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These Rules Can Go To Hell · Not Right Now

• 0:00
  [upbeat music] Hey, I have three kids. They eat so much. We try to eat real food. We try to cook when we can.
• 0:10
  We try not to waste too much 'cause it drives me nuts, and it's expensive, and also for obvious climate reasons, which is why the Mill Food Recycler changed our lives a couple years ago.
• 0:23
  It is an odorless, effortless, and fully automated food recycler. Look, we've had this thing front and center in our kitchen for, again, a couple years now it feels like, and it is just such a game changer.
• 0:37
  Way less waste, less smell, way less garbage, which by the way, saves you money. No leaky bags.
• 0:44
  Look, you got peels, bones, stalks, whatever leftovers, dump them in the Mill, and Mill dries and grinds them while you sleep. Again, it doesn't smell, which I don't understand. It's sleek. It's actually sexy.
• 1:00
  Here's a question people ask. How often do you empty it? Good question. It's every three weeks. I don't know, maybe, and there's a bunch of us.
• 1:07
  Plus, there's a little app where you can control it if you want and set a schedule, and it shows you how much food your family keeps out of landfills. A delight.
• 1:15
  Look, you can get seventy-five dollars off right now when you go to our special partner site. I'm gonna read you the link, but you should know it's also in the show notes, and you can just click it.
• 1:26
  It is mill.com/lp/important-not-important. That is mill.com/lp/important-not-important. I couldn't remember that, so we put it in the show notes.
• 1:44
  It's right there for you. Check it out. Huge thanks to Mill for sponsoring our work and doing the right thing, and thanks to all of you listeners for supporting our partners.
• 1:54
  [upbeat music] The kids were talking about downloading... What is it? Red Note? Oh, Jesus Christ. The one that just like full up front says it's Chinese propaganda. But also TikTok was that. TikTok is that.
• 2:06
  I'm like, why are we acting like this one is worse? Like, we already did this. It's like trading a metal gun for a 3D-printed gun. You're still shooting something.
• 2:13
  [upbeat music] Welcome to Not Right Now, the podcast about parenting through all of this.
• 2:29
  We'll be talking about/crashing out over topics like- Soccer snacks and sea level rise. While the Arctic melts? Question mark. Cleaning out uneaten lunch boxes again at four PM or ten PM every day.
• 2:42
  Youth sports and other camp signups you forgot about and won't get into anyways. And is there such a thing as unstructured time anymore for anyone? For me? It's not an advice show.
• 2:52
  It's a you're not alone, and you're also not crazy for screaming in the shower kinda show. I'm Claire Zulkey from Evil Witches. And I'm Quinn Emmett from Important Not Important.
• 3:03
  You can find details on anything we talk about in the show notes or at our website, notrightnow.show..show.
• 3:10
  And if you like what you hear today, please share it with a parent who needs it or who might laugh and tell their kids to be quiet, and then drop us a nice little five-star review.
• 3:18
  And reminder, you can send questions or feedback to questionsatnotrightnow.show. [upbeat music] We've actually come up with a name for this show. We're calling it Not Right Now.
• 3:32
  Do you wanna talk about maybe why that's meaningful to you, that phrase? I mean, I think you w- were talking about that because you were actually saying that to your kids numerous times, and we all say that as parents.
• 3:44
  Like, my kids will be asking me to look at something or help them while I'm already doing a task that's usually for them.
• 3:50
  So that is a saying, not right now, but also I think as parents, we feel that about the world in general. Like, I just unfollowed a bunch of social media accounts because not right now. I don't have time to get...
• 4:04
  let myself get depressed or obsessed or distracted by various things that keep us from whatever we need to be focusing on at the time.
• 4:13
  And yet, at the same time, we have to be sort of cognizant about things like climate change and AI and people's rights.
• 4:21
  And so I think that's modern life, modern parenting, that there are so many distractions, so many big and tiny problems, and they all matter.
• 4:30
  And at the same time, we are just trying to, like, finish our, you know, crossword puzzle on our phone or to finish our workout. Or literally just to sit on the toilet. It's, "Can I...
• 4:40
  W- Would you please stop standing outside the door?" Yeah. Yes. A hundred percent. There's nothing more pressing. And truly, if one of your siblings is hurt, how, how hurt? Because I need five more minutes.
• 4:51
  They're not gonna get more hurt. Yeah. What are your feelings on not right now?
• 4:56
  It's a hundred percent what you're saying, and I can't remember what exactly your response was, but you were saying it's something like a statement and a hope or a statement [chuckles] and like a promise or something, where it's like, not...
• 5:05
  It's the fundamental parenting thing. Ignore everything else in the world. It's the fundamental parenting thing, especially if you have more than one.
• 5:12
  But even then, like you said, you are actively doing something with your hands and probably your brain for one of them that they just asked you for, and either or another one asks you to do something at the same time.
• 5:24
  They didn't bring a towel into the shower for a world record seven-thousandth fucking time in a row.
• 5:29
  Or the same one asks you to do something else with the same level of impatience that they asked about the first thing that you're actively doing for them. It's some version of not right now.
• 5:37
  It's some version of like, you understand that I cannot do both of these things at the same time, right? And it's like sharks, their eyes are glazed over. But it's also fighting for your space.
• 5:46
  It's the texts that we're getting from politicians I've never heard of before saying, "We've gotta fight Trump. Please send me money." Not right now.Day one, I truly almost threw my phone in the fucking garbage. Yeah.
• 5:57
  No, I, I almost like will vote against you if you text me right now. Uh-huh. And no, not right now. I can't sign up to help with Catholic Schools Week, providing the teachers lunch.
• 6:06
  I do intend to, but, you know, uh, not right now 'cause I also have to sign up for spring sports and make the grocery list for the... So it is everything that comes and it's not just people with kids.
• 6:17
  You know, I think part of what we both care about is that we want people who don't have kids to know what we go through.
• 6:23
  We want people with kids to understand that this conversation is not just about us as well, but if we can all understand each other better and the constant stream of distractions, tragedies, priorities.
• 6:36
  If we could at least have a laugh about it and have a discussion about it and, you know, carry on, that's the best we can do. And it appl- like you said, it's such a wide range.
• 6:44
  It's not just, like, any version of parents, it's coaches and band teachers and grandparents and aunts and uncles. I remember, I, I have three wonderful siblings.
• 6:54
  On the second, it's older brother who has a couple kids, me, and then younger brother, and then younger sister, and obviously she's, she's everybody's favorite, as she should be. Sure.
• 7:03
  But it was during COVID, early COVID, and we had just come to the East Coast, and I guess it was, like, July-ish, so that would've been four months or whatever.
• 7:14
  Teaching preschool and all, all that shit, and my brother very kindly, he's in Brooklyn, and he locked himself in his apartment for two weeks, and he's like, "I'm coming to see those kids, but they're not gonna get it from me."
• 7:26
  And so he shut himself up, and then he drove all the way down. And he's a huge part of their lives. Like, e- when my siblings roll in, it's like Justin Bieber. My kids are like, "Kill my dad. Can I come live with you?"
• 7:36
  [laughs] Again, I get it, but he rolls in, and again, none of this was a surprise to him, but I guess I had been expressing just how tired and defeated I was for three months straight, and he got there, I think, in the afternoon and, and so the whole afternoon and the evening of everything and getting ready for our, our completely fake failing homeschool the next morning.
• 7:56
  And I remember they finally went to sleep, and he poured me a glass of something strong, back when I was still drinking, and he just looked at me and he goes, "Why are you so tired all the time?"
• 8:05
  [laughs] And it was because in two hours he was like, "This is every day?" And it's that. It's that. It's on a good day. Again, if you're a coach, a grandparent, an aunt, or an uncle who...
• 8:14
  We always joke that grandparents and aunts and uncles, it's great 'cause you can blow in and give them sugar and presents and then leave, and it's like, yeah, it's, it's still a lot.
• 8:21
  That's why I think you start wanting grandkids 'cause you're like, "Oh, I-- It would be so great to just have the fun parts and then just, you know, go home to your house and have the quiet time after that." Mm-hmm.
• 8:32
  It's not because I really want my kids to procreate. I al- also want revenge. You know? I want them to know- Mm-hmm... especially I want my younger son to have five boys so he can so- know what it's like.
• 8:42
  But yeah, my- as my parents said, I said, "What's more fun, being a parent or being a grandparent?" And they said, "A grandparent 'cause it's like parenting without all the BS." So yeah. Yeah.
• 8:51
  The, the BS is the not right now. I remember one of those weird moments of feeling like [laughs] I had crossed a threshold, in a good way, of parenting where we have, like, a finished basement.
• 9:03
  The goal was always, like, that's where the kids play.
• 9:05
  And my kids were probably, like, maybe two and five, and we had a friend over, and her kids were about the same age, and we were doing that thing where the kids are constantly are creating chaos at this level, you know, at the atmosphere.
• 9:17
  Mm-hmm.
• 9:17
  And, you know, they're trying to kill themselves, and they're asking you for things, and you somehow are having, you're patchworking a conversation above that even though you're both grabbing kids and saying, "Stop that" and "Not right now."
• 9:29
  And just like I have transcended a certain level here, and that, that is...
• 9:34
  I, it, I can tell in a weird way, like, how it will be strange when the kids maybe grow up and move out one day 'cause you'll be like, "What am I gonna do with all of this extra, this skill set and energy that I was able to carve out?
• 9:45
  And now what? Like, now I have a, a hobby? How is that gonna work?" The maybe of them growing up and moving out was really doing a lot of work that you threw in there.
• 9:53
  [laughs] But also it's not just forget I miss them, they've been a part of my life. What the f- am I supposed to do with these skills? Like, how are they ap- applicable to anything else, [laughs] anything else- Yeah...
• 10:03
  than just managing... Yeah, it's, yeah, so not right now. Again, and it's just also just fighting for, again, your space and your sanity so that you can be a better parent or grandparent or, or whatever it might be.
• 10:14
  I see it again, we got so lucky. We have both grandmas down the street for however long we get it, and it's amazing to watch them come over and be amazing, and they're both so amazing.
• 10:28
  And then you'll just look around and you go, "Where'd Grandma go?" And you realize she just left 'cause- Oh... she still has the not right now thing, and she's like, "And in addition, I don't have to do this." Yeah.
• 10:37
  "I'm just leaving." [laughs] And but also take me with you, you know? Right. [laughs] Fuck. Yeah, 100%. No, it was funny.
• 10:44
  We, my mom, you know, we can talk about aging some other day, and she's a different kind of person than she used to be in various ways, but she, she's way more indulgent to the kids than she was to my brother and me.
• 10:56
  And, like, for one thing, I had to learn how to use a knife and fork a very certain way, as if the queen might come over any moment. Mm-hmm. You know?
• 11:03
  And if she caught you buttering a whole piece of bread instead of a tiny piece of bread, like, forget it, you're going to jail.
• 11:09
  And so my kids, I mean, well, they can do whatever they want, but she, I don't know if she was tired or whatever, but she, my younger son was tipping up his plate to drink melted ice cream afternoon. Mm-hmm.
• 11:21
  And she said, "Stop eating that way." And I was like, "You better fucking listen." Like, she, like, brought it out, like the old school ver... And I was kind of glad too. This is what I was talking about. Yeah.
• 11:30
  You didn't believe me. It's still there. [laughs] Yeah, exactly. That's why partially I'm so mad 'cause I learned from the, I learned from the best. Uh-huh. I know.
• 11:38
  I, yeah, I'm, I'm working on, I don't know, I guess you can call it being less of a dick, but it all comes back to the not right now thing.
• 11:45
  Like, every morning I wake up and go, "Okay, I have 20 minutes with my oldest before he's gotta go 'cause middle school starts earlier. How do I maximize that 20 minutes with him, for him?"
• 11:56
  And the other one's like, "How do I survive and do it?" And 20 minutes into it every time I'm just like...No wonder they hate me. But also, what could I get for them on the market today? I don't know.
• 12:06
  I, I mean, I just find it amazing that you try to maximize that time versus we just... I don't know. We hit the things that we have to hit, which is like, are you dressed? Have you eaten?
• 12:15
  You know, do you have your stuff? Go. And if we happen to have like a little laugh along the way or time to pet the dog or something like that, and we're not mad, like then that's good. Yeah. And we do that too.
• 12:26
  Every- everybody in my li- everybody in my life fucking hates my checklist so much. [laughs] Every time I'm like, "Did you do your list?" They're like, "Forget if I did your list, old man."
• 12:38
  [laughs] "Let's just talk about how much I dislike your whole thing." And I'm like, "But if it didn't, how would you know what to do?
• 12:45
  'Cause you still stare at that list like someone else wrote it," I made them write it in their own hand, and like it's not the same list every single day. Little check marks. I got it off Etsy. It's great.
• 12:54
  I'll put the link in the show note things. It's actually great, but the- every day it's apparently new information. Every day it's an affront to their values and how they could possibly do everything.
• 13:04
  So we try to get through too, but I, I don't know, I don't know. We could talk forever about systems and the hopes and dreams that we put in the systems.
• 13:11
  But I guess that's maybe that's my pr- just to f- finish, 'cause you were saying you were surprised we don't just try to get through it, and I think one of my biggest issues, which I'm pretty open about, but is clearly still just partially buried and partially out there, is my best friend died when he was 30 and didn't get to have kids, and I'm not dealing with any of that well.
• 13:30
  My brother almost died from a thing, and I was a huge dick to him for the first 20 years of our lives. This and this.
• 13:36
  And so I am, I'm fully the Hamilton, like, why do you write like you're running out of time guy, except it's about parenting in 20 minutes when everyone's exhausted and really doesn't wanna unload the dishwasher.
• 13:47
  And so I'm trying to both make it the most loving 10 minutes and also yell at them to empty the dishwasher. It's not working- Oh... for anybody.
• 13:55
  [laughs] And that's, I think, why I should stop being surprised every day, but also- Well, that surprise sounds so magical. I mean, why stop? Well, I wanna go back for a second to the not right now of it all- Yeah...
• 14:05
  as well, because as we're talking, and who knows when this will be heard or by whom, but there was an inauguration this week, and I think a lot of us are maybe rethinking we're older, we're more jaded, we're more experienced.
• 14:21
  How we can be good people and make change in the world as these years go ahead, but also be strategic and not be suckers with our time and our energy. Yeah.
• 14:31
  And like I know now from experience that I can't parent these kids, and by which I mean parent, I mean not lose my shit or be depressed. Like, I'm not saying be magical or fun- Mm-hmm...
• 14:41
  or anything, just function, if I'm distracted and distraught and anxious and depressed. Yeah.
• 14:47
  But I'm also smart enough to know that, like, I don't need to post, make a post on Instagram stating for the record that I support trans people's right to exist. I do.
• 14:58
  I'm hoping that my time on this earth and record so far speaks for itself. And just trying not to get distracted by the ways that we're messaging or the actions that aren't really actions to demonstrate that we resist.
• 15:13
  Mm-hmm. And instead letting our... I don't know. Um, I, that's, I guess, part of the, the not right now, is like the not right now of like I'm not gonna let that throw me off course if I can in any way.
• 15:23
  I'm trying to use my lesson. I fully get it. I unfortunately-- It's both been four years. We've all aged, at least I've aged 4,000 years, and not well at all in any capacity.
• 15:35
  In the meantime, I've, like, made changing the world my job, which is my wife has told me repeatedly, "This is a choice you made, but you're not some person that, like, was born on the front lines of something terrible.
• 15:45
  Look at you." So it's an elective. I need to learn how to deal with it better.
• 15:48
  I've really gotten better, and then this happened again, and, like, stay off all the shit because the, the one thing we were all addicted to last time is now like a Nazi rally, basically, with a live feed.
• 16:01
  So not that one. There's 10,000 other ones. That's a whole different discussion of not right now. Don't do it. And, [laughs] by the way, not right now, I really don't wanna waste our energy o- on that specific subject.
• 16:11
  It's more, like you said, this moment. We realized, fuck, our kids are old now. They're learning about the three branches of government, where last time, 2015 or whatever, they were babies.
• 16:20
  So we had to sit them down that morning and be like, "Hey, if you see kids getting bullied because of this, stand up and tell somebody," and this and that, "and this is what's gonna happen.
• 16:28
  You're gonna be fucking fine," this and all this. But I was like, not only am I 10,000 years older, like that Grail knight at the end of Indiana Jones who just- [laughs]... falls over. Yeah.
• 16:37
  But not right now, like, but we don't have the space to just fall over because now I'm like, these kids are about to find out some real shit, and how do we keep our heads above us? Yeah.
• 16:45
  No, that's 100% what we are all talking about, and that, again, we have to contain all that at, at, at once. And I just had a therapy... We've had three forms of therapy this week as a family. We had family therapy.
• 16:56
  I had my, like, talk therapy, and I had my medicine therapy. And the medicine therapy lady, I feel like her job is always t- telling me that I'm doing a great job and to keep going, which is fine. Like, that's great.
• 17:06
  Sure. Just keep prescribing me what I need. But she was like, "Did you last time you get your blood checked, did you get your, like, vitamin D levels checked?"
• 17:12
  And I was like, "I don't think so," but also I'm like, "I'm doing the best I can. You know, I think I'm fine." And then she laughed, and she was like, "Yeah, I agree." I'm like, "You know, I can't..."
• 17:21
  It's like, I don't know about you, uh, but it's like protein, that's the new thing, is like, are you eating a protein? Where's your protein coming from? I'm like, "In the, in this economy?" Yeah.
• 17:29
  "I can't think about that." It's two things. For me, right over there, I don't keep any snacks in my office. My... Talk to my kids all the time, self-awareness hacks, 'cause I'll just eat them all.
• 17:37
  Except a huge pile of protein bars, which is 90% of my diet 'cause I don't make time to eat real food otherwise.
• 17:44
  Sure, I guess I'm getting my protein, but by default 'cause I just bought four fucking boxes of these things. But on the other hand, it's like, no, I, I hide in the pantry and eat trail mix for dinner. Yeah.
• 17:54
  I don't know what my vitamin D levels are. Are you fucking kidding me? [laughs] Yeah. My son was... We were laughing 'cause my older one was...
• 18:00
  He ha- he was feeling nauseous, and my husband, who's, like, much nicer than I am, was like, "Should we take him to the pediatrician?" And I was like-For feeling nauseous, not throwing up. Like, that's not...
• 18:10
  Like, that's a waste of time, of everyone's time.
• 18:13
  And then I pointed out, I was like, "He's been eating a diet of bagels and Lunchables," I would say, "So it's also possible he hasn't had, like, a good shit in, like, a week, and he hasn't been outside." Right.
• 18:23
  So no, we're not going to the doctor. Let's just hang out on that. Yeah. So- Congrats. I'm a doctor. That's the answer. [laughs] You know, here's some coffee. Go run around. Yes. Here, have a cigarette and enjoy.
• 18:35
  Yeah, so we are all containing multitudes like that.
• 18:38
  It, it is, and that is what also makes Not Right Now so meta is 'cause it is holding off all these different things while actually trying to do something for yourself or your kid or your partner or all three at once, but also this hope.
• 18:52
  It's like an active hope. Not right now. Yeah, and the other thing too is, like, not right now, and again, with this administration, is, like, not knowing what is real, for instance. Like- Mm...
• 19:02
  there are these executive orders basically saying that people are not people and things like that, and I, I did think about telling my kids about that at dinner the other night 'cause they do have friends who are trans and genderqueer.
• 19:13
  But also, I was like, you know what? I don't even really know what this executive order does. Like, it's certainly sending a message. I get it, like, loud and clear. Mm-hmm. That's not new. Like, we knew that- Yeah...
• 19:25
  was coming. And so I was like, let me not just start popping off angrily when we don't even know what is, what it is. You know what I mean?
• 19:33
  No, and you're right back down that road again, and this, a- as everybody says, and I think it's at least partially true, which is that's the point, is to just completely distract you with this and just wear you out.
• 19:43
  There's a woman I know I used to work with at the AV Club, and their house burned down. So, and people started a GoFundMe, and they put it on Instagram, and I donated money, and I've donated, you know...
• 19:55
  I've done Direct Aid and World Kitchen so far, and then this woman, she put up another GoFundMe 'cause some friend of theirs... This is hor- I... It sounds like I'm making chitchat, and it's not chitchat.
• 20:05
  This is simply the world we live in, though. Like, our friend's kid has leukemia, and can you fund this GoFundMe? And I kind of was like, "No, I can't." [laughs] I mean, I, God, I hope these people do okay.
• 20:16
  I c- but I was like, this is, like, a world that we're living in right now where it's like that Simpsons where there's the cute lamb and then they're like, "Get out of the way," 'cause there was, like, another cuter lamb behind it, you know?
• 20:25
  And, and that's how it is with, like, emergencies right now. And it's funny. Funny is the wrong word. Uh, I had to explain what gallows humor was the other day. Mm. They were like, "Why would you do that?"
• 20:34
  I'm like, "Look around."
• 20:36
  In the context of Not Right Now, a big part of my work these past four or five years, especially with COVID stuff and everything else, has been really just focus on control what you can control, you know.
• 20:47
  All you can do is all you can do in the sense of if there's something that you can contribute or control in your own life or whatever it might be, like, maximize that because that's as effective as you're gonna be, and it'll- Mm...
• 20:57
  feel good, and you'll have an impact in whatever you're choosing to do or need to do. But everything else, like, you can't do it all, and you're not gonna fix the jet stream.
• 21:08
  You're not gonna make the forest fires stop happening. You're not gonna make leukemia stop happening. But it always feels like not right now. I think it was the GoFundMe CEO, I don't know, something a few years ago.
• 21:19
  The guy was like, "You know, though, we can't sustain the American health." That's not the whole point of this.
• 21:24
  [laughs] It's supposed to be complementary at best, and, and turns out that's what we've got, and it's an incredible tool that wouldn't have existed 20 years ago.
• 21:30
  But at the same time, it just shows you very quickly how, at best, how porous the systems are for these things- Oh...
• 21:38
  if not dysfunctional, if not made to be that way in a lot of ways, that in one week you would get a forest fire and a leukemia one. It's like, why would someone have to, why would someone have to do that? Yeah.
• 21:50
  I'm wondering in the meantime, I'm like, I wonder if she also has to report on the Oscars right now 'cause she is an entertainment reporter and what- Of course she does. Yeah.
• 21:56
  Last night my husband and I were laughing because our ADHD son, I think, is going through a new phase of his ADHD. I don't know about you guys, but these things kind of go in waves. Mm-hmm.
• 22:05
  And the waves are very deeply felt by everyone in the house. Mm-hmm. And so we are on a new regime of sleep planning. Ugh.
• 22:12
  And our therapist, our family therapist, I don't know about you, sometimes you come up with a solution that you're so... You're amazed that you're like, "How did we not think of this before?"
• 22:21
  Our kid would always use the bathroom as a way to, like, get out of bed, and our therapist earned her fee and said, "Why don't you stop letting him have a cup of water next to the bed?" You know?
• 22:30
  And it took us, like, four years to be like, "Oh, yeah."
• 22:33
  So I was at guitar class last night, and my husband put the kids to bed, and the cup was taken, and our son, I guess, spent several hours pounding on the wall saying, "These rules suck. These rules can go to hell.
• 22:48
  These rules suck." And we were laughing so hard. I mean, and it... Because I think... I'm sure to our kids, that was, like, the worst thing you could say, you know? And- Oh. Yeah, yeah...
• 22:59
  I don't even know why it's funny. I mean, it's funny 'cause I wasn't there.
• 23:02
  If I was there in it, I would probably be writing, spilling my guts out on some anonymous Reddit thread just being like, "I don't know how we're gonna get up in the morning and go through this." But- Mm-hmm...
• 23:11
  sometimes, like, when you put it out, like when you say it out loud, it just makes you laugh and... 'Cause that's all you can do.
• 23:17
  And it's, throughout this and thinking about this and how, how valuable, at least if no one ever listens to this, it's just, like, therapeutic for me. [upbeat music] Hey, I have three kids. They eat so much.
• 23:31
  We try to eat real food. We try to cook when we can.
• 23:34
  We try not to waste too much 'cause it drives me nuts, and it's expensive, and also for obvious climate reasons, which is why the Mill Food Recycler changed our lives a couple years ago.
• 23:47
  It is an odorless, effortless, and fully automated food recycler. Look, we've had this thing front and center in our kitchen for, again, a couple years now it feels like, and it is just such a game changer.
• 24:02
  Way less waste, less smell, way less garbage, which by the way saves you money. No leaky bags. Look, you got peels, bones, stalks, whatever leftovers.Dump them in the mill, and Mill dries and grinds them while you sleep.
• 24:19
  Again, it doesn't smell, which I don't understand. It's sleek. It's actually sexy. Here's a question people ask: How often do you empty it? Good question. It's every three weeks.
• 24:30
  I don't know, maybe, and there's a bunch of us. Plus, there's a little app where you can control it if you want and set a schedule, and it shows you how much food your family keeps out of landfills. A delight.
• 24:40
  Look, you can get $75 off right now when you go to our special partner site. I'm gonna read you the link, but you should know it's also in the show notes, and you can just click it.
• 24:51
  It is mill.com/lp/important-not-important. That is mill.com/lp/important-not-important. I couldn't remember that, so we put it in the show notes.
• 25:09
  It's right there for you. Check it out. Huge thanks to Mill for sponsoring our work and doing the right thing, and thanks to all of you listeners for supporting our partners.
• 25:18
  [upbeat music] Anyways, I always thank my kids, and again, I try to put myself in their shoes and then get out of there as fast as possible, but I always come back to... You've seen "Step Brothers"? Yep.
• 25:33
  When they are finally friends and they're sitting on the couch, like watching TV, and they get in trouble for some shit, and the parents come and turn off the TV and tell them, "No TV for a week."
• 25:41
  And they're like, "This house is a fucking prison." [laughs] "This fucking sucks." Like all this, and I'm like, "That's my kids' reaction to- Yeah... most things." Yeah. "As if it's a jail."
• 25:51
  And I'm like, "Am I causing that?" Probably, in part, but also [laughs] pounding on the wall. Yeah. Yeah.
• 25:57
  And, you know, and it's funny 'cause, like, to him, that was the most transgressive thing he could do, and you're like, you know stories about kids who are deeply troubled, and you're like- Totally...
• 26:05
  "Well, I'm glad he's not, like, cutting off a piece of the dog's tail," you know? Yeah. I'm glad he's- Yeah... not getting the- Or himself. Yeah. Because that shit happens all of the fucking time. Yeah.
• 26:14
  And, and I consider myself, like, enlightened because I am beyond w- like, wondering if this is normal. I remember once, I made the mistake... Like, 'cause I found my people, and I think it takes a while to...
• 26:25
  Not everyone has their people close by, which is a real shame. Mm-hmm.
• 26:28
  But I put it on Facebook once that this kid in particular, 'cause he liked to roam the house at night and turn on lights and wake people up, that we put a lock on his door.
• 26:36
  And I made the big mistake of putting that in gen pop, as we say on Facebook, and some woman said, "I would be worried about if the house was on fire, if he would not be able to get out of his room."
• 26:47
  And I was like, "Well, how do you feel about him walking out the front door and walking into- Mm-hmm... the crowded street?" So yeah, just these little tiny... You're like, "Well, at least he's not that."
• 26:56
  Like, at least he's not on the HBO doc about the girl who went missing and then came back and was possibly possessed by the devil or not who she said she was. So- Mm-hmm...
• 27:05
  these rules do suck, and these rules do need to go to hell, but, you know. Many things can be true at once. [laughs] It's hilarious.
• 27:13
  That's where we have fucked up the most, and it's so hard not to when one of the children [laughs] is, like, really upset and they say something funny, or the way it comes out, or they mispronounce something, or they state, again, like, "These rules suck," but so eloquently, as if they're like Che Guevara, and you let a laugh slip out.
• 27:29
  Oh, yeah. And you know, you're like, "I just fucked up," and you can see the horror on their face, and you're like, "They're ne-they're never gonna forgive that."
• 27:37
  You've just trivialized their whole thing, but also it was really funny. [laughs] I feel like I gave them misogyny by accident once because I was- [laughs] It's... Wait, I think it is communicable, actually. Anyways.
• 27:51
  My husband was traveling out of town, which was like, you know, being a single parent is, uh, an own, its own state of mind. You could do a whole- Mm-hmm... you could do a whole season of the podcast on that.
• 28:00
  [laughs] Not single parent, I'm sorry. Parenting solo when you normally don't.
• 28:05
  But they, my kids were both indignant about something, and I think they were both naked, and they were both complain- like, you know, airing grievances to me in stereo, and I just, like, looked at them in their little naked selves, and I just started laughing.
• 28:19
  And they both... It was like that saying about women fearing murder and men being feared laughed at. Mm-hmm. And they both got so mad at me- Oh, yeah...
• 28:28
  for laughing, and that made me just laugh harder, and I, yeah, I was like, "They are mis- this is gonna be taken out on some poor woman someday." Like. [laughs] You gave them misogyny.
• 28:38
  That reminds me, w- last year, we walked out of "Barbie," like, this incredible m- m- movie that had came out. No, not we walked out. Oh, okay. Like, it was over, so no.
• 28:46
  We came walking out at the end, and it was my wife, and I think the kids had a few friends there, and my daughter, everyone loved it, and the songs, and this and that, and my daughter had a question about it, and my son turns around and literally goes, "Actually, that's not what the movie was about."
• 29:01
  My wife was like, "That's what the movie was about. It's what the movie's about. Go the fuck back inside." Yeah. Pay, pay full. "Clearly you didn't get the message, motherfucker." [laughs] Yeah. Kidding. No, 100%.
• 29:11
  We, my kid had to use the bathroom during the America Ferrera monologue, and part of me was like, "Well, you missed the whole thing." [laughs] Like, you would've gotten it- I know...
• 29:19
  the whole woman experience, but you had, you drank too much pop. No, that was it. We were in the car going, "He just mansplained 'Barbie' to her as we're walking out of 'Barbie.'" Like, holy shit. [laughs] Yeah.
• 29:30
  What the fuck does that happen? Maybe we gotta see it again. My son, he's learning about probabilities,
• 29:35
  and I just immediately went off on a tangent about how we don't know enough probabilities, and everyone needs to take those classes as, on top of civics and sex ed and all this stuff. Oh. And he was like, "Why?"
• 29:44
  I was like, I yell at them all the time about how dangerous driving is, and I'm always like, "Let me give you an example." Even in our dumb little historic small town, you pull up to a regular four-way intersection,
• 29:59
  I am like, I'm running, like, neo-level probabilities about, yes, I know the rule is that I was here first, and I'm supposed to be then the first to go. Do I trust these other three people?
• 30:11
  Of those three people, which one do I trust that's not gonna go first or is not looking at their phone, or this and this, and this. He's like, "You're doing all that when you're driving?"
• 30:17
  I'm like, "It's terrible."It's terrible. Yeah. But I was like, "I know you understand in school," and we all do it, and a lot of it's true, like, when am I gonna use this in life?
• 30:24
  I was like, "This is something [laughs] you will inherently use for the rest of your fucking life in every situation- Yeah... all the time." Yeah, yeah. I sniff, I open a salad and I smell it, and I'm like,
• 30:35
  "It's probably fine." Or you might get salmonella, may- yeah, you may never know. But the thing that's a killer is knowing that you are to let them go for like a good 10 or 15 years with that brain that's not formed.
• 30:48
  [laughs] Mm-hmm. I was telling my friend, who has two boys also, my- our son woke up on the wrong side of the bed, and my husband also woke up on the wrong side of the bed, so he was doing the old, like, pile on.
• 30:58
  Like, "Geez, what did I do? I didn't do anything." You know, just like the kinda thing you're like, "You're not gonna get the kid," but, "Good point, Dad."
• 31:05
  And my friend Christina was like, "Remember the frontal lobe, Steve." And, like, 'cause y- you know, too, that your kids are gonna learn to drive someday. And 'cause we were that age, they are gonna be so stupid.
• 31:16
  They're not gonna be like, "Well, Dad pointed out..." Like, my dad, who's cool, told me about driving. Like, you know they're gonna do all the dumb shit that we did, you know, and have even more ways of doing it.
• 31:26
  So fucking dumb. Some of the shit, you're just like, "Oh, oh, why am I not dead? How am I not dead?" Yeah. Forget prison. Sure, that's accounted for, but like, how am I not dead 20 times over?
• 31:37
  And if my kids did one of those things, it'd be like, "You're never leaving the house for the rest of your life." The kids go to school on a street where it's a side street that had, like, s- stop signs and no lights.
• 31:46
  And I was with some friends in high school, and we were driving around fast because that was like all you could do was drive around fast.
• 31:53
  And I must have gone around some car, or I don't remember, but some other driver got mad at how recklessly I was driving and began tailing us and speeding behind us.
• 32:04
  And we drove up to the beach and did one of th- did one of those things where you like quick U-turn and a quick turn, and just the kind of thing where I'm like, "I could've been dead. I should've been dead.
• 32:14
  I could've been arrested, any of these things. I made it through." And like... And that was... I, I was like a good kid.
• 32:21
  So if I was gonna be that dumb, my kids, who are, no offense, are boys, are gonna be much dumber than that. So much dumber. Yeah. [laughs] No, it's truly... It's... I can see in my wife's face, like, my...
• 32:31
  When my two boys, there's the girls between them, when they beat the shit out of each other, first of all, the younger one, it's all he wants in life is for the older one to, to pay attention to him- Yeah...
• 32:39
  especially with bodily contact. And 90% of the time it's great fun, but she gets stressed by it, and I'm like, "It's their love language. It's fine."
• 32:47
  And I can see her wrestling with that 'cause she didn't grow up with multiple boy siblings. But also I can see in her face, and I see it in my daughter's face all the time, and again, daughters, their own complications.
• 32:56
  But I can see in their faces like, "What's wrong with them? What is wrong with boys natively?" [laughs] You know, I'm like, "I, I don't know." Yeah. I think that's why I get sad sometimes, 'cause I am...
• 33:06
  I have no sisters. I have no sisters-in-law, no daughters, no nieces, and, but I don't really have a relationship with my mother-in-law. So every now and then I just get very, like,
• 33:16
  lonely that I don't have someone in my family that I can be like, you know- Mm-hmm... make those eyes at, and that's why, you know, it's good to have my friends.
• 33:24
  I hate that the boy moms stole the term boy mom, 'cause it was just a really good, like, quick way of saying I have boys, but now it- Mm-hmm... just means, like, I wanna marry my son, which is not, not it.
• 33:33
  But you need those people. But I swear, I have this theory that dads are harder on their sons 'cause they're so dismayed.
• 33:39
  Like, they hate thinking that they were ever that dumb, and they need to, like, grind it out of them 'cause it just reminds them of how stupid they once were and how few steps there are between being that way and being the way they are now.
• 33:52
  So few steps. I definitely think that's part of it, for sure. I'm gonna think about it. [laughs] Okay. I'm gonna have to get back to you [laughs] on that one.
• 34:00
  I think there's def- at least for me, there's a bunch of this. Again, I try to come back to. We went...
• 34:04
  I think I might've said it last time, but now w- we went on our little London trip right after Christmas, and I was trying to get him to pick stuff up off the floor and I just said, I was trying to just keep it positive, and I was like, "Oh, I'm really having such a great trip with you."
• 34:16
  He's like, "Yeah, you're a control freak." And I was like- [laughs]... "W- One, sure, I'll, I'll take that hit. But two, like right now?" [laughs] I'm like, "What? I, I just asked you to pick your towel up, man."
• 34:26
  And yeah, I'm still working on where all that's coming from and how I can do better with the checklists and all that stuff.
• 34:32
  But I'm, I'm sure part of it is looking back and going, "Jesus Christ," like I give my mom, like, blanket apologies all the time. And she's like, "For what?" I'm like, "E- everything. Everything." Oh.
• 34:41
  "Are you kidding me?" Yeah. But it's so funny what you just said.
• 34:45
  [laughs] My sister, again, the golden child, when I married my wife, and a year before my older brother married his amazing wife, the velocity with which my little sister never, basically never talked to us again because she was like, "Fucking finally."
• 35:03
  Mm-hmm. [laughs] "Are you kidding me?" Yeah. Yeah, and who can blame her? Are you kidding me? Right. No. Like why would she ever interact with us ever again? I know.
• 35:11
  Sometimes I think about how great it would be if my boys, if they do end up with girl partners, like how great it would be to, you know, have a pal like me in the house, but also I feel like karmically I deserve to have a really bad relationship if I have daughters-in-law, 'cause that's just like what I deserve based on how little I try to like have a good relationship with my mother-in-law.
• 35:28
  But we'll get there someday, and maybe they'll never leave the house based on, you know, how great they are right now. Like my son, [laughs] part of my... This one's really cute. My older son, he is young for his age.
• 35:42
  He's not on TikTok. We didn't even touch on TikTok. We should maybe talk about that just real quick as another, another Right Not Right Now. God, doesn't that feel like that was like eight months ago?
• 35:51
  Easily eight months ago. [laughs] So he, 'cause he doesn't have a phone, he has to make his own fun, you know, and God bless him for that, and he's very innocent.
• 36:00
  And he and his friends have been making their own trading cards lately. They have- Oh... some system called Bobert cards, and they, he hand writes them.
• 36:09
  And he got himself a laminating machine, which was so thrilling for him. Awesome. And they're selling these cards somehow. And I said, "Why don't you print the...
• 36:18
  Like use a computer to have the text instead of your handwriting?" And he just has that kind of... I, I'm beyond caring about it. I know that you can get through life with bad handwriting.
• 36:28
  But he acted like-You know, it, it was my dad telling me to get out the encyclopedia, you know- Mm-hmm... to work on a r- like, just like, "Okay, sure. Whatever, Mom." Like, slapping in the wind.
• 36:38
  But I'm like, "Okay, well, good luck selling, scaling your business," you know? What, what do I know? But yeah, that's what kids are doing now who are on TikTok. Are your kids on TikTok? Nope. Do they have...
• 36:48
  What was the feedback? Remember, control freak, Claire. Control freak. Yeah. No, my kids are definitely gonna be the kids, apply screens, TikTok, whatever you, alcohol to whatever you want.
• 37:01
  They're gonna get to college and immediately binge the whole thing 'cause they weren't allowed any of it. Yep. Tale as old as time. That was me.
• 37:06
  No, we like to say out loud to our friends, "We don't demonize screens because there's some good things and they're really helpful," and then I go home and demonize them.
• 37:14
  Uh- You're a better parent than those other people. I know that. No, I, there's no social media. They only have iPads. They're at home. They can basically only text each other. I did tell you, we got a landline. Mm-hmm.
• 37:25
  I am so stoked about that, and already, it's amazing. Speaking of, like, generational things, it's, like, in the middle of the living room- Yeah...
• 37:32
  which is not advantageous to them, and which any of us would've rebelled against.
• 37:35
  And in the middle of this morning, like, a, a Thursday at 10:00, one of them called my sister, who's in the middle of her workday, and I'm like, "She's working." And they're like, "Fuck you." [laughs] And [laughs]
• 37:46
  like, you, the look on her face was the same look at, on our faces from the '80s and '90s when someone would be like, "Get off the phone," and you're like, "I hope you die." And so that's their version of TikTok.
• 37:55
  So no, I'm sure they see it with their friends and all that, and what-what-whatever. What are you gonna do? But n- it hasn't been this existential thing for us. We'll have that, whatever the next thing is. Yeah.
• 38:05
  But it sounds like it's been chaos there. Well, I don't know. I mean, yeah, my kids are not...
• 38:11
  First of all, we could h- do a whole side conversation about how we're both congratulating ourselves about how offline our kids are, and yet they also have iPads and laptops and iMessage, you know? Sure.
• 38:20
  But just like- Yep... you know- Yeah... wooden, wooden blocks. Whatever you need to tell yourself. Yeah. And a wooden hoop. Uh-huh.
• 38:26
  And, but he, my son sent me a, a screenshot of the kids in his class pre-TikTok ban saying, like, "I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'm literally crying right now." And his screenshot was, these kids are crazy.
• 38:40
  And I thought it was kinda cute. He had darkened out the kids' names as if I'm gonna be, like, I don't know, putting them on blast.
• 38:46
  And also, he did a bad job, so I was like, I know Lindsay, whatever, said that, but that's fine.
• 38:51
  But I, you know, there was a part of me that was, like, kinda proud of him for being like, "These kids are messed up," but also I was like, I bet there's a part of him, too, that was like, had FOMO.
• 39:00
  I feel like that's a- Mm-hmm... a sweet spot of my life is, like, judgy FOMO. Mm. But yeah.
• 39:05
  And then when I was talking with the other moms, 'cause there was that brief ban and the kids were talking about downloading, what is it, RedNote? Oh, Jesus Christ.
• 39:13
  The one that just, like, full up front says, like, it's Chinese propaganda? But also TikTok was that. TikTok is that. I'm like, why are we acting like this one is worse? We already did this.
• 39:22
  It's like trading a metal gun for a 3D-printed gun. You're still shooting something.
• 39:27
  And, and then my son was saying they're gonna download VPNs, and there's a part of me, I mean, if we're talking about GIFs, it's that, you know, Anchorman where he's like, "I'm not even mad. I'm just impressed."
• 39:36
  Why can't you apply this problem-solving to when the, I ask you to empty the dishwasher and you say you can't reach the shelf for the 42nd time, but you can figure out the best VPN to use to download- Yeah...
• 39:47
  your Chinese app? [laughs] You told a fork, right? But you, like, are, you know... I mean, my friend, I have a friend who's a teacher who said that they had an issue at their school. This is, like, last year.
• 39:57
  This is even before everything happened where some kids, I think they were, like, fourth, they were so young, maybe fourth grade, fifth grade.
• 40:05
  These girls made a deep fake of another girl saying the N-word and put it on social media to, like, 'cause they were mad at her.
• 40:11
  And it was just chilling, 'cause this is, like, when the dinosaurs learn how to open the door, you know, and you're like, just imagine if they had these skills and applied them to something good.
• 40:20
  But it, that's also the not right now thing where you're like, whoa, I am- Yeah... fully unprepared and too busy to deal with deep fakes of that. No, I'm still dealing with all the other shit.
• 40:30
  I still, I'm dealing with COVID. Yeah. Like, imagine being a teacher and being like, "I'm trying to tell these kids to write their name on their homework," and they are doing deep fakes.
• 40:38
  And again, the, I was so not surprised it was girls doing this than boys, 'cause girls are so much more intelligent and devious. Mm-hmm. No, like, no offense to the girls, or compliments to the girls.
• 40:48
  Like, boys would never... Again, my kid is doing these dumb little homemade Pokemon cards that they're selling. No, the boys are like the Zoolander. The files are in the computer. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
• 40:58
  Like, the nice thing about my boys is I never have to really wonder what they're thinking too much, you know? Like- 'Cause the answer is not much... seventh grader, sometimes I have to double check.
• 41:06
  I'm like, are you sad or are you just- Mm-hmm... 12? Mm-hmm. And I think usually it's the latter.
• 41:11
  So the TikTok thing, the, I think the thing that I'm low-key worried about, but not right now, I don't have time to think about this, especially 'cause my kid isn't on it, but it's like I'm kinda worried that there are these kids who are gonna think that Trump is the hero for br- I'm like, please don't be that stupid that you think that Trump is good for bringing it back, but I can't, I can't think about that.
• 41:32
  I have- No... you know? You can't think about it. Mm-hmm. It's not right now.
• 41:34
  It's also just, like, a spectacular self-own by the Democrats to schedule it for the day before he came back, and, uh, it's just the whole thing, soup to nuts, fiasco. Yeah. Em- embarrassing, sloppy.
• 41:47
  It's like when you see a terrible op-ed in, like, the New York Times, whatever, and you're like, 12 people approved this. Yeah. Are you fucking... Okay. You just blew it. Yeah. [laughs] You just blew it. Yeah.
• 41:56
  The only thing that made me happy was just reading, like, on the gossip sites, which is, like, my, I think my, my plug-in to current events was, like, people being like, "I just deleted it and I'm not going back 'cause it's too stupid by now," and I'm like, it's like when your, when your mom starts using some tech...
• 42:10
  Uh, there was, like, a Reductress where it was like, Mom getting on TikTok finally, like, the day before the ban. Fucking Reductress is incredible. Yes. I love [laughs]
• 42:18
  the Reductress is like my social media version of Evil Witches, where I'm like, there's a camera inside my house. Yeah. Yeah. I can't even be...
• 42:26
  Like, they had one about boy moms, and I'm like, I can't be mad at it 'cause it's accurate, you know?
• 42:29
  Like, there's a reason behind this.Speaking of evil witches, I'm just curious how you have been doing your newsletter lately, because I find it really hard to be productive and try to put out a good product and make people wanna pay and support me when I'm feeling deeply depressed and demoralized.
• 42:45
  Like, I put out something very silly today 'cause I was like, "No one needs to hear another, like- Yeah... depressed message," 'cause we've all... Y- w- no one is... That is a flooded market.
• 42:55
  So I'm just curious how you've been doing your thing. Not well. Not... What's the madman? Not great, Bob.
• 43:02
  It helps that at some point we really consciously pivoted to, like, and we don't do this well all the time, nor fully all the time, but really saying like, "How is this a gift? How is this an opportunity?
• 43:13
  How do we say, 'Okay, this, but what's the solution? What is something you can actually do even if it really doesn't feel like you can?'" Even if the answer is, "Get the fuck offline. Throw your money at this.
• 43:22
  Here you go." It's hard. We had a, our, our sort of top-of-funnel newsletter, which we call now, It's Called Science: Science for People Who Give a Shit.
• 43:30
  It's really like rundown on the most important news, and here's like a potpourri of action steps about it.
• 43:34
  It's our big free thing, and that was supposed to come out Monday on Inauguration Day, and my number two, Willow, she writes that now. She is, as we call, production director, and she's Canadian, which good for her.
• 43:45
  Jesus Christ. Not that it's perfect up there either. But she was like, "Which... Does anyone wanna read this on Monday?" And I said, "Do whatever you want. Make it about Martin Luther King.
• 43:57
  Make it about romance beach reads. Don't care. Don't care." Oh. 'Cause the answer is, like, our usual shit, nobody's interested in that right now.
• 44:04
  So I think it's time and place, but we've, we've got so much other shit going on. But it's funny, this is such a big part of that because... So for a long time it was, okay,
• 44:14
  if we're gonna expand knowing we're extremely limited in, in resources and bandwidth and, and wanting to keep this prism of what we do, and now everything needs to, in some way, come back to
• 44:25
  helping people answer the question, "What can I do?" There were a few different versions of expanding that we've considered over the past year or so. One version was vertical-wise, but within the things we cover.
• 44:36
  Climate, which is obviously 400 different things, energy, water, immigration, whatever it might be, right?
• 44:44
  Public health, medicine, where you know there's definitely a market for those things and th- that market's gonna be very engaged, but it is pretty relatively small.
• 44:55
  The other version we considered was, okay, doing what we do, but a different version for each continent at least, right? What is the version of It's Called Science that's like Africa-specific?
• 45:06
  Which is obviously a huge collection of 80-plus countries, but th- it's inexcusable there isn't a version of this for th- with everything they're going through and the way they're growing.
• 45:14
  We can still do something like that. Same thing, like, how do we find, like, charismatic hosts that don't involve me at all for, from Southeast Asia.
• 45:22
  A billion people, whatever it might be, to do a show that's specific about being on the front lines there. That's not...
• 45:27
  And then two things happened, and they weren't surprising because, again, we don't really shy away from, like, the political side of it in the sense of not we don't talk about politics. More
• 45:40
  people have to understand how the sausage is made. Like, it's great to be an idealist, but some candidates in some places are just gonna fucking lose. It doesn't matter.
• 45:49
  And some are just gonna win, and you shouldn't spend your money there or elsewhere. It needs to be in the make-or-break places that'll overturn a chamber, that'll be able to guarantee whatever, or turn on Medicaid.
• 45:58
  We have to be realists about it too, and so we've always been very clear about that. We also don't, like we said, we don't categorically endorse any party or person or whatever.
• 46:07
  It's are you d- are you sh- actually doing the right thing, or are you doing a bad thing? I don't care what the letter is. We're gonna support you or come after you.
• 46:16
  So AOC had this quote few months ago before the election, and I'm a big fan, and she's such a great communicator, and she said, "We can't just be right. We have to be effective."
• 46:28
  And you can extend that in a lot of different ways, but it's that same thing of,
• 46:33
  look, if we want a child tax credit or baby bonds or something like that, free lunches, you can see the co-benefits of universal free lunches, even if they're not healthy, or at least, look, kids are eating, which means their grades are gonna be better.
• 46:44
  They're gonna sleep better. They'll... Their grades are gonna be better, which means they might be able to go to a community college or a college. Jobs all the way down the line.
• 46:51
  But none of that matters if every two or four years you're back out of power and it gets canceled again. You're not really building long-term effectiveness. And
• 47:04
  you can argue with that, and you can be like, "Oh, we shouldn't go back to courting white guys and leave everybody else behind." And we shouldn't leave everybody else behind.
• 47:14
  We can walk and chew gum, and ignoring the biggest voting bloc in the country, which you can take the name off of it, right? Could be anything. Mm-hmm.
• 47:22
  Ignoring it means you're gonna lose, which means you don't actually get to help those other people if you keep losing. It's just math.
• 47:31
  So we try to take that lesson and go, okay, instead of another clean energy or transmission podcast or a scientist's but just in Eastern Europe type of thing,
• 47:44
  it was looking at, as they talk about the, the Rogan and the right-wing message machine and all this different stuff, which again, y- you can totally take the wrong lessons from that, where Rogan endorsed Bernie a few years ago, and now it's this and that, and they're...
• 47:56
  And it's all funded, and they all talk to each other and all that.
• 47:58
  Okay, but what's the real thing here, which is really reaching people in their everyday lives because they really, even people like me, almost especially people like me, or if you work in transmission policy or public health, you don't want your vegetables all the time.
• 48:16
  Mm-hmm. Sometimes you just wanna listen to the parasocial version of people who get your everyday life, and if you can slide the vegetables in there as like a baseline part of it, and maybe not even every time,
• 48:29
  you might not have a bunch of progressive radicals, but you probably have a better chance of eventually radicalizing many more people if you instead step back and go-What about a show about parenting in these times?
• 48:44
  What about a show about food in these times? What are the major groups who just wanna hear someone turn on, it feels like a pair of friends that can turn on and off,
• 48:53
  who mostly align with their values, that they didn't realize, "Oh, shit, fuck, some kids don't even get lunch," whatever it is. Or, "Should I check my house insurance?" Oh. "Hold, hold on a minute."
• 49:00
  Or that's not what it's about at all, and it's just shit talking mistakes you've made this week, 'cause we all do it. And then you realize, like, some parents don't get time off. Yeah. Which is completely insane.
• 49:10
  That is the long answer to, we've really taken a step back in all that and gone like, "How can we be most... What's fun for us? What are we able to do?"
• 49:18
  We don't have the resources to produce Radiolab, which is so expensive and so complicated. Yeah. But also, those don't really show a return on your time as much. They're really hard- Mm-hmm...
• 49:27
  to get right, and more people listen to this kind of thing. And so we're trying to look at everything we do.
• 49:34
  Yes, everything has to come back to what can I do, which is obviously different now than it was a week ago in a lot of ways. But there's also a lot of things that haven't changed.
• 49:41
  State houses and stuff that's on the local level or internationally, even though democracy got crushed everywhere across the, the developed world, that stays true.
• 49:50
  Everything we make, the newsletter, essays, the main podcast has to come back to what can I do? Just recorded on bird flu, very different from this conversation. Much more [laughs] okay, what's the deal? What can I do?
• 50:01
  But we can make it broader and make it fit into people's lives in a more cohesive and organic way, I think, and I think that has the chance to be much, much more effective.
• 50:13
  Frankly, just, like, more fun to engage with- Mm-hmm... for us and people. So that's how the past week and a half has gone, really. Wow. You know? Okay. It's relooking at the top of the funnel and going, it can be...
• 50:23
  You know when I say the marketer's worst nightmare is when you're like, "It's for everybody" It's not. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
• 50:28
  This show, you and I have gone back and forth on subtitles for a month because we're like, how do we say it's for millennial-ish, young Generation X parents who have kids between 5 and 17 [laughs] right now?
• 50:39
  How do you define that in five words? 'Cause that isn't everybody. But at the same time, it's a lot of people. Mm-hmm.
• 50:47
  And a lot of those people didn't fucking vote, even if it's against their best interest or whatever it is, or they don't think it's gonna affect them. Yeah, that's how it's going. Yeah. Well, that's good.
• 50:56
  I mean, I'm glad that you have... I don't know, that you have a strategy and you know what you're doing and have a mission going ahead.
• 51:03
  And I think we can talk about this more some other time, but, you know, I think w- especially we talk about the h- the hustle and how you know when you're done and things like that. Yeah.
• 51:10
  But especially in the, the newsletter world- Yeah... at least with me, it started off as an experiment.
• 51:16
  And it gets very quickly c- if you do it well, all of a sudden you're faced with this is a business, I guess, and how am I gonna optimize this?
• 51:24
  Or as one of my college friends said, "Congratulations, you signed up to write a term paper every week for the rest of your life." And I was like- Yeah... "Fuck!" [laughs] Yeah. Fuck. And, uh, best practices and- Mm...
• 51:35
  someone called me last week too because he found my phone number on his billing statement, and he had a, an issue with his billing. And I was like, "How did you get this number?" And it, like...
• 51:44
  And it worked out totally, totally well, but I was like, I didn't realize I was IT, you know? Yeah. And I didn't realize I was the billing department. Yeah.
• 51:51
  And there's always a part of me that's like, well, this will go away sometime, and, or my kids are gonna get too old for me to, like, have much to say.
• 51:57
  But, you know, I've worked my career in terms of like, we'll do this until it doesn't make sense anymore or whatever. Mm-hmm.
• 52:04
  At least I think in a woman's world, especially a mom's world, but maybe dads are the same way, you live your life hoping that you'll find a system, a meal planning system, a calendar system, a list making system that you're like, once I lock into this system, a laundry system, then everything will fall to the wayside.
• 52:21
  And maybe it'll even be fun, 'cause we'll just, like, click off these satisfying little boxes.
• 52:25
  But, like, I think coming to realize that no system is meant to last forever and it shouldn't have to last forever is, uh, very liberating and freeing. It is. And that's a hard place to get to, though.
• 52:36
  On the other side of it is w- was [laughs] I think it's some meme, it's adulting is saying everything's gonna get easier after this week over and over again, and then you fucking die. Yeah.
• 52:45
  And it's the same thing as the system thing, where you're just like, oh, no, it, it isn't. And that's by the way that I, productivity systems, I've got it up the wazoo and I used to be so obsessed.
• 52:53
  But that 4,000 Weeks book is really good about that. It's not happening. It's not happening. No. Here's your time. Make it meaningful. And we're trying to do the same thing. If these are our resources, is...
• 53:04
  If this is what I'm choosing, I'm lucky to choose to do with my time, how do I make it a little more enjoyable to me? But also each thing is very intentional. Like the main podcast, we're changing the name of it.
• 53:16
  Instead of just conversations about these different things, we're gonna call it the most important question, which is- Mm... what can I do? And, and, and that's twofold. It's like, why are you doing this work?
• 53:26
  But also what can I do if I'm trying to get into it or to support it, whatever it is. It's just making slightly more intentional along the way after 200 of these things.
• 53:34
  And we've built this app, and the app is both for the power users who don't need the parenting pod, they don't need 3,000 words about this and this. They're like, "No, I know shit.
• 53:44
  I'm gonna get in there and do this, and I wanna collect it all." But there's also a lot of people who, and I've been there, and I wrote a whole essay about why we built the app, which I didn't realize why.
• 53:52
  It's often the middle of the night and you're racing, and you're like, "What the f- do I do right now?" Mm. For good or bad. And we wanted that to exist.
• 54:02
  And so that's very different than this, but it does all fit together. And the same people aren't gonna use all the things. We wanna reach more folks who are looking around this week going, "Fuck." [laughs] Yeah. Yeah.
• 54:14
  And I mean, I- I mentally, like I unfollowed a lot of accounts, some of which I am sad to unfollow, but I just was like, I don't need to get pulled into this.
• 54:23
  And then of course I saw the post from someone else on Substack saying, "So I know, I've seen a lot of you saying that you're pulling back, but like, there's something to be said about helping your fellow humans and thing, and to..."
• 54:34
  You know? And you're like, "Okay, fuck you." Like- Fuck you. I mean, and I know where she's coming from, but I don't need that.
• 54:40
  And I was like, well, first of all-You know we're all like guilty liberal progressives who are always thinking this anyway to begin with. So like we didn't really need to have you remind us. Well, it's helpful.
• 54:51
  That's not it. It's like putting the black square in your Instagram four years ago. Yeah. Congratulations.
• 54:56
  I didn't do it, and I'm a real one for that, 'cause I saw the bullshit from a mile away, and I still think I like looked at, you know- Fucking nailed it. [laughs] Yeah, I nailed it. But it's also...
• 55:06
  But the black squares, people going, "Not right now. Okay, this is what people are doing? Okay, hold on. Let me figure it out for 10 seconds" Yeah.
• 55:11
  No, I did that with the safety pins with Trump's first term, and I didn't... There's some other things, some bracelet I heard about after the second one. I was like, "Not... You can't get me this time.
• 55:19
  I'm not gonna wear something, and I know y- 'cause you're all gonna whatever." Plus, you know that there's gonna be, if we all wear some band or some bracelet or whatever, then we're all gonna get...
• 55:29
  Like, there's gonna be the system, the AI system that'll capture us wearing it, and then we'll all get told- Oh, now you're dead. Yeah. No, pink pussy hats eight years ago was like the tech wasn't there yet. Now,
• 55:39
  that's it. Yeah, no, you are... At the very least, you'll get, you know, extra bad ads for, you know, the super muscular Trump, you know.
• 55:48
  [upbeat music] That's it for this week. You're gonna make it. You're doing great, or you're just doing it, or just you, period.
• 56:05
  Just stop right there. But for more, you can hit subscribe right in your podcast player of choice.
• 56:11
  Please share our show with another parent in your life or anyone who might get a kick out of listening to what the hell we're going through.
• 56:17
  And if you have literally three seconds, just push your thumb against the five-star review button wherever you might be listening. But no pressure. Honestly, we know you're busy.
• 56:26
  Head to notrightnow.show for more, or send us feedback, questions, horror stories, doxing, whatever it is, at questions@notrightnow.show.
• 56:36
  [upbeat music]