Going Deep with Chad and JT - Ep 142 - Ashley Mears Joins

Episode Date: July 20, 2020

What up dudes! This week on the pod we have author and sociologist, Ashley Mears, we talk about her book "Very Important People" that breaks down the club scene. She teaches us a bunch of academic terms for partying that we will definitely use a lot. Get her book!Sponsored by Manscaped: Get 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code GODEEP20 at Manscaped.com. If you wanna trim your pubes during a contagion.

What's up, Stokers of Stoke Nation? This is Chad Kroger coming in with the Going Deep with Chad and JT podcast. Guys, before we begin, I want to remind you once again that we are brought to you by manscape manscape thank you so much for keeping our trims pubed for looking after our hogs for making sure that we're looking fresh and clean um because it's summertime and you want to look good and feel good so use code go deep www at manscape.com and i'm here with my compadre jean thomas what up boom clap stokers and we are here with our guest ashley mears uh professor of sociology at boston university and author and uh welcome to the show we're stoked to have you on thank you i'm getting stoked too

nice awesome do you do you have a definition for stoke in your life you nine awesome do you do you have a definition for stoke in your life um so i have two little kids and uh and yeah there's a lot of joy really beautiful joyful moments but it takes a lot of energy and effort to try to um focus on that instead of like the onslaught of challenge and work and stress and anxiety that comes sometimes like right after, you know, the beautiful joy. So I guess that's, that's my version of Stoke. Nice. Yeah. I've been wondering a lot during the quarantine if I want to have kids and stuff. And I think I do. I think it's like biologically hardwired into me, but I do, I am scared that I won't be able to step up to the work responsibility of it.

Yeah, well, hopefully, maybe in a couple of years this will pass and that burden will shift a little. But it's an ongoing problem in the U.S. is that there's a childcare crisis anyway without the pandemic. And that is a whole private market to have childcare, to have any kind of assistance, even to have paid parental leave is not federally guaranteed. So that is something to keep in mind. What would be, is there a country that has a better system that we could model it on? Pretty much every country has a better system.

So America is a very exceptional place for a lot of reasons, but we're one of the few, actually I think now the only industrialized country that does not have paid parental leave upon the birth of a child. You're guaranteed three months of unpaid leave from your job. Not only is that a very short period, but starting a family without pay is also not that helpful. Right. But we do have a rugged individualism that allows us not to look out for one another right now. Well, there's a big fear of the state and fear that the government will interfere with your personal choices. But raising a family, that's a public issue. That's something that is like a

public good that parents do, like rearing children. So they should be supported, I think. Yeah, that's true. Because if they don't rear them right, then we all have to deal with the consequences. That's right. The kids are driving too fast or they're like drunk in the streets, scaring the hell out of me. Like a group of 19 year olds, there's nothing scarier than that. Right. Yeah. Well, my, so my kids right now are five and two and everybody tells me that the teenage years, you know like the the real the real work and stress is just you know 10 years in the making it's coming yeah yeah yeah jt you you sort of you brought you brought some uh chaos to your parents growing up a little bit yeah i was an

animal um i lost my license i got kicked out of school i'd get into fights throw parties and cry a lot so i was a real handful he turned a corner i guess yeah i got medicated and saw a therapist that helped a lot but yeah but if the state could provide some of that stuff, that might be beneficial. Yeah. Yeah. Is paternal leave even, how common is that nowadays? It's still pretty rare. So in the States, I mean, it's incredibly rare.

It depends on the company. I think some really progressive-leaning corporations, or at least corporations that want to look progressive-leaning in tech, for instance, they have paid um leave for fathers as well um so in a in a state like iceland for instance which is one of the most progressive states um there's a it's it's shared parental leave so total might be nine months of full salary to take time out of work, but it can only be six months per partner. So there's an incentive that one's partner takes the leave, which means that there's, you know, if you're an employer and you're looking at a pool of candidates and, you know, the kind of bias against a potential mother or a mother isn't going to come in because

men are as likely to be you know involved in taking time away from work right yeah i know i know that's huge in uh medicine like uh um the the sort of you know that the idea that that i guess there's there's some of that discrimination in the idea that surgeons will eventually become mothers and won't be able to put as much time in at the hospital. And so it's sort of, it's kind of built into a lot of systems like that. Yeah. Which is, we've got to be more like Iceland, I guess. On the other hand, Iceland is a population of about 330,000.

It's a very cohesive place it's difficult to imagine you know how something like that could be translated into a country as large and as heterogeneous as ours yeah yeah it's tough we have so many factors that seem unique to us it was crazy with ice and i've been watching a lot of crossfit documentaries are you into crossfit uh no but i'm interested in that too yeah it's a rich world. And all the Icelandic female competitors, they have the best female crossfitters in the world. They all have the last name daughter. And I was like, and then I realized in Iceland, the last name you get daughter or Johnson, I think for men is always the ending of your name. And then the first part

of your last name is your father's first name most of the time. So you're like Sigmund's daughter, David's daughter, Thoris daughter, but now people are actually starting to switch and use their mom's names too for their last name. So,

okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's getting a little more, that's symbolically important, but yeah. Yeah. If you know the yogurt brand Siggy's,

you know, this Icelandic skier, the, so his last name is Hilmar son so he's the son of hilmar right yeah so it's done our daughter yeah right that makes more sense the guy i saw was johnson so he's john's johnson right that's fire that's johnson that got me pumped learning that i was like nice i know something is there anything you want to ask us? Yeah, yeah.

So there's a kind of different world to me, but my first impression as a scholar who studies and thinks a lot and teaches about gender, this is kind of a weird question, but I'm curious. Like, can women be bros? Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah. I've known some heavy bros.

So what is a bro? It's a really good question. Damn. You know, we've had a lot of sort of female bros bros i guess right in who sort of ask the same question you know they're like like i rip it at beer bongs i i you know i love drinking games uh i love the party i love to get after it yeah but they sort of feel limited by the the the idea that bros can only be dudes and they're like they're like how can i be more of a bro or like how can i be sort of known as a bro and i'm like you're already there

you know like like i think if you have that man if you uh yeah i don't really know how to explain it but yeah it's tough it's kind of like it's almost like scalia with porn it's like i know it when i see it you know like yeah it's kind of a vibe uh-huh yeah uh-huh so would you describe bro culture as welcoming to um all different points of diversity no no actually if you if you're more intimately aware of it, like if you actually grow up in it, you'll you'll actually see the warmer aspects of it. But to gain that kind of nuanced perspective, you kind of have to be forced to deal with it. Like I think that at a distance, it's not very welcoming. But I think actually, if you get into it,

it is pretty welcoming. Yeah, I think that's sort of the basis for a lot of our work too, is we're trying to sort of rebrand the bro because that's such a negative connotation nowadays, you know? And I think we're just trying to, to highlight the more joyous side of, of Brodom, which is just like, you know, enjoying time with your friends, having fun experiences, bonding, boosting each other's stoke, which applies to both genders. I mean, that's like not, that's not a, I think, you know, the more we, we sort of go along with this, you know,

it's, it's universal, you know, I think it's kind of like, I think anyone can raise stoke, but I think if you, I think, um, bros like to boost stoke. And so that's just not, that's not limited to just males. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I definitely feel more like I feel more, uh, authoritative talking about male stuff because it's like I've experienced it. You know what I mean? It's like I've walked a mile in those rainbow sandals. But like, but I mean, my number one maxim, like when I'm throwing parties is I don't want anyone to feel left out

because I think that's where most sadness comes from is feeling left out. And then that manifests itself into anger or into judgment and stuff like that so yeah i mean just based off that principle like everyone can be a bro yeah as long as you and you know everyone bros down the same they just have different tools with how they do it like some people listen to sublime some people listen to pennywise and then but if you observe them listening to those different soundtracks it's the same kind of temperament or it's the same idea. Yeah. Does that make sense?

Kind of, yeah. It's pretty vague. Right. What do you think a bro is? Sorry, go ahead, Chad. Go ahead. Well, yeah, on top of that, I found that in college, whenever I put on Get the Party Started by Jagged Edge,

everyone was pumped. Where the party at? It was like, get the party started by jagged edge everyone was pumped where the party is like where the party at my bed no but dude such a banger such a good yeah but where everyone was everyone was pumped where the party i was like in this moment we're all bros yeah yeah yeah great um well it leads nicely into a discussion of my book actually which is kind of a critique and like the downside of parties because my the book that i i wrote about this vip elite party culture is all about how the how the status of the people inside is kind of made and boosted almost inherently by the exclusions of everybody else. I know. Yeah. It made me wonder. I was like, can there be a such thing as like an egalitarian nightclub that like succeeds or is that just not how it's designed?

What would it look? Have you ever been to one? I've been to a really cool, I was thinking about this a lot because I've been to clubs and they completely run off the idea of being exclusionary and elitist. But my favorite bar is this bar in Miami in Wynwood called The Wood. And they let anybody in. I mean, they get a line, but they don't... And I've paid to cut the line, but it's not like elitist. And I think it actually has a better vibe because you get you get a broader intersection of people which i think helps the party right but i don't know if a nightclub

could function like that right because the well so the clubs that i studied they operate on the bottle service formula and the you know to get the big spenders to spend what they you know might start at 500 to800 for a bottle of champagne would come out to the table with a sparkler. So it's a kind of clear indicator of who has money in the room if they're buying a lot of such bottles and a lot of sparklers come out. So in order to attract those kinds of big spenders, the logic of that kind of club and the club managers is that the crowd has to be as good looking and as, as kind of socially significant or high prestige as possible in order to make that person feel incentivized to spend that kind of money.

So if it's driven, like if they're chasing that kind of money, as opposed to like, you know, the, the $5, like $10 cocktail at the bar you could probably let in a kind of greater greater kind of audience but you won't get that kind of cash flow right and who started that so it was like 54 was that like the first

really big like nightclub um no 54 was one of the kind of more iconic ones from the 70s. Yeah, with the very tight door policy, which is actually the policy that Steve Rubell had was more kind of like the one that you're describing in the wood in Miami, where it would be like the look of the person had to appeal to the door and they were looking for a certain kind of eclectic kind of interesting, could be beautiful, not necessarily could be celebrity, not necessarily.

I think some celebrities were really famously turned away. Oh, David, I remember. What's his name? David Lee Ross said he got turned away from Van Halen. Okay. Yeah. I think maybe Diana Ross he got turned away from Van Halen. Okay, yeah. I think maybe Diana Ross even got turned away. There were some really famous cases who just didn't fit the whims of the door at the moment. And that kind of boosted their status to claim that you could say that you were so important that you got in. Right.

You were interesting. And then Marquis was the club that made it. that well marquee was the one that perfected it i mean the bottle service thing starts in the 2000s um mostly in new york and there's some disputed origins of it apparently there were bottles that were being um sold via table service in paris and some club owners in the late 1990s saw this in paris and then they started to do it in New York. But like for relatively smaller sums, you know, $90 for a bottle of vodka. And then in the 2000s, the prices start to go up, and it becomes kind of a widespread thing, then it becomes a signal of status. And so Marquis was the first club in the kind of later 2000s, that really perfected the

business model of what's sometimes called models and bottles. So in order to get all the people getting their table service and spending in these wild sprees on bottle service, the idea was that they should have a bunch of fashion models inside the club. Why fashion models? Because they actually have in their bodies, like they have this embodied status because they're very tall, they're very thin. Everybody in New York can recognize them as fashion models. And so it was very exciting to be in the room full of a bunch of fashion models. So Marquee was the first club that actually started hiring promoters to kind of systematically recruit fashion models to come

into the clubs on a Friday or Saturday and then every night of the week for a party. Do most people even have fun when they're doing that bottle service stuff? Like, do they seem like they're having a good time or do they seem stressed? Like what's the... It really depends on the rhythm of the night. And I guess that's kind of true to Stoke more generally that it, you know, these are like momentary sensations of uplift that can't last. They can't last forever. They can't even last for a full duration of an hour. So over the course of a night, it ebbs and flows. I mean, some, some of the people that are going out with promoters, like the models, they might really love, you know, electronic dance music or hip hop. And they might, they might, might you know be super excited to be in this

kind of place they might be in love with the promoter that's taking them out and promoters are very good at being very charming and they sound like a cool dude yeah and then um you know some people they get really caught up in the moment of spending money and it can be really like euphoric and exciting to be there and the sparklers the the kind of beauty the music the settings all of that um but there are some other moments maybe in the same night where people are pretty bored looking they might be sitting on their phones i've been at some of these clubs like some of them you know supposedly really high-end ones in can and you know they're like 18-year-old models

who are like asleep on each other's shoulders sitting at the table, right? But the night before was really fun and everybody stayed out until 6 a.m. and then they had to go to the club the next night. Yeah, I remember my buddy got bottle service at one club this time, this one time. And it was like $2,000 or something this one time and it was like two thousand dollars or

something and what he got was like the table and like a bottle of gray goose and he's like yeah i'm gonna get bottle service like this is gonna be awesome and we and we i was like all right cool man and uh and then he did it and we're all just kind of standing there around the table you know and i'm like so you just have this one bottle he's like yeah and like so you have to buy you know it was literally like he was just paying for the ability to like stand at this table and feel important yeah yeah it was very fleeting well for some for some people so there's a mix of different things that bring somebody out maybe Maybe it's the novelty of experiencing it, right? But perhaps for people who might be like so-called young money, right?

Working in finance, getting a big bonus. Maybe this is kind of opportunity to participate in this very glamorous world that even if you haven't been in these kinds of clubs, you probably know about them from references in like hip hop lyrics and just in kind of pop culture more generally, or like the rich kids of Instagram. So this is an opportunity to kind of perform that. Right. And that can be very fun for some people. It's a pragmatic way to get, to get access to the club, to not have to stand at the bar.

They could split the bill with like five other guys in finance. Maybe a $2,000 bill doesn't seem that big anymore. Um, or for some people, um, this is a scene that's kind of important for them to go out and meet other people that are in their industry. This is especially the case in people in finance for people in finance. Um, so this might be part of entertaining clients or just kind of being in the milieu of kind of young upper-class people that

are running in these circles. Maybe not necessarily all the time, but for some of the time. You were kind of living a double life doing it because you were acting as one of the models, double life doing it because you were acting as one of the models but you were also a sociologist doing research did did you did you ever feel completely like a model or did you always feel like no I'm hearing more of like an observational almost undercover role always undercover role because at the time I was doing this I was already 31 32 um so I was kind of past the point of really like losing myself in the music and like enjoying it too much right like for me like the high heels are about four or five inches you know it's like just very uncomfortable trying to stand in those heels for three hours um dinner would start at 10 p.m and then we would follow the promoter to a club at around midnight and then stay out at least until

three sometimes later and like this is pretty pretty physically taxing I found at my age um although I always think if I had met the promoters when I was like 18 you know and partied with them I probably would have really enjoyed it and I got got a lot more pleasure out of it. But I mean, yeah, so I was, when I started the project, I already had my sociology professor job and I was pretty clear with all of the promoters that this is what I want to study and write about. And I would show them a copy of my first book, which was my dissertation, which was about the fashion modeling industry. And I would say, look, I wrote this book and I'd like to study your world and understand how you make a good party. And yeah, for the most part, they were really supportive or they were enthusiastic about the idea,

especially because I offered my time that I would come and support them at their table and wear my high heels. But I, I, I guess, I mean, to be honest, there are some moments that were really enjoyable where I did feel, you know, quite excited to be there. Some things were just really fascinating to observe keeping pace with the promoters, although it was exhausting. Also I became close to quite a few of them and would consider them at that time friends

with some boundaries around that. But yeah, I was always taking my notes and I always thought of this as, you know, if there were moments that were really uncomfortable, I thought of that as like good data. Did you gain more, uh, respect might not be the word, but like more appreciation for the difficulties of like the various jobs in that industry, specifically like promoter and or model. Yeah, for sure. Well, the models I knew, I knew pretty well from my, my earlier work. So I know that, that models generally don't make very much money. And it's, I guess it's kind of like the world of podcasts and YouTube that, you know, there's really at the tiny apex, there's a handful of people that make a lot of money and have celebrity. And then there's like this whole base pyramid of people who like are really struggling to pay the bills.

whole base pyramid of people who like are really struggling to pay the bills um but the promoters i was quite surprised by how much money they were making they were like two hundred thousand dollars at the the upper end um which is which is quite quite good for a lot of the men they hadn't gone to college you know and they didn't come from privileged backgrounds themselves but a lot and a lot of their earnings are in cash but it's also a pretty expensive job because they're spending so much of their money to like on big SUVs that they can then offer rides to the models to drive models around to their castings. Or they're taking models to lunch or to like whatever mixed martial arts classes. And then the promoters are tipping on the dinners so the the promoters actually they're they're spending a lot of money one promoter described his earnings as

funny money that you know it comes in but it goes out very quickly um and you know on top of what then becomes like fairly thin margins for their success that they're also just working really hard trying to create the vibe of the party to try to like give people that energy. I mean, a lot of them, if they're drinking, then this is like six nights a week of drinking, which can be quite tough for them. It was hard on their relationships. It was hard for them to keep steady relationships going. Often they had like kind of several girlfriends or kind of rotating girlfriends. I don't know.

I started the project and I saw the promoters as like, if it were a narrative, the promoters would be the bad guys. They'd be like the villains. Right. Because they're, you know, making money off of girls. They're slightly predatory. Right. Sometimes they have very predatory practices

in the way that they target models in particular. They make a lot of money off of them. It's fairly asymmetric. But by the end of it, yeah, I started to feel a lot of empathy for them, that they're also this kind of quintessential american dreamers like they're striving right yeah i felt that too yeah they all want to like level up and it makes them kind of uh very cynical in how they appraise people

because they're constantly thinking of them as like what kind of value they add to their own personal like uh perception but but then at the same time they want so badly to keep moving up the social ladder that you can't help but kind of feel a little bit of compassion and sadness for them that's right yeah yeah thank you for for i think sadness is the right the right kind that, um, that I wanted people to feel because, um, yeah, like they, I think it's also the problem of extreme economic inequality that they're so close to people that are so wealthy and they're like skews their perceptions of what success should look like. And so they're striving to be super rich and they can't be happy with the like 200,000 a year.

Yeah. And their understanding of what wealth looks like keeps changing. So they're changing their outfits and the way that they present themselves. But yeah, you referenced Gatsby, it feels like a bit performative the whole time. And yeah, your heart just kind of aches for them. Yeah. At the same time, they do some pretty- They're not the coolest guys. Yeah. Sometimes I have too much compassion for the wrong people. My friends will tell me that. They'll be like, I think you should be feeling bad for the other people. I'm like, right, right, right, right. But they're the main character, sort of.

So you can't help, but whoever the main character is, is the one that I kind of, yeah, or the one I heard about the most. You guys probably feel this, I mean, in the world that you've become. And this was a question I had for you, like, because now you're kind of celebrities. I mean, you're like in that kind of moment where you have all this recognition. In like two or three towns. In Orange County. In Orange County.

Yeah, well, that's a good launching pad for a lot of celebrities. That's true, yeah. Yeah. Well, that's a good launching pad for a lot of celebrities. So, yeah, I don't know if, if you feel the same kind of like, once you get an early or, you know, once you get that start of success, if like the pressure grows and it, you know, for sure. Yeah. No, absolutely. A lot of it. Yeah. You feel the need to keep building for sure. I mean,

just to keep progressing and keep climbing up i think a lot of it which i i feel like i've overcome now but uh started off in the beginning was um this feeling to this sort of like desire to live up to expectations you know it's like people see you in this sort of certain light and you're like whenever you meet them in person you're like you know you're like oh I got I gotta you know I gotta be the person they think I am you know which is like you realize it it's you are that person you know you just you know as long as you're just nice and and and grateful to have them as a fan or whatever that's enough but at first it was tricky because i'm like oh did i like i don't know i think i just so sort of made sensitive or self-aware that that that's

that pressure came to my mind but um i think that you just sort of learn as you go along right deal with it yeah yeah i've been reading a lot of stoicism too which helps me to get into the mindset of like because like with what we do you know in like entertainment it's like we're always looking towards like climbing and like you know doing a bigger thing and more recognition or whatever and that and stoicism helps me to kind of just stay in the moment and just be like you you know, I don't need this certain thing in the future to make me happy. I can, I can, if like I'm doing what I love already and that's enough, which is hard to sort of really, you know, fully grasp because like we're so with our culture and everything, we're so geared towards a huge success and stuff. But I think that the key is just to find the fun in what you're doing today. That's such a beautiful philosophy.

Yeah, it's so hard. I think like in so many fields, like in fashion modeling, obviously, but, you know, because it's in fashion modeling, you know, the chance of like you might book a big job tomorrow and then you might become, you know, Karlie Kloss or like whoever, you know, like a top model. And so people are just like constantly kind of striving for that. And then every day there's like so much rejection. Right. And it becomes really hard to take, to take pleasure in like the art of making a picture or anything that, you know, these kinds of brief moments.

It's surprising, like academia is also, you know, these kind of brief moments. But, you know, it's surprising. Like, academia is also, I mean, like... Same way. Right, yeah, it is the same way because when someone gets hired for a tenure track position, they have about seven years to try to do as much and as best of their work that they can. And then, you know, they'll get tenure, hopefully.

And then tenure is like, you know, this lasting job security or was pre-pandemic. I mean, we're not sure, but. Yeah. But yeah, I always, you know, was striving so hard pre-tenure. And then I always imagined that once I got tenure, I could just relax a little. But somehow like the pressure to, you know,

keep on that upward trajectory just got more intense. And so, and then time got shorter because I had kids. And then the kind of constant feeling of like, am I living up to the expectations of that, that I said or somebody said, you know, right. Yeah. It's very stressful. And with being an author too, when you, when you, you know, released your first book, did you,

And with being an author too, when you, when you, you know, released your first book, did you, how did that feel versus to how you thought it would feel? Well, so academic books are a little bit different. I mean, the way that I wrote my first book too, it's pretty dry. And it's written like a dissertation. And so it's the, it's the book that people publish, you know, they publish their dissertations as they're on that tenure climb so they can get their academic kudos. And, you know, I was really delighted for any of the, I was delighted that it was received well within

academia and then outside academia, any kind of extra attention or interest people took in it. I was really pleased and flattered. And the bookstore in Harvard Square, they told me that they keep it on the shelves because of like mothers of teenage girls who want to go into modeling will ask for a resource or they'll look for that book. And I was like, I was really touched by that.

Because usually when you publish something in academia you know it gets read by a handful of people maybe 20 people and that's kind of it and so um so yeah it that was fine and I was really just glad that I got the book out early you know so it was kind of a relief that I could um you know that I felt confident going for tenure. Yeah. I had a question about, to circle back a little bit, do you see the sort of club system that we have now, do you see it, you know, staying around for a while, or do you think it's just going to be sort of a brief moment in time? Yeah, it's a really interesting question. Like, will this be something that people look back on and be like, that was a weird moment that people did in the,

you know, in the 2000 teens? Yeah, and I had seen some forecasting that conspicuous consumption would start to evaporate as people become more mindful of, you know, inequality and, and of the importance of things like gratitude and experiences as opposed to just showing off through consumption. So, yeah,

there's some reason to, to think that maybe this would disappear, but I actually think not. I mean, maybe the clubbing itself will take a different form, but I think that this kind of experience that the club offers, which is the capacity to show off, I think that that is, you know, as wealth inequality continues and as new pools of wealth grow around the world, I think that this purchasing of status is,

we'll probably take other forms, but we'll continue. I think about the art market, for instance, contemporary art, the prices that people buy at some of the art fairs or at auction are just really outrageous. They don't correspond in any way to the work, but at least there's some kind of work that someone can say, like this is an investment piece. Whereas in clubbing,

it's really just popping bottles and like showing off, you know, and having that experience, which makes it like a very strange kind of thing. But I think that it'll, it'll continue in some other form maybe. Well, like displaying waste is like almost like a, it has like a social impact on the people around you, right? It shows that you have so much that you can just kind of throw it away. Right, right. Yeah. So it does that. It also has pretty deep roots in human culture. So the term that I use for it is an anthropology term called the potlatch,

which was something that described Pacific Northwest tribes that would gather together. And then the tribal nobles would, you know, have a contest to see who could have a bigger feast or who could like, you know, destroy more goods, you know, burning blankets or breaking canoes. Yeah, that sounds pretty fun. I mean, a potlatch was actually like deeply important to a community because it was about solidifying rank. Um, so it had consequences in terms of like the stability of the community, right? I mean the, you know, who, who wastes the most champagne or like dumps it off the yacht, you know, that's, it doesn't have any like lasting consequences for the social order. That's how Chad and I elect our leader, though.

Right. So there's these kind of connections to other, this kind of wasting as a form of signaling prestige is pretty old. And I think we'll continue. Right. What about, can you explain the public character a little bit? Yeah, so the public character, this is a concept that comes from an urban theorist, Jane Jacobs, who was, she wrote a book about the cities and city culture.

And in her book, Death and Life of Cities, she describes how some people in cities, like in a book, Death and Life of Cities, she describes how some people in cities, like in a neighborhood, you know, most people in a city, because it's a city, they prefer to move about anonymously. We're like, you don't know who's who when you're passing on the sidewalk

and you kind of tune people out. But for some people, they really like to be known and they kind of move through the city hoping to build connections catch attention make eye contact um and jane jacobs argued that those are the kinds of people that are actually really important to the fabric of a community because people know them people feel safe because of them um you know like when i was in grad school i lived in a neighborhood

where there was like the um uh these guys that would kind of always sit out on the stoop. And, you know, I could imagine that if somebody didn't know the neighborhood, they might think that, oh, this is a sign of loitering, you know, or something. But because I lived there, I always felt really, really great that they were there and really safe because I knew that like, you know, those guys knew me and I knew them and we were kind of connected just by virtue of like repeated interaction. And so, yeah, those kinds of characters are important. And the promoters that I got to know, I described them as a public character because when they, so this one guy, Dre, for example, not his real name but uh when he's moving through the city streets he lived in chelsea and he would walk down the street let's say prince um and to get to where he was going and then he wouldn't ever walk back on the way that he came

right to meet new people and like see see what's going on on the other streets and who he can connect and he only takes like the busiest streets, right? Right. Yeah. He goes on the streets where he knows there's like sidewalk cafes because he'll run into people. Yeah. So yeah, he kind of makes himself public and it, and it does something interesting in a, in a neighborhood. Yeah. It's like the mayor and do the right thing kind of reminds me of that too.

Right. Yeah. Just a person who says hi to everyone. Did, did Dre ever tell you how he felt about the book after it came out? No. So I sent him the advanced copy and he was just really proud that I had published the book because it took me a long time. I mean, I followed him for a couple of years and then we were keeping in touch and every time we'd keep in touch and check back in and be just kind of embarrassed like no i'm still working on it because i had two kids and i will slow you down and um yeah he was really really glad when the book came out he was he was very celebratory and then um yeah i sent him the book but it you know

he got the advanced copy right in March. So the world's been kind of in turmoil. Yeah. Yeah. How are these promoters doing during the pandemic? Yeah. So, I mean, their livelihoods are pretty much cut off, right? Like the clubs closed.

I think it does expose the vulnerability of these kinds of jobs. I mean, much like being a fashion model, like these are jobs that are really glamorous. They have, you know, great lifestyle perks, including, you know, travel and access to all these, you know, kind of VIPs. And it's freelance. So you're kind of your own boss of your time. And yet, you know, when there's, when there's a market shock, like now, you know, or there's kind of big disruption, freelancers, they, they don't have anybody who has their back, right? Like they, well, they have unemployment right now. But, but yeah, the, a lot of them are kind of

not sure what they're going to do, how they're going to transition. Dre is just kind of thinking next steps. I mean, some people were, they're kind of always hoping that they're going to launch another venture so they have more time to focus on those other ventures, but those other ventures are also like starting a you know clothing line for instance that's also put in jeopardy because investments you know investors are nervous um a lot of promoters were interested

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Dude. Go ahead, Chad. Go ahead. No, I had a really tangential question do you hit it oh i do too actually oh what's yours i'm curious okay okay uh so so uh in tyler cowan's podcast you you talked about sort of status uh signaling status or whatever or maybe status seeking behavior and i thrive a lot of being tan that's like my favorite thing yeah so i was just sort of wondering like is that

is that a form of like status signaling or yeah that's a good call dude i'm that's a fire question i like being tan too it's like when people say i'm tan that's so nice yeah it's like my favorite thing yeah what does it uh indicate to you when someone says you're tan like what does it what does it mean what are the symbolics of tan uh time for leisure yeah oh yeah like what do i think or what does that say to people? Yeah, what do you think it says to people that's a positive? This guy is one with the ocean. He's one with Apollo. He's in California and he's living the California lifestyle. I think maybe that's the biggest.

That's right. You're so healthy when you're 10 too. it's like there's vitality in it. But I know my dad, my dad had a guy who worked for him named Eddie. And my dad would always complain that Eddie was too tan. But I think he's working hard enough. I was like, why? He's like, he has too good of a tan. But I think my dad was just jealous. Yeah. Right. So like in the 19th century having a tan would mean that you're working too much right that you're working outdoors your skin would be rough course yeah so you wouldn't be in the leisure class and that starts to flip um until today

having it having a tan although you know it's also fashion so and in fashion's always context specific so like in california it means this one with the ocean, whereas being maybe more fair might be something that would be more valued according to the whims of fashion. Yeah, there's different countries where it's like a billion-dollar industry to be lighter. Right. But also tanning, you think about the Jersey Shore time period.

In the Northeast, it was fake tan all the the time i hit the fake tan booth a couple times i'm not proud of it but i'm not ashamed of it either you know you put a heart on your body and then you tan and you get the heart outline i had never thought about that oh it was cool yeah i do think there's different forms of it. If you're in California, I think it says one thing. You're at the beach and maybe you're surfing a lot. But if you're tan and you're living in the middle of the country where it's not possible for you to be tanning, I think maybe it says something a little bit different.

Like you're either going to like a tanning booth or you're just going to the Bahamas a lot, which maybe conveys a different message, especially the fake tan. Right. Yeah. If you have a tan in the middle of winter in the Northeast, then you're a part of the like, you know, January holiday set or you're going to the tanning booth yeah right do you know what i just realized my dad faked hands now

does he yeah he faked hands last time i was with him i'm like what did you do today he's like i got a fake tan it looked good we were gonna play golf the next day i was like it felt a bit redundant but whatever makes you feel good yeah he puts the sunscreen on what in all your experience in uh observing clubs what song this was what i was gonna ask uh what song gets people the most hyped oh that's funny well so it's been a while um so yeah i don't pretty much anything by Rihanna. Like hip hop actually was more exciting to people, but, but anything by Rihanna would be so much easier to dance to hip hop than it is

to dance, dance, like house or electronic for me. I don't even know how to move my hips. She doesn't feel fundamental to me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And so some clubs would have uh some kind of mix you know like they would transition between or it would be like a i don't know a kind of edm version of a of a rihanna song or something um but yeah i'm just remembering like the the young women they could really like they you know it feels good when you can sing a song with other people and everybody knows the lyrics. And this is why throwbacks are so popular, but like, yeah,

I think like Rihanna was what they were connecting to at the time. Like we found love. Yeah. That one. Right. Yeah. Kind of these remixes with Calvin Harris too. Yeah.

Those would all be popular. Drake was pretty big too. Like started from the bottom now in here. So. Oh yeah. I can imagine that if you're getting bottle service and that song comes on right yeah because it's the good mix yeah i made it i'm on the scene um yeah you know there's a there's this academic term for this when

when that kind of infection of the music happens and people feel it together i mean you call it stoke but um the french theorist Emile Durkheim would call it the collective effervescence. Oh, dude, that just got me so hyped. That's great. I was hyped before you even said it. I was so hyped to learn that term. Yeah, me too.

The collective effervescence. It's like the guiding logic of, I don't know, of like Burning Man or even a church service, you know, or like protests, like when people start chanting together and they like, they feel the vibe together and they make it happen. We're one body, we're one energy. Yeah. Yeah. At a ball game, you know, it's the kind of like logic of fandom too. It's like doing this thing together. Yeah. You feel like if you had different sunglasses on, you could see like the energy streams between all of us just connected. i think that you know nightclubs um nightclubs are beautiful places because you can catch that

you can feel that and and when it happens it just it feels so good so it really is like a high you know yeah yeah yeah but um it's just that in the clubs that I studied, there was all of this work that was happening behind the scenes to get to that moment. And that, that work was kind of so sexist and so racist and so exclusionary, you know, to create this kind of beautiful moment. It kind of ruined the moment.

No. Right. Damn. We got to find an ethical way to get there. We got to, yeah. Yeah. Well, it's like when I watched The Bachelor,

like I'm like, this is so produced. This is so contrived. There's these people are so manipulated. But every time at the end where they, when they say I do, I'm like, I believe in true love. This is like the packaging. Even if I'm somewhat aware of it, it'll still get. Yeah, there's all kinds of really interesting communities

of people that watch The Bachelor. Like I know like some of my professor colleagues are like crazy about the bachelor and it's like yeah once you start talking about the bachelor with people it's it really connects them it's amazing it grabs you right away they know how to just like hook you in right even because i mean i started watching it last year and i was like uh this is uh i was like this sorry just go ahead uh i was like i was like this is so absurd but i love it yeah and i think it was like a group thing because i've like watched like my girlfriend and then like her friends and stuff and we were all just sort of laughing you know and it's like we did have that collective effervescence of laughing at Pete.

There's that moment where they do something and you turn to the person in the room and you both go, oh, my God. I can't believe that happened. Yeah. I was wondering, do you think clubs are unsafe with the way people are able to dance on tables and the couches? Because I've been dancing on couches before at clubs and you lose your footing and you're like, oh, this isn't a very stable surface to be gyrating on. Yes, especially in high heels. Yeah, right.

That is a risk. Luckily, I didn't see or experience any of those kinds of hazards. But yeah, I mean, have pretty pretty tough security detail that are kind of making sure that everything's in check and so some sometimes you know security person might tell you to get down the security is pretty phenomenal i saw a famous football player once there who was there during season and he was smoking cigarettes so he's doing stuff that obviously would reflect poorly on him and then every time time I went to, and I wasn't going to show anybody, but I would like try and take a picture on my phone. And every time I took out my phone in a club full of a thousand

or some people, the security would slide and block my photo. They were hyper-conscious of anyone trying to do that. Yeah. So you guys, you frequent these kinds of places? Or you know them? Or you would want to frequent them? No, it's like a once every couple years thing for me. It's like when in Rome kind of thing. But it's not my preferred method of getting after it. Yeah.

If I'm in Cabo, you know, I'll indulge. But, I mean, when I first moved to L.A., I went to a couple clubs, and I was just like, you know, this is – I do, like, deep house, you know, so if it's, like, a deep house show, then, like, there's something about that, like, simple beat that can grab me. But even then, like, I had to be, like, pretty intoxicated to enjoy it because I kind of like being solo. Not solo, but, like, in smaller groups or just with friends.

But, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I guess I'm more of a house party kind of guy. But, you know, there is something about the – whenever I travel, the sort of novelty of going to a club in that city or, like, going to New York City, there's something about that that's really attractive, and it's fun to experience for sure. So is it part of bro culture? Or, like, do bros fit within this scene?

Yeah, absolutely. Tons of bros at clubs. Yeah. And bros love it. I just think you kind of – there's some guys who are like club guys. Like that's their thing. They love to just hit it every weekend. And for the most part, I actually think those guys are –

I would not categorize them as bros. Maybe there is like club bros but they don't seem uh to be the same kind of bro that i think i am yeah um but i do i mean it's fun like last time i went to a nightclub in miami though with my cousin juanita she's like lives there and she hooked it all up and she started crying because she thought i was having such a bad time she was like crying she's I was having such a bad time. She was like crying. She's like,

you're having a bad time. I was like, no, I'm just like nervous. I'm kind of lame. I'm like, something I did like to do. I was like,

go in the middle of the dance floor and just stand there and just feel all the energy around me. But I, it was probably looked weird. And then I told my buddy, I was like, Juanita, thanks for having a bad time. So my buddy went up to her and he's like,

Hey Juanita, I'm having a lot of fun. And she looked at him askance. It was like, shut up. And I was like, Juanita, thanks for having a bad time. So my buddy went up to her and he's like, hey, Juanita, I'm having a lot of fun. And she looked at him askance and was like, shut up. And I was like, you can't fool her. And I don't know, you're making me think a lot about like bro stratification. But I'm curious, like what kind of bros did you grow up with? So wait, is bros just like a stand-in for people or a stand-in for men or a stand-in for a certain type of man?

All three. Okay. But I like the way that you're trying to create like a taxonomy here. Yeah. I don't know. A bro is probably just like a dude who's kind of like not self-aware and just kind of like loves to have a good time. Okay.

Fuck yeah, man. I'm just here to have fun. I'm here to grab a couple beers. I'm here to have a good time. Okay. Fuck yeah, man. I'm just here to have fun. I'm here to grab a couple of beers. I'm here to talk to some people. And then I think because of where we were at, like culturally, the most emblem, the most visible bros were kind of the toxic bros. You know what I mean?

And that is a big part of the culture, no doubt. toxic bros you know what i mean and that that is a big part of the culture no doubt um and i don't know what it is exactly about those guys i guess they have tempers i guess they're misogynistic like they just think like you know they just think chicks are for having sex with and then but then they judge the women for having sex too and there's like this horrible kind of um like othering of women's sexuality and then um what else is it about them and then they kind of um like othering of women's sexuality and then um what else is it about them and then they kind of like are they don't like things that aren't in from their world like outsider stuff they kind of like are like that's lame or or they use worse pejoratives than that um that's probably what people think is bro but i don't know This is very enlightened. This is very enlightened bro kind of feminist culture that you're describing.

I mean, in your critique of. Right. Yeah. And I hope I embody that, but I mean, I've, you know, I've, I've been a douche myself, so I, I, I see it from, I've seen it from both sides and even in myself. But yeah, I don't know. What do you, what do you, what't know. Where did you grow up? So I grew up in the suburbs of Atlanta, about 45 minutes south of the airport in Georgia. And yeah, it's very suburban, pretty quiet. I mean, it was like transitioning from rural to suburban from the time I was in like late elementary until I graduated high school. And I think in the

10th grade or maybe ninth grade, like a super Walmart opened up and that was like a very big deal just to put it in perspective of like the kind of realm of, you know, leisure and consumption in my milieu. I went to university, went to University of Georgia, university um went to university of georgia literally two days after i graduated high school i i moved and started um because i was pretty eager to get out yeah in athens and athens is like a cool art town right like a cool yeah yeah yeah it's really like artsy good music and you gotta write a book on sec football culture and the tailgate culture yeah yeah yeah so i so i did some of this so athens is very split too because it's yeah it has a really heavy uh greek life um and the kind of tailgating takes

over during football season and then there's also the kind of i don't know like artsy maybe would be called hipster um kind of communities um that are kind of on the edge of town. Yeah, it's actually pretty mixed, but it has this kind of dominant perception as a party school that's tailored around Greek life. Did you get into football when you were there? Did you get into the Greek life and the whole kind of traditional stereotypical Georgia experiences? No, no. So I moved, I lived off campus. I never lived in a dorm. So I was kind of shielded from some of that. My sister is three years older and she was finishing up when I started. So we lived together. Oh, that's so nice. Yeah. And she had desist from her sorority.

So she was a real like sorority hater by the time I got to college. So she steered me away. That's an issue now is people are still having to pay their dues, but there's going to be no frat or sorority parties this year, but people still have to pay their dues for it. Yeah. I think this could be cataclysmic for the Greek system at colleges. Right. Well, in college more generally, I mean, there's an argument to be made that college on the whole has become a consumer experience that's geared around parties and enables parties through the Greek culture, but not necessarily only. And so without that in-person party experience, what will undergraduate or campus life look like?

And is it worth the price tag? Yeah, I think a lot of what I learned, I i mean it's something i was mature enough to really embrace education but a lot of what i learned was sort of the the interaction the social interactions with with people is where i gleaned a lot of my education even though it wasn't from classes it's like the experience taught me a lot or just helped me to sort of get through that that lot or just help me to sort of get through that that reckless phase of my life in a safe way glad you made it out in one piece dog well i scraped myself skateboarding yesterday so i don't know that's so awesome that's cool dude i love You got to keep living hard. It's good for you. And what about you?

I went to Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles, but I went to like 20 junior colleges first. And I went to a film trade school for a year. And I just like, honestly, the place I probably thought I got the best education and learned the most was Borough of Manhattan Community College. Yeah. Because it was like, it was probably the most diverse place I ever went to school. And, uh, and you know, you're in New York and it was

like, um, and it was kind of easy too. So I kind of went to like a tough academic high school and I felt overwhelmed. And then, so going to junior college was kind of like, I could kind of like slowly get better at school and it was really helpful for me but LMU I was like older than the other kids I didn't kick it with them at all I didn't want them to know I was older so I'd never like mentioned like Bill Clinton or I'm seeing a car or anything that could signpost me as a as a geezer but it was uh yeah it but you know I I still learn stuff there, but like, I, I like cheated on essay. I like bought essays online and stuff like that.

Like, I'm not very proud of like, but now I'm going to, I just signed up for a personal finance class through UCLA extension, which I was so pumped on. I haven't done a single assignment. I'm failing it. I can't do homework. I'm fundamentally incapable of doing homework. And it's a real problem of online education where we're all grappling with what to do in the fall.

Oh, so do you, so you actively teach it. You have like classes that, so yeah. What do you think, what's your perspective on coming back this year? So we're not fully coming back. We're doing this hybrid thing. So we're going to be in person part of the way, like, I don't know, a class will be offering both in-person instruction and online and nobody really knows what that looks like or how to do it so we're kind of inventing it as we go which means it's like a lot of stress and meetings like i have so many zoom meetings

kind of all day long and nobody really has answers like are we can we have class outside nobody knows like will the wi-fi be good enough because if you're if you have a class and it meets in person you have to be social distancing and you have to be talking like this with like a mask over your face and a computer screen is going to be capturing your lecture to broadcast to students who can't be there physically wow it just sounds really tough and um yeah everybody is really panicked about it and what's the what's the primary concern is it student welfare or is it the faculty's welfare that's probably some combination of both i guess what starts with student welfare um i think that kind of i don. I mean, a cynical take would be like,

it's the university's financial welfare in order to get the students to pay their tuition. You know, will they pay the tuition for an online education or will they just take a gap year? If they take a gap year, how hard will the university be hit, right? Some universities have huge endowments and they can write it out.

Like Harvard, for instance, some universities have relatively modest endowments and so they need the tuition for operating costs for salaries. So yeah, there's that, but also there's a concern about if we do open, then how is it going to look to protect the students, to protect the faculty?

What do we do when the weather changes and like people start getting colds and fevers? And yeah, like we don't really have such clear answers. This university, I think like all universities and educators right now, including like my five-year-old's kindergarten teacher are all like working really hard right now to try to figure out how it's going to look and how to make it work yeah right on yeah it's super stressful so it's a it's a good time to um be surfing instead i think yeah uh i know it's it's such a uh it's so it's so interesting to think about life like even like the week before the pandemic hit when like we were you know we were working on something

and we were talking about like what what if this progresses and we're like the off chance that we'll have to like stop working you know we'll figure it out we'll be back by june and now it's like july and we're like yeah i mean mean, we're in LA too, you know, so it's a huge hotspot and it just keeps, it's, uh, yeah. But, you know. Has it impacted your work? Because you're still doing podcasts and you're still making content. Yeah.

Yeah. Uh, yeah, we, we've been able to, you know, uh, thankfully, you know, a lot of our sort of content distribution is online. We had to have some other stuff we were working on, which is kind of on hold. It was like our biggest, it was like our big thing though. True. We're not allowed to talk about it, but, but, but I'm not that bummed about it. I mean, I know we'll make it happen, but it was like –

and worse things have happened to other people, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's – I mean, it's, you know, in other situations, it would have been a bigger blow, I think. But the fact that everyone else is in the same situation, it's kind of like – Yeah. You know, we're all going through this together and and and it'll be a better outcome i think because of it i believe that i mean especially because we've had more time to actually just work on it and work on ourselves

and you know our craft yeah so yeah it's a the uncertainty of this time you know i i definitely understand yeah like it's it's torture but i think it's i just read marcus aurelius all right i can handle it he went through plagues oh he did oh yeah he went through like wars and plagues and oh what a beast dude everyone you know i think if you i don't think there's been anything like this really like a complete shutdown but you know there's every generation has gone through stuff like this so it's just our period of adversity i guess yeah i was super lucky when the shutdown happened to have my mother-in-law from Serbia here. And, you know, she was only supposed to be here for three months.

It turned into a few more, but she's, she lived through the breakup of Yugoslavia. Yeah. And she, she was so kind of like, okay, here we go. I'll bake bread. It was like, you know, this is what you do. Like we survive, we'll be fine. It's like everyone mobilizes and we make it work. Yeah. Yeah.

We'll find a way. I've really like my appreciation for my parents has grown so much throughout this. And just like my appreciation for friends and family. It feels like that. That's been one of the good things about for friends and family it feels like that um that's been one of the good things about the whole thing is it's like made me think about like what actually makes me feel safe and makes me feel good about the world around me yeah it's just being yeah uh tight with those people that's right yeah yeah i realized that too because i followed the kind of professional middle class norm of like move away from home yeah school move away from

home for your career and then in the end what it got me was like we were pretty isolated before the pandemic hit and then yeah we were like wow we don't, our families are far away. How will we see each other again? We were thinking in like March, you know, like my friend network is kind of pretty weak and disintegrated from all of this moving. So yeah, that's a downside of having such a big country in which people move around a lot. Has this period inspired you to sort of, because of the sociological

impacts of it, has it inspired you to sort of study, you know, anything that's been severely affected by it or the changes in society? Like, has there been any sort of sparks? So we're working with a team with grad students, a couple of people in my department that are interested in labor. And we started interviewing bar workers, like bartenders, and we'll branch out to bottle girls of, of people who are kind of pulled out from work suddenly. And this kind of like tip work and shift work was already like,

you know, it's already fairly precarious in the sense that you don't have like a steady kind of predictable sense of, you know, what your hours will be necessarily, what your income will be. And so, yeah, we're just following people to see how they're coping, how they're managing, and how they're, how they're thinking of maybe transferring skills, you know, like being a, being a fitness trainer, for instance, has a certain kind of transfer to Zoom that being a cocktail or like bartender doesn't, doesn't quite have the same transferability, although some like

mixologists have, have tried, but you have to have a sort ofability although some like mixologists have have tried and but you have to have a sort of big instagram or like online following in order to make that work right yeah so if you know any any bartenders or if bartenders are listening then they should get in touch with me oh we for sure do yeah yeah um Chad, do you have any other questions? Should we answer some listeners' questions? I just have one more question. Yeah, baby. So I got to take umbrage a little bit, if that's the right phrase.

Oh, nice. On Tyler's podcast, he said that Miami is, what did he say? He said it's underrated. Oh, did he say it's underrated? Or overrated? I think you said it's overrated. And I just want to know, why do you not think it's as cool as Will Smith's as it is?

Okay, so I'm sure that Miami has great pockets to explore that I haven't even probed. But speaking of the kind of, you know, the beachfront and like the Star Island kind of mega rich development and leisure of Miami. Yeah, I think it'll be underwater in a, in a generation and, and that it and that it attracts, attracts people who are really in pursuit of the status game that on the whole, I would say is overrated. I would say this of Centrepay and, and any other, any other place. Can I, can I counter that?

I feel like everyone's in pursuit of the status game. And what I like about Miami is, and maybe I wouldn't want to live in it, but I like to visit it because the transparency of how people are in pursuit of it. You'll see an old dude in a Lambo with a young woman, and there's no pretense that it's anything other than almost transactional, I guess. And maybe I don't think it's virtuous, but there's something about the blatant honesty of it that I find that I think other big cities try to hide a little bit more. Like everyone's like, no, I'm like, I'm not into that stuff. But then we all kind of really are.

But we just try to do it in like more subtle ways, which I almost think is kind of like it's not as I know there's there's there's some quality in being up front yeah for sure there's something to be said for that yeah okay i'm rethinking my assessment actually i'm rethinking my assessment now i'm like does that even really hold water like what does it mean uh but yeah i felt like i had to stick up for Miami. I was born in Fort Lauderdale. Oh, cool, cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like Hollywood, you know, that like Broward County area.

And yeah, so my thoughts about the Miami area is that it, you know, it's like a retirement community. I kind of think of it, I associate it with my grandma and her kind of old, somewhat dilapidated house and kind of her rundown neighborhood, or perfectly fine neighborhood, but not particularly renovated. And then when I spent this time with these party promoters in Miami, I remember being so shocked when I got on the plane at 7 a.m. to return back to Boston straight out of an after party. The plane was full of older people. I was like, wow, I haven't seen like an old woman, you know, like a senior woman since I'd been there,

you know, only there for a week, no less than a week, but it was like just so many young women and middle-aged or younger men. And that's when it kind of dawned on me that like this part of Miami that I had seen, like the kind of VIP party Miami has like a very different kind of world of women and men in their various capitals than what I had grown up with. Right. That's awesome. All right. Let's answer some listeners' questions.

War Between Brothers. And I apologize. Some of these can be a little long. What up, council? I come to you with a very distressing family dilemma. My brother has recently turned against our mother and I. He seems convinced that everything I say is somehow an attempt to manipulate him. When I try to tell him that there is nothing he has that I want so bad that I would have to manipulate him for, he took it as an insult. That does feel a little insulting. This has come seemingly out of nowhere.

He used to say that he admired that I always just say what I'm thinking, and so he doesn't have to worry about what I mean by what I say. But now everything is interpreted as a manipulation. Even if I don't realize that's what I'm doing. In quotes, when our mother came to my defense, he said we were ganging up on him. It's to the point where we don't speak anymore. Because everything I say they twist to fit this image they have of me in their mind of me trying of me trying to be some kind of puppet master. Now they posting about me online oh brutal and i don't know what to do if there's even anything that can be done at this point thank you for your consideration a very unstoked stoker you guys get those those kinds of questions a lot this one's pretty unique actually um does it say how old the brother is

or no we didn't get any of those details i would guess like early 20s i would say probably um just based off the issue and and the majority of the questions we get the age most of the questioners it's tough man it's tough to say what to do, not knowing more. But I would say if your brother's saying that to you constantly, that maybe the best step is to first really question yourself if it might be true and ask yourself if you are being a little bit, I have a tendency to be a bit manipulative and be a little puppet mastery. So I can, I've had friends accuse me of that. And sometimes they were just stoned and weird, but other times I think they were valid in the criticism so i don't know i would i would uh you don't want to have beef with your brother and you don't want your brother to think you're toying with him so i would maybe

just talk to him and like say hey man i'm gonna make a sincere effort not to do that anymore and then if you and then if you try really hard for a couple months and he's still saying it then in good faith you can be like bro i honestly, I'm trying to be hyper conscious of it. I don't think I'm doing it anymore if I was doing it. And I think we now have to address whatever's going on on your end. But if you're not taking a good hard look at yourself, it's really easy for the other person just to put it all on you. Does that make sense? That sounds like really great advice and very sincere okay solid thank you what do you that's good stuff what do you guys think well i had a question in the in the question he said uh he he's like really upfront and honest that's sort of like way he prides himself on yeah

yeah he said he said that his brother liked that he was so like brass tacks about stuff and would just like hit him with like truths even if they were uncomfortable. But now he's saying he's being manipulative. Now his brother says, dude, you're being a puppet master at every turn. Yeah, I don't...

Dude, there was this stripper show where these guys competed to be the men down under dancers or whatever on vh1 and one of the guys was like really intense and he hated one of the other guys for being so naturally beautiful and such a good dancer and so he accused him of being like a puppet master but he but if you watch the show he just seems like a psycho he's like he's manipulating us and everyone's like what are you talking about he goes my brother and i used to crack up about this he goes look in his eyes look in his eyes he's manipulating us but he obviously wasn't and it just made the one guy who was accusing him look so crazy and it made him not sexy you didn't want to watch him dance after that because you're like dude you got bad energy we don't want to watch you dance um and he got booted from the show so yeah it's not a very good like i just just just because i'm being harder on the guy who wrote in because you wrote in so it's easier to speak directly to

what you can do i don't know i don't know where your brother's coming from on this enough yeah i think maybe if it progresses maybe like a family therapy sesh dude that'd be fire oh it's usually a good idea i would maybe do a little research on best practices for those things because i heard the interventions of that sort can go south oh is that true oh yeah well yeah because you know when you call the whole family together then one person can feel like everyone's ganging up and he's already raised that as something he feels. That makes total sense. Yeah, that model is a bit

confrontational, it seems like. Yeah. But dude, therapy's the best. Me and Chad went to it together and it was fire. You just come out of it hugging. Yeah. Couple's therapy. It's really nice. It was great.anne's a killer she's great she has a great like incense too does she have incense in there yeah and she's got a

treadmill dude she does uh therapy for some people on the treadmill i want to hop on that but i'm like if i hit the treadmill i'm not going to need therapy afterwards endorphins are probably like energy. Come off the treadmill. Like what the fuck was I even talking about? Yeah. Um, all right.

Uh, uh, all right. What up cultivators of stoke? I'm a 19 year old. Who's been in a healthy relationship for a while now, and it could not be going better. That is until the thought came to me the other day what if i end up marrying this girl and never

get to fulfill a milf fantasy i'm not overly obsessed with this notion but ever since the day my nuts dropped i vowed to get down and dirty with an older lady at some point how do you lads suggest i go about accepting that this fantasy may never come true much love will if i do end up getting married what's a better bachelor party location? Monaco, Grand Prix weekend, or Cabo? These are more questions we get a lot. Well, like, am I supposed to answer them? We can take it.

We can take it. A lot of times the guest will pass. We had like a rocket scientist on last week and someone was asking about like not being comfortable with their, yeah. And he was like, dude, you guys got this one.

We were like, all right, yeah, for sure. For sure. It is interesting to get people's reactions. Chad, what do you think,

dude? I think the grass is always greener. You know, if you have a solid relationship that you really value and you, you know, I think it's natural for anyone to have fantasies, you know, regardless of what situation they're in. But I think you just need to recognize it for what it is and then, and sort of, you know, sort of take a, take a second to, to, to really value what you do have currently because ultimately that's going to

be much more important and beneficial to your life than just some. Yeah. That's beautiful yeah you're right oh thank you connection is the best you know i grapple with it sometimes like is it better to be alone and just like living freely but then when you do connect with someone it feels so different you know what i mean it's just like yeah life's a lot better when you feel connected to the person you're you're with so if you if you get along great with your girlfriend i would just leave it in fantasy like because the fantasy might not even be as good in real life as it is in your head so yeah uh that that's just a part of human nature a little bit we we

we have these like gaps and how we feel, but like they say in that movie, take this wall. We can't go crazy trying to fill that gap. I start to see some very interesting threads around the like Stoker way of, way of thinking. And that's the definitely like the kind of appreciation of the moment, you know, going back to this idea of kind of almost like mindful thinking of what's happening in the present but um because my my answer would would be a very different one which is like 19 is quite young to um uh to imagine oneself in a you know permanent kind of romantic relationship and there's probably a lot of a lot of other um a lot of life changes that will happen that may or may not preclude a relationship with an older person at another point.

But I would have, instead of thinking about the moment, I would think about the forward thinking about, dude, 19 is really young. It's not a, you know, take it easy. Yeah, you're probably right. You're talking to me. I'm 32, so I'm like. At 32, you know take it easy yeah you're probably right you're talking to me i'm 32 so i'm like at 32 you know maybe yeah yeah exactly you bring up a great point i didn't i didn't actually i didn't realize he was 19 so it does make it a lot different i i for some reason when he reads the questions i get

like fragments of info i don't know why that is. Sorry. I just thought of a question that I wanted to ask you guys that I want, I meant to ask earlier. Can I ask it now? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Okay. So, so you, you know, like from, from my book and the, and the other other conversation with Colin that, you know, beauty is so important in this world of the vip world and and also i think a lot about it you know having come from the fashion modeling world

but i'm curious about like in your in your world you know being um being kind of like content producers and um you know not so much in the podcast, I guess, but like, does beauty pay play a role for you guys? Like, do you see there's a beauty premium in like this kind of world for men? And like for us or like just in general in this world? Well, for you guys in particular, and like, as you're, as you're kind of moving through the the the world of I don't know I don't want to call you like influencers but imagine if you were on that path yeah I mean I think anytime you're in a job where visibility is such a big part of it that uh that I wouldn't

call it beauty but like looks and health I almost use those as the words because it probably feels more comfortable for me that like that stuff is really important i mean you look at like paul rudd the guy hasn't aged like a day since clueless he looks better now and we all like love him for it but there's no way that's just through health like he's that's a full-time job he has they're looking like so pristine um and i do think i was saying this the other day i do think there's something when you're watching someone you feel better if the person you're watching looks healthy. Like if it seems, they don't have to be beautiful, but if they look like the healthiest version of themselves and they take their health seriously, I think, especially in this era with like

podcasting and Instagram, where we're so close to the lifestyle of the person we're following, I think that does matter. Like, cause look at like Kevin Hart, The Rock, they all work out constantly and it's a big part of why people like them. So, but I love working out anyways. So I I think that does matter like because look at like Kevin Hart the rock they all work out constantly and it's a big part of why people like them so but I love working out anyway so I feel better when I'm working out so I do but I also take Propecia I dye my hair to keep the grays out so I'm I'm definitely doing shit to like stay young yeah yeah yeah I'm I'm super into into health and stuff uh but I think maybe a lot of it is the reason maybe a lot of it is for the maintaining like a youthful look. Yeah.

Even though for men, you know, there's so much research suggests that you can get better looking as you get older. Right. Like your arc of having beauty capital is, you know, you're probably still far away from the peak of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think maybe youthful is maybe not, but just like looking good. I think, you know, I'll say I want to be healthy, but I think a lot of it is vanity too.

For sure. For me, I mean. Huge. Yeah. Like, you know, if, if we have to be on camera for something, like I won't drink, you know, for a while before because I'll know I'll just stuff like that. You know, I've become much more conscious of it and just sort of, you know, getting outside, getting exercise and stuff. So I do sort of, whether consciously or subconsciously, think it plays a huge role. Right. Probably being in L.A. too.

It's like one of the more like body conscious cultures, I think. Right. Yeah. Totally. And then I grew up in Orange County, which might even be more like body conscious cultures, I think. Right. Yeah. Totally. And then I grew up in Orange County, which might even be more body conscious, which is pretty wild. But if you're asking me if I stress about it, the answer is a big 10 four. I'm worried about it all the time. We did a video with these jump rope guys and I wore a tight t-shirt and my belly was sticking out in it.

And I just watched that video for like three straight days, just staring at my belly. Like was like oh my god um actually it was making me think too and this is kind of like uh I don't know I have some shame over thinking this way but I think like being on camera is like this is a more broader question but like do you guys think being on camera is like inherently feminine insofar as that the more you're on camera the more you think about glamour which is traditionally a feminine kind of um uh trait or ideal and then i just think like like if you see guys where they started their careers how they look on camera and then where they end they it kind of feels like they go through this process of being like less

traditionally manly and how i think about things like uh these crossfit guys I really like they just put out a video and they're like in really tight uh spandex and they're showing off their butts and I don't think they would have done that when they started but I think they've been on camera so long that once you've been on camera for a couple years you're like yeah put me in anything i'll wear anything you're like as long as i'm beautiful you start to think of yourself as like uh i don't know like a like an object like an object yeah you start to think of yourself that way yeah yeah so there's a within gender theory there's this idea that you know from a very young age little girls are socialized into thinking about their looks and is cultivating themselves as objects to be looked at typically the male gaze would be the looker and the woman or the

female would be that which is looked at and that's you know has these deep roots in princess culture and everything else but um yeah i found that when i when i was researching my first book, Price and Beauty, I interviewed male models about their careers and their earnings. And it's one of the few fields where men earn a lot less than women. It's like a huge pay gap where they're earning two times less than the women for equal work. And when I talked to the male models themselves, I would say, isn't this an outrage that you get paid so little for your efforts? And they were like, no, they were totally complicit with it and they embraced the idea that men shouldn't be paid for looking good,

that this is what women are good at and this is what women should be compensated more for. They were totally accepting, with very rare exceptions. They accepted this wage penalty, and they even thought about the skill that they had of posing for the camera or walking down the catwalk is not comparable to the skill that women could have. And for instance, if you look at the catwalk for men, or if you look at just a catwalk, like the way that women are walking down the catwalk, like they're in very high heels anyway, and they're like kind of crossing one foot in front of the other, which is a very exaggerated like swing of the hips when you walk that way. And it takes quite a bit of practice. And there's like runway coaches and movement coaches for women

to walk down the runway and when they studied the men and men going down the catwalk they really just look like they walked in off the street and somebody put them in a suit and they just go and the men would say like no they never had catwalk lessons there's no movement coaches for the men they were told to just walk like men and to not invest in the way they look. And almost like the harder they try, the worse it looks for a man. So I think, you know, I could see this definitely in the modeling world. Oh, interesting. Yeah, that's interesting.

I do think with men, you know, especially in Hollywood, when you see older men try to hang on to their looks, you know, like John Travolta or whatever and they do tend to it gets much worse they when they don't embrace their their natural selves it's it's uh they just yeah I mean they so it is kind of weird to see see men really try to hang on to their youth in that way when it just, it backfires. That's right. I mean, I think it's expected that women engage in all of those kinds of like so-called preservation efforts, right?

Because beauty and value is so closely tied to youth for women. And not to say that it doesn't backfire at all there's lots of you know like horrific uh um press that comes out whenever um like a woman celebrity you know has too much of some kind of cosmetic procedure um it's almost like for women you know damned if you do and damned if you don't right either she's like she's like botched cosmetically from too much or like she didn't do anything and she's just old whereas for men at least there's that that hatch of of growing old not to say that the pressure is not there which both of you feel yeah and i might just be hypersensitive too but because i know other dudes who walk through it with a little more

devil may care attitude. Yeah. But I'm like stressed. Like when my hair started to go, I guess everybody freaks out about that though. But, but you know, most of my friends are taking Propecia. Most of my,

and we're all, you know, it has a pretty gnarly list of side effects, but we're all like just braving it. Yeah. Does it work? Oh, it kills it.

Yeah. It totally works. yeah um all right let's do one more question uh all right let me try and find a good one all right what up chad and jt met a great guy back in february he's funny smart handsome even introduced me to the pod we went on a few Not a good one. All right. What up, Chad and JT? Met a great guy back in February. He's funny, smart, handsome, and even introduced me to the pod. We went on a few dates pre-QT, maintained our relationship over the last few months,

and now we're free to bone from the Northeast where cases have dropped. Problem is my roommate complains about hearing our sweet lovemaking, and it's gotten to the point where she hides in her room if he's over and doesn't talk to me about how things are going with him if it's just her and I hanging out. I care about being a good friend and an amazing gf so how can i bridge the gap between my roommate and my dope bf um well i'll pause my answer i'll pass it to you too in a while since i wrestled with these issues. Dude, I think you got to find

your dank BF is going to have some dank friends. And I would start cycling through some introductions and once she's got her own thing going, and cause look, it's harder to hear the noises if you're not making your own noises ever. You know what I mean? It provides this really to hear the noises if you're not making your own noises ever you know what i mean it provides this really stark kind of sad contrast so you just got to help her create her own boom town in the other room and then she won't be as uh harsh on y'all's good time i love that i also love i thought that yeah i think that's fire i also think maybe you could find another place, too, to engage in the act. Oh, that's exciting. Yeah.

I was thinking like his place, just so you can really let loose, I guess, and not have to worry about offending your roomie. Dude, his place is a very good call. Yeah. A very easy fix. I like that this person is so attentive to the needs of both relationships. That's nice.

Even without the sonic offenses, I think that it is really... It can be hard for a bestie when a BF joins into the fold. Maybe some dedicated roommate friend time that is kind of like

clearly just i don't know girls night or something yeah yeah that's fire advice yeah and it is really sweet she seems really sweet like she's so worried about her best friend and yeah i think just that alone the fact that you're so conscientious it's's going to work out for you all. Yeah. And I do like what you're saying, Ashley, about maintaining some sort of balance too of maintaining that friendship because you don't want to go all the way, go 100% to your BF and then disregard the rest of your life. You want to maintain that balance. Yeah, my dad worked in retail he said you never have one retailer that you're more dependent on for more than 30 of your business yeah because if they go under your company goes under

your dad's a beast yeah he's been partying too much quit partying so much dad um sorry to throw that out there my dad rages so does my mom do they listen to the pod uh no but they do sometimes they really like it they've both been on it they're both really cool characters they're great yeah um but they don't really listen but friends do. So they'll let them know I said that. Yeah. Nice. Well, my mom is actually downstairs with the kids and I should relieve her. Thank you for coming on. Yes. Thank you. This was such a weird and also fun and joyful conversation. Oh, that's really nice. Thank you. Guys, check out her book, Very Important People. oh that's really nice thank you yeah guys check out her book very important people i really enjoyed it it was a great i listened to it it was a great listen get the hard book you know get the tactile thing put it in your hands um yeah but yeah

thank you so much for coming on and the other book is the price of beauty pricing beauty the pricing beauty yeah it's probably not that good of a read i mean you know to be honest don't undersell it don't undersell it yeah no it's fire thank you out stalkers all right thank you thanks stay safe out there all right i'm just gonna i'm gonna leave thank you so much this is really cool and yeah, like eye-opening, actually. Like the impulse to classify and make a taxonomy of bros, I think is an interesting one to try to connect like bro culture to all the different, I don't know, like geographies and industries and class and race and gender, sexualities.

The bro diaspora. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all different. Because I think of bros and I think of like, know wall street like wolf of wall street guys kind of yeah yeah yeah and um and yeah i think our meeting was very like illuminating in that sense to see the like sensitive joyful side of bros oh that's so great to hear yeah we did that yeah that's pretty much the best compliment we can get so that means yeah yeah that's what we're trying to do we're trying to re-re-rebrand bros a little bit yeah or bring out the good bros i mean i love wolf of wall

street but it should just be a movie yeah all right take care bye guys have a great one bye that was awesome yeah yeah there's some great stuff in there yeah that was really fun chat what is your beef of the week my beef the week is um okay i'm kind of improvving it because I just couldn't come up with one this morning. But what am I beefing with right now? My beef is the limited selection of SPF. It's like you got 15 to 30 to 45 to 50 to 100. I want every five. You know, I want every five. And I want full-on descriptions of when you should use each one.

You know, because it's summertime. The heat is raging. You know, we want to get our bronze on, but we want to stay safe. We want to keep the skin healthy. you know it's it's hard to decide you know like sometimes i'm like do i go 15 or do i go 30 sometimes i would like you know if it's in that gray area i want to i want to go 22 oh dude it's a good call yeah and i think sunscreen should say they'd be like this is what you want spf 22 for you know if it's like if the uv index is like eight and it's like 74 you're gonna go 23 and i'll be like dude thank

you so much and that and yeah now i think about that's a lot of sunscreen to buy but you know what worth it they could sell it in smaller biodegradable packages. Yeah. So you're just like, Oh, I'm going to do a day at the beach. Let me grab some of this 25. That's not plastic. Yeah. Yeah.

Or like sunscreen dispensers, like home dispensers. Yeah. Why, why doesn't the government just have sunscreen at the beaches? Like at the lifeguard towers? They should. Aloe vera.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That should be, that should be, that should be funded by the state. Absolutely. Yeah. That's my beef. Aaron, what's your beef of the week? My beef of the week is the celebrities and millionaires who took stimulus money oh dude great call man you motherfuckers

yeah and the big corporations and the big corporations i mean i understand that some companies or like say productions let's say need to keep their people working that's that's one thing but someone like dr phil or kanye who've made hundreds of millions of dollars you can float your people for a while john stewart's done it you know all all the people through strikes and things like that. Conan's done it. You don't need to dip into money that other people, regular people need. I mean, in my own opinion, this whole thing would be a lot easier

if the government was doing their job and getting these stimulus checks out and extending it well beyond the one-time $1,200 thing, that's crazy. And if the reason they don't have that and it's not working is because of this, it's terrible. And B, it's going to keep people from feeling the need to race back to work when it's clearly unsafe and things are spiking like crazy. So that is my beef. Yeah.

They've, they've grossly, uh, misallocated it. If that's the right word. Uh, they don't even know where it is. Yeah.

A lot of the, like a lot of the stimulus checks went to people who aren't even alive. Apparently. and I mean, ghosts need to eat, sure. I get it. True. I believe in ghosts now, so feed them, dude. Dude, yeah.

Dude, good call. But I mean, yeah, it's just the financial sector. Know what you're doing. Yeah. We're in unprecedented times, and we need an unprecedented action. And hopefully, if we can keep everybody safe and inside, then it'll go away faster. But we're not. And Disneyland opened.

Disney World opened. Sorry. You're in the wrong country, Aaron. I know. But I don't want to leave. Didn't Kanye just celebrate Kim becoming a billionaire too? Yeah.

Unchill. Yeah. I think I only read the headline, but with Dr. Phil, it's like he got PPP money, and then his son bought a home worth millions of dollars with the money. Oh, dude.

I'm not sure how true that is, but if that is true, it's not cool. I need to talk to you, Dr. Phil. Yeah. Do you think it's okay to take money from one person that's supposed to help you survive and then you spend it to live lavishly do you think that's all right dude no you should come on his show and do that yeah dr phil you're petting me with needles and expecting me to like you did you say that my friend always used to say that was one of the things. You can't throw a cat at a bat and call it baseball.

That's not what a small loan is for. I've also been in the room with him one time a couple years ago, and my wife got violent food poisoning. So I blame him for that as well. Alright. My beef of the week is with dogs. What?

I love dogs. I love dogs. I love Aaron's dog. Chad, I love whatever dog you're going to get. My boy Joe got a dog. Bodie, great dog. My brother's got a dog. Zoe, great dog. But's got a dog zoe great dog but here's the thing dogs they got we've raised them up too high they're too it's too much in our culture they're they they're they they're on the airplanes people have stickers that say like you know this is my son it's the dog and then it's like and then you're

you're working i probably already talked about this it bugs me so much i've been in an office people bring their dogs in i was in charge of like i was like the office pa so i make sure the printer and the phones are all working dogs are ripping the phones apart because everyone's got rescues and then i'm like hey hey get away from the phones and then they come up like oh oh did billy rip up the phones he never does that i'm like he does it, hey, get away from the phones. And then they come up to me like, oh, oh, did Billy rip up the phones? He never does that. I'm like, he does it every day. He rips up the phones. He does it every day.

And I was used to Joe Azapela. I was like, you know what? I'll bring my drug-addled cousin in here, and he'll just be shooting heroin, you know, where we keep the ink for the printers. And, oh, was Mike doing heroin again back there oh he never does that sorry yeah well he's like feral in the office it's just i don't know no you know it's just there's just i love dogs i love dogs but let's let's remember that although we're all equal animals and humans you know dogs are dogs now i hear what you're saying i think

maybe maybe it's not as good for the dogs too because they're sort of like the owners are putting them up at this on this such a high pedestal and they're like what are you doing dude like i just want to like play fetch and kick it like i don't need to be in your purse wearing a sweater yes doesn't have to be a 24 7 thing where i'm being exalted all the time dude my friend dated a dog influencer lady her dog was a famous instagram dog and he told me the dog was like way past its due date on death and the lady was keeping it alive for the gram and was like posing it and the dog was like just let me die but and she was like hitting it with shots of caffeine and being like come on we got 30 more work days out of you yeah

you got some sponsorship that's that's a very cynical tale but yeah i just think like you know our dogs bite people and then people like oh it never bites people i'm like there's no fucking chance that's the first time your dog has bit someone. I sounded like Michael Rappaport there. It's good. Thank you. All right, Chad, who is your babe of the week? My babe of the week is this liquid IV hydration multiplier thing. I got a GNC, potential RIP to GNC.

I guess it's going bankrupt, but, you know. GNC's going under? I think so. Do they not sell online? I mean, that's – Amazon, dude. I wish Amazon just freaking undercut them. Yeah, that's true.

But, dude, I mean, I imagine this economy is probably pretty hard to sell supplements. We're like, dude, I just need food right now. I don't need creatine. But who knows? Anyways, liquid IV always comes in clutch to save the day with that excellent hydration. This is not an ad. This is just straight up. If I have a few beers or something, I'll chug one or two liquid IVs,

and I'll feel fresh in the morning. If I haven't had water in a while, I'll have a liquid IV, and I'll just get that hydration up, and my body will be like, dude, thank you for these electrolytes. I'm like, you're freaking welcome. So, yeah, it's been one of my greatest discoveries as of late. Just got to keep that hydration up. And you don't have to do it by drinking tons of water.

You just put a liquid IV in there, and you're just like, I feel good. That's what's up. But you just drink it? Yeah. Yeah, I was drinking one earlier it's basically like a little powder you put in and then you mix it with water that's awesome yeah aaron what's your baby who's your baby well one of i have two babes this week one of them is also a hydrating miracle worker it's's a Coca-Cola zero. Oh, nice. Not also not an ad. I wish they'd pay. Uh, I just love it.

I love the taste. I know it's probably killing me slowly, but, uh, it works for me. Um, and then my second babe of the week is the game show supermarket sweep. Yes. It's it's a, there's a small collection on netflix um i watched just like i did jeopardy like i did idiot test like it's just super fun and stupid it's all from like 1993 so the fashion and the hair is terrible um finally saw an episode with a people of color on it which was nice that was a bit when you look at it now, you're like, oh, shit. They need some – oh, man.

But yeah, just super fun, super dumb, running through a grocery store, trying to put as much in your car as you can for money. And the main prize, which I love the main prize prize is $5,000 split by two people. Right. It's so dumb, but it's so, it's just fun. It's fun to watch. Mark in the produce or in the meats section, just grabbed six honey baked ham. Just clocking them in the fucking golf cart.

Yeah. That was the best. I don't think they had vitamins on that. I always thought that would be a clever, my friend, you know, he said it'd be a clever way to win is you just put your arm like on the pills and just sweep all those in your cart. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, they do, they have like, you know, Tylenol and all that stuff in a section. They have automotive, like all that stuff,

super expensive. So, right. Yeah. It is weird that they kind of like, maybe that's part of the rules we don't know about where they like just hen pick some things like if you if you took like you can only take five of any one item i get that but like if you took five of the valvoline uh oil and then five of another brand like do you think that'd be a lot more money?

But they seem to just do the one most expensive and then move. You know, because it looks good on camera to hock those hams. Oh, yeah, yeah. Valvoline doesn't look as good going into the cart, but a big honey-baked ham, visually, it's wonderful. Yeah, yeah. Get that ham, the turkeys, the diapers, the imported cheese, and win yourself $5,000.

Great show. My baby of the week is just an American treasure, Kevin Kline. I think he's our best comedic actor who isn't like a comedian, who didn't come through the groundlings, didn't come through stand-up. He's a classically trained dramatic actor. I'm guessing. And he just has incredible comic chops. Like I think he was the first.

Actor to win a best supporting actor award for a comedic performance in a fish called Wanda. He's so funny in it. And then he's great in dramatic stuff too. Like the big chill and, and, and then really good in Dave, the movie about just what if a sweet guy became president? And it's a really, really good movie.

I'd recommend it. Capra-esque, very sweet way of looking at things. And then I just watched him last night in In-N-Out, which is a kind of a dated movie, but it's about this professor who gets outed for being gay when he has a fiance who's a woman by an actor who wins best actor. And I guess it was based on Tom Hanks did that when he won for Philadelphia. a fiance who's a woman by an actor who wins best actor and i guess it was

based on tom hanks did that when he won for philadelphia he dedicated into his theater teacher and he outed him as being gay before he was publicly gay but i guess now the guy lives his life as a gay man and is happier so um all well that ends well but so this movie is based on that matt dylan also hilarious in the movie another great dramatic actor who can be really funny but yeah i just think kevin klein he's so precise he makes such strong choices his movements are so like elegant on camera and i just think he's yeah one of the most uh underrated actors ever and then he does great little work now like he was in that movie uh no strings attached with ashton kutcher as like his uh douchey dad who was a tv star and he was hilarious and he big and broad and and charismatic then i

saw him in definitely maybe i've seen a lot of kevin klein lately and he played like in it. He was big and broad and charismatic. Then I saw him in Definitely Maybe. I've seen a lot of Kevin Kline lately. He played a Philip Roth kind of novelist in that. It was really, really funny. So yeah, Kevin Kline, I'm glad you're around, dude. You're just a great actor and keep doing what you're doing. And maybe you don't know this, but he's married to one of the all-time babes, Phoebe Cates.

Oh, right, from Fast Times, right? Fast Times. Wow. of the all-time babes phoebe cates oh right from fast times right fast times wow uh chad who's your legend of the week uh my legend of the week is my dad uh he's uh he's having a he's having a heart procedure during this podcast but i just got the word that he's all done and he's in recovery now. Yes, dude. That's why I was checking my phone. He's had arrhythmia for 20 years, so he's getting that fixed. It's cool what they can do with heart surgery now. They don't have to do open heart surgery all the time.

They can go through the arteries, put a catheter up there and fix it, which is great because they don't have to take a fucking saw to your sternum every time. Good. And just cry. So, yeah, I just want to give him a shout out. I'm glad he's in recovery, doing well. He's so funny, man.

He didn't want to tell the family that he was having a procedure done because he didn't want to like tell the family that he was like having a procedure done because he didn't think there was much risk you know he's like i don't want to bother people you know and and start make them take time out of days plus i'll have to be social now everyone's calling me i'm like you and i are so like uh yeah um and dude he's funny too because like sometimes i'll have like whimsical thoughts you know because his his coronary arteries are like looking better than they were last time there might be some like reversal and uh i was like oh maybe maybe it's like all this horse riding you've been doing i've been getting in nature. And he's like, no, that's stupid. It's the medication I've been taking. I'm like, yeah, for sure.

All right. But yeah, I just want to give a shout out to your legend. Glad you're in recovery and what up? Glad to hear that, dude. He's a fucking beast, man. Glad to hear he's good. Yeah.

Aaron, who's your legend of the week? My legend of the week is Gary Larson. Creator of the Farside. Oh. Recycling ice strips. Sweet. Oh, it's great. He started at like 30 or maybe 25 in 1980.

And then in 95, he just was like made enough money cool retiring um and so funny they're they're they're just such little slices of life because it's generally just one panel um a lot of times it's like anthropomorphized animals talking to each other it's and having human problems. It's, it's just so good. And he just, just came back. He started a website,

the far side.com. And now he's doing daily cartoons again. Cause he's, he's been retired for 25 years. Yeah. Wow. 25 years. So it literally just started like last weekend.

So, so you can go on there and catch them every day. It's pretty started last weekend. Cool. You can go on there and catch them every day. It's pretty cool. Cool. Let's check those out. Dude, that's awesome. I got two legends.

My first legend is Stephen Dorff. That's nice. He was good on True Detective this last season. Yeah, and he was good in Deuces Wild. That little underrated gem about a tough gang fighter in New York who looks out for his block. Nobody will ever sell junk on my block. They don't let drug dealers work on the block. They're good gangsters.

And then my second legend is this kid that I grew up with. One time I cruelly kind of pantsed him and then knocked him over at the volleyball courts in a salt Creek. And I kind of, you know, embarrassed him in front of a lot of people. So I reached back out to him and I was like, Hey dude, I'm really sorry about all that. We had a good conversation. He was, he was, he was kind about it. And then I said, look, dude, if you want to, you could like pants me and knock me over in front of people. And then he said, I don't want to do that and i was like oh that hit me hard i got it at that point

that's good stuff yeah yeah that's profound yeah some people don't want to do up i didn't even think about it. Chad, what's your quote of the week? Oh, dude. I'm moving from Van Wilder to American Pie now for my quotes. And first I got to go with Jim's dad. And Jim's dad goes, he's talking about drilling yourself. And he goes, I have to admit, I did a fair bit of masturbating

when I was a little bit younger. I used to call it stroking the salami, you know, pounding the old pud. Never did it with baked goods, but your Uncle Mort, he pets the one-eyed snake five, six times a day. What a great dad. He's so good. Aaron, what's your quote of the week? Yeah, quote of the week,

sorry, was Kira Soltanovich tweeted, Ghislaine Maxwell is the second worst Harry Potter incantation. Which I think is very funny. It's really funny. I was ruminating on some sad thoughts yesterday. This quarter of the week is from me.

And so sorry for doing that. But I was thinking yesterday, I was having some sad thoughts about myself. I was like, I kind of suck at some stuff. And then I said this to myself. You know what? I'll be better. Not rigidly, not too intensely, not perfectly.

Just steady in the right direction. We love everyone, and that includes ourselves. Good stuff. Yeah. I smoked pot for the first time in seven months last night, so I was having a lot of thoughts. Yeah. I just, for the first time in seven months last night, so I was having a lot of thoughts. Yeah. I just, my brain.

You wrote that down while stoned? Yeah. Because my brain just starts running and it goes, oh man, I'm going to die one day. Isn't that sad? Yeah, that's really sad. Okay, let's touch the sadness, but let's not live in it. Let's keep moving.

And then I just, and then it's like, but it's this constant like fast paced dialogue with myself. And then I was having some thoughts like, Oh, I kind of feel down sometimes. I kind of feel like I'm down sometimes because I don't like the way I'm doing things. Well, what can I do about that? Well, I can be a little bit better. And then it just came out like that. Yeah. That's good.

That's sort of like what Joe Rogan talks about is you work through the paranoia to, to may break down your walls a little bit or something. Yeah, you do. You do you can yeah it's hard it's really hard because it can feel pretty overwhelming but if i'm not doing it too much so that i'm not in that mind state too much where it becomes the norm i can actually kind of use it to to help me yeah but i don't know what that ideal number is once every seven months seems good right now um chad what's your phrase that we're forgetting after it right now.

Chad, what's your phrase of the week for getting after it? Lather it up and soak it in. Nice, dude. Let's lather it up and soak it in. Sorry, more actionable. Love that. Aaron, what's your phrase of the week for getting after it? Phrase for getting after it shoot let's go hawk some hams dude nice also fires me up uh my phrase for the phrase that we're

forgetting after it came to me while i was playing a call of duty and my friends we kept trying to get recons and we probably pushed it one recon too many and ended up getting ambushed. It's a life is what happens when you're busy making other plans from a, the great singer, John Lennon of the band, the Rolling Stones, dude,

crazy note to end on to chat. And I both by, without planning it, both watched The Firm last night. Yeah, dude. Wow. How nuts is that, dude? We both watched The Firm. Probably at the same time.

Yeah. What time are you watching it? We'll say it at the same time. One, two, three. Nine. Eight o'clock. Oh, I was going to say nine. I was going to say nine.

We were close. Damn it. Dude, that's wild. We were just talking on the phone today, Chad. I was watching to say nine. I was going to say nine. We were close. Damn it. Dude, that's wild. We were just talking on the phone today. Chad's like, I was watching The Firm last night. I was like, get the fuck out, dude. I was watching The Firm last night. Dude, Tobin Bell.

Yeah, good movie, dude. Good villain. Yeah. A lot of talent. All right, that's it. All right. JT, I'm going to work on this video. Thank you.