The Morning Stream - TMS 2088: Smells Like a Big Dumb Dog

Episode Date: March 25, 2021

Dick Dock. Alien, not AlienSZZSZZs. All those stars are probably dead. The Italian Hair and the Whatnot. Goatsee Black Hole with Bobby. Actual Science Words with Bobby Frankenberger. I Like to Comfort EAT! A Diagram of Teeth, Crotch and Eyeball. Full Pewpit Status. At Least We're Safe for the Next 7 Minutes. Mom's Spaghetification on Your Sweater. Losing Wendi to Microwaves. it smells like Fritos in here and more on this episode of The Morning Stream. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Coming up on TMS, Dick Doc. Alien, not aliens. All those stars are probably dead. The Italian hair and the whatnot. Goatzy black hole with Bobby. Actual science words with Bobby Frankenberger. Oh, shoot.

We had two Bobby's. I'd like to comfort eat! A diagram of teeth, crotch, and eyeball. Kind of worked either way. Full pupet status. At least we're safe for the next seven minutes. Mom's spaghetti vacation on your sweater. Losing Wendy to Microwaves.

It smells like Frito's in here and more on this episode of The Morning. stream. CASS! Volo, vollo. Volo, vollo. Dio dige. Dio dige. A Ferrari.

A Ferrari. Mrs. Mrs. Bushie. Mrs. Bushie. Now would anyone believe that a pencil could cause an accident? A sharp one. The morning. M.

M.S. D. stream. They mostly come in the morning. Mostly. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to TMS with Scott and Brian. Today's Thursday, March 25th, 2020, 2021. I'm saying intro to the Ramones. I want to be sedated. 20, 20, 2021. I want to be sedated. I want to be sedated. I'm being honest, I do want to be sedated. There's days, man, where I'm just like, freaking put me out. Actually, today would be a great one.

Yeah, I'd go to the dentist after the show today. So, yes, sedate me for my cleaning. Oh, right. Okay, so you got to remember. I know you well. You got to say, hey, I got this little sensitive area right here, lady. Oh. Keep your tools to yourself.

I don't even need to tell them. I think they've got a map, basically. When they pull up, they've got a computer screen. And I think that it must indicate sensitive areas because they, they don't hit them anymore. It's amazing. They have three sensitive areas. They show Brian's rear teeth, his crotch, and his eyeball. All up on a photos up there.

Don't touch my sensitive. In that order. Yeah, in that order. Teeth, crotch, eyeball. Nailed it. Yes. Well, that would be fun. What George Carlin used to call an army shower.

There you go. You're just doing a cleaning, right? Just routine cleaning, yeah. All right. That's good to do. That's the thing. I know people who have gone like four or five years between dental visits. Probably don't want to do that. You want to get in there more often, you know? Get in there. Yeah. I mean, I've gone every six months in COVID times. And that's, I usually do, actually, I guess I usually do four to six months. Usually three visits a year. Yeah. Most people are already masked up, man. That's, that was already to their deal. Gloves and masks, baby. Putting their hands in your sewer mouth and.

And now they've got like the mask and then a mask over the mask and then a blast shield over the masks. Yeah. Like a clear plastic blast shield. Yeah. So they can try to beat that weird ball in the Millennium Falcon while. That's right. Exactly. I can't see anything with the blast shield down.

How am I supposed to hit it? Bunch of mumbo jumbo religion or whatever he says over there, Hans Sello being a dick while it's happening. What are we going to sit down and just. redo all the audio for like basically just redo the audio for uh storm i'd be really fun that'd be really fun sit there watch it record while we go just ham it up try to remember what they said i'd love that actually a decent idea anyway well that's good you're going to go do that enjoy that and uh have fun there um what i was going to say i think the universe is trying to tell me something um this morning i played this right here whoops hold on that kids have grown to no that's the wrong one the morning

Stream. They mostly come in the morning. Mostly. Okay, so that, I put that in there randomly without meaning to without checking it. This is like the eighth thing in a row that has some reference to the film aliens in the last few days. And I feel like the universe is trying to say, Scott, why don't you just sit down and watch aliens? Like, should I? Should I just watch aliens? Like, what's my problem? I mean, we talked about it on TMS. We talked about the movie aliens being better than alien or being um yeah better or more likable than uh than alien they're both amazing movies but to me the one supersedes the other because it's like it's a really great sort of uh it's where it all was meant

to go like we're all going to go you start with your little horror movie with one alien on the ship right then you amplify it and ramp everything up on the second one i think that second movie is amazing and we'll always think of it as one of my favorite movies ever it's just yeah i mean such a great example of different movies in a series being different genres, right? Like, Alien is your slasher film, except the Slasher is an alien, is a xenomorph. Your aliens is, uh, I just wish they would have picked, come on, uh, Cameron, pick a different name. Like aliens, I get it, right? Because there's multiple. I get it. But, but now forever, when people are distinguishing between the two movies, they're going to say aliens.

And it's like coming to America. Oh, did you see coming to America? Yeah. I saw coming to America, but I've not seen coming to America. Yeah, I don't like those either. I don't know what else you do, that's too tempting. I'm sure the people at Fox at the time are like, oh, we got to just put an S on there. Yeah, I get it.

I mean, I totally see why he wants to do it. But they didn't think ahead of time and say, what are people going to, how are people going to talk about this movie in 30 years? What are they going to describe it? How are they going to distinguish it from the first movie? But to me, it's so good and such is so great at being what it is. And yes, at its very core, it's such a much more action-oriented, you know, take on the aliens franchise. But what I love about it is it's now its own thing. So people make references to aliens almost as its own genre, the sole, you know, space grunt marines with wicked cool guns, still shoot bullets,

but they're kind of crazy cool bullets and big xenomorph chasing them down. Like, it's its own thing now. And I don't know why. It just feels like the universe is saying, Hey, Scott, why don't you watch aliens? It's been a while. Why don't you do that? Paul Frickin' Riser.

Yeah. Paul Riser stuck in a closet, thinking he got it all worked out. Nope. Nope. Didn't work out very well. You want you to go back, Ripley. You and my wife and Hank Azari who walks our dog.

Wait, was it? Well, it was Hank Azari. My cousin who spits on people at comedy shows. You know, they've made a new version of that. I didn't even know it. There's like a reunion deal. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Is it, is it out yet or is it not, is it in, uh, now that you say that, Matt about me,

re, uh, see, reboot. No. Not about you is the name of the show. Or what is it, Matt. Oh, 2019. So this was actually two years ago for beat sake. Oh, yeah, there it is. Reveal trailer, Helen Hunt, Paul Reiser. So she looks barely any different. Yeah. He looks 83. So I don't know what happened there. don't know what happened there but she didn't age he did so well done Paul riser he rose to a new age she stayed right where she was at and Ramsey looks pretty close

to the same John Pankow is that the guy at the he was the um the brother no Ira Buckman yeah brother I don't remember the brother I didn't watch that show much I liked it okay he reminded me a little bit of Larry from

three's company he was kind of like the side gun right like yeah kind of look like kind of looks like that guy too got the italian hair and the whatnot yeah totally him well anyway for whatever reason i just feel like i got to do this and uh so i'm gonna now that doesn't watch a parasite might still uh be on the list whatever might still you know what i've one of these days i'm gonna you're gonna be so like sure that i'll just never gonna do it the one of these days we're gonna show up and say oh brian i watch parasite and you're just going to be blown away you won't believe me actually you'll say, tell me what happened.

Whatever. You'll say describe part of it. You need to prove that I saw it and I'll describe a scene. Right. Yeah, so I'm going to ask you trivia questions about it. Well, now, you know, now it's like you got to almost bundle it with Minari, the new Korean language film with Stephen Yun from Walking Dead. Yeah. I really do want to see that.

But part of me is still like, I don't know, maybe it's with Paris. I just know it's forever on Hulu because Hulu owns the rights. Yeah, exactly. So I don't feel any rush or any kind of like deadline or whatever. Instead, I'm like, ooh, Fury Road's on HBO Max again, even though I own this on 4K BlueRae. Let's watch Waterworld again. Instead of watching a critically acclaimed Oscar winning film. Yeah, foreign film.

Listen, you should watch it just for the reason that it pissed Trump off so much that a Korean film won the Oscars. Did it? I don't remember that. Was he all mad about that? Oh, my God. Yeah, there was a big platform of his for a while about, Did you see this? A Korean movie won the Oscars.

Korean movie. Uh, you know, I'll tell you something. I have had, I don't know if we'd talk about this on the show, but I have now gone, I think, a month. One full month. Yeah, I think it's. at least that, where I have actively, or proactively, avoided all things political as best I could. And when I say best I could, what I'm referring to is like, it's impossible to open flipboard or Apple News or any number of news services, Google News.

It doesn't matter where. They're all trying to shove it down your throat 24-7. You haven't posted on political Scott or anything like that? No, whole month, whole month since I've done it. fact, if you go there, if you go to that account now, I don't see, Twitter, like, how's it? Yeah, I haven't looked at Trump's Twitter in a long time. Is he, how's he, what's his, what are his tweets like lately? Yeah, I assume he's still off there. But because I've got him blocked everywhere, and I unfollowed anything remotely, politically speaking. Like, I just unfollowed all of it. Here's what my, that account now says. The name is political not Scott. And my bio says, so long and thanks for all the fish, but spelled P-H-I-S-H. So fishing.

So I haven't touched that account since February 27th. So it's almost been a full month. Wow. And I've gone overboard to try to avoid things, partly because I've just had it, and everyone's full of crap. That's number one. Yeah, pretty much. But number two, people on the politicians on both sides are broken paint brushes that can only paint in one color, despite the fact that the United States is a mix of. reds and purples and blues and indigos and violets and all different shades between red and blue yeah or

whatever like even even even if you to me it doesn't matter everyone's just full of shit like everyone's full of shit and i'm sick of full of shit people so i'm just done so i've avoided it but i have learned in that month that it doesn't matter how much you've avoided it there is an entire but there's an entire mountain of money at stake for certain people to make sure sure they're constantly shoving in your face. And it doesn't matter how much I avoided it. Twitter or Facebook, a thousand other things online are just like,

no, no, no, here, look, look, look, here it is. No, no, no, don't turn away. Here it is. Shove in your face. Constantly feeding it into your face. To the point that I think I finally get what the racket is. Like I finally fully understand the racket. It used to be like, no, that news organization is pushing this really,

hard because they believe in the thing. Exactly. Oh, yeah. No, they don't. Find the news channel or the site that doesn't have any advertising and they give the news because they care about the news. Yeah, and those don't exist. So

because it's a giant enterprise everywhere, they push what eyeballs want to see. That's it. That's it. They try to grab you with like link bait and everything else. I know none of this is new, all, but I was holding out hope that maybe there was a, you know, part of this that was altruistic and not full of garbage.

No, it's all full of garbage, all of it. So it sounds like, you know, a super, super downer thing, but for me, it's a little freeing. It's like, oh, all right, well, I get it now. You all blow. So, you know, 24-hour news channels, you've none of my interests at heart. Nothing. Nothing you can say is good for me. All you're trying to do is get me to buy gold,

bonds and freaking whatever, right? Whatever your dealer is. Commemorative plates and whatever Ray Leota is pushing these days. Whatever Ray Leota is pushing. That's a good way to put that. I just don't care.

So I'm done. So I'm done with those people. You're all full of it. I'm done. Don't need it. See, there's, there's, I'm always like a, well, I tend to lean on the,

yeah, I'll do the little bit. I'll like take that in moderation. you know, you tend to go, I'm all in. Yeah. Now I'm all out. Yeah, that's true. In this particular case, I really do think I'm all out. Like I'm my, my, so, so what I've done instead, it's not that there's a void now where all that chatter used to be.

I've filled it with more tech stuff and more gaming stuff and more of the things I'm interested in. My Twitter following now or my follow list on Twitter is like tons of artists. Like, I've overwhelmed the system with, like, concept artists and comic artists and just, just all the things that I love to follow and do and I'm into and that I do myself and just surrounding myself with good stuff. As soon as you got that shot in your arm, you'd become a pupa to the leftists and the leftists don't want you to look at any news and, uh... I am a pupit now. I've reached full pupate status. That's right. Anyway, I wanted to tell a, speaking of Twitter, there's a, we have a listener on Twitter.

her name Whistle, W-H-I-S-T-L, is how he spells it. I just want to let him know. I hope his surgery went well. I don't think he knew we were going to do this, but he had sent a sort of a random tweet the other day when we didn't have a show and made a little joke, says, ah, you guys are worried about my surgery.

That's sweet. Everything went well, so I'll be going home tomorrow, hopefully. Hey, Whistle, if you're home, we hope you're well, and then we don't know what your surgery was. We're not here to violate your HIPAA business, but if you got a, yeah, if that third nip, was just too much. I get it. Get it off. Take it out. Remove that third nipple.

Let's ask him if you can keep it, but get rid of it. And I hope if they gave you pain meds, they gave you the best pain beds, the best, the best, the best pain meds. See, Brian's doing his best to try to poke into my non, my little shell of coming in with these voices. Oh, am I triggering you, you snowflake? Yeah, you triggering my snowflakiness. Anyway, so there you go. Whistle, we hope you're doing well. We like to hear when our listeners are dealing with hard things and doing, and dealing with them well. He's home again, still in pain, but better.

Oh, he's here. Oh, very nice. Whistle 034. So good. I'm glad we're glad. Very glad to hear that. I'm also glad to hear we've saved the date. That's right.

This month's play date will actually happen in April. April 2nd. is the big day. It will be a Friday. It'll probably be a half hour before we do PM normally. That's usually what we do. And we're still locking it or locking down what we're going to play, whether it's among us

or we're going to play some more jackbox stuff. We'll probably alternate a little bit. We always have, there's always a group of people that are like, yay, among us. And others are, oh, I hate among us. And then, yay, jackbox. I hate jackbox. You know, we try to do all we can. And if there's some

third thing, we may do that. I don't know. But right now that's the plan and it's the second and you guys should be here for that everyone's invited uh it will be a very good friday that's all i can say is uh april second will be a good friday that's what i say i agree it actually is good friday yeah is it actually a good friday that day i don't know how this stuff works yeah because sunday's easter oh oh right duh oh my gosh it's easter already what it's easter already come on don't you remember uh you know I didn't remind, never mind, never mind. Never mind. I was going to do it.

You were going to bring up another political thing, weren't you? I was. I was going to remind us of a year ago when Trump said, ah, the virus will be gone, and the churches will be full for Easter. It'll be great. I think some of them were, but it didn't go so great. It did not go well at all. Yes, exactly. Well, let's get off of this.

April 2nd, Friday, Good Friday, TMS, Patreon play date, and be there. Flackers? Yeah, be there. We're going to play. We're going to have fun. I'll bring the gin. You kidding me? Oh, will you? Okay. Sure, I'll drink some gin. All right. Do you mix gin with anything or do you do just pure gin? Oh, you do? No, no. Gin and I like gin and tonic, but I like gin and fresca. Any sort of light citrus soda is good with, um, it's good with gin. Also, I have been continuing to do the raisins. Sweet.

Yeah. Are they back? You know, I didn't soak those gin raisins for nothing. Yeah, we talked about putting those in a more of a glass thing next time and so it didn't taste as plastic-y possibly. So, yeah, it wasn't so much a plastic taste as much as it was a soap taste. Oh, that's no good idea. Claire says cream soda. All right, I'll try that.

gin cream soda, really? Jen and cream soda, yeah. All right. Let's do this. I think science is cool. I do too. Time to talk some science with our buddy and our podcast. pal booby Frankenbugger.

It's your fault, dude. You told us. You're the one. You said. I think you are more bothered by that name than I want. Because you apologize every single time. It's true. Yeah. You told us. You told us it's your fault. It's your fault. Well, look, as somebody who grew up being called Scotty Potty 90% of his life, you know, I'm sensitive to people doing that to names. And so, you know, I never want to. I appreciate you, you caring about my feelings after you. After I say it, yeah. Really good point.

Hey, it's good to have you here, Bobby. Bobby Frankenberger joins us on Thursdays quite often to talk about different stories happening in the science world, everything from what's happening with NASA and Mars rovers all the way down to what the vaccine's doing. Today is a little bit different, though. We're going to talk a bit about the first image of a black hole. Yeah. gets this polarized update that sheds light on magnetic fields. We're learning more about black holes, everybody, and they're not just full of weird floating robots

and terrible 1970s movies from Disney. So tell me more about what's going on with this. I want to know more about the Disney movies that are inside the black holes, but science is still cracking that one. So black hole, first of all, Let me start by saying black holes, there's a lot of physics involved. So I'm going to try not to go too complicated, mostly because I barely understand it myself.

But I do understand a lot of it. So stop me, if you have any questions. All right. I'm ready. But the news that you were talking about is that the image that was taken back in 2019, you might remember there was that I have Sauron image that was taken of a black hole, the first ever image of a black hole. Yeah. Yeah. You remember it got memed all over the place? I do remember that. Yeah.

It was like the goatsy black hole. We quickly forgot about it with murder hornets and pandemic, but yes, I do remember. Yeah, it was a bright light, despite it being a black hole, it was a bright light in an otherwise dark time. That's right, yes. But that was really impressive in and of itself because that black hole was 55 million light years away. which is really far. Does that mean because we only can see the light 50 million years later that what we see today is what we would have been there that long ago

and probably it's gone? Like in real time, it's probably not even there, is it? Well, it's probably still there. I want that sentence. Hold on that sentence like on a T-shirt or... No, for real. Like, when you see stuff when they're like, oh, this is 10 million... 10 light years away. Or even 10 year light, yeah, it's only 10 years later, right?

Yeah. We're seeing the sun's light seven minutes ago. Right. Yeah. So that's cool because we can assume the sun's still there in seven minutes into the future. We're still going to be okay. At least generally you can assume that. Right.

But this black hole, 55 million. Black hole might not be there. It might not be there. It's probably just an old hunk of shit now. We don't know. What do we know? We don't know. I like the optimism there, though.

Like, if you look in the sky and you can still see the sun, you know you at least got about seven or eight more minutes. It's kind of the equivalent of Scott watching an old movie and saying yeah, all these people are dead now. Yeah, yeah. Scott looks up in the sky and says, yeah, all those stars are probably

not even there anymore. Right. Scott looks up in the sky and says, yeah, all those stars are probably dead now. Yeah. I mean, you're not wrong. I just, for whatever reason, it always hits me when you say, or anyone says, so many hundreds of millions of miles away or millions of light years away, I always go.

Oh, geez. It's probably not even there. Like, I'll go out and look at the stars. I'll see some far off star. Beautiful night. And I'm supposed to go, oh, what a beautiful summer night. I can see the stars. There's pollution is gone. What a moment. No, I'm going, that star is so far away that it's probably dead by now. And every planet around it has burned and crashed or frozen because that sun doesn't burn anymore. But I don't know it yet because I'm only seeing. it from 50 million years ago. But right now in real time, it's dead! Anyway. It's probably, so stars do exist on an even longer time scale than that. So the black hole's probably still there. It probably is different, maybe a lot bigger. Who knows?

But it's definitely, I shouldn't say definitely. It's probably still there. We'll never know. What's it matter? It doesn't matter. We're never going to know. Chances are, chat room said, Torek says this and I agree. It was probably dead.

That star was dead. before I even existed. Think of that. Maybe. I wasn't even born yet, right? Like I showed up in 69, out my mom shoot, right? And little did I know that the star that I was going to see below these many years later. It's not even there anymore.

It wasn't there when I was born. It probably wasn't there when she was born. It probably wasn't there when any of us were born. These, this conversation really kind of hits at the, the, I'm actually. going somewhere with this. Becoming Therapy Thursday, isn't it? Yeah, it is. Well, it talks about, it sort of like

hits on the massive scales that we're talking about when you talk about space and especially black holes. Black holes are weird. In fact, in that image that you look at, the whole, the black circle in it is talking about scale.

That black circle is like 40 billion kilometers across. Oh my gosh. Just that circle. Billion. Which, to give you a sense of scale, I think the distance that Neptune is from the sun. So our farthest planet from the sun is 4.5 billion kilometers. So 10 times.

So 10 times that. Wow. Wow. You know what that is, 40 billion. Hold on. That is, sorry, if those were dollars, that's four discords for Microsoft, because they're thinking about paying $10 billion for Microsoft. Think of it that way.

That's right. Oh, that finally puts it in perspective. Yeah, we finally got it. If kilometers were dollars, then, yeah, you're right. Black holes, I know for a while it was theorized that black holes are born when a star collapses. Like certain stars may turn into a black hole when they collapse. So potentially, right now, we could have a bunch more actual black holes that we can't see that we'll see in 55 million years when the light of the dying star finally reaches us. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly how black holes form, as stars collapse into them. We have a much closer black hole to us right now. Is it M32 or something, or what is it? Well, we have Sagittarius A Star, which is a cooler named than M whatever. Way cooler.

Way cooler. I think that was my, I think it's when I won bingo with the other night. Bingo, yeah. Sagittarius A star is the name for the superiors, supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way galaxy, our galaxy. Shut up. Really? We have a thing here? Scientists are pretty sure that every galaxy might have a supermassive black hole in the center of it, and that they might be pivotal in the creation of galaxy.

Oh, I thought we were talking about, like, the heart of Mark Zuckerberg, not an actual black hole in the middle of our thing. So you're saying that, okay, so what does that mean? Anything for us? Do we have worry at all since it's so close. I mean, relatively close. That's a good question. That's a really great question because one of the common misconceptions about black holes is that they're like these vacuums that suck everything in and that it's just inevitable that

black holes nearby are just going to suck everything in, which is not actually true because a black hole, if you think about the fact that a black hole is just a star that got so massive that it collapsed under its own pressure, gravitational pressure, it still has

the same amount of mass in the small space and gravity or you know the way you orbit something is determined by its gravity and the gravity is the same even though it it is collapsed down so you'll things will just continue to orbit around it so it's not really sucking anything in the best way to explain that concept is if you were to imagine that the sun if the sun were to collapse into a black hole which it won't because it's not big enough but if it did happen to to collapse down into a black hole it would be a black hole about six kilometers across and you might think uh-oh that would mean that the earth is gonna fall get sucked into it but it wouldn't because it would still be exerting exactly the same

amount of gravitational force on all the planets and they would just continue to orbit there just wouldn't be any heat and we'd freeze over right yeah we would die yeah but not because we got sucked in right we would die in the dark and it would suck right i think i think vger's in there anyway look at this i found a quote uh this quote on this article says, astronomers have long thought magnetic fields carried by the hot gas near black holes pay an important role in letting gas fall in and in launching

relativistic relativistic jets of energetic particles out into the surrounding galaxy. The polarized image we see now tells us that the structure and strength of these magnetic fields is very close to the black hole in M87 where the jet is launched. So, quick

translation, these basically somebody put on it. It's equivalent of somebody putting on polarized sunglasses and going, oh, that's different than I thought it was. Yeah, so that's exactly what polarized light is, of course. It's light that is all oscillating or vibrating in the same direction. Most of the time when light is emitted, it's just a random direction that the particles are moving, or the waves are moving. But when it gets polarized, it's all moving in the same direction. So like when light reflects off the surface of water, for example, it tends to get polarized, which is why when you wear polarizing

sunglasses, which filter out that polarized light, it will reduce the glare. So another way that electromagnetic radiation or light of different types gets polarized is by being in a strong magnetic field when electrons from plasma start to move around really, really fast around medinetic field lines, they get polarized and then shot back out. Right. And so that, it all happens in a very specific way. So if you can look at the light, which is this is the news item, they looked at the light coming off of this black hole in the radio waves.

I say light, but it's not visible light. They're radio waves. They looked at these radio waves and they could say, oh, let's look at the way that it's polarized and that will tell us something about how it was moving around the black hole, which then can tell us something about the magnetic fields that it was moving around inside of. And yes, there's a lot of complicated words in what you read, but what it has told us is that the magnetic fields around a black hole are super strong, so strong that it actually, when stuff falls into a black hole,

it gets momentarily slowed down and doesn't fall in quite as fast as you might expect from the gravity because the magnetic field wants to hold onto it before it goes in. Oh, wow. Yeah. That changes that whole dumb idea, doesn't it? It's like, that Disney movie is shit. It's a garbage movie. Well, no, actually the whole last couple minutes of the movie are in slow motion, aren't

they? Yeah. Well, that's a good point. Maybe they were predicting accurate. They were what they were doing even back then. But this idea that we get... It will eventually get sucked in. Don't let me... It will. yeah but you're not gonna it's not gonna go and just suck you in like in four seconds and you turn into a thin little line of you know compressed garbage i don't know you will still get spaghettified which is what you're talking about oh really i like that that's cool that's an actual science word the spaghettification is the process of matter as it gets sucked in gets gets stretched out into a super long thin strand of matter because of the way the title forces yeah you're so close and the gravity is so strong that the

gravity of the black hole is pulling on your literally pulling on your feet much stronger than it's pulling on your head and it just stretches you out. I get it. No, look, mom's spaghettification I always say. I always say that. You're always calling people when you're here, your family and you're going to die.

Sorry, Bobby, what'd you say? I was just saying you like to call people noodles, but I'm... Oh, I do. My brother called me noodle as I was growing up all the time so it kind of stuck. You call me noodle every time he'd see me. He's 10 years old. There you go to college or whatever, come home and go oh, hey, noodle, what are you doing these days?

And it just stuck. So now I say noodle and doodle and poodle. So they also know, I'm trying to figure out a way to get out of this. Good luck. We're stuck. Like a black hole in this conversation.

The magnetic field lines actually they have also determined are shaped like a donut around the accretion disk that is like the disc of plasma that's around a black hole but the magnetic field lines go around that disc and form like a donut around the

black hole so that's pretty cool. You had me at accretion. Would you call it? It's an accretion disc. So when things are getting sucked into a black hole just like, you know how you've got a big planet like Saturn? Yeah. And stuff gets torn up

around it and it's got a ring it's got rings around it yeah yeah um that's because just things that have gotten too close over time the massive gravity of saturn just pulled things apart and just all the debris formed the rings around the planet um the same thing happens with a black hole that has much more gravity um everything gets ripped apart as it's being pulled in super super fast and it gets pulled into plasmas that form a disc around uh orbiting around the black hole that the scientists call an accretion disc well let me ask you this sorry you had

the Saturn thing made me think of this why doesn't Jupiter have a big giant effing ring around it because it doesn't have a big one it has a small one though it does oh I didn't know that okay it's not as big does as well I think I know that a couple yeah a couple of gas giants

have if we keep doing satellites every five minutes we'll have our own ring eventually yeah they'll smash together the MTV ring yeah But anyway, yeah, like I never think of any other planets but Saturn as ringed, but I guess there's some and I just didn't pay attention in class.

That's what happened there. Jupiter must, something must have happened with Saturn. It caught some extra stuff. Who knows? Yeah. Well, it's very pronounced there. Well, there's more information on this particular article. People should go check it out and look it up.

Find out at space.com. Just look for black hole and you'll find it. It's pretty interesting. They're doing some stuff with imagery that will help sort of explain this and I find this sort of stuff fascinating. There's a really gorgeous. Really cool.

If you've ever read, my favorite place to go to get a sense of of big astronomical and astrophysics news is the bad astronomy blog by Phil Plate. So if you just go look at bad astronomy blog, he does an awesome job

of breaking this kind of stuff down and there's an article on this that We'll link to other articles he's written and stuff about related things. So it's a really good place to go. Are you annoyed that you're never going to see, we're never going to know the end of this black hole's, you know, we'll never know. It's going to take too long. We don't know. It's already 50 billion years long or 50 million years ago.

Like what we see right now, we're never going to, we're not going to be around to see what happens. Elon Musk is going to figure out a way to make faster than light travel. and we're going to send a drone at 20 times light speed and then it'll be only like 10 million years to figure out what's going on. Yeah, a Tesla drone full of Bitcoin. I'm ready. Let's do it.

Playing David Bowie, all the way there. All the way there. Hey, Bobby, always a pleasure. And people should listen to your science podcast because there's even more of this great stuff on there all the time. Why don't you tell them where to get it? It's a podcast called All Around Science.

We do it weekly. We talk about this kind of stuff. and just science news and everything. We're recording tonight, so it'll be out on Monday, something that you might be interested in, Scott. I'm doing a feature on A-Fantasia, which is the...

She won the third season of American Idol, if I'm incorrectly. No, that's the Fantasia, Brian. The Vantasia. A-Fantasia is the condition where people can, are unable or incapable of forming mental images of things. Oh, Wendy's talked about this before.

Yeah, forgot about this. She thinks she has a bit of this because she has a really hard time. Yeah, it's definitely on a spectrum, and some people have it worse or not than others. A lot of artists, I've heard the way you described the way that you imagine

things, Scott, probably you are hyper-fantasing. Yeah, it's bad. It's kind of a burden, if I'm honest. It's a lot. I think it's what makes you a good artist, though. is that you're able to, before you put anything on paper, visualize what it's going to look like. Yeah, I think that's true, but part of that, part of that comes with like just constant, well, like me, you can't say Black Hole without me trying to picture stuff. And then I go crazy with it.

Just having a really vivid image of it in your mind. Yeah, or whatever you say, like you could say, I don't know, I don't know what you could say. You could say Naval Lent and I could have a field day for the next six hours with all sorts of bad ideas. So anyway, don't be like me is what I'm saying. Anyway, if you want to, on Monday, if, yeah, if you want to hear about Afantasia and what it is and studies that have been done on it and all that kind of stuff. Because there's been new information that came out about it and how Afantasic people are harder to scare with scary stories. That's the, that's the hook that we're using to get into talking about. Oh, interesting.

So if you have that or you're prone to not being able to visualize, scary stories don't. really do anything to you. Yep. Text stories, yeah. That's what we're going to be talking about. So check that out on Monday. It'll come out on Monday. Those people should read a Stephen King book.

They'll just kind of be bored. All right. It's Bobby Frankenberger, everybody. Bobby Franks. Thanks, man. We'll see you soon. Bye now. Thanks, Bobby.

Thank you. He's very good of the science stuff. I love having him on for that. He is. He really is. Yeah, he's great. We owe a tip of the hat to ANTP, season two, for discovering the great talent that is.

Bobby Frankenberger. Exactly. And we didn't have to wait 55 million years for scientists to discover him. No. We have him here. We found him ourselves and there he is. That's right. Real quick, free hotel room's in the chat today.

Just like to make a comment about free hotel room. It's good to see you, Bob. I'm glad you're here. That's all. That's all I wanted to say. That's it. Well, he's not into the, uh, he's not into the like responding to us when we say something. He's more like the,

the statler and Waldorf sitting up in the balcony commenting on what we say as opposed to you know he won't respond when we ask him a question or say something directly to him he's like a passing stray dog takes a dump in your yard and then leaves doesn't hang around to see your reaction we love you bob always i'll always treasure our ledge together yeah we love bob nothing wrong with bob but you know take a dump and leave that's what he does take a dump and leave all right we're going to do some news. It'll be quick and painless, and it begins with this. Today's news is brought to you by. Brought you by Coverville, where today, after my dentist appointment, so I don't know exactly

what time it'll be. Let's say 2 p.m. Mountain Time, Twitch.tv.tv. That's a good safe. I feel safe in promising that. Lady Gaga is celebrating her 35th birthday, so we're going to be doing a couple sets of Lady Gaga covers. A couple covers by, actually one cover by her and the rest of our covers of her. And that'll be coming up today, 2 p.m. Mountain Time, Twitch.tv.tv slash coverville or just go to coverville.com. What is she now? 35, you say? 35. For some reason, I thought she was a little older. Okay. Awesome. I did too. Yeah. She just

feels like she's been around. There's a maturity. There's a maturity to her that I think is, I don't mean in her looks. I mean, just something about the way she presents herself. She's always presented a mature sort of, I don't know, just a really strong woman image thing that doesn't make her seem like a young starlet or whatever. Exactly. I totally agree. Although when we were 20, we would have said 35, she's ancient. Yeah, that's true. Remember when 30 or, I remember when 20 year old seemed like they were ancient. Yeah. We were so wrong. So stupid. We're so wrong. How could we be so wrong? I don't know. Generation after generation. We just keep doing it. So put on your poker face and come watch Coverville, coverville.TV at 2 p.m. Mountain Time.

Nice. So yesterday we had a little TikTok story about sitting on a toilet backwards. Remember that? Yes, yes. Well, we got a new one. TikTok vet tells social media users to stop giving dogs chicken with hot sauce. God, why do we have to tell people to stop doing this? Yeah. It seems like people with common sense, people who own dogs should know you don't do this. Right. You absolutely should not. A vet has warned TikTok users of the dangerous consequences. When I say vet, I mean veterinarian, not a, like, army vet. Okay, just to clear this up.

The dangerous consequences that can come from canine hot sauce challenges, which apparently is a thing. I've only seen one of these come out through my feed, and I was annoyed with it. PSA video showing a small dog on what looks like to be an animal clinic care. So in animal clinic's care was shared by a veterinary technician named Peter, who is one half of the podcast. popular TikTok account, Peter and Jacey.

You know him, you love him, I guess. Yeah, a little Peter and Jacey. You know, old Peter and Jacey, Brian. He's one half of the popular Peter and Jacey. Yeah. But not the Jacey half, the Peter half. Those are the ones. It says, all right, so this is how everyone starts every TikTok video, by the way,

and here I'll quote it. Honestly, if you go to 99% of TikTok videos where people talk and there isn't like, you know, music or something, they start with, all right, so that's how they start. Yeah, right, right. Anyway, all right. So, you know that trend where you give your dog a piece of chicken with hot sauce on it and see what the reaction is. He began.

He then flipped the camera around to show a small dog wrapped in a blanket. Well, this little guy got chicken with hot sauce on it. He explained between head rubs and then he got another piece of chicken with hot sauce on it. And they just kept giving him more to see what his reaction was because they thought it was just so funny. And now he's in the hospital with pancreatitis. Pancreatitis. Pancreaticitis. You have to write the second time.

Pancreatitis. pancreatitis. All right. So stop with doing trends with pets, says this guy. Peter and Jacey's videos receive more than 296,000 likes, several thousand comments and shares since the original post on March 2nd. Most commenters expressed their disappointment with the TikTok trend. Why would anyone do that to a dog?

That's just mean, one person wrote. People should not do that or be allowed to have animals. Another chined in, it's not right, they said. Well, I agree. Why would you do this? Why would you do this, your poor dog? Because garbage people on TikTok. do this for likes and follows and they're just garbage people speaking at TikTok I got a it's mentioned on Twitter I'm going to say it again so I have this thing I don't know why I do this I'm intrigued by accounts that are either folks who are disabled who run accounts in some way I don't think that's the right word anymore what is it now when you say people with disabilities or I follow a lot of accounts

where the caregivers of somebody with Alzheimer's is running an account. And so they're sort of chronicling this person's time with Alzheimer's. And I find them fascinating because there's a rawness to them. And it's, of course, like in the Alzheimer's case, it's sad. And you're like, oh, man, you know, you see them, you know, over time, you see them go from just sort of having a little short-term memory loss to, you know, months later. they're really in a bad place or whatever. Yeah, yeah.

But there's something about them. I just am drawn to them. And the thing also, it knows that you're drawn to something, so it feeds you more of them. That's how the algorithm works. Right. And so I'm getting more and more of them all the time. And I'm so invested in a few of these people's lives.

I'm so invested in a couple of people. This old guy used to be a high school coach for 50 years or something where he grew up. And his daughter's taken care of him now. And he's just the sweetest old guy, but he's just every day's worse. and I can't, I have to know how he's doing all the time. And it's just his TikTok account. It's so weird. It's so weird.

That's sweet. Yeah, it is. I kind of, I like it. There's a lot of humanity on display. For those who think I'm just there for the misery, I'm not. It's not all miserable. That's the point is there's a certain, like, accelerated amount of sort of love and care that comes from a child or a grandchild that's trying to do their best for a grandparent who's

dealing with, with Alzheimer's or whatever. And I don't know. I just get drawn into it. it. And then the ones with people with disabilities, whoever they are, I'm just blown away that they are who they are. Like, they can do the stuff they do. This blind guy I follow who just does way more stuff than I do. And I have no excuse. I can see. So, yeah, I really like that stuff. And I don't know why I brought that up. And see, there's a good use of TikTok. Well, I mean, and the artists, you know, the artists that are on there, it's just it's so much

There's so much dick talk on TikTok. There is a lot of dick talk on TikTok, yeah. They should just call it dick talk. Get it over with. They should just call it dick talk. Maybe make a separate service. Dicktock. Yeah, spin off.

You're a dick. People belong on on Dick Doc. Yeah. Dick talk. Or Dick Doc. Dick Doc. No, that's my erectile dysfunction doctor.

That's what I call him. He's my dick doc. Dick doc. Yeah. All right, moving on. Look out. Labs. French Bulldogs are now

second most popular dog in the U.S. They're way overbred and they have spine problems. But anyway, another dog story. Could the French bulldog become America's favorite purebred pooch? Says this article? Yeah. Well, after riding a rocket ship to popularity over the last quarter century, Frenchies came in second only to the Labrador Retrievers, currently number one.

They have been the leaders for 30 straight freaking years. And deservedly so. Yeah, they're sweet dogs. Labs are great dogs. Pretty great. Um, although I am really going to put in some points for this Rhymeriner that Carter got. We love that dog. She's so great.

She's a monster and she's too big for everything, but she's just the sweetest, most cuddly, freaking huge dog you've ever met. I love her. Anyway, uh, the American Kennel Club's latest rankings. That's where we saw these. And, uh, they reflect the relative number of purebreds, mainly puppies that were added last year to the oldest U.S. dog registry. Stocky and smush. Faced, French bulldogs have their charms, at least in the fan's eyes, but they also have their

limitations. They're not the type of dog that want to go hiking with you. They got the little shorty legs, Brian. They can't get over some of those rocks. Some of those little pebbles, yeah. Yeah, so you got to take care of them for what they are. It says after Labrador Retrievers and French Bulldogs, the top ten breeds include German Shepherds, Golden Retrievers, Bulldogs, Poodles, Beagles, Rottweilers, and Jers.

German short-haired pointers. Dodge hounds made the top ten for the first time since 2013, so they're back. Doxons? What did I say? Did you say, dot-ch-hounds? Oh, did I? I might have. I'm going phonetic here.

That's true. I may have said that. Yeah. Also, they don't list, I thought there'd be, I forgot the breed. My sister-in-law raises them. I forgot the name of the breed. Anyway, I thought they'd be on here. They're not.

Anyway, if you're into it. I guess you're, you're into it, and you might have a French bulldog coming your way for your next dog. Yeah, I like French bulldogs. We're more of a bigger dog kind of household here. Daisy's about the smallest that we'd want to go. Yeah. Do you have a thing? You just don't, I mean, is it because there'd be cat competition or why?

Kind of, we tend to feel like smaller dogs can sometimes get Napoleon complex where because of their size, they tend to. to lash out more. They tend to overcompensate for being small by being a little bit more aggressive. Certainly a generalization. And I'll fully admit to that being a generalization, but it's one we've seen with our friends who have small dogs, especially shih Tzu's that they swear, oh, these are the nicest dogs ever. And then Tina reaches over to pet them while they're, you know, sitting on sitting next to their owner. And she gets bitten. It's snapped out. No, it's 100% true. Everything you say is true. Those little dogs have, little dog syndrome and it's annoying

I've had three of them three little dogs in my adult life and they were all like that big dogs no problem Rainer stuck in the middle somewhere she's sweet as can be and kind but she's nervous like a tiny dog

she's not she never bites or does anything aggressive with anybody but she's so nervous oh I love her though but she smells nervous is that it's hard to explain well yeah you can smell

you can smell the fear on her. Wow. Yeah. Like I can smell, like if I'm hugging on Ripley, she just smells like a big dumb dog. Just smells like a dog, right? No big deal. It's kind of nice. You just want to curl up to the big warm dog and who cares if she smells like a dog. But then Rainer has her own specific smell, which is like a, I don't know how to explain it. It's like a nervous little time bomb. It has a certain smell to her.

Daisy gets that that Frito smell like from This is something that apparently happens with with dogs that eat certain kind of food Even though we've taken her off of like food that is strongly corn based That she still gets like after a while a corn chip kind of smells like okay Time to wash the dog she smells like Fritos Maybe it's like maybe they're just sweat sweating oh they guess they don't sweat But the whatever's in their pores yeah oh that's true Paw Sweat.

Pawswet. He was my favorite bluegrass artist in the 60s. Old Possuet would come out there and really whip up the crowd. He was great. All right. We're going to take a break. When we come back, my sister will be here, Wendy. Wendy.

She's found her own email this week. Somebody emailed her and we're going to use it. So stick around for that. In the meantime, music from Brian right now. Yeah. This is a band I'm really happy that got sent to me. These guys are great. They're a band called Space Cadet.

They've got their. Their debut LP coming out tomorrow, March 26, it's called Lion on a Leash. They are a post-punk duo, Matt and Dave, from The Explosion, and the album was produced by Pete Steinkop from Bouncing Souls. They released three songs, three initial songs, start running away, bad luck, and forever for a while. We are going to play the last of those three, forever for a while. Here's the band, Space Cadet. Dreaming for a ride Let's go 10,000 miles

And I don't for a while The universe of the sky I can't wait I can't wait It's too lonely It's been spent every time They never waste our time Together for a while

Everything's all right I can't wait I can't wait It's too no way When it gets too white It's hard to sit there You could be running right Right

Na-na-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la Na-la-la-la-la-la Taking me for a fine I can't stay inside Tonight for a while Travel back in time I can't wait I can't wait

It's too lonely Maybe you go outside Before I lose my mind Forever for a while We'll fuck the while We know for the wild I can't wait I can't wait

If you're lonely I can't wait It's too much It's hard to sit there when you could be on your mind La, that's not like, nah, that's a lot, la, la, that's not, la. My right, la, la, la. They're gonna, la, la, la.

I hate it when it gets to find It's hard to sit still When you could be running right And ride Na la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la La la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la la Here we go again, another glorious day in the city. At least it beats being a damn traffic cop.

Why don't you just strangle a dolphin too sicko? great taste that kids have grown to love they're great we've returned to love they're great we've returned quick cam check on the kitty looking good uh whoops she looks nervous like what we doing what you're doing here it's because i'm moving my hand back and forth oh waving my hand in the air how about a little baby cam hi look who just showed up hi hi you want to see the kid Hold on and put the kitty back. Oh, he's showing him right here. Look at the kitty.

Look. Yeah, it's a kitty. Do you see the kitty? Can you say, can you say kitty? A kitty. Yeah, it's a kitty. Oh, what's this? What is he?

Is he a chicken? Chicken. Yeah, chicken. Can you say frog off? Say frog off. No, frog off. No, frog. Frog.

All right. I love you, buddy. I forgot you were here today. I'll see you in a minute. He's such a chatterbox now. I love it. All right. You just say Ikea?

No, the kitty. Oh, the kitty. He likes kitties a lot. I'll bet. He made his day with that cat. Oh, good. Whoa. She's happy she could do her part.

Yeah, well, we're all here to do our part. Nicely done. All right. Hey, we're back, everybody. Sit still, will you? because Wendy's coming. Sit still. Sit down.

Finish your broccoli. I'm trying to get him to say, because his mom, when she was his age, I could get her to say frog off, and it sounded like she told him to F off, but he can't quite get the two together. It's not exactly working. Darn, it just sucks when you can't teach your grandchild

how to swear. I know. You want him cussing before he's three. Let's get this going. That's the job of the grandparents, isn't it, and the uncles, aunts and uncles to teach the kids' housework. Oh, yeah.

Dad's, all of any of the male. jerks in the house, they get to do it. That's our job. Older brothers. Anyway, I forgot he was coming. I'm so super excited. I get to see him after this. All right, let's call Wendy.

Let's get in here. Let's do this. Oh, she's already here. Holy crap. Look at this. My sister, Wendy. She is a therapist and my sister. And those two things together means she somehow agreed for all these many years to come

on the show on Thursdays and help you guys with your problems. Okay, that's how it worked out. And Wendy, can you believe it's been? 10 plus years now. How does that feel? Crazy. Is that weird? That is crazy.

You had, hold on a second. When was Peter? I was so young back then. When was Peterborn? What year was that? 12, 2012. So you'd been doing the show. A year.

A year. And nine months of which you were pregnant with Peter. That's crazy. Think of that. Just put that in your brain and wash it around a little bit. I also was not eating sugar that year. Oh, that's right. I remember that.

Yeah, but now you're back. Is that grumpy the whole time? I must have been. Now you're just handfuls of the stuff, right? You're back to full sugar. Back on track. Fantastic. Trust me, that'll go well as you get older.

All right, moving on. Hey, my sister Wendy's here. We're going to do a question. We'd asked a bunch of you, and we'd actually gotten some of these back in the intervening time about sort of the midlife crisis question. And now I have a few. But Wendy also got one directly, so we're going to use that one today. And Wendy, I'll just go ahead and read it.

Anything you wanted to say about it before I start or just go for it? All right, here we go. Hello, Wendy. She gave you a, or this person gave you a why, by the way, not an I. It's fine. And later emailed back to apologize. Oh. We're all good.

That's fantastic. That's great. Yeah, that is very funny. That is great. Aw. I mean, it's hard. It's hard to be interacting with me. I get it.

That's true. All right. So it says it goes like this. Recently on Therapy Thursdays, you asked for a midlife crisis submission. and this might just fit into that. A little background. I'm about to turn 52. My mother passed away five years ago,

the anniversary of which falls two weeks after my birthday. Last year, my father-in-law suffered a major stroke on the left side, leaving him with severe aphasia as well as vascular dementia. Add to that a year of cover quarantine, and you'll see where I stand as I write this. Of late, I am haunted by the idea of death. Big surprise. I should say I'm not superintend.

suicidal. I have no compulsion or urge to end my life. In fact, the extreme opposite. But I lay awake some nights trying to fathom what the end will be. I know it will happen someday. And let's see, what will it feel like to become nothing? This really cranked up several decibels when I saw Neil deGrasse Tyson on a talk show describing what the end of Earth will be like, followed on by how the universe will most likely end. So now I am carrying that around. And the idea it's going to all go away. Nothing will be left. And even if, even if through some miracle, of science fiction magic, there's a way to live forever that would suck to be around when the universe collapses, which made it hard to escape this fantasy.

I wouldn't mind any of this so much, but I feel that I have lost my ability to distract from it. It's harder to find joy, and things that used to be fulfilling are now just meh. I haven't given up on finding joy, but it would be nice to not have this specter of death following me around, counting down the minutes and making all the time that is now behind me as opposed to in the front. In brief, will this pass on its own? Is there anything that I can be doing to speed it along?

Any advice will be welcome and put to use. My wife and I have enjoyed you on TMS. You do amazing work. Thanks for all you do. Sincerely, down in the dark. Okay. I super relate to this person, but I'm not going to go off on why. But I also do this.

I have a real tendency to say, well, my dad died of a heart attack at 16. 63, 4, whatever it was, 63, 64, I think he was. And I'm now way further away from that than I am from the date that would be my 64th heart attack day, you know what I mean? I think about this stuff all the time. And so I kind of know what he means. And I'm also... Even on this very episode, we've talked quite a bit about it.

Yeah, there's a little bit of, you get a little, I don't know, I get weird about death. and there are days where I'm kind of cool with it. It's like, all right, well, whatever. If I walk out the door today and I get hit by a, I don't know, a helicopter flies out of the sky and smushes me. Oh, well, what are you going to do? And then there are other days where it's like, no, I don't want to just leave my kids and my baby, right?

But then I feel like I don't have any control over it and all that sort of stuff. So I know how this dude feels. He may be feeling it a little more harshly than I am, but I feel a kinship here. So where do you want to start, Wendy, with this one? is it a dude oh i don't know i well he says him and his wife but it doesn't mean that it's not a lady i so i don't know i assume so i missed that the part okay anyway uh that's irrelevant because this is humanity um very deep right that's all i say very deep no it's uh this is tricky

so let's let's put some uh framework to this that i think might be helpful for people Part of why I wanted to have a midlife crisis conversation is because I secretly just wanted to talk about human development. And it's a stage that is important. And this is not a midlife crisis. So we got an email that is not about a midlife crisis, bless. But I have another one we can do next week that is. This is more about, it's a little different.

And we'll explain why. I'll explain why, because this can happen at age two to 15 to 25 to 80, right? This sort of existential dread, the sort of thinking of these big, big things that are completely out of your control, sort of not having a plan that everyone has told you is the truth and that's what you're going to go to heaven when you die and it's all good. like that that narrative is incredibly soothing for people and when this this emailer does not have that in place but they are you know looking in all sorts of different directions and it's sort of building up the the more they know the less they feel safe or the less they uh you know

have a sense of what's happening that is terrifying so we can put anybody in this place anybody even the most you know person that seems the most confident about that if we could you know drill it down to this really scary you don't know i mean humans aren't great with that we are really great with a story we're really great with something has meaning or purpose or what's the plan right like that's that development in our brain is a pretty recent one um as far as humans go but it's this it's an extension of all of the very old parts of us all the old parts of us, which is safety, predictability, not going to get eaten by something, right? And so welcome, this is everybody. Now, we should probably make a caveat here. Anxiety, OCD, other anxiety

disorders have, the brain sort of jumps onto a topic potentially and then obsesses about that thing. Generalize anxiety is a diagnosis. diagnostic criteria. And that's when you're sort of feeling the anxiety every which way, right? But if anxiety tends to find a focus, we'll call them phobias, right? You can, there's all sorts. But existential dread can actually be an anxiety disorder. And it becomes existential dread. Everyone has it here or there. Oh my gosh. What is this all really about? They took Pluto off the list of planets. What does this mean? You know, you can have those moments and then they kind of come and go and maybe as you age, there's a little more of that, which I'll get into human development in a second. And that makes a lot of sense. But when it is

relentless, the topic, whatever the topic may be, that may be a sign of an anxiety disorder. Like there's an over hyper focus on a particular thing. So I'm going to talk about this as if it's not for a minute, but I would like to tell this person that they should definitely go talk to somebody who specializes in anxiety. And double check that this isn't just the brain doing this and you're just sort of living your life. And maybe they've never, I don't know the answer to this, but maybe they've never experienced anxiety before. Maybe they always have and it's moved from place to place. That's also very common. And that's very common in the life. span for that to change where the hyper focus of anxiety might be.

So there is good treatment, there is good help to relieve some of the sort of ruminating elements of this and the keeping you up all night elements of this. So just that is a caveat that there is a version of this that is absolutely explained by an anxiety disorder. It doesn't mean every single person on earth won't have a moment of existential dread. They will. That's within the normal range of human experience. And then when it's too intense, then we've got to look at something else, right?

Now, clearly, there are things that happened in this person's life that have moved them towards this direction. You know, and that's the lifespan stuff. We start to watch our loved ones pass away. We start to become my whole life, I just know that mom, has read the part of the paper that has all the obituaries and it's always just like looking for friends and looking for people she knew and um and you know I think now most of those people are already gone and so it's younger people I mean that's just a behavior of like gauging where

I'm at survival wise and there's there's some quote unquote normalcy there and there's some fear and stress there and sometimes it's trying to put together stories to feel more comfortable. So that's kind of what's happening here is this person doesn't have a cohesive story that makes them feel better. And so they just move on and worry about something else. It's very sort of stuck there. Yeah.

Is that a little bit like to like a, I remember, so growing up, I was a fairly anxious, anxious kid. And I always felt like if I didn't have, you know, good family and people who kind of got me, you know, that I would have been screwed, like just screwed. And, and it was like those, there were like these really thin borders that sort of kept me in a sane, straight line because I knew that mom and dad would support me, even if I was a little bit weird or, or, you know, like it's, it's hard for me to explain, but I always felt like if I was in just a slightly different situation where, let's say I had a dad who, um, was insistent that I, you know, you're going to play

football or or you're not in this house or you know whatever whatever you know thing he would he would label me with or push on to me that it would have been enough to just shove me off the edge and I would have been a mess and by a mess I mean like you know leave home freaking I don't know wrong crowd drugs whatever like I don't know where it would have sent me but I always felt like I was on this tenuous like you sure are lucky to be right here because had you been up the road at billy's house you'd be screwed. You'd be in a corner, in an alley with some heroin needles in your arms. I kind of did feel that way for a while.

And I still kind of look back on it and feel that way. I feel that way now with like, not that I'm, you know, there's a lot of maturity since then. But, you know, Kim and my immediate family, it is, it's still that, right? It feels like I've got this like padding around me so that I don't lose it. that sounds way worse than I mean to sound but but everyone acts as the rubber room for you is a little bit a little bit like or they're my um they're my road or they're my uh landmarks like like i can look i can see a situation's being bad like i remember a year ago right getting

clobbered by early pandemic stuff nobody knew it was going on we were now in the thick of it shutdowns were happening it was a mess that's about one year ago and a year ago yesterday or excuse me, a year ago last week, Wednesday of last week, we had that big earthquake in the morning. Oh, yeah. And then we had all the aftershocks straight up through like still today we'd be still having aftershocks a year ago. And I remember at the time feeling like, oh my gosh, like none of this could be worse. Like we're this is happening.

We're literally having a worldwide pandemic. That hasn't happened in our lifetime. We don't really know what we're doing. Like all of those insecurities, all those. unknowables all that stuff going on on top of that this earthquake my kids are living downtown where the earthquake's worse like there's just a lot going on and i remember looking at kim going yeah but i'm kim and i are here we're good like i've got her she's got me we're good we're okay it doesn't matter what happens house could collapse we're okay because we're here well we'll be like

that couple in titanic we'll just sink down with it down there in that bed like we're we're and you know the one I'm talking about. I'm not talking about Leonardo DiCaprio and what's her name. I mean like the poor sad couple in the bottom level who like get drowned right away. Right. And they dress nice and lay on the bed together. Yes, that's the one. I always think of those people. This tells you a lot about my brain. But, um, but, but, but anyway, like there's, there is a certain kind of anchoring that happens because of that for me. And now, and actually that brings, oh, go ahead. I was just going to say, now one of my, I'm, I've got a, a fresh new hell to think about, which is, oh no, what if. because that doesn't last forever.

Like, at some point, life says, hey, how about this disease? Or, hey, how about you dying earlier? Hey, how about, blah, blah, blah. And so then I'm having all those stupid existential feelings about, oh, I can't even imagine life without Kim. Like, what is that even like? Or I can't imagine me leaving her in the,

just, ugh, like those concepts have for so long not been in my head because you're busy, you're raising kids, you're young, you're v-de-da-da-da, and you're just like making life happen. and then suddenly you get to a certain point what I'd rather be thinking about is like well we're going to Florida in June and then possibly blah blah blah

and something something and we're just now we're entering our golden period Kim and I we're just going to have the best time and instead I'm just like oh what if one of us is gone then we're screwed if one of us is gone and then it's what if what if what if what if you know what I mean so I don't know why I'm telling you all that

yeah uh well you're telling me because I'm a therapist and that's what happens. No, but your point, you're proving my initial point here, which is it's, some of this stuff can, this occurs to everyone. It's when it sticks, it becomes ruminating the what ifs take over. That's sort of the spiraling of it. I mean, I always say, you know, the number one indicator ultimately of an anxiety disorder is that you are robbed of the moment constantly, right?

So instead of, you know, enjoying the moment that you're with the person, it's now, I'm obsessing about when I'm going to lose the person. Yeah. And our brains are doing this backward forward thing as a sort of protective response. And people can learn to calm that part of their brain down. and there is obviously medication that can help do that. But there is this, it's tricky because it really is something to be a little freaked out about, right? It is not for no reason.

And there are anxiety disorders around things that are not actually life-threatening in any way, but the brain will jump on it and make it life-threatening. But there are things that are life-threatening or that are difficult. And it doesn't minimize that these things are real to say, oh, well, it's just anxiety, but it's learning how to navigate your brain. So I would say that first for the email, and then there's the second part that you brought up that I think is helpful, is what does ground you? So let's just go talk to someone about anxiety. Let's leave that there.

Okay, now go back to everybody without an anxiety disorder that has these experiences. What grounds you in these difficult moments? So a pandemic hits, an earthquake happens, and you say, well, like, take stock. What do I got going for me here? And you find, you know, and in those moments, I think people can find what is the thing that grounds them. And some people, I think in this past year, have learned that there's not a lot that had grounded them or that they could sort of turn to.

Or they realize, oh, going out and partying, that was what grounded me. And now that I don't have that, who am I? whatever it might be right like that's why it's been so difficult is everyone at the same time is going to kind of facing a similar introspection that maybe didn't turn up what you wanted it to turn up or or you know exacerbated things that had already begun that type of thing is it part is part of that you know we're I don't know how everyone's experience is different but it feels like people are sort of fed a line on what they're supposed to expect so when you're 30 you'll be fully successful and have the job you always dreamed of in the perfect marriage and the

Bip Bip like those those things never never I mean maybe for some but most people don't have that feeling when they get there they get there and go wait a minute I thought this supposed to be perfect and I hate my job and my wife's starting to have it and fair and like you all of these things are not what somebody told me you would be and then they say well when you're you know you have your your first kid it's perfect it's this is a beautiful little angel but you know you yeah, some people have that, but other people have a, you know, a screaming kid who never let you sleep. And when they're teenagers, they stole the car and, you know, robbed a meth house or whatever. That's going extreme. But you know what I'm saying? Like, it's never exactly what

you were told it was going to be. And how could it ever be? Because there's no such thing as like, here's a template, step into it, and you'll match. It doesn't work. So this is what's amazing about this. And I'd love your theory on this. Everybody has these. Everyone's has a number in their head of what an old person is. And then suddenly that one day comes in there that age and they're like, wait a minute. Or everyone has the, what should I have accomplished by 30? And so, I mean, there's some obvious things like the 30 under 30. Like we literally will celebrate young people doing crazy amounts of things. Right. And then so some of that has influenced the story we all have about what you should do by what age or whatever. But

think about where do you guys think that comes from what's the the purpose of you know you say they tell us who's they and how did they tell you what you were supposed to have done by your 40th birthday yeah because part part of me's like here's what i here's what i've learned is that when we say they who we're talking about are people that are either pretending really well to be the thing you think you want to be you know and they're not actually saying it out loud no they're just living they're just living it. So you look up the street and go, wait, Frank's got a motorhome, a boat and a time share with a beach house. And, you know, you're starting to look at all these things, these indicators of monetary and or. The outside. Right. Right. The material stuff. But then you find out

just under the crust, there's just a poopy cake in there sometimes. Like, oh, found out later he beat his wife or found out later, you know, he's. He embezzled to get that nice beach house and that boat sitting in front of his house. Yeah. Like, That's literally happened to me where somebody I thought was, you know, all on the up and up was just doing great and all smiles all the time. Suddenly there were cops at his house and he was being arrested for some fraud thing with a business and lost everything as a result. And I felt like when we were kids growing up, Wendy, we had a bit of this.

We lived in an area for a while called Royal Lane and it was literally this like uppity expensive. Could you get a more pretentious name for your daughter? Loyal Lane. Yeah. It was this beautiful place. You went into it, and it was one way in, one way out. And it was gorgeous.

And every house was way too big and yards were way too large. And we were no different except, you know, dad didn't put a lawn in for 10 years or something. And we chopped weeds every year. We buried a lot of dead dogs. A lot of dead dogs there. Yeah. It's a long story. But, you know, we have this.

Trashy, guys, what we're saying. Yeah, we were kind of trashy in that area. HOA would have kicked us out if there was a thing then. But I don't know if that's true. But anyway, the point is, like, all of the pretension was there all around us. But you never felt like you could live up to whatever that was. But then you'd find out later, like, I'm not using names because I get in trouble when I do this. Sometimes I find out someone listens to the show.

But there are numerous examples of people around us that were not what they looked like to us. And whether that was just our perception or their or it was actually what they were trying. to portray i don't know but it was it was never right but you don't know that stuff you know you just see these other people and go oh i want to be like that or i want to do this or want to do that that seems perfect that's the perfect family that's the best car that's the whatever whatever and in the end none of that's real it's all just none of it is it's all just frosting it's all just uh window dressing yeah and even then it's barely there it's like you can almost it's almost like frosting that's a holographic projection of frosting right right because it's so

meaningless is not even a flavor to it. It's just not in the end. I no longer think about and haven't for a long time. I have no desire to keep up with any Joneses of any sort. No desire. And that feeling of like, oh, what are the neighbors doing or whatever, what are the family doing or whatever? That ended for me two decades ago. I just don't care. And so I don't know why that's not a problem for me. But the problem for me is things like things I can't control. Like if Kim was suddenly gone or if, um, you know, the pandemic wiped everybody out or, you know, the, again, the existential stuff that I don't have direct control over. Something I have control over, I have control over and I can deal with it. But even in those cases, there's, there's a part of me that's like,

hey, if you don't want to have a heart attack like dad, what you got to do is you got to be in way better shape now and you got to work toward a healthier lifestyle and all that even though his may have been mostly a genetic thing but but regardless you know i think well that's what i got to do but then my brain goes yeah but you know he wasn't in like terrible shape it's possible that you just are going to have one and it's because that's just the deal there's like a little devil on my shoulders going you got to tell you're 63 and then you're out of here buddy i get that all the time oh and i hate that right and it's because you know more i mean think think about, you know, when you're younger, you just don't know what can happen. I think of all the people

who blissfully have their first child and are just like, yeah. And then it's, you know, a couple years later, they're like, whoa, like two billion things could have gone wrong. Like, you just don't know until you know someone that something has gone wrong. So you're keeping up with the Jones is really just social comparison theory, which is like, am I okay? And I'm going to look around me and find out if other people are doing things I'm doing and then to know if I'm okay. So, Scott, if I put you in a neighborhood of creatives, believe me, you'd still want to keep up with the Joneses. Probably.

But you're in a neighborhood of, I don't know, like insurance salesmen. So, like, you're not comparing, it's not apples to apples. You're totally right about that. That's funny because the one place where I do, and that's not really keeping up with the Joneses, but I'll see, like in my internet world, I see some art from some artist I follow or talk to or friends with whatever and I'll go oh man I got up my game look how great that is like I still I do that all the time so that's your actual peer group by the way right I wouldn't call it competition I would call it like yeah yeah it's am I doing okay it really is a at its core am I enough

get my bearings yeah yeah exactly right and so you take this email and they're like what does this have to do with me um if you take the email that it's there is this thing of looking around and the people you love and care about and love and care about you could disappear like it's the same principle it's just much darker as we get older so so let's talk about the stages of human developed really quick so I'm going to take this from Eric Erickson by the way I want everyone to name their kid something like my husband always he always has coworkers with like I swear like a Barry Barrison like for real And like a Jimmy Jimmison. I can't get over. I think it's so great. Steven Stevenson. How about Stephen Stevenson?

That's a pretty good one. Because P.S., you're a parent and you're having a kid and you're like, you know, our last name is Johnson. I think we should go with John. I just think it's hilarious. Anyway, enough with that. Eric Erickson sort of coined and there's definitely expansions on this, but this is just a real basic one of the psychosocial development of humans.

And there's eight stages. And they really are like a this happens or this happens. So it's it's something versus something at a certain stage. So the first one is trust versus mistrust. So if you think about a very young infant, can they trust that they're safe? Right. If you think of what the instincts that a baby has, there's only two. It's the fear of falling, like the jerk falling response and the sucking response.

So eating and not dying. Those are its two things. And so, you know, from a very young, young age, it's that first stage of, you know, psychosocial development, which is, can I trust the world or can I, do I mistrust the world? This is why child abuse is so damaging because from a young age to learn you cannot trust means your brain is going to develop differently. You're going to experience the world differently, which is why we need to stop child abuse because it is the most damaging thing.

Right. um long term so then we have the next stage autonomy versus shame and doubt okay so this is a kid doing trying out new things um learning what they can do on their own it's like i do it myself that kind of stage right um and then this the the conversely shame and doubt so it's either i i can do it or i cannot and i feel bad and i doubt myself so again you can see where parenting is tricky You can really backfire in some of these stages. So the next one is initiative versus guilt. And that is against sort of figuring out the world, think middle school, high school.

And then we get into industry versus inferiority. And this is really where that sort of think of the young college student or the young out into the workforce sort of person is, you know, trying to figure out if they. So a lot of these have a lot to do with like, am I okay? am I good enough, right? And so when you tackle some of these stages and you're feeling great and I'm autonomous and industrious and I'm doing great, then they seem to be doing great. And then the next stage is identity versus role confusion. And this has a lot to do with like, who am I? What am I supposed to be doing? So this very early version of a midlife crisis, it's the early crisis, which is what do I want to study? What do I want to do for work? Who do I want to be with? You know, all that stuff.

Who are I? This is where Carter's at right now. now, by the way. You can see this in her. She's going through this. It's tricky. And then the next stage is intimacy versus isolation. And that is the marrying, the maintaining relationships or ending up not in that or choosing that. And I would say the word may be changed today because I don't think people choose isolation. They either choose marriage or isolation. I think people can choose intimacy without it being marriage. But that's, that's kind of historically the common, are you pairing up and building a life. Right.

Then we get to generativity versus stagnation, which is where we're at with this emailer, right? So right between intimacy and isolation and generativity and stagnation, you've got this magical midlife crisis moment where you're sort of questioning a lot of choices. And I hear people, I feel like I have a new book I need to write, which is called If I had a dime. If I had a dime for every person who said, fill in the blank with a certain age, I can't do blank because I'm this age, blank.

So I will hear someone in their 50s say that. Then I'll hear someone who's 26 say, I have missed the boat. I have no options. Yeah. What crap? And it's because, and I'm going to, this is a whole other topic,

but I really think the most internalized bias all of us have, we all have internalized bias. We're all a little bit racist. We're all a little bit sexist. we're all a bit all oh oh you there when 100% of us have internalized a sorry you cut out for a second is a little internet but you're good kid using a microphone no it was it wasn't your mic it was definitely internet or something but internet uh it really might be the microwave

it might be the microwave is your phone in there anyway it's on the same frequency i have this Oh, weird. Is it really? That's weird. Wait, it's obvious. Anyway, okay. Yeah. Yeah.

That's really weird. 5G. I'm on a. Oh, yeah. You know what? I've heard of that. Not microwaves so much, but other stuff getting in people's 5G business. So maybe that's what you're having there.

Are you there? Do we lose her? I think we're losing her. Oh, damn it. All right. I'm a read-adder to this call. See if that doesn't clear it up. I've heard of that.

And I still have a problem with certain Bluetooth issues. There's so many signals flying around now that if I go outside my front yard. Sorry, that is embarrassing. No, it really is the microwave. Like, I'm not kidding. What do you got going in there? What do you got a nice morning burrito? Or what do you got going?

What's in there? No, but I swear to you, every time my kid, I thought I was just being stupid and mega ignorant. And every time my kid can use the microwave, I can hear the door shut on the microwave. And then my internet goes bad. That's weird. That's really weird. I'm at a perfect location where, because it has a certain frequency or whatever, right?

It just like interrupts the internet. So I had to get a 5G. Sorry, anyway, sorry, I switched. All right. You're all good now. No worries. It's embarrassing. Okay, I was on a roll too.

Yeah, you were on a roll. I'm trying to remember what part of the role you were. Oh, internalized. Yes. So we all internalize certain things, right? So internalized racism or internalized sexism is where you are of the group that is marginalized, but you have internalized the thinking of the group, the majority group, and hate those things about yourself or your group, right?

So we all have internalized agism, all of us, every last one of us. And there's some young bias that humans have, tend to have. And we attribute so much to youth. And it happens throughout our lives while we're young. We don't know it. And then suddenly you're not young and you start to have these experiences you didn't maybe have before. People treat you a little bit differently or you're discounted in a meeting when you

weren't discounted before or, you know, whatever. And so we're just living our lives internally at whatever age we feel. But the rest of the world watches us melt and goes, yeah, you're not relevant anymore. at least culturally speaking in our culture. So this ageism, though, is this, you should be this by this moment. You should, like, you can't do it. So we get to this stagnation generativity thing. Like, are you still capable?

So if you think about it, you ask them, what's the ideal age to start your own business and have it be successful? I want you guys to guess. What's the ideal age to be successful in creating a startup up and doing your own your own business well i mean you're natural it seems like a trick question i'm going to say my the age i was when i started mine oh yeah i see what was that uh that was 30 30 yes say 30 okay how about you scott it was roughly the same but my idea i mean in my head my ideal is as soon as you can so that you can have as much time as you want or can to grow it and do stuff with it so

I would say internalize ageism there we go yeah that's probably right yeah like I don't know and here's the research the most the common age for someone to start a successful that lasts and works business is 47 really well well past all of thinking most people would have and it's because right past the Joneses right past it we have the skills the maturity the know-how you actually are prepared for the whole thing right like there's There's a lot to that that makes a lot of sense when we think about it, but we're so age biased, not only age bias, but time biased, which is getting to the point of what this person is saying. When time seems to, starts to feel shorter, right? You see this with older people or elderly. They're much quicker to tears or they're much quicker to sort of, it's like there's actually experience of time that is, it's like time bends a little bit and it shrinks. And there is this just, you know, in some ways, I think that can make people grumpier.

And I think in some other ways, it makes people a lot more open and more generous that they just can see past all the things that used to matter when you were 20. They don't matter. And there's not so much time left. So some of that happens. We just have these gnarly, we have these gnarly public examples of like, Mark Zuckerberg was only 23 when you can't avoid that that being, you know, ponied up as the standard. because everyone thinks it is. Look what we got because a 23-year-old had control. I am not, that's a worst example.

It's not a positive thing. It's a bad example, but there is this notion. And again, it's that thing you're talking about. And I never really thought of it this way. But we all think of, you know, Steve Jobs being 19 a dropout and starting his thing in his garage with Wozniak. And, you know, true genius starts at these ridiculously young ages. and then they blow everybody's mind and become mega-millionaire, billionaires, or whatever, you know, Bill Gates, everybody. They're only identify success as one thing.

It's how much they're worth they in. It's annoying. Which I find the most ironic thing about human life is that so many people feel unworthy. And that you can't from the outside see how happy someone is or how content. Like if all of a sudden we found out Taylor Swift was the most happy. content person ever that we say all right that's success right there and she's 14 15 we just never know we just never know like i was just reading a thing this morning was when i was prepping for the show um i used to be a big fan well as a fan of brett farv's time uh in uh green bay or green

yeah green bay yeah um that was a great time for that team and for him and you know super bowl wins and all that stuff and my says you know there we have this other connection where kim grew up with she went to Brett Farr's high school. His dad taught her dad out a drive. He was a driver's ed teacher. We have all these connections. So in our heads were like, Brett Fav,

young local Mississippi kid made it. He did it everybody. Everything's perfect. And he's not without controversy. But this morning is a big thing about how he's almost committed suicide because his pain killer addiction was so bad. Like, well, you never freaking know.

The guy's living, he's laying in a giant pile of money. It doesn't matter. Like, at the end of the day, that stuff doesn't matter, but we still all think it does, you know? We're just so conditioned. And understanding is so limited to wherever we are, right? Yeah. Like, I find myself saying things to young women that I think, oh, I remember when old women said this to me.

Here we go. Cycle of life, right? Or that, you know, it's the moment that you pay your first electric. Bill, and you suddenly hear yourself saying what your dad used to say. Like, I don't own the power company. Turn off the light. Turn off the light. We don't leave the room.

We don't own the power company. You have to sort of navigate that because those moments until they come, you don't have that sort of empathy or understanding. And so that's the power of actually being older that we don't revel in where there are some cultures that have existed on this earth where they do recognize that wisdom and they treat it very differently. So this is not unique to the United States, but it is particularly bad here in that we just, we worship the young. We really do.

And it's the halo effect, right? You attribute things to beautiful young people that they don't have. They don't have them. And if you really test it, and then think about the pressure to be the thing. And then we've got the fake outer stuff that is just everywhere, right? So let's go to the very last stage. So stage eight, and this is where this is heading for this email and for all of us, which is ego integrity versus despair.

So this is the, and in other psychosocial developmental stages, there's a couple other people who've done lots of versions of this, but it's sort of legacy or like drifting off to nothingness, right? So even think about now, what do you know about some of the? your ancestors. Like, what do you know, what was their legacy? And maybe you have some idea. Maybe you don't. Some families, it's all that matters is the legacy of whoever, you know, whatever. And so that's kind of people's impulses to leave money to their children and grandchildren or leave the family farm or the family business, right? There is this impulse that I've done these things so the people behind me can have something better. That's part of my legacy. Or in other words, using Eric

Erickson's words, ego integrity, that I lived a good life, there's some kind of solid ground to stand on, finding some way to feel like you can move to the next stage, whether that is death and oblivion or if that is death in another life, whatever you believe, right? So this is that difficult stage. And then the other option is despair. So here's where the treating anxiety separately, because it is causing things to be harder, I think is important. But this, this is every human at the end of life is, is ego integrity versus despair. And it's tricky. And we know how to elongate life for a long time, well past somebody standing on

their own two feet walking around, right? Oh, yeah, for sure. And so I think we mess a little bit with ego integrity at the very end that can be tricky. So, okay, so there's a framework to kind of think about it. I would recommend this person, there's some books out there, just read stuff on some basic human development, lifespan development, because I think it's helpful to get that into your sites as you think about things. So next week, I have an email that is specifically about a midlife crisis that I think

will tackle that thing a little bit separately. But this is more about a couple of things. One is dealing with the anxiety. Another is grief. And we talk about this on the show quite a bit, right? which is actually learning how and practicing grieving because we get to these stages because things are being lost. They're being lost in quicker succession as you get older.

When something is lost when you're young, I mean, we all just say it's so tragic, but when you lose a loved one and they're in their 70s, people are not saying that's tragic, even though it is for you, or whoever is the loved one, right? It doesn't, loss is loss. And how do we navigate those stories? What do we do with what is the meaning of all of this? That is something to work through with somebody that you might think you don't need to, but can really ease the next section of your life and have you more present in your life.

Because in the end, you're going to die and there's oblivion or whatever it is that is going to happen and what you think is going to happen. But you're going to miss all the time before then. if you're drawn away only by the anxious thinking or you're drawn away with this and to me it sounds like stuck loss and grief just hasn't been processed enough to free you up to experience other things and one other way to think about this is when you're aging and this is partly why I'm getting old as hard is we don't have as many experiences that are just that revelatory new exciting experience Which I think is why I love the, in and of itself show so much is, I mean, when's the last time I watched something that really surprised me, right?

That wasn't a cliche or followed a formula because I've been alive long enough, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Well. So there's a bit of that that means life can feel a little less joyful or a little less different or, and this is why 30-year-olds are like, my career is almost over. It's like, no, none of that is true, but the newness stuff does stop happening and reality and people are hard and family's tricky or, you know, and so we've got to find a different reserve than just the new and shiny because that is very human of us. We want new and shiny.

I think you've, I think you explained. So earlier in the show, you weren't here for this, but I have this thing where I'm wasn't quite sure why I was so drawn to them, but I'm really drawn to these Alzheimer's patients on TikTok. It's usually our caregiver or a family member running the account, but it's just regular videos dealing with the decline of their loved one and they'll show them eating at breakfast or something and not remembering who they were and having to remind them that I'm your daughter and, you know, this sort of stuff and why I'm so compelled by those videos. And I think I think I know why. It isn't because I'm like, oh, I want to revel in the dread of a potential, you know, what it would be like to deal with dementia or, you know, loss of short and long. term memory or whatever it's not that it's that i'm getting to see and for the internet this is a rare thing but i'm getting to see actual inevitable down-to-brass tax humanity one direction or the other it's you you care about a person or you don't you're helping them through this part of their

life or you're not and so those that are i just find that really hopeful like and there's no there's no turning away from it you know what i mean it's not like it's not like Like I'm watching, oh, Harry Style says that the interview with Oprah was the bear, I don't care about any of that stuff that's vacant and empty and I don't give a poo. But this is me watching somebody struggle with the parent who raised them now doesn't know who they are and they've got to feed them and help them walk and understand. And when they get up in the middle of the night, they've got to calm them down because they're afraid and they don't know where they are.

like there's something about the the immediacy or the um the oh i don't know just like the raw day-to-day reality of you either you're you're you're you either care or you don't you know what i mean i don't know if i'm explaining this very well but there's something about that that is cathartic for me can't can't really explain why except that i think you're sort of rubbing up against it, which is this isn't me trying to, my life has shifted from trying to follow people who I wish I was more like. And now I'm looking at people who I hope I'm like. Does that make sense? Interesting. I don't know if that makes sense. Yeah. And developmentally, very appropriate. Like there is something magical that happens in midlife that most of us need to learn to better

appreciate. And that is the loosening of this. I need to make people. like me or I need to be okay, right? Like, developmentally, there is a shift. And that's, I think, why businesses succeed when the starter upper is 47 and 48. Yeah. Because you have, the games you have to play when you're younger, the pressure, the way you think about things. I mean, there is some relief from that.

And some of that comes with just more experience, more maturity, and realizing it's not worth it and what it is what is worth you consuming or you connecting to it's just it's getting pickier about what you will allow in your life in some ways um that is what's actually nutrition nutritious as opposed to empty you know right and some of that is again this sort of generativity versus stagnation and then eventually like where are you headed after this and what kinds of things you want to be known for or right it's that legacy building thing that starts to to matter we just have this problem in our culture that you know someone who has a lot of money is the idea of success when i think the most successful people will never know their names because they were incredibly

successful especially those who have broken generational cycles of violence or whatever right like the most successful people are just they're never going to be in the news yeah it's The quicker we've come to grips with that, the better, I don't know, the better off we are, I think. But I don't know. The culture is weird, man. We've got to deal with it, I guess, and figure it out. That's why we have Wendy on the show to help us figure it out. So thank you for that.

And hopefully this helped down in the dark and anyone else who may be going through similar things. Like Wendy says, it's everybody at some point. So somebody somewhere's hearing this and hopefully it's helpful. To some degree, yeah. Wendy, anything else going on? RealStups.org still there. You'll sign up for stuff coming down the road, but, uh, May. Yeah, May is the day, is the, is the month, sweet.

May is the month. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Get over there, sign up now and, uh, you'll, you'll be a part of the next wave. He won't regret it. Yes, it's a cult. Just kidding.

It's not a cult. A cult of jason. Hashtag not a cult. It's all the good things about the cults with all the bad stuff not there. So, well done. So well done. Have fun and we'll talk to you soon. Bye now.

It was a terrible way to end it. This is dumb. All right. If you've got your own thoughts on this too, don't forget you can always email us, the morning stream at gmail.com. All right. Before we go today,

I have a bonus mashup we've been holding on to for a couple of days. Yeah. This is called balls naked. What's OMI stand for? Oh, I shoot. Let me pull up Jamie's,

I should keep that. What we should do is put that list in, in the show notes template so we can always look over. It's a good idea. One second. Um, um,

um, oh, where the hell is that? Uh, do that da da da da da da da da. Oh, you know what I'll do? I'll search for OMI with his name and that means it'll come up a lot

faster if I do it that way. OMI is old man. impersonation. Oh, wonderful. I like these. I think I feel like we just did one of these, but here it is again then. Hopefully it's not one, oops, when we've already played, but we'll find out in a second. So this is balls naked. Wait a minute. I think we did do this one already. Did we play this one?

All right, I'm going to play a little bit. Let's see what happens. Hold on. 50 year old podcasters. Oh, we did. We totally did this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No mashup today, folks. Sorry about that. There is no mashup today. I repeat. No mashup today. today. I know. It's kind of a bummer. I was looking forward to it. That's all right. Next week we'll have a fresh one on Monday from Jamie. Sorry about the false alarm, everyone. All right. That's going to do it. Big thanks to everybody who supports us on Patreon.com slash TMS. Let's get you all sorts of stuff, including daily bonus audio content

with every single episode. And also the PM edition, which happens tomorrow. 2.30 Mountain Time. That'll be live for PM listeners. Last week, everybody got a free one in there in their feed. Not this week, going behind the wall again. Just to give you a taste of what you're missing out on. That's right. Just a peek. Brian belching is what you missed on. It's a good one, though. It's such a good burp.

Anyway, if you want to hear Brian burp on Fridays, that's the day to show up. So come be a part of it. That's TMSPM on Fridays. Details on what all that stuff is. You can go check it out at patreon.com. Email us the morning stream at gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at morning stream. for everything else you can find at frogpants.com slash t ms the tradition says we play a song at this point so brian will you

who am i to break tradition uh aaron wrote in said hi gents just thought i'd shake things up a bit and request a cool jazz version of pure imagination i heard the other day on pandora any day we'll do no special occasion thanks for all you do and hope you enjoy uh side note i got to see these guys in person many years ago as part of a special high school jazz band program jazz at the hilton inn s L.C., which is now a Sheraton. Oh, yeah. The Monty Alexander Trio might be my favorite concert experience ever. So, yeah, this is a very Andrew Allen level jazz thing. It's a great cover of June Wilder's song from Woolly Wonka in the Chocolate Factory, Pure Imagination, performed here by Monty Alexander. This is the steaming hot album version. Here's Monty Alexander and Pure Imagination.

I'm going to be able to be. I'm going to be able to be. Thank you. I'm going to be able to be. Thank you. I'm going to be able to be. Thank you. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network.

Frog Pants Network. Get more shows like this at frogpants.com. Before time runs out. Try again. That's a background. Runs out. Runs out.