Latest / SpeakSmart English / Beyond the Basics: English Phrases Starting With Out Of

Transcript

Beyond the Basics: English Phrases Starting With Out Of · SpeakSmart English

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Picture this. You are You're running late for something important.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: You are out of breath, you are out of time,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: and you are just entirely out of luck.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely, the classic morning disaster.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Exactly, And in a matter of like seconds, you have
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: used the exact same two words to describe a biological failure,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: a ticking clock, and a cosmic curse. Which is crazy
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: when you really stop and think about it. Why does
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: the English language use this specific metaphor, like an empty container,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: to describe literally everything that goes wrong in our daily lives.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: It is a remarkable quirk of human psychology. I mean
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: it really is. We basically frame our entire existence, all
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: our frustrations and our failures, around this architecture of lack.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Like the container is empty, the boundary has been breached.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: You are suddenly, without warning, existing in a deficit.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: And that is exactly the fascinating linguistic mystery we are
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: unpacking today. We are exploring a transcript from an online
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: lesson created by an English teacher name He's based up
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: in Canada, and his mission in this material was to
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: examine twenty six extremely common English phrases that all begin
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: with those exact same two words.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: Out of which is such a brilliant I don't know
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: microscopic lens through which to view human behavior, because he
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: is taking this tiny, almost invisible grammatical structure and using
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: it to uncover how we unconsciously categorize our entire world exactly.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: And our goal today isn't just to sit here and
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: memorize vocabulary. If you are listening right now, maybe on
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: your commuter or while you're cooking dinner, whether you are
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: a native English speaker who uses these idioms one hundred
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: times a day, or if you're currently mastering the language,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: we want to understand the why.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: The psychology behind it.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Why do we rely on these specific spatial metaphors
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: to express separation or broken states or just sudden scarcity.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: I think it reveals this invisible geography that we are
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: constantly navigating every single day.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Ooh, invisible geography.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: I like that, right, because we're always tiptoeing a lot
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: the boundary between the safe, ordered things we are inside
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: of and the chaotic things we have suddenly and often
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: very jarringly fallen out of.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: It's so true. And Bob actually mentions his process for
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: putting this material together, which is kind of telling in itself.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: He sat down and just naturally brainstormed over twenty of
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: these phrases right off the top of his head in minutes. Wow,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: just instantly, instantly, And then he used AI to generate
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: a few more, just around out the list, pulling up
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: phrases that deal with human behavior. But the sheer volume
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: he could recall instantly just demonstrates how deeply this grammatical
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: structure is baked into the foundation of how we think.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the fact that he didn't even need a dictionary
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: for the vast majority of these proves that this isn't
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: some niche corner of linguistic No, not at all. This
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: is literally the primary vehicle English speakers use to describe
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: the phenomenon of losing something vital.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Right, And before we can understand how we relate to
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: society or the abstract concepts of the universe, have to
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: look at how we relate to our own physical bodies,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: the human machine exactly. Yeah, Because your very first experience
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: of lacking something usually happens right behind your own eyes
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: or you know, in your own lungs. So let's look
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: at how this starts with our sensory perception, specifically being
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: out of focus.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: That is the perfect starting point, honestly, because it deals
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: directly with epistemology. Wait epistemology, Yeah, basically, how we know
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: what is real, how we perceive the world before we
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: ever reach out to touch it.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Ah, got it? Well? Bond explains this physically using the
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: analogy of a camera lens or taking off your glasses.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: The result is a deliberately blurry image.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: He actually does this great on camera demonstration where it
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: puts his hand right up to the lens, forcing the
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: camera to lose its sharp resolution.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: Well that's clever.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, his hand becomes this ambiguous, blurry blob, and then
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: the autofocus catches and it snaps back to being sharp.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: He even jokes that he was kind of hoping the
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: blurry effect would last a little longer, just to hide it.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: It is a funny moment, but it perfectly highlights the
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: mechanics of human perception. When your eyes or a camera
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: lens are not geometrically aligned to capture light correctly, the
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: image is out of focus. What is so fascinating here
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: is that focus is treated by the language as a
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: physical territory. A territory how so, well, you are either
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: dwelling within the territory of clarity or you have stumbled
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: outside of it. The blurriness is the state of being
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: removed from that specific zone of precision.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Okay, Yes, And we take that physical idea of a
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: blurry camera lens and we just apply it to our
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: mental state all the time.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: We really do.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: Like you sit in your desk, you stare at a
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: spreadsheet and you say, I just can't concentrate on completely
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: out of focus today. You literally treat your brain like
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: a misaligned piece of glass.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: Precisely, we map the mechanical function of the eye directly
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: onto the cognitive function of the brain. When you are
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: out of focus mentally, your thoughts are literally blurry. You
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: cannot lock onto the sharp edges of an idea.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, But staying with
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: the purely biological side for a second, Bob brings up
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: the sudden, kind of violent physiological feedback loop of being
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: out of breath.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: He shares these great personal anecdotes about living on a farm.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: He talks about carrying incredibly heavy feed or farm equipment
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: around his property and just feeling his lungs burning.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: It's a very universal feeling.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: It is and he actually issues a direct invitation to you,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: the listener. He says, if you don't know what this
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: feels like, stand up right now, go outside and sprint
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: as fast as you can for twenty seconds.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: You will definitely feel that deficit instead of absolutely. It
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: is the most immediate biological alarm bell you possess. Your
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: body demands oxygen to fuel your muscles, and when the
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: physical demand exceeds the environmental supply you can pull in.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: You are suddenly existing in a critical deficit.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: Right you are literally out of the very invisible gas
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: keeping your cells alive, exactly, and he connects this directly
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: to the broader physical can condition of being out of shape,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: and I found his observation about the seasonal nature of
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: this really interesting. He notes that by the end of
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: the summer he is usually in fantastic shape because he
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: has been doing intense manual labor on the farm for months,
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: walking miles a day, lifting, sweating.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: Makes sense. Farm work is no joke.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: Right, But by the end of the winter, after months
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: of sitting indoors, resting, and probably eating too much hardy
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: winter food, he admits he drifts completely out of shape.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: That highlights how cyclical our relationship with our own biology
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: really is the agrarian calendar, you know, summer labor versus
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: winter rest. It perfectly illustrates that physical shape is not
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: a permanent destination you arrive at and just stay in forever.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: It's a perishable state, highly perishable.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: It is a volatile condition that requires constant daily maintenance.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: When you stop providing that maintenance, you drift outside of it. And,
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: as Bob rightfully points out, if you are out of shape,
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: even the slightest physical exertion will immediately make you.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Out of breath. The structural container and the resource inside
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: it are intrinsically linked.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, beautifully put, and that.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Leads to the ultimate depletion, which is being out of
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: energy the dreaded wall. Yeah, Bob gives this very relatable
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: example of attending a school graduation ceremony on a Wednesday
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: night midweek.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Events are brutal.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: They really are. It was the absolute last obligation he
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: had for the school year. The adrenaline finally wore off,
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: and the next morning, even though he slept in, he
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: woke up completely exhausted. He says, he's just wiped out,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: totally out of energy to do anything.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: Energy in this context is essentially synonymous with human stamina
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: and willpower. It is the invisible fuel for the human machine.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: Okay, so here's where I really have to push back
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: on this whole paradigm.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: Oh okay, let's hear it.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: Think about the dominant analogy we use today. We compare
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: the human body to a smartphone battery. You wake up
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: at one hundred percent, use your brain all day. The
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: battery bar turns red, and you declare you are out
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: of energy. But why do we frame our humanity like that?
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: Why do we say we are out of breath or
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: out of energy as if they are tangible liquids sloshing
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: around in a cup. It feels like this language frames
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: human stamina as a strictly depletable industrial resource, like I
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: don't know gasoline in a car.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: That is a phenomenal critique, honestly, and it raises a
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: vital question about how the industrial evolution fundamentally rewired our
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: language rewired at how well before machines dominated our lives,
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: we might have described exhaustion as a natural resting phase, right,
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: like a harmony with the setting sun.
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: The natural cyclelidic exactly.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: But post industrialization we began talking about our bodies as
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: if they are combustion engines that require measurable inputs and outputs.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: You have a finite amount of breath, a finite amount
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: of energy in the tank, and once the tank is empty,
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: the machine stalls.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: We treat ourselves like broken appliances.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: We really do. It is a profoundly utilitarian way of
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: viewing the human experience. We aren't just naturally tired at
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: the end of a long day. We are completely depleted
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: of a necessary commodity. We have basically failed the productivity
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: metric because our internal container is empty.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: It is unsettling how naturally we accept that framing very
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: but eventually we have to look past the boundaries of
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: our own skin and look at the physical world around us,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: because it is fascinating how we project those same rigid
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: mechanical boundaries onto our physical environment, the physical spaces we
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: occupy and the spaces we are barred from entering.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: This brings us to the spatial and locational disconnects, the
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: geometry of human access.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: You could call it exactly. Let's look at physical distance
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: and safety boundaries. Bob talks about being out of reach
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: using the classic example of items stored on the very
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: top shelf of a kitchen.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: Cabinet, the perennial struggle.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: Yes, you literally need to introduce a tool like a
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: step stool or a ladder to breach that vertical distance.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: He also points out the ubiquitous warning labels on household
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: chemicals or medications that explicitly state keep out of reach
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: of children.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: Which is a perfect example of using spatial removal as
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: a deliberate tool for human safety. Right, you are intentionally
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: creating a physical chasm that a child's arm cannot bridge.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: The dangerous item still exists in the room, obviously, but
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: by manipulating vertical space, you are rendering it inaccessible. You
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: are engineering safety through.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: Geometry, engineering safety through geometry. I love that. And then
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: we move from the reach of our hands to the
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: reach of our eyes being out of sight.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: Oh, this one is great.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: The source material has an absolutely hilarious visual to demonstrate this.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Bob pulls up an image of the legendary massive basketball
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: player Shaquille O'Neil. Classic Shack is attempting to hide behind
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: a tree trunk. It is significantly narrower than his shoulders.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: He fails hilariously because his entire body is still completely
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: one hundred percent visible on both sides of the tree.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: It is a fantastic comedic device, but it serves to
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: perfectly illustrate the absolute binary nature of the definition.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: What do you mean by binary nature?
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Well, to be out of sight means you have completely
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: removed yourself from the visual field of the observer. It
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: is essentially the adult version of object permanence.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Right like a toddler playing Peekaboo exactly.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: Shack's failure to hide behind that tiny tree just proves
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: how strict the concept is. You are either entirely obscured
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: or the illusion is completely shattered. There is no such
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: thing as being fifty percent out of sight.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: You're either in the visual field or you're out Precisely now,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: what happens when physical location intersects with deep social anxiety?
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: Ah, the plot thickens.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: It does we move from not being seen to desperately
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: wishing we couldn't be seen because we are out of place.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Bob's shares a very vulnerable anecdote here detailing what he
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: calls his biggest fear in life.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: Oh, this is a fear that resonates with almost everyone.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: It truly does. His ultimate nightmare is showing up to
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: a formal event wearing a casual T shirt and faded jeans,
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: only to walk through the door and realize every single
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: other person in the room is wearing a tailored tuxedo
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: or an elegant gown.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: Just instant, total panic.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Utter panic. He even used an aiimage generator to create
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: a picture of this exact scenario to show just how
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: underdressed and viscerally uncomfortable the person in the center of
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: the room looks.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: What is so compelling about the phrase out of place
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: is how it perfectly bridges the physical realm and the
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: psychological realm. Howso, physically you are occupying the space, you
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: have every right to be standing on that carpet, but contextually, aesthetically,
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: and culturally, you do not fit the environment, and that
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: physical mismatch causes an intense internal agony.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: You feel like a puzzle piece from the wrong box
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: that has just been jammed onto.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: The table exactly. It touches on deep evolutionary psychology. For
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: early humans, belonging to the group, the in group was
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: literally a matter of survival, right.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: You need the tribe to survive the winter.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: Yes, if you didn't fit in, if you were out
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: of place. You risk being exiled from the warmth of
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: the fire and the safety of the tribe. When you
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: show up to a black tie event in a T shirt,
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: your brain is firing ancient alarm bells telling you that
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: the tribe is going to reject you. You belong somewhere,
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: but your biology is screaming that it certainly isn't here.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: It is that visceral, sweaty feeling of all eyes turning
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: towards you, and you just know you crossed an invisible
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: social line exactly, And speaking of crossing lines, that leads
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: us directly to the concept of being out of bounds.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: Right Bob explains this strictly through the lens of organized sports.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: If you are playing soccer, or basketball or football, there
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: are thick white lines painted on the grass or the
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: hardwood court. If the ball or even the shoe of
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: the player holding the ball grazes or crosses that painted line,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: a referee instantly blows a whistle. You are out of
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: bounds outside the agreed upon area of play.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: Game theorists actually call this the magic circle.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: The magic circle.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is a temporary world with its own widgid
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: rules of reality. Inside the painted lines. You are a
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: hero scoring a goal, but the second you step out
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: of bounds, the magic circle dissolves. The game stops instantly.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: The rules of reality only apply within that specific geometry.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: That makes so much sense. But there is this incredible
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: unscripted moment in the lesson that I have to highlight
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: because it blew my mind.
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: Oh the self correction.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, Bob makes a real time self correction that
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: is just fascinating to watch. He's trying to explain the concept,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: and he attempts to use out of bounds to describe
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: a human social situation. He says to his audience, imagine
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: your friend is dating someone, so that romantic partner is
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: out of bounds for you to try and date. But
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: almost immediately mid breath, he catches himself. He shakes his
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: head and realizes the phrase sounds completely wrong for people,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: and he corrects himself, saying, the proper phrase for human
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: beings is actually off limits.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: That moment of spontaneous self correction is absolute linguistic gold.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: It reveals the deep, subconscious rules of language operating in
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: a native speaker's brain in real time. Consciously, he knew
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: exactly what concept you wanted to convey right a strict
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: boundary you absolutely cannot cross, but his subconscious linguistic process
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: or flagged out of bounds as fundamentally inappropriate for a
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: human relationship.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: So why is that? I want you listening right now
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: to ponder this. Why don't the physical lines in sports
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: seamlessly translate to human relationships. Conceptually they're the exact same thing.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: It's a border you shouldn't cross, a rule you shouldn't break.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: Yet English has these incredibly strict, unspoken contextual rules that
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: separate them.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: It all comes down to the fundamental nature of the
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: boundary itself. Out of bounds implies a geographic spatial reality.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: It is a literal line composed of chalk on dirt
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: or paint on wood. Human relationships, however, are not geometric.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: They are governed by complex social contracts, emotional nuance, and
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: moral permissions.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: So you can't paint a line on the ground to
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: protect a marriage.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: Exactly, when we say someone is off limits, we were
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: talking about a negotiated boundary. It is a boundary of respect, ethics,
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: and social permission, not a physical line you can accidentally
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: step on with your shoe. Our language meticulously separates the
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: geometry of a sports field from the ethics of a friendship.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: The geometry versus the ethics. That is a brilliant way
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: to frame it. So we have mapped out how we
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: relate to our internal biology and how we relate to
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: the physical and social spaces around us. Now we really
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: must look at how the English language copes with things
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: that expire, age or become suddenly unavailable. Ah. Yes, this
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: is the intersection of time, technology, and consumerism.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: This is where we see human language struggling to articulate
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: the relentless forward march of time and while the absolute
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: fragility of human commerce.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: Right, we are looking at the anxiety of the ticking clock.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Starting with being out of time. Bob paints a highly stressful,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: universally understood picture.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Here.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: You're sitting at a small desk in a quiet classroom
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: taking a massive final exam.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: My heart rate is already going up.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Right, the professor says, you have exactly two hours. You
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: look at up at the clock on the wall and
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: the second hand is sweeping past one hour and fifty
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: nine minutes. You are staring down the barrel of being
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: completely out of time.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: It is perhaps the most universally stressful scenario we experience
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: because time is the one singular resource that no amount
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: of wealth or effort can manufacture more of.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: You can't buy an extra minute.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: You really can't. When you are out of time, you
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: are entirely stripped of your agency. The event is over,
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: the window is closed, whether you are prepared for the
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: outcome or not.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: And closely related to the anxiety of time running out
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: is the anxiety of time leaving you behind.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: Entirely being out of date.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Being out of date, time didn't just expire, It passed
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: your tools by rendering them obsolete. Bob shares a hilarious
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: story about a family member who was constantly complaining that
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: their work computer was out of date.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: Oh, this story was so funny.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: Bob says he didn't quite grasp the severity of the
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: situation until this relative started describing the machine. They were
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: running Windows ninety five or maybe Windows.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: Ninety eight, unbelieved.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: We're talking about a massive, beige plastic tower, a fourteen
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: inch heavy CRT monitor, a CD ROM drive, and a
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: literal slot for a floppy disk.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: That isn't just out of date. That is practically an
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: archaeological artifact, right, but it illustrates the concept perfectly. Something
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: that is out of date isn't necessarily mechanically broken. That
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: old beige tower might boot up perfectly fine.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: Sure it turns on.
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: It just no longer aligns with the current technological era.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: It has been marooned in the past, rendered useless not
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: by its own internal failure, but by the rapid evolution
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: of the entire digital ecosystem around it.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: That's a great way to put it. Marooned in the past. Now,
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: from the evolution of silicon and software, we move to
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: the ancient cycles of nature and modern commerce. Let's talk
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: about scarcity, specifically being out of season and out of stock.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: Bob uses a wonderful agricultural example for out of season.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: He contrasts the joyous experience of buying fresh local strawberries
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: and rurld Canada in the middle of June, when they
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: are naturally in season, bright red and taste like sunshine,
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: nothing better, nothing better, Versus attempting to buy them in
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: the dead of winter in January. In January, Canadian strawberries
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: are completely out of season. That means you are buying
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: fruit that has been grown in a greenhouse in California
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: or Mexico, loaded onto a refrigerated truck driven thousands of miles,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: and they just taste watery and dull.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: This highlights how the phrase out of can describe a
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: profound disruption in natural planetary cycles. So modern humanity has
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: used logistics, global shipping, and refrigeration to completely conquer the seasons.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: We have engineered a reality where we are never truly
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: without strawberries. Yet our language still holds onto the truth,
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: acknowledging that the natural order has been circumvented. Wow, the
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: fruit you are eating in January is existing outside of
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: its intended temporal window. The language remembers the Earth's natural rhythm,
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: even if our grocery stores completely ignore it.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: That is profound. And speaking of grocery stores, there is
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: the pure, unfiltered retail disappointment of things being out of stock.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: Oh the worst.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: You see a vibrant advertisement for a massive weekend sale
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: on a television you want. You get in your car,
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: drive across town, walk confidently down the electronic sile and
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: the metal shelf is just completely bare. A helpful employee
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: tells you they are sold out. The item is out
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: of stock. Bob mentions the one saving grace of this scenario,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: which is asking the cashier for a rain check. You know,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: a little digital barcode or a slip of paper that
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: allows you to secure that heavily discounted sale price for
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: the future whenever the logistics chain finally brings the item
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: back into the store.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: The concept of the rain check is a fascinating cultural
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: artifact of consumerism.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: It really is, isn't it.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: It is essentially an iou from a massive corporation to
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: an individual citizen. It is a contractual promise to restore
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: the cosmic balance of supplying demand at a later date.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: But the immediate visceral feeling of encountering that bare shelf
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: or an out of stock notification online is profound. It
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: is a sudden, sharp denial of access to the modern marketplace.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: You have the capital, but the container of commerce is empty.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: Container of commerce is empty. Which brings us to perhaps
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: the most fascinating hidden revelation in this entire transcript.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: Oh the rule.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: The rule. It is a strict rule about the phrase
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: out of order. It is a rule so deeply ingrained
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: in our collective psyche that most native speakers obey it
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: daily without ever realizing it.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: This is one of those subtle linguistic nuances that truly
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: uncovers the sociological wiring of how our civilization functions.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Bob points out that the phrase out of order is exclusively,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: rigidly reserved for shared public utilities. He list the prime
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: examples a massive photocopier in the school staff room with
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: a takes piece of paper on it reading out of
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: order awaiting repair. Or a vending machine in a train
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: station that eats your quarters but refuses to drop your
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: chocolate bar. Or an elevator in a public parking garage
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: that has its doors permanently shut.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: Yes, and the crucial distinction Bob makes is that you
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: would never ever walk out to your driveway and declare
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: that your personal family sedan is out of order. Never
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: if your car engine won't turn over, you simply say
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: it is broken or that it broke down. You do
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: not put a handwritten out of order sign on your
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: own personal lawnmower in your own garage.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: I look at this as a kind of linguistic tragedy
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: of the commons.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's a good comparison.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: Shared items, things that belong to the public trust, or
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: a faceless corporation. Get this highly formal, slightly detached label
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: out of order. It sounds sterile, it sounds bureaucratic. But
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: our personal items, the things we bought with our own
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: money and rely on intimately for our daily lives, they
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: feel much more viscerally broken. Why do we create that
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: emotional and linguistic diftance when dealing with public machines?
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: If we pull back and look at the sociology of it,
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: it is entirely about liability, responsibility, and the expectation of
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: the social contract.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: Explain that a bit more.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: When a public elevator is out of order, it implies
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: a reach of a public agreement. The facility management, the
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: invisible authority governing the building, has failed to maintain order
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: in a shared communal space.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: Right, It's their problem, not mine.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The phrase is formal because it involves public liability,
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: collective inconvenience, and a bureaucratic chain of repair. But when
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: your own car is broken, that is an intimate personal tragedy.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: You ben the direct consequence of being stranded, and you
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: bear the direct financial burden of the mechanics bill.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: So the language changes to reflect the burden.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: Exactly. The language shifts dramatically from a formal declaration of
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: public malfunction to a raw statement of personal hardship.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: It is amazing how much complex sociology and legal liability
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: is packed into those three little words. So we have
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: progressed from the breakdown of physical machines to the breakdown
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: of social norms. This transitions us perfectly into examining the
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: social contract, looking at human behavior, perception, and how we
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: judge one another.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: This is where the phrases become deeply psychological. We are
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: no longer talking about empty coffee cups, blurry cameras, or
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: broken elevators. We are dissecting human conduct and the consequences
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: of our actions.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: We are unpacking what it means to be out of line,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: out of character, out of context, out of touch, and
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: out of trouble. Let's start with the concept of breaking
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: the rules being out of line. Bob gives examples that
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: are very focused on disruptive behavior. He talks about restless
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: kids throwing erasers at each other across the classroom while
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: the teacher.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: Is talking classic out of line behavior right.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Or in a serious adult setting, someone walking right up
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: to a microphone at a formal city council meeting and
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: just starting to yell their opinion without raising their hand,
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: waiting their turn, or being recognized by the mayor. Even
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: in his own digital life during his live streams, if
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: internet chat users start using profanity or being rude, he says,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: they're out of line and he has to ban them,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: putting them in a digital timeout.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: The phrase out of line is incredibly visual and historically rich.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: It evokes a literal physical cue of people standing in
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: an orderly row waiting their turn for rations or entry.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: It represents order, patience.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: Any quality like standing in her line at the bank.
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: Yes, when you behave inappropriately, when you yell out of
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: turn or throw an a racer, you are metaphorically stepping
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: out of the formation that society has agreed upon to
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: maintain peace. You are disrupting the geometry of good manners
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: and civil society.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: But then, he brilliantly contrasts that societal rule breaking with
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: being out of character, which is a much more internal,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: private deviation. Being out of line means you are breaking
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: society's rules, but being out of character means you are
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: breaking your own rules. Bob shares a very vulnerable personal
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: example here.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: Yes, I remember this, he.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Says, his normal character, assuming he is eating well, exercising
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: and getting a full night sleep is to be a
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: very positive, energetic, happy guy, which.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: Comes across in his lessons.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: Definitely, no for sure, but he reveals that he had
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: some weird, lingering health problems over the last year that
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: left him chronically exhausted, and he admits with a lot
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: of humility that during that time there were moments he
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: was uncharacteristically grumpy, short tempered, and angry with his family.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: That kind of vulnerability highlights a profound psychological truth about
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: human nature. What's that We all possess a baseline personality,
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: a meticulously constructed character or persona that we present to
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: the world to navigate our relationships. It is who we
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: believe we are. When intense external pressures like chronic pain, insomnia,
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: or extreme stress force us to act outside that established baseline,
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: it is incredibly jarring. It is jarring for the people
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: who love us, but more importantly, it is jarring for ourselves.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: We feel alienated from our own identity.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: It is exactly like wearing a mask that suddenly doesn't
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: fit your own face. You look in the mirror and
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: you literally don't recognize the emotional reactions you are having.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: Oh, exactly.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Now, from personal behavior, let's look at how our words
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: and ideas are treated in the modern digital age being
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: out of context. This is arguably one of the most
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: critical phrases for navigating the Internet today. Bob explains the
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: inherent danger of digital media slicing up long form communication
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: into these tiny, weaponized ten second clips.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: It is the ultimate modern communication hazard, the fragmentation of truth.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: He gives this hyper specific, slightly funny example to illustrate
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: the danger. He says, Imagine he is on a live
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: stream talking about global sports and he says the full sentence.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: My friend says, Canada has no chance of winning. But
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: that's ridiculous. Canada will definitely.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: Win, right, very clear statement.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: But if a malicious user comes along, uses video editing
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: software to clip just the middle part, Canada has no
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: chance of winning and posts that five second clip on
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: social media, they have completely isolated and reversed his actual meaning.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: What is truly fascinating here is the etymology of the
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: word context itself, Oh do tell. It originates from the
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: Latin word contextier, which literally translates to weaving together together. Yes,
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: thing of a massive, intricate tapestry. When you take a
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: sentence out of context. You are literally grabbing a single
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: thread and forcefully pulling it out of the tapestry. Oh wow,
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: Holding up a single red thread doesn't show you the
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: picture of the drag and woven into the fabric. In fact,
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: ripping that thread out actively destroys the integrity of the
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: whole piece. In the digital age, we have built entire
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: industries and algorithms dedicated to unweaving each other's words to
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: manufacture outrage.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: The digital outrage machine runs entirely on ripping threads out
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: of tapestries. That is a great visual and navigating that
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: chaotic digital landscape requires you to be very aware of reality,
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: which brings us to being out of touch. The brilliant
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: expert insight Bob provides here is that there are actually
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: two very distinct, almost unrelated uses for this one phrase.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: Yes, understanding this dual meaning is critical. The first meaning
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: refers to being blissfully uninformed about the current reality of
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: the world. Right uses a great sociological example a local
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: grocery store that still has a giant faded sign on
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: the front sliding doors mandating that all customers must wear masks,
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: long after the pandemic has officially ended, the virus has
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: waned and the government rules have changed. The store management
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: is completely out of touch with the current reality of
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: public health and society.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: And then the second meaning is much more intimate. It
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: represents a lapse in interpersonal communication. Bob talks about having
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: a sudden realization that he hasn't spoken to his own
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: brother in six.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: Months, which happens to the best of us.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: It does. They haven't argued, life just got busy. They've
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: been out of touch for too long, and he realizes
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: he needs to pick up his phone and bridge that gap.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: Before we analyze the psychology of that, I want to
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: highlight something really interesting Bob does during this section regarding
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: phonetics and pronunciation.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: Oh right, it is a.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: Fantastic practical technical tip for anyone listening who wants to
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: understand how Native English speakers actually sound in casual conversation.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Yes, the pronunciation tip. I love this part walk us
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: through exactly what he points out.
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: Bob notes that when Native English speakers are talking at
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: full conversational speed, the separate words out and of almost
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: always violently crashed together and blur into the slang sound
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: outah right, like outa here exactly. You hear people say
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: I'm out of luck, We're out of time, I've been
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: out of touch. However, there is a subconscious phonetic rule
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: which is if the very next word in the sentence
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: begins with a distinct vowel sound like the word order,
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: native speakers will instinctively hit that hard F or V
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: sound to create a bridge between the words. It becomes
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: distinctly out of order, never out of order.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, yeah, you're right. I never say out of order.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: Right. It is a microadjustment the human mouth makes in
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: milliseconds to maintain the rhythmic flow of the sentence and
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: prevents stuttering over clashing vowel sounds.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: It is one of those invisible rules of language you
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: obey every day without ever being taught it in a class,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: like knowing how to breathe. But okay, I want to
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: push back on the core metaphor of out of touch itself.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: Go for it.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: I want to know why physical touch, the act of
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: putting your skin against an object, became our linguistic go
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: to metaphor for mental awareness, intelligence, and social connection. When
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: did losing literal physical contact with an object become completely
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: synonymous with losing your mental sharpness about current events.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: It is a profound observation and it raises a fascinating
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: point about embodied cognition and how our highly evolved brains
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: process abstract.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: Information embodied cognition.
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, meaning we are physical, biological creatures first and foremost.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: Our very earliest, primal understanding of reality as infants comes
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: entirely through tactile sensation. It is haptic grounding, like babies
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: touching everything exactly. Touching a hot stove teaches you danger.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: Holding a mother's hand teaches you safety. Feeling the texture
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: of a rock teaches you prominence. Therefore, when we want
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: to describe a deep, high, highly accurate, intellectual understanding of
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: the world, we borrow the vocabulary of our most fundamental, reliable.
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: Sense that makes so much sense.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: To be in touch means you metaphorically have your finger
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: pressed firmly on the pulse of reality. You can feel
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: its texture, its heat, its heart beat. When you lose
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: that connection, you are intellectually floating in a void. You
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: are out of touch, completely untethered from the heavy grounding
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: weight of the fact.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: Untethered. I love using that word for this concept. Yeah,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: because the final phrase in this social section is entirely
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: about a parent trying desperately to keep their child tethered
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: to good behavior and safety, keeping them out of trouble.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: Ah. Yes.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: Bob describes this as the quintessential classic parental farewell. When
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: a teenager is packing up the car, leaving the house
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: to go camping with their friends for the weekend, the
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: parent stands anxiously at the front door and says, have fun,
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: but stay out of trouble.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: It is the universal parental clea across literally all cultures.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: Bob defines it very specifically. He says, what the parent
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: really means is don't do anything illegal, don't do anything
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: spectacularly dumb, and please, whatever you do, don't do anything
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: that results in a late night phone call to my
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: house from the local police department.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: What is truly fascinating about this idiom is that trouble
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: is framed entirely as a geographic location, like a place. Yes,
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: it is spoken of as if it is a physical
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: place you can accidentally wander into if you aren't looking
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: at your map. The parent is essentially telling the teenager
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: navigate your weekend terrain very carefully and avoids stepping into
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: the physical swamp.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: Of bad decisions, the swamp of bad decisions.
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: It implies that trouble is out there, lurking in the
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: woods like a predator or a pitfall, and it takes active,
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: conscious effort to steer your path to stay out of it.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: Which is the perfect conceptual transition to our final section. Actually,
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: because sometimes you try your absolute hardest to navigate your
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: path carefully, you follow all the rules, and the universe
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: just throws a swamp right in front of your feet. Anyway,
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: sadly true, that brings us to our final exploration chaos, scarcity,
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: and the unexpected.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: This is the ultimate dramatic culmination of the entire out
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: of concept. Up until now, we have talked about minor inconveniences,
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: blurry vision, and social missteps. But this final section is
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: about what happens when human beings experience a catastrophic total
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: loss of agency, resources, or physical safety.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: We're looking at phrases that describe the absolute bottom, dropping
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: out of your reality, out of control, out of practice,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: out of luck, out of money, out of work, out
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: of business, out of danger, and out of nowhere. Let's
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: start with the terrifying loss of physical and emotional agency. Okay,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: the prime example Bob uses to illustrate being out of
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: control is driving a heavy car in the middle of
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: a Canadian winter and suddenly hitting a patch of invisible
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: black ice on the highway, terrifying In an instant, the
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: steering wheel goes slack in your hands, that breaks, do
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: absolutely nothing, and you are completely at the mercy of
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: kinetic momentum.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: It is a moment of pure visceral terror. You are
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: no longer piloting the machine. The frozen environment has taken over.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: You have literally been evicted from the driver's seat of
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: your own reality.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: He also brilliantly applies the phrase out of control to
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: human emotion. He talks about massive bouncers at nightclubs having
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: to physically restrain and kick out patrons who have become
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: highly emotional, aggressive, or severely drunk. Those patrons are out
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: of control, meaning their rational, civilized mind is no longer
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: managing their physical actions. The animal brain has taken the wheel,
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: and sometimes chaos just finds you, regardless of your actions,
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: which brings in the phrase out of nowhere. Bob describes
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: a sudden jarring traffic accident. A person driving a car
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: through an intersection suddenly collides with a bicyclist, and when
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: the police arrive, both the driver and the cyclist claim
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: the other party came out of nowhere.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: Out of nowhere is such a fascinating, almost philosophical phrase
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: when you really analyze it, how so well in the
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: realm of physics. Obviously, the bicycle did not materialize from
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: a quantum vacuum, right.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: It existed before the crash.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: It came from a very specific street. It occupied space
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: and time. But human perception is incredibly limited. Our visual
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: cortex can only process so much data at once. When
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: an event happens faster than our brain's ability to track
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: its origin point. We described the object as arriving from
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: literal non existence nowhere. It highlights our deep biological vulnerability
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: to sudden violent change and.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: The adrenaline crash. The overwhelming relief when that sudden violent
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: danger finally passes is palpable. Bob uses dramatic AI generated
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: image to illustrate the phrase out of danger. He generates
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: a picture of a massive gear clad firefighter physically carrying
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: a woman out the front door of a raging, burning home.
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: So it's a powerful image.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the flames are still consuming the living room right
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: behind them, but because she has crossed the physical threshold
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: of the doorway onto the lawn, she has transitioned from
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: mortal peril to safety. She is out of danger.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: The spatial dynamic in that image is incredibly literal.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: What do you mean?
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: Danger? Was the interior space of the burning house wrapped
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: inside the danger, and she had to be physically bodily
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: carried out of its boundaries to survive.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: Right, she was literally taken out of it. But not
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: all crises are sudden, explosive life and death moments. Some
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: crises are slow, grinding, deeply stressful periods of scarcity. This
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: is where human language gets very real and very bleak
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: about economics and survival. Being out of money, out of work,
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: out of business, and out of luck.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: This is the somber language of the empty wallet and
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: the foreclosure notice.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Bob touches on the stark, terrifying reality of being
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: out of work. He actually mentions his own strange, difficult
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: situation about thirty years ago, where he suddenly found himself
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: without a job, desperately scouring the classifieds looking for work
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: to pay his bills.
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: Very humbling experience.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: Very He also mentions the mild diversion of this college,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: students coming back to their hometowns for the summer, desperately
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: searching for minimum wage employment just to appease their parents.
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: And when enough people in a community are out of work,
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: the domino effect happens and you start seeing the neon
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: going out of business signs plastered in the windows on
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: main Street. The local store is liquidating its inventory, permanently
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: locking its doors, and ceasing to operate entirely.
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: What is sociologically fascinating here is how the abstract concept
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: of business is treated as a physical container or an arena.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: An arena.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a company doesn't just fail and dissolve, It goes
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: out of business. It is forced to exit the arena
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: of commerce entirely. It is exiled from the marketplace.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: And sometimes you have the money in your pocket, you
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: have a job, but the universe simply denies you. You
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: are just out of luck. Bob shares this highly relatable
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: story about his wife, Jen and their kids desperately wanting
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: to go see the pop star ed Shearon in concert.
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: Oh, concert tickets these days are insane, right.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: Bob looked up the ticket prices online, saw the exorbitant fees,
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: and flat out told his family, You're out of luck.
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: I am absolutely not buying tickets that are that expensive.
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: He also gives the mundane example of seeing an ad
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: for an incredibly cheap used car online, calling the number,
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: only to hear the seller say, sorry, buddy, you're out
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: of luck. I just sold it ten minutes ago. You
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: are totally unable to get what you wanted.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: The way we use luck in these phrases is so revealing.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: Tell me more about that.
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: Luck is treated as an exhaustible, finite resource. It is
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: conceptualized as a cosmic bank account that you can accidentally overdraw.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: Oh, a bank account.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: Yes, you tried to make a withdrawal to get those
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: concert tickets or to buy that cheap car, and the
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: invisible cosmic bank teller informed you that your balance was zero.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: That is a brilliant analogy. Speaking of things that decay
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: are empty out over time, we have to mention the
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: degradation of human ability being out of practice.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: Ah.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: Yes, this is the tragic loss of a physical or
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: mental skill purely due to time and neglect. Bob talks
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: about his own frustrating struggles with archery. After taking a
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: very long break from the sport, he couldn't hit the target,
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: his form was terrible, all because he was out of practice.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: He also meant turning down casual invitations to play pickup
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: volleyball with friends because it has been years since he
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: played and he knows his reflexes and skills have severely degraded.
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: I have to say I absolutely loved the specific detail
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: in the source material about the AI generated golfer he
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: used for this segment.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: Oh, it is one of the funniest moments in the
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: whole lesson.
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: But wanted to use AI to create an image of
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: a frustrated golfer who was clearly out of practice, and
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: the AI completely hallucinated the physics of how the sport works.
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: It failed so spectacular.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: The generated image shows a golfer winding up, pulling his
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: club way back over his shoulder to take a massive swing,
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: but the golf ball has somehow already been hit and
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: is flying through the air off the tee. The visual
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: representation of a human being completely out of practice was
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: accidentally flawlessly executed because the AI machine itself had no
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: earthly idea how to play golf.
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: That is incredible irony. But you know, if we pull
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: all of these threads together. If we synthesize this entire
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: final section on ko and scarcity, what we're really looking
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: at is language describing the total catastrophic alteration of an ecosystem.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: An ecosystem.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, when you are out of control on black ice,
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: when you are out of work, or when you are
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: completely out of luck, you haven't just misplaced a single
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: item like your car keys. You have been forcefully, entirely
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: removed from the ecosystem of success, safety, and stability. You
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: are standing outside the fortified walls of the city, looking
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: back in at the warmth, stranded in the cold.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: That is an incredibly powerful, evocative way to look at it,
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: the walled city of stability and the frozen wilderness of lack.
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: And that profound division actually leads me to a final
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: overarching thought that I want to leave you the listener,
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: to mull over as you go about the rest of
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: your day.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: Oh, a final thought. I like it.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: We've spent this entire time meticulously examining twenty six different
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: ways the English language describes loss, brokenness, deficit, and chaos.
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: Out of is almost universally a description of a negative
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: city situation.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: Right, every single phrase we have discussed is a problem
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: that needs to be solved, or a tragedy to be endured.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: But if you look closely at the linguistics, notice the hidden,
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: unspoken implication baked right into the grammar itself. The phrase
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: out of inherently implies that the default state of the
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: universe is being in wait.
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: Okay, unpack that form meat.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: Think about the binary nature of the phrases. The language
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: assumes that we are by default supposed to be in focus.
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, we are biologically supposed to be in shape.
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: We are meant to be in control of our vehicles,
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: in business, and in touch with our families.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: That's amazing.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: It suggests that despite all these twenty six phrases describing chaotic, stressful,
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: and negative situations, the deep foundational architecture of the English
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: language is actually profoundly inherently optimistic.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, I never thought about it that way.
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: We culturally view order, health, abundance, and human connection as
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: our natural container. That is our home, that is where
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: we belong. And when things go terribly wrong, when we
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: lose our jobs or our tempers, we haven't entered a new, permanent,
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: miserable reality. We have merely and temporarily fallen out of
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: our rightful place. The structure of the language itself is
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: a subconscious promise that things are supposed to be okay,
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: that we can find our way back inside.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: We view order as the natural default of the universe,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: and chaos is the temporary exception. That is an incredible revelation.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: It totally reframes every single phrase we just spent the
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: time analyzing. You aren't permanently broken, You are just temporarily
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: out of your container.
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: Precisely you just have to climb back in.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: That is a truly phenomenal, uplifting thought. To end on,
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: I want to sincerely thank you the listener for staying
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: with us all the way to the end of this
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: extensive exploration of the source material. We love taking these
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: seemingly mundane everyday concepts just two little words, and seeing
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: how incredibly deep the psychological and sociological roots really go.
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this conversation, please take a moment right
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: now to subscribe on whatever app you were using so
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: you never miss a future shit. We have so many
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: more fascinating mind bending topics coming up that you absolutely
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: won't want to miss until next time. We bid you
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: a fond farewell stay curious, stay in bounds, and whatever
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: you do this weekend, try to stay out of trouble.