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Why's that dude in that dumpster? · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
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Speaker 1: from House toff works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
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Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant. We are the Koch Brothers and
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Speaker 1: we own you. How you doing good, sir? Top of
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Speaker 1: theod morning. I saw you give me a tip of
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Speaker 1: the hat and everything off the old cap. Wow, we're
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Speaker 1: suddenly like Will Ferrell and anchor man. You're a London
0:38
Speaker 1: gentleman went in Rome. Uh, Chuck, I think before we
0:42
Speaker 1: go any further, we should um plug our Kuba Team,
0:45
Speaker 1: Big time awesome Cuba team. That's k I v A
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Speaker 1: dot Org slash team Slash stuff you should know. Nice. Yeah,
0:52
Speaker 1: that's where you can find us. Yeah. Um we founded
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Speaker 1: that team in October two, right, brilliant idea. Yeah. Um.
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Speaker 1: By October two, last October, we'd already hit the quarter
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Speaker 1: of a million dollars in loans mark right, Um, we
1:13
Speaker 1: are on track to hit half a million dollars in
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Speaker 1: loans made to entrepreneurs in developing countries. Um. By May
1:21
Speaker 1: we just hit four hundred thousand. Our team did, and
1:24
Speaker 1: we just wanted to let everybody know who's not a member,
1:26
Speaker 1: the team is open. Just go on and make a loan. Uh,
1:30
Speaker 1: twenty five bucks is the lowest increment you can make.
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Speaker 1: But it's alone. This is not just an outright donation.
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Speaker 1: Because it's repaid. You can reloan again, or you can
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Speaker 1: take it and go on your merry way. But it's
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Speaker 1: pretty cool. It's a good feeling. Everybody on the Kiva
1:44
Speaker 1: message board is a happy chipper person. And I don't
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Speaker 1: know that they are all the time, but I think
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Speaker 1: when they come to Kiva and hang out there for
1:54
Speaker 1: a little while, they get happy. Feel better about yourself.
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Speaker 1: I know I do. But yes, halfs half million, it
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Speaker 1: was nice. It's crazy. Who knew? Well, that's Cuba. Also
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Speaker 1: we're on Facebook stuff you should know and Twitter, the Twitter,
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Speaker 1: s Y s K podcast. Yes, all right, let's go
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Speaker 1: to sleep. All right, let's get started. Huh, Chuck, did
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Speaker 1: you know that UM xerox and I think the twenty
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Speaker 1: one century, maybe a little before that, UM took out
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Speaker 1: ads in all sorts of publications. I saw it in
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Speaker 1: some sort of bar association UM magazine. I can't remember
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Speaker 1: which one. Um saying hey, Mr and Mrs Consumer or
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Speaker 1: Mr Mrs Lawyer, UM, don't use the word xerox, use
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Speaker 1: the word photocopy instead. Yeah, xerox is. It's like a
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Speaker 1: Kleenex or cute dip or as Britain was once a
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Speaker 1: brand name, Heroin once a brand name. UM. And the
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Speaker 1: reason that Xerox is so up in arms about this
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Speaker 1: is because if enough people's start using your term generically,
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Speaker 1: especially as a verb like xerox ng or facebooking, you
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Speaker 1: can lose your trademark status. It can become a part
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Speaker 1: of the vernacular. And it has happened to to some
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Speaker 1: other um, some other brands before. Evidently Alan Wrench Um,
3:23
Speaker 1: like I said, Aspirin, Escalator Um, the Jungle Gym, Tarmac,
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Speaker 1: Yo Yo, Zipper, all of these were once brand named
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Speaker 1: shattering my everything, the illusion of everything I know, But
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Speaker 1: isn't that weird? And then there's a there's a whole
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Speaker 1: this is pretty cool. There's a whole list of stuff
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Speaker 1: that's um become. It's in that's in danger, it's in
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Speaker 1: that realm where xerox is right now, where it's very
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Speaker 1: commonly used. But these people still managed to keep their
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Speaker 1: their trademark Jaws of Life, Yeah, Neilla Wafers Yeah, ban
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Speaker 1: Pong Yeah, is table tennis Yeah, and um, let's see uh,
4:02
Speaker 1: Skivvy's is underwear. Crock pot Rolodex is technically supposed to
4:06
Speaker 1: be called a rotary card file. We should just read
4:09
Speaker 1: each one of these with a question mark at the end.
4:10
Speaker 1: After everyone for Mica, go card, and my voice will
4:15
Speaker 1: go higher and higher until you can't even hear any
4:16
Speaker 1: more untill only dogs start howling. Jack. This is one
4:20
Speaker 1: that I knew to. Realtor is a real estate agent
4:23
Speaker 1: that is not any real real estate agent. A realtor
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Speaker 1: is a specific company's real estate agent, centuries any one
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Speaker 1: real tour oka. Um, but you have all of these uh,
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Speaker 1: all of these bands are all these brands band Aid,
4:37
Speaker 1: by the way, that's why I said that. UM. Originally
4:40
Speaker 1: their tune was I Am Stuck on band Aids because
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Speaker 1: band Aid stuck on me. They changed it to I
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Speaker 1: Am Stuck on band Aid brand because band Aid stuck
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Speaker 1: on stuck in the brand because the adhesive. They don't
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Speaker 1: want to genericize their own name. There's one in this
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Speaker 1: list that I didn't see that should be and that
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Speaker 1: my friend is Dumpster. Did you know dumpster is a
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Speaker 1: trademark name. He told me, okay, well, the dumpster the
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Speaker 1: big trash bin usually on wheels um that can be
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Speaker 1: lifted by a garbage truck. That whole process was actually,
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Speaker 1: this whole process was originally called the Dempster dumpster, and
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Speaker 1: it was invented in by George Dempster, who was later
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Speaker 1: the mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee. And apparently up to that point,
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Speaker 1: if you were making something or you had a construction
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Speaker 1: job going on, you just park a dump truck nearby,
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Speaker 1: and everybody would throw their waist in or take piles
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Speaker 1: and moving into the dump truck. It was somebody's job.
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Speaker 1: So Dempster was like, why don't we just create this receptacle,
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Speaker 1: receptacle that we can eventually, you know, start by hoisting
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Speaker 1: with the chain and just dump into the back of
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Speaker 1: the dump truck, or you know, will eventually create these
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Speaker 1: hydraulic arms that can go into the slots on the
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Speaker 1: side of this dumpster with a capital and that can
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Speaker 1: just lift itself up into the back. I bet you,
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Speaker 1: he said, I'll call it the Dempster, and his wife said,
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Speaker 1: you're not calling that thing the Dempster. I'm not being
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Speaker 1: associated with trash and how about dumpster and she was
6:14
Speaker 1: like genius copyright at trade market pour me and Martini.
6:20
Speaker 1: So and I've always noticed have you ever noticed it
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Speaker 1: seems like a lot of waste management UM companies, especially
6:25
Speaker 1: locally owned ones, tend to have a person's first and
6:28
Speaker 1: last name, like Jackie Curtis Porta potties. Have you ever
6:33
Speaker 1: look around, You'll start to see it's really weird. Interesting,
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Speaker 1: It's a lot of pride um. But Chuck, the point
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Speaker 1: is the whole reason I say this is because um,
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Speaker 1: we had to fatten up freegans. Anytime we use the
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Speaker 1: word dumpster, we're using it with a capital D. I
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Speaker 1: just want to say, so we don't have to say
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Speaker 1: t M every time. The dumpsters with a capital D
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Speaker 1: every time we use it, and we're gonna use it
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Speaker 1: a lot because we are talking about freegans who are,
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Speaker 1: in other words, dumpster divers. Yes, Josh, the word freagan
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Speaker 1: is a combination with word free and vegan. Doesn't necessarily
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Speaker 1: mean they're vegan. I think they just thought I had
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Speaker 1: a nice ring. Probably, I'm sure a lot of them
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Speaker 1: were vegans when they started. Yeah, of course there's a
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Speaker 1: lot of overlap or maybe the guy was named Frogan
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Speaker 1: who started the movement. That's not true. No, actually his
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Speaker 1: name is Keith McHenry. Okay, Well, freagans, Josh, are I know?
7:25
Speaker 1: You know this are people who are it's also called
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Speaker 1: post consumerism or reclaimism. They are anti consumerism. They say,
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Speaker 1: we don't like this whole cycle of working and spending
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Speaker 1: and buying and wasting and trashing and then buying it again.
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Speaker 1: And we are going to try and reclaim and scavenge.
7:45
Speaker 1: We're gonna try and not buy things. We're gonna try
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Speaker 1: and not work, maybe just volunteer were we don't want
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Speaker 1: to pay rent. We're gonna squat when we can. And uh,
7:54
Speaker 1: that's what we are. We're freagans. In a very big
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Speaker 1: distinction between freagans and um tramps, hobo the homeless is
8:01
Speaker 1: that freakings are doing this by choice um and if
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Speaker 1: they don't actually have the money to buy food, they
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Speaker 1: usually have the skills or education to um to go
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Speaker 1: out and make the money needed to buy food. This
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Speaker 1: is all very much a lifestyle choice, and it is
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Speaker 1: also their very presence, Their very existence is a thumb
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Speaker 1: in the nose to the consumer economy that America has
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Speaker 1: which is in many ways very wasteful. One right, Uh,
8:29
Speaker 1: stat time, I guess in the United States of America,
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Speaker 1: Josh wastes billion pounds of food each year. That if
8:38
Speaker 1: you go by the stat that we waste a quarter
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Speaker 1: of our food, it's between a quarter and a half.
8:44
Speaker 1: I've seen a half. So it's entirely possible that a
8:48
Speaker 1: hundred and nineties six billion pounds of food are wasted
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Speaker 1: every year. And we'll get in two more specifics on
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Speaker 1: what kind of food is being thrown out, But a
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Speaker 1: lot of times it's not oh, this big box of uh,
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Speaker 1: completely rotted apples. It's uh, these apples are pretty bruised. Uh,
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Speaker 1: this container is mashed, So we're gonna throw this stuff
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Speaker 1: out exactly. Um, And I guess it's not just food.
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Speaker 1: You know, food makes a lot of sense. We need
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Speaker 1: food to live, work, play, freaking eyes, do whatever. Everybody
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Speaker 1: needs food. But food has a lot of other inputs
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Speaker 1: wrapped up into it. Right, Like I think we talked
9:27
Speaker 1: before about virtual water, like the movement of crops from
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Speaker 1: a place that has an abundance of water and can
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Speaker 1: grow these crops to a place that doesn't have it
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Speaker 1: is technically the movement of water needed to grow those crops.
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Speaker 1: You're just moving the crops, so there's a loss of
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Speaker 1: water when that's thrown away. There's a loss of energy
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Speaker 1: to produce and transport these things. Um, there's just all
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Speaker 1: of these losses represented by just throwing away of food,
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Speaker 1: and Freakings are like, okay, two things. Number one, I'm
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Speaker 1: gonna eat that food for free, because I'm not grossed
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Speaker 1: out by jumping jumping in your dumpster and technically it's
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Speaker 1: perfectly fine food. And number two, I'm also gonna do
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Speaker 1: it to make you feel like a jerk for throwing
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Speaker 1: it out right. Yeah, critics will fire right back at freakings.
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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well you're putting gas in your car and
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Speaker 1: you're using electricity to cook that food, so you're on
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Speaker 1: the grid, So you're a big hypocrite freaking say oh yeah,
10:18
Speaker 1: well every little bit counts, jerk. Everybody's calling one another jerk, yeah,
10:23
Speaker 1: pointing fingers. It just goes downhill from there, throwing food
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Speaker 1: at each other. Well, I do take issue with with
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Speaker 1: that a little bit, like I I do. It's true
10:30
Speaker 1: every little bit counts, um, And obviously you do need
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Speaker 1: electricity or heat or something to to live, to freaking
10:37
Speaker 1: another day. Um. The thing that gets me is the
10:39
Speaker 1: idea that, um, you should hitchhike um or hot box
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Speaker 1: cars or whatever, because that way, in that sense, you're
10:48
Speaker 1: just freeloading on somebody else who's using that gas and
10:51
Speaker 1: you're still using it too, You're just freeloading it. That's
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Speaker 1: the one that I do have an issue with is hitchhiking. Yeah,
10:59
Speaker 1: because I guess so they would fire back. Hey, dude,
11:01
Speaker 1: that train is going from here to Topeka. I can
11:03
Speaker 1: totally understand the train. And technically, if somebody, if you
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Speaker 1: only catch a ride with somebody in a distance or
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Speaker 1: for in the to the place that they're going anyway,
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Speaker 1: isn't that what hitchucking is? People out of their way here? Yeah?
11:18
Speaker 1: And plus where do you give them the person in return?
11:21
Speaker 1: I can understand the train. It's a company and yeah,
11:24
Speaker 1: well yeah, yeah, so uh freaking figure. We should point
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Speaker 1: out that freegans there's not an official organization. Uh, there
11:34
Speaker 1: is a website freaking uh f R E E g
11:36
Speaker 1: A and dot info and that's very robust and up
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Speaker 1: and running. Yeah, that's that's kind of the central home
11:42
Speaker 1: where you can learn how to forage urban forage. Uh,
11:46
Speaker 1: They also forage in the woods. We'll talk about that
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Speaker 1: in a minute. They have classes, they talk about scavenging sites, like, hey, dude,
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Speaker 1: the dumpster on the street is loaded with baked goods
11:58
Speaker 1: this morning. Get over there and it gets the other
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Speaker 1: And I want to say, also, I have nothing against
12:03
Speaker 1: freakan is um um, it's just freeloading drives me crazy.
12:07
Speaker 1: But for the most part, freakans don't you know hippie
12:10
Speaker 1: rob Yeah, yeah, heeries again. But if for the most
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Speaker 1: part freakans um don't freeload. And there they they squat,
12:18
Speaker 1: but they squat in abandoned buildings. It's not being used anymore.
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Speaker 1: They they eat free food, but it's food that other
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Speaker 1: people throughout. Um. But the I think the key here
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Speaker 1: that really differentiates freagans from other people who eat out dumpsters,
12:33
Speaker 1: aside from being able to buy food, is that they
12:36
Speaker 1: actually do work or they do activities. They're just not
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Speaker 1: doing it for money. So for example, they volunteer, right,
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Speaker 1: because how much money do you need if you eat
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Speaker 1: out of a dumpster on purpose and you don't have
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Speaker 1: any you know, house payment or anything. So you have
12:53
Speaker 1: all this extra free time aside from foraging and um
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Speaker 1: most of them tend to volunteer or um work on
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Speaker 1: activist causes. Like there's a freaking colony um in old
13:04
Speaker 1: growth forests around North America where basically they just built
13:08
Speaker 1: tree houses in these huge old trees and said now
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Speaker 1: you can't cut them down. It's called the resistance community, right, yeah,
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Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. It's a cool thing to do
13:16
Speaker 1: with your time. So let's talk for a second about freaking's.
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Speaker 1: The key to their philosophy to me is they think
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Speaker 1: that consumerism is bad because it destroys the environment through
13:26
Speaker 1: things like deforestation, factory farming, labor practices that stink, and
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Speaker 1: it's all profits centered. So they think, uh, you know,
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Speaker 1: that's implicit approval. If you're working, yeah, living in what
13:39
Speaker 1: most people get, still in a normal life, working and buying,
13:42
Speaker 1: you're saying that all this, all this is okay with
13:44
Speaker 1: you because you're taking part in it. We don't want
13:46
Speaker 1: any part of it. So we're gonna do our thing.
13:48
Speaker 1: We're gonna not upgrade our iPhone. We probably wouldn't get
13:52
Speaker 1: an iPhone. We have an old flip phone, or maybe
13:54
Speaker 1: we don't even have a phone like that. We have
13:56
Speaker 1: cans on the strength. I'm not gonna update my fashion
13:59
Speaker 1: because the sweat her is perfectly nice. Just because Bill
14:01
Speaker 1: Cosby might have worn it in it's still a great sweater.
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Speaker 1: Your mom liked it, and fashion is like, how important
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Speaker 1: is that really is there? You know their philosophy. Um,
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Speaker 1: we're gonna repair things that we have to. That's that's
14:17
Speaker 1: that's another big point with volunteering and and um donating
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Speaker 1: time and all that. Um. Like, if you can do
14:23
Speaker 1: something like repair somebody's camp stove, that's a valuable activity, right,
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Speaker 1: and uh, in the end, Josh, what they end up
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Speaker 1: with is a lifestyle that is very much not financially
14:37
Speaker 1: dependent on things like, uh, some stinky job that you
14:41
Speaker 1: have to do that you hate doing, so that frees
14:43
Speaker 1: them up. They're like, Hey, I need a couple hundred
14:45
Speaker 1: bucks a month to live, so I'm gonna make that
14:48
Speaker 1: by doing some odd jobs. And then I'm gonna volunteer
14:50
Speaker 1: and give back, right, And also you can you can
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Speaker 1: get back when you give and you volunteer through things
14:57
Speaker 1: like time banks. There's a website um called TimeBank dot
15:00
Speaker 1: org that I found on the freaking website and basically
15:04
Speaker 1: it's like, um, let's say that I know how to
15:07
Speaker 1: repair your bike, and you know how to um teach
15:11
Speaker 1: people how to play the guitar. So I'll go, you know,
15:15
Speaker 1: repair your bike, and and you teach me how to
15:17
Speaker 1: play the guitar um and it's equitable. We don't remember
15:20
Speaker 1: in the bartering podcast that doesn't always happen. You sometimes
15:23
Speaker 1: have to engage in multilateral barters all that kind of thing.
15:27
Speaker 1: Time banks get around that by saying like, Okay, well
15:30
Speaker 1: you went and volunteered at the animal shelter for a
15:31
Speaker 1: couple of hours, you earned two time dollars that you
15:35
Speaker 1: can turn around and use for anything, you know, from
15:38
Speaker 1: a member of this time bank. So that's pretty cool too,
15:41
Speaker 1: although again it's pretty much impossible to get away from
15:44
Speaker 1: currency in one form or fashion. Huh Yeah, I mean
15:47
Speaker 1: most freegans have a very limited uh budget to endorse
15:52
Speaker 1: your lifestyle. They're they're probably not completely free, although there
15:56
Speaker 1: there might be some that don't use money at all,
15:58
Speaker 1: but most of them like limited as much as possible.
16:02
Speaker 1: So where's this going on, Josh? It's going on all
16:04
Speaker 1: over the world. But if I was a freaking I
16:08
Speaker 1: would move to New York City, New York City, New
16:10
Speaker 1: York City. Yeah, because New York city has got a
16:13
Speaker 1: lot of rich folks. That means there's gonna be a
16:15
Speaker 1: lot of great trash. I know, what do you Allen's trash? Yeah,
16:21
Speaker 1: and in trash Day in New York, imagine it's a
16:23
Speaker 1: field day and the night before trash night, which is
16:26
Speaker 1: called um. It's pretty bad. You know. The worst in
16:31
Speaker 1: New York is in the summertime and it's hot and
16:35
Speaker 1: it's rainy, and it's trash day and the sidewalks are
16:40
Speaker 1: just full of garbage or in the middle of a
16:42
Speaker 1: garbage strike. I mean, hats off to whoever makes that
16:45
Speaker 1: city run. They're doing a good job, I think Michael Bloomberg,
16:48
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, it's off to you, then, sir, h
16:51
Speaker 1: They forage in New York for things like furniture, bags
16:55
Speaker 1: of clothes, electronics, Like they'll camp out behind an office
16:59
Speaker 1: that's moving. M All of what you just said is
17:03
Speaker 1: called urban foraging, right. It all fall falls under that umbrella,
17:06
Speaker 1: which is just like foraging, except rather than looking for
17:10
Speaker 1: um routes to drink water from, you're getting office chairs
17:14
Speaker 1: for your squad or water. Yeah, that's another thing you
17:18
Speaker 1: want to But the point is is the the um
17:22
Speaker 1: the city is the forest with everything you need and
17:25
Speaker 1: then some if you know where to look and you
17:27
Speaker 1: can hold your nose. It depends. So you know, every
17:33
Speaker 1: everyone who's ever once a bad kid knows that the
17:35
Speaker 1: cops can go through your trash once it comes out
17:37
Speaker 1: to the curb. So there is actually a Supreme Court
17:41
Speaker 1: case UM from California v. Greenwood, wherein the the Supreme
17:47
Speaker 1: Court ruled that cops could once you put your trash
17:51
Speaker 1: out it was public property. You expected someone else to
17:55
Speaker 1: come along and take it eventually. And that means that
17:58
Speaker 1: anybody wants you can go to your trash, including cops
18:01
Speaker 1: looking for evidence that you're a drug dealer, or freakans
18:04
Speaker 1: looking for bananas that still look pretty good. Yeah, freakings thought, hey,
18:08
Speaker 1: this should apply to us too, right, Well, that's what
18:11
Speaker 1: they use and I think they I think they use
18:13
Speaker 1: it to a great success. Although there are a lot
18:16
Speaker 1: of laws UM like local, state, regional, municipal laws that
18:20
Speaker 1: UM are anti scavenging laws, basically because most people think
18:26
Speaker 1: of people who go dumpster diving is strictly UM hobos
18:30
Speaker 1: who you don't necessarily want around. I'm not sure that
18:34
Speaker 1: there's plenty of cities out there, you know, well, a
18:37
Speaker 1: lot of stores, grocery stores and the like will lock
18:40
Speaker 1: up and cage up their dumpsters to discourage this kind
18:42
Speaker 1: of thing. Some will put sharks in their dumpsters. Yeah,
18:46
Speaker 1: land sharks very dangerous if you come across one of those. Uh.
18:51
Speaker 1: The deal is they think that they can get a
18:52
Speaker 1: lawsuit if someone dumpster dives on your property get some
18:57
Speaker 1: food and get sick by it. And and um, that's
19:01
Speaker 1: not exactly true though, is it. Didn't the us D
19:03
Speaker 1: have a ruling on that. Uh No, the U s
19:06
Speaker 1: c A encouraged this. It's called the um Bill Emerson
19:09
Speaker 1: Good Samaritan Act. And I could just barely find who
19:12
Speaker 1: he was. He was a uh A congressman who encourage
19:17
Speaker 1: this act died before it could get passed. When they
19:20
Speaker 1: passed that, they named it after him. But basically it said,
19:22
Speaker 1: if you are a good person and you are giving
19:25
Speaker 1: away food, you're picking up food, you have any anything
19:29
Speaker 1: to do in the chain of taking food, rescuing it
19:32
Speaker 1: from the landfill to feed the poor, and you are
19:36
Speaker 1: not purposefully poisoning the poor um or doing it for
19:40
Speaker 1: your own benefit, and someone gets harmed, you can't be
19:42
Speaker 1: held liable for anything that happens. We're gonna protect you,
19:46
Speaker 1: but that that prevents that. The whole point was to
19:49
Speaker 1: encourage people like you, like you said, grocery stores and um,
19:53
Speaker 1: other groups to donate their leftover food rather than just
19:56
Speaker 1: let it go to way and a lot of people,
19:58
Speaker 1: a lot of places do that. We're not saying everyone
19:59
Speaker 1: just hatches their food. A lot of restaurants donate their food.
20:02
Speaker 1: It's great. Yeah, Um, speaking of food, though I did
20:07
Speaker 1: mention bruised fruit. A lot of times you're just crushed
20:10
Speaker 1: packaging boxes. Sometimes the cell by date is cruised on
20:14
Speaker 1: by and that doesn't necessarily mean that it's rotten. No,
20:18
Speaker 1: the FEDS don't have any kind of mandatory dating low
20:22
Speaker 1: except for baby formula and baby food, and cell by
20:25
Speaker 1: date is all voluntary. The used by date is the
20:28
Speaker 1: one you want to stick to. That's actually kind of rare.
20:32
Speaker 1: The cell by date is just saying it's past it's prime,
20:36
Speaker 1: but it's still got tons of life in it. Like,
20:38
Speaker 1: for example, if you can keep eggs at forty degrees
20:41
Speaker 1: fahrenheight just you know standard for a refrigerator. Um, the
20:46
Speaker 1: last for three to five weeks past the cell by date?
20:48
Speaker 1: Did you know that? And if you talk to my Mom,
20:50
Speaker 1: you can drink milk for up to two months after
20:52
Speaker 1: the date. I don't know about that one. The U.
20:54
Speaker 1: S c A Does say, though, that factory sealed bacon,
20:58
Speaker 1: not fresh bacon, but stuff that was in the in
21:00
Speaker 1: the factory that came last two weeks beyond its sell
21:02
Speaker 1: by date. And you mentioned New York being the center
21:06
Speaker 1: of freakingism, Well, it stays fairly cold New York throughout
21:11
Speaker 1: the year, right, which prevents bacteria from being from growing
21:15
Speaker 1: because bacteria throws between forty and a hundred and forty
21:17
Speaker 1: degrees fahrenh height. So I imagine that you're safest in
21:21
Speaker 1: below forty degree Weather's good point, you know what I say?
21:24
Speaker 1: What the nose? Nose? Yeah, I don't even look at
21:28
Speaker 1: the dates. I give it a good sniff. That'll tell
21:31
Speaker 1: me all I need to know about whether it's gonna
21:32
Speaker 1: go in my body. Yeah. I usually don't have time
21:35
Speaker 1: to sniff. I'm too hungry wolfing it down. And then
21:39
Speaker 1: if I'm still standing afterwards, so much the better. Uh.
21:44
Speaker 1: So that is urban foraging. Um. We should also point
21:46
Speaker 1: out to that sometimes stores uh actually bag discarded food
21:50
Speaker 1: separately from the other trash, so it's not like you're
21:53
Speaker 1: picking an Eclaire off of a lot of toilet paper
21:56
Speaker 1: and saying, oh, this looks fine. Uh. And then there's
21:59
Speaker 1: why all foraging. If you live near the forest and
22:02
Speaker 1: you're freaking you can collect plants. Uh. The website freaking
22:06
Speaker 1: dot info will actually tell you how to do this,
22:09
Speaker 1: tell you what's safe to eat. Um. Sometimes they practice
22:12
Speaker 1: guerrilla gardening. They'll go find a little unused plot of land.
22:15
Speaker 1: We've talked about this. Have you noticed that, like in
22:17
Speaker 1: the last couple of podcasts we've recorded, like five other
22:21
Speaker 1: podcasts have been touched on. You know, this means we're
22:24
Speaker 1: we're growing a body of work. Well, our quest to
22:26
Speaker 1: explain the world. It's all coming together. Oh it isn't it. Yeah,
22:30
Speaker 1: it's all tying. And at some point we're gonna say
22:33
Speaker 1: that's the last one. It'll be the time when we
22:36
Speaker 1: use the word is and realize we did a podcast
22:38
Speaker 1: on is. It depends on what your definition of is is.
22:41
Speaker 1: It's gonna be a long podcast, but we'll do it.
22:44
Speaker 1: A lot of them barter, like we said, they call
22:46
Speaker 1: it free sharing though, but what it is is bartering.
22:49
Speaker 1: They'll have a little market, freaking marketplace that's set up
22:52
Speaker 1: like every Saturday morning in this this part of New York,
22:55
Speaker 1: will all go meet and hey, I see you've got
22:57
Speaker 1: a a laptop that you fixed. I've always wanted a
23:01
Speaker 1: toaster oven. Let's make a deal throwing some rotten eggs
23:05
Speaker 1: and we're all good. Just sell buy man. What about healthcare,
23:12
Speaker 1: that's a big one, And I looked all over the
23:14
Speaker 1: freaking info site for this. Um. Basically, they don't have
23:18
Speaker 1: healthcare licked yet. Um. They've got it close though. There
23:22
Speaker 1: are healthcare collectives which have been successful here there say
23:26
Speaker 1: if you get enough people, you can get it down
23:28
Speaker 1: to about a hundred bucks a year per person, and
23:31
Speaker 1: those go to fun free clinics relies heavily on volunteers. Um.
23:37
Speaker 1: But the state operates all sorts of free clinics as well. UM,
23:42
Speaker 1: which I imagine if you just go in and say
23:45
Speaker 1: I dumpster dive every day, they'll be like, we'll take
23:47
Speaker 1: care of you. Um. So that one is not kind
23:50
Speaker 1: of licked because you can also make the you can
23:53
Speaker 1: make the case that well, that's freeloading again, and that
23:58
Speaker 1: completely undermines everything that freagans are about reloading, because it's
24:03
Speaker 1: not waste. Health health care is not wasteful. The um
24:06
Speaker 1: hours of a volunteering doctor or are in or not wasted.
24:11
Speaker 1: Of course not somebody would use those right well, but
24:13
Speaker 1: a lot of times they are avoiding the healthcare because
24:17
Speaker 1: of we don't want to support the pharmaceutical industry. We
24:21
Speaker 1: don't want to support these h ms. Have a feeling
24:23
Speaker 1: if it was the you know doctor down the street
24:26
Speaker 1: from with the white picket fence that gives you a
24:29
Speaker 1: coke and tells you to everything will be better, they
24:31
Speaker 1: might be a little more apt to support something like
24:33
Speaker 1: the health care syst right, And that I saw that
24:36
Speaker 1: stated somewhere that they were saying, like if you just
24:38
Speaker 1: cut out the profits, that it's much cheaper than we think. Interesting,
24:44
Speaker 1: So Josh, this food recovery is um what they're into
24:48
Speaker 1: as a freaking But that's not a new thing because
24:51
Speaker 1: we have a long history in this country and other
24:52
Speaker 1: places as far back as biblical days of gleaning. And
24:57
Speaker 1: that's when you have a crop. You especially nowadays with
25:01
Speaker 1: the big mechanic systems, they'll leave behind a lot of
25:04
Speaker 1: waste that they're not gonna go back and pick it
25:06
Speaker 1: all up, so they'll allow people, um, and they did
25:08
Speaker 1: this some biblical days after they've reaped the harvest. So
25:11
Speaker 1: if you're poor, you can come into the field after
25:13
Speaker 1: us and pick up what we've left behind. Yes, it's
25:15
Speaker 1: called gleaning, not gleaning the cube. You no gleaning. Gleaning UM.
25:21
Speaker 1: There's a group called the Society of St Andrew And
25:23
Speaker 1: there's a lot of gleaning organizations, but UM. One of
25:26
Speaker 1: the more famous ones is a Society of St Andrew
25:29
Speaker 1: UM where basically they just have a central hub and
25:32
Speaker 1: they say volunteers go pick up you know, discarded food
25:37
Speaker 1: anywhere you can and bring it here and then we'll
25:38
Speaker 1: distribute it. Right, a simple model, but it works very well.
25:43
Speaker 1: They And if you are a freaking I would imagine
25:47
Speaker 1: you get some sort of halo for volunteering at the
25:52
Speaker 1: Society of St Andrew. Yeah, you're the ultimate circle is
25:55
Speaker 1: completely you have a good, nice spot in freaking heaven
25:59
Speaker 1: if you do that. The whole idea, the anti consumer
26:02
Speaker 1: culture idea that forms freaking is um apparently finds its
26:06
Speaker 1: roots back in the sixteen forties in England and Chuck
26:09
Speaker 1: there's a guy named Gerard wind Stanley who lost his
26:13
Speaker 1: shirt in business, moved to the countryside and founded a
26:17
Speaker 1: colony that he called the Diggers, and the Diggers basically
26:21
Speaker 1: lived without money for as long as they could, not
26:24
Speaker 1: that long. But UM, when Stanley and the Diggers inspired
26:28
Speaker 1: the sixties counterculture diggers who UM created their own kind
26:33
Speaker 1: of utopian colony or movement, and they inspired Keith McHenry,
26:39
Speaker 1: who is basically thought of as the father of freakani
26:42
Speaker 1: is um, which popped up in the early twenty one
26:44
Speaker 1: century as far as you know, and now he lives
26:47
Speaker 1: a lush, rich life collecting on that word freaking. And
26:51
Speaker 1: then food he's a fat cat, right. And then Food
26:56
Speaker 1: not Bombs is another good, good example of UM. The
26:59
Speaker 1: free in movement incarnate right, which is basically like they're
27:03
Speaker 1: a gleaner society and then they go feed the homeless,
27:06
Speaker 1: feed the poor, feed freagans UM. And one of my friends, Justin,
27:11
Speaker 1: who's living on tour for a while UM out in California.
27:17
Speaker 1: He told me they used to call him soup not
27:19
Speaker 1: food instead of food not bombs. I was like, that's
27:23
Speaker 1: kind of jerky, don't you think? And he said yes.
27:26
Speaker 1: And as a sister a sister group to Food not
27:29
Speaker 1: bombs as homes not jails, which is pretty self explanatory.
27:34
Speaker 1: That's it. Uh, well, let me give you a quick example.
27:38
Speaker 1: If you're wondering and thinking these people are really weird,
27:41
Speaker 1: let me tell you about Daniel Zeta. He's an American
27:44
Speaker 1: who moved to Tasmania. But you might think it is
27:48
Speaker 1: weird in and of itself, not necessarily. About a decade ago,
27:51
Speaker 1: he's thirty five, and he gradually became a freagan as
27:55
Speaker 1: he became a little more conscious of the world around him,
27:59
Speaker 1: the environment, it wanting to help out the environment. He
28:02
Speaker 1: had a great job, government job. It's pretty good money
28:05
Speaker 1: from what I understand. Uh, And he eventually quit the job,
28:08
Speaker 1: and now he is a freaking pretty much full time.
28:11
Speaker 1: He doesn't dumpster dive though. He works for a food market.
28:18
Speaker 1: Basically trades his work for food. Whatever they're gonna discard
28:21
Speaker 1: he'll take. He travels around the state. He builds environment
28:24
Speaker 1: environmentally friendly houses in return for lodging, and then in
28:29
Speaker 1: his off hours he services the community. So he says
28:32
Speaker 1: he needs about two hundred bucks a month to live.
28:35
Speaker 1: And for a while he lived on a boat that
28:38
Speaker 1: had solar panels, and the whole bed of the boat
28:41
Speaker 1: was a garden, a vegetable garden, and he bought you know,
28:45
Speaker 1: sandals off the Internet that were returned because the dude
28:48
Speaker 1: didn't like him. He got his computer from his friend
28:51
Speaker 1: who was throwing it out because the hard drive was busted,
28:53
Speaker 1: replaced a hard drive. He's been using it for like
28:55
Speaker 1: five years. And uh, that's just one story. He's not
29:00
Speaker 1: some Weirdoh, he's not a freeloader. He's not some crazed
29:04
Speaker 1: hippie hobo freak. He's just a guy that was like,
29:07
Speaker 1: you know that, I'm kind of tired of buying into
29:09
Speaker 1: this whole system. So this is my life now. Chumps,
29:12
Speaker 1: if you ever me to freaking assume they think you're
29:15
Speaker 1: a chump. How they do chuck. If anybody wants to
29:20
Speaker 1: learn more about freakings, they can check out f R
29:23
Speaker 1: E G A N in the handy search bar, how
29:26
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. And if this picked your interest,
29:29
Speaker 1: you should check out our another podcast of ours on
29:33
Speaker 1: how much money do I really need to live? Remember
29:36
Speaker 1: that one that was good? Uh, you can find both
29:38
Speaker 1: of those on how stuff works? Right, And I said
29:41
Speaker 1: handy search bar, So that handy failed search bar. I
29:46
Speaker 1: failed in my attempt to find a replacement. It is
29:48
Speaker 1: handy though. It's time for a listener ma'il okay, Josh,
29:53
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this zebra fish email of course, from Alex.
29:58
Speaker 1: Dear Chuck and Josh and Jerry. I'm a research technician
30:01
Speaker 1: in a neuroscience science lab studying sleep in circadian rhythms
30:06
Speaker 1: with zebra fish. I first discovered your scintillating podcast several
30:09
Speaker 1: months ago, and they had quickly become part of my
30:12
Speaker 1: daily routine. Each morning when I come in to feed
30:14
Speaker 1: the fish, I turned up the speaker's blasting the show,
30:17
Speaker 1: and there are suddenly over ten thousand fans listening to
30:20
Speaker 1: your podcasts in a fifteen by fifteen foot room. They
30:24
Speaker 1: eagerly swim to the left sides of their tanks the
30:27
Speaker 1: position of the speakers as soon as the podcast begins,
30:30
Speaker 1: so the zebra fisher are reacting to the dulcet tones
30:34
Speaker 1: of Thus, I consider myself apparent to these fish, and
30:40
Speaker 1: that I feed them, clean their tanks, and educate them
30:42
Speaker 1: through your podcasts. One of the first errors I made
30:44
Speaker 1: as a parent was to make a false promise to
30:46
Speaker 1: these fish that if they continue to work hard in
30:48
Speaker 1: our experiments, which is administering cocaine to sleep deprived fish,
30:54
Speaker 1: that's what he's studying. Chuck and Josh would acknowledge their
30:57
Speaker 1: hard work on the podcast. Please help me out. Don't
31:00
Speaker 1: let down my fish for a false promise I made
31:02
Speaker 1: long ago. God speed. Keep your ear to the grindstone, Alex.
31:05
Speaker 1: I wonder if that tiny room that they keep them
31:07
Speaker 1: in is a bathroom. I don't know. And I wonder
31:10
Speaker 1: if Alex is really a scientist. Yeah right, he's just
31:14
Speaker 1: into getting fish high. Well we'll see. Well, Thank you, Alex.
31:17
Speaker 1: Thank you two our ten thousands zebra fish fans. Hello fish,
31:21
Speaker 1: You guys get some sleep. Okay they can't, they're dying
31:24
Speaker 1: to or they're just dying. If you are conducting some
31:29
Speaker 1: sort of odd experiments, we want to hear about it.
31:32
Speaker 1: Wrap it up in an email, will you spank it
31:34
Speaker 1: on the buttocks and send it to stuff podcast at
31:38
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com For more on this and
31:45
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works dot com.
31:49
Speaker 1: Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
31:52
Speaker 1: the house stuff works dot com home page. Brought to
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32:00
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