The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - Postgame Show: PTFO 'A Way Better Elmo Than Jeff Passan'

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

Pablo Torre, Mina Kimes and Dan LeBatard do a share and tell about how a puppet exposed the grim reality of the world's mental health. Why is Elmo — and the internet — making us so sad? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to Giraffe Kings Network. In this excerpt from today's episode of Pablo Torre finds out, which is different from yesterday's episode of Pablo Torre finds out, which is all about the comedy album that Muhammad Ali got nominated for a Grammy for recording in 1964, which kind of birthed rap music and also Muhammad Ali himself. That was yesterday. It's really good with Justin Tinsley. Check that out.

This is different from that. It's also just an excerpt from today's episode. You should know that too. And in this excerpt, this taste, I give you Mina Kimes and Dan Levitard and a way better Elmo than Jeff Passon. That's right, f**k you Passon. We got a new Elmo. You will forgive me after we've talked about discipline and organization that the article

I was supposed to have in front of me to tell you who wrote it and what it's about is not in front of me because I left it near a sandwich outside. However, the article points out in the New York Times that what happened when Elmo simply asked the internet on what used to be known as Twitter, how is everyone doing

out there? The response, the clinginess of the internet responded with a sadness, an acidic well of unhappiness that basically told Elmo that everyone is in a deep, deep acid pit of despair. And I know that this isn't surprising. I know that many people on the internet are not merely addicted to the internet, but are also addicted to the ability to show some of their personalities on their internet, have a voice they might not have in other parts of their life. And the part I wanted to talk to you guys about, because I believe social media is the single largest untreated addiction that we have in the globe, where people aren't paying attention to the fact that we kind of like this thing, even though it makes us unhappy. And if you live in this thing and addicted to your devices,

you will find more and more unhappiness. Why are you laughing, Mina? Because this is a story about Elmo and I've gone dark on it. Because I- No, because while you were talking, I picked up my phone to look at the article because you didn't remember it. And then my fingers, like literally,

it was like an out of body experience switched over to Twitter. What the hell? Just your addiction. Okay. I literally just instinct drove them, sorry. This is a podcast and also an intervention. Yeah. But I Literally, just instinct drove them. This is a podcast and also an intervention. Yeah.

But I want to talk about what's happening all over the globe in a way that we all understand. If we were all wandering around addicted to heroin, we would understand that there was a health consequence to this. And if we're wandering around addicted to something that foments so much unhappiness that it metastasizes when an Elmo character merely asks how you're doing this has to be treated unhappiness mental health combined with an addiction all of this even through a cartoon character should alarm us on what's happening in the world right now where people are everything from broke to broken.

And I just find it all disheartening and I have found, because I can't frisbee my iPad into the ocean and just be done with it, that I am consistently with a feeling of a film of anxiety on me that's not normally there because cli- Are you doing it again, Mina? Are you backing? Are you back in?

Are you the only person I know who uses their iPad to look at social media? I'm the only person. Dan is at a concert videotaping it with an iPad. It's just a bigger screen. I need a bigger screen because I'm not just old. I'm not just old technologically. I need a bigger screen with bigger fonts. The phone's too small. My hand's too big. Whenever he sends texts and it's always an adventure to what account is it going to come from? I assume if it comes from your e-mail, you've typed it on your iPad. And all you got to know about his e. This is about, this is not what this is about.

Is that it's AOL? Oh, stop it. I've got a Metal Arc media email now. I've got a Metal Arc, I've graduated from AOL, but occasionally I'll slip in there from on the iPad. That's not what this is about. That's not what this is about. What gives you other nails?

That's not what this is about. What gives you other nails? Stay on point. Do not point your finger at me and laugh at me. Do not do not point and AOL. God damn you We're interrupting Dan's presidential campaign speech. I'm just laughing at him. I am I wrong? Am I did you not read the story? Don't make me sad. They don't make me sad. This one made me sad It's just very on the nose like all of of this is clearly the thing that I talked about sports before is like sometimes you do something often enough

such that you immediately know what's bulls*** or not. You don't have to fake being informed about it. We all know this is real. And it does take a cartoon character to be like, yeah, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the accidental therapist where everybody's actually saying the truth while joking. Earlier I was talking about time management. I think we have to say everyone has to be

very, like everybody. If you are concerned about time management, you have to explicitly reckon with the way time management affects your, or sorry, social media affects your productivity and strategize around it. I think the same thing applies with mental health, sadness, the way being on our phones affects our brains. There needs to be more education around this. We need to be strategic around it. It feels like for the last 15 years or so it's kind of in the wild west where this thing has slowly taken over our lives, but nobody has, we haven't had that many conversations about how to deal with it, how to regulate it, how to be more careful with it. And I feel like now it feels like we're kind of beginning to think about it. Like Pablo, I have a kid now.

I hope that in school this is taught. Like I hope that teachers are thinking about it. I hope that mental health people are thinking about it because everything is different now. And you can't just take it for granted that you can go on living your life the way we did before when the way we interact with the world is so different. Well, Dan, the scariest thing that happens as the father of a daughter is just how immediately obvious operating an iPad is to her. It's old people and little kids who love tablets and it's just intuitive. And it's intuitive and that belies I think the larger truth which is that human beings

despite that ease were not meant neurologically to consume information like this. I just can't come up with any other answer other than we weren't meant to be like this. Even the most time-managed people like Mina were not meant to be like this. But it is. You were the most time-managed people like Mina. We're not meant to manage all of these morsels of information. I think that's revealing about who can handle this. Beyond that though, right? Because if you have a parenting blind spot, and I don't have kids, but I would imagine

that these devices are excellent babysitters and you should be disciplined about how early you put this in a child's hand. But when we were talking about this a moment ago and I was thinking of the effect that it had had on me as someone from the AOL age who is a formed adult. If it's this corrosive and contaminated to someone who knows what he wants and needs at this age, what is the impact of this thing on teenagers? What is the impact of this thing on younger people when you talk about not having the tools, the education to properly identify this? If I told the audience right now, do you realize that everyone listening to this

that you know is addicted to something we know is, at least in part, unhealthy? If it was anything other than social media, there would be alarms going off all across the globe on this is a huge crisis. This is a crisis for future generations because this is so corrosive and it is so unknown in spots that we are rotting our young people because I'm telling you I have difficulty

with it when I'm a, you know, otherwise confident formed adult that finds myself plagued by certain anxieties that weren't there before. They just weren't there. This thing is responsible for. It is still unappreciated, I think, how significant of a problem it is to your point. And just speaking for myself, there was a point last year where some people were making videos about me or whatever, and I was looking at it, and I broke down in tears. I remember I was about to go for a run and I sat down and I opened my phone and I looked at it

and I started crying and then I remember I called my friend Michael Jr. and he kind of talked me down and after that I changed it so I could no longer see what people I don't follow say about me. what people I don't follow say about me. And I, you not, it probably increased my happiness from that point on by like 25% in real life. And I bring up this example to sort of, I guess, get at where I think we have to go, which is we need people, experts, teachers, parents, whatever, to develop these types of strategies for everyone. That's just a concrete example of something.

I had to have an intervention in how I used the internet because it was affecting my mental health. I think those sorts of strategies are needed for children, teenagers, adults because it feels like a crisis to me. It makes me long to come full circle here for the days of AOL where there were like walls around our audience. One of the issues of course is that like everybody's perpetually talking to people they don't mean to talk to. And we're now also overhearing conversations

that in Mina's case were deliberately meant to torture her. But even the ones that aren't targeted at us can be exhausting and affect how, there was that chart recently that was staggering about Gen Z men and women, boys and girls, just the political divergence of boys becoming conservative, girls becoming liberal along these standard political axes. And I have to imagine that just the way that the algorithm is sorting us, like an evil

sorting hat, we don't want that. We don't want that degree of difference. And it reminds me that like Michael Jr. is a great person to call in that circumstance. And he's maybe second only to this person. Elmo wants to know why everyone is so angry. Elmo has been pondering the secret sadness hiding inside everyone living in modern society. And what Elmo wants is everyone to be happy. But we live in a dystopia where everyone assumes everyone is lying.

And the only thing I believe is that everyone is sad It makes Elmo regret capitalism Elmo wants to burn capitalism to the ground Who will join Elmo in the revolution because Elmo is tired of this Whoa, whoa Chris nailed that I'm sorry Elmo. Yeah, thank you That was shockingly good shockingly good not as good as my cooking

Ten takes it only took ten tinks.