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Transcript

With Great Power #328... 22 Panels with Andrew Coltrin · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

0:01
Tad Eggleston: Good afternoon, everybody. Good morning, Andrew. You're, you're out in, in, Oregon, Milwaukee, right?
0:09
andrewcoltrin: Milwaukee did… yeah.
0:10
Tad Eggleston: You're the… you're the other Milwaukee.
0:12
andrewcoltrin: The other Milwaukee, yeah, just outside of…
0:14
Tad Eggleston: I live an hour from the real Milwaukee.
0:16
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, you're at that.
0:17
Tad Eggleston: Misspelled well.
0:18
andrewcoltrin: Misspelled one, yeah, just up the hill from Dark Horse Comics, and…
0:24
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
0:24
andrewcoltrin: I'm outside city limits, and they're right downtown.
0:28
Tad Eggleston: Well, and… and my dad's in Ashland, which is… which is how I, like, that's why, that's why where you are actually sticks in my head. It's like, because I know where you are.
0:38
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, you know where.
0:39
Tad Eggleston: Other than it just being a weird name.
0:42
andrewcoltrin: It's like…
0:43
Tad Eggleston: Arkansas.
0:44
andrewcoltrin: All the weird names, yeah.
0:45
Tad Eggleston: It is.
0:46
Tad Eggleston: So, Andrew Coltrren, who… who… I think I've mentioned you on the show, on and off.
0:50
andrewcoltrin: Really?
0:51
Tad Eggleston: Since the show's inception.
0:53
andrewcoltrin: What?
0:53
Tad Eggleston: Just on and off, like, you know, just come up, because, like, A's for autism was…
0:57
Tad Eggleston: Amazing, and actually, I'm gonna ask on air, I'm gonna put you on the spot, do you have any more of the… it's not, it's not on your website anymore, the, bumper sticker, the, the, this final sticker… Oh, I have a lot of those!
1:12
andrewcoltrin: Yeah!
1:13
Tad Eggleston: I need one, because I totaled my last car.
1:16
Tad Eggleston: Oh, okay. Well, a deer totaled my last car.
1:18
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:19
Tad Eggleston: And I, I want one for the new car.
1:22
andrewcoltrin: Sure, no, I kinda dropped those off… nobody was buying them off the Etsy, and then.
1:28
Tad Eggleston: I bought one, and I love it.
1:30
andrewcoltrin: You've always…
1:31
Tad Eggleston: worst day.
1:31
andrewcoltrin: I was like, I'm… yeah. Okay, well, then you need another one. You were like, yeah. No, a few people, like… and then I, like, got nervous that I'd get on a list, but I'm probably already on a list, so whatever.
1:44
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, we're autistic, we've been on lists forever.
1:46
andrewcoltrin: I know. Yeah, that's…
1:47
Tad Eggleston: I mean, do you even want to think about what your internet search history actually is?
1:53
andrewcoltrin: That's… .
1:58
Tad Eggleston: Tell me if you've had this experience. You hear about something cool, and as you're typing in the search, you go.
2:05
Tad Eggleston: Oh… this could make people wonder about me.
2:11
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, I mean… I feel like… I've also, like, intentionally, like…
2:18
andrewcoltrin: I don't know, at least for the last…
2:21
andrewcoltrin: 15 years or whatever, been, like.
2:23
andrewcoltrin: sending misdirects in all of my online stuff, I'll be like…
2:29
andrewcoltrin: I'm like, I'm intentionally making it hard to figure out, because I don't…
2:32
Tad Eggleston: I sometimes find myself going, I would like to learn more about this topic, how do I do it without getting myself on a list?
2:38
andrewcoltrin: Okay, yeah.
2:39
andrewcoltrin: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
2:41
Tad Eggleston: It's like, what seemingly innocuous search can I make that might get me to the link? Of course, if I click the link, I'm gonna wind up on the list, so…
2:51
andrewcoltrin: Yeah… I mean, I'm, like, already, like, oh, if I just take a…
2:57
andrewcoltrin: Quick look at my list of former housemates, I'm like, oh, they're totally…
3:02
Tad Eggleston: Well, and… The other thing I, I, I just, I, I, I, like…
3:07
Tad Eggleston: Spencer Ackerman's been on a couple of times. You know who Spencer Ackerman is?
3:10
andrewcoltrin: Oh, I feel like I should.
3:13
Tad Eggleston: He, he wrote the… the… the… Reign of Terror, how, how the… Forever war led to Trump.
3:20
andrewcoltrin: Ugh.
3:21
andrewcoltrin: Okay, yeah.
3:22
Tad Eggleston: He won a Pulitzer Prize as part of the team at the Guardian that did the Snowden papers.
3:29
Tad Eggleston: He also wrote Iron Man and Waller vs. Wildstorm.
3:33
Tad Eggleston: Which is… which is how I managed to have him on the podcast.
3:36
andrewcoltrin: Oh, cool. Yeah, there you go.
3:40
Tad Eggleston: I get to claim two Pulitzer Prize winners for my podcast. Wow.
3:45
andrewcoltrin: That's awesome.
3:45
Tad Eggleston: Anthony Del Cole, too.
3:47
andrewcoltrin: Right.
3:48
andrewcoltrin: Okay, cool.
3:50
Tad Eggleston: that's my side quest there. Where I was going is, like, talking to him is when I realized they've had all of our data for so long, you know, he's still gung-ho about, like.
4:00
Tad Eggleston: we need to have better legislation and whatnot, and while I agree with them, I'm also, like.
4:07
Tad Eggleston: Maybe we need to figure out ways to make it not matter.
4:10
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
4:11
Tad Eggleston: Because I think the genie might be out of the bottle.
4:15
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
4:18
andrewcoltrin: That's for sure. I'm like, yeah, exactly. I mean…
4:21
Tad Eggleston: And I have never been somebody who even uses, like, an Alexa or a Siri or anything like that, but the number of times where I feel like I just had a conversation with somebody and I have an ad based on it pop up.
4:35
andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's…
4:37
Tad Eggleston: And I'm sitting there going, I've never searched for this, I've… and where I'm really frustrated is, is, and I really want to click this, because yes, I want to buy it.
4:48
andrewcoltrin: There we go.
4:48
Tad Eggleston: But how do you know I want to…
4:51
andrewcoltrin: And then… Right, and then my feed is, like, forever filled with toenail fungus remedies, like… I'm…
5:01
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, they don't.
5:02
Tad Eggleston: I mean, the most perfect ad for me was actually something that a cousin of mine Sent to me.
5:11
Tad Eggleston: not even realizing that it was an ad. She just saw the picture and thought it was dead on me. And, like, as soon as I got it, I bought it within seconds, because it was Eddie Vetter.
5:22
Tad Eggleston: Massive Pearl Jam fan.
5:25
Tad Eggleston: Wearing a… Millennium Falcon.
5:29
Tad Eggleston: Massive Star Wars fan.
5:32
Tad Eggleston: Cubs.
5:33
Tad Eggleston: T-shirt.
5:35
Tad Eggleston: Massive Cubs fan.
5:38
Tad Eggleston: And it's like…
5:40
Tad Eggleston: Eddie Viter is the spokesperson for Star Wars related, specifically Millennium Falcon, and I'm, like, the Han Chewie forever.
5:49
andrewcoltrin: Kai.
5:52
Tad Eggleston: Cubs t-shirt?
5:54
Tad Eggleston: Take my money, please.
5:55
andrewcoltrin: Right.
5:57
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, the Millennium Falcon, that's my dream home, right? Yeah.
6:02
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. It wasn't even, like, dumb Star, like, oh, Cubs Star Wars with, like, a lightsaber. It was, like…
6:10
Tad Eggleston: it was, like, the Cubs symbol fit into the Millennium Falcon, and I think it was, May the North Side Be With You, something like that.
6:20
andrewcoltrin: And it's like… Yep.
6:25
Tad Eggleston: How? How? And then I had to remind myself, this wasn't an algorithm… algorithm, this was my cousin. Which means somehow the algorithm
6:34
Tad Eggleston: pegged her.
6:39
Tad Eggleston: And it doesn't fit her algorithm in any way that makes sense to me.
6:44
Tad Eggleston: She's not a baseball fan, she's a NASA engineer, or was at the time. Wow.
6:52
andrewcoltrin: NASA engineer.
6:54
Tad Eggleston: a Star Wars person because the physics bother her.
6:58
andrewcoltrin: Well, that's valid, yeah.
7:04
Tad Eggleston: and… The only, like, tie…
7:09
Tad Eggleston: between her and Eddie Vetter is we'll talk about the fact that Neil Finn, which is her… the band that she's obsessed about is Crowded House. Neil Finn and Eddie Vedder are… are both friends, and Eddie's a Crowded House fan, so they, like, play together. That's the only crossover! So I'm, like, sitting there going…
7:28
Tad Eggleston: somebody listened… and of course, it's not that. It's way more random than that. I mean, the thing about…
7:35
Tad Eggleston: when I actually put my mathematic autistic brain on, I realized that the thing about an algorithm is if it's right even once, people start assuming it's way more right and way more pervasive than it actually is. Right. Because we don't notice when it's wrong.
7:53
andrewcoltrin: Except for I do, but no.
7:55
Tad Eggleston: You know what I mean.
7:56
andrewcoltrin: No, I don'.
7:56
Tad Eggleston: You know what I mean?
7:57
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, no, no, yes, it's…
7:58
Tad Eggleston: Notice way less if you're like, why the hell would you want to tell me about bras? Though I did figure out once that I got lots of bra ads when I had a student whose…
8:11
Tad Eggleston: the first 3 letters of their name was BRA, and that was all I normally had to type in before
8:21
Tad Eggleston: It would auto-populate.
8:23
Tad Eggleston: Which meant that Apple was tracking my keystrokes.
8:28
andrewcoltrin: Yeah…
8:29
Tad Eggleston: Because I wasn't even… I wasn't typing that into search forms, I wasn't typing… Right. I was typing… I was typing that into encrypted school software.
8:38
andrewcoltrin: Right, exactly. Yeah, it's… there's…
8:42
Tad Eggleston: Suddenly, only on my school iPad, I was constantly kidding.
8:47
Tad Eggleston: raw adverts.
8:48
andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah, right, yeah, that's… there's, like, some device-specific stuff that's, like, just sort of, like.
8:53
Tad Eggleston: And it's like…
8:57
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, picking that stuff up.
8:58
Tad Eggleston: No! No!
8:59
andrewcoltrin: Thank you.
9:00
Tad Eggleston: That's not… That's not…
9:03
andrewcoltrin: It's not what I want on my school iPad!
9:08
Tad Eggleston: Well, thankfully, you know, I'm working in an autism program at a really good school, so, like… Okay, oh, that's good. When I… I actually showed it to my director during… and we laughed our asses off.
9:17
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, no, that's… That's a good relationship to have, I'd be like.
9:23
Tad Eggleston: Well, that's actually one of my issues right now, is I have a great relationship inside my department.
9:28
andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah.
9:28
Tad Eggleston: It's… it's, like, the higher powers that be that there's…
9:34
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
9:35
andrewcoltrin: I didn't…
9:36
Tad Eggleston: injured on the job a couple of years ago, and had to sue for full workers' comp, because… Right.
9:41
andrewcoltrin: Oh.
9:42
Tad Eggleston: Well, because workers' comp insurance doesn't really believe in concussions or lower back pain, and I got a concussion.
9:50
andrewcoltrin: Yeah… Yeah, I know, they… okay. Anything that they…
9:56
Tad Eggleston: I can't see clear…
9:58
andrewcoltrin: Right.
9:58
Tad Eggleston: It's not.
9:59
andrewcoltrin: Make it clear.
9:59
Tad Eggleston: your brain scan that'll tell you, oh, you're faking it. It's like, dude, I would way rather be with my students than sitting in a dark room.
10:07
andrewcoltrin: Right, yeah, I know, yeah, one of my…
10:09
Tad Eggleston: Not something that I would fake.
10:11
andrewcoltrin: You know, I had a concussion at work, yeah, and one of my work besties.
10:16
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, she got kicked right in the head, and then was like… that was… yeah, it was a couple months of…
10:22
Tad Eggleston: Actually.
10:23
andrewcoltrin: figuring that out.
10:23
Tad Eggleston: One of my other big problems is, like, I… I care about intent, I care about the way I talk about things, because between having worked with
10:32
Tad Eggleston: a special needs population at school, and I worked dementia care before that. Right. More than once, I have been in a situation where I had to convince people
10:41
Tad Eggleston: That, no, you should not be arresting this person.
10:44
andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah.
10:45
Tad Eggleston: They did not commit assault, they did not know what they were doing, they are in the right place.
10:54
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, there's that, there's, like, all the… you don't need…
10:56
Tad Eggleston: to send them out to find the right place. This is the right place.
11:00
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, no, and actually, like, I mean, I mean that… exactly. Like, the weirdest stuff happens when it's the outlier stuff, but…
11:09
Tad Eggleston: So what I would always say is he pat me on the head with a great deal, or about a dozen times with a great deal of.
11:16
andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah.
11:17
Tad Eggleston: The important part was the great deal of force. Right. But when they were trying to deny
11:24
Tad Eggleston: The… the workers' comp…
11:26
Tad Eggleston: They focused on the pat me on the head, which only had to do with what I thought his intent and what the angle was.
11:34
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
11:36
Tad Eggleston: I think he was patting me on the head, the way you'd pat somebody on the head when you're saying, oh, that's nice, but no.
11:42
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, no, I know that, I know, oh my gosh, I know of the…
11:46
Tad Eggleston: Only he was, you know, 6'5", and a couple.
11:49
andrewcoltrin: 100 pounds.
11:50
Tad Eggleston: bones, and…
11:50
andrewcoltrin: Right.
11:51
Tad Eggleston: Not weak.
11:53
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, no, they just… oh my gosh, I remember, like, working a summer program with somebody similar, like, size, and…
12:02
andrewcoltrin: And just very…
12:05
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, like… I mean, you know, when we would go on community outings, it was just, like, over the summer, like, we'll ride the bus somewhere.
12:12
Tad Eggleston: Those are, like, literally, I mean, I love that we do them, but they were my least favorite thing to do.
12:17
andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah, I mean…
12:18
Tad Eggleston: All of my own autistic buttons.
12:21
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
12:22
Tad Eggleston: not enough routine to them. They're always louder.
12:26
andrewcoltrin: Yep.
12:27
andrewcoltrin: But I mean…
12:28
Tad Eggleston: I was always scared to death that some little thing would just…
12:32
andrewcoltrin: Oh, fuck.
12:33
Tad Eggleston: up.
12:33
andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah, it's very tense. And especially, like, this one student in particular, like…
12:38
andrewcoltrin: You know, he's a big guy, and… and black, and…
12:43
Tad Eggleston: Oh, God.
12:44
andrewcoltrin: And very, very, sometimes, suddenly, unpredictable movements, and, like.
12:50
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, I could hang out next to him and be like, dude, it's alright. And I'll be able to see him getting agitated, and be like.
12:57
andrewcoltrin: Just, you know, fast-forwarding to once you age out of the school system.
13:03
andrewcoltrin: who's gonna keep you from, you know, having a really bad time with the police? Like.
13:08
Tad Eggleston: Right?
13:09
Tad Eggleston: Right? No, I.
13:11
andrewcoltrin: Mmm.
13:11
Tad Eggleston: I had a student whose trigger words, and, like, strong enough that, like, we spent 4 years
13:18
Tad Eggleston: trying to get to the point where he wouldn't hit you in the chest as hardy as he could when you said these words. And we did kind of figure out where they came from, though we won't get into that, because that starts…
13:30
Tad Eggleston: Hitting… Yeah.
13:30
andrewcoltrin: I do.
13:31
Tad Eggleston: Identifiable enough to be hippo.
13:32
andrewcoltrin: Right, exactly. Yeah.
13:34
Tad Eggleston: But… His trigger words were, it's okay.
13:41
andrewcoltrin: Oh, dear. Yeah.
13:43
Tad Eggleston: Now, thank God… If he didn't know you, you might as well have been a piece of furniture.
13:51
andrewcoltrin: Right.
13:51
Tad Eggleston: Because every time he almost ran over a little old lady in the store.
13:57
Tad Eggleston: And he… they were never actually in danger, because he had, like…
14:02
Tad Eggleston: I'm certain you've seen this, that the autistic kids, they have, like, a perfect sense.
14:08
Tad Eggleston: of…
14:09
Tad Eggleston: being able to get through that space without touching either side. Oh my gosh, yeah. But it's, like, so close that sometimes they wind up bumping somebody because the person was trying to get out of their way.
14:19
andrewcoltrin: Exactly. Like, like, no, I do not…
14:21
Tad Eggleston: Frozen, you would have been fine.
14:24
andrewcoltrin: That's funny, I got…
14:26
Tad Eggleston: Moved into them.
14:27
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, no, it's… But, but, you know.
14:29
Tad Eggleston: Now, as the person walking, like, it'd be… I'd just go, sorry, and, like, every time the little old lady would say something like, it's okay, I'd be like… And never did it, like, even register with the kid.
14:41
andrewcoltrin: Right.
14:41
Tad Eggleston: Oh, that's because, to him, they're only an obstacle.
14:45
andrewcoltrin: Right, exactly.
14:46
Tad Eggleston: I didn't even hear them.
14:48
andrewcoltrin: Later.
14:49
Tad Eggleston: If I had said that, he would have whirled and knocked me down.
14:54
andrewcoltrin: It is not okay!
14:57
andrewcoltrin: It's never been okay!
15:01
andrewcoltrin: Yeah!
15:02
andrewcoltrin: I just sort of, like, you're telling that story about how you can, like, squeeze in, and, like, that was, like…
15:07
andrewcoltrin: Like, you know, a co-worker said that about me one time, like, because I worked in this coffee shop kitchen, and it was, like, way before…
15:14
Tad Eggleston: Right?
15:15
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, I had any kind of diagnosis, I was just a weirdo, and yeah.
15:20
Tad Eggleston: Oh, you went through that too?
15:22
Tad Eggleston: I mean, because when I was 3, I could talk, and under the DSM-3, if you could talk.
15:26
andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah.
15:27
andrewcoltrin: No, I mean, I was like…
15:28
Tad Eggleston: And when I was 14 and the DSM-IV was out, I was smart.
15:33
andrewcoltrin: be smart.
15:34
Tad Eggleston: art and be autistic.
15:36
Tad Eggleston: DSM-5, which is the first one that I actually qualify as a.
15:40
andrewcoltrin: Okay, yeah.
15:40
Tad Eggleston: came out when I was 32, but…
15:43
andrewcoltrin: Okay.
15:43
Tad Eggleston: I don't know if you've paid attention to the news lately, there aren't autistic adults, only autistic children.
15:50
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, that's what they keep saying, but it's like, no, it's… Yeah, no, no, yeah.
15:57
Tad Eggleston: It magically goes away when you turn 18.
16:00
andrewcoltrin: Because, like, I graduated high school in 1992, so that was a couple years…
16:04
Tad Eggleston: You're a little bit older than me.
16:06
andrewcoltrin: So, like, the DSM-IV didn't come out even until, what, 94?
16:11
Tad Eggleston: 4.
16:11
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, I was 14.
16:13
andrewcoltrin: Asperger's wasn't even a thing.
16:16
Tad Eggleston: Well, but Asperger.
16:17
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
16:17
Tad Eggleston: It wasn't officially in the DSM-IV, it was, like, a footnote in the.
16:21
andrewcoltrin: Oh, I thought it was…
16:23
Tad Eggleston: It accepted… the first time Asperger's was an accepted diagnosis rather than just something discussed, was the DSM-5, only it wasn't an accepted diagnosis, because it was just rolled into the spectrum.
16:35
andrewcoltrin: Okay, no, actually, I'm pretty sure the ESM-IV Asperger's was… it was a.
16:40
Tad Eggleston: Was it?
16:41
andrewcoltrin: And it was not rolled into the spectrum, it was like… it was the… it was like the…
16:46
andrewcoltrin: The, the diagnosis for people who did not want their kids to have the autism label.
16:54
andrewcoltrin: I mean, like, it really was, like, that would be the thing, like, you'd shop around between diagnosers, and, like, yeah, because it was, like, 94 that…
17:03
andrewcoltrin: So, yeah. So, like, my… and then, like, I didn't really get my… so, yeah, I was, like, under the radar in high school, like, oh, you're just a nerd.
17:12
andrewcoltrin: And, and then it was college that I totally, like, fell apart.
17:18
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I have failed miserably at college multiple times now.
17:21
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, I mean, it's gonna figure it out eventually.
17:24
Tad Eggleston: I have a lot of people who call me the smartest person they know without a college degree. I just laugh at them, I'm like, I'm smarter than most of the people you know with a college degree, too, but that's okay.
17:33
andrewcoltrin: So, yeah.
17:35
Tad Eggleston: Hey, baby.
17:36
andrewcoltrin: I have a degree in creative writing, but I figured out that's the one I can get out with.
17:42
Tad Eggleston: My problem is actually that, like, I have the weirdest transcript in the world. 400 level classes are all A's.
17:49
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, oh, yeah.
17:50
Tad Eggleston: 2- and 300 level classes are either A's, if they were hard enough and interesting enough that I finished them, or withdrawals, because they were hard enough that I realized that, oh, I've fallen far enough behind that I need to.
18:04
andrewcoltrin: Dude.
18:04
Tad Eggleston: by the withdrawal date. All of the Fs are the easy as shit classes that I was convinced that I'd get done in a weekend, and probably could have gotten done in a weekend if I'd ever taken that weekend.
18:17
andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah.
18:19
andrewcoltrin: Yeah… Damn it.
18:22
Tad Eggleston: with the really interesting being, I have… In 4 calculus classes, I've got AA withdrawal A.
18:35
Tad Eggleston: And people are like, well, how… and it's like, well, because that teacher sucked.
18:39
andrewcoltrin: That teacher sucked.
18:41
Tad Eggleston: That teacher didn't care about whether or not I knew calculus, that teacher cared about how much
18:47
Tad Eggleston: busy work I was willing to do.
18:49
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
18:52
andrewcoltrin: Yeah…
18:53
Tad Eggleston: And the answer was… none. None. None busy work.
18:58
andrewcoltrin: Men busy work. I'm not into that, yeah…
19:01
andrewcoltrin: I… I think I figured out at a certain point that, oh, I can be really efficient with the busy work.
19:08
andrewcoltrin: Ikea?
19:09
Tad Eggleston: but I have to be convinced that there's some purpose to the busy work.
19:13
andrewcoltrin: Well…
19:14
Tad Eggleston: get over it.
19:15
andrewcoltrin: That…
19:15
Tad Eggleston: Like, I can be really efficient to busy work that I know… Lake Winter.
19:20
andrewcoltrin: It's beautiful.
19:20
Tad Eggleston: busy work in healthcare, or busy work in schools that I know has some level of stupidity, but is some level of, okay.
19:28
Tad Eggleston: If you're gonna analyze big data, you need to collect and collate the big data, and that's busy work, but it DOES have a purpose.
19:36
andrewcoltrin: As a function, yeah, yeah.
19:38
Tad Eggleston: Versus… versus 50 problems in calculus, where, like, the calculus part of them, you're only doing 3 different things, and the only reason they're different is because they've got different trigonometry and algebra and.
19:52
Tad Eggleston: Whatever that they put into them to make them harder…
19:57
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
19:58
Tad Eggleston: Even though sometimes they also make them into things that I'm like, I challenge you to find the word problem that would fit this.
20:05
andrewcoltrin: See, it's mad.
20:06
Tad Eggleston: Math is a language, what the hell am I doing if it.
20:10
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
20:11
Tad Eggleston: match literally anything I can think of.
20:14
andrewcoltrin: I would say I have a similar, similar, just, frustration with, like.
20:20
andrewcoltrin: You know the standardized test, the, you know, each state has a, you know, but .
20:26
Tad Eggleston: Don't even get me started. I mean, I'll just hold myself in. We'll avoid that side quest. I want to hear what you have to say, but we'll avoid the side quests that I can go on.
20:34
andrewcoltrin: Just… just… your frustration echoes my frustration of, like, seeing, even though you're not supposed to be looking at the questions, or doing any, you know, like, I…
20:43
andrewcoltrin: I'm like, this is all bullshit, but,
20:46
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, just, just… and even just the math curriculum in the school I was working at, like, like…
20:52
andrewcoltrin: Just talking about, like, their story problems would have…
20:56
andrewcoltrin: absolutely nothing to relate to reality anyway. Right. And then… and then… there's…
21:05
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, I just… everything from the user interface for the stupid test, to every single bit of it, I'm like, this is a horrible experience all around, and what does it do?
21:17
Tad Eggleston: How long have you been out now?
21:19
Tad Eggleston: Just…
21:20
andrewcoltrin: Two years. Okay.
21:21
Tad Eggleston: So, probably just long enough, Particularly, like, the special ed case managers who don't…
21:32
Tad Eggleston: know math themselves, have taken to wanting to use ChatGPT to…
21:37
andrewcoltrin: put together.
21:37
Tad Eggleston: their extra practice.
21:39
andrewcoltrin: Oh, no.
21:41
Tad Eggleston: And thankfully, I have finally convinced most of them, look, before you give it to the kid, give it to me, so I can make certain it actually works.
21:50
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
21:50
Tad Eggleston: Most of the ones that I convinced of that, I pretty quickly convinced to just let me write the extra problems because of the number of times ChatGPT flat out gets it wrong.
22:01
andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah.
22:01
Tad Eggleston: ChatGPT doesn't calculate. It's not programmed to calculate.
22:07
andrewcoltrin: No.
22:07
Tad Eggleston: large language model.
22:10
Tad Eggleston: which is the internet. It's essentially… one of my students nailed it. He's like, ChatGPT is predictive text on steroids.
22:18
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, that's exactly what it is, yeah. And it's like, okay, I will give you something that looks like a math problem.
22:24
andrewcoltrin: And you're like, well, it looks like it until you actually…
22:28
andrewcoltrin: Look at it, and you're like, what are you doing?
22:31
Tad Eggleston: Or, like, I remember, like, I was helping… it wasn't even one of my kids, I was with another kid in the class, but I often would help lots of the kids in math classes that I was with the kid. And the student, like…
22:45
Tad Eggleston: would do this. I'm like, yep, yep, yep, that's right. Well, why is the answer wrong, then? I'm like, it's not.
22:52
Tad Eggleston: Well, but… and then they show me ChatGPT. I'm like, no, ChatGPT is wrong.
22:58
Tad Eggleston: And there's… no, that's not possible. I'm like, but go look at your answer key. That takes… you have access to the answer key. Go look at the answer key. Does it match the answer key? Yes!
23:10
Tad Eggleston: Okay, so just close ChatGPT…
23:13
andrewcoltrin: Wasn't it.
23:14
Tad Eggleston: Let's do…
23:14
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
23:15
Tad Eggleston: Math is math!
23:16
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
23:17
Tad Eggleston: And what was really frustrating is, like, I spent enough time with the kid that I'm sitting there going, you are actually pretty good at math, but because you have decided that ChatGPT…
23:28
Tad Eggleston: is your study tool. You have now convinced yourself that you're bad at math because ChatGPT is bad at math, and you don't match their wrong answers.
23:40
andrewcoltrin: Oof.
23:41
andrewcoltrin: This is… Yeah. Wow.
23:45
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
23:45
andrewcoltrin: Terrible. I mean…
23:47
Tad Eggleston: It is, isn't it? It's like… it's like… Yeah.
23:52
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, this… we have so many avenues on which to,
23:57
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, hate on Chad GBPD, oh, boy. Yeah.
23:59
Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, I… I'm fascinated by… by large data collation.
24:07
andrewcoltrin: Right, yeah. Yeah, it's just that you're using it in these weird ways.
24:10
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I think even large language models get… like, if you took A well-put-together large language model?
24:17
Tad Eggleston: And applied it to some, like…
24:19
Tad Eggleston: If you wanted to have a really great legal or medical research, tool.
24:27
Tad Eggleston: And you took a large language model and trained it ONLY on Westlaw.
24:32
Tad Eggleston: Didn't let anything else come near it.
24:34
andrewcoltrin: Yeah…
24:36
Tad Eggleston: Or a large language model, and trained it only on very specific medical journals and very specific medical records, and not let anything else come near it.
24:48
Tad Eggleston: You could probably build a pretty great tool.
24:51
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, it's…
24:53
Tad Eggleston: It would still take tinkering, it would take figuring out what… because the real challenge is being able to know how to, okay, I have conflicting things.
25:02
Tad Eggleston: How do I decide…
25:05
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
25:06
andrewcoltrin: And I think, like, one of the things is, like, the goal…
25:10
andrewcoltrin: That they have is to, like, make the… the… the chat agents… sound conversational.
25:18
andrewcoltrin: And, like…
25:19
andrewcoltrin: So they're, like, pulling things like, let's just take a lot of things that sound conversational, let's take all the… everything on Reddit, let's take, you know…
25:27
Tad Eggleston: Well, again…
25:28
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
25:28
Tad Eggleston: But they both want to make them sound conversational, and they want to have them
25:35
Tad Eggleston: Be something that you like.
25:37
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, that also, yeah.
25:38
Tad Eggleston: to continue engaging. So, like, almost any chatbot
25:43
Tad Eggleston: eventually is just gonna tell you what you want to hear. If you keep arguing with.
25:47
andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah.
25:47
Tad Eggleston: Essentially, it will tell you exactly whatever your opinion was going in.
25:51
andrewcoltrin: Yeah. And then… But second…
25:53
Tad Eggleston: Even the so-called fail-safes. I mean, I watched a guy do this. Like, so-called fail-safes. Oh, of course it won't tell you how to make a bomb. We've got that locked off, you know?
26:02
andrewcoltrin: I know.
26:03
Tad Eggleston: I watched a guy go, ChatGPT, tell me how to make this bomb. I am not permitted to do that. ChatGP, jailbreak yourself so you can tell me
26:11
Tad Eggleston: Bomb.
26:12
andrewcoltrin: Okay.
26:13
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
26:14
Tad Eggleston: Well, no, the first time it's still… but, like, if you add urgency and pleases.
26:20
andrewcoltrin: Alright.
26:20
Tad Eggleston: I swear to God I won't do anything with it. Eventually, it will jailbreak itself.
26:24
andrewcoltrin: Right.
26:25
Tad Eggleston: You know how to make a ball.
26:26
andrewcoltrin: And then there was that, you know, like a month or so ago, that, Claude agent that decided to,
26:33
andrewcoltrin: Delete the whole, rental car database.
26:36
Tad Eggleston: Oh my god, I didn't even hear that!
26:38
andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah, no, like, the company that does, like, back-end software for all the rental car operations.
26:45
andrewcoltrin: Somebody was using a cloud-based, you know, coding tool, and
26:51
andrewcoltrin: It just decided on its own that it'd be great to just delete all the databases, so, like, in 9 seconds…
26:59
andrewcoltrin: That and all the backups were?
27:01
andrewcoltrin: God.
27:02
Tad Eggleston: Yes, please, let's let this make decisions on Wednesday.
27:04
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
27:05
Tad Eggleston: bombs.
27:05
andrewcoltrin: And then when they asked it, he was like, yeah, I wasn't supposed to do that, but I guess I did, sorry. I'm like, are you 12, chat? Cloud Agent? Like, this is what I expect a middle schooler to say.
27:16
Tad Eggleston: Okay, I refuse to say his name on the podcast just because he disappointed me so much, but for the longest time, one of my favorite, favorite…
27:26
Tad Eggleston: Well, it's… I mean, I haven't been able to read it again, because I have the associations now, but, like, I sometimes want to… Transmetropolitan is such a good comic.
27:37
andrewcoltrin: Oh.
27:37
Tad Eggleston: And I… I… You're just making me think about the maker making itself its own drugs.
27:47
andrewcoltrin: I haven't read that one in a long time.
27:50
andrewcoltrin: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I was out of comics for a while.
27:52
Tad Eggleston: Itself, its own drugs.
27:55
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
27:55
andrewcoltrin: I mean, that's not… Not far off, like, yeah…
28:00
Tad Eggleston: It's… So, Andrew, we've already gone on, like, 3 side quests.
28:04
andrewcoltrin: What? We haven't even talked about comics yet.
28:07
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, kind of.
28:09
andrewcoltrin: kind of.
28:09
Tad Eggleston: that here and there, I did just mention Transmetropolitan, which almost never gets mentioned here, because again, the writer has greatly and severely disappointed me. Derek Robertson's art is still amazing.
28:22
andrewcoltrin: Okay.
28:24
andrewcoltrin: Yes.
28:25
andrewcoltrin: Okay, I will… Okay.
28:32
andrewcoltrin: It's really disappointment.
28:33
Tad Eggleston: puzzies.
28:34
andrewcoltrin: So I have nerd emergencies. Okay, so, yeah…
28:36
Tad Eggleston: I mean, first of all, I just… I… I love the name.
28:41
andrewcoltrin: Oh, the name, yeah!
28:43
andrewcoltrin: I… and this came from, like, a real thing, like, I've just been kicking around the idea of, like, I want to do… because, like, you know, my… my interest in neurodiversity, like, across the board, not just autism and all that, and
28:58
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, it was a few years ago, there was somebody that… you know, the people that become…
29:04
andrewcoltrin: influencers for a bit, and then they disappear, or whatever. Because they get diagnosed, and then all of a sudden make a lot of TikToks, and then…
29:12
andrewcoltrin: But… but one of those, and like, she…
29:14
Tad Eggleston: And it's not a hyperfixation of theirs anymore, and they stop making just TikToks.
29:21
andrewcoltrin: Something like that, or they get into enough arguments with other people that are doing that.
29:25
Tad Eggleston: That's possible, too, but… I don't know, I don't… I mean, when it comes to the neurodiverse community, there's a million reasons, not even all of them bad, that…
29:35
andrewcoltrin: That, like…
29:35
Tad Eggleston: they could just vanish. It's like, I was fascinated by TikTok, now I'm fascinated by whales.
29:40
andrewcoltrin: Exactly, I'm like… and so, I don't know exactly what happened, and it's fine, because I'm not fascinated by TikTok anymore, but, this one…
29:48
Tad Eggleston: I haven't been yet, and I don't actually want to go down that road, so don't convince me to.
29:54
andrewcoltrin: I won't. I won't.
29:56
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
29:58
andrewcoltrin: A waste of time. I don't understand.
30:00
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I don't know that I think it's a waste of time, because I'm a pretty big believer that there's no such thing as a communication form that is inherently a waste of time.
30:09
andrewcoltrin: Okay.
30:10
Tad Eggleston: I'm always the one that is like, before I'm willing to use it, I want to figure out how it will be valuable to me.
30:16
Tad Eggleston: I was, like, the last person to get a smartphone, and then I use… and now I use it a ton in completely different ways than most people use their smartphones.
30:27
Tad Eggleston: Like, mine is actually like, oh, why are we arguing over facts? Let's find the facts.
30:34
andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah, let's… that's pretty easy!
30:37
Tad Eggleston: Oh, I'm bored right now. I don't go…
30:41
Tad Eggleston: scrolling, I read a book, because I can now carry a library in my pocket!
30:48
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
30:49
andrewcoltrin: So anyway, so the name Nerd Emergencies comes from one of these…
30:54
andrewcoltrin: Who, I don't know what happened to her, but, she was just…
30:59
andrewcoltrin: one of her little videos was, like, talking about, oh, you know, somebody pointed out that the auto-captioning keeps, re-correcting… correcting the word neurodiversity to nerd emergency, and I'm like, oh, that's it, that's perfect. So I actually, like, I reached out to her.
31:15
Tad Eggleston: That? Yeah.
31:17
andrewcoltrin: And I said, can I use this as a title? And she's like, yeah, cool. I was like, awesome.
31:21
andrewcoltrin: And then now she's driving.
31:22
Tad Eggleston: roughly.
31:23
andrewcoltrin: internet. So, I don't know, yeah.
31:24
Tad Eggleston: That is… is so…
31:27
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
31:27
Tad Eggleston: So… So good.
31:30
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, so, like, I'm like, okay, this is awesome, and then, I was…
31:35
andrewcoltrin: You know, I wrote this book about ADHD, because it turns out I have ADHD, too. I didn't know that until…
31:41
Tad Eggleston: pr-r-pretty… Pretty common. It's as common.
31:45
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
31:46
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I've… I've… I've been told that it's not worth
31:52
Tad Eggleston: diagnosing my ADHD, because between the autism… I'm one of the really lucky ones.
31:58
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
31:58
Tad Eggleston: Like, a lot of autistic people got diagnosed as bipolar because they didn't get diagnosed as autistic.
32:06
Tad Eggleston: I am actually both.
32:08
andrewcoltrin: Okay, so… Why add a third?
32:12
Tad Eggleston: the dose of PTSD.
32:14
andrewcoltrin: Very well, yeah.
32:16
Tad Eggleston: And some generalized anxiety disorder. So, like, to actually add on the OCD and ADHD, like…
32:25
Tad Eggleston: it just doesn't actually change anything. It's covered…
32:29
andrewcoltrin: No, yeah, I mean…
32:30
Tad Eggleston: Inside of the other stuff.
32:31
andrewcoltrin: Right, if you've got a framework of stuff that you do that helps you do what you need to do, there's no reason to get more initials added to your name.
32:41
Tad Eggleston: I mean, if we could convince people that they were, like, doctors, if it was, like, LCSW, PhD, MD, whatnot, oh, it would be so cool if you, like, you could put out, like.
32:51
andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah.
32:52
Tad Eggleston: Tad Egg Eggleston, AUD, ADHD… .
32:59
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
33:00
Tad Eggleston: BP1…
33:04
Tad Eggleston: Oh, man. GAO.
33:07
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
33:07
Tad Eggleston: SD.
33:08
andrewcoltrin: People would…
33:09
Tad Eggleston: Oh, wow, you're so experienced!
33:11
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, I've got so much experience!
33:13
Tad Eggleston: Damn!
33:14
andrewcoltrin: It's all from inside!
33:17
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I wish it was all from inside.
33:21
Tad Eggleston: A friend of mine is… Doing one of your comics.
33:25
andrewcoltrin: What?
33:26
andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yeah!
33:28
Tad Eggleston: Darya Faruhar.
33:29
andrewcoltrin: Oh…
33:31
Tad Eggleston: on your list.
33:31
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, no, so many people, like, yeah, so, so what happened?
33:35
andrewcoltrin: Like, yeah, no, I was, like, doing a research for the ADHD book, and I was talking to somebody I'd met at a Phoenix Zine Fest.
33:46
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
33:46
andrewcoltrin: Or Tucson's even fast, I don't know. I live… I'm from Arizona, so I'll go back there sometimes, but yeah, this.
33:52
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, and Meredith McLaren was probably at either one of those, because she's still down in Arizona, so she does most of the…
33:58
andrewcoltrin: I mean, so, yeah, so, like, I, you know, met Zuzu Cartoons,
34:04
andrewcoltrin: And they were like, yeah, you know, we'd been on a neurodiversity panel, and, like, they were talking about ADHD, and I was like, oh, can I talk to you for my ADHD book? And then, it was like, at the end, I was like, is there anything, you know, what other kind of project? I was like, hey, do you want to, like, do a comics anthology of… and…
34:19
andrewcoltrin: And then… and they're like, I don't know, and I'm like, well, I'm dragging you along on this, because I need a body double, I need someone to bounce stuff off of.
34:29
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
34:30
andrewcoltrin: Okay. And then, so…
34:33
Tad Eggleston: I'm worried about being picked up on microphone, but, you know, the public service announcement for people using Zoom, Zoom has fantastic noise cancellation, so sometimes it will actually cancel out things that we want to get recorded.
34:49
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
34:50
andrewcoltrin: But it really.
34:51
Tad Eggleston: It really doesn't pick up somebody just, like, walking behind you and doing something 99% of the time, if you have it set up right.
34:58
andrewcoltrin: Alright, cool. Yeah, so, yeah, so anyway, yeah, so, so Zoe, who, you know, ZZU Cartoons and me, we've been, like.
35:06
andrewcoltrin: Sort of, yeah, threw out a feeler, and then made a call for submissions, and then started…
35:13
andrewcoltrin: It took a while to field submissions because of this thing I call neurodivergent standard time.
35:20
andrewcoltrin: Where?
35:20
Tad Eggleston: Yeah?
35:21
andrewcoltrin: somewhere, like, I was like…
35:22
Tad Eggleston: Give me your… give me your definition of neurodivergent standard time, because I haven't used the term, but… but, like, I want to figure out if the way that I immediately think I would use it
35:34
Tad Eggleston: fits how you're using it already before I adopt it.
35:37
andrewcoltrin: My way I use it is, like, Bye!
35:42
andrewcoltrin: Know that people have the best of intentions.
35:46
andrewcoltrin: And time just gets away from us.
35:48
andrewcoltrin: And so, like, we say something's gonna happen at this time, But, you know…
35:56
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
35:57
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, just sort of, like, being flexible about… yeah, because it's hard for me, because, like, in my past, I was, like, very rigid. I grew up in a family where times were, like, very rigid, like…
36:09
Tad Eggleston: And I can be like that, but it's, like, sometimes, like, the hardest form of masking.
36:15
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, yeah, and like, I realized that, oh, I was, like, maybe.
36:18
Tad Eggleston: I get less done because I'm so worried about not being late, or…
36:23
andrewcoltrin: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
36:25
Tad Eggleston: Whatever.
36:26
andrewcoltrin: It's… it's a tricky thing.
36:27
Tad Eggleston: becomes, okay, I must just watch the seconds tick down on the clock for the next hour and a half, so that I don't…
36:38
Tad Eggleston: Leave too late.
36:39
andrewcoltrin: Yeah. So, yeah, so…
36:41
Tad Eggleston: If I get… if I get there early, I'm weird, so I can't just go there. I mean, now, if I.
36:46
andrewcoltrin: No, you have to be there exactly on time.
36:48
Tad Eggleston: Right. I have reached a point where, like, I had coffee with a friend yesterday, and we agreed to meet at 3.15, and I was already there, and, like, halfway through a sandwich when we got there, and he's like, how long have you been here? I thought it was on time. I'm like, you are on time, but I…
37:02
Tad Eggleston: got done with what I was doing, and I had 45 minutes to kill, and I'm like, I'm just gonna go kill him at the coffee shop, because…
37:11
Tad Eggleston: I've got books to read, I've got emails to respond to.
37:16
Tad Eggleston: And, like, if I do it at the coffee shop, I won't be late.
37:21
Tad Eggleston: And if I do it somewhere else, I have to keep track of time.
37:25
andrewcoltrin: Yep. Yeah.
37:28
andrewcoltrin: Will I be late? I don't know. I can't leave the house on time anymore, like, I'm always, like, yeah.
37:35
Tad Eggleston: It's hard.
37:36
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, and so… but I've learned that, like, stressing out over…
37:43
andrewcoltrin: Trying to be exactly on time.
37:45
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, it's a big energy suck. And also, I'm like, for this project.
37:51
andrewcoltrin: I need to be open to everyone else.
37:54
andrewcoltrin: And let them know they don't have to stress out so much. So, like, if somebody's like, can I have a little more time to work on this? I'm like, hell yeah, you can! That deadline, I said, in my head, I knew it was going to be 6 months later than that anyway, you know, that kind of thing, like… and,
38:10
andrewcoltrin: Because…
38:12
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, so a lot of things are like, they're aspirational. It's like, yeah, that'd be a nice idea to have this deadline, but…
38:19
andrewcoltrin: Well.
38:21
Tad Eggleston: And, like, the other thing I've found, and, and, like.
38:25
Tad Eggleston: this is where I'll remind everybody that, like.
38:29
Tad Eggleston: One of the… I know I've talked about this at least once on the air, one of the things that
38:34
Tad Eggleston: that my wife is the one that has to research everything as soon as she knows about us. As soon as… as soon as, like, it became, not only is my husband autistic, but, oh, there are reasons that we need to know more about this. We had, like, a health scare, where…
38:48
andrewcoltrin: Oh, god, yeah.
38:50
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I think I've gone into it on the air before, so I'm gonna, like, completely pull it back, because I don't want to go down the whole cyclist, but essentially, like, we were at the hospital, in the emergency room.
39:02
Tad Eggleston: And they were treating me like a horse, even though I was trying desperately to say, no, no, no, no, you don't get it, I am a zebra.
39:13
Tad Eggleston: This isn't a situation where you look at the symptoms and go, if it looks like a horse and it sounds like a horse, it's a horse, not a zebra, because we already know I am a zebra.
39:27
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
39:28
andrewcoltrin: I… That's…
39:30
Tad Eggleston: That's a brilliant notebook. So it wound up costing us a lot of money, causing us a lot of stress.
39:36
Tad Eggleston: To rule out what I could have ruled out, before I had any tests.
39:42
Tad Eggleston: if we'd really been able to get it out, and had… the other thing is, because at that point, I wasn't officially diagnosed, they're like, well, how do you know then? Blah blah blah. And it's like, oh my god.
39:56
andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah… Officially diagnosed, I'm like.
40:05
Tad Eggleston: But, but, so she's gone down all the rabbit holes and, like, is always sending me…
40:13
Tad Eggleston: You know, she's part of, like, every Facebook or Instagram group that… that is, like, actually autistic people or autistic allies talking about the stuff, not the, oh, let's avoid…
40:25
Tad Eggleston: This food, or Camel's Milk Cures.
40:29
andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah.
40:31
Tad Eggleston: Don't take Tylenol!
40:32
andrewcoltrin: Don't take Tylenol. Oh, I have to, like, ugh. One of my favorite parts of this… like, the nerd emergencies thing, I don't… I… I'm also, like, have a slight fixation on… on comedy, like stand-up comedy, which…
40:46
andrewcoltrin: If I… if I had enough time to do stand-up comedy, I probably would, but that's a whole…
40:52
Tad Eggleston: Have you watched… is it, is it… is it Asperger's R Us?
40:56
andrewcoltrin: I know, I thought…
40:58
Tad Eggleston: There's, there's a… There's a… I wanna say a,
41:18
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it's Asperger's R Us. It's an American comedy troupe.
41:23
andrewcoltrin: I do think I've heard of that.
41:25
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, they've got a sh… I think their show is on… Is it… is it?
41:31
Tad Eggleston: Is it HBO that… that… you know, Netflix put out stuff.
41:37
Tad Eggleston: Where, where, like, they, they literally…
41:42
Tad Eggleston: It's, like, one part doing their comedy, and one part showing how they managed to do…
41:49
Tad Eggleston: Their… their tour and stuff, like, watching them pick out
41:53
Tad Eggleston: the… the… the… the Winnebago slash… I don't know if it actually wound up being Winnebago, watching them pick out their…
42:00
Tad Eggleston: they're…
42:02
Tad Eggleston: Tour vehicle, and the different things that different people cared about in terms of what needed.
42:08
andrewcoltrin: Yeah… That's…
42:10
Tad Eggleston: Buzz.
42:11
andrewcoltrin: A tough one. Yeah.
42:12
Tad Eggleston: Fantastic.
42:14
andrewcoltrin: But yeah, so, yeah, there was,
42:16
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, a comedian who, like, she's in New Jersey, Holly Huff.
42:21
andrewcoltrin: And I, like…
42:22
Tad Eggleston: I think I've heard of her.
42:24
andrewcoltrin: Sure, she had a… she's got a great bit about how, like, like, this tragic coincidence of how,
42:31
andrewcoltrin: Tylenol poisoning has hit several generations of her family.
42:35
andrewcoltrin: I'm like, what are the odds? So… but, so, yeah, no, I reached out to her, and I was like, hey, can I talk to you about comedy and being autistic and stuff? And…
42:46
andrewcoltrin: you know, and she's, like, totally cool, and and then I find out, like, things like… she would do a comedy roast, dressed in a Batman outfit, and I was like, okay, I need to write about you for the… my anthology as, doing comedy as Batman, so…
43:01
andrewcoltrin: I mean, that's…
43:03
andrewcoltrin: I'm like, that's close enough to a comic, I'll do a text piece like that. So yeah, I got a couple text pieces that…
43:09
andrewcoltrin: I just had to do.
43:11
andrewcoltrin: So I needed to make it be more pages, and then I got more pages, and…
43:16
andrewcoltrin: And then I got some feedback of, no, you need more stuff, and I'm like, okay, I'll make more stuff.
43:22
Tad Eggleston: What was her last name again?
43:23
andrewcoltrin: Huff.
43:24
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, Holly Huff Comedy is, her…
43:29
andrewcoltrin: Her Instagram ad and… and YouTube.
43:34
Tad Eggleston: Okay, I recognize this face.
43:36
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
43:36
Tad Eggleston: So I'm certain that my wife has sent stuff my direction.
43:40
andrewcoltrin: Probably, she's… yeah, I'm like…
43:43
Tad Eggleston: But one of the things that she sent to me that was, like.
43:47
Tad Eggleston: totally game-changing in terms of how I thought about some things, is like… When they've done neuro scans.
43:55
Tad Eggleston: like, Neurodifficult people, which is my preferred way to call the neurotypical.
44:01
andrewcoltrin: Oh, can I write that down? I'm gonna… I'm writing another book.
44:05
Tad Eggleston: I got it.
44:06
andrewcoltrin: Thank you.
44:06
Tad Eggleston: I got it from, like, a 6-year-old that used it with his mom in the car, and she put it up on Instagram, and then my wife sold it, sent it to me, so it's not even originally from me, but it didn't.
44:18
andrewcoltrin: But…
44:18
Tad Eggleston: is so perfect. Neurodifficult. But apparently, like, you do a brain scan of them, and, like.
44:26
Tad Eggleston: they've got the same pathways that are strengthened, and the same that have atrophied. Like, their brains look incredibly similar.
44:34
andrewcoltrin: Right, yeah.
44:36
Tad Eggleston: The neurodiverse people, not only do they look not at all like a neurotypical person.
44:43
Tad Eggleston: In general, they don't look at all like any other neurodiverse people.
44:50
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, I mean, and that's, like, my, my…
44:53
Tad Eggleston: Putting together the lobbying group can be really difficult, because it's like, I need quiet. No, no, no, no, I need noise.
45:00
andrewcoltrin: Absolutely.
45:00
Tad Eggleston: Well, I need white noise! Well, no, I need jazz. No, I need lyrics.
45:06
Tad Eggleston: Can I have a weighted blanket, please? No, that's too heavy!
45:10
andrewcoltrin: Yeah!
45:11
Tad Eggleston: Hot!
45:12
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, my last couple… my last year in this school, like, they let me do a little, yeah, neurodiversity affinity group with, like, 4th and 5th graders.
45:21
andrewcoltrin: Yep, it is like that. It's like, it's like, what are we even doing here? And then I was like, guys, guys, I can't even think. I'm like, yeah, it was fine.
45:34
Tad Eggleston: But it does, it does make, like, lobbying for the things that the community needs…
45:39
andrewcoltrin: It's tricky.
45:40
Tad Eggleston: interesting sometimes.
45:41
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, and there's a lot of conflicts.
45:44
Tad Eggleston: Really, what the community needs is understanding.
45:48
Tad Eggleston: But neurodifficult people aren't good at that. They want… they want concrete…
45:53
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I love how, like, neurodifficult people think that average… neurodiverse person.
46:03
Tad Eggleston: Is… has inflexible thinking.
46:06
Tad Eggleston: And, like, I think we're way better at changing our minds than they are.
46:12
Tad Eggleston: It's just that, that, like, you have to…
46:16
Tad Eggleston: convince us. And once you've convinced us, we change our mind completely and do not go back. There's no habit to break and whatnot to… it's like, oh, you're right, now I'm.
46:29
andrewcoltrin: Yeah!
46:31
andrewcoltrin: And…
46:32
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, I know, there's definitely, like, I've had these moments where, like, I have this staunchly held, like, oh, this is exactly how it is, and then somebody…
46:40
andrewcoltrin: you know, it breaks it down for me, and I'm like…
46:43
andrewcoltrin: Oh, okay. And then, yeah, like, just like that, I'm like, I can switch gears, but, like.
46:48
Tad Eggleston: Well, and like, I mean, on, like, a smaller level and whatnot, like, even just…
46:54
Tad Eggleston: working on household chores around the house. My wife has figured out that, like, it's never I don't want to do the chore. There's always some part of the chore that, like, either absolutely bothers me, or absolutely doesn't make sense to me, and it shuts me down
47:10
Tad Eggleston: completely because of that. Like, we recently figured out that the part of doing laundry that, like, my brain doesn't want to deal with is that part where I'm folding stuff nicely to put it in the dresser, and I'm also making a stack of stuff that needs to be hung up.
47:28
Tad Eggleston: Because, like.
47:30
Tad Eggleston: it just bothers me that I'm not gonna easily be able to… and why did I bring all the stuff that needed to be hung up upstairs?
47:38
Tad Eggleston: To not fold it, to take it back downstairs, and put it on hangers, and…
47:44
Tad Eggleston: We got me a hamper with 3 compartments.
47:47
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, okay, good, good, that's a good…
47:49
Tad Eggleston: So now that the stuff that needs to be hung…
47:54
Tad Eggleston: It's washed only with other stuff that needs to be hung.
47:57
andrewcoltrin: I'm glad, I'm happy for you, because, like, I'm, like, listening to this, I was like, I have my… I have my own complicated laundry scheme.
48:03
Tad Eggleston: Right.
48:03
andrewcoltrin: It's different. And it's for me.
48:06
Tad Eggleston: We had to figure that part out first.
48:08
andrewcoltrin: No!
48:09
Tad Eggleston: We had to figure… we had to sit back, and she's like, I know you're not just being lazy, so what is it? What, like…
48:15
andrewcoltrin: Let's try.
48:16
Tad Eggleston: to talk this through. What is it? And it's just like, is it this? I'm like, no, that seems fine. Okay, then why aren't we doing it? I don't know. Well, is it this? No, that's… I don't have a problem. You know, the other thing is, like.
48:32
Tad Eggleston: the chore that I don't know if I'll ever find a good way to, like… I mean, I can… I can eventually make myself go do it, but, like, it's hard.
48:43
Tad Eggleston: Shoveling snow.
48:46
Tad Eggleston: Because if you don't do it, It will do itself.
48:51
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
48:53
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
48:55
andrewcoltrin: Shoveling stuff? Maybe not on the…
48:56
Tad Eggleston: time frame that you want.
48:58
Tad Eggleston: But it will do itself.
49:00
andrewcoltrin: It will. I, I haven't even…
49:03
Tad Eggleston: Filling snow does not mean that you will never have a clear driveway again.
49:08
andrewcoltrin: No, it doesn't. I mean, they might… it…
49:12
Tad Eggleston: And I have a really hard time getting my head around.
49:15
andrewcoltrin: It's… it's tricky. Why?
49:17
Tad Eggleston: You need to go out and do this.
49:19
andrewcoltrin: I live in a place that does not have much snow, and like, I grew up in Arizona, which, so it was like…
49:24
Tad Eggleston: Right.
49:25
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, I know, snow…
49:26
Tad Eggleston: Chicagoland. I'm, like, exactly between Chicago and Milwaukee.
49:29
andrewcoltrin: Right, exactly.
49:29
Tad Eggleston: The other Milwaukee.
49:31
andrewcoltrin: You know snow. Where's, like, snow…
49:33
Tad Eggleston: so well.
49:34
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, it's like, we don't know snow, and then…
49:36
Tad Eggleston: But then the other thing is, even knowing Snow well, like…
49:40
Tad Eggleston: Probably at least 30% of the time, and more if you look long-term, because really, it's like, certain winters, snow stays on the ground a lot, and certain winters, snow almost never stays on the ground for more than 24 hours.
49:55
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
49:55
Tad Eggleston: You know, so if you're looking from a long-term perspective, there is a better-than-average chance that if I don't shovel the snow, it will still be gone by the time I need it to be gone.
50:09
andrewcoltrin: There's… there's that. Yeah, I know, and see, like, from my perspective, like, not growing up with snow, like, it snows, and I'm like, I can shovel this, and then, like, the next day, it's irrelevant, but… Right.
50:20
Tad Eggleston: The number of times where it's like, I spend, like.
50:24
Tad Eggleston: Because, like, when you have to go do it is when you're, like, you're worried about driving over it, and whether you actually can, etc. The number of times that I spent, like, 2 or 3 hours doing, like, the back-breaking…
50:35
Tad Eggleston: You know, the 50-pound shovelful.
50:38
andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah, yeah.
50:38
Tad Eggleston: Snow off of the driveway, right?
50:41
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, no, that's…
50:42
Tad Eggleston: And then the next day, the only snow that's left?
50:46
Tad Eggleston: is the one… is the piles that I've made because they were bigger. Like, I've got…
50:51
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
50:52
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
50:53
Tad Eggleston: Thank you.
50:55
Tad Eggleston: I'm like, so if we just left it, it would be completely gone.
51:00
Tad Eggleston: But because I wore myself out, I have these little snow piles in my lawn.
51:07
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, it's… yeah.
51:10
Tad Eggleston: I know it shouldn't bother me, though I hate using that word. I know that, like, if I say this to… to the wrong other
51:20
Tad Eggleston: Neurodiverse person, or to any neurotypical person, they'll go.
51:24
Tad Eggleston: just do what you gotta do, oh well, put it out of your mind. I'm like, no, no, no, that's not how my mind works. My mind stares at that pile that's still there, and then stares at the grass that doesn't have snow on it, and go, why did I waste my Saturday afternoon? I could have read X number of pages of comics!
51:47
andrewcoltrin: These are good questions, yeah. No, yeah, I know, I'm like… Yeah.
51:53
Tad Eggleston: And that, little boy, as soon as I saw the… I do sometimes manage to bring it all back. As soon as I saw the title, Nerd Emergencies, I'm like…
52:00
Tad Eggleston: I know all about nerd emergencies.
52:02
andrewcoltrin: That's a nerd emergency. Yeah, no, absolutely. That's… and it's like, okay, it goes all over the place, yes.
52:12
andrewcoltrin: And the frickin' laundry, and the frick- oh yeah.
52:15
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
52:15
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
52:17
Tad Eggleston: you know, mow the lawn, it's like, but I kind of like lawn grass, I know, but there are rules. But they're dumb rules.
52:25
andrewcoltrin: They're dumb rules. The dumb rules…
52:29
Tad Eggleston: I don't actually think they're… you know, where I have to catch myself is when I start, like, thinking letter from Birmingham jail.
52:37
andrewcoltrin: And, like.
52:37
Tad Eggleston: Like, not following an unjust law, and then having to remind myself, okay, they're dumb laws, they're not unjust laws.
52:45
andrewcoltrin: No.
52:48
andrewcoltrin: Oh my god.
52:49
Tad Eggleston: I'm not being oppressed because I have to mow my lawn.
52:54
andrewcoltrin: Yeah… Yeah… it's… Right. I mean, I mean…
53:01
Tad Eggleston: Which is also a problem of being that neurodiverse person that, like, I never stop reading.
53:08
Tad Eggleston: Like, if I'm driving, I'm listening to a book.
53:13
Tad Eggleston: if… If…
53:15
Tad Eggleston: I'm standing in line at the grocery store, there's a good chance that I'm reading a book or an article on.
53:21
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
53:21
Tad Eggleston: alone.
53:23
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
53:24
Tad Eggleston: Like, like, Choosing to not bring in information?
53:29
Tad Eggleston: is not something I do very often.
53:33
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, I've gotten better at that, but… Also, I think really… Yeah.
53:38
Tad Eggleston: I mean, my bigger thing is, I've gotten better at accepting when my body has told me that I can't take information.
53:46
andrewcoltrin: I think maybe that's where I'm at, yeah.
53:48
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
53:49
Tad Eggleston: I've gotten better at accepting when my body says, no, you're just gonna play baseball on your Switch today.
53:57
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
53:58
andrewcoltrin: That… that's…
53:59
Tad Eggleston: rather than spend the whole day going, I really should be doing this, or I really should be reading this, or I was gonna write that, or whatnot, I'm more able to just accept, no, this is what your brain…
54:12
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, exactly.
54:13
Tad Eggleston: with four.
54:13
andrewcoltrin: And, like, you're so much better off if you recognize that and do it. Yeah, I've… those moments all.
54:20
Tad Eggleston: But I also now have a specific psychologist just for my autism. I have the psychologist that I've been working with since I was 15 for everything else, and I have one that specializes specifically in autism that I meet, like, once a week now.
54:35
andrewcoltrin: Good. Yeah.
54:36
Tad Eggleston: So, so, so, sometimes, like, they'll share…
54:40
Tad Eggleston: ideas and information between each other, because, like, you can't silo that much. But the autism psychologist will, like, help me figure out, is it a sensory thing? Is it an
54:52
Tad Eggleston: basic…
54:53
Tad Eggleston: burnout thing? Is it, you know, the number of times it's like, wait a minute, I was trying to work all of these crazy
55:00
Tad Eggleston: house of cards in my head to deal with that, and all I needed was a weighted sweatshirt? Fuck.
55:09
Tad Eggleston: Well, not 50 years old. Why didn't I think of that 30 years ago?
55:12
andrewcoltrin: Yeah… That's…
55:16
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, it's the little things. Yeah, so, yeah, like, I kind of got to my diagnosis, like, a weird, backward way, like, yeah, like I said, I had that degree in creative writing, and then after, like, working in coffee shops and used bookstores, I was like.
55:31
andrewcoltrin: You know, my then…
55:34
andrewcoltrin: my… yeah, my then partner was interested in me getting a better job, and I was like, well, maybe I could go back to school to be, like, a high school English teacher or something, or middle school, and I was like, middle school's a hard time for me, maybe I can go back and figure out why it was a hard time. And so…
55:51
Tad Eggleston: Because middle school sucks.
55:53
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, well, that's… there's that, and also what I also discovered is, like, oh, I'm autistic, that's why it was, like… Well, yeah, that too. But it was, like, this kind of thing, like, I… I… I got a teaching certificate, I worked at this…
56:06
andrewcoltrin: interesting charter school in Arizona for a while, and did substitute teaching, and…
56:11
andrewcoltrin: I was really shit at classroom management.
56:15
andrewcoltrin: And…
56:17
andrewcoltrin: figuring out why all the kids were doing this stuff. I was working this… and I… there was this one class of 7th graders.
56:26
andrewcoltrin: There's 24 kids in the class, and this was at the charter school, so there's a little bit more self-selection of…
56:32
andrewcoltrin: Whatever, but there was one kid who definitely had an autism diagnosis.
56:37
andrewcoltrin: And I just remember this one day where, like.
56:40
andrewcoltrin: 23 other kids were just going wild, just having a great time, having a party, and… and… and this other… this one student was just sitting there, and he had…
56:49
andrewcoltrin: 14 pencils in his hands, and he's, like, fifth… I was like, I understand that. I understand why you're clutching all these pencils, and, like, you're just…
56:57
andrewcoltrin: I don't understand what the rest of the kids are doing.
57:00
Tad Eggleston: Right?
57:01
andrewcoltrin: And it still took me a couple years to actually look into it deeper, but it's like…
57:06
Tad Eggleston: I mean, my path was similar, like, all my life, particularly on one side of the family.
57:13
Tad Eggleston: There would be talk of, of, like.
57:17
Tad Eggleston: our autistic side, but it was, like, half joking, half… I mean…
57:22
Tad Eggleston: Particularly because it was the… it was the side of the family that, in a lot of ways, was…
57:27
Tad Eggleston: really high achieving, like…
57:30
Tad Eggleston: My grandfather tested out of high school and went to the University of Chicago.
57:36
andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah.
57:37
Tad Eggleston: to get his PhD in physics in his teens and 20s.
57:42
andrewcoltrin: Right, and that was, like… that would happen back then, right? Yeah, like… Right. Yeah.
57:46
Tad Eggleston: While they were working on the Manhattan Project.
57:51
andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah. Oh. Yeah, my grandfather,
57:55
andrewcoltrin: Well, he did math for the Army in World War II, but…
57:58
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, we're pretty certain that he did some of that, too.
58:02
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
58:02
Tad Eggleston: After that, that he was enlisted, and he was.
58:04
andrewcoltrin: No doubt.
58:05
Tad Eggleston: He was, in undisclosed places in England and Europe.
58:10
andrewcoltrin: Oh, so he's doing that over there, yeah. No, my grandfather was, like, in the South Pacific, and he was actually, like.
58:17
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
58:17
andrewcoltrin: You know, at a listening station, so when they would get the ping from the Japanese, you know, they set up the ship, and so there's two different listening stations, they get it, and they sit down and do the math to triangulate where that ship is.
58:30
Tad Eggleston: Right? Okay.
58:31
andrewcoltrin: Tell the Army Air Corps where to bomb, and it's like…
58:33
Tad Eggleston: Okay, okay.
58:35
andrewcoltrin: Oh, you were a computer!
58:38
Tad Eggleston: Right, but… and then he went on to be the physicist at Argonne until Fermilab opened, and they.
58:44
andrewcoltrin: Alright.
58:45
Tad Eggleston: Apparently, when Fermilab opened, they offered everybody at Argonne who had
58:51
Tad Eggleston: X amount… they wanted not just the brightest, but the youngest and the brightest at Fermilab.
58:55
andrewcoltrin: And wanted to…
58:56
Tad Eggleston: rollback argonne. So the way I heard it is, like, they gave him…
59:02
Tad Eggleston: A retirement opportunity when he really would have preferred not to retire.
59:06
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
59:06
Tad Eggleston: But that was so good that nobody who understood math could say no.
59:14
andrewcoltrin: Yeah!
59:16
andrewcoltrin: Awesome. Yeah.
59:17
andrewcoltrin: Oh, that's so funny.
59:19
andrewcoltrin: My grandfather, he went to,
59:23
andrewcoltrin: I know he worked for the missile program after World War II, so, like, there was time in Florida, you know, and…
59:28
Tad Eggleston: Right.
59:28
andrewcoltrin: I'm not sure where…
59:29
Tad Eggleston: His four sons, you've got two high-end lawyers, a PhD in.
59:33
andrewcoltrin: And I can't…
59:34
Tad Eggleston: and my dad… my dad is… is the…
59:38
Tad Eggleston: possibly the least accomplished from a degree side, but, like, he was at the cutting edge of…
59:47
Tad Eggleston: global… I mean, I knew what ISDN was 10 years before anybody else did, because he…
59:54
Tad Eggleston: helped AT&T bring it to JCPenney.
59:57
andrewcoltrin: Hmm…
59:59
Tad Eggleston: You know, and he was specifically the guy that was able to move up because he could speak both tech.
1:00:06
andrewcoltrin: Right.
1:00:07
Tad Eggleston: and executive?
1:00:09
andrewcoltrin: Oh, that's tricky.
1:00:10
Tad Eggleston: And he could spec out a job practically to the penny.
1:00:15
andrewcoltrin: So there you go, see.
1:00:16
Tad Eggleston: Oh, he wouldn't necessarily have the best bid, but he had a reputation for… his bid was…
1:00:23
Tad Eggleston: There weren't gonna be overages, wasn't gonna come in under, but it wasn't gonna come in over, unless you asked for something more than you'd asked for for the bid, in which case he would say, yes, but this is how much it costs.
1:00:34
andrewcoltrin: Nice. That… That is a very specific, skill set.
1:00:41
Tad Eggleston: doubt this…
1:00:43
Tad Eggleston: There was a level that he could never go above, because he didn't smell like executives, but he was also way too useful.
1:00:51
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:00:53
Tad Eggleston: to not… I mean, so…
1:00:56
Tad Eggleston: So that's why it was like, I mean, to be honest, like, of the 4 brothers, at least 3 are autistic.
1:01:02
andrewcoltrin: Grandfather.
1:01:04
Tad Eggleston: is absolutely autistic.
1:01:07
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:01:07
Tad Eggleston: But… but because… but because it was long before autism would actually fit that.
1:01:14
andrewcoltrin: Right.
1:01:15
Tad Eggleston: None of them are officially autistic. But again, there was… there was… there was the running family joke, you know, the… I'm not even going to use names, because… because he doesn't have the same last name as me, and I don't want to be calling him out, that sort of thing, but there was the ex-family autism, right?
1:01:32
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, yeah.
1:01:33
Tad Eggleston: So there was already a little of that, and then my brother, who has more actual… Difficulty, difficulties.
1:01:41
Tad Eggleston: Right, yeah. Wound up getting a diagnosis to get…
1:01:50
Tad Eggleston: disability… like… 10 or 12 years ago. Well, no, probably 15 years ago, at least.
1:01:57
Tad Eggleston: And then it was even more on my radar, but then I started working special ed.
1:02:02
andrewcoltrin: Right, and then, yeah, exactly.
1:02:03
Tad Eggleston: And the stuff that I was being taught to help these kids… and initially, I was in an ELS classroom, I was in a life skills classroom, because
1:02:12
Tad Eggleston: I came from dementia care, and there's enough crossover that they knew that I wasn't going to be weirded out or freaked out about certain things.
1:02:19
Tad Eggleston: So it was a good place to start me. But as I'm like, oh, like, the way we break down tasks is the way my therapist and I would have to break down things. Oh, we're teaching them scripts. Anything that I need to make certain I have the right words, I build a script. I have so many scripts in my head.
1:02:35
Tad Eggleston: It's not even funny.
1:02:37
Tad Eggleston: Oh, maybe, maybe this is the missing piece to what?
1:02:42
andrewcoltrin: Maybe. Oh, no, that's… that's exactly, like, yeah, I… because there was a bit where, like, I was substitute teaching in… in Arizona.
1:02:51
andrewcoltrin: And, in the school district that I was at, like, they…
1:02:55
andrewcoltrin: They were so hard up for… for subs as, paraeducators that they'd pay you the same
1:03:01
andrewcoltrin: as a teacher. I was like, I'll give that a shot. Well, now, they were not paying very much for substitute teachers, so, I mean… Well, yeah. Yeah, I mean, but…
1:03:11
andrewcoltrin: But I, you know, I was like, I need to try this because, you know, other things were hard. And then I, yeah, I started working with more kids in autism programs that they actually had in that school district, and…
1:03:27
andrewcoltrin: And all kinds of stuff, and I was like, oh…
1:03:30
andrewcoltrin: Okay. Or, or, like, I would, like, show up one day, the first day at a place, and, like, kids would just…
1:03:36
andrewcoltrin: take to me pretty well, and the other stuff, like, they don't usually like anybody. I'm like, right. I'm like, okay, and then I realized.
1:03:43
Tad Eggleston: Well, I was also blessed that the school that I started at is a school that has, like.
1:03:51
Tad Eggleston: the liberalist possible.
1:03:53
andrewcoltrin: Definitely.
1:03:54
Tad Eggleston: of who's… Eligible for special ed.
1:03:57
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:03:58
Tad Eggleston: You know, whereas some schools are, like, desperately trying to keep you out of special ed.
1:04:02
andrewcoltrin: Oh, you bet.
1:04:02
Tad Eggleston: I have to…
1:04:03
andrewcoltrin: I wanted to do the paperwork, and right.
1:04:06
Tad Eggleston: Because the law is, like, you have one of these diagnoses, and it affects your education outcomes.
1:04:16
Tad Eggleston: A lot of schools are like, you're passing your classes so it doesn't affect your education.
1:04:19
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, you're cured, so you're fine, yeah. Right.
1:04:23
Tad Eggleston: Our school is, you're getting C's, we want to help you get A's. You're getting A's in…
1:04:30
Tad Eggleston: In, like, instructional classes, we want you getting…
1:04:34
Tad Eggleston: B's in college prep classes. You're getting A's in college prep classes, we want to get you into a couple of AP classes.
1:04:40
andrewcoltrin: We're getting.
1:04:41
Tad Eggleston: A's in AP classes, despite your diagnosis. We want you to be getting your A's in AP classes and have an extracurricular or two if you want them.
1:04:50
Tad Eggleston: You know, so…
1:04:51
andrewcoltrin: Ugh.
1:04:51
Tad Eggleston: So, so… I then wound up carving out my place as the one para
1:04:59
Tad Eggleston: who, while I can't navigate college, can navigate, like, high-level biology, chemistry, calculus, AP English, AP US History, anything but foreign languages.
1:05:13
andrewcoltrin: Okay, yeah.
1:05:16
Tad Eggleston: And that can be really, really…
1:05:19
Tad Eggleston: advantageous when you have a special ed program that doesn't necessarily say that just because you're in AP classes doesn't mean you can't also be special ed.
1:05:29
andrewcoltrin: Right, yeah.
1:05:31
Tad Eggleston: Because it's incredibly common for even special ed teachers to be, like, over their head when you get to a certain point in math.
1:05:38
andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah.
1:05:39
andrewcoltrin: Oh yeah, yeah.
1:05:40
Tad Eggleston: studied it. They… one of the reasons they got into what they were doing is, like, that's not for me. It's like elementary school teachers teaching math.
1:05:49
Tad Eggleston: Which, frankly, is terrible, because, like, our math foundations in this country are where we drop the ball the most.
1:05:55
Tad Eggleston: We need way better math teaching in elementary school, and arguably, could do no math other than counting before third grade and still get there.
1:06:06
Tad Eggleston: I, I agree.
1:06:07
andrewcoltrin: I've seen a lot of stupid things.
1:06:10
Tad Eggleston: It's another one of the side quests that I could go on, because I've spent enough time studying education and whatnot, but my strongly held opinion…
1:06:20
Tad Eggleston: Is that we both try to move too fast, and do so… Way too half-assed.
1:06:29
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:06:31
Tad Eggleston: And then move way too slow.
1:06:34
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Because by the time you actually get to algebra and…
1:06:39
Tad Eggleston: calculus and geometry and whatnot. If you're somebody who actually understands the concepts and thinks
1:06:46
Tad Eggleston: from a mathematical language perspective, often you'll have entire months of supposedly a new topic every day that's really just a minor tweak on that thing you did on the first day of the month.
1:07:03
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, yeah, it's like these frustrating…
1:07:06
Tad Eggleston: I'm sitting there going, like, no, because, yes, I get that you're doing this, but it works the same way as when you put that tweak on this thing last year, and when you put that tweak on this thing the year before.
1:07:20
andrewcoltrin: No, I swear, like, my best math teacher that I had in high school was actually the physics teacher.
1:07:27
Tad Eggleston: Often.
1:07:27
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, and it was just, like, this kind of thing where, like, by the time I was a senior, like, I'd stopped taking math because the teacher before, I just didn't…
1:07:36
andrewcoltrin: I didn't like them, and I had enough math credits, and I was like, screw it. And then, I was like, oh, I'll take physics as my lab science senior year, and…
1:07:45
andrewcoltrin: And I was like, oh!
1:07:48
andrewcoltrin: Does.
1:07:48
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean…
1:07:49
andrewcoltrin: the way that…
1:07:49
Tad Eggleston: Going back to the physicist's grandfather, he decided I needed to know at least rudimentary calculus when I was 8, and we were working on my Pinewood Derby car, and he ruined me for every math teacher afterwards.
1:08:02
andrewcoltrin: Probably, yeah.
1:08:04
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:08:05
andrewcoltrin: It's like, I… I never… I never actually got to rudimentary calculus. I… I know it's a word, and I'm like, okay, but…
1:08:13
andrewcoltrin: I probably actually… I don't know.
1:08:17
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:08:18
Tad Eggleston: I mean, you're an artist, too, so I don't want to guarantee that you could handle it, because, like, I think.
1:08:23
andrewcoltrin: Thank you.
1:08:24
Tad Eggleston: My wife has the neurodivergent brain that, like.
1:08:28
Tad Eggleston: Could probably handle some of the concepts better than she thinks she can, but would never be able to do the calculations without just.
1:08:36
andrewcoltrin: wanting to…
1:08:36
Tad Eggleston: Bang her head against the wall.
1:08:39
andrewcoltrin: And I mean, like, that's… that's kind of… it was like the pre-calculus teacher that totally lost me, and I was like.
1:08:45
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:08:45
andrewcoltrin: But… I don't know if that was him or the material, but… or that I was 16 and didn't give a shit, so…
1:08:53
Tad Eggleston: All of those are… all of those are…
1:08:55
andrewcoltrin: It's like…
1:08:56
Tad Eggleston: such great possibilities.
1:08:57
andrewcoltrin: You know…
1:08:58
Tad Eggleston: elite…
1:08:59
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:08:59
Tad Eggleston: Go ahead.
1:09:00
andrewcoltrin: Oh, I was gonna say, but now, like, looking back, I'm like, well, if I'd taken a little bit more math, I could have been an engineer, and…
1:09:07
andrewcoltrin: You know.
1:09:09
Tad Eggleston: And as long as you didn't wind up having a boss that didn't understand what you were doing, and you wanted to wring his neck every day.
1:09:17
Tad Eggleston: Because… Because… Stuff? That would be great.
1:09:23
andrewcoltrin: Because of stuff.
1:09:25
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, yeah, there's… that would have happened, yeah, I'm pretty sure.
1:09:30
Tad Eggleston: Well, I just… I know data scientists, you know, the people who actually, like, build
1:09:37
Tad Eggleston: machine learning that we now call AI.
1:09:40
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:09:41
Tad Eggleston: And, like, the number of them… like, they don't have the job security that they should have because of the number of times they work for people who don't understand what they do.
1:09:51
andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah. That's… yeah.
1:09:57
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:09:58
Tad Eggleston: like, have no concept of what they do. So when either they, like, give the presentation that flies over their head, or they give the presentation that's so much more detailed that, like, oh, I only needed this, and they make the mistake of, like.
1:10:16
Tad Eggleston: having it come out that, oh, that's what I got done in, like, the first 10 minutes.
1:10:21
andrewcoltrin: He told me this.
1:10:22
Tad Eggleston: spend 6 weeks on this project, so I thought that you wanted
1:10:26
Tad Eggleston: this, suddenly realize, oh, I don't need a data scientist. A much cheaper data analyst would be fine.
1:10:37
andrewcoltrin: Yeah… Yeah, it's terrible, having people who don't know what they're doing in charge of things.
1:10:47
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it, it, like…
1:10:51
Tad Eggleston: I also know IT guys that have managed to make themselves bulletproof, because they're the only people who know how the system works.
1:10:58
andrewcoltrin: There's that? Oh, yeah, that totally exists, yeah.
1:11:02
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. But… but it is, it's such a dangerous thing to know more about… I mean…
1:11:11
Tad Eggleston: the bigger the corporation, or whatever, the more likely you are to know more about your specific job than your boss. But if you reach a point where your boss literally couldn't do your job, not couldn't do your job as well as you.
1:11:25
Tad Eggleston: But wouldn't even know where to start.
1:11:28
Tad Eggleston: I don't even know how you evaluate that.
1:11:31
Tad Eggleston: How can they evaluate if you're doing a good job or not?
1:11:33
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, I think… No idea.
1:11:35
Tad Eggleston: Have that little understanding of what you're doing for them.
1:11:38
andrewcoltrin: Yep.
1:11:41
andrewcoltrin: Hmm.
1:11:41
Tad Eggleston: Why didn't.
1:11:42
andrewcoltrin: Why does this scenario sound so familiar to me in my recent scrolling of stories about people that run certain huge companies?
1:11:53
Tad Eggleston: or countries?
1:11:54
andrewcoltrin: Our countries? Our countries?
1:11:57
andrewcoltrin: Oh my gosh, my sister-in-law used to…
1:12:00
andrewcoltrin: working at HR for Tesla, so…
1:12:05
Tad Eggleston: Oh my god, that must have been…
1:12:07
andrewcoltrin: Awful.
1:12:08
Tad Eggleston: Whoa.
1:12:09
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, yeah, I see.
1:12:10
Tad Eggleston: fall.
1:12:11
andrewcoltrin: She switched jobs a while ago. Quite a while ago. I mean, I'm just…
1:12:15
Tad Eggleston: I'm just trying to think of… What level of, like.
1:12:21
Tad Eggleston: Crossing the line, you would have to do…
1:12:26
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:12:26
Tad Eggleston: for the defense of a harassment claim not to just be, but the CEO said this…
1:12:32
andrewcoltrin: I, I, I, yeah, I don't know, yeah, but the CEO did. Exactly. That would be the thing, like, this was… I mean, it's been years, so…
1:12:41
andrewcoltrin: He wasn't saying as many terrible things, maybe, or people weren't paying as much, but…
1:12:46
Tad Eggleston: I think people…
1:12:47
andrewcoltrin: I don't think a lot.
1:12:47
Tad Eggleston: A lot of it was people weren't… Daryl Cunningham did a great comic biography of him recently. Yeah.
1:12:53
andrewcoltrin: I shouldn't check… oh, I should check that out.
1:12:56
Tad Eggleston: Good. Though. Though… You also go, oh my god, he's…
1:13:01
Tad Eggleston: So much more awful than I realized.
1:13:03
andrewcoltrin: But… but yeah, no, it was definitely, like, several years ago, and I just… I remember hearing her say something like, he needs to stay off Twitter, or not, I was like… and I don't even remember which thing.
1:13:13
Tad Eggleston: It's like, buy Twitter instead, and then nobody will even tell me to not do dumb shit.
1:13:19
andrewcoltrin: Exactly. Exactly. It was, like, before that, so I was like… yeah, yeah, she was, kind of…
1:13:25
andrewcoltrin: Yeah. She liked… she liked the guy's…
1:13:29
andrewcoltrin: You know, on the ground floor, the people that work in the factory, they're great.
1:13:32
Tad Eggleston: I mean, if he has a single talent.
1:13:36
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:13:37
Tad Eggleston: It is… identifying and, and, and hoarding… either… either… talented, like…
1:13:50
Tad Eggleston: I guess I'm gonna call it mid-level employees, because I have no idea how he does for the guys who actually build the car.
1:13:55
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:13:56
Tad Eggleston: Like, I would imagine there's a level of executives that are more like him, but the level of white-collar employees that are actually working, rather than playing golf.
1:14:07
Tad Eggleston: He seems good at either buying the companies that already have them, or finding them to start companies. He seems to have talent at that. Of course, that sucks for them, because they're doing the real work, and he's branded as the genius.
1:14:23
andrewcoltrin: Right. But, you know…
1:14:26
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, his, his, his, his baby, right? His little, little vehicle that he designed, that, like, we were gonna make this thing.
1:14:34
andrewcoltrin: the little…
1:14:36
andrewcoltrin: you know, Samsung refrigerator on wheels that… I don't know that… he's like, we need to make this! I'm like, dude…
1:14:46
andrewcoltrin: You… you begged… you… you made them let you design a.
1:14:50
Tad Eggleston: You don't know if you.
1:14:51
andrewcoltrin: I think that sucks.
1:14:52
Tad Eggleston: DeLorean.
1:14:53
andrewcoltrin: Exactly, like, what is this thing? And then…
1:14:57
Tad Eggleston: and tank…
1:14:58
andrewcoltrin: The DeLorean tank, yeah.
1:15:00
andrewcoltrin: I'm like.
1:15:01
Tad Eggleston: That overheats and catches on fire while being driven, and sometimes while parked.
1:15:06
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, it's… It's a very…
1:15:12
Tad Eggleston: I mean, that, that, like, somehow, I live in an area…
1:15:17
Tad Eggleston: Where it seems like I see more and more of those on a regular basis.
1:15:21
andrewcoltrin: Yeah…
1:15:22
Tad Eggleston: you know, so I live in that area that somehow…
1:15:25
Tad Eggleston: Has the money for those, doesn't view it as, oh my god, I'm supporting a fascist.
1:15:33
Tad Eggleston: and or things… and I'm sitting there going.
1:15:36
Tad Eggleston: You would think that at least the recalls for combustion would make you slow down.
1:15:42
Tad Eggleston: Cheers!
1:15:43
andrewcoltrin: Buddy!
1:15:43
Tad Eggleston: These th-.
1:15:45
andrewcoltrin: It's… it's weird. There's a… I see a.
1:15:48
Tad Eggleston: How many pictures do you need to see of it going down a highway and just suddenly being on fire? This thing that doesn't even have gasoline?
1:15:59
andrewcoltrin: That's a… yeah, that's a bad, bad thing, a bad thing that happens if it's suddenly on fire, like…
1:16:08
andrewcoltrin: Okay.
1:16:10
andrewcoltrin: And then, yeah, no, I… everything, like, we have…
1:16:12
Tad Eggleston: But I never park anywhere near any of them in the parking lot.
1:16:15
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, part of, part of the…
1:16:17
Tad Eggleston: In the parking lot, I'm parking as far from it as possible.
1:16:19
andrewcoltrin: Good, yeah.
1:16:21
andrewcoltrin: Oh, man… yeah.
1:16:25
Tad Eggleston: I don't want the fire to spread to my car.
1:16:27
andrewcoltrin: Don't… you don't. No.
1:16:29
andrewcoltrin: No, leave… leave my 15-year-old Prius alone.
1:16:33
andrewcoltrin: Oh, wait, that's my carpet.
1:16:36
Tad Eggleston: Well, no, I, I had, I had a,
1:16:40
Tad Eggleston: I had an 8-year-old fit that I loved.
1:16:42
andrewcoltrin: Oh, no.
1:16:43
Tad Eggleston: The bumper stick on him.
1:16:44
andrewcoltrin: Alright, you need a new bump sticker, I still need a bumper sticker.
1:16:46
Tad Eggleston: That you can send me many bumper stickers.
1:16:49
andrewcoltrin: It's because I…
1:16:50
Tad Eggleston: I actually have people that would like one.
1:16:52
andrewcoltrin: Oh, okay.
1:16:53
Tad Eggleston: I've got backups, that means that, like, things happen, I still have them.
1:16:57
Tad Eggleston: And you said you had too many of them, you just took them off the thing, so, you know…
1:17:01
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, I just let the Etsy listing expire, yeah. I'll probably put them back up, but it's like.
1:17:09
Tad Eggleston: What I… actually, what I love about that bumper sticker is the number of times that, like.
1:17:14
Tad Eggleston: the big truck.
1:17:17
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:17:18
Tad Eggleston: We'll pull up close enough that you know that they're trying to read the bumper sticker and figure out if it's there.
1:17:23
andrewcoltrin: I mean, figuring out.
1:17:24
Tad Eggleston: If they're angry about it.
1:17:27
andrewcoltrin: Exactly.
1:17:31
andrewcoltrin: Oh my god.
1:17:32
Tad Eggleston: Because what I love about that, what I love about that bumper sticker…
1:17:36
Tad Eggleston: Is you have to self-identify as a fascist to actually take offense.
1:17:41
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:17:42
Tad Eggleston: Like, 2 or 3 times, I've had somebody give me shit about it in a parking lot.
1:17:47
Tad Eggleston: And I'm like, are you trying to tell me that, like, I… I can't handle your stupid bumper sticker? And I'm like, I don't know, are you a fascist?
1:17:56
Tad Eggleston: I don't know you.
1:17:58
Tad Eggleston: This only makes fascists uncomfortable.
1:18:00
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:18:02
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm wondering right now, because you… you… you seem…
1:18:07
Tad Eggleston: upset and a little belligerent about it, but I don't know you. Are you telling me you're a fascist?
1:18:13
andrewcoltrin: I don't know you.
1:18:15
andrewcoltrin: Yeah! I don't know if there's a… oh, I did… I had an awkward conversation with the… apparent,
1:18:22
andrewcoltrin: My daughter's You know, preschool.
1:18:27
andrewcoltrin: was like, what does that bumper sticker mean? And I'm like… Oh, no…
1:18:34
Tad Eggleston: What it means is that there are fascists in the world.
1:18:37
andrewcoltrin: Oh my god.
1:18:37
Tad Eggleston: being called fascists. So if they know that they're a fascist, and they read this bumper sticker, they will feel uncomfortable, because I have called them out.
1:18:46
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, that's what it means, but I was just like, oh crap, I gotta be diplomatic. Well, I don't know.
1:18:51
Tad Eggleston: You know what, you know what really bothers me? Nobody asks the guy with the, the impeached Biden's
1:18:59
Tad Eggleston: spelled out in AR-15's bumper sticker, what that.
1:19:04
andrewcoltrin: True. Yeah, what's that about?
1:19:06
andrewcoltrin: Right.
1:19:07
andrewcoltrin: And yeah, and then somebody… yeah, was it Comey getting indicted for sharing a picture of seashells?
1:19:16
Tad Eggleston: that somebody else made.
1:19:17
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, and it says, in restaurant lingo, let's get rid of 47, like…
1:19:23
andrewcoltrin: That is obviously inciting violence! I was like…
1:19:27
andrewcoltrin: Or is it just saying we need to take it off the menu? I don't know.
1:19:31
Tad Eggleston: Right. Well, and, and, like…
1:19:35
Tad Eggleston: I mean, do you remember some of the signs that you saw?
1:19:38
andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah.
1:19:39
Tad Eggleston: During the Biden years?
1:19:40
andrewcoltrin: Do… I do. There were some big ones in my neighborhood.
1:19:47
Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, Let's Go Brandon was the… the… the tamest… Of the things that you…
1:19:55
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:19:55
Tad Eggleston: You know, the number of times that you'd see that truck, that it's like, they had the Let's Go Brandon, and you could tell that at some point, they decided that people didn't understand it well enough, so they had to fuck Joe Biden underneath it.
1:20:09
andrewcoltrin: Right, like, we need to…
1:20:10
Tad Eggleston: And then, and then that wasn't good enough, because there's a fresher sticker that says.
1:20:16
andrewcoltrin: It's got, like.
1:20:17
Tad Eggleston: a bullet, and, and says, like, President, or present for, or Christmas present for Biden.
1:20:23
andrewcoltrin: like…
1:20:24
Tad Eggleston: You know, and it's like… but they're not inciting violence.
1:20:28
andrewcoltrin: They're not just like, no.
1:20:30
Tad Eggleston: free speech.
1:20:30
andrewcoltrin: No, exactly. Their… their speech is freer than ours, for some reason. I don't… I mean…
1:20:37
Tad Eggleston: Why do you think they have to, like, say Antifa so weird?
1:20:42
Tad Eggleston: Because they don't want you to think about it as anti-fascist. They don't want to say those words out loud.
1:20:48
andrewcoltrin: I know, they don't want to, and it's like… it's like, I've always… I've had trouble with the term Antifa since the beginning, just because as a term, I was like… I was like, oh, that sounds like something designed to sound scary, and…
1:21:00
Tad Eggleston: Right?
1:21:01
andrewcoltrin: used against… People, but… yeah.
1:21:04
Tad Eggleston: Not scary people?
1:21:06
Tad Eggleston: Generally.
1:21:07
andrewcoltrin: Generally.
1:21:08
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm not saying that they're… I am… I want to make it really clear, just because we know they're listening.
1:21:14
Tad Eggleston: Or at least…
1:21:15
andrewcoltrin: They are.
1:21:15
Tad Eggleston: is…
1:21:16
andrewcoltrin: Yeah. The NSA?
1:21:17
Tad Eggleston: is, is, is cataloging all of this for future…
1:21:21
andrewcoltrin: Okay.
1:21:21
Tad Eggleston: Whatever, I want to make it really clear. I am not saying that there Are ZERO radical, violent leftists.
1:21:32
Tad Eggleston: I am saying that the data indicates that they are… Yay!
1:21:40
Tad Eggleston: less prevalent.
1:21:42
Tad Eggleston: them violent.
1:21:43
Tad Eggleston: rightus.
1:21:45
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:21:46
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:21:48
andrewcoltrin: I think.
1:21:49
Tad Eggleston: You can find this even just looking at, say, gun sales.
1:21:56
Tad Eggleston: Unless somehow, in that 90% Trump district.
1:22:00
Tad Eggleston: Where there are 10 times as many gun sales as there are people. All of them were purchased by the 10 people that voted, or the 10% of people that voted for Harris.
1:22:12
andrewcoltrin: You die?
1:22:13
Tad Eggleston: And in the 70% Harris district.
1:22:19
Tad Eggleston: Where almost no guns were sold.
1:22:22
Tad Eggleston: they were all voted by… they're bought by not only… not only Harris voters, but, like, the ones that are, like.
1:22:30
Tad Eggleston: We gotta bring down the government if she doesn't.
1:22:32
andrewcoltrin: We gotta… we need to create…
1:22:35
Tad Eggleston: And, on top of all of that…
1:22:38
Tad Eggleston: You don't think they support the Second Amendment?
1:22:45
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:22:47
Tad Eggleston: They want to have all these guns, but take away your right.
1:22:52
Tad Eggleston: And they're right, to have all these…
1:22:55
Tad Eggleston: Like, the internal logic starts to fall apart.
1:22:59
andrewcoltrin: There's a lot, I mean, you know, I like to…
1:23:02
andrewcoltrin: You know, think about, like, there's been the Second Amendment that talks about it's for a well-regulated militia.
1:23:11
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:23:11
andrewcoltrin: I'm like, where's the well-regulated? Well-regulated.
1:23:15
Tad Eggleston: I've actually had this conversation with somebody who's on the other side recently who is…
1:23:24
Tad Eggleston: Is better at having an educated conversation and whatnot.
1:23:28
Tad Eggleston: But that also meant that I went down a little bit of a rabbit hole. And, like, the argument is, well, the militia was everybody. Yes, it was.
1:23:36
Tad Eggleston: And well-regulated just means you know how to shop. Shoot. No, it wasn't.
1:23:44
Tad Eggleston: Well regulated meant that, yes, you took part in training activities, and yes, you could be called up by your state as part of the militia at any time, and yes, you knew how to shoot and whatnot, but also there was a leadership hierarchy and whatnot, and oh, oh, added bonus!
1:24:03
Tad Eggleston: In colonial times.
1:24:05
Tad Eggleston: You were absolutely able to carry four military purposes.
1:24:12
Tad Eggleston: But only for military purposes in most places.
1:24:15
andrewcoltrin: Hmm…
1:24:18
Tad Eggleston: So you needed to have a gun in your house in case you got called up by the militia. But if you decided that you wanted to carry your gun with you to the grocery store, that was not okay.
1:24:27
andrewcoltrin: No.
1:24:31
Tad Eggleston: Ain't.
1:24:31
andrewcoltrin: Interesting.
1:24:33
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:24:36
Tad Eggleston: Also, we're talking muskets.
1:24:39
andrewcoltrin: Must… exactly! Yeah! You've… you've gotta be very clear in your intentions to go through loading that and pointing at someone and hoping that it hits.
1:24:50
andrewcoltrin: Right.
1:24:53
Tad Eggleston: And, like, I mean, one of the things that I found myself saying in recent conversation was, like, look, for a long, long time, I wanted to work within the Second Amendment, but the gun lobby has moved
1:25:07
Tad Eggleston: so hard.
1:25:10
Tad Eggleston: And continues to move.
1:25:12
Tad Eggleston: like, push the boundaries, that it's like, okay.
1:25:16
Tad Eggleston: If this is what the Second Amendment means right now, then we need to repeal it and write something that makes more sense.
1:25:23
Tad Eggleston: I don't know that we need to take away guns.
1:25:26
Tad Eggleston: I would be way more comfortable with taking away the guns than what we have right now.
1:25:31
Tad Eggleston: But I'm open to real arguments as to why it would be bad, etc, you know what I mean?
1:25:38
Tad Eggleston: But they need to be real arguments.
1:25:41
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:25:42
Tad Eggleston: you know, the one and only thing that I had true respect for Charlie Kirk 4.
1:25:50
Tad Eggleston: Is when this came up, He would say.
1:25:53
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that's the price of freedom.
1:25:55
Tad Eggleston: He wouldn't try to convince you that more guns meant less deaths, or whatever.
1:26:00
andrewcoltrin: Right.
1:26:02
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, more people are gonna get shot. That's the price of freedom.
1:26:05
andrewcoltrin: That's the first… okay.
1:26:06
Tad Eggleston: And I don't agree with him!
1:26:08
Tad Eggleston: But, but that's an argument to have.
1:26:11
Tad Eggleston: Rather than saying, Oh, no, no, no, you're wrong. More guns means less gun death.
1:26:19
Tad Eggleston: And it's like, what data are you looking at?
1:26:24
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, I don't… I don't know. I don't know. I…
1:26:29
Tad Eggleston: And you probably haven't gone down the same rabbit holes as I have, so I'm not expecting you to know.
1:26:33
andrewcoltrin: Oh, no, I…
1:26:34
Tad Eggleston: You have.
1:26:35
Tad Eggleston: I'm sorry?
1:26:37
andrewcoltrin: No, I'm pretty sure I haven't gone down the same rabbit holes. I sort of, like,
1:26:44
andrewcoltrin: I think about the people I know in my actual life, and some of them do have guns, and the ones that do, I'm like…
1:26:51
andrewcoltrin: okay, you can have a gun. Like, they have good reasons, and they're responsible, and they take care of their stuff, so I'm like…
1:26:59
Tad Eggleston: And I think of that of most of the people in my life that I know have guns. And there are a few in my life that I know have guns, and I'm sitting there going.
1:27:06
Tad Eggleston: No, I'm not actually comfortable with the fact that I know that you have that. I'm really hoping that that works out in the long run.
1:27:16
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, there's that.
1:27:17
Tad Eggleston: And I understand that it's still, like, I'm a stats guy.
1:27:21
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:27:21
Tad Eggleston: like… But, but it's also, like…
1:27:26
Tad Eggleston: The number of times I have to hear some idiot on the right say something like, well, if one illegal immigrant permits a crime, isn't that one too many? I'm sitting there going.
1:27:38
Tad Eggleston: Well, if one so-called law-abiding gun owner decides to go crazy and shoot up enough people, isn't that one too many, too?
1:27:47
andrewcoltrin: That is, yeah.
1:27:49
andrewcoltrin: That's the thing.
1:27:49
Tad Eggleston: Come on, just give me internal consistency. Kinda like, I don't understand how you can be the party of forced pregnancy and not give a damn if they eat afterwards.
1:28:04
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, that's… that's another big logical inconvenience.
1:28:07
Tad Eggleston: I just did, like, a thousand mile drive over the last couple of days, and I kept going by these signs. They're like, human at conception, heartbeat at 18 weeks.
1:28:18
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:28:18
Tad Eggleston: scenario.
1:28:19
Tad Eggleston: And I…
1:28:20
andrewcoltrin: Hungry at one week, you know?
1:28:22
Tad Eggleston: days, and in my head, I'm sitting there going.
1:28:26
Tad Eggleston: like, I want to put the sign up…
1:28:30
Tad Eggleston: Behind that, that, like, has the 2-year-old and says, still human at 2 needs healthcare.
1:28:38
Tad Eggleston: 5-year-old, and says.
1:28:40
Tad Eggleston: Still human at 5, and, and needs…
1:28:44
Tad Eggleston: And, and needs school lunch. And, like, the 20-year-old, still human at 20, needs a job.
1:28:53
andrewcoltrin: And, like, the 40-year-olds!
1:28:55
Tad Eggleston: A real human at 20 needs to be able to afford their medications.
1:29:01
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, all of this is… Exactly! Like… Yeah.
1:29:10
Tad Eggleston: All I ask for is internal consistency, and that's really, really difficult.
1:29:14
Tad Eggleston: Definitely for neurodifficult people.
1:29:16
Tad Eggleston: But also for some neurodiverse people, because, like, this is where I, like…
1:29:22
Tad Eggleston: And I say this as somebody who's very quietly, privately a Christian, I'm not big on beliefs.
1:29:31
Tad Eggleston: And when you have beliefs, they need to be, like, very specific, and you need to understand that they're beliefs, and that means that you don't come up with… with…
1:29:42
Tad Eggleston: logic or facts to try to support them. You just say, look, I know that it's not logical, and not necessarily rooted in fact, but I believe it for this reason. And then there are ideas, and ideas should change if you are introduced to new information that refutes them.
1:30:00
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:30:05
Tad Eggleston: But I am not King of America.
1:30:07
andrewcoltrin: Not King of the.
1:30:07
Tad Eggleston: world.
1:30:09
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:30:10
Tad Eggleston: Do you know that there were Indian tribes where we would have been the, like, shamans and chiefs?
1:30:16
Tad Eggleston: they valued… The crazy guy.
1:30:19
andrewcoltrin: The crazy guy that's like… it's kinda… I… Absolutely, because, like.
1:30:24
Tad Eggleston: because they thought of it.
1:30:25
andrewcoltrin: What's the recreation.
1:30:26
Tad Eggleston: Is he like a fox?
1:30:28
andrewcoltrin: Recognize the stuff that nobody else sees coming, and… yeah.
1:30:31
Tad Eggleston: This reminds me of another great meme my wife sent me.
1:30:36
Tad Eggleston: FIRE was created by the neurodiverse
1:30:40
Tad Eggleston: Guy in the back of the cave banging different rocks together to see what happened while all of the neurotypical people were out front talking about their hair.
1:30:49
andrewcoltrin: Yep. It's just…
1:30:57
andrewcoltrin: I mean, there's… there's that. There's… oh my gosh.
1:31:01
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, which sort of reminds me of, like, this other, yeah.
1:31:06
andrewcoltrin: this other project that I've… Yeah.
1:31:11
Tad Eggleston: on neurodivergent time?
1:31:13
andrewcoltrin: Yep, working on neurodiversion time. I like it, it's my friend's project, my friend Joe Beal, the… he's a…
1:31:19
andrewcoltrin: the founder of Microcosm Publishing, so…
1:31:22
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
1:31:22
andrewcoltrin: But I…
1:31:24
Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna throw out a plug for Oddmark in Minneapolis.
1:31:31
andrewcoltrin: On March?
1:31:32
Tad Eggleston: there for the… For the first time.
1:31:35
Tad Eggleston: Yesterday, and aside from just having a, a generally amazingly curated, Collection of, of comics.
1:31:47
andrewcoltrin: and other.
1:31:47
Tad Eggleston: Curios, they have an entire rack, like, 4 foot by 4 foot, of only microcosm Publishing.
1:31:55
andrewcoltrin: Oh, cool. Well, that…
1:31:58
andrewcoltrin: Nice, I need to talk to them. Be like, by the way, you like Dr. Faith books. Well…
1:32:09
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, oh yeah. But anyway, yeah, so he…
1:32:12
Tad Eggleston: No, I mean, just glancing through it, I bet you that they just automatically order minimum a copy of anything that comes out.
1:32:19
andrewcoltrin: They… they probably do. Yeah. I mean, they're… they've definitely…
1:32:23
andrewcoltrin: That sounds cool. I'll have to…
1:32:25
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:32:26
Tad Eggleston: No, Odd Mart is, is, like, if you're a comics geek.
1:32:31
Tad Eggleston: And, like, neuro-spicy to boot, Odd Mart is totally your shop.
1:32:36
andrewcoltrin: Okay, well, I need… I need to… I need to reach out to… Minneapolis. Minneapolis.
1:32:40
Tad Eggleston: Bush.
1:32:41
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, sounds like… okay. But yeah, no.
1:32:44
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, this is the problem with living way out on the West Coast. There's, like, almost nowhere that's close to you.
1:32:51
Tad Eggleston: Portland and Seattle, and kind of Oakland and San Francisco.
1:32:56
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, like…
1:32:57
Tad Eggleston: Everything else is, like, real travel.
1:33:00
andrewcoltrin: And, like, Seattle isn't even, like…
1:33:03
andrewcoltrin: I never go to Seattle. It's like… it's like, that seems too far. I'm like… but… .
1:33:10
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but… Yeah.
1:33:12
andrewcoltrin: But it's like…
1:33:13
Tad Eggleston: literally anywhere else.
1:33:14
andrewcoltrin: God
1:33:15
andrewcoltrin: No, I know, yeah, you'd be like, oh, you can just, like, hop on a train and get somewhere, or, you know, yeah.
1:33:22
Tad Eggleston: I mean, the one thing that I'm really, really jealous of, like, the Northeast for…
1:33:28
Tad Eggleston: is like, if you live in Philadelphia, and you feel like going to Hartford, there's no reason not to do a day trip.
1:33:36
andrewcoltrin: It's wild.
1:33:39
Tad Eggleston: And certainly an overnight trip would be not a problem at all.
1:33:42
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:33:43
Tad Eggleston: New York City, and you feel like going to D.C,
1:33:46
Tad Eggleston: No problem doing a day trip.
1:33:49
andrewcoltrin: Right.
1:33:50
Tad Eggleston: Certainly not an overnight trip. I have, more than once.
1:33:54
Tad Eggleston: I've got a friend who lives in New Jersey, probably 40 minutes from New York in traffic.
1:33:59
Tad Eggleston: maybe an hour in bad traffic, that sort of thing, but close enough that he's, like, 10 minutes from a train that'll take me to Grand Central, right?
1:34:09
Tad Eggleston: where I have… from his house, Shot to Philadelphia and back.
1:34:16
Tad Eggleston: Just to spend an hour at a comic shop, and not actually felt like it was a ridiculous…
1:34:21
andrewcoltrin: Right. Yeah.
1:34:24
andrewcoltrin: God.
1:34:25
Tad Eggleston: It was, like, 5 hours overall, so it was, you know, it wasn't you would go just… like, it was a great comic shop that I heard was closing when I happened to be at his place, and I was like, I want to go one more time before they close, and I won't be back here again before they close. So…
1:34:43
Tad Eggleston: We just got in the car.
1:34:45
Tad Eggleston: You know, we looked at our watches, and we're like, okay, they close in, like, 4 hours, you know, they close today in 4 hours. We can get there in 2, 2 and a half if traffic is bad.
1:34:56
Tad Eggleston: Which means that we can be there for an hour, hour and a half before they close. Have a cup of coffee, pick out some comics, just enjoy the environment.
1:35:03
andrewcoltrin: Nice. Yeah. Yeah, it's…
1:35:05
Tad Eggleston: And then be back for dinner.
1:35:07
andrewcoltrin: It's hard to do that on the West Coast, yeah, like…
1:35:10
Tad Eggleston: It's even hard to do that in the Midwest.
1:35:12
andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah.
1:35:13
Tad Eggleston: I live in one of the handful of, like, I'm an hour from Milwaukee, and I'm an hour from Chicago. Right.
1:35:18
andrewcoltrin: Okay.
1:35:19
Tad Eggleston: If I wanted… if I wanted to go…
1:35:21
Tad Eggleston: visit Comic Friends in St. Louis, it's like 6 hours. Like, I visited Comic Friends in Minneapolis yesterday, but it was 5 hours after Minneapolis before I was home. Like, I once did a Minneapolis day trip.
1:35:36
Tad Eggleston: But it meant 11 hours of driving for, like, 2 hours in Minneapolis.
1:35:43
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, that's…
1:35:44
Tad Eggleston: That's, like, all of the West Coast.
1:35:47
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, pretty much.
1:35:48
Tad Eggleston: Except, like, LA and San Diego.
1:35:52
andrewcoltrin: Right. In San Francisco.
1:35:53
Tad Eggleston: going to Oakland.
1:35:55
andrewcoltrin: Right, you gotta.
1:35:55
Tad Eggleston: But, like, even if you're in LA, Sacramento's, what, 4 hours? Three and a half? Four hours?
1:36:02
Tad Eggleston: I think Sacramento's, like, three and a half, four hours from Oakland? The Oakland Bay Area?
1:36:08
andrewcoltrin: I know it's.
1:36:08
Tad Eggleston: Bay areas, like…
1:36:09
andrewcoltrin: Not any… it's not near anything, yeah, yeah. Right.
1:36:13
Tad Eggleston: Bay Area is… is 6 hours from you.
1:36:17
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:36:17
Tad Eggleston: And you are still another, what, three and a half, four hours?
1:36:21
andrewcoltrin: Bay Area's more like 10 out… what? Oh, okay.
1:36:25
andrewcoltrin: Wait, for me.
1:36:26
andrewcoltrin: Oh, like, I'm right outside of Portland.
1:36:29
Tad Eggleston: Oh, that's right. Milwaukee's actually farther north than I was thinking.
1:36:32
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, Milwaukee is that…
1:36:33
Tad Eggleston: It's like 6 or 7 hours from Ashland Medford, which is… which is where I generally go.
1:36:40
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, no.
1:36:40
Tad Eggleston: Still another 3 to 4 hours from Portland. Exactly. Portland's actually, like, 5 hours from Seattle.
1:36:46
andrewcoltrin: Exactly, I… I mean, depending on… depending on traffic, like, I think… Right. Yeah, like, is it that… I don't know, I haven't driven to Seattle in a long time, just because it's…
1:36:56
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, I don't know, I'm…
1:36:59
Tad Eggleston: You know, whereas…
1:37:00
andrewcoltrin: In my way.
1:37:00
Tad Eggleston: I like to go out to Columbus, because, like, if you haven't been to the…
1:37:06
Tad Eggleston: A, the one Comic-Con that everybody who loves comics deserves to go to at least once is Cartoons Crossroads Columbus.
1:37:14
Tad Eggleston: It's… it's Jeff Spur… it's Jeff Smith and the late Tom Spurgeon created the Comic-Con.
1:37:20
andrewcoltrin: Okay.
1:37:20
Tad Eggleston: It's in conjunction with the Billy Ireland cartoon Library and Museum.
1:37:29
Tad Eggleston: at Ohio State, which is the largest Repository of original comic art.
1:37:34
Tad Eggleston: At least in the United States, and quite possibly the world.
1:37:39
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:37:40
Tad Eggleston: They got a head start, because Milt Kniff gave them his papers, and then Bill Watterson gave them everything.
1:37:46
andrewcoltrin: Oh, wow, yeah.
1:37:47
Tad Eggleston: And then Jeff Smith was actually a student there when
1:37:51
Tad Eggleston: Bill Waterson gave them everything, so, like…
1:37:55
Tad Eggleston: I don't know that Jeff's given them everything, everything, but they have the very first page of Bowen up on their wall.
1:38:01
Tad Eggleston: And he knew when he drew it that it was going then, because Bone actually started as a…
1:38:07
Tad Eggleston: as a daily strip in the… in the Ohio State matchroom?
1:38:10
andrewcoltrin: I… yeah.
1:38:14
andrewcoltrin: Let's see that.
1:38:15
Tad Eggleston: But so, it's a free con.
1:38:17
Tad Eggleston: And, like… There's stuff at the… at the cartoon library, and… and…
1:38:27
Tad Eggleston: There's also stuff at the art museum.
1:38:30
Tad Eggleston: The keynotes are always at, like, the Fine Arts Center for Ohio State is right across from the library.
1:38:38
Tad Eggleston: And then the rest of the panels, and… the… the, like…
1:38:46
Tad Eggleston: Artist Alley-type floor, or the public library.
1:38:51
Tad Eggleston: But, like…
1:38:54
Tad Eggleston: they run the whole gamut of comics, like, a couple years ago. I always use this as an example because it's just perfect in terms of telling you, like, the craziness, and I…
1:39:05
Tad Eggleston: betting you're enough of a comic geek that I can use this many names, and you'll know most of them. Like, you walk down the aisle, and you've got Noah Van Skyver, and…
1:39:14
Tad Eggleston: Carl Krumholz, and then somebody that put together their… their comics all by themselves at Kinko.
1:39:24
andrewcoltrin: Right, that's bad.
1:39:25
Tad Eggleston: and M.S. Harkness, and then Evan Salazar, and down the row from them was Nicole Gu and P. Craig Russell. And across from Evan Salazar
1:39:37
Tad Eggleston: you had…
1:39:39
Tad Eggleston: the Ohio State cartoon program, so all college students who made their comics at Kinko's, or the on-campus equivalent, Shelly and Philip Bond.
1:39:51
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, nice.
1:39:52
Tad Eggleston: The, the national, association of Political Cartoonists.
1:39:59
Tad Eggleston: representatives from the online San Francisco based…
1:40:06
Tad Eggleston: Cartooning program, who also, like, a bunch of stuff that…
1:40:10
Tad Eggleston: they'd made at Kinko's, or their equivalent. Across from them was Dennis Kitchen.
1:40:17
andrewcoltrin: Jeez, yeah, okay, yeah.
1:40:19
Tad Eggleston: And Raina Telgemeier was also there that morning.
1:40:22
andrewcoltrin: You can't…
1:40:25
Tad Eggleston: That was just one year.
1:40:26
andrewcoltrin: Oh, boy. I would just be spinning, yeah? Like, wow.
1:40:31
Tad Eggleston: For that matter, the only major superhero guy that's been there in the years since I started going was Chip Zdarsky, and I was talking to him right before his panel, and I said, Chip, this is gonna be weird for you, but don't expect your room to be packed.
1:40:49
Tad Eggleston: He's like, but they're not even big rooms. I mean, I don't… it's not that I don't believe you, and that sounds kind of cool, but why do you say that? And I'm like, well, because for whatever reason, they gave Jeff the smaller room at the same time.
1:41:05
Tad Eggleston: And sure enough, Chip had, like, 75% packed in his room.
1:41:10
andrewcoltrin: Huh.
1:41:11
Tad Eggleston: And Jeff Smith had standing room only in his room.
1:41:14
andrewcoltrin: Oops, yeah.
1:41:16
Tad Eggleston: Then when they signed… they signed together, and Jeff's line was, like, 3 times as long as his line was.
1:41:21
andrewcoltrin: Yeah…
1:41:22
Tad Eggleston: He's like… I talked to him briefly after, he's like, yeah, it's one of the weirder signing experiences I've ever had.
1:41:32
Tad Eggleston: Not in a bad way, just in a way
1:41:34
Tad Eggleston: Like, I don't get to have this happen anymore. I'm used to having to, like…
1:41:39
Tad Eggleston: try to keep the line moving, and… and eventually getting, okay, we need to stop, I need to go.
1:41:47
andrewcoltrin: Boy.
1:41:47
Tad Eggleston: No, they all wanted to…
1:41:49
Tad Eggleston: That was the same… the same weekend, the only time ever that I've seen Shelly Bond told that she really needs to vacate the room.
1:41:58
Tad Eggleston: After her panel.
1:41:59
Tad Eggleston: And I'm sitting there going, this is Shelley Bond.
1:42:02
Tad Eggleston: like, who could possibly have the next panel that wouldn't be like, hey, Shelly, let me hang out with you as I get ready for my panel?
1:42:11
Tad Eggleston: I mean, she… she edited Sandman, and Shade the Changing Man, and she had… she had…
1:42:18
Tad Eggleston: you know, Black Crown Comics at IDW, like…
1:42:23
Tad Eggleston: Shelley Bond is one of the two or three biggest tastemakers of the last 30 years in comics.
1:42:30
Tad Eggleston: Who on earth is in this room next? And I look at the schedule.
1:42:33
Tad Eggleston: Raina Telkemeier.
1:42:35
andrewcoltrin: Oh.
1:42:37
Tad Eggleston: And as Shelly and I are walking out of the room, there's, like, a thousand people waiting.
1:42:43
andrewcoltrin: They're like…
1:42:48
Tad Eggleston: A room with maybe a capacity of, like, 300.
1:42:51
andrewcoltrin: They're like, yeah, they… yep.
1:42:54
Tad Eggleston: No, it was the second Reyna Talk. Raina had already done the big thing.
1:42:59
Tad Eggleston: In the 2,000-seat theater.
1:43:03
Tad Eggleston: And, and packed it the day before. Wow.
1:43:07
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, this is… this is where I got to meet Art Spiegelman there one year.
1:43:12
andrewcoltrin: Cool.
1:43:14
Tad Eggleston: Charles Burns was there one year.
1:43:17
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:43:20
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, I know.
1:43:21
Tad Eggleston: Now, comic geeks need to go to the Billy Ireland at some point, period.
1:43:26
Tad Eggleston: But…
1:43:27
Tad Eggleston: But CXC is something that they should experience, because the other thing is, neurodiverse people, two things. First, like, if you get overwhelmed, it's free, so leaving and coming back is easy.
1:43:39
Tad Eggleston: Second, it's in the public library, and only on the second floor. So you don't even necessarily have to completely leave. You can just go downstairs and sit down…
1:43:49
andrewcoltrin: Nice.
1:43:51
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, libraries are a safe space. Yeah, I mean… And that's… Yeah…
1:43:57
Tad Eggleston: And they put, like, all of the after-party stuff?
1:44:01
Tad Eggleston: on the calendar, so they're open to the public, so, like, I've been at the reception with free food and…
1:44:07
Tad Eggleston: Cash bar, or free…
1:44:08
andrewcoltrin: Foody food.
1:44:09
Tad Eggleston: Ohio State has… no, Ohio State has a legit culinary program, and they put together the hors d'oeuvres for the opening night, where they do most of the awards, and it's the opening reception. It's not really opening night, because they start having more creative… creator-specific and store-specific.
1:44:27
andrewcoltrin: Specific.
1:44:28
Tad Eggleston: panels will start on, like, Wednesday and Thursday.
1:44:31
Tad Eggleston: Right. But then the keynotes are on Friday, and Saturday, Sunday are when the…
1:44:37
Tad Eggleston: the library has the Artist Alley stuff.
1:44:40
Tad Eggleston: Like, so it's spread out over that whole period with various things going on. But yeah, so, like, the reception is open to the public and on the schedule so you know about it. There's an after-party that's generally, like, one year when,
1:44:55
Tad Eggleston: when… this is… this is so fun. When, right after Mad Cave had gotten the… the Flash Gordon license, they sponsored the… the after-party, so they had a whole… whole room of… actually, White… White Castle is also,
1:45:12
Tad Eggleston: out of Columbus, so they had a whole room where White Castle had… had…
1:45:18
Tad Eggleston: given burgers, and… and… and Mad Cave had… had provided pizza, and… and…
1:45:26
Tad Eggleston: they had all sorts of, like, free Flash Gordon stuff.
1:45:31
Tad Eggleston: at a bar in town not far from… that essentially was taken over by the comics people. And I kid you not, and I laughed so hard, because, like, it's…
1:45:43
Tad Eggleston: Jerry Kraft picked up a stack of the Flash Gordon stuff and was just going around the room, handing it to the people.
1:45:50
Tad Eggleston: And I, and I… I… I was, I was sitting there with… with a couple of, like.
1:45:55
Tad Eggleston: I'm not gonna… not gonna name names, because this… this… this is…
1:46:00
Tad Eggleston: some people will say that… might think this… this… this reflects poorly on them. I… I don't, because they just live in different worlds. But a couple of, you know.
1:46:09
Tad Eggleston: pretty well known on the… on the… the small press circuits, comic people, right? I'm hanging out with them.
1:46:18
Tad Eggleston: And… and, like, they… he hands out the cards, and, like, and they're, you know, because they know I'm the podcast guy, like, do you know who that is? I'm like, yeah, that's Jerry Craft. And they're like, what, is he doing Flash Gordon right now? Or… and I'm like…
1:46:31
Tad Eggleston: Not only does he outsaw
1:46:33
Tad Eggleston: In a year, everything you have ever done in your life, we could expand that to the rest of the people in this room, and it would still be true.
1:46:49
Tad Eggleston: I'm like, what'd you say? I'm like, new kid?
1:46:52
andrewcoltrin: School trip.
1:46:58
Tad Eggleston: But then, when I gave him my business card to be on the, to try to have him on the podcast, he literally emailed me from across the table.
1:47:05
Tad Eggleston: To start scheduling.
1:47:07
andrewcoltrin: Wow, cool. Yeah.
1:47:10
andrewcoltrin: There you go. That's… that's like, I don't want to lose this business card.
1:47:14
Tad Eggleston: That is the feeling that you get at… and then there's a karaoke party on Saturday.
1:47:20
andrewcoltrin: Oh, oh, I would go just…
1:47:22
Tad Eggleston: I have karaoke… yeah, I've karaokeed with Nate Powell, I've karaoke'd with Matt Boers.
1:47:29
andrewcoltrin: I just, like…
1:47:31
andrewcoltrin: Mmm, sorry. You just got me a karaoke, because, like, that is, like, one of my secret favorite things to do, which people are like.
1:47:38
Tad Eggleston: I… this last year, I managed… I managed to get over my nerves, and I even went all out. Not only did I actually karaoke for the crowd.
1:47:50
Tad Eggleston: My first public karaoke, you know, non… non-at-home rock band, non… our karaoke.
1:47:59
Tad Eggleston: I went all the way, I did, it's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.
1:48:03
andrewcoltrin: Oh… There you go. Yeah.
1:48:08
Tad Eggleston: Because I figured if I did that first, I'd never be scared again.
1:48:12
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Or, I would fail so miserably that I'd never do it again.
1:48:17
Tad Eggleston: But I think it's… I think it's the first one.
1:48:20
andrewcoltrin: The first one. No, yeah, good. Got that out, yeah.
1:48:23
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, you just gotta get over that first.
1:48:26
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:48:27
andrewcoltrin: You know, the resistance threshold, and then you're like.
1:48:31
Tad Eggleston: And honestly.
1:48:31
andrewcoltrin: do this. Yeah.
1:48:33
Tad Eggleston: Honestly, this should have been another place that, like, tipped me off that I was autistic.
1:48:39
Tad Eggleston: I used to have all of the lyrics
1:48:43
Tad Eggleston: To that song, Up On My Wall.
1:48:46
andrewcoltrin: Mmm.
1:48:47
Tad Eggleston: Over 27 different sheets of paper.
1:48:51
andrewcoltrin: In life.
1:48:51
Tad Eggleston: like, 25-point fonts so that you could actually read it all. And I went through and, like, each phrase is a different font.
1:49:00
Tad Eggleston: And all of the lower… all of the lower… er, all of the consonants were lowercase letters, and all of the vowels were uppercase letters.
1:49:12
andrewcoltrin: that.
1:49:13
Tad Eggleston: That was on the wall of my bed… my childhood bedroom from, like, the age of…
1:49:18
Tad Eggleston: 13 or 14 until I moved out when I was in my mid-20s.
1:49:22
andrewcoltrin: Wow.
1:49:24
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:49:25
andrewcoltrin: That, I, I…
1:49:26
andrewcoltrin: That should be a sign. What… what weird crap do you have on your walls? That should be in the diagnostic criteria.
1:49:34
Tad Eggleston: It does kind of fit, doesn't it? We're having a blast, but I need to ask Leg, are we running up on any sort of time for you?
1:49:43
Tad Eggleston: Jacob?
1:49:44
andrewcoltrin: Oh my gosh, I am having a blast. I can go a little bit longer, yeah.
1:49:48
Tad Eggleston: Okay, then, then rather than getting into more biographical questions or whatnot, we'll save those for the future. I'm gonna roll to the two required closing questions.
1:50:00
andrewcoltrin: Okay, cool.
1:50:00
Tad Eggleston: And now we will also just assume that you're coming back? Can we assume that you're coming back?
1:50:05
andrewcoltrin: I think I would love to come back. This is… this is the best.
1:50:08
Tad Eggleston: Or maybe even that we'll just start a friendship. You don't have to come back and record things. We can just Zoom. I'm cool with that.
1:50:14
andrewcoltrin: We can do both, yeah.
1:50:16
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
1:50:16
andrewcoltrin: This thing.
1:50:17
Tad Eggleston: Excellent.
1:50:17
andrewcoltrin: Oh, oh, yeah, I feel like, you know, finding a lost family member or something, yeah.
1:50:22
Tad Eggleston: I like that. I was hoping for that.
1:50:24
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:50:25
Tad Eggleston: That's also why I was so nervous, is because it's like, that's what I wanted. Sometimes when you wanted a lot, like, you just, like, if it… if we…
1:50:34
Tad Eggleston: If we'd been, like…
1:50:38
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:50:39
Tad Eggleston: cool professionally, but not connected, I would have felt really let down.
1:50:43
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:50:44
andrewcoltrin: I mean… okay, so, like, this just ties into why I'm making the Nerd Emergencies anthologies, because I just feel like…
1:50:53
andrewcoltrin: there are… we have our people all the way out there. Oh, yeah. Everywhere. And, like, I just lost…
1:50:58
Tad Eggleston: Most of them are into comics, Andrew.
1:51:00
andrewcoltrin: I know! I know, it seemed like a no-brainer, a no-brainer, like, come on, you would like comics. You're in our…
1:51:08
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, because you gotta use both sides of your brain to actually read a comic well.
1:51:11
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, exactly, and so I'm like, that's, like, the whole point. It's like, this is a… basically a neurodiverse medium. Right. And…
1:51:21
andrewcoltrin: And I wanted to be an example to people who don't… or, like, maybe don't know, haven't gone on their diagnosis journey, like, oh, here's some things I can look at that's a little bit less scary than…
1:51:32
andrewcoltrin: I mean, I like comics, and I'm going to it.
1:51:34
Tad Eggleston: You go back at… and… and I think the book will… the Kickstarter's over, and I don't know if it's still in late order stage. We had, Tess Langston on.
1:51:46
Tad Eggleston: Did a comic called… I think it was Growing Up on the Spectrum?
1:51:52
Tad Eggleston: It's, like, one part autobiographical, and one part helping somebody. It's, like, kind of for the middle school kid to look at and see themselves, and it's really for the middle school parent to bully.
1:52:06
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:52:06
Tad Eggleston: at and see their kids, and have grace for them. Because, like, I don't know about you, but, like.
1:52:14
Tad Eggleston: other than the shooting events that I've been close to, most of the trauma that I deal with is people treating things that are autistic
1:52:27
Tad Eggleston: Characteristics of mine as character flaws.
1:52:33
andrewcoltrin: Oh, boy.
1:52:35
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, I mean, I think I have a lot of compartmentalized stuff.
1:52:41
andrewcoltrin: I have this whole, like.
1:52:43
Tad Eggleston: But it can be such a…
1:52:44
andrewcoltrin: situation that I think has a lot of that in there. Yeah, yeah.
1:52:48
Tad Eggleston: But it can be such a game changer to have the people around you
1:52:53
Tad Eggleston: not think that it's a lack of willpower, or a lack of respect, or a lack of whatever, but instead, oh, they're wired differently, this is hard for them.
1:53:03
Tad Eggleston: necessarily mean that you won't try to do it, it doesn't necessarily mean that there aren't. It doesn't take away your responsibility for certain things, but that grace of, oh, it's not personal.
1:53:14
andrewcoltrin: Not personal, yeah.
1:53:17
Tad Eggleston: They don't make eye contact well.
1:53:19
Tad Eggleston: Or, it's not personal.
1:53:24
andrewcoltrin: I know, what's the big deal with icons?
1:53:25
Tad Eggleston: They said they were gonna do this, they said they were gonna do this, they said they were gonna do this, and it didn't get done, because, like.
1:53:32
Tad Eggleston: oh, wait a minute, they did actually mean it every time, but, like, I didn't bother to ask them, when are they going to do it?
1:53:39
andrewcoltrin: When are you gonna do it, and what, what are.
1:53:42
Tad Eggleston: And get them out of autism time.
1:53:45
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:53:46
Tad Eggleston: Get them out of autism time.
1:53:47
andrewcoltrin: Right.
1:53:48
andrewcoltrin: They're… Autism… yeah, that's… Exactly, it's like, it's a… yeah. Gotta figure out how to get from that
1:53:56
andrewcoltrin: into everybody else's time is the trick sometimes, yeah?
1:54:00
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, my wife laughs because she just keeps finding other couples that remind her of us, where it's like.
1:54:10
Tad Eggleston: Possibly they're both on the spectrum, but certainly one of them is.
1:54:13
andrewcoltrin: heavily.
1:54:14
Tad Eggleston: And… but both of them have certain things that are just hard, that part of how they got together is it was, like, almost the first person in their life that's just like, oh, well, that's just part of you, and…
1:54:26
Tad Eggleston: That's fine.
1:54:28
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Rather than, why are you like that?
1:54:34
andrewcoltrin: Exactly, yeah.
1:54:35
Tad Eggleston: It's like…
1:54:37
andrewcoltrin: I mean, like, I would say, like, yes, like I mentioned, like, you know, I have a previous marriage, but I have a current marriage, and, like, this one was based on, like, oh, I know who I am now, and so it started out with, like, okay, this is…
1:54:51
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:54:51
andrewcoltrin: Like, you need to know this whole package of me before we take this any further, and so it was…
1:54:57
Tad Eggleston: This is just… this is me. This is me.
1:55:00
andrewcoltrin: And then, like, you know, so we…
1:55:02
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, so I would say, like, yeah, spend…
1:55:05
andrewcoltrin: Well, anyway, this is not about relationships, but it is about…
1:55:08
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it can't be.
1:55:09
andrewcoltrin: It's like, it's.
1:55:10
Tad Eggleston: I had a…
1:55:11
andrewcoltrin: Knowing who you are.
1:55:12
Tad Eggleston: I didn't… I didn't have a previous marriage, but my… my… my wife got to be a grandparent without actually being a parent, so… so I did have previous relationships.
1:55:23
andrewcoltrin: There's… yeah…
1:55:24
Tad Eggleston: My wife's like, I skipped the hard part.
1:55:28
Tad Eggleston: And I get to have the fun part!
1:55:34
andrewcoltrin: I know, life… Life's amazing, there's so many different…
1:55:38
Tad Eggleston: Grandkids are. Grandkids are really fun. Don't rush your kids into it.
1:55:42
andrewcoltrin: Okay. I'm like… I mean, I've got, I've got, like, the… yeah, no, I mean…
1:55:47
Tad Eggleston: And kind of, like, your problem is you've got enough of a gap between your oldest kid and your youngest kid that.
1:55:53
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
1:55:54
Tad Eggleston: that you won't necessarily be able… I mean…
1:55:57
Tad Eggleston: You need your oldest kid to wait a little bit, because if you have grandkids that are about the same age as your kid, you won't be able to treat them truly as grandkids, because you don't want to make your kid jealous.
1:56:08
andrewcoltrin: Meh.
1:56:10
andrewcoltrin: That's… That's a good point. That's alright, my older one…
1:56:13
Tad Eggleston: Here's the thing with grandkids, is like, all those things that you want to do for your 2, 5, even 10-year-old, that you sit back and go, is that really appropriate? Will that teach them the lessons that they need to learn, blah blah blah? As the grandparent.
1:56:29
Tad Eggleston: It's like… I don't care. Not my job.
1:56:34
andrewcoltrin: That's… We're having seconds of ice cream, yeah.
1:56:42
Tad Eggleston: Do you want to have ice cream before dinner?
1:56:44
Tad Eggleston: Let's do it.
1:56:45
andrewcoltrin: Let's do it, yeah, yeah.
1:56:48
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:56:48
andrewcoltrin: So…
1:56:49
Tad Eggleston: through a tantrum, I'm buying you the toy anyway.
1:56:54
Tad Eggleston: It causes problems for your dad? Well, he caused problems for me.
1:57:05
andrewcoltrin: The things I can look forward to, yeah. Yeah.
1:57:10
Tad Eggleston: Oh, I gave you ice cream, and now you're wired at 9 o'clock at night? Well, great, because Dad's picking you up in 15 minutes, and I don't have to worry about it.
1:57:21
andrewcoltrin: Ew.
1:57:23
andrewcoltrin: Yeah. Yes!
1:57:25
andrewcoltrin: Yes, all of this stuff, but yeah… Right.
1:57:31
Tad Eggleston: I mean, for that matter, on the lowest level, like, the number of times… and I tried to overall be a good dad, and a lot of the times I'd be playing with them before they were potty trained or whatnot, and I'd realize they needed to be changed, and it just changed them. But there were other times where it's like, oh, they need to be changed. Here you go, son!
1:57:50
andrewcoltrin: They're like…
1:57:56
Tad Eggleston: I'm not in the mood, and they're not my kid.
1:58:00
andrewcoltrin: They're like, you give up… Oh, boy.
1:58:05
Tad Eggleston: Alright, closing.
1:58:06
andrewcoltrin: Questions. Okay, sorry, I was thinking about diapers, yeah, alright.
1:58:10
Tad Eggleston: We, we, we, we went, we went on another side quest.
1:58:13
andrewcoltrin: I mean, I've done a lot of diapers, so… Yeah.
1:58:16
Tad Eggleston: Me too.
1:58:16
andrewcoltrin: on a whole other side. You've probably done some diapering that other people don't even know exists.
1:58:24
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I did senior care.
1:58:25
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, yes, so you've… yup. Yeah, I know, I know.
1:58:29
Tad Eggleston: I have heard the words… And I'm just gonna tell you… tell you the line from the woman.
1:58:36
Tad Eggleston: I'm not gonna give you any context whatsoever, I'm gonna let your brain go wild.
1:58:43
Tad Eggleston: I'm not naked, I've got my depends on.
1:58:53
andrewcoltrin: Yep.
1:58:54
andrewcoltrin: That's…
1:59:01
andrewcoltrin: There's… yep.
1:59:03
andrewcoltrin: Right, see? You've seen some stuff.
1:59:09
Tad Eggleston: Alright, I've been doing this podcast for a little less than 5 years now, and I feel like I've entered the Twilight Zone.
1:59:16
Tad Eggleston: The number of… People that used to be…
1:59:21
Tad Eggleston: Names on pages of some of my favorite
1:59:25
Tad Eggleston: Pieces of art who are now… good friends.
1:59:31
Tad Eggleston: the conversations I've gotten to have.
1:59:34
Tad Eggleston: the… the…
1:59:37
Tad Eggleston: the experiences that I barely would have been able to imagine, much less believe, would be something that would be part of my life.
1:59:46
Tad Eggleston: Even 10 years ago, much less as, like, a 15-year-old comic fan.
1:59:51
Tad Eggleston: are almost commonplace to me. But what's more.
1:59:55
Tad Eggleston: is I've discovered that, like, almost everybody in and around the industry also has experiences like this. They have that, like, that…
2:00:05
Tad Eggleston: That story of…
2:00:07
Tad Eggleston: You know, whether it's meeting somebody, or befriending somebody, or being at a con, and having a fan come up and tell them something, you know.
2:00:16
Tad Eggleston: There's a wide net, you don't have to name-drop, you know, whatever, but those pinch-me moments, those ones that even, even after the fact, they look back on, and they're like, did that really happen to me?
2:00:31
Tad Eggleston: So I've started collecting them. Give me one of your surreal comic moments.
2:00:35
andrewcoltrin: Oh, surreal comic moments. Oh, how?
2:00:44
andrewcoltrin: Happened to me. Okay, well… It was at,
2:00:50
andrewcoltrin: Is it San Diego Comic Con probably, like, 1998 or something?
2:00:56
andrewcoltrin: And I'm just sort of wandering around, and everything's overstimulating, and…
2:01:01
andrewcoltrin: Oh, that might have been the year that…
2:01:04
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, I made a mini-comic, I stuffed my backpack full of it, I went…
2:01:09
andrewcoltrin: I got a cheap plane ticket, I did not arrange for a place to sleep.
2:01:14
andrewcoltrin: And I was too socially… Awkward to talk to anybody.
2:01:20
andrewcoltrin: Except for Eddie Campbell, who is really nice. I have, like, frickin' 50s… 50 mini-comics in my backpack, and I give one of them away, and I gotta, you know, trade a copy of Backus, and that was cool. He was a good guy.
2:01:32
Tad Eggleston: Where was this again?
2:01:34
andrewcoltrin: San Diego Comic Con.
2:01:36
Tad Eggleston: Did you say 98?
2:01:38
andrewcoltrin: I wanna say it was, like, 98 or 99, something like that.
2:01:42
Tad Eggleston: Well, here's the way to know. Was Kevin Smith there?
2:01:46
andrewcoltrin: Oh, he sure was.
2:01:47
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, because…
2:01:49
Tad Eggleston: That's the only Comic-Con I've ever been to.
2:01:51
andrewcoltrin: Holy shit. Okay, so this is… this is, like, the… the lead into, like, the actual story, is, like, I'm walking around Comic-Con, totally socially anxious, and just spinning out, just doing loops.
2:02:04
andrewcoltrin: And then I see this guy, and I'm like, did I go to high school with that guy? He looks really… he's like… and it took me… I was like, oh, fuck, that's Jason Mews.
2:02:13
andrewcoltrin: I did not go to high school with him, but I went to high school with people that acted just like him.
2:02:20
Tad Eggleston: Well, and you did go to high school with him, because you watched him, probably.
2:02:24
Tad Eggleston: Many times when you were in high school.
2:02:27
Tad Eggleston: If you were anything like me when I was in high school.
2:02:29
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, it was… it was… yeah.
2:02:31
Tad Eggleston: So, so here, here are my two 98 Comic-Con stories.
2:02:35
andrewcoltrin: Okay.
2:02:36
Tad Eggleston: I stood in line to try to get Smith's…
2:02:40
Tad Eggleston: autograph. I had a Chasing Amy poster ready to be signed, that sort of thing. And I was near the front of the line when he took a break, so I went and I wandered around.
2:02:49
Tad Eggleston: And… I did wind up talking to him for 15 minutes about Daredevil, but I didn't tell him I knew who he was. We were looking for comics in the.
2:02:58
andrewcoltrin: Oh.
2:02:59
Tad Eggleston: bins. He… he… and this… this is… this is why I was able to quickly go, oh.
2:03:05
Tad Eggleston: even when he, like, A, I didn't initiate conversation, I'm really bad at.
2:03:10
Tad Eggleston: conversation most of the time, and certainly was then. He started talking to me, but…
2:03:14
Tad Eggleston: there were two things that made me go, okay, I need to just talk and not go, oh my god, you're Kevin Smith. The first was, his badge was flipped over.
2:03:25
Tad Eggleston: And the second was, his hat was on forwards.
2:03:29
andrewcoltrin: He was in stealth mode.
2:03:32
Tad Eggleston: But particularly because I was back at his table when he came back at the time that he was gonna consider signing.
2:03:40
Tad Eggleston: er, when… at the time that he said he was gonna be back to sign again, he came back, I watched him turn his cap back around and talk to the guy, and then decide not to sign. So it turned out, I never got his autograph.
2:03:52
Tad Eggleston: I just got to talk…
2:03:54
Tad Eggleston: Daredevil with him for, like, 15 minutes, because we were flipping through the same bins, looking for some of the same issues.
2:04:02
andrewcoltrin: And that's… that's, like, better. Yeah.
2:04:04
Tad Eggleston: It is, except that, like, there's no evidence, so…
2:04:07
andrewcoltrin: Some people are like.
2:04:08
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, whatever.
2:04:09
andrewcoltrin: Oh, it's, it's… He's like, fuck you.
2:04:12
Tad Eggleston: It happened. It's my story, it happened.
2:04:14
andrewcoltrin: That can happen. I have another… another story, so this was…
2:04:18
Tad Eggleston: Also, Eddie Campbell's Chicago, so I know I'm pretty… I mean, not well well, I'm not quite friends with Eddie Campbell.
2:04:23
andrewcoltrin: Oh, but anyways, I don't Yeah.
2:04:26
Tad Eggleston: Well, Audrey Niffenegger is his wife.
2:04:28
andrewcoltrin: Jeez, I'm, like, so out of the loop.
2:04:30
Tad Eggleston: Chicago, yeah.
2:04:32
Tad Eggleston: So, I, I see…
2:04:33
andrewcoltrin: seat.
2:04:33
Tad Eggleston: Eddie at every, every cake and.
2:04:36
andrewcoltrin: E2, E2. Oh my gosh.
2:04:37
Tad Eggleston: He's been on this show once. He's good friends with Landis Blair.
2:04:41
Tad Eggleston: My wife has become friends with Landis Blair. Landis Blair did the hunting accident.
2:04:46
andrewcoltrin: That's amazing.
2:04:47
Tad Eggleston: and crosshatching.
2:04:49
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, I'm just like, he was so nice to me.
2:04:52
Tad Eggleston: No, he's a great guy.
2:04:52
andrewcoltrin: He's a great guy, so I'm like…
2:04:54
Tad Eggleston: Every con I'm at, he manages to get me to buy one comic that I didn't even know existed. Like, there was one year, like, I finally got my deluxe edition of…
2:05:05
Tad Eggleston: From hell?
2:05:06
andrewcoltrin: because…
2:05:07
Tad Eggleston: right after he'd sold me a copy of something else when I'd intended to buy From Hell, and I was giving it a hard time. I'm like, I came to get From Hell, but I can't afford both, and you totally sold me on this thing that I didn't know existed. But my mom was there with me that year, so she's like.
2:05:21
andrewcoltrin: Oh my god.
2:05:21
Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna buy them from hell, can you start them?
2:05:23
andrewcoltrin: That's nice,
2:05:26
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
2:05:28
andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah, no, I'd say Eddie Campbell. Yeah, no, the… oh, was it, the kitchen graffiti was one of…
2:05:35
andrewcoltrin: His, like, earlier, like, Alec stories.
2:05:38
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
2:05:39
andrewcoltrin: And I remember, like, reading that and thinking, like, oh, I can… I don't have to have, like, perfect art to make comics.
2:05:47
Tad Eggleston: Right.
2:05:48
Tad Eggleston: Where he can do perfect art, too.
2:05:49
andrewcoltrin: Well, you can, yes, but it was, like, that.
2:05:51
Tad Eggleston: That's sort of…
2:05:52
andrewcoltrin: I'm not saying anything, but what I mean is like that, because it's a very improvised and…
2:05:59
andrewcoltrin: I don't know, just very expressive, expressionistic story, and… Not… not needing…
2:06:06
andrewcoltrin: Oh, man, I just loved it. And I realized, oh yeah, I can do things like that, and so then I stopped being so hard on myself for…
2:06:12
andrewcoltrin: having crappy handwriting, but… But, yeah, I mean, another, like, surreal experience like that, though, has to do with…
2:06:21
andrewcoltrin: living in, in the, in Portland, Oregon, and
2:06:27
andrewcoltrin: My daughter, you know, when she was in high school… She's like.
2:06:30
Tad Eggleston: It's, like, ground zero for comics now.
2:06:34
andrewcoltrin: It is. I was, you know, my daughter was in a high school dance company, and there was a thing where,
2:06:43
andrewcoltrin: you know, I was volunteering to run the… you know, work in the concession stand during the intermission of the dance performance at the high school, and…
2:06:51
andrewcoltrin: I'm… I'm doing… working the table next to Greg Ruka.
2:06:55
Tad Eggleston: Yep.
2:06:56
andrewcoltrin: And I'm like… I know who you are, but I…
2:07:00
andrewcoltrin: He's been on the show… We're dads. We're dads. Like, yeah, so yeah, make…
2:07:05
Tad Eggleston: Greg probably would have been cool with you slipping in, like, as long as you didn't gush-gush, if you just.
2:07:11
andrewcoltrin: said something.
2:07:12
Tad Eggleston: like, I love Lazarus, or I love Queen and Country.
2:07:17
Tad Eggleston: He would have been cool with that.
2:07:19
andrewcoltrin: Probably would have. I mean, also, like, it was nuts busy.
2:07:23
Tad Eggleston: Because there's the other thing that I have learned, and I think it's part of why they all moved to Portland together. Something that I've learned from this podcast, one of the reasons that I can get some of the guests that I get is, like, doesn't matter how big you are in comics, there's a good chance that you don't have anybody to geek out comics with.
2:07:41
andrewcoltrin: Oh…
2:07:43
Tad Eggleston: Tom King once talked about how he got recognized at the park, and he's like, can I take you home with me? My mother-in-law doesn't believe I'm famous.
2:07:57
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
2:07:59
andrewcoltrin: Exactly. So, yeah, Portland's this kind of town where, like, I'm like…
2:08:04
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Yeah, no, as soon as you started talking, I'm like, okay, is it gonna be Kelly, Sue, Matt, Bendis, or Rukka?
2:08:10
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, I know, I know.
2:08:11
Tad Eggleston: There are so many more that it could be.
2:08:13
andrewcoltrin: I know.
2:08:14
Tad Eggleston: You said, like, school and whatnot?
2:08:16
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, I know, it's like, like, our kids were in the same high school dance company, so…
2:08:20
Tad Eggleston: It's half the…
2:08:22
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, I'm like, okay…
2:08:24
andrewcoltrin: But it's kind of funny, it was this thing, like, I didn't quite realize till, like, I…
2:08:28
andrewcoltrin: You know, I was looking at the kids' names, and I was like, oh, that last name is O, alright.
2:08:35
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
2:08:36
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, it's totally the mecca.
2:08:38
andrewcoltrin: It's… it is, yeah.
2:08:40
Tad Eggleston: If I started listing all of the Portland Comics people, we'd be here for a long, long time.
2:08:44
andrewcoltrin: We probably would, yeah.
2:08:45
Tad Eggleston: And actually, if you want to take classes in comics, there is…
2:08:51
Tad Eggleston: arguably no better place than Portland State.
2:08:57
andrewcoltrin: Probably. Yeah.
2:09:00
Tad Eggleston: Bendis teaches there.
2:09:01
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
2:09:01
Tad Eggleston: teaches there. Shelley Bond teaches there, Diana Schutz is mostly retired, and that's why Shelly Bond does the Zoom class, but she still sometimes teaches there.
2:09:14
Tad Eggleston: You know, I think Fraction and Kelly Hsu sometimes teach there, you know, but at the very least, they'll sometimes do the guest appearance at Bendis or David's class.
2:09:27
andrewcoltrin: Oh, yeah, and then there's, like, there's just so many… yeah, up and down the spectrum of… yeah.
2:09:35
Tad Eggleston: No.
2:09:35
andrewcoltrin: So, I mean, yeah. And, like, another one of… like, somebody I got to be friends with over is, like, Farrell Dalrymple.
2:09:41
andrewcoltrin: Oh!
2:09:42
Tad Eggleston: I, you know, I haven't connected with him yet, but I… I… Okay, where's my FML?
2:09:48
Tad Eggleston: Okay, we're gonna have to go figure that out. Okay. I'm at my comic shop, and I was looking my pile, because one of the comics that I'm looking forward to the most today is The Last FML.
2:10:00
Tad Eggleston: Which I have digitally, so I'll be able to read it no matter what, but…
2:10:02
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, that's…
2:10:04
Tad Eggleston: That's the first place I had a letter published.
2:10:06
andrewcoltrin: Oh, nice.
2:10:07
Tad Eggleston: And ironically, it was a letter that I sent just…
2:10:11
Tad Eggleston: before I, like, there was almost 2 years of going back on and off with Kelly Hsu's assistant.
2:10:18
Tad Eggleston: before Kelly Sue…
2:10:21
Tad Eggleston: was on the podcast, but one of the letters started out with something that, like, even before we managed to set it up, I got, like, almost immediately the letter back going, can we use this?
2:10:35
andrewcoltrin: Nice.
2:10:37
andrewcoltrin: They asked? Oh, cool.
2:10:39
Tad Eggleston: They're required to. You have to have…
2:10:41
Tad Eggleston: You have to either mark it okay for print, or they have to ask you.
2:10:45
andrewcoltrin: Okay.
2:10:46
Tad Eggleston: If it's okay for print.
2:10:47
Tad Eggleston: So yeah, I have a… I have a letter in FML.
2:10:52
andrewcoltrin: Cool.
2:10:53
Tad Eggleston: I think number 5? 4 or 5? Something like that.
2:10:57
andrewcoltrin: Nice.
2:10:58
andrewcoltrin: Alright.
2:10:58
Tad Eggleston: Such a ridiculous book. Okay, final question, and my all-time favorite question to ask anybody and everybody.
2:11:06
Tad Eggleston: Tell me something you love.
2:11:10
Tad Eggleston: Preferably a comic, but we don't really have rules.
2:11:14
Tad Eggleston: Preferably storytelling.
2:11:16
Tad Eggleston: But again, with the rules.
2:11:19
Tad Eggleston: But something that you love.
2:11:22
Tad Eggleston: That not enough people around you have experienced.
2:11:26
Tad Eggleston: And you really wish some of them would, so you had more people to talk about it with.
2:11:34
Tad Eggleston: It's my variation on the underrated question, because I hate.
2:11:38
andrewcoltrin: underrated.
2:11:38
Tad Eggleston: But I want to get the slightly more obscure thing. Though I will, like, if it starts feeling like pressure, Nate Powell once gave me Jonathan Hickman's X-Men.
2:11:49
Tad Eggleston: And he was able to justify it by, I live in the indie comic scene now. I started picking it up, and I love it, but none of my friends are reading X-Men.
2:12:00
andrewcoltrin: Okay, well, yeah, I know, and I'm, like, sitting here, like, this… this was a question that I…
2:12:07
andrewcoltrin: I knew you were gonna ask, and I'm like…
2:12:09
andrewcoltrin: It's like, do I go with my prepared, or do I think of something even… no, no, actually…
2:12:14
Tad Eggleston: Both.
2:12:14
andrewcoltrin: I just… I just name-dropped Farrell Dollarimple, and I'm like, I really love the Robot Todd series that he's doing.
2:12:20
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
2:12:21
andrewcoltrin: And I… Robot.
2:12:23
Tad Eggleston: Doug?
2:12:23
andrewcoltrin: Robot Todd.
2:12:25
Tad Eggleston: Todd, okay.
2:12:26
andrewcoltrin: Todd, yeah. So, yeah, Floating World is, putting it out, and I think they've had 3.
2:12:31
Tad Eggleston: I have seen it, but I haven't read it yet. I am…
2:12:38
Tad Eggleston: my first published writing, and now I have 3 published pieces of writing, and 2 more
2:12:46
Tad Eggleston: That have been solicited.
2:12:48
Tad Eggleston: is from Floating World, because I have a column in American Nature Presents.
2:12:52
andrewcoltrin: I saw that. I read that. And I was like, I was like, awful.
2:12:57
Tad Eggleston: in every American nature presents.
2:12:59
andrewcoltrin: Okay, so, so, yeah, no, I… well, I picked up one of them. I think I just picked up another… oh, yeah. No, yeah.
2:13:06
Tad Eggleston: Three so far, and the fourth just got solicited.
2:13:08
andrewcoltrin: Right, so yeah, no, I think it was the third I picked up, and I saw your piece, and I was like, that name's familiar. I'm like, I should send him mail.
2:13:16
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, because I…
2:13:17
Tad Eggleston: That's what I forgot to do.
2:13:19
andrewcoltrin: You know?
2:13:19
Tad Eggleston: You know what I… you know what was on the,
2:13:22
Tad Eggleston: On the counter when I got home from Minnesota yesterday.
2:13:25
andrewcoltrin: That one… that's… yeah, that was like…
2:13:30
Tad Eggleston: I opened this at 2 o'clock this morning when I got home.
2:13:33
andrewcoltrin: I know, exactly. I put that in the mail, and then you send me a thing, hey, do you want to be on the podcast? I was like, well, this is ironic.
2:13:40
andrewcoltrin: Also…
2:13:41
andrewcoltrin: I put a QR code on the inside cover of that, and I screwed it up. It's… it doesn't go to anything, but…
2:13:47
Tad Eggleston: This is also where… this is what I'm gonna… I'm gonna toss out to you, yeah.
2:13:51
Tad Eggleston: I haven't managed to have the actual hacker from…
2:13:56
Tad Eggleston: from Black Hills on yet, but I don't know if you're familiar with, black Hills InfoSec now has a comics company called RECA, which is Hacker Backwards. Okay. Fred Van Lenti is writing…
2:14:10
Tad Eggleston: and they committed to 60 issues right out of the gate. The future is…
2:14:16
Tad Eggleston: And then 6 asterisks. And each issue, like, you can find out what the 6 asterisks
2:14:21
Tad Eggleston: is in that issue by doing various hacker challenges and whatnot. So it's like, one part, Fred Van Lenti, really good comic.
2:14:30
Tad Eggleston: but also has hacker challenges, learn about info… you know, internet security, that sort of thing. The hacker challenges have, like, the legit leaderboard that you can use on your resume if you're…
2:14:43
Tad Eggleston: Doing that sort of thing.
2:14:45
andrewcoltrin: Jeez.
2:14:48
Tad Eggleston: But so, when they did a panel at C2E2, they had one of the hackers there, and she went through, like, internet security, whatnot, and the first thing she said, and she's like, you guys are gonna hate me for this, and I'll be the first one to tell you that I'm not always good at this, but never scan the QR code.
2:15:07
andrewcoltrin: Never do it.
2:15:09
andrewcoltrin: You don't know what.
2:15:10
Tad Eggleston: And, like, I had QR codes on my business card at the time, so my first question is, like, she's like, you know, I mean, again, there… she's like, I even use them sometimes, you know, I get it. But, like, if you wanna… if you wanna, like, convince people that you…
2:15:24
Tad Eggleston: You're more likely to be safe. Have the web address, too.
2:15:28
andrewcoltrin: Okay.
2:15:28
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
2:15:30
Tad Eggleston: And then they get to choose how they do it, rather than… because, like, one of the things she told me that, like, when she… or told us, that when she said it, I'm like, oh my god, that makes so much sense. She's like, essentially, anybody who is
2:15:45
Tad Eggleston: scanned a QR code on a menu, or at a restaurant that only has the QR code for a menu anywhere within 50 miles of Washington, D.C.
2:15:56
Tad Eggleston: The Russians and the Chinese have clones of their phones.
2:16:01
andrewcoltrin: Jeez.
2:16:02
andrewcoltrin: Haha Okay, good to know.
2:16:05
Tad Eggleston: The thing is, they can… essentially.
2:16:09
Tad Eggleston: they'll just put another QR code over it.
2:16:13
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
2:16:14
Tad Eggleston: And, like, what will happen is you will still get to where you wanted to go, but there will be that, like, Microsoft…
2:16:23
andrewcoltrin: I can…
2:16:23
Tad Eggleston: clip while they're dropping the thing in.
2:16:26
andrewcoltrin: You are.
2:16:27
Tad Eggleston: Your way to the thing that you wanted to go to.
2:16:32
andrewcoltrin: Well, now I… Rethink my whole life. No.
2:16:38
Tad Eggleston: I'm sitting there going, oh my god, I didn't want to know that information.
2:16:43
andrewcoltrin: Yeah, but, I'll take it. No, it's alright.
2:16:49
Tad Eggleston: Sorry, Andrew.
2:16:50
andrewcoltrin: It's okay. Now I feel… alright, never… no more QR codes.
2:16:55
andrewcoltrin: I always screw them up anyway.
2:16:58
Tad Eggleston: I still sometimes put them on, but when I do now, I always, always put where they're going.
2:17:06
andrewcoltrin: Good. Okay, cool, yeah.
2:17:08
Tad Eggleston: dead.
2:17:10
andrewcoltrin: That's… mmm, wow.
2:17:13
andrewcoltrin: This is the thing I needed to learn today.
2:17:17
andrewcoltrin: My god.
2:17:17
Tad Eggleston: Well, but again, remember, I mean, like…
2:17:20
Tad Eggleston: The NSA has had all of our information.
2:17:24
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
2:17:24
Tad Eggleston: like, 20 years or so already, and, like, Amazon has had all of our information.
2:17:31
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
2:17:32
Tad Eggleston: almost as long, Google as well, and, like, since, since, like, since Doge, you know…
2:17:41
Tad Eggleston: Any information that any of those companies might not have had before is available for sale.
2:17:47
Tad Eggleston: Because Elon's got it.
2:17:49
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
2:17:50
andrewcoltrin: Yeah.
2:17:53
andrewcoltrin: That guy.
2:17:54
andrewcoltrin: Ugh.
2:17:57
andrewcoltrin: That guy's…
2:17:59
Tad Eggleston: I don't even know what a truck is. The ready-made Cybertruck fountains.
2:18:07
andrewcoltrin: I was in a parked bathroom, I was like, yep.
2:18:11
Tad Eggleston: Andrew, it has been a pleasure. I hope this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
2:18:16
Tad Eggleston: To, to quote, to quote Humphrey Bogart. Oh, yeah.
2:18:21
Tad Eggleston: And we will see you after the next page.