Latest / Armstrong & Getty One More Thing / Would-Be Fun Havers
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: So obvious. Even the Canadians figured it out. It's one
- 0:03Speaker 1: more thing.
- 0:07Speaker 2: One more thing.
- 0:09Speaker 3: Wow, way to sucker punch the Canadians, for some reason.
- 0:14Speaker 1: Actually have a couple of friends who are Canadians, and
- 0:16Speaker 1: they're absolutely delightful people.
- 0:18Speaker 2: Absolutely.
- 0:19Speaker 1: I love Canadians.
- 0:20Speaker 3: I love Canada. I was talking to my kids the
- 0:22Speaker 3: other day that we're gonna do that this summer. We've
- 0:24Speaker 3: been wanting to get him up there and we just
- 0:26Speaker 3: never get around to it. I love Vancouver Island and
- 0:29Speaker 3: then we'll take the ferry across and then drive the
- 0:31Speaker 3: part Canada. I'm always talking about stopping at the maple
- 0:34Speaker 3: syrup tastings.
- 0:36Speaker 1: Right.
- 0:38Speaker 4: You laughed, It's beautiful.
- 0:40Speaker 1: You laughed when I said I love Canadians. What's the
- 0:42Speaker 1: story banks bread taking? Yeah?
- 0:44Speaker 5: No, I just I I laughed because you you slammed
- 0:47Speaker 5: the Canadians and you're like, no, I got I got
- 0:49Speaker 5: friends that are Canadians.
- 0:51Speaker 2: You didn't do that.
- 0:52Speaker 4: It was like the token, like, oh, I've got black friends.
- 0:55Speaker 1: They're a little Canadians are a little slow, everybody, that's
- 0:58Speaker 1: what they're fine folks. Right.
- 1:01Speaker 3: A couple of texts before we get to Joe, Why
- 1:04Speaker 3: Joe hates Canadians.
- 1:05Speaker 1: I do not hate Canadians.
- 1:07Speaker 2: Thought, that's what you said.
- 1:08Speaker 3: No, I wasn't paying attention. I have to share this
- 1:11Speaker 3: as a text or I took my six year old
- 1:13Speaker 3: granddaughter to San Francisco. While we're walking to lunch, a
- 1:16Speaker 3: group of men rode by in their bikes, absolutely naked.
- 1:19Speaker 3: My granddaughter said, Nana, who is running this place out
- 1:22Speaker 3: of the mouths of babes?
- 1:24Speaker 2: Yep, no, wow.
- 1:25Speaker 3: Sort of thing you will see in San Francisco, completely
- 1:27Speaker 3: naked men on bicycles, And some people think that's wonderful
- 1:32Speaker 3: for some reason, that that's like progress for some reason.
- 1:36Speaker 2: I'll never understand it.
- 1:37Speaker 3: A bunch of Twistoids also mentioned at the end of
- 1:40Speaker 3: the radio show on the twenty first that it was
- 1:42Speaker 3: my birthday and for some reason, I've never cared less
- 1:48Speaker 3: about my birthday than now. And I'm not exactly sure
- 1:50Speaker 3: if it's wisdom and maturity or depression and I've lost
- 1:55Speaker 3: the ability to enjoy life. But we did get this text,
- 1:59Speaker 3: fuck your birthday. Everyone has when you're not special.
- 2:02Speaker 2: Geez, thank you for that.
- 2:06Speaker 1: All right, that's that's a person I really pity. Yeah,
- 2:10Speaker 1: imagine being that unhappy.
- 2:12Speaker 2: I just I don't even know. I don't even know.
- 2:15Speaker 3: When I see that sort of stuff on social media
- 2:17Speaker 3: and you see a lot, it's always like, wow.
- 2:20Speaker 4: First of all, Jack, happy birthday. Second of all, fuck
- 2:23Speaker 4: that person.
- 2:25Speaker 1: There you go, Yeah, that has nothing to do with you, obviously,
- 2:28Speaker 1: I know.
- 2:28Speaker 2: You know that Jack. No, no, no, no.
- 2:30Speaker 1: Boy, that's that's entirely about that person.
- 2:33Speaker 3: When I come across that stuff on social media. Really,
- 2:37Speaker 3: honest to God, the thing I think is I need
- 2:39Speaker 3: to make sure my kids don't end up like that,
- 2:42Speaker 3: to where they're so miserable at the with the lur
- 2:45Speaker 3: lives that they have to strike out at anything that
- 2:49Speaker 3: might be pleasant or happy for someone, Yeah, to get
- 2:52Speaker 3: through the day. I mean, Jesu, it's so awful.
- 2:55Speaker 5: Or someone that that maybe isn't so miserable that they
- 2:57Speaker 5: do that, but does it for joy?
- 3:00Speaker 1: You know?
- 3:00Speaker 5: There are those people that that, I mean, you see
- 3:03Speaker 5: them all over the internet that create these accounts just
- 3:05Speaker 5: to troll.
- 3:06Speaker 4: People because they enjoy it.
- 3:07Speaker 3: I've only known I've only I've only personally known two trolls,
- 3:11Speaker 3: but they both had the same attitude. So I'm just
- 3:13Speaker 3: assuming that that's kind of common among.
- 3:15Speaker 2: The troll community.
- 3:16Speaker 3: They really get such enjoyment of there's somebody happy. I'm
- 3:21Speaker 3: gonna try to take some of that. And it's just
- 3:25Speaker 3: think it's so weird. I've never had that feeling. You know, somebody,
- 3:29Speaker 3: somebody's sickness, somebody got somebody got a new car, and
- 3:32Speaker 3: I say.
- 3:34Speaker 2: I heard they suck or just something like that. What
- 3:37Speaker 2: what is that like?
- 3:38Speaker 4: Why?
- 3:39Speaker 2: Why?
- 3:39Speaker 1: Well, as I've always said, people who are too dopey
- 3:44Speaker 1: or lazy to build things, the only satisfaction they get
- 3:46Speaker 1: is from breaking things. And again that's pathetic.
- 3:50Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like the person who vandalizes the playground equipment.
- 3:53Speaker 3: I mean, it's the same sort of thing.
- 3:54Speaker 2: It's just awful.
- 3:55Speaker 1: The only effect they will ever have on the world
- 3:57Speaker 1: before they are dead is to break things and hurt people.
- 4:00Speaker 1: So that's what they do. And and again it's it's
- 4:03Speaker 1: just painfully pathetic.
- 4:08Speaker 2: What is a birthday dinner for you?
- 4:10Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I'm gonna go eat steak tonight and some
- 4:14Speaker 3: sort of ill advised dessert'd be my guess. It's more
- 4:16Speaker 3: for my kids than me. I don't know if I
- 4:17Speaker 3: would even leave the house tonight if.
- 4:19Speaker 4: It would kids birthday bang bang.
- 4:22Speaker 2: Oh boy, that sounds like a challenge.
- 4:27Speaker 4: Steak push ups. That's the that's the deal.
- 4:30Speaker 3: A bang bang is back to back meals of completely
- 4:32Speaker 3: different kinds. So what do I follow steak with pizza?
- 4:37Speaker 3: Stop and get a pizza?
- 4:38Speaker 1: Oh? Oh, steak is a dense, dense first blow.
- 4:43Speaker 2: It's gonna leave a mark. Yeah wow.
- 4:46Speaker 1: Following up steak something completely different, nice uh Ramen restaurant
- 4:52Speaker 1: or something that's a little hipster for you.
- 4:54Speaker 4: Maybe Italian though in the noodle the noodle realm.
- 4:58Speaker 1: Well right, let's go raman a. I like the spaghetti
- 5:01Speaker 1: and meatballs.
- 5:02Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 5:04Speaker 3: Yeah, I did an accidental bang bang with my brother
- 5:07Speaker 3: when he was in town when I had cancer. We
- 5:10Speaker 3: ate a pizza not knowing my wife was making dinner,
- 5:12Speaker 3: and then we got home and she had made a
- 5:14Speaker 3: big dinner, like a big homemade dinner, because my brother
- 5:17Speaker 3: was in town, and so you can't you.
- 5:18Speaker 2: Know, So Mum's the word.
- 5:20Speaker 3: We had stuffed ourselves with pizza, but then brought it
- 5:23Speaker 3: hard for that homemade dinner.
- 5:25Speaker 2: Also, well, wait a man up.
- 5:27Speaker 4: Yeah, I commend you for that.
- 5:29Speaker 2: It's just the polite thing to do. Mention this on
- 5:32Speaker 2: The Armstrong and Getty Show.
- 5:33Speaker 1: Wanted to flesh it out a little bit this big
- 5:34Speaker 1: Canadian study that came out from the Canadian Pediatric Society
- 5:38Speaker 1: strongly stating that the nanny state has gone too far.
- 5:44Speaker 1: The helicopter parent nation of veal calves spirit of the
- 5:48Speaker 1: modern world and that kids need more unstructured playtime. And
- 5:52Speaker 1: I love the way this is written. It's our friends
- 5:54Speaker 1: at Reason dot com. But kids need to climb trees,
- 5:58Speaker 1: jump off things, and ride their bikes, even at great speed,
- 6:01Speaker 1: according to the Canadian's Healthy Childhood Development through outdoor risky play.
- 6:06Speaker 1: Wait a minute, risky it's the sort of finding that's
- 6:09Speaker 1: almost considered radical these days. Uh they mentioned this developmental
- 6:13Speaker 1: psychologist the University of British Columbia has been championing risky
- 6:18Speaker 1: play for more than a decade.
- 6:21Speaker 3: Yes, you remember my story of some of my sons
- 6:23Speaker 3: are super super into skateboarding and we took a trip
- 6:26Speaker 3: to Los Angeles where skateboarding was kind of born. You know,
- 6:29Speaker 3: they're in Venice Beach and the dog Park or whatever
- 6:32Speaker 3: that's called the dog Pound. But we went around all
- 6:36Speaker 3: these skateboard parks. I'd Google Google them and I'd go
- 6:39Speaker 3: to them, and everyone but one had all these rules
- 6:44Speaker 3: about you had to have a helmet, and knee pads
- 6:46Speaker 3: and elbow pads, or you weren't allowed to skateboard there
- 6:49Speaker 3: in the city where skateboarding was invented by like, you know,
- 6:53Speaker 3: cool kids just being dangerous and wild, and we didn't
- 6:57Speaker 3: get to skateboard because we didn't bring all those pads
- 6:58Speaker 3: and everything like that. He doesn't use knee pads and
- 7:00Speaker 3: opal bads. But how nuts is that?
- 7:04Speaker 1: So? The Kinnucker Pediatric Society wasn't ready to endorse this
- 7:08Speaker 1: doctor's call for action. It was only when faced with
- 7:10Speaker 1: soaring rates of childhood anxiety, depression, obesity, and even myopia shortsightedness,
- 7:16Speaker 1: that Canadian health officials realized that quote letting kids go
- 7:18Speaker 1: out and play could be a real way to deal
- 7:20Speaker 1: with a lot of these challenging issues. That's because the
- 7:23Speaker 1: doctors came to recognize two truths. Number One, children are
- 7:27Speaker 1: hardwired to play because it aids their development. It teaches
- 7:31Speaker 1: them how to take action, get along and solve problems.
- 7:34Speaker 1: And Second, replacing rollicking kid led play with structured adult
- 7:40Speaker 1: led play was a mistake. It deprived children of a
- 7:44Speaker 1: million opportunities to exercise their autonomy. It also increased the
- 7:48Speaker 1: risk of physical danger. Oddly, enough and you get me
- 7:52Speaker 1: started on this, I will go all day about You
- 7:56Speaker 1: learn volumes. When you invent a game, you invent the rules,
- 8:00Speaker 1: you enforce the rules. You have disagreements about the rules,
- 8:03Speaker 1: You have the interplay between human beings negotiating the outcome
- 8:07Speaker 1: to that. You see who goes along with it who doesn't.
- 8:10Speaker 1: You see people who behave with dignity, You see people
- 8:13Speaker 1: who behave in a petulant manner. You learn stacks and
- 8:18Speaker 1: stacks and stacks of things about human beings by doing
- 8:23Speaker 1: that that a kid could never learn in a book
- 8:25Speaker 1: and never learn from adult led play. Actually I'm a
- 8:30Speaker 1: militant on this topic.
- 8:31Speaker 3: They actually outlawed that at the grade school near me.
- 8:35Speaker 3: I know because there's a game that the kids all
- 8:37Speaker 3: play that they made up on the court there on
- 8:41Speaker 3: the asphalt, where they bounce a ball around and you
- 8:43Speaker 3: hit it with your hands and keep scoring.
- 8:45Speaker 2: Stuff like that.
- 8:45Speaker 3: But anyway, they came up with official school rules that
- 8:47Speaker 3: everybody has to follow and nobody's able to deviate from.
- 8:51Speaker 1: I despise that thinking.
- 8:53Speaker 2: I despise those people. Well.
- 8:56Speaker 3: Their reasoning, though wrong, was it would cause less content
- 9:00Speaker 3: than less arguing. And although your point is.
- 9:02Speaker 2: Oh, good. It's the content prime of the kids.
- 9:04Speaker 1: The chance right, yeah, yeah yeah. Listen to another Brick
- 9:09Speaker 1: in the Wall part two. If you get a chance later.
- 9:12Speaker 1: That's a big floyd an old band.
- 9:13Speaker 2: Anyway.
- 9:14Speaker 1: So play does those things that Oh I'm sorry, I
- 9:18Speaker 1: skipped ahead. When kids play without adult supervision, they hone
- 9:21Speaker 1: their social and emotional coping skills. What's more, free play
- 9:25Speaker 1: can quote significantly reduce children's risk for elevated anxiety, and
- 9:29Speaker 1: play does that in a rather obvious way, says Peter Grave,
- 9:32Speaker 1: professor of psychology and neuroscience at Boston College and co
- 9:36Speaker 1: founder of with actually the author of this article, with
- 9:39Speaker 1: an organization called let Grow. He says, quote from an
- 9:42Speaker 1: evolutionary standpoint, why do children want to play in a
- 9:45Speaker 1: risky way? Because this is how they develop a little courage.
- 9:49Speaker 1: They deliberately put themselves into situations where they're feeling fear
- 9:53Speaker 1: so that unconsciously they can have a sense of control
- 9:56Speaker 1: over it. Quote I can feel this fear and survive it.
- 10:00Speaker 1: So when they face a real emergency, they're slightly less
- 10:02Speaker 1: likely to panic. They're also less fearful because they know
- 10:05Speaker 1: quote something can happen and I can manage it. The
- 10:09Speaker 1: Canadian report recommends pediatricians promote risky plays preventive medicine for
- 10:14Speaker 1: mental health. But what about the physical danger that risky
- 10:17Speaker 1: play sometimes involves? How can doctors and parents in schools
- 10:20Speaker 1: ignore that? By looking at the statistics, says the first
- 10:25Speaker 1: psychologist lady, from twenty oh seven to twenty twenty two,
- 10:28Speaker 1: there are two deaths from falls on the playground and
- 10:31Speaker 1: four hundred and eighty from motor vehicle crashes. This is
- 10:35Speaker 1: in Canada two to four hundred and eighty. So if
- 10:40Speaker 1: you don't let your kid engage in risky play, you
- 10:43Speaker 1: need to be two hundred and forty times more adamant
- 10:47Speaker 1: that they're never in a motor vehicle. As the Pediatrics
- 10:51Speaker 1: paper notes, quote, the research is established that children are
- 10:54Speaker 1: less likely to be injured while engaging in unstructured activities
- 10:57Speaker 1: than when playing an organized sport.
- 10:59Speaker 2: Sports are mortane.
- 11:00Speaker 1: Interest in goof around play starting to sound like the
- 11:02Speaker 1: real risk and risky plays that our culture is busy
- 11:04Speaker 1: outlawing it. Think it signs like the one in suburban Washington,
- 11:08Speaker 1: d C. Playground like you were talking about. Check that
- 11:10Speaker 1: warns would be fun, havers, adult supervision required.
- 11:15Speaker 2: Would be fun. Havers.
- 11:18Speaker 1: So how do we normalize free play again? The one
- 11:21Speaker 1: doctor tells parents start with an underwhelming experiment. Let them
- 11:25Speaker 1: out in the backyard while you're watching for a few minutes.
- 11:28Speaker 1: The next day, sit in the kitchen and don't watch.
- 11:31Speaker 1: You and your kids will get used to the time apart.
- 11:34Speaker 1: Another way is to ask your kids school to start
- 11:36Speaker 1: a let grow play club. That's when the school stays
- 11:39Speaker 1: open for mixed age free play. An adult is there,
- 11:41Speaker 1: but like a lifeguard, they don't organize the games or
- 11:44Speaker 1: solve the spats.
- 11:46Speaker 2: Oh lifeguard.
- 11:46Speaker 3: Then you had to bring up the community pool, which
- 11:49Speaker 3: is you know, doesn't allow cannon balls, or a local pool.
- 11:53Speaker 4: They took the diving board out of ours, yeah.
- 11:55Speaker 2: Place twenty years ago.
- 11:57Speaker 1: Yeah, treading water.
- 12:00Speaker 3: Treading water. You can jump feet first into the water,
- 12:03Speaker 3: but you can't turn in the air. You have to
- 12:05Speaker 3: be facing the same directions when your feet left the cement.
- 12:08Speaker 3: Or they will whistle you and come over with the
- 12:09Speaker 3: clipboard and fill out some forms.
- 12:11Speaker 4: And no diving or you're getting benched.
- 12:13Speaker 2: Oh diving, what are you? Insane? Shit?
- 12:15Speaker 1: They jail you for that. It's as if we are
- 12:18Speaker 1: deliberately trying to give kids anxiety and lack of confidence.
- 12:24Speaker 1: If I were to design a program to accomplish that,
- 12:28Speaker 1: it would look a lot like the modern world. And
- 12:30Speaker 1: I'm reminded, and I wish I'd thought of this in
- 12:32Speaker 1: advance to grab this. We talked about this. I think
- 12:35Speaker 1: it feels like it was last year. I'm getting old.
- 12:37Speaker 1: It was probably fifteen years ago. In Germany, the big
- 12:41Speaker 1: association of German insurance companies came out and issued a
- 12:45Speaker 1: statement in favor of letting kids play free and take
- 12:50Speaker 1: on risk because they did studies and they make their
- 12:53Speaker 1: living this way, so they're serious about it. They did
- 12:56Speaker 1: studies showing that kids don't grow up with an ability
- 12:59Speaker 1: to assess risk. They don't know if they can do
- 13:02Speaker 1: this or handle that, or endure that or whatever, because
- 13:06Speaker 1: they've never been given the chance to try. So they're
- 13:09Speaker 1: much more prone to serious accidents and injury.
- 13:12Speaker 3: So the only way out of this is if the
- 13:13Speaker 3: insurance companies decide it's actually cheaper to let kids play
- 13:18Speaker 3: and have a few bumps and bruises, then we pay
- 13:21Speaker 3: for their anxiety medicine, or they get into worse accidents
- 13:24Speaker 3: when they're older.
- 13:24Speaker 2: That's just fantastic.
- 13:26Speaker 1: Wow, Yeah, you're right, what a conundrum. So yeah, the
- 13:28Speaker 1: insurance companies have to all get together and say, hey, look,
- 13:31Speaker 1: some kids playing ball at another kid's house. Don't sue
- 13:34Speaker 1: the parents for the cost of the broken arm.
- 13:36Speaker 2: Just just let it go.
- 13:38Speaker 5: Yeah, that's likely, Joe, You're right, that was from last year.
- 13:41Speaker 5: And they wanted the children to develop risk competence.
- 13:45Speaker 4: Yeah, risk playgrounds.
- 13:46Speaker 3: Yeah, so nuts, so nuts, And it's so tragic. Yeah,
- 13:55Speaker 3: how did we get so the kids didn't do this
- 13:57Speaker 3: to themselves? All the parents are doing it. So how
- 14:00Speaker 3: did How did generations that grew up running around having
- 14:05Speaker 3: a good time and it's not like you know, I
- 14:08Speaker 3: know a half a dozen people that lost an eye
- 14:10Speaker 3: or an arm or died. How did we then decide
- 14:14Speaker 3: that we were going to raise our kids differently?
- 14:17Speaker 2: How did that happen?
- 14:18Speaker 4: Maybe the Internet?
- 14:19Speaker 2: Maybe the Internet? Yeah.
- 14:21Speaker 1: The theories that I've found most compelling is a the growth
- 14:26Speaker 1: of coast to coast media, so that if something horrific
- 14:29Speaker 1: happens to a child in Florida, you hear about it
- 14:32Speaker 1: in Seattle in a way that never used to be
- 14:34Speaker 1: the case. Secondly, and I'm intrigued by this theory. I
- 14:38Speaker 1: haven't really dug into it as people who become less
- 14:41Speaker 1: and less religious and less and less believers in another life.
- 14:48Speaker 1: That makes the only life you'll ever have worthy of
- 14:52Speaker 1: obsessive protection. You've got to stay safe and alive as
- 14:59Speaker 1: even to a red level of caution.
- 15:02Speaker 2: That's intriguing.
- 15:04Speaker 1: It's kind of a big, big question. Then you got liability, right,
- 15:09Speaker 1: And third, safety ism, which is a product of all
- 15:13Speaker 1: those things I mentioned in a couple other factors where
- 15:16Speaker 1: people adopted safety first, is like an unquestionable maxim for
- 15:21Speaker 1: living life. As I've said many times through the years,
- 15:24Speaker 1: how about safety? Third, fun British third, and I'm not
- 15:28Speaker 1: talking about your operating an e fing wood chipper.
- 15:30Speaker 2: Okay, Fun first, let's have fun with the wood chipper.
- 15:33Speaker 1: Yeah, and then maybe innovation second, adventure second, safety, third.
- 15:39Speaker 3: Yeah, the combination of not wanting kids to get hurt,
- 15:42Speaker 3: which is a decent impulse. I don't want a kid
- 15:44Speaker 3: to get hurt either. I'm thinking about this person I
- 15:46Speaker 3: know who when the skateboard park oput up in town.
- 15:49Speaker 3: They told me that they volunteered with some other mothers
- 15:51Speaker 3: to go there on Saturday mornings with clipboards and check
- 15:55Speaker 3: kids in and make sure they were all wearing their helmets,
- 15:57Speaker 3: and I thought, wow, that's what you did with your
- 15:59Speaker 3: Saturday to the skateboard park and be the skateboard Nazis.
- 16:03Speaker 3: But I know this person. They're super nice. They were
- 16:06Speaker 3: just thought something dangerous came to town and we're gonna
- 16:08Speaker 3: try to help keep kids safe. They were wrong. But
- 16:10Speaker 3: then you got the other part of it, the liability
- 16:13Speaker 3: where your insurance carrier just says, hey, if you let
- 16:16Speaker 3: kids run on the grass and somebody gets slips and falls,
- 16:19Speaker 3: we're gonna get sued. So you better not let kids
- 16:21Speaker 3: run on the grass if it rained the day before,
- 16:23Speaker 3: or we'll drop your We'll drop your insurance, and then
- 16:25Speaker 3: you have no choice.
- 16:26Speaker 1: We clearly need to establish the conservative States of America
- 16:32Speaker 1: or that crap is not allowed. It's in the few
- 16:37Speaker 1: regulations we have, and we run an experiment with all
- 16:40Speaker 1: the things you're talking about. Kids are allowed to play
- 16:43Speaker 1: in risky ways. Your kid breaks your arm, their arm,
- 16:46Speaker 1: you pay for it. And just the experiment on the
- 16:51Speaker 1: other side has been a miserable, effing failure.
- 16:54Speaker 2: Miserable and it's getting worse.
- 16:56Speaker 1: So yeah, well, in some places it is worse than others.
- 17:04Speaker 4: Jack's birthday dinner here we go, steak spaghetti mcflury.
- 17:09Speaker 3: Ah flurry, that might be the dessert on the way
- 17:13Speaker 3: home to mcflury, I love that dessert.
- 17:16Speaker 1: Well, happy eights birthday because you're speaking like a child.
- 17:21Speaker 4: Yes, happy birthday.
- 17:23Speaker 2: Happy birthday. Well, I guess that's it. Spaghetti to mcfory.