Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Flightless Bird: Leaf Blowers

Episode Date: December 6, 2022

In this week’s Flightless Bird, David Farrier sets out to understand why Americans love leaf blowers so much. Plagued by leaf blowers around his tiny one-bedroom apartment, David attempts to reach President Joe Biden to discuss leaf blower use at the White House. Failing miserably, he has to settle for another politician - also powerful - Pleasantville Village Trustee, Nicole Asquith. Why are various cities and states attempting to phase out gas-guzzling leaf blowers and why are they so dangerous? David speaks to Seattle Met magazine journalist Benjamin Cassidy, who recently wrote about Seattle's leaf blower turf war, before musing on Americans’ obsession with the perfect lawn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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no endless searching for the right therapist. Learn more and save 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com slash bird. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash bird. Hi, I'm David Farrier, a New Zealander who accidentally got stuck in America, and I want to find out what makes this country tick. Now one thing I love to do is use my ears, because there are so many good things to listen to. Back in New Zealand, I'd enjoy listening to the beautiful call of the tui bird, or the gentle braze of a nearby flock of sheep.

or the gentle braze of a nearby flock of sheep. Here in America, I'm getting used to different noises. The soothing cooing of a crow. And because I'm in LA, the gentle hum of traffic. But there's one sound that really cuts through every other sound. And it comes without warning. and it comes without warning. It's the leaf blower. And from what I can tell, Americans love to show their patriotism by blowing leaves from one place to another place.

But all that leaf blowing comes at a cost. A typical gas-powered leaf blower throws out more pollutants than a 6,000-pound 2011 Ford Raptor. I wanted to find out what America has against leaves. I wanted to know why they need to be blown around all the time. I mean, it's like vacuuming the house, but instead of sucking everything up, you just blow all the dust into another room. It doesn't make any sense to my simple Kiwi mind. So, get ready to gas up that tank so you can make your yard the cleanest, tidiest yard in town, because walked through the yard towards the attic and two leaf blowers around me blowing.

Wow. Were you in a tornado? I was in a tornado. Wow. It was actually triggering in a good and bad way. That was a you in a tornado? I was in a tornado. It was actually a very triggering in a good and bad way. That was a bad trigger. Why? The good trigger was there's some major excavations going on around here. Yes. And I love tunnels. And I got excited seeing all the dirt and digging being done. Yeah. We're going to see you just pop up out of the ground one day. That's my dream.

What did it trigger badly? Well, I'm not alone. I know other people have a problem as well, but it's so loud and so stressful. Yeah. What do you feel when you hear a leaf blower? Because there are a lot of them around this part of certainly Los Angeles. There are. I walked by a couple of leaf blowing incidents on my walk and I could give a shit i just don't care at all you don't care at all and i actually feel loved a lot by the people who are leaf blowing often because they notice me and then stop or turn their blower away because they're trying to protect my heart that's really polite that they stop and i've to be clear i've got nothing against the leaf blowing. There's a lot of them in America that are employed to leaf blow. Yes.

And we get into this in the documentary. Okay. I don't have beef with them. Yeah. And they're beautiful. They're turning the leaf blower off. They sense you coming. They turn away.

I give them a little chin up. Oh, you smell at them. I don't smell. No, it's a chin up. You're like. You did a smell. What do you do? How do you communicate with someone when you can't audibly communicate?

Like car-to-car, if you're driving and you lock eyes with the driver and they've done something nice. Oh, I do a little wave. You do a wave. Yeah. In New Zealand, we do the raised chin briefly. That's kind of a male thing, I think. That's how men communicate. Okay, this is interesting because it doesn't look natural.

Oh, sort of the head jerk. Can you stand up and do it? Yeah, it goes. Because maybe it just looks confusing because you're sitting. I'll be walking along the leaf blower and I'll go. They'll turn the leaf blower away and I'll go. Oh, wow. Yeah, it seems.

It does seem funny when you do it right there. It seems extreme. No, you've got no context. You can't just be doing it to nothing. That's why it's weird. But that's what I would do to a leaf blower when they turn away from me. Okay. You're waving.

I wave or I smile. Okay, that's nice. Because normally I have a frown on. And then if I like the person, then they get a nice smile from me. This might be a West Coast thing, but I get really frustrated driving and taking driving lessons because I'm going to get my license. But if I do something nice to another car, I let them in. Yeah. There's no wave and no hello at all.

There's nothing and it's blank. And that makes me so furious. It is annoying. I don't like that either. In the South, we do a lot of waves and smiles. Yeah, that's great. It's all in hospitality. The whole thing about LeapFloors, I've got no beef with the people that are employed to do it.

That's fine. What I do have beef with is the private individual who has the leaf blower because they're too lazy to rake. Oh, wow. What a statement. It's not lazy. It's efficient. Yeah, I have a leaf blower for my backyard. Okay, so do you put your leaves

when you're blowing them somewhere do you gather them and put them in a compost bin or are they just floating out for someone else to come up and leaf blows somewhere else and it goes on forever so mine's not for leaves it's for like dead parts of the tree on our back patio okay i'm just blowing it into the like dirt to clean up but if the patio area and i might be wrong on this but in new zealand when leaves come off a tree they just decompose naturally it's like nature does it and that nature has a natural leaf blower called the wind yeah and we use that wind is just moving it also into another place yeah but it's not creating extra pollutants and noise because the noise i mean even making this podcast each week

i record for the documentaries i record these little voiceovers in my little apartment yeah i don't have soundproofing i'm surrounded by windows the number of times i've been disrupted mid-flow my voice is sounding great you know i'm not coughing or spluttering it's all sounding up enunciations through the roof wow i'm're very confident. And then the leaf blower begins, and I go, fuck, and it's have to start again. Well, this is, I mean, a ding, ding, ding for the life we're living right now, because there's lots of noise happening here, lots of construction noise. There is. You hear it.

That's what's going on. But you don't seem to care about that. No, it's rare. The problem with the leaf blower is it's a constant soundtrack to living in America I think because you've been here so long You've all become immune to it I'm noticing it all the time The pneumatic drill

You only hear that occasionally and it's kind of a thrill You're like, wow, what a weapon that is And it sounds like you think there's no value to blowing leaves Yeah, and there's no That's my main point There's no value to it at all Well, yes, because it's slipping. You're slipping on leaves over here.

It's not a banana peel. It is. Sometimes it rains, rarely, but still. And then they get stuck on the ground and then you can slip and die. How many people have died? Rob, look up how many people have died based on leaves. I actually had a bit of a dinner disaster or a near disaster recently. I went to meet with some New Zealand friends,

and there was a friend I hadn't seen there in a while, but I don't know her well enough just to sort of get stuck in straight away. I sat down. I was late. They were mid-conversation, and she had just uttered the sentence, I'm not lying, I love leaf blowers. My parents are visiting from New Zealand. They love them so much.

I've given them one, and they've taken it back to New Zealand. Oh, my God. And this was a couple of days ago, right? So this was fresh in my mind this whole episode. And I just launched into a tirade that I thought was funny, but she took as an attack on her, her mother, her concern for the environment. It went bad. Oh, so she thinks it's good for the environment. Look, I don't want to speak for her.

Hadn't thought about it or had got an electric one, which is much, much better for the environment. Oh, I see. She took it as you were saying you don't care about the environment. You don't care about your mom. You hate the world. Oh, yeah. Yeah, she took it as that attack on her very core of her being.

And it went south real quick. I think you might owe her an apology. I sent the message saying, nice to see you afterwards. That might come off as sarcastic. It was nice to see her. It was. All my social cues were off. I thought it was a funny thing to talk about.

It wasn't funny for her. Do you think maybe because of your face blindness that your ears are hypersensitive? maybe because of your face blindness, that your ears are hypersensitive and you're hearing the leaf blower in a way that maybe the rest of us aren't. I think that's a great theory. There was a show I was obsessed with, an American show called The Sentinel.

It's big in New Zealand. And The Sentinel, he got lost in the jungle and because there were no other sounds around, I might be telling this wrong, all his senses got heightened. So when he came back to the city he was like a superhero no you'd hear everything he could see everything yeah that's what happens that's real that's science if you are blind yeah your other senses are often heightened and i am it in action on this weekend yeah so this it was really something can i tell explain the scenario from your point of view okay so david was meeting me i was with two friends

and you were meeting us and we meet at this place we go to a lot and i normally have a seat i'm sitting in you're always in the corner yes monica's corner i call You're always in the corner. Yes. Monica's corner, I call it. Always in the corner. And other people were sitting there that day. It was horrible. So we had to sit somewhere else. And I do have a regret. I didn't even think about the fact that I should have warned you. And I'm sorry.

I apologize. But I was sitting there and chit-chatting. And all of a sudden, I see you come in. And you're in a cat jacket. So you're very hard to miss. You were kind of beelining towards the corner uh i want to just quickly clarify it was a jacket with prints of cats on it wasn't like a cat jacket made of cats or cat fur just want to clarify okay it's good you're making a beeline for our spot yeah you were smiling and you kind of had this smile like kind of plastered on your face

because you clearly didn't, you were getting anxious. And then you just took a hard left turn for the bar and you just sat, plopped yourself down there. I was like Tom Cruise in a fighter jet. It really was. Evading a foreign pilot who was about to attack. The problem was I knew you were there with a friend right yeah the couple in the corner sitting there i got close i know enough of you when i get close i can there's more data i knew it wasn't you but by then i'd been grinning at

this person that's when you saw me make the evasive left to the bar and i was sitting down to regroup because my plan was to sit at the bar and then pivot gently and see who else was in that bar and that's when you saved me horrific wow what would have been very funny if I'd sat down and started talking and then realized because that would have been truly horrific because then she would when you came out to pay him out of the situation then she would oh my god oh my well it didn't happen. It didn't happen. So there's a double-faced blind going on. The woman who I insulted about leaf blowers, she was sitting outside Kismet, which is on the walk to meeting you. Yes. I blanked her.

Really? She told me that at dinner after I berated her about the leaf blower. She said, you didn't recognize me. And so I just had a whole conversation with her about my disability. Back-to-back blindness. Yeah bad oh my god i mean i want to feel compassion right now but i'm i wish none of this was happening to you same this is a shameless plug i write a newsletter called web worm if you go to web room.co i have a whole essay about my facial blindness if it doesn't make sense to you leaf blowers i made a documentary about them because it's not just me that has a problem.

This is my journey. I've been documenting leaf blowers for a while now. Wednesday morning, here we go. This will go for like another half hour at least. This leaf blower was across the street from where I live, but it still cut through my windows and walls, a verbal assault to an otherwise quiet one-bedroom apartment. And they're just moving leaves from one part of the pavement to another. Ugh. And they're just moving leaves from one part of the pavement to another. Another day, another leaf blower.

Leaf blowers. There's two of them going out there. Two of them. Two too many. On some days, it interrupts my work. I go to record a voiceover, like the one you're listening to right now, and someone turns on a leaf blower. This puts me under tremendous pressure and stress, because if I don't make this show each week, I'm pretty sure Dax will revoke my visa and I'll

become an illegal flightless bird. I was in the middle of recording a voiceover for Flightless Bird, and yeah, this happens. They're surrounding me right now. Sometimes they just idle, which I see as a direct threat from the leaf blower. It's saying, don't you dare sit down and get any work done, or I'll fuck you up. I'm not even by the window anymore. I'm sitting at my desk trying to work. Ah!

Stop! Go away! Ah! Stop! Blowing! Between the ghost that wakes me up at 3am and this constant leaf blowing, something has to change. Or at least I had to try and understand why this was happening. The reason for this torture. See, back in New Zealand, we have a natural leaf blower which we call the wind. It doesn't require gas and it's pretty quiet. If that doesn't work, we get out something we call a rake.

So my name is Benjamin Cassidy. I'm a senior editor at Seattle Met Magazine in Seattle, Washington. I'm talking to Benjamin because he recently wrote a passionate plea about the use of gas guzzling leaf blowers. Living in this city around so many landscaping crews that are coming through on city streets and blowing the sidewalks where seemingly there are no leaves to be found. And I've wondered why that is. And it seems like many people in the city are wondering the same thing. This is a whole other issue. People blowing leaves where there aren't any leaves. I watched a TikTok the other day of a man on an apartment rooftop who had a leaf blower, and he was just wandering around blowing nothing. Absolutely nothing. He was using air to blow air. It's

deranged behavior. Lock him up. Have you gotten to the bottom of why this is happening in a city where you're not dealing with leaves? What are they blowing? Dust, bits of dirt, dog shit. What are they up to? The explanation you hear from some folks is, well, on certain streets, there are some leaves and you need to be able to clear those sidewalks for folks who might have a hard time getting around the city. But at the same time, there are in Seattle, the resolution that was passed to phase out gas powered leaf blowers. There are still electric leaf blowers that could be used or rakes, brooms, etc. to clear a sidewalk. So I'm not against clearing the sidewalks of anything. I'm just against using this device that has negative health and environmental effects. That's why Seattle has passed the resolution to phase them out.

They're not only annoying to your ears, they're unhealthy. A study from back in 2011 found that hydrocarbon emissions from 30 minutes of leaf blowing with a gas-powered leaf blower are roughly the same as a 4,000 mile drive from Texas to Alaska. That's because the two-stroke engines found in most gas-powered leaf blowers are not great. They combine oil and gas in a single chamber, which gives it grunt and keeps it light enough to carry. But according to a piece in the New York Times, up to a third of the gas is spewed into the air, evaporated poison. Two-stroke engines dish out chemicals and they whip up dust, dust that's full of pollen, mold,

old dried dog shit, and chemicals from pesticides. Ultimately, this means more risk of things like lung cancer, asthma, and heart disease developing when you suck this stuff into your body. And has that law actually come into effect as far as not being able to use the gas leak lowers? Has that come into effect yet? No, no. First of all, it's a resolution. So it does not have the force of law. Resolutions are kind of interesting at the city council level because it's in some ways a statement of what our policy is, but not actually an enforceable policy. Useless. No, to be fair, it's a positive step, but a long step, a five-year deadline to phase

them out. California is actually set to become the first state to ban gas-powered lawn equipment, but you'd hardly know anything listening to the cacophony of leaf blowers outside my window. California's governor, Gavin Newsom, signed a bill that said all small off-road engines need to be zero emission by 2024. He's thrown $30 million towards making that happen, which is great, but it's still two more years of me slowly going insane. California is following in the footsteps of around 100 American cities and towns that have also banned gas-powered leaf blowers. It's good news for people who make electric leaf blowers.

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These frames have been selling out every December, so get yours now before they're all gone. Terms and conditions apply. What is it about America that just likes to get rid of leaves, do you think? I don't know, because in some ways, America is also obsessed with the concept of fall, right? Pumpkin spice latte and this whole environment. So, yeah, that is sort of a tough thing to balance. I would say it's keeping up with your neighbor, whether it's real or imagined competition.

I think of that scene in The Truman Show, the perfect fake American town, all those perfect lawns. It's enough to drive you to the edge of your sanity. Truman, Truman, I think I'm going to throw up. Me too. I just think it's funny that like many things, it's all or nothing. It's like, well, if we don't have the gas powered leaf blowers, then how are we going to ever clear leaves? Which doesn't seem like it speaks well to our ability to innovate, which we love to celebrate and beat our chests about in this country. Obviously, in the grand scheme of things, this isn't the biggest environmental or health negative effects for us to tackle. But it does seem like a little thing that we can change.

These little annoyances that you would think we would have a solution to by now. So, Benjamin Cassidy, I have an ally. I've lapped my way through that whole doc. I want to know your emotional responses to that. While that was rolling, you sort of put another outfit on, you put a sweater on, you started getting changed while it was happening. You looked annoyed. You sort of looked at me with disgust at one point. I was listening to myself and thinking I sound like a bit of a pretentious idiot. Okay. Which I wasn't happy with. You didn't sound like an idiot, but yeah, you sound. Entitled, like get that off my lawn. Yeah, because you even said lock them up.

That's a very. Lock them up, throw away the key. That's a very conservative phrase. I would free a lot of people that are incarcerated to incarcerate private citizens that are leaf blowing listen here's a bone i will throw you okay throw me a bite it was incredibly loud it was shocking i thought you were like you went outside and put it right up again and put your mic right up against it but it was really loud and that would drive me nuts too if i was trying to work oh fuck speaking of sound and some sounds coming from below the attic what's that he's gonna put on music it's gonna be so loud we have to tell him is that dax going into

the gym yeah look it's an episode of noise maybe it's appropriate it is because it is like our environment is full of noises and how we meant to sort of all get on with each other if we're all making noise that's kind of lovely but also the gas stuff is crazy that sucks i didn't know that electric yay all the way i'm super happy for electric i think we should just adopt that but let's definitely not get rid of the leaf blower let's definitely not go to brooms and rakes it's unreal you look horrified at the mention of brooms and rakes i'm like what are you living in like 1910 when like the old grandma. The Amish works for the Amish.

They love it. They're all about it. We are never going back. We're only moving forward. So you're going to have to accept it and just take on the electric leaf blower as your cause. Also, it's not getting rid of leaves. It's just making a path. It's not throwing them in the garbage.

Well, maybe sometimes if there's too many, but it's like just making a path. Through all throwing them in the garbage well maybe sometimes there's too many but it's like just making a path through all the leaves that's what i don't understand i come from a place where there are so many trees we've all seen lord of the rings it's like that trees everywhere i've never seen that so oh don't bother oh i can't say that i'll get murdered by new zealand great film great series we have trees we have leaves but for some reason and i genuinely still don't know why we're not not blowing them, but we're okay. But maybe we are slipping over on them and I just haven't noticed. Maybe I'm so used to that lifestyle of slipping everywhere I walk.

I think you are. Or in New Zealand, they're brooming and raking and wasting an hour of their day. In America, we are about innovation, fast, efficiency. And the leaf blower ticks off all of those things. All of those things and ruining the environment. Well, one other thing I found out is that the lunar moth, what a name, it loves leaves. Ew. It lives in leaves.

Ew. No, it's a beautiful moth. A moth is like a butterfly they're beautiful i rescued a moth the other day it was on the path i shifted it oh i saw that story i thought that was sweet that was a moth my point is the lunar moth population in america is plummeting and a lot of that is to do because it lives in in leaf brush under trees it's being away. Imagine you're living in your home. Yeah. And you just get blown away by a lot of wind. Awful.

The poor lunar moth. Think of the lunar moth. I think you need to maybe appeal to me in a little bit of a different way. The lunar moth is not the way in to my empathy. Okay. Yeah. A world without the lunar moth isn't, yeah. It's not bothering me so much.

It's not going to make me lose sleep. I mean, look, I don't want a living thing to go extinct. Why aren't they evolved to be a little tougher to be able to stand the wind, the blowing? There's a podcast. It was Ricky Gervais' old podcast. His producer, Carl Pilkington, was on the show, and he had a segment, Carl, in the early days,

Do We Need Him? And he would just go to a scientist with an animal he truly hated and say do we need him like if we got rid of because he got stung by a jellyfish so do we need him like what is the jellyfish doing oh i love this person and this podcast yeah and obviously it's part of an ecosystem but he kept pestering the scientists do we need? And the scientists always get perturbed because eventually they're like, why do you? They're like, we don't. No, we don't. It's in the ecosystem, but it's a really hard thing to explain. This is also your fault. You bring up so many animals and you're forcing me to say I could care less about the lunar moth. So do you think I'm evil? No, I don't think you're evil. I just think different. I get worried about this. You're not evil. I live in a bit of a sort't think you're evil. I just think different. I get worried about this.

You're not evil. I live in a bit of a dreamland as well. I love animals. I love them too much. That's my problem. I'm too far the other way. I don't need to be shifting a moth off the sidewalk. It's psychotic.

No, that was nice. I think you can do the moth, but you should also kill the snake for me. Yeah. Yeah. I sent you guys a video the other day of a bear attacking a hiker, and it was. And you felt bad for the bear. Well, no, I didn't. It actually was terrifying.

Yeah, right? It's a terrifying guy on a hike. He's climbing, so he's sort of precarious. He's sort of on a need. And a bear is just rushing him from below. And, like, keeps trying to jump up. He can't get to his bear spray. So he ends up just screaming in a really aggressive way, which works.

He did a great job. It was terrifying. Yeah. Like that bear was really coming at him. I hope that makes you decide not to go on your bear trip that you're planning. It made me think twice, to be honest. Okay, I appreciate that. Okay, good.

All right. Back into my journey into the evils of the leaf blower. Okay. I've been thinking about what I've learned so far, that America is phasing out gas-powered leaf blowers, but that for all of Seattle's posturing, it's still five years away from actually getting rid of the demon known as the gas-powered leaf blower. California's made a big song and dance about getting rid of them too, but not for another few years. I'll probably be dead by then. I'll have choked to death on the fumes of leaf blowers that surround my apartment. I needed to talk to someone in power, someone in charge of all this mess. I tried President Biden. Okay, White House. The White House. Oh, hi, it's

David Farrier speaking. I'm just wondering if there's a way to talk to President Joe Biden or to get a message to him. That's easy, sir. All you have to do is write him an email or a letter and request for a phone call at his convenience. Okay, and is it best, do you think, for email or a physical letter? What do you think has the best result? It doesn't matter because if with email, it's here instantaneously if you go to the White House website. Okay, great. Now I can do that. And, quick question for you out of curiosity. Do you use leaf blowers around the White House to get rid of the leaves? Oh, I would not know anything about that, sir. That belongs to the grounds people. Okay, fair enough. I really appreciate your help. Thank you so much.

I didn't rate my chances of getting a reply from the president, so I tried some senators and governors, but none of them wanted to talk to me. some senators and governors, but none of them wanted to talk to me. I worked my way down the list of power and eventually got to the most powerful person who'd talk to me, village trustee Nicole Asquith. So I'm on my local village council. We call it the board of trustees. Nicole is on the village council of a town called Pleasantville. Pleasantville sounds like a made up place, but I looked it up on Google Maps and apparently it's real. Found in upstate New York. I suppose like you, but in a different way. I have not always lived in a situation where leaf blowers were ubiquitous the way that they are here. In fact, they are currently playing part of the soundtrack of our interview. I thought we were safe. The leaf blowers in my LA neighborhood were,

for once, silent. But almost 3,000 miles away, in a town called Pleasantville, they'd just fired up. There really is no escape. Nicole shuts the window, which makes very little difference. And I have found it to be overwhelming at times, but there's also has been a vocal contingent of our community that felt that there was too much of the leaf blowers for some time. But there was a significant uptick during the pandemic because, as you know, all of a sudden there were a lot more people working from home. This is exactly what Ben from Seattle Met Magazine had told me earlier. I've been spending, like so many people over the last couple of years, much more time in my apartment during work hours. And hearing how frequently these devices are being deployed

has been shocking. In the part of the city that I'm in, I would not have expected that. Like the aliens in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, leaf blowers had essentially been invading our lives for decades without us ever noticing. They're taking you over, cell for cell, atom for atom. Suddenly, while you're asleep, they'll absorb your minds, your memories. But being stuck at home all day, America finally woke up.

Yeah, exactly. And so we had many, many more residents writing in and saying, what is it with the constant leaf blowers? This is too much. You know, you have to do something about it. I don't want any part of it. You're forgetting something, Miles. What's that? You have no choice. There had been attempts made over a number of years to legislate leaf blowers in some ways.

to legislate leaf blowers in some ways. And where I live in New York State, there's no state regulation at this point, but many municipalities near where I live had already passed some kind of regulation. And so it's a little bit of the scattershot approach. And to be honest, if everybody had the time and the energy to take care of their own lawns, it probably would not make as much of an impact because who has the time to be out all the time blowing the leaves around? Sorry, I'm so distracted right now. It's so distracting. I mean, it has to do with the kind of noise that particularly gas powered leaf blowers produce, right? They have this like low, what do you call it? Nicole is so distracted by the leaf blower outside her window, she can't get her words out.

So let me take over and voice over because I have no leaf blowers to distract me right now. Two-stroke leaf blowers emit a sound that has a really, really low frequency. Up close, they pump out up to 100 decibels of low frequency brain penetrating sound. As much as a plane taking off. Exactly. So what I was saying is that really the more egregious contributors to the problem,

and this is nothing against landscapers, but it's the landscape companies that show up sometimes with two, three, four backpack blowers at a time. And obviously that produces a lot more sound. But in the summertime, leaf blowers are used to blow off grass clippings. Companies come through and they mow the grass and then people like to have the little bits of grass blown off. That's one of the most deranged things I've ever heard in my life. Well, I mean, I hate to say it, but like you see some sort of ridiculous situations.

You know, you see people blowing particulate matter from one property literally to another property or blowing into the street. I mean, part of the thing with leaf flowers is it's not whatever it is disappears. It's just going somewhere else. Stay tuned for more Flightless Bird. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Flightless Bird is brought to you by Rocket Money. Now, if you're like me, Monica, you've got a lot of subscriptions to a lot of things.

And unless you lose your credit card or someone steals it and you have to cancel it, you don't even realize what you're paying for oh i have so many it's a nightmare and the idea of rocket money is that it's an app you get and it just goes through all your subscriptions and tells you what you might need and what you might not need it basically shows you where all your money is flowing out to that you've forgotten about that's awesome i mean yeah because sometimes you buy a thing just to get like, you know, that free trial. Oh, yeah. And then you forget about it. They're banking on it. It's an app that helps you track all of your expenses. And because of it, I no longer waste

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If I didn't have this, I think my whole day would just be spent trying to find these things and I'd never get any flightless bird made. To make it easy, Athletic Greens is going to give you a free one-year supply of immune-supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com slash flightless. Again, that's athleticgreens.com slash flightless to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. Nicole says that even with all that noise, as people blew leaves and grass around willy-nilly, upsetting the pleasantness of Pleasantville,

banning leaf blowers still proved difficult. There was a strong contingent at a certain stage that said, this is a discrimination against landscapers, basically. You know, you're telling landscapers how to do their business. And we changed what we proposed, too. Initially, there was a desire just to have a seasonal ban on all leaf blowers, and we got a lot of blowback on that. I would say it divides roughly in half of people who are in favor of legislation and people who are against legislation. And it raises this interesting question, too, of what do you do when even a minority of a community is aversely affected

by something? Because the truth is it affects people in different ways. So take the noise sensitivity, for example. We spoke to people who had children who suffered from autism whose children were particularly disturbed by the noise. For them, it has a much stronger impact. Depending on where you live, it might affect you a certain way, depending on how you work and so on. So if it really doesn't bother a certain amount of the community, but you have, say, a minority that feels that their quality of life is really affected by it, then what is the role of government? Which just is an interesting question, I think. Lawns themselves, I think, are a fascinating subject when it comes to this country because we imported it from England. The kind of grass we grow here is not at all designed

for even an East Coast climate. It's what they call cool season grasses. It's not like the native grasses we had here at all. And so we have to fuss over them and put such ridiculous amount of work in order to get the grass to survive. It's just a really fascinating phenomenon. I think it's really interesting to think about where it comes from and what we're signifying by having these immaculate lawns in front of our houses. We have our own little castles. And there are people who study this who are interested in, from an anthropological perspective, there are people who speculate that it goes back to Africa. We're sort of naturally attracted to these landscapes in which we can see things

from a distance. You know, you could sort of see the predators from afar and things like that, which I find kind of interesting. I mean, don't get me wrong. I can be seduced by a beautiful lawn too. I get it on a certain level. It's just that I also know what tremendous trouble it is, not that I succeed in maintaining a nice lawn, but you know, the pesticides that are required, the mowing, the now blowing in some cases, it's really a phenomenal amount of work. Before I let Nicole return to local body politics, I had one final question about leaf blowers and the changing regulations, laws, motions, and resolutions governing their use. What happens if people violate that? If people are just saying, stuff you to the law, I'm going to do what I want, I'm an individual, I have my rights, I'm going to blow these leaves all year long.

Technically, what happens is that people can call up either the building department or the police. All right, the police could potentially turn up for this. They could potentially, yeah. It goes first to the building department, and then outside of normal business hours, it goes to the police department. But they can technically call the police at any time. I doubt they're going to be super punitive, especially for a first offense. I think the police should lock people up immediately if they fill out this law.

Lock them up. I thank Nicole for her time and for being the only American political figure brave enough to talk to me about leaf blowers. I sat down and looked out the window at the beautiful country called the United States of America. I took that precious moment to take it all in, knowing that sometime, very soon, and without warning, the tranquility would end. I don't think I've ever been so angry in one of these episodes. You've been looking so furious over there. It's made me uncomfortable. Well, look, get used to it if you're gonna present information like this i'm sorry but my friend erica had to call 9-1-1 because there was someone with a gun

out in the parking lot the line was busy and honest to god if people are calling the fucking police about a leaf blower, you can go die. Like, for real. Yeah, I think. I mean, you're tying up the lines where there's a potential mass shooter in Sephora. Trying to get rid of the leaf. Look, I got to be honest. I tend to agree with you. I find it difficult to argue for the policing of leaf blower use.

It's very funny to me. I just think it raises a really fascinating question because I don't really understand how the laws work here. But we've got like a law saying thou must not leaf blow. How that's actually enforced, because it's more of an agreement in society that you can't do this thing. But ridiculous. I mean, the police are already overreaching.

It's ridiculous to think that you can call the cops in some of these states or cities and complain about a leaf blower. It feels like it's like a homeowners association type of thing. Like some of these neighborhoods have rules within the neighborhood about like sound ordinance. Imagine just Rikers Island, but just for people that have blown too many leaves these are also people that are just being hired i don't really have beef with people hired it's more what i see is the individual has to have their lawn in america so precise because americans do love their lawns i think a bit more than new zealanders do how do it so manicured and to do that they're just blowing leaves all day that's the thing i have

a problem with let's talk about the minority piece certain people suffer more from loud noises than others so that's the societal thing right how do we balance looking up to a minority that has sensitive hearing or reacts to it with a bigger picture i i guess i'm gonna upset some people here that sound very right this is an open discussion that we have to have about these blowers. I want to sort it out. But no, this speaks to a bigger issue, which is how much do we owe everyone for their own personal issues? Totally.

I don't know that I owe somebody silence because their ears are too sensitive. I think they might need to get earplugs i'm not kidding like i don't have good eyesight okay i'm not expecting everyone else to like put their shit closer to me so that i can see better no i need to deal with my own thing and the parents need to deal with their kids stuff without asking other people yeah i love all this stuff i don't know what the answer is, but this is being in a society, right? It's always balancing up all our wants and needs. I just think this is such a funny way into this topic because it doesn't really, like, yards don't really matter.

Yeah. But they also do. Yeah. And they're sort of entrenched in this country. When I brought up the Truman Show, that's what I remember from that film, is the perfect American place has these perfectly manicured lawns. And I kind of love and hate how obsessed some people get about their lawns. I just think it's a very funny starting point for this conversation, right? No, it is. And I would also love it if everyone did bring everything closer to you. Me too, actually. I don't remember

leaf blowers when I grew up. I'm sure they were there. No, that's the thing. I think they were or they snuck in, but because we're all at work or away from home, we're not hearing them. Pandemic, everyone clocked it because they're at home all the time and they're like, oh my God, they're everywhere. I think they've always been with us. We've just never noticed until the pandemic. Perhaps. I just wonder if suburban America has less or more. Yeah. Because we're living in a city. Maybe there's more because city streets have to be cleaned and maintained. Yeah, more people as well.

More people. More mess, more dust, more things to be blown away. But in L.A., there's a minority group that's often hired here who are doing these jobs. Yeah, it's work for people. It's work that allows people to live here and to have a life and support their families. Yes, and I don't want them to have to pull out a fucking rake. I want them to be able to do their job with ease.

Imagine if I went around screaming at every public leaf blower and telling them, stop that, take a rake. Yeah, what an asshole I would be. Absolutely, that's hundred percent the other side of it and also it's not just a backyard thing they need to clear massive areas and streets of rubbish and they should be able to do that in a way that's not going to break their back my beef again is with that personal leaf blower that someone has they fire it up on a weekend i'm trying to record my podcast it's blowing blowing. I feel like that's like 5%

though of leaf blowers. It's usually the gardener, which they're not just a leaf blower. They're doing a whole bunch of other maintenance. They're keeping the world turning. Totally. It's like during New Zealand during the pandemic, you suddenly realized how important

all those workers were, which we never think of. People in the supermarkets and stuff who just kept people people alive and it's probably the first time in history where people have gone oh probably quite important yeah exactly yeah well what did we learn we learned okay so we learned that leaf blowers emit a very low frequency hum much akin to a plane taking off learned that these single cylinder engines on gas-powered leaf blowers emit a very low frequency hum, much akin to a plane taking off. Learned that these single cylinder engines on gas powered leaf blowers are incredibly bad. Yes. Electric ones much better and on the increase. We like that.

Laws are changing to push the gas guzzlers out, which is great. We learned that Americans are obsessed with their lawn. May go back culturally to wanting a flat space around our homes so that we can see predators approaching what we're doing it's our domain the lawn and you notice that kind of halloween time in america don't you like lawns just become this fixated thing well yeah because then people put out their scary cats and their skeletons it's really fun we also learned that a lot of americans are pussies and can't handle a little noise and are like, oh, my little baby

ears, I can't handle it. Feels like an attack, but I'll take it. She called you American, that's a compliment. You didn't call me American. I just went to 100% American there. I actually was not talking about you, but I will include you in that. You were, thank you. That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me. In actually was not talking about you, but I will include you in that group. I think secretly you were. Thank you.

That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me. In the context of being in America, that's the kindest thing you've ever said, and I just want to acknowledge that. People are going to be mad that I used that word, but I think I'm allowed to because I'm a woman. All right. Good night. Bye.