Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Everything is Awesome! Just Ask Josh

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Everything is Awesome! Just Ask Josh · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Good day, humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. Evan is with us. Evan
• 0:07
  Pavanca, community manager. He's here to ask me questions to throw around some ideas about
• 0:12
  what's going on in the world to basically be the conduit for you, the people. Hello.
• 0:17
  Hi. Thanks for having me. You couldn't, you couldn't put on a towel. Yeah. Not today.
• 0:22
  I'm here. You were wearing a bad jacket. You look like you were going to, you look like
• 0:27
  a 13 year old with a bum. It's a lot. Thank you. Now you've just got a baseball cap on
• 0:31
  backwards. Yeah. Like you're trying to be beverson but is that a thing? Is that not cool
• 0:37
  in any part of the world to wear a backwards hat is that it's not cool in any part of the
• 0:42
  world at them. There's not been cool in any part of the world since 1992. Is it just
• 0:46
  time for me to grow up Peter Pan and start? It's time. Yeah. You should grow up Peter Pan.
• 0:52
  We got questions coming in along the Transome. I'm not sure what a Transome is, but they're
• 0:56
  coming in there anyway. We got questions about some of the episodes from some recent episodes,
• 1:00
  about things that are going on in the world and I also have a few things that are going on in the
• 1:03
  world that are a little more upbeat that I wanted to share with people. Good. So I just wanted to
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  set the stage for that. Evan, shall I give you one thing that's not upbeat first and then we
• 1:14
  can just get it out of the way. Yeah. What if this is like, you know, it's entertaining.
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  This is like family feud. Like I have one too that I really want to talk about. So what if we
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  picked the same one? It wouldn't be amazing. Okay. Well, you do, you do, you, you do, you
• 1:26
  do. Okay. I read in a fascinating article yesterday about ozempics zombies. Do you,
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  does that mean anything to you? Oh, no. Okay. So the article you know ozempic, obviously.
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  We are familiar with it. So basically, they're starting to see that people who are on it.
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  I don't understand exactly what it does, but it blocks the receptors that give you the desire
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  to eat food, right? I think is correct. Okay. Over time, people are losing their desire to basically
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  do anything. People have quit drinking, quit gambling, quit. Every bad thing that they don't want to
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  do, but they're also like not interested in their kids anymore. They're like turning into
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  just like shutting everything down kind of a thing. Well, it does stop you from being addicted to
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  things, right? So it's like, yeah, if it stops you from smoking and like drinking and gambling,
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  then maybe if you like are also getting a buzz from playing with your kids, it does that. But
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  then again, I'm always skeptical about these studies because how many people are we talking
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  about in comparison to how many people take ozempics? It's like, you know, every single person in
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  America is on his impact. So if there are a hundred people who turn into zombies, you know,
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  they might have eaten a cashew and turned into a zombie. Sure. And then would be like, there's a
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  cashew epidemic. Yeah. But I think, I mean, who knows if this article, you know, what the
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  data actually is on this, but it did get me thinking about, because I talked to my kids a lot
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  about this, as you know, I quit drinking like seven years ago, and I'm not sure where you're at on
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  that, but yeah, I'm still laughing. I was at an event last night and talking to a fan about
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  if someone came up to me and was like, I'm a fan of the show. And obviously they weren't so much
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  of a fan of the show that they knew that I didn't drink because they all put me at beer. And then
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  we got to talking about that. And he was always like, Oh, you know, I wish I was there as well,
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  but like, what would I do in social situations? Then I remembered Anthony Robbins, you know,
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  the great Anthony Robbins life coach Tony, the tone star. I mean, him talking to
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  saying that he was at a dinner with like a very rich and famous and powerful person who was hosting
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  the dinner. And everyone was drinking wine, except for Tony who doesn't drink. And then afterwards,
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  Tony was like, you know, he was like, Oh, I wish I didn't drink. I really hate the fact that I
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  still drink. And Tony was like, you know, why don't you just stop? And he was like, well, I mean,
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  what about when I'm in a party and everyone else is drinking or I'm hosting a dinner and everyone
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  else is drinking. And Tony Robbins looked at him and said, Oh, I thought you were a leader.
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  Oh, oh, burn, which is a good retort. Yeah, good, sick. And Tony Robbins coming in high.
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  I said, I said that, I said that to this guy who came with this fan who came up to me at the
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  function. And then he slinked away. But it does kind of get to the point about the Olympics
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  zombies. And I'm not judging anybody if you want to do whatever. But it's like, I wonder if I
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  could you want to be a zombie? No, I'm not saying it's going to turn you into a zombie. Here we go.
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  Like, don't have any of your zombies. These are people too. Or were people. Zombies are zombies,
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  were ones people. And now they're the living dead, which is fine. That's I was taking their
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  identity. I agree. But I respect everyone's identity. You know, if you could have just taken a shot
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  or a pill to quit drinking, it does kind of feel like that would be different for some reason.
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  I don't know why I'm cool with it as long as it, but no, there is a pill. There is such a pill.
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  Right. It makes Katie hurts. I wrote a book about it. Yeah. It makes you sick. Right. But it's just
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  got no, no, no, there's one. No, there's one that makes you see now. Evan, we had a conversation
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  about this on this very damn pod house. I think you and I have not. It's different than the one
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  that we probably get. You're right. I'm sorry. There's one that's been around for a long time
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  that when you consume alcohol, it makes you feel nauseous and flushed. And in fact, I think it
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  works the same way as like the gene that a lot of people, a lot of Asian people have. You know,
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  how a lot of Asian people get like kind of hot and flushed. Yeah. If they drink, it's the same kind
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  of phenomenon. And that has been one way of doing it. But it's still, it still doesn't remove the
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  desire to drink and it doesn't remove the high of the drinking. It just like adds on this extra layer
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  of disincentive. But what Naltrexone does is it screws with the dopamine pathways in such a way.
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  It also, by the way, stops opioids from having an effect. So if you're taking Naltrexone,
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  you have to have a card in your wallet that says, if I'm hit by a car or in an accident and
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  take it into the emergency room and I'm out cold, be aware that I'm on Naltrexone. So if you give
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  me morphine and try to cut me open, it's going to be very pain. It's going to hurt. And so what
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  it does is like you just don't want the drink because it gives you, it still gives you the fogginess
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  and the dis, this cool like uncoordination and discombobulation, but it doesn't give you any kind of
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  pleasure. And that's fine. That works for people. Great. But as long as it doesn't turn them into
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  the living dead, as long as they don't, you know, adopt a taste for human flesh and wander around
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  late at night. Are you digging up great? Are you a zombie guy? Do you like zombie movies, Josh?
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  Yeah, I do. I am partial to a zombie to it. I mean, I like my zombies fast. I don't like my,
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  you know, that was the great contribution of the walking of the living dead walking dead.
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  The show, yeah, they were fast. They were fast zombies. But I'm not unlike the arms out walking
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  along, shuffling along slowly. Sean of the dead. Very good, though. Very funny. They're slow.
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  They're kind of slow. Slow. Yeah. But World War Z too fast, too fast.
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  Right. Cause they're wave and they're just mowing them down. Brad Pitt, you know, I want to see
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  fast enough to catch you. Anyway, that's, that wasn't my point. The point was just,
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  have you ever seen the movie The Jerk with Steve Martin? Well, of course.
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  I've seen it. It's like timeless. But this, so this is like where my mind always goes with things
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  like ozampic and whatever our fads is that it'll turn out in six months or a year to like
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  make everybody's hair fall out or something that we don't understand and or make everybody go
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  across. I mean, that's right. You know, or it'll just do what it does, which is like make your
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  body kind of atrophy. Yeah. And maybe there'll be consequences of having low, I mean, we know it
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  decreases your bone density and decreases your muscle mass quite dramatically. So I just get
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  never made one that we don't really have that much money to be made by these things. I just get
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  nervous. I guess. But anyway, yeah. And also when, and also when they're rolled out without any,
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  like broader context about wellness, like say what you want about RFK, Jr. But I mean, at least,
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  I think the man has a misguided, but nonetheless, noble conception of health as being holistic in
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  some way. And it not just being a, let's shove everybody full of fast food and, you know, industrialized
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  factory farming and then give them a pill to stop the effects of the terrible shit that they're
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  putting in their body. Yeah. No, boy, no. On that. Well, speaking of infectious diseases,
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  somebody in the sub-stack wants you to talk about the way you think about risk management with
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  COVID. Is that something you actually want to revisit? Oh, I saw it. And I heard the, yes. And it
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  was a, again, I'm not going to be a big sick of fan here, just telling you how great your episodes
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  have been lately. But I did enjoy the turning points Australia conversation. And I think a lot of
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  people did. And I, this was a conversation with the, the, the head of turning point in Australia,
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  the Charlie Kirk turning point USA, you know, but the Australian versus in offshoot. Yeah. And he
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  came to, to fame or notoriety during COVID where he was a big anti lockdown champion. And yes,
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  I was sent this, this comment as well from JT saying, I don't know if this is the one that you're
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  talking about. If there was another one, we get a few. I think I feel Josh just can't admit or
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  can't understand the difference between relative risk reduction and absolute risk reduction when it
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  come to COVID. At least he can now admit that the mandate measures were quite unquote silly. Yeah,
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  those violations of civil liberties and bodily autonomy were so silly. So taking a pot shot at me,
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  I guess for maybe I called them silly in their excesses. Firstly, to say that I'm a Johnny come
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  lately, who's only admitting it now is belied by the fact that in November of 2021, I wrote an
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  article that got me in a lot of trouble in the city, wanting Harold and the age saying, can we
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  start having a rational conversation about how we're dealing with the pandemic because that was at
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  a stage at which basically everybody was vaccinated, but it was still taboo to talk about easing up,
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  about totally abolishing the final restrictions on interstate travel and so on and so forth.
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  People misunderstand the the epidemiology and the economics of pandemics still.
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  It's not that I don't understand the difference between relative risk and absolute risk.
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  It's that if you're going to try to eliminate community spread of a pathogen,
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  then you sort of have to go all or nothing. The worst case scenario is what places like the UK
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  did and I think it was not dissimilar in places like California where you sort of try to do a bit
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  and then you say, actually, this isn't working, it's too hard. So let's let it rip and then for a while
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  and then you realize that the health system is overwhelmed and then you bring in some new rule and
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  then it's the unpredictability and the fact and the factlessness that is the real pain.
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  It's also the fact that the economic consequences of nobody wanting to go out and
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  have coffee with a friend if it means that they might spend the next two weeks in bed with a
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  terrible flu means that the economy doesn't recover as fast as it might. The Australian
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  approach was we have the opportunity if we move fast enough to restore normality throughout the
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  duration of the pandemic until everybody can get vaccinated. That essentially worked. The
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  borders were closed and the state borders were closed and for a majority of Australians,
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  they lived in the four out of the six states that completely eradicated COVID pretty quickly
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  and then basically lived perfectly normal lives. I mean, for a long time, that was even the case
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  in Sydney. I remember posting, I went to see Hamilton in a huge theater in early 2021 and I was
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  posting it to Instagram and there was no social distancing. We were all sitting next to each other.
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  We were masked but we were all sitting next to each other and like my American friends were like,
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  oh my god, this is giving me an anxiety attack. Just even looking at this because they were a year
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  into being into cowering inside because the initial phases of the pandemic had been
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  mismanaged and there were all other kinds of reasons why it's more difficult for a country like
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  the United States to enact a swift border closure than it is for an island nation like Australia.
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  So the idea is that Australia fumbled the vaccine rollout which then meant that long after other
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  countries had already begun opening up and being vaccinated, we were still swanning along in our
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  blind state of bliss and ignorance and this is all with the exception of Melbourne and Victoria which
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  had a different experience and that's its own thing and that's where Joel Jamal, my guest,
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  was and that's where most of the radical libertarian anti-COVID lockdown activism was happening with
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  some justification. But for people to understand what the rationale was behind it, it then became a
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  question of, okay, well, the vaccines are now here and it wasn't Omicron, what came before Omicron?
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  Delta. Delta upended all of the epidemiological assumptions that the public health departments
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  had been working on and so all of a sudden the normal ways that they would contain small outbreaks
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  from the quarantine hotels that were allowing Australians back into the country no longer worked
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  because it was so much more infectious. There was an outbreak and then it was like, all right,
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  what do we do with the final 90 to 100 days? Do we allow it to rip and hope that we don't become
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  northern Italy to New York City in March of 2020 or do we stay home and wait until we're all vaccinated
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  and then let it rip? And the decision was made to stay home and get vaccinated and that was incredibly
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  popular decision. So I'm sorry that people who descended from that decision had to abide by the
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  supposed human rights violations of the rest of us. But Australia's fatality rate was 90% lower than
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  the United States per capita. And yeah, there was hardship. I mean, you know, pandemics suck,
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  so you just have to choose your version of suckiness in a way. And Australia never went down the path
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  of long school closures, for example, and most of the population was able to continue going to
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  work and continue going to school for the majority of the pandemic. So relative risk versus
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  absolute risk is I think the wrong framing. I'm not saying that, you know, you should do everything
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  that you can in order to eliminate any risk of dying of COVID. I'm saying that when you're choosing
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  which version of the spread of a pandemic to select, there is a good case to be made for going
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  very hard very quickly. And then reaping the benefits rather than eaking it out over time.
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  I don't I don't think it's a, I don't think it's about that. I don't think anyone,
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  certainly not me, is saying that you should absolutely eliminate, eliminate the risk.
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  Right. Yeah. Which is that makes sense. Yeah. I'll say, but I I subverted you said you had a funny
• 15:48
  thing. Yeah, I had a, I had a, well, maybe not funny. Oh, Matthew says in the chat that his
• 15:57
  company makes now tracks on. Oh, cool. That's interesting, Matthew. Tell me more. Tell me
• 16:01
  Matthew. Why am I here? So my, my, my, my maybe not why you. Why is Evan? Yeah. Evan,
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  everybody, Evan Pavanke, 1080 manager. He works at words nine hours a week, nine hours a week,
• 16:15
  as well as being a university professor works nine hours a week on this show. Also, you'd be happy
• 16:19
  to know all of the things. Little league is, is back up. We had our first game last night. So
• 16:25
  you'll be losing me to baseball as well. Again, okay, great. I'll be honest. Makes my life
• 16:32
  a lot more difficult. So here's the, here's the piece and use that came across across my desk.
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  Traders made $832 million in oil bets just before Trump's social media post about Iran talks.
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  So traders made bets worth half a billion dollars in the oil market, about 15 minutes before Donald
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  Trump's post, touting quote, unquote, productive talks with Iran sent the price of crude tumbling
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  and ignited volatility in other assets. Trump's announcement at 704 AM triggered a sharp sell-off
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  across global energy markets and jumps in S&P 500 stock index futures and European equities
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  as investors dialed back bets of a prolonged conflict. The well timed trades echoed the flurry
• 17:19
  of largely highly profitable bets made on the prediction market, polymarket, on the timing of the U.S.
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  as a tax in recent months on Iran and Venezuela. White House spokesperson Kush Desai said, quote,
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  the only focus of President Trump and Trump administration officials is doing what's best for
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  the American people. He added the White House does not tolerate any administration official
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  illegally profiting, profiteering off inside a knowledge and any implication that officials are
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  engaged in such activity without evidence is baseless and irresponsible reporting. However,
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  the piece goes on to say several hedge funds noted that this was one of a number of examples in
• 17:58
  recent months of large trades being made ahead of official U.S. government announcements. One trader
• 18:05
  at a major hedge fund said energy consultants had recently noticed several large block trades that
• 18:13
  they found to be unusually timed. Quote, my gut from watching markets for the last 25 years
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  is this is really abnormal. He added quote, it's Monday morning. There's no important data today.
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  There aren't any Fed speakers. You'd want a front run. It's an unusually large trade for a day
• 18:30
  with no event risk. Somebody just got a lot richer. And then that added added at the end. And
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  today will be my last day working for the Trump administration. You can find me on a ginormous yacht
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  in the Mediterranean from here on out. No, that was ahead. No, the guy before. Yeah, yeah.
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  So that's nice. So 15 minutes before the announcement that Trump was looking to end the war,
• 19:01
  bunch of people bet that the oil price would go down and they made all the money from it.
• 19:07
  So good for them. Yeah. What do I ask? Feel free to ask us any questions on the sub-stack. We'll get to
• 19:12
  it. Evan Pavanko is with us. The community managed. I'm just looking through your chats right now.
• 19:20
  Evan, we have some other questions that have come in from viewers. But is there anything that you
• 19:25
  want to flag? I'm going to give the floor to you. Oh, wow. Thank you. Well, I had a general
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  observation that kind of spans a few of the recent episodes talking about housing, policy,
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  and high density, low density housing, urban planning stuff, diversity in communities,
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  whatever. Correct me. But every time I hear these conversations about institutional changes
• 19:53
  that can be made, whatever, I kind of roll my eyes a bit because I really feel like it doesn't
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  matter how we lay neighborhoods out if we don't start actually, you know, like talking to each
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  other, like actually engaging. Do you know what I mean? It's like my IRL. I mean,
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  real life. I mean, IRL, like I live in. How do you do that if you live in the suburban area?
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  How how how low density is your area? I'm imagining bucolic. Well, now, feel as I said,
• 20:29
  I'm a butter 80 acres. There's no one in sight. So I don't have anybody to hang out with,
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  but are normal. So how is the IRL conversing going on those 80s?
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  Chatted with my neighbor about the frogs coming out of the pond the other night. Yeah.
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  What do you have to walk 48? 40. I don't know what is coming up the driveway.
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  Haker it, but I guess my point is like at the end of the day, the value of community
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  lies with engagement and conversation and getting together disclosure. I'm teaching
• 21:01
  Tocqueville right now in my class. So this is always like, you're always you never haven't been
• 21:06
  teaching Tocqueville. You're always pulling Tocqueville from under your stupid backward baseball
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  cap. He's the best. He is the best observer of
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  what could be wrong with democracy. Well, democracy in general, I think, which is that you need
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  associations. You need clubs to be a part of and people to get together in real life and talk
• 21:31
  about problems and talk about their lives so they can understand each other. And whether you're in
• 21:36
  the leafy suburban neighborhood or urban high rise, if you're not actually doing shit with your
• 21:43
  neighbors, I just don't think it really matters. And I think at the end of the day,
• 21:48
  yeah, but that sounds that sounds to me, Evan, like something that someone who has only lived in
• 21:53
  suburbia says, have you lived in a big city, a big urban city? Yeah, I lived in Vancouver for a while.
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  Not a city. What? What? Vancouver? Not a city. Get out of here. I hope we I'm teasing you.
• 22:07
  I hope we hear it in the chat Vancouver's fine. I'm sure Vancouver is
• 22:13
  a Vancouver's love. Don't let Josh talk shit about. Everyone says Vancouver is lovely.
• 22:17
  Beautiful. Yeah, but I lived in a lot of a lot of a lot of heroin addicts and a lot of
• 22:22
  right. It's only in gas town. That's only in gas town. Vancouver is fabulous. No, I love
• 22:28
  our Canadian friends. For me, Toronto is the better city because it's more of a city. You know what
• 22:35
  I mean? Vancouver's more spread out. You. Evan's just shaking his head and his arms across
• 22:42
  in a very defensive. He's very, he looks very defensive. I can't believe I'm defending Vancouver.
• 22:46
  I don't, I didn't like you that much, but now I'm gonna, I'm gonna mean either. Okay, but so what's
• 22:51
  your point? The thing is there are a couple of ways of, there are a couple of benefits to
• 22:58
  high density living that I have found. One is true, which is what you're saying, which is like,
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  yes, make a proactive attempt to have real life conversations with your neighbors, have the potluck,
• 23:10
  you know, have the, have the bingo, have the, you know, the grown-ups come over and drop their
• 23:16
  keys in a golf-ish bowl and you go home with your neighbor's spouse, whatever you want to do.
• 23:21
  Judge back. Whatever. What's that? You're a mud-wrestling competition in the backyard,
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  whatever you want to do. There's all that. But then one thing that big, very high-density urban
• 23:32
  centers have that I like is just the all of the incidental human to human contact that you
• 23:39
  can't avoid because you're just walking down a street that's full of hundreds of other people
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  and every place that you go into has lots of other people and so they're a constant.
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  Sociologists have a word for these kinds of relationships. I can't remember what it is, but it's like
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  people who are definitely not friends and kind of maybe acquaintances, but they're just sort of
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  form the scaffolding of the rest of your life in a human community and that's what you can't get
• 24:03
  from suburbia, even if you're doing a good job at building community. I'm not saying everyone
• 24:08
  needs that. I'm partial to it, but you're right. You can, you can manufacture human connection even
• 24:17
  in a sprawling suburb, but you can't manufacture walking down the street and having to step over
• 24:25
  a homeless person at the same time as a billionaire drives by in a limousine and the smell of
• 24:30
  Shawarma comes off the Middle Eastern halal food stand and the Hasidic Jews are walking past.
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  Love it. That's like something that only happens in big cities, which I really love. The melting
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  bar. I'm with you. A hundred percent. I love time spent in cities. I'm with you, but my experience,
• 24:49
  I guess, is still that or my take, I guess, is that it like actually now we're in New York for the
• 24:54
  US Open this last fall. We stayed right downtown, you know, at the standard or whatever and it's like
• 25:03
  you still, we walked a bunch, but everybody's just on their phones. You go into the local coffee shop.
• 25:08
  No one, no one talks. You don't even have to talk to the barista anymore. You just order it on
• 25:12
  your phone and go grab it, whatever. I guess my point is just that we can make talk about structural
• 25:18
  changes all we want. But at the end of the day, I think underneath that, and more important,
• 25:23
  we need to revisit creative ways to actually like sit down and, you know, talk to each other.
• 25:31
  And then that's, in fact, much more important. And I would, you know, you've read bowling alone
• 25:38
  the Robert Putnam book. Yeah, that's right. When it first came out, it's been a million years.
• 25:42
  Yeah. So at the time, he was saying that television is going to ruin democracy, you know, because
• 25:48
  everybody's just going to stay in their homes instead of biking in the cul-de-sac with their
• 25:52
  kids after dinner or whatever and talking in the neighbors. And, you know, now obviously iPhones
• 25:59
  and the internet have are a whole different thing. And, you know, I think a suburban setting where
• 26:09
  I'm not saying we should have the, and I think this happens somewhere in some town where they
• 26:15
  like have an internet blackout after 8 p.m. or something like that. Or maybe I'm making that up.
• 26:21
  That was just a dream. I think China switches off its social media after like 9 p.m.
• 26:28
  But for kids, it like, but do you know what I'm saying? I think so.
• 26:32
  There are different like, because we, I think what you're alluding to is the conversation that we had
• 26:37
  with the chairman of the, yeah, the city of the committee for Sydney, who like studies,
• 26:45
  what makes cities work. I think the, the episode, what was the episode called? Like, how cities
• 26:49
  are going? No, it was like, Mr. Mombani, this is how you run a city or something like that.
• 26:53
  Oh, yeah, that's right. Yes, that's right. Mr. Mombani, this is how you make a city thrive.
• 26:59
  So the, I think there's, so there's the incidental interactions that as you say can be
• 27:04
  unfulfilling because maybe you just use the app to order your coffee instead of having a chat
• 27:09
  to the barista anyway. Although I would encourage people to have a chat to the barista.
• 27:12
  You remember that study? Remember that study about where they got college students to strike
• 27:19
  up conversations with people on the subway? Yeah. Remember this? They had to chart their,
• 27:24
  their happiness. It was part of the, you know, perfect. And nobody wanted to do it in advance.
• 27:27
  They thought it would be terrible. And then after doing it after a week or two of daily
• 27:32
  making conversations with strangers on the subway, the control group that wasn't doing that was
• 27:37
  considerably less happy than the group that had been doing it, even though it's kind of scary
• 27:43
  to begin with. So there's that. Yeah. And then at the other end of the spectrum, there's what
• 27:47
  you're talking about, which is building communities in regardless of where they are, even if they're
• 27:52
  in suburbs where people come over and you can talk and you can get into the serious stuff and you
• 27:58
  can flesh out ideas and whatever. What I'm a big fan of, maybe because I grew up in medium
• 28:03
  density. And now I live in medium density. I've moved back from low density. Suburbia to medium
• 28:08
  density is maybe something in between that I haven't really thought of trying to articulate
• 28:14
  before, but like it's not like living in Manhattan where there's total cacophony, but it is
• 28:23
  dense enough that you can walk to the local park and probably the parents of a kid who you
• 28:28
  know is there with their kid playing in the playground and you incidentally chat about nothing
• 28:33
  terribly important or you can go to the local bowling club, which is like a kind of a a team who
• 28:40
  bar that Australia has. And you know, you can hang out and have a beer and there'll be other people
• 28:45
  who you're sort of tangentially familiar with who are there. I think that's good. It definitely
• 28:53
  feels different just to be able to hang out at the end of school. You're like, you know,
• 28:58
  just your kid want to come over and have a play day. Sure. It's not so far away that we're
• 29:03
  going to have to drive 20 minutes through to suburbs to get there or something. Yeah. Or even just
• 29:08
  like show up to somebody's house. I mean, it's so offensive. You know, can you imagine if like
• 29:13
  somebody just like showed up and was just knocked on your door? What's up? What are you doing?
• 29:19
  I mean, not at your home as witness. I didn't know you were. I mean, it's just sad that we
• 29:24
  did that as kids. I just go over to my friends. All the time. All the time. And it was like,
• 29:29
  oh, what are you guys having for dinner? Like, can you make me a plate? Like whatever. And now the
• 29:33
  thought of that is like that's so rude. I mean, I even think it's rude to call someone without
• 29:40
  texting them first. It's like, you know, you call someone calls me. I'm like, well, I'm in the
• 29:43
  middle of something. I didn't I didn't plan for this. Exactly. I know what I'm doing for the next
• 29:48
  15 minutes. And I wasn't going to be talking to you. Right. Yeah. So my point is like, I loved
• 29:54
  playing sim city as a kid. Did you, did you ever play that video game? You don't. I didn't. But
• 29:59
  I know like that's what it sounded like you and Damon were kind of, you know, like, well,
• 30:04
  move this here and put a part there and blah, blah, blah. And that's great. And we should do
• 30:08
  stuff like that and be thoughtful about the way we design urban spaces. But at the end of the day,
• 30:13
  I'd rather see like my university that I teach at like four students to leave their cell phone
• 30:20
  in a basket when they go into the dining hall or something. Oh, yeah. You know, and I think that
• 30:25
  would do work to actually change things for the good than like thinking and spending billions of
• 30:34
  dollars about how we're going to lay out the dorms so that people are more in contact with each
• 30:39
  at the end of the day, it doesn't matter because they're just on their phones.
• 30:45
  I remember when I was living in New York City when the MTA, the Metropolitan Transit Authority
• 30:53
  brought in mobile phone reception to the subway system. Oh, man, the microphone is good enough
• 31:01
  that that gulp was so. I am. Oh, yeah. ASMR. Here we go. It's like so sensuous.
• 31:12
  Oh, man. Just when he was about to go, we lost him literally as he was about to take a beautiful
• 31:18
  luscious gulp. Get a human as well. If you've listened to this much of the episode, then you must
• 31:24
  enjoy it presumably unless you're just listening from massacistic reasons. So you should listen
• 31:28
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