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Go West Young Man... · Armstrong & Getty One More Thing

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Go west, young man. I don't want to. It's one
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: more thing.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: I'm so before we get to that. Man of scale
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: was mean to me this morning. I mean mean, I
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: don't know it thinks I stole. I don't know if
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: it thinks it's I stole its wife or or something.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: But the scale is so mean to me, brutal. I
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: wonder if it has anything to do with going to
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Denny's in the middle of the night the other night
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: after taking the dog to the vet, or the fact
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  Speaker 2: that I had ice cream twice. The funny thing about
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: the scale is it's just I mean, it's so reality
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: based obviously, and and this weird sense that I have
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: that I can, you know, slip one by the scale somehow.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: You know, I'll eat this one. Really shouldn't eat this
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: sort of thing, right, Just pull a fast one. Yeah,
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: I'll pull a fast one. Scale won't notice.
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: It's so hilarious, it's yeah, and it never works.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: The whole vacation thing.
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: You know, calories don't count all or you know it's
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: been stressful and it'll be fine. I mean, because it
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: was a stressful day.
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  Speaker 1: I'm a plate whatever screw.
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  Speaker 2: I'm gonna get a new scale. Throw this one in
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: the trash and get a new one. Gives me better numbers. Although,
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: like Trump did with the Bureau Labor Statistics, Lady, I
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: don't like these numbers. I'm gonna get a different scale.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: It gives me better numbers.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you're fired.
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  Speaker 3: I'll just keep going through scales. You got a stack
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: of them out back, rusting in the rain.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I heard.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: So.
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  Speaker 1: We're talking about that. The other day.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: They said in their family, they have a bunch of
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: scales in the uh bathroom because members of the family
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  Speaker 2: have some sort of wearable that communicates with the scale,
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: and to make it simple, they just each have their
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  Speaker 2: own scale. So they got like four scales in the bathroom.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: And he said, if he doesn't get a good number
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  Speaker 2: on his scale, sometimes he gets on a different one
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  Speaker 2: to see if it's better.
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  Speaker 3: Wow, that's a lot of clutter, unless you got an
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  Speaker 3: enormous bathroom.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah huh.
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  Speaker 3: So mentioned during the radio show today that the number
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: of Americans who move to pursue a better gig is
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: dropped to like the all time low as far as
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: anybody can tell. And I made reference to an article
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  Speaker 3: we'd talked about.
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  Speaker 1: It had to be at least.
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: Oh, it was a long time ago about how progressive
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: froze the American dream in the Atlantic, and it talked
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: about how nobody's moving like we used to as a people,
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: and it's really interesting.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: It's long. It's the Atlantic, of course.
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: But all sorts of different quotes from historians and observers
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: of the American scene, and the one thing that strikes
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: everybody is how mobile we are, and how you don't
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: grow up in the same village your family's been in
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: for two hundred and fifty years and you never leave there,
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: and anybody who comes there is viewed with great suspicion
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  Speaker 3: because what are you doing here?
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: This is our village? And how America is not like
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  Speaker 1: that at all.
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  Speaker 2: No, it never has been up until now, I guess,
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: but it's funny. It just popped into my head. One
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  Speaker 2: of them, not one of the number one thing I
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: don't like about the fact that I came from a
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: moving family as a kid and now as an adult
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  Speaker 2: is the lack of other family being around. I didn't
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: grow up near cousins and grandparents. My kids aren't growing
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: up nearing cousins and grandparents. And I see other people
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: that have that in their lifestyle and look so awesome.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: But we're not getting married and having kids, and people
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: seem to care less about family than they ever have.
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  Speaker 2: So the moving hasn't stopped because of that. It's got
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  Speaker 2: to be other reasons.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's also worth pointing out.
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  Speaker 3: I know more than one person who is driven completely
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: insane by the proximity of their family and the need
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: to deal with them on a regular basis, whether they
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  Speaker 3: like to or not, because you can't choose your family.
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  Speaker 2: I hear those complaints, but I gotta believe over all
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  Speaker 2: the upside to be better than the downside.
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  Speaker 3: Depends who you ask, but yeah, I see your point.
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  Speaker 3: So this is one of my favorite parts about this article.
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  Speaker 3: Then I'll get to the main thing that I wanted
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  Speaker 3: to bring to you. But when ceaseless migration, I'm sorry,
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  Speaker 3: the ceaseless migration that we have shaped a new way
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  Speaker 3: of thinking. When the mobility of populations was always so great,
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  Speaker 3: the historian Carl Becker observed, the strange face, the odd speech,
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  Speaker 3: the curious custom of dress, and the unaccustomed religious faith
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  Speaker 3: ceased to be a matter of comment or concern, and
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  Speaker 3: as people live to learn to live alongside one another,
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  Speaker 3: the possibilities of pluralism or something like it. Open The
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: term stranger in other lands synonymous with enemy instead, wrote
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: Becker wrote, became a common form of friendly salutation. This
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  Speaker 3: is the only nation in the world that would say
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: something like County stranger.
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  Speaker 2: Oh that's true. Yeah, interesting.
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  Speaker 1: I thought that was kind of cool in a way.
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  Speaker 3: But anyway, the main reason I wanted to bring this
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: up is the concept of moving Day. And again, we
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: talked about this months and months ago, but the great
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: American holiday, the great holiday of American society at its
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  Speaker 3: most nomadic, was Moving Day, observed by renters and landlords
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth. And
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  Speaker 3: it's funny, there's a nickname for Saturday on the PGA tour.
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  Speaker 3: It's moving Day because you try to get higher in
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  Speaker 3: the standings whatever. But and I've always heard that expression,
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  Speaker 3: but I've never known what it meant. Really, So nineteenth
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  Speaker 3: and twentieth century Moving Day was a festival of new
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  Speaker 3: hopes and beginnings, of shattered dreams and shattered crockery, as
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  Speaker 3: a Chicago newspaper put it in eighteen eighty two, quite
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  Speaker 3: as recognized today as Christmas or the fourth of July.
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  Speaker 3: It was primarily an urban holiday, although many rural communities
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: where least farms predominated, held their own observances. The dates
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: differed from state to state and city to city. It's
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  Speaker 3: April first in Pittsburgh, October first in Nashville and New Orleans.
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  Speaker 1: But May first was the most popular, and.
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  Speaker 3: Nothing quite so astonished visitors from a boa abroad as
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  Speaker 3: the spectacle of thousands upon thousands of people picking up
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  Speaker 3: and swapping homes on a single day.
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  Speaker 2: I assume everybody has the same question to me, why
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  Speaker 2: did that happen? I mean, why, how did everybody agree
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: that we're going to move on the same day?
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  Speaker 3: It just it came to me exactly, leases just landlords.
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's an obvious incentive for having all of
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: your potential renters be available on the same day that
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  Speaker 3: your current renters depart.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I know. I live in a college town.
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  Speaker 2: That's the way it is now. As a renter, that's
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: exactly the way it is. You go whatever it is
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: like next week is when the college kids come to
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: town and the leases start. And that's just the way
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  Speaker 2: it is every year.
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  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: I live in a resortee place and Saturday mornings outbound
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  Speaker 3: when all the condos and timeshares and hotels empty, is
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: crazy traffic. And Saturday afternoon inbound is crazy because everybody's
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: showing up to do their renolds. But if I'm renting
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: a condo out it's perfect. Everybody knows it's Saturday, check
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: out at eleven, check in at four or whatever. And
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  Speaker 3: so that's what evolved. Because we were such immobile people,
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: huge percentages of people moved every day. And I've got
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: those numbers around here somewhere. It's you know, again, it's
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: a very long article with the numbers kind of spread
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  Speaker 3: here hither and yon. But so it just came to
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  Speaker 3: be that moving day was the day everybody moved in
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: whatever city. For months before moving day, Americans prepared for
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: the tenants, gave notice lit the landlords or received word of.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: The new rent.
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  Speaker 3: Then followed a frenzied period of house hunting as people,
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  Speaker 3: generally women, scouted for a new place to live that
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  Speaker 3: would in some respect improve upon the old quote. They
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  Speaker 3: want more room, or they want as much room for
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  Speaker 3: less rent, or they want a better location, or they
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  Speaker 3: want some convenience. Not heretofore enjoyed the Topeka Daily capital summarized.
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  Speaker 3: There were months of general anticipation. Cities and towns were
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  Speaker 3: alive with excitement. Then early on the day itself, people
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  Speaker 3: commenced moving everything they owned down to the street corners
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: in great piles of barrels and crates and carpet bags,
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: vacating houses and apartments before the new renters arrived. Be
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  Speaker 3: out at twelve you must for another family. Are on
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: your heels. Uh blah blah blah. And my god, we
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  Speaker 3: were so much more illiterate back in the days, and
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: Thermapalae was a very tame pass compared with the excitement
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: with trieses when two families meet in the same hall
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: in Brooklyn, Minutter warned. Then the car men driving their
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: wagons and dreys through the narrow roads exchanged charged extortion
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  Speaker 3: at rates, lashing mattresses and furnishings atop other heaps of goods,
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  Speaker 3: and careening through the streets to complete as many runs
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  Speaker 3: as they could before nightfall, and treasure hunters picked up
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: the detreatise in the gutters as stuff fell off the wagons.
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  Speaker 3: Utility companies scrambled to register all the changes. Dusk found
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  Speaker 3: families that had made local moves, settling into their new homes,
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  Speaker 3: unpacking belongings and meeting the neighbors.
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  Speaker 2: Joe and I have both come from moving families, moved
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  Speaker 2: a lot of as adults. Katie, did you or all
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  Speaker 2: your relatives around?
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  Speaker 3: My relatives not all of my relatives were around, but
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  Speaker 3: we stayed in the same town for thirty two years
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  Speaker 3: of my life.
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  Speaker 2: This, see, that's unimaginable to me. Yeah, I mean, I
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: just can't even picture what it would be like, Michael,
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  Speaker 2: I know you've stayed in the same spot.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty much like Katie.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, everybody knows everything and you can't go to the
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: grocery store without seeing somebody, you.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: Know, Yeah, which is either a good thing or a
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: bad thing, depending on how you look at it. I
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: had a girlfriend years ago who she had everybody was
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: in the same area, and she would talk about, oh boy,
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: here comes fall because for whatever reason, there were lots
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: of like cousins with birthdays and anniversaries, and there's just
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: like eight weekends in a row where everybody was expected
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  Speaker 2: to be at Grandma's house because it's somebody's birthday or
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: anniversary or something. It just like took up two months
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: and she was trying to decide whether she wanted to
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: tell her parents, you know, I'm not going to do
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: all of them this year. I think. I think I
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: just can't because it was kind of expected that everybody
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: showed up for everybody's birthday and I didn't. I don't
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  Speaker 2: have that at all in my life. And you know,
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: for better or worse, and a lot of it I
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: think is worse. I wish, I wish my kids would
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: have been able to be around cousins and stuff a
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: lot that, But I am raising my kids certainly with
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: the idea of if you can't find the job you
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: want here, and you probably can't go to where it is.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Sure.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, So back in nineteen oh six, for instance, over
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: a five year span, this is in Saint Louis, Greater
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: Saint Louis. Over a five year span, eighty percent of
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: local families would have changed addresses.
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  Speaker 2: That's amazing.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they might have stayed in the same metro area
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: or the same county or whatever, but they would move.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: That's a completely different lifestyle.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, there's a different world in a lot of
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: different ways.
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  Speaker 3: And actually, the point of this article, which is an
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: opportunity to take a shot at progressives, which you may
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: recall from the first time we discussed that was in
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: New York City, and like the sixties and seventies, progressives
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: came into neighborhoods and decided this should be preserved just
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: as it is. We can't lose the quaint character of
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: this neighborhood. And America would say, yeah, we want to
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: update it, we want to improve it, we want to
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: tear down what is not efficient and build what is efficient,
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: and do what we've always done as a country.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: But the progressive said, no, we can't do that.
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  Speaker 3: That's ugly and blah blah blah, and that is what
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: caused a lot of the shortages of housing in our cities.
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: And you know, it's true, and they make a really,
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: really good case, and it is the nimby nature of
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: lefties and how they fall in love with a particular look.
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: Never mind that that neighborhood didn't look like that twenty
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: years before, because that wasn't the right use for that neighborhood.
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: They didn't need as many you know, shops and boutiques
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: they needed whatever, and twenty years from now they'll need
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: completely different stuff. So why are you freezing it in amber? Well,
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: because it's sweeten I live here, and I want to
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: protect my property value. At the same time, somebody once
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: said to me they were talking about Rome, and they said, yeah,
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: we tear down our colosseums, so nobody, no future civilization
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: will ever visit our colisseums because we just tear them
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: down and build something new, which is better.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: You win with the comment that everything was very different
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: back in nineteen oh six.
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: It was very very different. Computers were very slow, no
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: Wi Fi at all. No Wi Fi was spotty at best.
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: Coverage is spotty.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: The iPhone cameras were crap. They were like twelve pixels.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Twelve pixels period. You guys want to see something cool.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: My wife and I ran into this yesterday, ironically, nineteen
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: oh six San Francisco.
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: They have footage of what it was like in San
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: Francisco nineteen oh six.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: It's amazing. Yeah, it is.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: It is. If you've seen it slowed down and colorized,
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: it's just incredible. Yeah. I love stuff like that. If
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: you had a time machine, you could go back and
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: just like walk around the street someplace, it be endlessly fascinating.
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: Pick a new time like every week, do it a
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: few times a year of course.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: She has scratched yourself on a rusty nail, and you'll
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: be dead by the end of the day because there's
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: no antibiotics.
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: But eh, where's that she would have been more careful? Well,
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: wait a minute, Wait a minute, wait a minute, No,
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: there are no antibiotics.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: That's a good point.
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: But if you had a technics shot, that would go
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: with you to the other time, right right?
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: Well, I guess I don't know. How do time machines work.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: Do your vaccinations go with you in the time machine?
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: I assume they.
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: Oh, sure they do what I don't know, why would they? Well,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: something to think about. I guess that's it.