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Transcript

Episode 500: Goodbye & Hello · Words & Numbers

0:00
Coming up next on Words and Numbers, whatever the hell.
0:03
We want. Hi, I'm James.
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And I'm Anthony. And this is words and numbers.
0:13
Let's do an exciting word this weekend.
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I'm sorry, I thought we were doing the back and forth thing.
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What would you like to talk about?
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What back and forth thing do you want to do?
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Well, I want to talk about private arrest warrants.
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Oh, so you actually have material for today, our 500th
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episode. This is our 500th episode.
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Can you believe? That.
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This we we started in February of 2017.
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We predate COVID. I was still living in Utah at
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the time. And yeah, we'll, we'll tell you
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the whole story coming up in a in a few minutes.
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But, you know, and there I've been getting, I don't know if
0:55
you've also been getting, but I've been getting a lot of
0:58
e-mail and a number of Facebook messages and an inordinate
1:04
number of people have joined words and numbers backstage, the
1:08
Facebook group, all with the single question, where the hell
1:14
has your podcast been? Yeah, it's almost, it's almost
1:18
as if people enjoyed hearing us. They internalized it and look
1:22
forward to it. And then we said, Oh yeah, we're
1:25
going to take three weeks off. Sorry.
1:26
Yeah, well, everyone was. Everyone was concerned that, you
1:29
know, there was something wrong, you drop dead or what have you.
1:33
Yeah, but. Everybody always worries.
1:35
E-mail questions. Facebook questions, Yeah.
1:38
Yeah, I, I, I told a few people that you died.
1:42
Well, I thought it was kind of would have been kind of neat to
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end on 499. Yeah, but then the.
1:48
People. Wondering, well, now you're
1:50
you're kind of giving away the farm by saying end on 499.
1:56
They're all going to think, oh God, they're going to end on
1:59
500. But anyway, you've got something
2:03
to talk about apparently. So why don't you go ahead and
2:05
talk about that? Well, I want to talk about
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private arrest warrants. This.
2:11
Comes from. I would like to be.
2:14
I want to be a no. Issue.
2:15
Actually, I don't think you can. This comes from North Georgia.
2:20
Nikki Arts and her husband hired Larry Shepherd to build a house.
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Arts gave Shepherd money for materials and deposits.
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You know, the kind of thing you do with a general contractor and
2:33
sometime later subcontractors start coming to Arts asking for
2:38
money, and Arts looks into this and what happens is the money
2:44
that they gave to Shepherd for the down payment and for the
2:47
materials and all of this, he just walked off with it.
2:50
He never paid the subcontractors.
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So Arns goes to the local police.
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And the police said this appears to be a civil manner, civil
3:02
matter, essentially breach of contract.
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We're not going to do anything. Now in most cases, you just kind
3:08
of have to throw your hands up and say, well, all right, we'll
3:10
go to civil court. But of course, civil court
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doesn't carry the the panache, the threat of arrest that comes
3:17
with Criminal Court. But in Georgia, there is a
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rarely used legal tool called a private arrest warrant.
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And what happens is, in Georgia, citizens can apply directly to a
3:33
judge for a private arrest warrant.
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It's the same process the police use.
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So if she'd gone to the police and they had said, yeah, verily,
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this guy stole your money, we're going to take out an arrest
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warrant, they would go through the process that she's going
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through. You filed the papers with the
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judge, and she goes to Magistrate Court.
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The judge asks that Shepard be arrested.
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Shepard attends the hearing, tells the judge his side of the
4:01
story. Explanation all that The judge
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sided with Arts, which means it then goes to the District
4:08
Attorney who chooses to prosecute.
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A grand jury then handed up six felony theft charges.
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Now this would not have happened in civil court.
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There is no such thing as a felony charge in civil.
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Court. I am absolutely loving this
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story. Isn't this great?
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So the six felony theft charges, the case hasn't been decided.
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But the bottom line is this private arrest warrant bypasses
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the potential roadblock of police refusing to act.
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North Carolina, go ahead. I'll go it.
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It actually makes the contractor's life very, very
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difficult, right? He, he took somebody's money,
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didn't deliver, and now he's got to go through this gigantic pain
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in the ass about it. Usually that doesn't happen.
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So this will at the very least inform his future life choices.
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But Oh yeah, I would imagine all the other contractors in Georgia
5:11
are going to think that better. I better keep my my nonsense
5:15
above above the water level here or I might have to go to to
5:19
prison too. And and then it actually gives
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the aggrieved homeowner, or landowner in this case, I guess,
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a a mechanism by which to achieve justice.
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This is win win all around. Yeah, and the big thing here is
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that arrest warrant, which again, doesn't happen in civil
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court. If she had gone the civil court
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route, she would have, you know, filed for breach of contract.
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And, you know, if the guy just didn't show up, you know, maybe
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there's some ruling against him. I don't know how that works.
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But the, the, the teeth of the law aren't there.
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They are here. He's got to go through this
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process, otherwise they throw him in the clink.
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Yep, that's right. Now in civil, in civil court,
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you get a judgment rendered against you and they they still
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have to find a way to collect it.
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And that that's not always as easy as it sounds.
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One of the first jobs I had as a a graduate student when I went
6:22
out to California was tracing these com skips, skip tracer and
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people who had judgments against them in court who would just
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disappear. It became my job to go find
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them, right? Because, and it's a rigmarole.
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And some of these people had judgments against them for, you
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know, 10-12, fourteen years. So if if they had had prison
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dangling over their heads like the Sword of Damocles, they
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would have made good on that that in court that day, no
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question. But to your original question,
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can you do this? I don't think so.
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There are only a handful of states, principally North
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Carolina and Georgia, allow individuals to request arrest
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warrants. Maryland, South Carolina,
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Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia have softer versions.
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But what's interesting here is over the 50 states, with the
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exception of Ohio, all those states that that have some
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variation on private arrest warrant are states that were
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part of the original 13 colonies.
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As such, they they existed prior to the federal government and
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and as a consequence inherited much of their legal
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infrastructure from English common law at the time in which
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there was no organized police force that you had to
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effectively do this bring grab the offender, whoever offended
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you by the caller, and drag him before a judge.
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Yeah. And that was a, in a lot of
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ways, a kindler, gentler time. Of course, you know, people
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lived on average, about 30 years.
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Let's not romanticize it too much.
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I I like this. I like and I look fool somebody.
8:07
I like that somebody did a little digging, figured it out
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and used it. Yeah, that that's that's really
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great. And look, contractors.
8:16
When they're good, they're great, but when they're bad,
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they're the worst people in the world.
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And yeah, when they're absolutely, when they're bad,
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they're a nightmare. And when they're in that second
8:27
category, they should be forced to make make things right when
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they screw them up. And they screw them up all the
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damn time anyway, believe it or not, that brings us to the
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foolishness of the week. I don't have anything I want to
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talk about this week except this.
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Oh, oh, right. So you're all about oh.
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And you've actually done research for something and now
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you just flippantly say you haven't done anything.
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Well, yeah, that's right. I thought that was the deal for
8:54
today, but you know, you can go. What's that phrase I'm looking
8:59
for? Fuck yourself, right?
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Now and stop it. We still have the entire. 500th
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episode. I could say whatever I want to.
9:05
Oh, for Lord's sake, Yeah, for Lord's sake, God, it's like I'm
9:11
married to two women. And, and while I'm on that
9:17
topic, I remember when aunt, when I lived in Utah, I, I lived
9:22
with my wife, of course, but there was a graduate student,
9:25
female graduate student living in the basement and the entire
9:28
neighborhood was abuzz that there were polygamists in the
9:31
neighborhood. Utah, when a man lives in a
9:35
place and multiple women shuffle in and out, he is a polygamist.
9:40
And, and none of the locals would ever talk to me or us for
9:44
that matter. They wouldn't wave at us.
9:46
They. And one day I got home from work
9:49
early, 'cause, you know, professors don't do real work.
9:52
And I got out of the car and all the Mormon mommies were pushing
9:55
their little babies in those carts around the neighborhood.
9:58
And the two women were sitting reading together on the front
10:01
porch. And I said, Honeys, I'm home.
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Walked up, kissed each of them on the cheek, and then walked
10:08
inside. There, by cementing my
10:13
reputation as a polygamist, it was great.
10:17
Anyway, we are on to the foolishness of the week.
10:21
But this is not the foolishness of the week, nor the month, nor
10:25
the year, nor the decade, and probably not even the millennia.
10:30
This is the foolishness of all time.
10:35
How is it, Ant the two people can put together what is I think
10:41
by any objective standard, the greatest podcast in the history
10:46
of podcasts and not get sponsorship?
10:53
Now we, we were sponsored for a little while.
10:56
You people out there might recall what is commonly known
10:59
between Ant and I as the civil CIVL era.
11:06
And you know, they they were kind enough to pay us for six
11:08
months, get us a professional producer.
11:10
It was really great. And then when that deal ended,
11:14
they did not want to continue on, at least not paying us.
11:20
And when I say paying us, we weren't making a salary or a
11:23
part time salary. What would it have been enough
11:27
for? Probably two or three good meals
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out in two or three movies a month.
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You think that's about fair? Give him just give or take.
11:39
So if we're not, we're not talking moon and stars material
11:42
here. Although our goal was to get to
11:45
moon and stars levels, right? We were hoping that we could
11:50
make this our sole means of making a living.
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And yet that just never happened.
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It never even came close to happening.
11:58
So that, my friend, is the foolishness of all time.
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So we want to talk about now. That's it, That's your
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foolishness. You bet your ass it is.
12:11
We have, you know, we have pointed out before in, in terms
12:17
of the raw stats and they're not our stats.
12:20
They're just when I look, these are the things I find we're
12:23
routinely rated amongst the top 110th of 1% of podcasts in the
12:29
world by, I presume it's by downloads, which I quote that
12:36
statistic. And then I follow up very
12:38
quickly with that's perhaps less of a testament to our popularity
12:43
than it is to our doggedness that we've stayed with it for so
12:48
long. And there are so many podcasts
12:50
out there that if you stay with it for a long time, you
12:53
necessarily end up in that rarefied space.
12:57
Most podcasts are some very weird young man ranting about
13:03
something in his mother's basement.
13:04
He gets enough for about 2 1/2 episodes and he calls it a day.
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Right. Been doing this for a while and.
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5. 100 episodes. 500 episodes, and we're actually pretty damn
13:16
good at it. And I thought it would be kind
13:17
of fun. Most of the the long timers
13:21
probably already know the story, but my guess is that there's
13:25
going to be at least 2/3 of our audience who have never heard
13:31
how words and numbers got started.
13:33
And I remember it like it was yesterday.
13:38
Anthony called me, I believe it was on Skype.
13:41
Remember, we were all still using Skype all the time.
13:44
Before zoom was a thing. That's right.
13:47
And and he said, James, we should do a podcast.
13:51
And I said, what the hell, Just shut up.
13:55
And he said, no, no, no, we should read our op eds because
13:58
you and I were writing an op-ed every week back then.
14:01
Oh yeah, tremendous output. And he said we should read our
14:06
op eds just into a camera and then release it as a podcast.
14:10
And I thought that is easily the dumbest idea I have ever heard
14:15
in my entire life. And I said, all right, because
14:20
the Ant was quite insistent. And I was utterly convinced I
14:25
didn't want to do this. And, and I said, OK, I agree, we
14:31
can try this once if and only if we can send it to a
14:38
disinterested third party who can then pass judgment on it and
14:43
tell us if it sucks or not. And aunt readily agreed.
14:47
And I thought, well great, this will take exactly 1 episode and
14:51
I'll be done with this forever. Now given that you already know
14:54
this is the 500th episode, you know I didn't win this one.
14:58
But anyway, we decided we were going to send it out to a guy
15:03
named Sean Malone, who Aunt knew and who I was about to know and
15:07
who treated us quite nicely for a number of years and who
15:10
remains my friend to this day. And but Aunt knew him and I
15:15
didn't. And, and we sent it off to Sean
15:19
and he took one look at it and he got back on a call with us
15:22
and he said, my God, that sucked.
15:25
And I thought, thank you, Thank you, God.
15:30
Like, like that little kid at the end of Animal House who had
15:34
a Coed shot through his bedroom window as he was reading a
15:38
Playboy magazine, right. Thank you, God.
15:41
And then he said but, and I'm like, Oh no, no, no, no, no, no,
15:47
no. It was supposed to be.
15:49
And furthermore not but he said, but I've just gotten a job at
15:55
fee and they've asked me to develop content and honestly, we
16:00
don't have any yet. Would you guys like to work on
16:03
this and become part of that? And I'm like, how?
16:08
How'd this happen? How did we get here?
16:12
This is not what I wanted at all, and the early days of the
16:16
podcast were an in 8 minute video format hosted by the
16:21
Foundation for Economic Education, a group that Ant and
16:24
I worked a lot for back then and who somehow managed to forget
16:29
both of our phone numbers over the years.
16:33
You want to take it from there. Well, we, we were is part of our
16:39
fee sponsorship. Back in the day, you and I were
16:44
doing high schools, our high school circuit, which which we
16:48
had like the podcast just built up on our own to the point that
16:53
we were visiting, I want to say 50 to 100 high schools a year.
16:59
That's what we were doing that for almost as long as the
17:01
podcast ran. We stopped that when, when?
17:04
Yeah, I switched over to this new life of mine a couple of
17:07
years ago. But it was it was an interesting
17:10
synergy because we had the the high schools that we're going to
17:16
and talking about economics and and government.
17:19
This was exactly the audience that Fee wanted to hit high
17:24
school level talking specifically about economics and
17:27
government. So it was a natural fit there,
17:30
and it built our listener base because we'd come and talk and
17:34
we'd pitched the podcast and of course, they'd all become
17:38
listeners. And we've had your to this day,
17:41
I'll get from time to time an e-mail from someone saying, oh,
17:45
I heard you first when you came to my high school back in
17:47
whenever. Yeah.
17:49
And now this is somebody, an adult with kids.
17:52
Yeah. Yep, Yep, it was great.
17:55
And we we continued on with the 8 minute video format for, oh,
18:00
less than a year. It was way less than a year.
18:03
Yeah, because we realized early on that, well, things weren't
18:08
growing and nobody really wanted to look at us, which is a little
18:13
weird 'cause the people changed their mind at some point, but
18:16
whatever. And then we did a little bit of
18:20
digging, a little market research, something that, you
18:22
know, if we were smart, we should have done a touch
18:25
earlier. And we, we learned that people
18:28
listened to podcasts at 2 very specific times during their day
18:34
on their commute, average commute in the United States,
18:37
about 24 minutes. And when they did cardio at the
18:41
gym, about 30 minutes typically. So we decided, well, all right,
18:47
let's make 1/2 hour audio only podcast.
18:51
And it started really working right from the start.
18:55
And then we said, well, let's maybe have some segments where
19:00
we each talk about something different like Anthony did
19:03
today, but I didn't. And then a main topic.
19:06
And we did that. And I had always wanted to do a
19:10
section called the Asshole of the Week.
19:13
I wanted this right down to my bones.
19:16
And the nice people at Fee said, if our audience is high school
19:21
students, can you maybe not do that?
19:23
And I said, well, you're not without a point.
19:27
And that's how the foolishness of the week was born.
19:30
Well, I could. I could remember you and I were
19:33
driving through Kentucky going from Jackson County High School
19:38
to some other high school, and we were talking specifically
19:42
about this problem and bandying names back and forth, and that's
19:47
when we landed on Foolishness of the Week.
19:50
And it stuck. It stuck real hard.
19:53
Yeah, it turned out. I think it's safe to say it's
19:56
it's everybody's. Oh, I think it's people's
20:01
favorite part of the of the show.
20:03
Yeah, I think I think so too. I but I, I don't want to make it
20:07
seem like they don't like the more high minded stuff.
20:11
I think they really do. But the foolishness of the week
20:14
is just funny. You typically go find something
20:18
that's so idiotic, like that poor man who stuffed a World War
20:22
One munition up his backside and they had to evacuate the
20:27
hospital for fear that it was going.
20:29
To blow. Right.
20:31
But it's not. It's not just that.
20:32
It's not just the foolish stories.
20:35
It's the fact that you become so incensed you take it personally,
20:39
as if someone is insulting you by being foolish out there in
20:43
the world. That's what people love.
20:46
It does happen that way more than not.
20:48
And the young man who stuffed that thing up his butt really
20:50
didn't reach that category. But any, any time a politician
20:55
is the foolishness of the week. I was personally offended the
20:59
minute I saw the story and I've gotten all wrapped up and worked
21:03
up about it. And so once we added the
21:05
foolishness, it was like the thing just kind of came
21:08
together. And we've been working with that
21:10
format ever since. And we, we went from the 30
21:14
minute audio and people started whining.
21:16
We wanted to be longer. So then we made it 45 minutes
21:19
and people started whining, half saying I want it longer, half
21:23
saying I wanted to go back to 30 minutes.
21:26
You, you literally can't keep anybody happy in the podcast
21:29
world. And then when Civil came along,
21:31
they wanted us on YouTube. So all of a sudden we're back to
21:35
video again. And now you're looking at two
21:38
guys who are even uglier than they were before, because now
21:40
they're eight years older. Well, yeah, the up the upside is
21:45
we can see you get red in the face when you're angry about
21:48
something. Yeah, that, that's right.
21:50
I'm, I'm cool with it, whatever. But but that's really the story
21:55
of the thing, as it has existed until this moment, and as it
22:02
will exist no more. Well, The funny thing is, I'm
22:05
not entirely sure how it's going to exist until we finish this
22:08
conversation, you and I. You and I have had several
22:14
conversations about how we move forward.
22:19
If we move forward, I'm not sure that we're 100% decided.
22:26
I think we're probably 90% decided.
22:28
We're 100% decided and see, this is when I tell the people that
22:33
it, it's like having two wives. This is the shit.
22:35
I mean, right here, right here, because we decided last night
22:39
what it was going to be. And now and it's back to 90%
22:43
again. And I got to explain to him all
22:45
the reasons why we decided what we've already decided.
22:49
Well, let's see if your version matches mine.
22:52
There we go. Here we go.
22:54
And this is actually typically a very difficult part of the
22:57
conversation with me because those of you watching on YouTube
23:00
right now see Ant with that pen in his left hand, which means
23:04
he's been taking notes of this. And if he's taking notes of
23:11
this, he's taken notes of the conversation we had last night
23:14
and probably every other conversation we've ever had.
23:17
And every now and then he will from out of the blue say, James,
23:20
that directly contradicts what you told me on June 18th, 2007.
23:26
And you know, I, I just kind of have to take his word for it
23:29
'cause I didn't take notes in 2007 or any other year.
23:35
The podcast as it has existed will no longer exist.
23:42
There will not be a Twice, God help me, a Twice weekly podcast
23:48
anymore. There will not even be a Once
23:52
weekly podcast anymore. But there will be, for those of
23:57
you still listening, a podcast irregularly when circumstances
24:04
warrant. Yeah, and and I think that
24:09
solves a couple problems. 1-2 problems.
24:12
Exactly. Yeah, one is 1 is scheduling
24:15
that that had become a bear. Even with Civil taking over the
24:19
production side, doubling the number of episodes became kind
24:24
of took a lot of that back. But I think the larger problem
24:26
is we found ourselves or at least I found myself saying, OK,
24:32
it's time to record a podcast. What we going to talk about?
24:35
I don't know it, it makes. And having said that, having
24:41
gone on this, whatever it has been so far, 2-3 week hiatus,
24:45
several things have popped up in the news.
24:48
I thought, OK, here's something we could talk about.
24:50
So it seems to make much more sense that rather than coming
24:54
out according to a schedule, we come out opportunistically.
24:58
As things arise that are natural for us to talk about, we'll talk
25:02
about them. And for, for listeners who are
25:06
thinking, well, what does that mean?
25:09
I don't know. I could see it be, I could see
25:12
it averaging, maybe one or one to two weeks averaging.
25:19
You know, you might find sometimes when we come out twice
25:21
a week, you might find other times where we go three weeks,
25:23
you don't hear from us. I, I think all of that's right.
25:28
And you know, one of the things you and I still have to figure
25:31
out is do we bother with this YouTube nonsense or not, Right?
25:36
Do we? Just I like to.
25:37
YouTube I, I do too, but it adds in a layer of complexity right
25:44
that somebody's got to edit this shit, you know and and frankly
25:50
when I said before that we we don't really make any money on
25:53
this we literally make $0.00 on this now so.
25:57
Yeah, and it was. It wasn't far off of 0 before,
26:00
but yeah. It really wasn't, and we
26:02
honestly can't afford an editor right this this kind of thing.
26:08
Well, well, we got to we. Got to figure out how to do
26:12
this. Let me jump in here for a
26:14
second. Our, our friends on Patreon have
26:17
been funding us for good Lord almost since we started.
26:23
And it's their funding that has enabled us to.
26:27
There's all kinds of piddly little things you've got to pay
26:30
for from, you know, the, the monthly subscription to the
26:33
things that host your your files to the editing software and blah
26:38
blah blah. It adds up.
26:41
Well, it does because there's lots of these piddly things.
26:44
But to move forward with, with someone doing the post recording
26:54
production, which will be a third person, we are going to
26:59
need some more bucks. Not a tremendous amount, but
27:04
we're going to need a little bit more.
27:06
So I would throw out to, to our listeners, if you haven't joined
27:10
Patreon, please do so. It's word patreon.com/words and
27:15
numbers. And you don't don't feel like
27:18
you have to come in and, you know, give $100 a month or
27:21
something, couple bucks here and there will help us out.
27:23
Yeah, what? What's the lowest tier that
27:26
we've got? I think you there are people
27:29
that come in at $1.00 a month. It's kind of like there's if you
27:34
come in at $5 a month, you get access to to various things
27:38
there. Once in a while.
27:40
I think there are a handful of people give us $20.00 a month.
27:42
Once in a while we'll get someone coming in at 100, but
27:45
typically it's 5 to 10 a month. And, and look, if 100 people
27:51
could find $2.00 a month to give us that, that would get us
27:58
somewhere. Yeah.
28:00
So I just throw it out there as a possibility.
28:03
If you can't afford this or don't want to, I would never
28:07
even for a second think less of you.
28:11
We're just happy you're, we're just happy you're here with us.
28:16
But if, if you have the means to throw a dollar or two a month
28:19
our way and I'm really asking for a dollar or two, that would
28:23
be plenty good enough. And let me let me also say,
28:27
Aunt, if any of you know anybody who would like to sponsor a
28:34
podcast, like really sponsor a podcast, we, we would take some,
28:40
we would take some meetings. Yeah.
28:43
We're we're willing to so. Nonprofits, corporations,
28:48
whatever. Let me let me underline
28:50
something you just said I think is really important.
28:54
You said, look, if you can't give anything or you choose not
28:58
to, whatever it is, we're not going to think any less of you.
29:01
I want to underline that many times over the years I've
29:09
received e-mail from someone who says, look, I've listened to you
29:13
for a long time. I've never written in in, but
29:17
I've got a question or a comment or whatever it is.
29:19
So too, on words and numbers backstage, which you should join
29:23
if you can. Facebook group Words and
29:25
numbers, words and numbers backstage.
29:27
Often someone will post something and say, you know,
29:31
start off with long, long time listener.
29:35
But I've never posted first time, first time caller.
29:37
Yeah. And, and in each of those
29:39
instances, I think to myself, here's somebody who has been
29:43
contributing. They've been contributing by
29:45
listening, just by listening. That's useful for us.
29:50
It's a, it's a, it's a far bigger deal than I could ever
29:52
tell any of you. Yeah, yeah, there, there have
29:56
been several times in our years that I've thought, look, this is
30:01
too much. I've I've got to give it up.
30:03
I got to go do something else. And invariably somebody will
30:08
send me an e-mail or a couple times I get stopped at an
30:10
airport. And it's it's, it's always the
30:14
same kind of conversation of I've never reached out to you
30:17
guys, but I listen to you every week and I really appreciate
30:20
what you're doing. Good Lord, every time one of
30:23
those things happened, I said, OK, that's it.
30:24
I got to keep going and. We've had a world record for
30:28
those things happening since we went on hiatus.
30:32
Yeah, we go on hiatus for three weeks and all of a sudden I've
30:35
read emails are pouring in, a whole bunch of people joined
30:37
Words and numbers backstage. It's, it's, it's really been
30:41
quite touching actually. You know, the emails all say
30:45
where the hell are you guys? And when they join words,
30:48
numbers backstage, you have to answer a question to prove
30:51
you're not a bot or somebody more likely than a bot looking
30:55
for a, a group to learn about words and numbers.
31:01
Literally I. Want to know about words?
31:04
We, we, we get all these people who are not native speakers of
31:08
English who thinks, who think this is the group to join to, to
31:11
learn the, the tongue. But the question is, why do you
31:17
want to join this group? And I think we've had a spike in
31:24
applications lately. If you want to call it an
31:26
application and they all say, where the hell is the podcast?
31:31
I want to know where the podcast went and getting cut from the
31:38
civil deal was bothersome to me. I it really anger.
31:45
It didn't anger me, it was upsetting.
31:48
I thought we had finally found a home and we would just stay
31:51
there and it would grow over time and and you know,
31:54
everything we would all live happily ever after, blah blah
31:57
blah. Didn't, didn't work out that
31:59
way. But to see all these people
32:01
asking where we've gone tells me that we better go somewhere and
32:06
we better do something right 'cause apparently there's more
32:12
people enjoying it than we think there are.
32:16
And you only find that out when there's a break in the chain,
32:20
right? So thank you to, to all of you
32:23
who have written, texted, God help me, some of you find my
32:28
phone number and text me. I have I have gotten emails,
32:35
Facebook messages, texts and then texts on WhatsApp and on.
32:44
What's the one that begins with an RR?
32:47
The I don't know what. The hell is that one?
32:50
How do you not know? You pay attention to these
32:52
things, or don't you? I have no idea.
32:57
Here we go. It is, yes.
33:00
So it begins with an R and it's called signal.
33:09
To to date no one has contacted me on Telegram yet, but yeah OK
33:14
I. You know, just as a side.
33:16
Note more I've gotten more love since we stopped public
33:20
publishing episodes than I did in any three-week period when we
33:24
did publish. Just as a side note, so there's
33:29
there was texting and then there was that.
33:32
What was that app way back like in the 1990s?
33:36
It had a little like Daisy was it's thing and it went bleep at
33:40
you. That was a really popular thing.
33:43
People would like text back and forth on computers and then you
33:47
go to your Facebook Messenger and then you've got the WhatsApp
33:51
and the Signal and every one of these basically does everything
33:56
that every other one does. Why do we get this sequence?
34:00
The only thing I can think, and I've observed this kind of
34:04
anecdotally with students. The only thing I can think is
34:08
you reach a point where the people who are using the app
34:12
have been using it for so long that they've now become older
34:16
and the younger people want to talk without the older people
34:19
listening. And the only way to do that is
34:21
to have some new app and hence this this new thing.
34:25
This is why young people use Venmo, not PayPal, not realizing
34:30
that they're the exact same technology.
34:32
Right. It's not only the same
34:34
technology, it's the same company.
34:36
Ridiculous. I used to use ICQII.
34:41
Don't. Know if that's the one?
34:43
That's the one with the AC, Yeah, Which would bring all of
34:47
your various chat programs under one umbrella.
34:53
And it was so much easier just to deal with people that way.
34:56
And believe it or not, last week I started looking for an ICQ
35:00
replacement. And there are a few out there.
35:05
They all seem to be imperfect in one way or another, but I'm
35:08
going to start. I'm going to start because I
35:10
can't keep track anymore of who uses what to talk to me.
35:15
Sometimes I'll remember, Oh yeah, this guy said this thing.
35:19
I got to go look that up. And then I got like 19 different
35:22
communications processes open on my desktop, and I can't remember
35:27
which of the 19 he used. So you know that that's getting
35:32
a little hard to deal with. Well, you and I had you and I
35:35
have that problem for, you know, having talked as as much and as
35:39
frequently as we do, we'll get into a habit of using Zoom and
35:45
then one or the other of us will switch to text and that message
35:47
gets lost because we're used to Zoom.
35:49
So we'll switch to text and then later on somebody will send one
35:52
on Zoom and that one gets lost. And then I got to send an e-mail
35:55
saying where the hell are you? What's the power And it's it's
36:00
never exactly clear. I think we both landed last
36:04
night on just regular texting is.
36:06
The we better stick to texting, right?
36:08
Yeah, that's. Just the fastest way.
36:10
But here's the degree of difficulty on that.
36:14
As our good listeners know, Aunt, I almost never know where
36:18
my phone is. Oh my God.
36:23
I never use it. I don't care about it.
36:27
It doesn't do anything for me. If I'm out of the house, I've
36:31
got my phone. If I'm in the house, I don't
36:33
know where it is. I never have it with the bleeps
36:36
turned on because I don't want to hear that nonsense.
36:40
Which means even the wife can't call it so I can find it.
36:44
I just know it's here somewhere. Is it linked somehow to your
36:48
computer? So if I text you, it comes up on
36:50
your computer. Yes, texting comes up on my
36:53
computer. OK.
36:54
All right. So regardless, I can still text
36:57
you and I know that you will have gotten it.
36:59
Yeah. Yeah, but you know, I'm sitting
37:01
at the same machine for every one of these things, and yet
37:04
somehow we perceive them each as being different in some way.
37:09
Yeah, it's all words in a box. Why?
37:11
Why complicate this? It's words in a box anyway.
37:17
You got anything else to talk about, Aunt?
37:19
Yeah. One I think we left off.
37:22
We we cleared the history of the thing, didn't we?
37:25
Yeah, we did. Yeah, OK.
37:28
Several people have asked me about tips for starting a
37:32
podcast and you know, to start a podcast, I mean, it's you just
37:38
start a podcast, right? The trick I think that we've
37:41
discovered is not in starting it.
37:46
Anybody can start one. It's did you keep going and you
37:50
keep going even when you only have a few listeners because I,
37:54
I get the sense that people think if you, if they don't
37:57
immediately explode to 1,000,000 downloads, there's something
38:00
wrong. We had, we had in our early
38:04
years, whatever it was, 50-60, maybe 100 people listening per
38:10
episode, but it was growing 2% a week, every single growing. 2% a
38:17
week for a very long time. Yeah, yeah.
38:21
And and that's, you know, the trick there is you just keep
38:25
going. I got a note yesterday again
38:29
asking me where the hell the podcast is by a young man who is
38:34
stationed in Poland right now. And he said, look, man, I, I
38:39
stumbled upon this by accident and I showed my two brothers and
38:44
all three of us listen every week and then we talk about it.
38:47
Aw, how nice. Yeah, right.
38:49
So shout out to you Wesley in in Poland.
38:54
Oh, is that Wes? It is one of the Wes's.
38:57
We have at least three Wes's who weren't OK, listen.
39:00
So, but you know, and another thing that we did relatively
39:06
early on, we realized that we had a community of sorts that
39:11
listened to us. So we opened the the Facebook
39:15
backstage group and we said, hey, just because we were
39:20
getting so many emails after a while that we could, we couldn't
39:24
answer them. And we thought, well, if
39:26
everybody shows up to one place and asks the question there, we
39:28
can answer it there and then everything will be fine.
39:31
And before you know it, friendships were developed and
39:36
animosities emerged and that that Facebook group became a
39:41
microcosm of a larger society. I think a a little better
39:45
behaved, not as much better as I would.
39:48
Oh, I think a lot better behaved.
39:50
Well, I, I would prefer if some people would cut the shit,
39:53
right. I mean that that's just, it's
39:55
just not where you go to be nasty to each other.
40:00
And and yet, some people simply must be nasty to each other no
40:04
matter where they go. Oh, OK, we we put up with it to
40:09
agree and we kick people out to a degree.
40:12
But it is a a community and I plan on sticking with it
40:18
regardless of how often the podcast comes out.
40:20
I'll be hanging out at Words and Numbers backstage for for the
40:23
rest of my life. Well, I.
40:25
Imagine, give long as there are people in it, I'll be there.
40:28
We started it kind of like leading it and it over with
40:35
past, I'd say 3-4 years, maybe five years has taken on a life
40:38
of its own. I think you and I could could
40:40
just leave and it would continue.
40:43
I don't know what's the same lines it has.
40:45
I don't think anybody would notice if we weren't there,
40:48
frankly. I really let me leave.
40:50
Don't. Let me say something else here
40:53
about our past episodes. This is episode 500.
40:57
We talk. We tend to talk about things
41:00
that are happening currently, but the episodes are largely
41:07
Evergreen in that whatever it is we're talking about, even though
41:10
it's something is going on right now, we go to the fundamentals,
41:14
the the things that are true across time and across people.
41:19
It's the truth we want to get AT.
41:22
And so to that extent, you know, if if at any point you're you
41:27
start to go into withdrawal and you haven't heard the past
41:31
episodes, go back and start at the beginning.
41:34
You'll find a lot of really good stuff all throughout there.
41:37
You, you will. And I think every single episode
41:40
we have done has a significant Evergreen portion.
41:46
I, I would call it at least 5060%, right?
41:50
Because something's always happening right now and it's
41:54
always happening right now against the backdrop of what's
41:58
already happened, what should have already happened, what did
42:03
already happened, right? All these sorts of things.
42:07
And the Evergreen lesson is always like a, a, just a little
42:11
bit of happiness right in the middle of all those words,
42:13
right? There's always something
42:16
timeless in every argument that people have.
42:22
So you can go find that in those earlier episodes.
42:25
Yeah. And I think I think that's one
42:27
of the important things that separates us from the standard
42:34
talking heads and and is also on the other side responsible for
42:40
the fact that, you know, we don't have 10 million listeners.
42:43
Yeah, that's. Right.
42:44
What attracts 10 million listeners is, is the fluff, the
42:48
surface stuff that is, that hits the that hits the gut, that
42:52
makes me mad or sad or afraid or glad or whatever it is.
42:56
And yeah, that stuff's out there, but.
42:58
But. When you dig into the truth, it
43:00
becomes less of a visceral response and more of an
43:04
intellectual response. And that's not to say that you
43:07
know that you're smarter than anybody else if you listen to
43:11
us, but rather that if you listen to us, you're someone who
43:14
is more interested in in thinking through the thing
43:18
rather than feeling the thing. Yeah, the the truth has no
43:22
talking points. Yeah, the truth.
43:24
The truth is the truth and partisan bickering does not
43:29
matter right now. I'll tell you that Barack Obama
43:34
was every bit as wrong most of the time as Donald Trump is.
43:39
The partisan rancor has nothing to do with this.
43:43
When I made the case against Barack Obama, and I'm assuming
43:47
you too, people would say things like, oh, I bet you just love
43:52
George Bush though, didn't you? Then then, you know, Biden
43:57
becomes president and I'm a, I'm an anti Democrat again.
44:01
And then Trump becomes president for the second time and I'm an
44:04
anti Republican. And no, I'm, I'm just chasing
44:08
after the right answer, which honestly is what everybody
44:11
should be trying to do all the way up to whoever sits in the
44:15
big chair. You and I could have been much
44:19
wealthier if we had decided to just show up and yell at each
44:24
other and say a bunch of crazy things about whoever was in
44:29
power. Right, right.
44:31
But that would have been a Better Business model.
44:36
But a Better Business model? Business decisions.
44:39
We we are making business decisions.
44:41
We were making broadly philosophical positions.
44:44
Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right.
44:46
And at the end, how do you live with yourself?
44:48
I mean, you can live quite well, but how do you live with
44:50
yourself? I think some of those assholes
44:53
don't have a whole lot of trouble given what I see.
44:59
And and then, you know, I saw Charlie Kirk get shot for having
45:05
opinions that people didn't like.
45:09
So, you know, that's where we live in.
45:12
It's not the greatest version of the world that it could be, but
45:17
it's it's actually pretty interesting most of the time.
45:22
Good enough for me I guess. So one last time, if you're able
45:26
to help us out, we'd certainly appreciate it.
45:29
If you aren't, we certainly do not hold it against you, and we
45:32
invite you to listen to us as much as you can.
45:35
Either way, look, if if you aren't, we still appreciate you.
45:39
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it.
45:41
Was still We absolutely appreciate everybody who
45:43
listens. But for those of you that are
45:46
looking to contributepatreon.com/words and
45:50
numbers. Is that with the end of the
45:53
ampersand? Oh yeah, no, no, no.
45:56
It's spelled out words and numbers.
45:58
One word that URLs really dislike?
46:02
Ampersands. The ampersand has caused us more
46:04
problems over the years than anything else.
46:07
That's been the real pain in my ass.
46:10
Anyway, I am at James R Harrigan at Twitter.
46:15
Anthony. I'm at at Anthony Davies and for
46:20
those of you that still do old school, send us e-mail
46:24
wordsandnumberspodcast@gmail.com. And for the last time in this
46:33
way, I I will say one more time. Life is hard.
46:40
We know. We really know.
46:43
Everything about it is hard. You wake up in the morning and
46:48
every damn thing you have to do all day long is actually
46:52
difficult. And most of the people you'll
46:55
meet are difficult too. But here's the thing.
46:59
You never know what kind of cross anyone is carrying.
47:02
You never do. And everyone is carrying a cross
47:07
of some kind. So keep that front of mind when
47:11
you have to deal with them and just take a deep breath, center
47:18
yourself and be nice to each other.
47:21
It's the best thing you can do. It's the best thing anyone could
47:25
do. And I think on that note, thank
47:29
you for 500 fantastic episodes. And we'll have more for you as
47:37
time and circumstances permit. See you next time, James.
47:42
See you next time, Aunt.