in front of it.
8:42
SPEAKER_01: That's pretty great.
8:43
SPEAKER_01: No, it was the coolest TV.
8:45
SPEAKER_01: It died, finally.
8:46
SPEAKER_01: Like, could not be repaired, died.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's too bad.
8:50
SPEAKER_00: See, what you do at that point is, well,
8:52
SPEAKER_00: at least what I would have done,
8:53
SPEAKER_00: probably,
8:54
SPEAKER_00: is you take out the old cathode ray tube system,
8:59
SPEAKER_00: and then you can actually install a flat screen TV, like, in that slot.
9:06
SPEAKER_01: Well, I wanted to...
9:07
SPEAKER_00: It's square, which is kind of a problem, but, you know...
9:10
SPEAKER_01: I wanted to take it out and make it like a fish tank or something
9:13
SPEAKER_01: or just something neat and interesting.
9:15
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
9:16
SPEAKER_01: I wanted to do something.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: That's incredibly Instagram.
9:18
SPEAKER_01: I know.
9:19
SPEAKER_01: It really is.
9:21
SPEAKER_01: I wanted to do that before Instagram existed in my defense.
9:25
SPEAKER_01: And also, it just was so heavy that it was like, okay.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:30
SPEAKER_01: I don't actually know what happened to it.
9:32
SPEAKER_01: I think my brother got it.
9:35
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
9:36
SPEAKER_01: It's probably in some... Well...
9:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
9:40
SPEAKER_01: Anyways, I'm going to go
9:42
SPEAKER_00: beyond that.
9:43
SPEAKER_00: I'm not at all handy, but I like to think that I could be.
9:47
SPEAKER_00: And I will periodically watch YouTube videos.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: The other day,
9:50
SPEAKER_00: I literally just watched,
9:51
SPEAKER_00: I spent like 45 minutes in the evening watching a YouTube video of a guy who got
9:57
SPEAKER_00: a hold of an old console record player radio thing.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: And he was taking it apart and cleaning all the parts and replacing all of the capacitors.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: And...
10:09
SPEAKER_00: And then he wired in a Bluetooth receiver into it.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I could do that.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: I bet I could do that.
10:15
SPEAKER_00: I'm never going to do that.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: I probably couldn't do that.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: But I like watching and be like, I bet I could do that.
10:20
SPEAKER_00: The level
10:22
SPEAKER_01: of stuff we have,
10:23
SPEAKER_01: and I'm going to screw this up,
10:24
SPEAKER_01: and I think you're not going to be friends with me after I say this.
10:27
SPEAKER_01: This is going to be the blondest, most A lot of companies made them.
10:31
SPEAKER_01: People think of them as being Victrola.
10:33
SPEAKER_01: Victrola was the big company that made them, so they're often thought of as being Victrola's.
10:49
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what brand it is.
10:52
SPEAKER_01: I will send you lots of requests later.
10:56
SPEAKER_00: It has the crank on the side that you have to crank it up and then is the horn,
11:01
SPEAKER_00: does it go above the record or does it have the horn built in?
11:04
SPEAKER_00: No, you can
11:05
SPEAKER_01: take the horn off.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they were made so the horn was built into the case.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: I've seen them where there's this big wooden horn behind a door below the record player.
11:19
SPEAKER_00: You have to open up the door when you play it to let the sound out.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to take a video of
11:23
SPEAKER_01: it after this.
11:24
SPEAKER_01: It still works.
11:25
SPEAKER_01: We have old records for it.
11:27
SPEAKER_01: You would die.
11:28
SPEAKER_01: That one's cool.
11:29
SPEAKER_01: But we have that set up.
11:31
SPEAKER_00: Do not put a vinyl record on that.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: You may know this.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: Never put a vinyl record on it.
11:35
SPEAKER_00: No, it's the discs.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
11:37
SPEAKER_00: But a lot of people don't know this.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: On those, they actually use shellac.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: So it's very, very thick.
11:43
SPEAKER_01: No, it's like these ceramic-y
11:46
SPEAKER_00: almost discs.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: It's shellac.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: It's bugs.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: That's what shellac is.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: But if you put a vinyl record on it, the needle just shreds the vinyl record.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: It'll play it once, and as it's going, it's just absolutely destroying the record.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, don't do that.
12:06
SPEAKER_01: No, there's like a little built-in cabinet and we have all these records.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, with the record slots.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: From like the 20s.
12:13
SPEAKER_00: I want them.
12:14
SPEAKER_00: I want them all.
12:15
SPEAKER_01: Well, you can't have those.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: That one we do actually have set up.
12:19
SPEAKER_01: We have this room that we call the Florida Room.
12:21
SPEAKER_01: I don't know why.
12:23
SPEAKER_01: And we have it set up in there.
12:25
SPEAKER_01: We have these really cool, very,
12:28
SPEAKER_01: very unique Tiffany lamps that are painted with like mountain scenes
12:32
SPEAKER_01: and They're missing a couple panels in the back.
12:35
SPEAKER_01: I need to figure out what kind of organ I need to sell to get those fixed and repaired.
12:42
SPEAKER_01: I will someday.
12:44
SPEAKER_01: But we have a lot of really cool old stuff from my husband's family.
12:49
SPEAKER_01: What's your dream?
12:53
SPEAKER_01: I know.
12:54
SPEAKER_01: If you came to our farm, you would just be walking around like, I want to live here.
13:01
SPEAKER_00: We inherited stuff from my mother's family.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: We were never good at taking care of things.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: Most of the stuff got lost and moved.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: And I regret that.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: We had a lot of really cool antique stuff.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: We tended to use the stuff.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: They wear out.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: Or just got broken or lost over the years, which is a shame.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: We had this very cool old bowling set that was like, it was a 10-pins bowling set.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: It was like these little soldiers.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's really cool.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it was from the 19th century.
13:34
SPEAKER_00: And it was this little bowling ball.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: Over the years, the soldiers just slowly became less and less populist until there were none.
13:44
SPEAKER_01: We have a bunch of old board games.
13:49
SPEAKER_01: We have a ton of old toys.
13:51
SPEAKER_01: We have antique farm equipment.
13:53
SPEAKER_01: We have antique record players.
13:56
SPEAKER_01: I collect antique cameras.
13:59
SPEAKER_01: And antique typewriters.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: We have so many.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: I used to collect antique typewriters.
14:05
SPEAKER_00: I've lost most of them over the years as well.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: I think there's only one place that still repairs them in America.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: There's a place in California.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: Tom Hanks made a movie about it because Tom Hanks collects manual typewriters.
14:23
SPEAKER_01: Great orthodox person there.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: Tom Hanks is orthodox?
14:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that.
14:29
SPEAKER_01: Fun fact.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: You can have trouble online if you claim any connection to Tom Hanks.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: There's some conspiracy theories about him.
14:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm unclear why.
14:41
SPEAKER_00: I think it's because he seems like a pretty nice guy and everyone just feels like they...
14:44
SPEAKER_00: Have to find an excuse to truly despise nice people.
14:48
SPEAKER_00: He's steadily married to the same person, Torita Wilson, for decades.
14:53
SPEAKER_01: Which is why he's Orthodox.
14:55
SPEAKER_01: She is Greek.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: With a name like Wilson, I should have assumed.
15:01
SPEAKER_01: No, but she's Greek.
15:04
SPEAKER_01: They're actually massive benefactors to a beautiful church in,
15:10
SPEAKER_01: well, the cathedral in Los Angeles.
15:12
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: Speaking of Los Angeles,
15:15
SPEAKER_00: did you see that Karen Bass posted a thing asking about their,
15:22
SPEAKER_00: she's put out an ad asking for donations saying that for every dollar
15:26
SPEAKER_00: that you donate, the city will donate $5 to her, so it was like magic, which
15:33
SPEAKER_00: Apparently is a thing that like.
15:36
SPEAKER_01: Oh, because they have the like public private split election funding.
15:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: The Common Sense Institute has been pushing that forever.
15:44
SPEAKER_01: Or was it common concern?
15:47
SPEAKER_01: Common cause?
15:47
SPEAKER_01: Common concern?
15:48
SPEAKER_01: I forget.
15:49
SPEAKER_01: Whatever it is, it's common something.
15:52
SPEAKER_01: This was something that goes way back to when I was in college.
15:56
SPEAKER_01: They were proposing these public-private split.
16:00
SPEAKER_01: It's supposed to limit the spending in politics.
16:03
SPEAKER_01: So if you agree to it,
16:05
SPEAKER_01: then you can't spend beyond a certain amount, but you get all this public money.
16:11
SPEAKER_01: I'm not a fan of those.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: It was a big push in the 90s.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: The federal government now,
16:19
SPEAKER_00: like the presidential election,
16:20
SPEAKER_00: they all abided by those until Obama realized he could raise so much more money.
16:26
SPEAKER_00: And Obama chose,
16:28
SPEAKER_00: actively chose,
16:29
SPEAKER_00: because there was no law you had to do it,
16:32
SPEAKER_00: Obama actively chose to sever, to not do that so he could raise more money.
16:37
SPEAKER_00: And that's basically a dead letter now when it comes to slavery.
16:41
SPEAKER_00: All right.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: When you when you put it like when you put it like that,
16:45
SPEAKER_00: like Bastard,
16:46
SPEAKER_00: the like basically it just sounds like,
16:49
SPEAKER_00: you know,
16:50
SPEAKER_00: you can help us attach a Hoover to the to the American tax or to the Los Angeles
16:54
SPEAKER_00: and California taxpayers wallet to fund the Democratic Party.
17:00
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's the entire reason anyone gets elected in California.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: Like, well, yes,
17:08
SPEAKER_01: it's yeah.
17:09
SPEAKER_01: Stuff is.
17:10
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
17:11
SPEAKER_01: Talking about California politics makes me so depressed because it's like.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: It's a beautiful state.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: I believe that I will concede California is probably our most beautiful state.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: It's the best
17:24
SPEAKER_01: place and the worst people.
17:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think that not suffering environmental hardship of any substantial note,
17:35
SPEAKER_00: and minor earthquakes don't count,
17:39
SPEAKER_00: but not suffering a seasonal effect, I think it breaks people somehow.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: It somehow destroys their ability to understand the world.
17:48
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
17:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
17:49
SPEAKER_01: I would disagree with the not having to deal with seasonal problems as someone
17:56
SPEAKER_01: who used to live in the San Fernando Valley and had to deal with Santa Ana winds
18:03
SPEAKER_01: and constantly having to evacuate for wildfires.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: It's breezy.
18:10
SPEAKER_00: Oh, no.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: It is a very dry, hot wind that fuels fires and...
18:17
SPEAKER_00: The actual counter to my argument is that New England is also politically batshit,
18:25
SPEAKER_00: and they have very wild swings between summer and winter.
18:32
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's so funny.
18:33
SPEAKER_01: Everyone keeps saying like, oh, you're leaving Colorado.
18:36
SPEAKER_01: You're going somewhere better politically, which, number one, we're not we're not changing.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: What?
18:42
SPEAKER_01: I know.
18:42
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, wait, it's Massachusetts.
18:45
SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm going to Boston.
18:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
18:48
SPEAKER_01: I will say, one,
18:50
SPEAKER_01: I do think New England is bad shit,
18:52
SPEAKER_01: and they're very, very liberal, and I don't agree with the politics at all.
18:57
SPEAKER_01: And also, oddly, they are less crazy than Colorado.
19:01
SPEAKER_01: Colorado has gone crazy.
19:03
SPEAKER_01: Further left than even California on a lot of things, which is so, so weird.
19:09
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of reasons for that.
19:10
SPEAKER_01: That wouldn't.
19:12
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
19:12
SPEAKER_01: That's not our lane.
19:13
SPEAKER_01: I don't know that it would be super interesting for this.
19:17
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I don't know.
19:18
SPEAKER_01: We are still Colorado residents, though,
19:21
SPEAKER_01: and we're going to stay Colorado residents,
19:24
SPEAKER_01: even though we're going to be living in Boston.
19:28
SPEAKER_01: It's a school thing.
19:29
SPEAKER_01: So we'll come back here on breaks and things.
19:32
SPEAKER_01: We're not.
19:34
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to be driving a Colorado license plate car around Massachusetts
19:38
SPEAKER_01: because we're not living there full time.
19:42
SPEAKER_00: I mean, downside of that, I would bet it's probably cheaper to register a car in Massachusetts.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
19:48
SPEAKER_01: They don't call it Taxachusetts for nothing.
19:50
SPEAKER_01: I guarantee it is less expensive to register your car in Massachusetts than freaking Colorado.
19:58
SPEAKER_01: This year,
19:59
SPEAKER_01: it was $1,400 for the privilege of,
20:04
SPEAKER_01: what, renting the car that I own back from my state?
20:08
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what it is.
20:09
SPEAKER_00: Have I told you how much it cost me to register my car?
20:12
SPEAKER_00: Screw off.
20:13
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to know how much it is?
20:14
SPEAKER_01: No, I don't want to know, but you're going to tell me.
20:17
SPEAKER_00: $25.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: Oh, my God.
20:19
SPEAKER_01: I hate you.
20:22
SPEAKER_01: We have an old Sequoia that we will never get rid of because it's like the best car on earth.
20:27
SPEAKER_01: And it'll be my kids once they are finally really driving.
20:32
SPEAKER_01: My son is like learning to drive.
20:33
SPEAKER_01: He's late on this,
20:35
SPEAKER_01: which side note,
20:36
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what it is with Gen Alpha,
20:38
SPEAKER_01: but they're not independent and wanting to drive and like.
20:44
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, drive people.
20:45
SPEAKER_01: They're just not as motivated.
20:47
SPEAKER_01: But that car is like 200 bucks.
21:01
SPEAKER_01: So in Colorado, it goes off your car's value.
21:05
SPEAKER_01: And that car is not worth very much, but it's still like $200.
21:09
SPEAKER_00: $200 for a beater is an insane registration.
21:12
SPEAKER_01: It really is.
21:13
SPEAKER_01: No, it really, really is.
21:14
SPEAKER_01: That Vespa that you are really envious of is, I think it's going to be a couple hundred bucks.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: Because it has value as a vintage car.
21:26
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't really, though.
21:28
SPEAKER_01: We don't have to go off value like that,
21:30
SPEAKER_01: so the way they calculate it is at least a little bit more fair.
21:35
SPEAKER_01: It just, Colorado's so warped.
21:39
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's a horrible, horrible state.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: Horrible state with beautiful scenery is pretty much the Colorado story.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: Sure, sure.
21:50
SPEAKER_01: I love it here, but I wish other people loved it, too, and would stop.
21:56
SPEAKER_00: My oldest daughter seems very happy to be able to drive.
22:01
SPEAKER_00: She'll talk about this sometimes.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: My youngest has no interest in driving.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: My oldest daughter rides her bike to school every day when she can.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: She's very into being an independent, being able to do stuff herself and stuff.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: My youngest sometimes rides her bike to school,
22:22
SPEAKER_00: but she'll also just be just as happy to grab a ride from me.
22:27
SPEAKER_00: That's my oldest.
22:29
SPEAKER_01: My oldest doesn't care.
22:31
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he just doesn't care.
22:33
SPEAKER_01: He's like, oh, whatever.
22:34
SPEAKER_01: I'll get out when I get out.
22:36
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't mind.
22:38
SPEAKER_01: My daughter is very...
22:41
SPEAKER_01: She really wants a car and she really she has her heart set on like
22:48
SPEAKER_01: a 90s Ford Bronco or she wants an old Chevy boxy truck.
22:54
SPEAKER_01: You should get her like a VW Rabbit.
22:57
SPEAKER_01: Well, I will only let my kids drive SUVs or tall cars.
23:02
SPEAKER_01: In Colorado,
23:03
SPEAKER_01: if they are here,
23:06
SPEAKER_01: everyone has really big cars, and I don't want them going underneath a big SUV.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: What?
23:13
SPEAKER_00: That is an insane concern.
23:17
SPEAKER_01: It's not, though.
23:18
SPEAKER_01: If you're surrounded by big cars and you're learning to drive,
23:22
SPEAKER_01: I want you to be at the same level.
23:25
SPEAKER_01: Like, size level.
23:27
SPEAKER_01: You see enough accidents with really,
23:29
SPEAKER_01: really big cars and really small cars,
23:31
SPEAKER_01: and I'm like, okay, I want my kids in a big cage, like a big metal cage.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: What you should do,
23:38
SPEAKER_00: and I want to do this,
23:40
SPEAKER_00: but it would require, you should teach her to drive, teach her to drive stick first.
23:45
SPEAKER_01: No, she only wants a stick.
23:46
SPEAKER_01: Like, she does not, she, yeah, but she's really cool.
23:50
SPEAKER_01: I'm not as cool as she is.
23:52
SPEAKER_01: She's like, Wants an old beater, like she just, she loves old trucks.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: I do not really know how to drive stick.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: I've driven stick a few times.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: I can't drive stick.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: I feel bad about that.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: I was like,
24:07
SPEAKER_00: my sister always referred to,
24:09
SPEAKER_00: she used to only drive manual transmissions and she'd always say,
24:13
SPEAKER_00: if you're driving automatic, you're not really driving, you're just pointing.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: What?
24:22
SPEAKER_01: My son wants my in-laws Tesla because he's like,
24:24
SPEAKER_01: I could just dial it in and it can drive for me.
24:28
SPEAKER_01: I'm like.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's and this this is actually my wife.
24:36
SPEAKER_00: She doesn't.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: I drive most places.
24:39
SPEAKER_00: She doesn't really find that much.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: She is.
24:42
SPEAKER_00: She likes the fruits of driving.
24:43
SPEAKER_00: She doesn't like the driving.
24:46
SPEAKER_00: But that's.
24:47
SPEAKER_00: I thought there's two very different outlooks on cars in general.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: I think that a lot of people view them basically like an appliance.
24:57
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, it's like, you know, a toaster.
25:00
SPEAKER_00: It's like, you know, if it toasts my bread, I'm happy.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: I don't really care.
25:04
SPEAKER_01: This is me you're describing.
25:08
SPEAKER_00: Well, no, because you like the freedom of the road.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: I do actually really love driving, but I don't care about the car.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, the car is throwing me down.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm not talking about gearheads or a whole other thing.
25:24
SPEAKER_00: Car obsessives, I love them.
25:25
SPEAKER_00: I think they're like, you know, they do a lot of really cool stuff.
25:28
SPEAKER_00: But just,
25:30
SPEAKER_00: I think,
25:31
SPEAKER_00: I have always viewed cars as being a, like,
25:34
SPEAKER_00: you know,
25:34
SPEAKER_00: it's this basically magical box that will take you anywhere you want to go.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: That was cute.
25:43
SPEAKER_00: No, it wasn't.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: I know why you're laughing.
25:45
SPEAKER_00: That was really cute.
25:45
SPEAKER_00: I know why you're laughing, you filthy gutter brain.
25:50
SPEAKER_01: I actually wasn't.
25:52
SPEAKER_01: I just thought that was a really adorable way of saying it, but okay.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: No, I really wasn't, like.
26:00
SPEAKER_01: Hand on the Bible.
26:01
SPEAKER_01: I wasn't.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: I thought that was cute.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: We had a conversation about a post the other day that had to do with cake,
26:07
SPEAKER_00: and you were like, you know what cake is.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: I was like, no, I don't know what cake is a euphemism for.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: I have no clue what that was.
26:14
SPEAKER_00: I was trying,
26:16
SPEAKER_01: by the way,
26:16
SPEAKER_01: I was trying so hard to say that in the most PG way possible,
26:21
SPEAKER_01: and I deserve all the credit for that.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to define what you said cake is slang for.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: My wife will listen to this and I'm not going to find it to you either.
26:34
SPEAKER_01: Don't look it up.
26:35
SPEAKER_01: Don't look it up.
26:36
SPEAKER_01: It's not worth it.
26:37
SPEAKER_01: It's not worth it.
26:38
SPEAKER_01: It's just...
26:40
SPEAKER_00: No, but that's the, no, like a car, I've always thought of it, like in these exact terms.
26:46
SPEAKER_00: It's a magical box that will take you to wherever you happen to want to go.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: Like, you know,
26:51
SPEAKER_00: I remember when I was first starting to drive,
26:54
SPEAKER_00: I remember I was driving down the road and I was like,
26:56
SPEAKER_00: if I kept, like, you know, this road connects to literally all points in America.
27:01
SPEAKER_00: I could,
27:01
SPEAKER_00: in theory,
27:02
SPEAKER_00: just like,
27:03
SPEAKER_00: you know,
27:03
SPEAKER_00: from where I am on this black tarmac,
27:06
SPEAKER_00: I I could arrive anywhere in America if I wanted to and had the time and had
27:10
SPEAKER_00: the resources to do it.
27:13
SPEAKER_00: And there's something magical about this, too.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean, a lot of people don't have that.
27:17
SPEAKER_00: Like I said, a lot of people just view it as an appliance to get you from A to B.
27:23
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's the difference between the kind of people who just want
27:26
SPEAKER_00: to take highways wherever they go and the people who want to ram around
27:30
SPEAKER_00: the back roads a little bit and see what small-town America they can see along
27:36
SPEAKER_00: the way is like.
27:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
27:39
SPEAKER_01: I love the journey of driving.
27:41
SPEAKER_01: I love, like, going through small towns.
27:46
SPEAKER_01: My daughter and I are heading out on our cross-country trek soon.
27:50
SPEAKER_01: We're still here with some friends for a week or two.
27:56
SPEAKER_01: And we have a list of things that we want to stop at.
27:59
SPEAKER_01: Like, We're going to go to the Marsh Cheese Castle because my daughter's obsessed with it.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: This is in Wisconsin, right?
28:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's in Kenosha.
28:09
SPEAKER_01: So I used to live in Wisconsin.
28:10
SPEAKER_01: We're not going to go up to Madison, although part of me is like, oh, maybe we should.
28:14
SPEAKER_01: I loved living in Madison, even though they are literally the most insane people on Earth.
28:20
SPEAKER_01: I do actually really like Wisconsin.
28:22
SPEAKER_01: But we were at a thrift store here in Colorado and found a Marsh Cheese Castle snow globe.
28:31
SPEAKER_01: And she bought it because it's like the weirdest, most awesome thing ever.
28:35
SPEAKER_01: I might take a picture.
28:35
SPEAKER_01: I'll make that the picture for this episode.
28:40
SPEAKER_01: But she has had this snow globe forever because it was just so absurd.
28:44
SPEAKER_01: And she's like, wait, is the Mars cheese castle?
28:47
SPEAKER_01: I was like, yeah, it's only like an hour or two out of the way.
28:50
SPEAKER_01: It's fine.
28:51
SPEAKER_01: We'll go on a little diversion.
28:53
SPEAKER_01: And so she's really, really excited.
28:54
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, it's just a cheese store, but...
28:57
SPEAKER_01: It's great.
28:58
SPEAKER_01: I love like weird Americana.
29:00
SPEAKER_01: It's the joy of being able to drive.
29:04
SPEAKER_01: And I like that she's into that.
29:06
SPEAKER_01: My son couldn't care less.
29:07
SPEAKER_01: He's like, nah, I just He's excited to take public transportation.
29:13
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, okay.
29:15
SPEAKER_00: That's the thing with trains.
29:17
SPEAKER_00: I actually really like trains.
29:19
SPEAKER_00: One of the problems with liking trains,
29:21
SPEAKER_00: you get hooked in with all of the public transportation perverts who are obsessed
29:27
SPEAKER_00: with trains.
29:28
SPEAKER_00: Why can't we have high-speed rail everywhere at all times?
29:32
SPEAKER_00: But so ever since I read Atlas Shrugged,
29:37
SPEAKER_00: honestly,
29:38
SPEAKER_00: when I was there,
29:40
SPEAKER_00: Ayn Rand described some things very well in the way that she handled the trains.
29:44
SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh, that's it.
29:47
SPEAKER_00: But at the same time,
29:49
SPEAKER_00: the problem with trains is where it gets to grow and where things are and
29:55
SPEAKER_00: where you can go are decided by the lay of the track.
30:00
SPEAKER_01: Well, and I don't like trains because you don't get to see all of those fun,
30:05
SPEAKER_01: special, unique, out-of-the-way places.
30:07
SPEAKER_01: Like when I go to Ireland, everyone's like, oh, well, you could just take the train around.
30:12
SPEAKER_01: But then you miss like 90% of the country.
30:15
SPEAKER_01: You have to get out and go away from the train.
30:19
SPEAKER_01: And that just like, so are you taking the train to then rent a car or take a taxi?
30:26
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
30:26
SPEAKER_01: It just doesn't work.
30:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, no,
30:30
SPEAKER_00: that's one of the—the national park system,
30:34
SPEAKER_00: people like talking about the national park system,
30:36
SPEAKER_00: people like lauding their beautiful national park system, whatever.
30:41
SPEAKER_00: The reason that—was it John Muir, I think, was the guy who— Yeah.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: So the national park system was literally built and designed
31:17
SPEAKER_00: originally
31:19
SPEAKER_00: to get people out of cities and get them seeing other parts of the country.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: Also
31:27
SPEAKER_00: because Teddy Roosevelt was very concerned there wouldn't be enough animal stuff
31:30
SPEAKER_00: for future generations to hunt like he so loved hunting.
31:34
SPEAKER_00: It was actually a very practical solution to his concerns.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: But I think there is something too.
31:42
SPEAKER_00: There's so many people who don't leave their little urban environment.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: They don't go out and they don't go and see.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: I'm not even just talking about the national parks, but just the rest of America.
31:50
SPEAKER_00: The way people outside of It's more about the stops along the way.
31:54
SPEAKER_00: Exactly, the stops along the way.
31:56
SPEAKER_00: That's a little Easter egg for the future.
32:25
SPEAKER_01: Wait, but really quickly,
32:26
SPEAKER_01: I have to just say,
32:27
SPEAKER_01: so I get this is going to sound like an off topic thing,
32:31
SPEAKER_01: but you'll get to where I'm going.
32:33
SPEAKER_01: I get press emails all the time for my website, people pitching story ideas, things.
32:40
SPEAKER_01: Lots of PR companies email me these like weird pitches
32:44
SPEAKER_01: and usually they don't fit anything I'm talking about.
32:49
SPEAKER_01: Right now, as I was just checking, I just got a flood of emails and I look and I got one.
32:55
SPEAKER_01: And the email I just got was,
32:57
SPEAKER_01: what decades of deferred maintenance look like from behind the wheel?
33:01
SPEAKER_01: Are you currently covering conversations around infrastructure,
33:05
SPEAKER_01: transportation policy, or the state of America's highways?
33:08
SPEAKER_01: Like, is this BR company listening to our conversation right now?
33:12
SPEAKER_01: That actually sounds pretty good.
33:16
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I just had to point that out.
33:18
SPEAKER_01: I was like,
33:18
SPEAKER_01: literally,
33:19
SPEAKER_01: as we're saying this,
33:20
SPEAKER_01: I got an email from a press company trying to help me talk about America's highway
33:26
SPEAKER_01: and how we need to be spending more money on our transportation systems, which...
33:34
SPEAKER_00: Yes, we do.
33:34
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
33:35
SPEAKER_00: we need to stop funneling money into a lot of things we are funneling money into,
33:39
SPEAKER_00: and I think maintain our...
33:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we need to actually put the money towards things like that,
33:48
SPEAKER_01: towards bridges, towards roads.
33:56
SPEAKER_00: You will rarely drive along a highway without seeing construction with
34:02
SPEAKER_00: a sign saying this project brought to you by such and such.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: But the side roads are generally not being as well maintained at all.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: You do not
34:16
SPEAKER_01: live in a blue state.
34:17
SPEAKER_01: And I can tell by this conversation because you literally like you will be driving
34:23
SPEAKER_01: through Kansas and Nebraska and Or even Wyoming.
34:27
SPEAKER_01: And the second you hit Colorado,
34:29
SPEAKER_01: even though it's a federal road, it's absolute like nightmare disaster.
34:34
SPEAKER_00: Really?
34:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: And that's West Virginia.
34:38
SPEAKER_00: I truck along West Virginia through West Virginia a decent bit.
34:43
SPEAKER_00: And they have been doing like it's kind of a pain right now.
34:46
SPEAKER_00: They've been doing like massive, massive infrastructural repairs on all of their highways.
34:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: I'm assuming this was some sort of interstate highway fund money they tapped.
34:58
SPEAKER_00: But they're like, as far as I can tell, redoing all of their bridges.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: They're actually widening out the highway at various points,
35:05
SPEAKER_00: like along pretty much all of their major interstate corridors,
35:08
SPEAKER_00: which it's a pain now.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, it needs to be done.
35:12
SPEAKER_00: We need to maintain all of these things and be doing a better job.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: This is something that Donald Trump was actually in his first administration doing.
35:21
SPEAKER_00: Was talking about a lot that he hasn't really focused on much that the state
35:27
SPEAKER_00: of our infrastructure as far as airports and roads is we should be
35:33
SPEAKER_00: that we should have the best of all of these things.
35:35
SPEAKER_00: And the fact that we don't is embarrassing.
35:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
35:39
SPEAKER_01: Well, no, I agree.
35:41
SPEAKER_01: And I will say,
35:41
SPEAKER_01: like in Colorado,
35:42
SPEAKER_01: it's always under construction,
35:44
SPEAKER_01: but that doesn't actually mean they're doing anything.
35:46
SPEAKER_01: I just told you today there's a huge scandal in my town brewing because
35:52
SPEAKER_01: the gas station, the Taco Bell and the McDonald's sank.
35:58
SPEAKER_01: The developers didn't do a good job mitigating
36:01
SPEAKER_01: the bentonite clay that's underneath all of our houses here.
36:06
SPEAKER_01: I live in a town that's very, very farm-based.
36:09
SPEAKER_01: It's great for farms.
36:10
SPEAKER_01: We're right up against the mountains,
36:11
SPEAKER_01: but we have shifting soils and you have to know how to deal with shifting soils
36:16
SPEAKER_01: and how to set buildings up properly.
36:20
SPEAKER_01: And it's being so rapidly developed that people just aren't doing any of this.
36:26
SPEAKER_01: The McDonald's and the Taco Bell, I think, are two years old and they are.
36:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
36:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: It's really fun where we are.
37:05
SPEAKER_00: You told me about this and I said that I think one of the – I am not a libertarian.
37:11
SPEAKER_00: Anyone should be aware that I'm not a libertarian.
37:14
SPEAKER_00: One of the major functions
37:17
SPEAKER_00: that I believe government should be doing is maintaining – I'm not talking
37:26
SPEAKER_00: about federal government.
37:28
SPEAKER_00: This is a local government thing.
37:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's the only reason they exist or should
37:31
SPEAKER_00: exist.
37:33
SPEAKER_00: To make sure that, like, you know, people are building their buildings.
37:37
SPEAKER_00: You don't have a triangle shirtwaist factory fire kind of situation
37:42
SPEAKER_00: where no thoughts are put into it.
37:44
SPEAKER_00: And clearly no thoughts are put into this.
37:45
SPEAKER_00: No one did anything.
37:46
SPEAKER_00: You said you think it's public corruption.
37:47
SPEAKER_00: I tend to assume it's probably public corruption.
37:50
SPEAKER_01: Which is really funny because I and I don't want to make this sound like it's
37:54
SPEAKER_01: a liberal conservative thing
37:56
SPEAKER_00: because
37:57
SPEAKER_01: I actually live in
37:58
SPEAKER_01: a small town that's fairly conservative.
38:01
SPEAKER_01: We vote red.
38:03
SPEAKER_01: We're getting closer to voting blue with all these new people coming in and all
38:10
SPEAKER_01: of these houses that are going to sink.
38:12
SPEAKER_01: So they're going to have to leave.
38:13
SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry.
38:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
38:16
SPEAKER_01: Don't let the door hit
38:17
SPEAKER_00: you on the way out.
38:17
SPEAKER_00: Whereas the house you currently live in, it stood the test of time.
38:23
SPEAKER_01: Because my husband's grandfather built it in the 70s by hand,
38:27
SPEAKER_01: and he used to work for the Army Corps of Engineers.
38:30
SPEAKER_01: He actually built...
38:33
SPEAKER_01: Most of the Boy Scout camps around the West he built,
38:36
SPEAKER_01: he built a lot of federal fish hatcheries as well around the West.
38:41
SPEAKER_01: So like up in Leadville, there's a fish hatchery that's, we love going up there.
38:46
SPEAKER_01: I'm really, I'm going to be sad when we don't live there.
38:50
SPEAKER_01: I understand that, but we don't have a family connection to you.
38:52
SPEAKER_01: Well, actually, we do because of my degenerate Irish family.
38:55
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we'll go tour the former tenement buildings that my family used to own.
39:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
39:16
SPEAKER_01: Anyways, it's going to be sad to be away from stuff like that.
39:20
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, like my husband's grandpa knew what he was doing and knew how to mitigate soil.
39:28
SPEAKER_01: The townhouse that I live in that is,
39:31
SPEAKER_01: frankly,
39:32
SPEAKER_01: I feel really nervous about being so close to this gas station that may explode.
39:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
39:37
SPEAKER_01: Is close by, but those were done really well.
39:42
SPEAKER_01: I have a townhouse in a neighborhood,
39:45
SPEAKER_01: you know,
39:45
SPEAKER_01: these new developments where they have like four or five developers come in.
39:50
SPEAKER_01: Ours were done before most of the houses that are in there now.
39:55
SPEAKER_01: And they weren't selling because they were priced a lot higher.
39:57
SPEAKER_01: And people were like, well, why are these so much more expensive?
40:00
SPEAKER_01: It's a townhouse, not like a detached house.
40:03
SPEAKER_01: But ours are the only ones that aren't sinking.
40:07
SPEAKER_01: The developer did a great job.
40:09
SPEAKER_01: Our developer was fantastic.
40:11
SPEAKER_01: And he only did like two rows of townhouses in this neighborhood.
40:16
SPEAKER_01: He mostly does historic preservation in Fort Collins and does really high-end restorations.
40:25
SPEAKER_01: Fantastic developer.
40:27
SPEAKER_01: Love him.
40:28
SPEAKER_01: Sad that we're around all these really cheap developers that just came in and put
40:34
SPEAKER_01: in massive swaths of ticky-tack houses.
40:38
SPEAKER_01: Little boxes on the hillside.
40:40
SPEAKER_01: I know, I said that for a reason.
40:43
SPEAKER_00: I'm surprised you say that they've only been there for like two years.
40:46
SPEAKER_00: When you told me about this,
40:47
SPEAKER_00: I assume these buildings have been there for like 20,
40:49
SPEAKER_00: 30 years and that this was like some problem.
40:52
SPEAKER_00: It's that bad already.
40:55
SPEAKER_00: But also, we have easy technology to mitigate these things.
40:59
SPEAKER_00: I think you're supposed to do something that I'm I believe,
41:02
SPEAKER_00: I'm not positive,
41:03
SPEAKER_00: I think you're supposed to do concrete injection into the soil,
41:07
SPEAKER_00: like firm it up underneath you.
41:09
SPEAKER_01: They also need like plions and stuff.
41:14
SPEAKER_01: Whatever.
41:15
SPEAKER_01: You also have to like stir up the soil to a certain amount so that it's all mixed in.
41:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
41:38
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what people in northern Colorado are doing.
41:41
SPEAKER_01: I honestly think a lot of it is really poor engineering.
41:46
SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of it is people don't understand soil here like they used to
41:52
SPEAKER_01: or they're coming from somewhere else and don't know how to mitigate this.
41:58
SPEAKER_01: It's just so downtown Loveland is.
42:03
SPEAKER_01: Has had to tear up this one road four times now because each time they redo it,
42:09
SPEAKER_01: they realize they didn't fix the problem and they'll just plow ahead and it's like,
42:14
SPEAKER_01: wait a second, these are fairly easy to understand.
42:17
SPEAKER_01: Um,
42:19
SPEAKER_01: A lot of Northern Colorado is sinking right now because people just don't know how
42:22
SPEAKER_01: to deal with this anymore.
42:24
SPEAKER_01: There are three neighborhoods in my town dealing with this.
42:28
SPEAKER_01: There are our rec center.
42:30
SPEAKER_01: They poured the foundation.
42:32
SPEAKER_01: Number one, our rec center, we voted against it numerous times.
42:35
SPEAKER_01: And our town council is like, yeah, we don't care.
42:38
SPEAKER_01: We're just building it anyways, which I don't know.
42:41
SPEAKER_01: I don't know how this happens.
42:43
SPEAKER_01: When we say we're not voting for it and they're like,
42:45
SPEAKER_01: yeah, we're just going to do it anyways and your tax dollars are paying for it.
42:48
SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't know how that works.
42:52
SPEAKER_01: It's just a nightmare.
42:54
SPEAKER_01: Our local governments have run amok and they are not doing the only thing
42:59
SPEAKER_01: that they should exist for.
43:01
SPEAKER_01: I don't get it.
43:04
SPEAKER_00: Terrible state, beautiful, beautiful views.
43:07
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, that's...
43:10
SPEAKER_01: I'm just waiting for all these people's houses to sink and then they can go off to
43:16
SPEAKER_01: the next place they're going to go destroy being probably Tennessee or Texas
43:20
SPEAKER_01: because that's where everyone ends up going.
43:24
SPEAKER_01: So it can be someone else's problem and then we can come through and fix things up.
43:28
SPEAKER_01: But.
43:29
SPEAKER_00: They used to all go to Florida,
43:30
SPEAKER_00: I Think,
43:31
SPEAKER_00: but then Florida's housing costs went nuts,
43:35
SPEAKER_00: and then their insurance rates went nuts,
43:37
SPEAKER_00: and now apparently people can't sell houses in Florida.
43:39
SPEAKER_00: I was reading things.
43:41
SPEAKER_01: Can't sell houses in Colorado.
43:43
SPEAKER_00: Yep, that's...
43:44
SPEAKER_01: All of these states where we have to deal with these things.
43:49
SPEAKER_01: The way that Colorado is a lot like Florida,
43:52
SPEAKER_01: you can't get great insurance here because we have wildfires.
43:57
SPEAKER_01: They have hurricanes.
43:59
SPEAKER_01: We also have floods here after fires.
44:01
SPEAKER_01: There's just, you know, states where you have to deal with stuff like this.
44:06
SPEAKER_01: We're going to see.
44:07
SPEAKER_01: And I think in Florida, it's going to become apparent, too.
44:10
SPEAKER_01: There's going to be big crashes and we'll see where people pick up and how they move forward.
44:16
SPEAKER_01: In Colorado, I have hope.
44:20
SPEAKER_01: Maybe I shouldn't, but.
44:23
SPEAKER_00: I think in aggregate,
44:24
SPEAKER_00: the best places to live are,
44:25
SPEAKER_00: in fact, in the Northeast from a general safety perspective.
44:31
SPEAKER_00: You don't really have hurricanes.
44:33
SPEAKER_00: Sure, you have harsh winters, but you don't have hurricanes.
44:36
SPEAKER_00: You don't have wildfires.
44:38
SPEAKER_01: You do have hurricanes in coastal New England.
44:43
SPEAKER_01: Coastal New England, you might have to.
44:45
SPEAKER_01: It's a nor'easter.
44:47
SPEAKER_01: Asheville might.
44:49
SPEAKER_01: Take umbrage with this statement a little bit or, you know, around the East.
44:54
SPEAKER_01: That's not Northeast, but like the East Coast, like Baltimore floods.
44:58
SPEAKER_00: One-off freak occurrences of a hurricane heading up the Ohio Valley.
45:04
SPEAKER_00: It's not...
45:06
SPEAKER_00: I'm just saying,
45:07
SPEAKER_00: the Northeast, for the most part, it has swings, but it's extremely predictable.
45:13
SPEAKER_01: Don't they flood like every year?
45:14
SPEAKER_01: No.
45:15
SPEAKER_00: No.
45:15
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
45:17
Okay.
45:21
SPEAKER_00: But my dream is for all the conservatives to like recolonize the Northeast
45:25
SPEAKER_00: and take it back because that's our heritage.
45:29
SPEAKER_00: No.
45:30
SPEAKER_01: Embrace your Randianism and come to Colorado because you notice all of the place
45:35
SPEAKER_01: when shit hits the fan in all of these dystopian novels or all
45:41
SPEAKER_01: of these like libertarian leaning things,
45:45
SPEAKER_01: it's always Colorado where the resistance starts.
45:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
45:49
SPEAKER_00: but they also developed a weird mirage machine that would make it impossible to tell
45:55
SPEAKER_00: where they were, as I recall.
45:57
SPEAKER_00: It's been a while since I read Atlas Shrugged,
45:59
SPEAKER_00: but I'm pretty sure Galt made some kind of weird mirage machine that you had to see,
46:02
SPEAKER_00: like basically had to fly through what appeared to be a mountain to get to it
46:05
SPEAKER_00: to keep all the outsiders out.
46:07
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
46:09
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's really funny.
46:10
SPEAKER_01: This town that I'm talking about dealing with all these problems is,
46:14
SPEAKER_01: Half the areas, actually, there's a YouTuber you watch.
46:19
SPEAKER_01: They live right near where there's Galt Gulch and Galt Street and all these things.
46:27
SPEAKER_00: Galt-themed.
46:28
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to say,
46:29
SPEAKER_00: I think Ayn Rand probably had never actually been to Colorado,
46:31
SPEAKER_00: and she probably just picked a place that seemed really weird and remote.
46:36
SPEAKER_01: I think she had.
46:39
SPEAKER_01: Colorado actually isn't a focus of it.
46:41
SPEAKER_01: But then you look at Man in High Castle, Colorado is the base of the resistance.
46:46
SPEAKER_01: Colorado is this... We always had this fierce, independent spirit, and...
46:55
SPEAKER_01: I think the legalization of drugs took a lot of that away from us.
47:00
SPEAKER_00: Legalization of drugs was horrible.
47:03
SPEAKER_00: Everybody who pays attention called that as being a long-term bad plan.
47:07
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, at least they made money.
47:10
SPEAKER_00: It's the worst because
47:11
SPEAKER_01: we were the first.
47:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
47:12
SPEAKER_01: So being the first— You got
47:14
SPEAKER_00: all the money.
47:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
47:17
SPEAKER_01: And what do we have to show for it?
47:19
SPEAKER_01: Horrible highways— Poor schools.
47:23
SPEAKER_01: I mean, my town,
47:24
SPEAKER_01: as I'm talking about all of this development that's going through,
47:26
SPEAKER_01: they haven't built one new school.
47:29
SPEAKER_01: And pot money was supposed to go for all of that.
47:31
SPEAKER_01: Like our town has two dispensaries.
47:35
SPEAKER_01: They still are broke and can't afford to build in schools.
47:39
SPEAKER_01: And that's all the money from pot goes to roads and schools.
47:45
SPEAKER_00: I think it was PJ O'Rourke who said giving money and power
47:49
SPEAKER_00: to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to your kids.
47:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
47:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
47:54
SPEAKER_01: No, it is.
47:55
SPEAKER_01: It is.
47:55
SPEAKER_01: And it's not a Republican or Democrat issue.
47:58
SPEAKER_01: It's it's anyone.
47:59
SPEAKER_01: No, I think Republican states tend.
48:04
SPEAKER_01: I feel like.
48:06
SPEAKER_01: Red state Republicans, by the way, are the worst Republicans you will find.
48:10
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, 100%.
48:11
SPEAKER_00: But the public corruption in red states tends to be more personal.
48:18
SPEAKER_00: Usually they're not making a lot of bank off of it like they are in blue states.
48:21
SPEAKER_00: Usually it's just they're like, you know, screwing the secretaries.
48:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
48:27
SPEAKER_01: I would say there's plenty of mismanagement of funding and things like that.
48:31
SPEAKER_00: If nothing else, there is less money going around in red states for the most part.
48:36
SPEAKER_00: If you look at like Alabama,
48:37
SPEAKER_00: Mississippi, those kind of things, there's really just less money to be cyphered.
48:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
48:59
SPEAKER_00: Are living off of the monetary legacy of when they weren't blue states.
49:08
SPEAKER_00: They were not what would now be a red state.
49:11
SPEAKER_00: If you look at New England,
49:13
SPEAKER_00: if you look at Colorado, if you look at California, none of these were ever...
49:18
SPEAKER_00: They were never similar politically to an Alabama or a Mississippi or whatever,
49:24
SPEAKER_00: but they were creatures of this very specific form of republicanism
49:30
SPEAKER_00: that somewhat no longer exists.
49:32
SPEAKER_01: But now you're going to see that in places.
49:36
SPEAKER_01: You brought up Alabama a bunch.
49:38
SPEAKER_01: We're going to start seeing that in Alabama as Alabama has become a massive tech hub.
49:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
49:45
SPEAKER_01: Huge in the aerospace industry.
49:47
SPEAKER_01: A lot of Coloradans are moving out of Colorado.
49:51
SPEAKER_01: Lockheed has moved a lot of jobs.
49:54
SPEAKER_01: Ball Aerospace, all these groups are going to Alabama because it's so much cheaper.
49:58
SPEAKER_01: It's so much friendlier to businesses.
50:00
SPEAKER_00: They tend to be lower regulatory environments.
50:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
50:04
SPEAKER_01: In 20, 30 years,
50:06
SPEAKER_01: Alabama is going to have the problems that we are having because- You are going
50:10
SPEAKER_01: to have a new generation that grows up without a lot of the problems that they had
50:14
SPEAKER_01: to fight through,
50:15
SPEAKER_01: without a lot of the institutional knowledge of how this money needs to be stewarded
50:23
SPEAKER_01: and how to do it properly.
50:26
SPEAKER_01: And they are going to go through and burn through it just like Colorado is
50:30
SPEAKER_00: now.
50:32
SPEAKER_00: I forget.
50:32
SPEAKER_00: I'm paraphrasing, but there's the old there's the old hard
50:36
SPEAKER_01: times create.
50:37
SPEAKER_00: No, I was going to go with a
50:39
SPEAKER_01: different one.
50:39
SPEAKER_01: Strong men create soft times.
50:42
SPEAKER_00: That is a modification of an older thing,
50:45
SPEAKER_00: an older European concept that was,
50:47
SPEAKER_00: I would say,
50:48
SPEAKER_00: the parents wearing wooden clogs go up the stairs
50:51
SPEAKER_00: and their children wearing silk slippers go back down.
50:54
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
50:56
SPEAKER_00: I really
50:57
SPEAKER_01: like that.
50:57
SPEAKER_00: I like that a lot.
51:00
SPEAKER_00: That's perfect.
51:01
SPEAKER_00: It's a good formulation.
51:03
SPEAKER_00: It's like, you know, that's...
51:06
SPEAKER_01: I have hope that someday California and Colorado and a lot of these places
51:10
SPEAKER_01: where life really is pretty hard,
51:14
SPEAKER_01: I have hope that we will eventually hit bottom and be like,
51:18
SPEAKER_01: wait, we don't have to live like this.
51:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
51:22
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's been off and on the news for a bit.
51:27
SPEAKER_00: Mississippi has been a butt of educational jokes for as long as I've been alive,
51:32
SPEAKER_00: probably longer.
51:34
SPEAKER_00: They have completely reformulated their education system and are now,
51:40
SPEAKER_00: I believe, number two in America now.
51:44
SPEAKER_00: You can see the cutoff in their school demographics and in their school test scores.
51:52
SPEAKER_00: You can see the cutoff of before they reformulated how they teach these things and
51:56
SPEAKER_00: after, because I think it's now floating around seventh grade.
52:04
SPEAKER_00: Suddenly, they are number two in the nation for best test scores in English and in math.
52:14
SPEAKER_01: I want us to put a pin in this and maybe next episode talk more about like academia
52:21
SPEAKER_01: and about the educational system.
52:24
SPEAKER_01: Both of us are trying to avoid the hot topic online right now, which,
52:31
SPEAKER_01: you know,
52:32
SPEAKER_01: is a case that's making national news that neither of us want to get into
52:36
SPEAKER_01: because everyone has lost their minds on it.
52:39
SPEAKER_00: There's a couple that's floating around right now.
52:42
SPEAKER_01: It has created this really stupid battle of the sexes when everyone is wrong.
52:49
SPEAKER_01: But I do think it would be really interesting to talk about some of
52:54
SPEAKER_01: the shifts we're seeing in academia,
52:56
SPEAKER_01: like the story that came out that the Berkeley acceptance rate from high schools
53:04
SPEAKER_01: that are failing math and English.
53:06
SPEAKER_01: And I think it would be really fascinating to talk about all of that just because you...
53:11
SPEAKER_01: Kind of grew up in academia and would be a cool perspective to take.
53:16
SPEAKER_01: And it has nothing to do with the topic du jour online right now, which, yeah.
53:22
SPEAKER_00: That topic is mostly being talked about in what I yesterday referred to online
53:26
SPEAKER_00: as Lady Twitter, which I believe I said is a horrible place.
53:31
SPEAKER_00: That has basically not come up into my feed,
53:34
SPEAKER_00: except for every once in a while, Lady Twitter makes a horrifying appearance.
53:38
SPEAKER_00: And you have just massive cat fighting on the time.
53:43
SPEAKER_01: It's not just women, though.
53:45
SPEAKER_01: I will say a lot of gay men.
53:48
SPEAKER_01: No.
53:48
SPEAKER_00: Well, like Matt Walsh.
53:50
SPEAKER_00: I was going to say Jack Posobiec who blocked me.
53:53
SPEAKER_00: Me.
53:54
SPEAKER_00: I already said gay men, Courtney.
53:57
SPEAKER_01: Fair enough.
54:00
SPEAKER_01: I will just say right now,
54:01
SPEAKER_01: and this is something that you very wisely have said you do not want to.
54:07
SPEAKER_01: I don't really know that men need to get into that topic at all.
54:12
SPEAKER_01: But just as the lady to stand up for people.
54:17
SPEAKER_01: I guess myself is not being a part of lady Twitter.
54:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
54:23
SPEAKER_01: It's just so bad.
54:25
SPEAKER_01: Like, I log into Instagram and TikTok.
54:28
SPEAKER_01: I logged into TikTok this morning.
54:31
SPEAKER_01: You couldn't get anywhere without seeing, like, the husband did it.
54:35
SPEAKER_01: There's this.
54:36
SPEAKER_01: There's that.
54:36
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, wait, we just hate men at this point.
54:39
SPEAKER_01: And I am taking a time out from all of it because...
54:42
SPEAKER_00: All ladies on Twitter are not parts of lady Twitter.
54:46
SPEAKER_00: Lady Twitter is a very specific fear.
54:49
SPEAKER_00: I have a lot of...
54:52
SPEAKER_01: I actually don't know what qualifies as lady Twitter.
54:56
SPEAKER_01: And I am someone who only watches Bravo.
55:00
SPEAKER_01: So... My...
55:03
SPEAKER_00: There are various spheres to Twitter.
55:10
SPEAKER_00: I live in what I call political Twitter.
55:14
SPEAKER_00: Now, there are two spheres of political Twitter.
55:16
SPEAKER_00: There is serious side and what I call gonzo side.
55:21
SPEAKER_00: I try to mostly inhabit gonzo political Twitter.
55:25
SPEAKER_00: Serious side Twitter people take themselves way too seriously.
55:29
SPEAKER_00: They think their tweets are actually changing the world in some way.
55:33
SPEAKER_00: I'm just there to...
55:35
SPEAKER_00: I forget who it was.
55:36
SPEAKER_00: I saw somebody said that half the people on Twitter is people who wouldn't make it
55:41
SPEAKER_00: a stand-up comic, so they get it out of their system.
55:47
SPEAKER_00: That's my sweet spot.
55:50
SPEAKER_00: But then there are all sorts...
55:52
SPEAKER_00: So lady Twitter is...
55:55
SPEAKER_00: Where, when the women are all talking to each other.
56:00
SPEAKER_00: So, there are people who largely only interact with other women on Twitter,
56:05
SPEAKER_00: and they get into these angry fights all the time,
56:08
SPEAKER_00: and they take, like, massive offense at everything.
56:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
56:14
SPEAKER_01: I don't disagree with that.
56:15
SPEAKER_01: I guess I just don't ever see it on actual Twitter.com.
56:19
SPEAKER_01: I do see it on TikTok, threads, Instagram.
56:23
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh, I hate this.
56:25
SPEAKER_00: You, I think, you have friends who are in Lady Twitter.
56:29
SPEAKER_00: There's a couple people I could think of who are very deeply embedded in Lady Twitter.
56:34
SPEAKER_00: But for the most part, you tend to inhabit political Twitter.
56:39
SPEAKER_01: Also, I just have so many more friends that are men, which,
56:43
SPEAKER_01: you know,
56:43
SPEAKER_01: probably says a lot about me,
56:45
SPEAKER_01: and I'm sure a lot of girls would say it makes me pick me or
56:48
SPEAKER_00: something.
56:50
SPEAKER_00: You've said it to me in the past that one of the reasons, like, you don't take twins.
56:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
57:08
SPEAKER_00: It's completely different than anything you're going to find
57:10
SPEAKER_00: in any—political Twitter is what Twitter, I believe, as a whole should be.
57:16
SPEAKER_00: Musk is trying to push Twitter towards being more like Instagram and whatnot,
57:21
SPEAKER_00: but political Twitter is what makes Twitter unique,
57:25
SPEAKER_00: what sets it apart from the others, because it's people having actual conversations.
57:31
SPEAKER_00: It isn't just being monologued at.
57:33
SPEAKER_01: It's also really idiotic of me to use my business name and be talking politics on Twitter.
57:40
SPEAKER_01: It was a choice.
57:41
SPEAKER_01: It was a horrible choice.
57:44
SPEAKER_01: But also, like, I used to be political.
57:47
SPEAKER_01: I used to work on campaigns.
57:49
SPEAKER_01: I, up until very recently,
57:51
SPEAKER_01: did a lot of contract political work, a lot of comms and messaging stuff for people.
57:57
SPEAKER_01: And I used to work in politics.
57:59
SPEAKER_01: So it's something, for me, it's like my little escape.
58:03
SPEAKER_01: I don't totally understand women who are on Twitter all the time
58:08
SPEAKER_01: for political stuff just because...
58:11
SPEAKER_01: Like, who are you talking to?
58:13
SPEAKER_01: Most women are on TikTok and Instagram,
58:15
SPEAKER_01: and I am not political at all on those just because I don't want to have to deal
58:20
SPEAKER_01: with all the blowback because I tend to think somewhat differently than the rest
58:26
SPEAKER_01: of my cohort.
58:28
SPEAKER_00: Nope.
58:30
SPEAKER_00: Next time we'll discuss at least part-part academia stuff.
58:35
SPEAKER_01: Some of the Jason Arday stuff I think is interesting to talk about in how we're watching now.
58:41
SPEAKER_01: People are saying you can't criticize academia.
58:45
SPEAKER_00: That has a lot more to do with British culture than American culture.
58:48
SPEAKER_00: People in America.
58:50
SPEAKER_00: The thing with the Arday story, the Arday story is very British in how it's presented.
58:54
SPEAKER_01: It is.
58:55
SPEAKER_01: It is.
58:55
SPEAKER_01: But I think it's important to look at just because...
59:00
SPEAKER_01: If you look at a lot of British political correctness,
59:04
SPEAKER_01: and I'll just kind of like TM that, it spills over into America.
59:09
SPEAKER_01: So I think it's really interesting to talk about because that's coming next for us.
59:15
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
59:15
SPEAKER_00: All right.
59:16
SPEAKER_00: We'll talk about that next time.
59:17
SPEAKER_01: Bye.
59:18
SPEAKER_00: Bye-bye.