The Morning Stream - TMS 2437: Rats in the corn chute

Episode Date: March 16, 2023

Snagging the rubber. Whil's Whife. Was there a show yesterday, cuz I, like, really wanted to know? Here Today Gone Temari. The Irish love their Double D. Same place, not my Butt. Paging Dr. Skinny Fingers. Conscience-free '23. An Up Yours Lyfting Story. Googly Eyes Patient Zero. Quit bragging about your Terabytes (Preshow). a 10 hour tool, 10 hour tool. Pickup at Island Five. Cunning Linguists with Amy. Burn-in the burnout with Wendi 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, snagging the rubber. Quills' wife. Was there a show yesterday, because I really, like, wanted to know? Here today. Gone Tamari. The Irish love their double D. Same place, not my butt. Paging Dr. Skinny Fingers. Conscience Free, 23.

And Up Yours Lifting Story. Gugly Eyes, Patient Zero. Quit bragging about your terabytes. A 10-hour tool. Pick up at Island 5. Hunting Linguists with Amy. Burn in the burnout with Wendy and more on this. episode of The Morning Stream.

Some people use them to hold hors d'oeuvres together. Kids make scale models of famous buildings and bridges out of them. And some people actually use them for their primary purpose to remove food caught between their teeth. Oh, Disney, you naughty bitch. The Morning. stream. I was born without a conscience. Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to TMS. It's the morning stream for Thursday, March 16th, 2023. I'm Scott Johnson, and that is Brian Ibit. Hello.

Man, I don't like missing shows at all, but we missed one yesterday, and we warned everybody, so you all knew we were doing it. But how did your thing go, your doctor visit go? You know, Well, it went just fine. My regular GP was not available. Basically, they said, hey, we know you've got this regular prescription that you need for such and such. We can't renew it unless you get your physical. If you want to schedule with your regular GP, we've got openings in June. Or if you want to meet with one of his PAs, then we can get you in next week.

They said this to me last week. What I should have said is, great, can you. And you hooked me up with whichever one has the skinniest fingers. Is there one who's just known for having little skinny fingers? Instead, they gave you a guy with gigantism. No, actually gave me a woman who had lovely skinny fingers. Oh, good, good. That's good.

You know what? I've said this before, and I still don't understand why. But when it comes to physicals, rather have a lady. Always rather have a lady. Always rather have a lady. I don't know why. I can't explain it. I just know I prefer it.

Yeah. It's got nothing to do with sex anybody who thinks it is. No, no. It has nothing to do with, no. Okay, let me cup these. Turn your head and cough. Yeah. By the way, I didn't have to do that.

She cupped them, but I didn't have to, I don't know why I didn't have to turn my head and cough. Oh, well, that's good to know. Yeah, no, I can be, same with massages. Just, I just prefer a lady. It's not a, it's not like I'm, it's not like I'm George Costanza freaking out because I'm dude's touching. Jerry. It's not that at all. I just have more trust for women. Don't know why. Plus, they do have the

smaller fingers. And lucky Phil, I don't know if, I certainly don't think that the, um, the PA that worked with me had lung fingernails. And I don't think, I think as a, as a nurse, as a physician's assistant, even as a doctor, if you're a woman, I feel like it looks unprofessional to have lung, you know, French nail tips kind of manicured deal? I don't know. I mean, is that, am I making an unfair generalization? Like, no, Brian, we can have long fingernails. We'll just, you know.

Yeah. It just seems like they would be in their way, like more of a practical point. Right. Exactly. Point of reference. It's like, well, if you're going to have, if you're a doctor, you're going to have moments of needing to be intricate with your fingers and your hands to check for this and check for that. And you're looking, you're on your back checking for heartbeat. with the cold thing and you don't want to be poking people or having a hard time holding your stethoscope no exactly yeah amy saying long fingernails would be a pain for any profession where

you have to regularly put on latex gloves good point oh yeah because you'll snag the rubber as they say you don't want to snag that rubber you know that's what i did on the way to prom that's right but boom anyway stop to the convenience store never mind all right hey hey hey hey hey i'm doing good i i uh how's your physical go well here's here's the hilarious thing your doctor was gone so you had to do one of his assistants it was supposed to be mine and i got a i got a call at the last minute that uh she wasn't going to be her so i said i'd rather wait for her so really so really was a situation well you really did have the opportunity to still have your physical done by a dude but said nope i will wait it may have been

somebody else besides the dude but i was just like you know what i'll just i'm this isn't anything we're rushing for it's just similar thing i need to get some prescriptions renewed so i'm going later instead yesterday i chilled out spent time with van nice hung out with the boy and carter and kim chilling it was nice it was a nice morning i will admit yeah it was nice so that's what i did uh for all i know there's a rat living in my my corn chute and they and and now a doctor hasn't seen it i don't know i don't know i decided to lift and you know what i didn't put in the show notes and i could talk about later if we've got you know we've got because I know you still have a couple top of show things to talk about but I always like a good lift show or a story

do you want to do we wait for that or do you want to do it now I don't it doesn't matter to me let's let's do it now and I'll do it fairly quickly all right but I got this is the first somebody can remind me if I've if I'm completely forgetting something but this is like the first horrible experience I've had lifting and it wasn't even a passenger oh Oh, it had nothing to do with passengers? Hold on, can I guess? I want to guess. All right, yeah. Gastrointestinal. Gastrointestinal emergency. Okay. I did have that like last year and that was a horrible experience. So I did forget about that. Yes. Okay. But no, it wasn't. But oddly enough, in exactly the same place. Not my butt, but at the airport.

Oh, the airport. Okay. Interesting. Let's hear this. All right. So dropped off a customer at the airport. And immediately, got a notification that I had another ride to pick up at the airport. Usually the pickup locations are at Island 5. So you've got the terminal and then you've got on the on the pickup level it's all the commercial vehicles right. So you've got taxis at Island 1. You've got Island 2 is like buses to the outside parking lots, threes, you know, whatever. It's like the buses that go up to the mountains, et cetera. But it's basically a whole level that is not for regular people to come up and pick up their friends. They have another level for regular schmows to go and pick up their buddies

from the airport. Okay. Our new airport has that now as well. That makes sense. Yeah, so taxis, lifts, all that sort of thing. And normally, our location is to pick up at Island 5. Four years of lifting, only one other time have I ever gotten a request to not pick up at Island and it was for an accessibility right it was somebody that that was on crutches they got the door right there uh at the at the entrance i pulled up they got in no problem okay yesterday i get another one and uh you know i get the ride it says oh you're picking up between doors 511 and 513 i drive really about a hundred feet forward from where i dropped off the last passenger it's like oh great this is nice and convenient i don't have to because if you have to do island five i have to go all the way

around to the other side of the airport and then back all the way around to the east side to Island 5. It is a 10-15-minute ordeal. Okay. So I pull up, I open up the hatchback or the, you know, the back of the thing because I'm always ready in case they've got luggage. Sure. And I sit and wait, I kind of look around. And then one of the police that works at the airport comes over and says, hey, do you have a pickup here? And I said, yeah, it's an accessibility ride. And I show them the app. It's like, all right. He goes off. Okay.

I wait and I wait and it's like time is ticking down. They've got five minutes and it's already three minutes in. And I'm like, all right, where are they? And I grab my phone and look at it and just as I do that, he calls. And he says, hey, where are you at? And I said, I'm right by doors 511 and 513. He said, oh, I'm at Island 5. I thought that's where I was supposed to go.

And I said, well, if you go to Island 5 in the app, you need to say I'm at Island 5 and not request an accessibility ride from these doors. Oh, I see what they did. He's like, oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I said, so I can drive around and pick you up. It'll probably be about 10 minutes. He's like, well, are you just right there? And I said, yeah, I'm like right at the entrance where you came out.

And I say, wave at him. And I say, can you see me? He's like, oh, yeah, I'll be there in 10 seconds. Yeah. Because seriously, it takes that long to walk from Island 5. Yeah. The airport police see me waving and talking to the guy. Oh, shit.

And not the guy who came over, but his buddy says, oh, and in his loudest voice possible. oh so you're a liar then what I'm like what he's like so you you know you park you get you just park up here and make your shame on you for making your passenger walk to you and I'm like no it's an accessibility right and I have the app in my hand I'm showing him he's like

oh don't you know I don't care anything you have to say you guys know how to manipulate things and he comes over and he starts taking pictures of my car from the back like getting my license plate from the back and with the front like this airport security guy doing this. I would be so irritated right now. I'm right now, Brian, I want to jump out of my skin and punch somebody. I hate that story. I inside, I was boiling. I mean, he's loudly calling me a liar. He's loudly and like, you know, other other people. My passenger is getting in the car.

He's like yelling, you know, he's yelling at me in front of all these other people at the, at the waiting area. I'm like, dude, it says accessibility. He's like, ah, you guys know how to manipulate things. I know. I know what you guys do. I'm like, for Pete's sake. Like, I basically, you know, say like that. He's like, yeah, for Pete's sake, he repeats back to me.

I said, look, I tried to calmly explain to you. At least I was polite. And I'm getting in the car. And he says, I was polite, too. I could have given you a ticket. F that guy. Foot to the groin moment here. I freaking hate him.

I hate him. And so, like, I got in the car and the guy's like, oh, man, I'm so sorry. I just bumped, I could have sworn I hit the right area for pickup. I'm like, dude, totally happens, not your fault. That guy's just, you know, he's an ass. He feels like he's a big fish in a small pond. He gets to boss people around. So I drove off, was nice, chatted with the guy, the whole ride.

He was actually really cool. He's visiting his son who moved out here during the pandemic, fell in love with Colorado and stayed and all that. And, but when I got home, fortunately, my new ring dash camera that I had installed captured video of the guy like taking pictures and I took a screenshot of the thing of the app that said accessibility ride and so I forwarded both of those to airport feedback like basically customer service and said here's the whole story of what happened uh here's photos of the guy who did it and here's the photo of the accessibility

ride, blah, blah, blah. So, listen, I don't want him to get fired over this unless he's got a history of doing this. Yeah. Then I'd like him to get fired. But I would like an official complaint added to his file so that if he does continue to do this, there's record that he, that he doesn't want. I agree. I agree.

You know what? While Third Eagle was worried about blue horses and penises, he should have been worried about that guy. That's what you should be worried about. But I'm really hoping, I'm kind of hoping I get, uh, another airport ride the next time that I go there because I want to see if he's there and I can you know like given the bird as I drive by or say you're a dick you're a dick dick dick you can throw out there part of me if I didn't want to get my passenger to wherever he needed to go part of me was going to be like yeah give me a ticket so

I can so I know who to complain to about your crappy attitude in the way you treated me That's lame. I'm mad for you and with you and near you. I hate that. I hate it. Oh, that would make you so mad. Plus, you're talking about it. You're at a busy thing. Airport's always just coming and going. Everybody's always got stuff to do. And this guy had to take his time to do that. Give me a freaking break. And there was no, like, even if even if he could say, well, my job is to make sure the traffic is going through here clearly and there's nobody stopped for no reason. Even if that was the only excuse, there was zero people around me. There was no cars in front of me or behind me or anything like that. So lame. anyway okay sorry let's let's get on a happier stuff i'm mad for you for you all right all right i really wanted to like be an ass back to him but i you showed great restraint you showed i showed restraint yeah which you know it's hard to do in a situation like that i'm a professional

you all have nothing to worry about all right well speaking of professionals we're here to professionally give away some stuff i want to give the rando pack in the mail this would be like prints and stickers and stuff and we're going to do it with a brand new segment we call Stand back and check your personal belongings. It's time for the morning form. All right. It's time for the morning form. The morning form.

That's right. This is where you guys go fill out a thing. And then you are in the running for today's giveaway. Frogpants.com slash the morning form. Just click on the button that you're presented with there. It'll take you to a little thing, a little Google form. And just add, put your stuff in. Today's subject is Best Movie Aliens.

all right so you click on that form it'll tell you right there best movie aliens best film aliens so it's you know alien creatures or types of aliens from movies it's a big list of multiple choice for you to choose from including something that isn't listed here and you can write in your own if you want that's all just for fun and also just to be cool data once we're done I want to see what everybody picked but the main goal here is one of you will win some stuff okay so frog expense dot com slash the morning form, all lowercase. All lowercase, the morning form, which we, Brian figured out this morning was definitely case sensitive. I did not know that.

Because I was going to be one of the first people who reply. I'm like, ooh, which one is the, which what's the alien choices here? Yeah, I'm glad you did because you got a dead page and I would have sent everyone to a dead page had I got that wrong. But anyway, go do it. Frogmanse.com slash the morning form, yes. How come Elf is not listed here? Oh, he's not in a film. There's no film that I know of with Alth.

Although, if you're saying there is one coming, I'll sign me up. I'll watch an Alph movie. I'll do that. That would be fun. Hey, where's the cat? I mean, that's kind of the gist of the entire series. Yeah, that's his thing. I'm trying to find the... Oh, Silver Whispady 3. Good point.

What, what happened? You forgot a very important alien that really should be in that list. Oh, yeah, look at that. I mean, how did we not include him? Stitch, yeah, Stitch. I guess I didn't include... other, did I do any other animated stuff? Yeah, I guess I didn't. Well, you know, next time. Here's how it'll this to work because people at home are like, wait a minute, you're doing this just live? No, it's, it's, we announced the winner on Monday. So you guys, everybody at home has a chance to do it as well, all right? It's going to do these on the regular. There'll be all kinds of different prizes over time. Today's happens to be a print and sticker pack that will come directly to your door. And it means that international people can play too because it's this nice,

thin package that I can send anywhere in the world for less than it usually cost to ship stuff overseas. So, again, at home, if you're listening, frogpants.com slash the morning form. I like the arrival aliens that only talk in coffee, the rings that are left on the table when you drink coffee. Oh, yeah. You know what you need for that. You need a coaster.

A coaster? Are you talking about a coaster, Scott? There's no cool coasters out there. We really could use a cool coaster. There is a cool coaster that isn't even part of the Vegas swag bag. I made these separately. Here is the TMS Vegas 20203 coaster. It's so freaking rad.

And that might be in the package that wins this week. Who knows if that'll be in there. I can't wait for that to absorb my fluids. Right. You need an absorbent pad, Brian. Coffee fluids. I need the coffee off my cup. He's all out of absorbent pads, Brian is.

So we're going to. we're going to send him one anyway uh so there's that go go go get in there and get that done all right we're going to call amy because it's amy time yeah uh let me just see if i can figure out why red fraggle isn't coming there we go okay she's uh she's back from her trip her yeah it could be someone who looks just like her i really do need to know the story on this so we'll ask her shortly right after this one of the things that i uh enjoy also is reading Oh, us too, mister. It's time for us to play a little read this, where we learn how to read books from Amy.

She teaches us how to read. You're going to teach us how to read. I've got a new intro. I like it. What do I do when I get to the end of a page? Does that mean the book is over? Yeah. How does it work?

How does it work? Amy, can you explain? Well, as Grover would tell us, you don't turn the page. Oh, that's right. There's a monster at the end of this book. That's right. You just got back from the Joko Cruise. How to go?

Was it fun? I did. I did. It was great. It was good fun as it always is. So, yeah, I have cool stories to share. Probably the funniest one that I can share in a small amount of time has to do with the picture I sent you. Oh, all right.

So as you saw there, there's a dude that looks remarkably. like Chuck. And as it happens, he is actually the official Joko Cruz photographer. He's a really nice guy. His name's Steve. And he wears nothing but Batman logo shirts. Like, he has like 40 something Batman logo shirts. So he is known on boat as Bat Steve. And so we met him on our first cruise. And they, you know, we, we chatted up with him and his spouse. He's a real, like I say, he's really nice guy and whatnot. And it was kind of funny that we noted, like, how much they looked alike. So Chuck decided that in future years, he's going to cosplay on there, because there is a

cosplay day. Okay. There's a cosplay day on the boat. And so Chuck said, my cosplay is I'm going to cosplay as Batsteep. That's great. That's great. I was wondering, like, God, did Chuck just happen to have a Batman t-shirt and a camera with them. So he brought this as his cosplay outfit. Correct. Yes. I mean, he has, he has that

nice DSLR camera. He didn't like buy a nice camera for his cosplay or anything. But expensive cosplay. Yeah. He did have to buy a Batman logo shirt because that, you know, he did not have one. But yes. So that, but that's not the end of the story. Oh, there's more. So there's more. Oh, it gets so much better. He found out they were twins. They're separated at birth. No. So Chuck and Bat Steve were up in the coffee shop area. There's a up in the crow's nest. They have a place where you can actually get nice coffee. And so they were chatting it up.

They were in line. And Steve said, hang on just a second. I got to go do something. Can you watch my camera stuff for me? And, you know, Chuck says, sure, of course. So Steve leaves his stuff, you know, at his place in line. And then Chuck has to go grab something. So he leaves his camera in line also just, you know, goes across the room, grab something, comes back.

Where he can see it still, yeah. Right, yeah. Line has formed behind where Chuck was. And so, but he kind of just scoots back in front of the nice blonde lady that who's there. And it's just like, oh, you know, sorry. I promise I was, I was here already. Blonde lady says, yeah, sure. But she's, you know, she's jovial and nice about it.

Sure. And then Steve comes back and they're chatting it up. And again, remember, this is the official Joko Cruz photographer guy. So he knows everyone. Right. So then up walks Will Wheaton. Oh, Will Wheaton. To join his wife in line.

Oh, the, the, the, the, the, the blood lady was. Oh, my God. Chuck, you cut off Anne Wheaton. Really? Wow. Now you're in trouble. I just have this lovely like 10 minutes. conversation, you know, and they're talking about, uh, you know, having creative spouses and all,

you know, all this kind of thing and whatnot. They just have this lovely little chat. Meanwhile, I'm, I don't, I think I was in like a crafting class. I'm completely somewhere else on the boat. Chuck just casually texts me like, oh, yeah, I had this nice 10 minute combo with Will Wheaton. I was like, what? That's great. And no selfie with them? No, no. Well, and like, so, so then, So then here's where the picture comes in. Okay. So we're up on on deck later on. And I said, okay, we know, we've got to get the cosplay, you know,

Bat Steve doppelganger picture here, right? So we take that one that that you showed. And then there's another one that I sent you where they're doing like the Spider-Man point at each other deal, you know? And so, yeah. So we pose that picture right then. Again, Will Wheaton comes walking by and just doubles over cackling laughing. He thinks that's like the funniest free.

He doesn't say anything. He's just like, he's just cackling at it. And I'm looking behind me. And it's Will Wheaton. And I was like, I asked Steve, I was like, was that Will? And he's like, yeah. And that just made my day. You know, I mean, making anybody laugh that much is awesome.

Did you turn and say this? Shut up, Wesley. Did you do that, no? New. Okay. All right. Just checking. But, you know, yeah, he's, he's really, really nice. Like, we saw him later on, like, a beach day. There was a guy who had, like, a t-shirt from the tabletop show that he does. And he saw him wearing that. He said, dude, I owe you a high five. That's one of the perks of you being our patron is I give you a high five. And, you know, he was like, I got this like 12 years ago. He said, hey, doesn't expire. Like, he was just. a really nice, really, really nice guy. And, you know, and he said, the guy says to him, well, thanks for coming. And Will just says, well, thank you for having me. You know, and I mean, it was like the most genuine thing. He's just, he's, he's, he just really nice guy. He seems like a really nice guy. Yeah. And September interviewed him for, uh, America's Next Top podcaster. And it was just such

a great interview. Like if people, if you haven't heard it, whether or not you listen to Antip, you should go back and listen to that. It's also rare. He doesn't do those very often. No. Just busy and, you know, can't do it. I remember I was doing a joint thing on Twitter and he had to turn them down for this interview because he was so busy. So it's kind of rare.

So once you, uh, in fact, I remember being shocked when she got that interview. I was like, are you kidding me? This guy's supposed to be one of the hardest dudes to get to sit down and do a podcast. And yet, there it is. That was awesome. Right. Right. Yeah.

Very cool. I'm sorry. People are saying my mic is hat. I don't know if it was just because I yelled what or am I like, hot in general. It was a little hot. I think it was just because you were excited about the story. I'm sorry. No, no. There's nothing. No apology necessary. It's just expressing how stoked you are. Nothing wrong with that. Yeah. It was just really funny. Like that just made my day. Because like I say, you know, you make anybody laugh that much and it feels good. But then you look

and it's like, oh, person I admire and know who they are. I made them laugh that much. That's even better. That's great. Well, I'm glad it went well. Sounds like a good time. Yeah, yeah. It was. It was really fun. And they had all kind of art installations this year, which was really fun. Like, they had like one place where they had it, they called it the Gamer's Garden.

And it was all these plant related things from video games. And so they showed like the little chomper plant from, from Mario, you know. And then they had like a pea shooter from plants versus zombies. And they had the cactore guy from another game. It was really neat. And they had to put up signs that said, please don't put googly eyes on them because everybody puts googly eyes on everything on that ship.

Which, by the way, is also Anne Wheaton's fault. Yes. I was going to say, Anne Wheaton is the, you know, at least what I consider to be the patient zero of the googly eyes trend. Maybe everything everywhere at once might have reamplified it. Yeah, re-up to the opportunity. the cactars from that's not Final Fantasy is it

I thought that was Dragon Quest I don't know that's cool though you have any pictures of that my chance I do I think I sent you a couple

and that I oh yeah this one right here oh yeah there it is yep I'm pretty sure that's Dragon Quest I knew you would get a kick

out of that and I have some other stuff just to send you like there was they put a full arcade on board Chuck was very excited in that photo

about the there was like the little lichen with the eyeballs from Labyrinth and because you can't see it in this photo but the shirt that he's wearing is from Roosevelt's and it's got the little worm from Labyrinth and it says hello all over it you know it's really cool love love the shirts from Roosevelt's Tina got me like two of them at D23 and I can't wait for it to be warm again so I can wear them oh yeah like that's wear one in Vegas that's Chuck's favorite thing to to to wear now are those Roosevelt shirts he's got a whole whole collection of them so nice that is so cool well and and thank you brian because i found out about them from you oh stop it that's awesome cool that's great uh it's roosevelt the presidency lives on in shirts now that's where you get them

both both uh franklin d and teddy that's right live on in shirts that's right forever all of the roosevelt so what is your so did you get time to read did you have any book uh things happen while you were there? So there are a lot of authors who come on board there. I tell you what I did a lot of was crafting and learning about new crafts, which is one of my favorite things to do. But I did get to write down a lot of new authors that I want to check out. I haven't had a chance to go and read any of those yet,

but they're totally on my list now because they always feature some new authors that I've never heard of before. or, you know, that are just awesome in general. I mean, John Scalzi always goes. And, you know, he apparently, there was a thing where John Scalzi was like a big fan of wearing bright green crocs. I don't know. I missed that part. There's always something, no matter how much you pack your schedule full, you're always missing

something because it's like DragonCon. There's too much to do. So I missed that particular meme. but yeah like I can confirm I was on a tender boat back from the beach with John Scalzi and he was wearing bright green crocs but uh wow you know I took a minute to tell him you know that I appreciated the Kaiju preservation society because I enjoyed it and it was indeed a much needed break so because that's why he wrote it he specifically wrote it as like a break from COVID and all that stuff All the crap going on. Yeah. He was like, I, exactly. He's like, I need to write a pop song of a novel.

And I was like, mission accomplished. Nothing wrong with that. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Sometimes you just need to do it. Yeah. So I didn't do that much reading on board because frankly, if I was still enough to be reading, I was probably sleeping.

But because, man, you know, I taught a puppet building class on the ship. And, you know, I learned. learned a bunch of new stuff. Like, I'm sitting here right now. I'm putting stitches onto this ball. It's this Japanese art called Timari, which I had I had heard of before, but only on that cruise. It's basically you sew geometric patterns onto a round ball, which when I describe it like that, it sounds really boring, but it's really fascinating and cool to look at because you're very interesting. Hold on. Do you stitch it into the side of the ball? Is that how you do it? yeah like well so the ball itself like the core of the ball is styrofoam and then you you wrap it in this very fine pink thread and so you just kind of jam it through there and then you make all these really cool i'll post a picture of mine when it's done um but yeah there's a whole website dedicated to it tamari dot com has like a ton of uh oh these are wild look at that yeah oh my mom has a bowl of these she didn't make them but she has a giant bowl for

full of these. Yeah, they're pretty rad, I think. And, like, they're, I think they would make great Christmas ornaments or, you know, just stuff like that. I just, I love things like that with, uh, intricate geometric, repeated patterns and things like that. I love learning how to do things like that. I became, I became obsessed with origami after I went on this cruise.

Also, like, you learn all kinds of cool stuff. So. That's cool. Yeah. These look nice. I thought my mom had a collection of like holy hang grenades. but they're... They're Tamari balls.

That's cool. All right. There's a day. John Tamari. Oh, I see what's good. Hey, so what are you going to recommend we listen to this week or watch? All right. So, as you guys may or may not know, March is Women's Month.

You know, last week there was International Women's Day. And so I figured now would be a good time for this book that I'm recommending this week. Excellent. here is your clip everybody enjoy whoops wrong tab here it is right here getting people to understand that language itself is a means through which people can be harmed elevated or valued is really important zimmon says zimmin like most of the other word whizzes i talk to for this book is a linguist a profession that despite common misconceptions has nothing to do with learning to speak dozens of foreign languages or correcting people's split infinitives

Linguistics is, in fact, the scientific study of how language works in the real world. Under that umbrella falls sociolinguistics, where the studies of language and human sociology intersect. It actually wasn't that long ago, around the 1970s, when linguists first began studying how human beings use language as a social tool to do things like create solidarity, form relationships, and assert authority. Out of everything they investigated, the most eye-opening and contentious subject has undoubtedly been language and gender. That is, how people use language to express gender, how gender impacts how a person talks, and how their speech is perceived. Over the decades, linguists have learned that pretty much every corner of language is touched by gender, from the most microscopic units of sound to the broadest categories of conversation. And because gender is directly linked to power in so many cultures, necessarily, so is language.

It's just that most of us can't see it. Interesting. Tell me more. Who is this? Yes. So this book is called Word Slut, a feminist guide to taking back the English language by Amanda Montel. And she goes through a lot of how our language has evolved to support. current gender norms and the patriarchy and things like that, but just in a dispassionate

and scientific way, like a linguist's scholarly way. Like this is how this word evolved. But it's also very accessible. I mean, you can hear her voice is very conversational. That's actually her reading it. And it's all very accessible and funny. There are the chapter name alone are worth hanging out for this book because like there's a chapter called slutty skanks and nasty dykes a comprehensive list of gendered insults you know i mean who doesn't want to read that how to embarrass the shit out of people who try to correct your grammar eff it an ode to cursing while female you know things like that it's just hilarious and and it's really great and it just does a really deep dive into how

how gender has both effects and is affected by our language and therefore how it impacts society specifically and I I haven't run into her using the term woke yet but I because I think this was written slightly before I mean it's it's modern enough like she talks about the exchange the the you know access Hollywood exchange that Trump has you know but from from a linguistics point of view, which is fascinating, frankly. She talks about that. So it's recent enough that it's got some cool recent events.

But I don't know if Woke had entered the lexicon quite yet. But she does talk a lot about how African-American vernacular English, you know, we get so much of our slang from there. And things warp from what they were originally. used for in AVE into something else, which is what has happened with the word woke. Sure. So, and I just found it, I find this book endlessly fascinating and just doing these deep dives into this is where this word came from. And, you know, like, when I say bitch, you know, this is, these are all the things that probably come to your mind, right?

but what if I told you that it completely meant something else originally and that language evolves and and this is how this is how we got here and just taking words like and and dissecting them and figuring out this is how we got this pattern of speech I don't know I find that really fascinating and and she does it in a way that makes it really conversational and accessible. She tells a story about being on a train with a very posh-looking, you know, New England woman. And she, and it was like a fellow parent, right? They were on their way to some school thing. And their kids were friends. And so the author of the book asked the girls, hey, hey, how did y'all do on your test? And the other mother just clutched her pearls and was like, oh, you can't say y'all. Someone might think you're Southern.

And then she goes into and she took that opportunity to, A, approach her with curiosity about, oh, really? Why do you think that? And actually, the word y'all is a very utilitarian, second person plural. And I didn't want to use you guys because as far as I know, neither of our daughters. identifies as a guy and so therefore blah blah I mean it was just very and she actually left the conversation feeling like I bet she won't call anybody out for using y'all again you know so and and but she did it in such a way that it was just uh it was just an intellectual exercise not a hey I'm going to call you out and make a conflict kind of a thing and so which I thought was really cool so

I don't know. I think I always feel like, hey, the more you know, the more you know, right. Yes, I always think that as well. That's great. That sounds great. Tell me the name of the book again, just so people can hear it one more time. The name of the book is word slut. I don't know how you'd forget that, but it is word slut. Word slut. All one word. All one word. PMS.L.I will also have a link to it. So go check that out. It already does. Amy, it's good to have you. on. I'm glad you're home. You're safe. Everything's good. No cruise COVID. Get this no CC, as I like to call it. No COVID. We've already, you know, we've already tested. We came back negative. Everything's good. I'm tired. I've got the post-vacation, you know, I need to sleep for a week thing going on. But other than that, yeah, everything's great.

Yeah, the vacation after the vacation. Yes. Aren't nearly enough of those. It's Amy Robinson, everybody. Red Fraggle, wherever you find her. Amy, we'll see you next time. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. All right. I think we need to do one of those.

What we need to do is figure out how to make Paul and Storm invite us to do TMS live on a Joko cruise. Instead of us reaching out, we need somebody to reach out to Paul and Storm and say, hey, you need to be great on a Joko cruise is Scott and Brian in the morning stream and they could do a live show there. You should maybe see. if they're up for that. Oh, I see. Yeah. And then they'll reach out to us and say, are you guys up for that?

We'll be like, uh, if you could get us, yeah, maybe, you know, all expenses paid. Yeah, well, we're good. Yeah, I guess we'll do it. Yeah. You want to do that? Let's do it. Uh, they are under the impression that Scott doesn't want to do it.

Oh, is that true? Is that true? I don't know. You were anti-cruz for a while until you just went on your, more reasons. Yeah, but I never told anybody I wouldn't do that. I don't know why they're under that impression. I might have said that on the show and maybe that got back to him. That I didn't,

didn't want to go on the cruise that you didn't like cruises oh they didn't like cruises potential disease fest that they can be yeah i don't know who told them that but yeah i guess so they could have got it from that um yeah if they caught if those guys oh yeah is that what it is yeah paul think you're not into into you're not pro cruises well i'm not anti cruise not really pro cruise i hate ted cruz yeah i don't like ted cruise penelope cruz is great tom cruz is all right in certain contacts uh i don't know who else who's another cruise cruise. I can't think of anyone else. Anyway, it is

a disease fest, but, you know. No more so than just going to the mall or going to, you know. Oh, I don't know about that. I'll bet your chances on a cruise ship are worse than a mall. But it depends on the cruise ship, obviously. If you spend three days in the mall, I think they're probably equivalent. Yeah, I guess

that's true. With the same, with the same 500 people, you're stuck in the mall, then you'll, it's the same. You go five, six days straight in a mall. That's probably better right. Okay. We're going to take a break. When we come back, my sister Wendy will be here. We got a little thing to do with her. So we'll get to that in a second. But we need some music to break things up. What do you got? Continuing our week of rock, we've got Lucius Malcolm, who goes by, Call Me Malcolm. This is a brand new debut solo album, past, present, and future regrets, which just came out now. Now, if you like bands like Rise Against, Jimmy Eat World, Don't say those, you know, rise against Jimmy E. World. Alkaline Trio, the Menzinger's.

Kind of melodic punk. Really, really good stuff. This is, like I said, the brand new single, which comes from past, present and future regrets. It is called Zero Summs Game. Here is Lucius Malcolm. I quit drinking to try drowning instead I run to the murder and the smiles that I blend Yeah

Come out swinging I never connect I'm self-medicated by a major negress Yeah But in the meantime I straighten my tie Laughing as I'm dust in the scene If the crime I can't find anything To pacify This could be heaven

This could be heaven But in my signal Consuming the days and setting far to my hope, yeah Too many bullets, I'm losing my grip I am full of head, but I shoot back from her help, yeah, but I swear it's the last time This could be heaven, but there is hell to pay today This could be heaven,

But then we held a pace someday, yeah Drink up with all the thoughts you could eat Before I beat my retreat For the last time And I swear I think I've never conceived The rain to concede only some times This could be heaven, but there is how to pay today

This could be heaven, but there'll be how to pay, But they'll be how to pay This could be heaven, But there is how to pay today This could be heaven, We found me how to pay someday, yeah. is keeping track of your air time. UltraData introduced a unique gadget called the time tracker. The device attaches through a simple Velcro strip and picks up your cell phone activity

by sensing the antenna transmissions. The time tracker can display your current monthly bill and even keep track of free off-peak usage. Wiling away the afternoon in the tub is more than a way to wash our bodies. The morning stream. There's no such thing as fair in a fight to a death and a thing. All right, we're back, everybody. Welcome back to the program. Please tell me who that was one more time.

Yeah, that is Lucius Malcolm. He's the frontman for the UK scout punk band, Call Me Malcolm. But this is first solo project. It's called Past, Present, and Future Regrets. This is the brand new song, Zero Sums, Game. Nice. All right. Stack your boxes. Wendy's coming on. My boxes are stacked. Good, because that's where they need to be for this hard-hitting, psychological thing we're about to do. All right? So get ready for this. Here we go. Wendy. I mean, random. Not a chance. It's Wendy, my sister, Wendy Dunford, joining us from the Twin Cities. I don't know, just a thing. I've been working on a few tweaks, a little Lodd. changes to some of the audio on the show and so we decided to redo yours and that's you in the

middle there by the way Wendy I mean random not a chance I don't know why I don't know why Martin Short is talking to you that way but whatever that's actually I think from the movie inner space I believe yeah yeah yeah Meg Ryan played Wendy and no no Wendy was the his co-worker right something to that effect because she comes up to him to finally date him after he's saved the world and he goes not a chance Yeah. I used to think that movie was so good. And it was good. It was fun. I don't think it's that good. It's all right. Anyway, my sister, Wendy, she's here. She's going to talk some psychology here today. She's an actual practicing therapist. And the rest of us are just slubs who come to her altar and say, please help me. And we got a text that wants to ask you a question. Wendy, are you ready for this? yeah all right this came to 8014710142 feel free to use it if you'd like uh this is from he says

his name is crondo in the chat when he can he told me that it was fine if i used his name in a later discussion uh is there a certain level of professional burnout that is actually permanent and dangerous what can one do to challenge the burnout they feel and get a fresh perspective says crondo well crondo let's find out um i assume when he says professional burnout we're just talking about like work stuff right like assume so yeah maybe the maybe the principal's the same to matter what we're talking about but i assume that's what he means so but professional burnout would would lean towards work as opposed to uh personal burnout yeah unless you're a developer for the game burnout um i think it's uh specifically a professional burnout so let's you know somebody who works too many hours or

spend a long time doing a thing and they're just tired of it or whatever can that sort of thing become, in his words, permanent and or dangerous? Yes, dangerous, definitely. Permanent, kind of. Those are really good answers I gave you. I think, well, let's just talk quickly about, you know, we observe the brain a lot in MRI and fMRI scans, and we make a lot of educated guesses on stuff, right?

But we don't, I mean, think of it, I don't know, sometimes I think how far do we still need to go to really understand the stuff? It's exciting, right? What we know so far is exciting and the more we learn. But a lot of times we're just seeing a region of the brain light up and we're like, cool. And we don't really know how it's happening. Exactly. However, there are a couple of things you can kind of see changes over time.

And that's really where a lot of our good data that comes from is watching a brain morph, the same brain or the same brain's morse. Anyway, but there is some research to show with burnout that, and if you've ever experienced burnout, you'll be like, uh-huh, this is obvious, that it actually affects your brain's functioning, which is real, like, it's real. And there's some brain imaging studies that show that your amygdala is actually enlarged and the frontal cortex is thinning. And now let's remind our dear listeners what that means, the amygdala is of the fear center

part of the brain. It's the part that senses danger all the time. If you struggle with anxiety, dysregulation, your amygdala is on flea all day, right? And that, so they're showing some enlargement there. Yeah. Yeah. And then they're showing thinning in the frontal cortex, and that is where our executive functioning. See, that feels, that feels permanent to me when you say thinning, like this literal physical thinning of a brain thing. That sounds bad. You don't think of it thickening. No. Yeah. It's hard to get back to. the thickening. And the reality is, I mean, from what I know, it doesn't do be permanent. It can be reversed, but it is slow and you have to do something about it. You can't just keep going,

doing all the same things and being like, why isn't this getting better? You have to behave differently. And sometimes that is like very, very real break from whatever professional thing you were doing in order to recover. What's hard, and we don't have to spend a ton of time going into the socioeconomic reasons for all of this, but there are a lot of cultures that don't, well, there's one mainly that does not allow for any breaks. You know, very little actual vacation time and, you know, sick leave and different things are how this would be rectified. But when it's very minimized, you know, in terms of what you actually have, it's, it's hard to recover from burnout. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah. I mean, I've known people it takes a year, year and a half to really fully recover.

from burnout. So maybe we should pull this apart a little bit. What's professional burnout versus what's sort of recently I was talking to someone about their family dynamics since they were children. I always find those folks are burning out by about age 40. And that is playing the role they've always played, you know, making sure everybody's happy, your people pleasing, those kind of behaviors that usually stem from a very young age, it's like we run out of energy to keep them going. And so burnout tends to be more likely then, as well as professional burnout. This is why we have midlife crisis as people. It's a lot of things will coalesce around that time frame of running out of energy to do the same things we've always done. And maybe professional pressures are a little different at that stage too. So any other burnouts I'm missing? So we've got professional, maybe personal, a caregiver. Caregiver burnout. Relationship burnout. Is that a burnout thing where it's

like you're just sick of the person you're with or I don't know how that would work. Well, let's, let's actually take the, we're going to use the brain scan just as a foundation for a second. So anything that's going to keep your fear responses high and your thinking straight low. Those two things are maybe an interesting framing for burnout of, I'm more on edge, I'm more anxious, I'm more stressed, I'm more afraid. And then I can't think. I mean, I feel like when I had COVID, I had the brain fog pretty hardcore. Yeah.

And I thought, oh, is this what? Like, the frontal lobe thing is off. Like, it's not working. It's really difficult to do some basic stuff you could always just do. And so that's one of the common descriptors when people are experiencing burning. out is just stuff that used to be no-brainers for them are suddenly really frustrating and difficult or not as fast or as good up. So there's a couple versions of this.

And maybe burnout is a word we should be more careful as we define. But I think it's when you just lose motivation, the willpower to keep doing it. And there's like a almost a physical inability to do so anymore. And I think that's where the brain stuff actually shows up. Yeah. Is that our brain going, hey. you you did this too much now i'm not going to let like is it really just not letting us can you motivate through it yeah like what do you yeah how do you do that because your brain's pretty

powerful it's like your number one deal you know yeah it is your number one deal and it will not just write itself without you changing and that's i think so let's just take a random made-up story i don't know if this is the email or or anybody else but let's take you were raised in a home where being productive or almost perfectionistic was tied to being loved. And it was maybe not explicitly said or anything, but it's like, hey, in this family, we blah, blah, blah. You know, you have your like levels of accomplishment or all of my siblings were this. And so I must be that as well. Or, you know, clearly mom and dad's faces are smiling when I accomplish a thing and they're frowning when I am not.

And so you get this sort of from a very young age, you can have this productivity and accomplishment and your value is what you produce. And it's very much gets wrapped around into a story about who we are. Right. And now go through your life. I went to law school and I did my this and that. And I'm now high producing cog in the capitalist wheel. And I am running out of energy to keep making everyone happy so I'm lovable, right? I'm reducing this to just like a thread here, but kind of that idea of like, what do you do? You are starting to lose brain capacity and feel miserable and you don't want to get out of bed in the morning. And yet your value as a human being is tied to getting out of bed and producing.

It's really hard to say, you know what, we're going to stop. I mean, I think we've had a code word forever for what we all know. need is a sabbatical, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, I'm just taking a break from, but it's like burnout prevention, it's burnout treatment, but only a select few in this country anyway, get access to something like that where they're paid to take a break, right?

Right, right. And anyway, so, so kind of this idea of like, you're, if you're tied to your job from a psycho-emotional value perspective, right? Like, I am nothing without this professional. title, the money I make or whatever, taking a break is, you know, tantamount to dying. Like, it's a huge burden to think I've got to stop in order to recover and get better when all I've ever done is produced in order to feel good enough, right? So you got to have someone help you unwrap that because if you are not willing to

stop and take a break and recover from burnout, it doesn't happen on its own. It just doesn't. I wish it did. I think we all believe, like, oh, I'll take a vacation and I should be good. And then you're not. That's usually how you know. If you take a good week off and you are doing some things you love and getting plenty of rest and sleep and eating yummy food or something and you go back, like, let's do this. That's not burnout.

That's, you're running on the end of your energy and you need a break, right? Yeah, that's good. Versus that vacation doesn't do one dang thing. It just makes you feel worse. that's a good sign you're probably not a good spot i've had that before where a vacation did nothing for me like get to the other end of it and you're like well i i feel like i was maybe even more stressed out on this vacation yeah it's like that especially with with you know folks like us who work for themselves and feel like you know oh by taking a vacation i'm neglecting all these

things that i myself have told myself i need to do and so it's much tougher than a boss saying yeah don't think about work for seven days we we our brains don't do them yeah or knowing that that place has four other people that can make sure to cover for you while you're gone so when you go when we go it's different because there is nobody it's us it's yourself and so you can't really say to yourself oh don't worry about it we got it while you're gone who does nobody exactly yeah so yeah well and and and for both of you and maybe other people like if productivity is so important that you might be filling any small moments during a break with work stuff, thinking you're going to get ahead, right?

Like, oh, then I want to do this when I get back or I could just. And so the problem probably is for most people, because we can work from anywhere, usually, right? Or catch up on something from anywhere because the Internet is everywhere and there's maybe some work you need to do you can do or something, right? it is all willpower and it's all decision and boundaries about like taking a break and most of us are not great at that right so you might be thinking you're giving yourself an advantage but what you're actually doing is reducing any chance for a break to be a break um now if you're not experiencing burnout you're just be like that was kind of a productive vacation okay but when you are experiencing burnout you will uh and you and you keep behaving in such a way i mean you're not it it's It takes longer. In fact, some studies are sort of naturalistic studies, sort of that kind of is more

you ask people who've been through it and how long kind of thing versus, you know, following someone around. The average is like one to three years for full recovery from burnout. Like to the extent. Wow. That's a lot more than I thought you were going to say. You're re-thickening your frontal cortex and shrinking your amygdala. It takes some time, right?

So some other studies have pointed to like up to a decade for, people to fully feel like themselves again. So, yes, it's serious and it is really, I think because of the word burnout, we can feel that in a lot of contexts. I think we're not always seeing it as the seriousness that it is. And the, I don't know, it doesn't have a diagnostic-y sounding word, you know what I mean? Yeah. It's a hard, burned out versus like a major depressive episode, recurrent, you know, 304.5 on the

diagnostic manual, right? Like that, it just doesn't seem, I don't know, but it is incredibly serious in terms of just how long it takes to recover and what you sort of need to do to feel like yourself again. Right. And what's really tricky is most people who get to burnout tend to be pretty ambitious and they're always going for stuff and, you know, burning the candle at both ends. And it is such a personal flip to living a different way. to recover that it's pretty tricky and people will just keep going i mean if you look at kind of our current model it's like well then just throw some antidepressants at it or throw um i mean i would i would assume most of the peruvian jungle is full of you know silicon bros who have hit

thrown out and and you're going to try whatever it takes in order to try to break it like how do i get to back to be myself um and most times people will throw at whatever has made them successful in the past, they'll throw the same kind of thing, which actually is part of what got you to burn out. And the real answer, and this is the hard answer, is finding actual balance in your life. And I've worked with a couple people, it's like pre-burnout, and you can see it coming, and it's already kind of beginning, and we can really course correct. That's the best outcome I've seen. It's the best time to get it. Yeah. Makes sense, right? Because then we're like, all right, let's make, here's some boundaries for your new vacation. Like, you don't.

don't get to take your phone, you know, or whatever. Yeah. And you start to build other structures, like truly taking the weekend off, stuff like that. And you're done working at five and creating boundaries that just have never, didn't exist for them. And you can prevent some of these more serious cases. Yeah. And so if let's say you're, let's say you get to a point where the burnout is like burned in, like you've really let it go.

And you, and now. knowing what you've just said, like, you're looking at two or three years of what is kind of a physical recovery. Yeah. Not kind of. It is. Like, what are your chances? That seems like really low success rate to me.

I don't know why. Because it's not like you can just stop for two years and go, well, that's it. I'm not doing nothing. Yeah. Unless you're some billionaire who sold everything off and now can just sit around and do nothing, that's not most people. That's hardly anyone. No.

It's not. And most people just keep. working through the feeling burned out right and then I mean we're a nation of alcoholics that's one way we treat it and truly like getting through the night right and then go doing it again the next day like there's I think sometimes and we're pretty good at this is finding escapes or real you know other realities to enter to leave the current reality right like that's one way we handle our own realities.

And so I think there's a lot of time you can just keep kind of living that way. And so it takes, it takes some effort to do it differently. And so here's just a couple of ideas that are, like, we're going to back off from the three-year recovery plan real quick to just what are some scientifically proven treatments for daily management, right? whether it's severe all the way to like pre-burnout prevention kinds of things these things have are pretty peer-reviewed studies stuff so here's one that's so simple and hard and anyone who does real steps with me will know this is like one of our main focuses um because

it is so powerful and works so well but is hard to do without support and that is making daily recovery a thing. So every single day. So the research is pretty overwhelming that if you can have a daily recovery event or effort, and we can go through some of those, it's way more important than waiting for a weekend or vacation. So it's got to be every single day. Now, someone may say, hey, I play a video game for that. Cool, right? If that does it and you feel refreshed. I'm ready to kick it the next morning. Cool. Um, but it, it cannot wait until your vacation seven months from now. No, it works the opposite for me. If I play a video game anytime during the work day, I feel like I'm neglecting something else. So that one would definitely

not for you. Not for me. Well, and so, so if we think about it, it's got to be something that happens every day. Right. Because that should work and that should feel like a, a respite from work. But Yeah, it's changing my mind to accept playing a video game as a little short, hour-long vacation from work or half an hour or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And so whether it's whatever your thing of choice is that makes you feel really like down,

like I don't mean it down. Like I've powered down my work. Powered down. Yes. Actually, let's use a cell phone analogy. I think I might have mentioned this before, but I think it's really helpful is this idea of you can have your phone unplugged, but it's not recharging, right?

Like you can be off the phone. I mean, you can, okay, take your actual phone. I plug it in and it's charging or I can just not touch it. I'm not using it either way. So what are you doing on a daily basis that is unplugged versus charging, recharging, right? And that's what a vacation often acts like. It's like, well, I've unplugged, right?

like I'm not working, working, but are you actually recharging? So the idea is to find something daily that helps you do some of this recharging. So the studies show that, you know, frequent breaks, more important than long, like annual vacations, not enough, right? And especially even weekly breaks, right? So if you just only have something you look forward to on the weekend, that's tricky. So a couple ways to do this. Speaking of smartphones. so they had people participants in lots of these studies write regular journal entries right so they could read like in the natural their natural strategies people were using to combat burnout and what they found that the work from home thing really is tricky and this was done before COVID so um I think everybody was working from home yeah exactly uh I feel like Scott Scott has a really good method of doing this with like the hammock hanging out with the dog in the hammock yeah or or just, you know, hanging out with the dog, that sort of thing. I need to be better about just saying,

all right, I'm going to go have some cat time for 30 minutes and play string with the cat and phone off. I find chilling with the dog is like this immediate feeling of, I mean, it's not even that revolutionary. I guess people probably spend a lot of time with their dogs. But for me, it's like I'm having a crazy day and I'm in between stuff and I just know I need some mental energy to carry me through the night.

Like Thursdays are really busy. So today's going to be nothing. and if I can just spend 30 minutes on the couch nestled up with Rainer who looks like a leper right now because her skin's so weird but it doesn't matter she's got these issues anyway that is all I need sometimes to be good to go you know I don't know if that's rebuilding any walls in my brain but it's it's definitely a good thing when I do it no it is and what you're doing is you're soothing your nervous system right you're an animal this is why animals are therapeutic, right, is that they, your heartbeat regulates itself with

the animal, right? Or the cute overload or whatever happens. There's lots of good things that happen to a brain. If you're an animal lover, of course not for people who hate animals. That doesn't work. But regulating your, and a hammock is a version of the same idea of like putting yourself in a position of rest. Right. So yes, you should like, on a couch. That is an important daily tool you can use. Now, think about this for a moment, though. What do you do when you tend to lie on a couch is you then engage in scrolling or whatever, right? That's not what we're saying, but this is where like a hammock with a book or a hammock with a dog or a hammock by yourself, you're putting yourself in a rest position

and regulating your nervous system to some extent, right? But if you add energy, all the time. You're never actually disengaging fully. And so it doesn't take a ton. You're not to lay there for two hours to get the benefit. You can lay there for 10 minutes. But what we've learned, and I should get the numbers correct on this, but like, you know, as a whole, we are, we really struggle with silence, right? Because now we can fill it 100% of the time. So for some, sitting there in silence is like a death wish. Like, oh, no, my brain doesn't. Blah. Like the silence to quote, you know, is deafening, you know, and you're so used to always listen to something.

Is there, I know there's like, for sleep, you've got your 90 minute cycles. Is there an equivalent for taking a break? Like is a 20 minute break better than a 30 minute break or something like that?

Like, does it? I'm not sure exactly on the numbers, but I do know five minutes is effective. So I think kind of like a nap. There's too long for a nap. And then there's just the right amount for a nap. And we vary as people, right?

But I think it's like sub-30 is the perfect nap. And anything over that, you run the risk of thinking you're in third grade again and you miss the bus. Like, you don't know where you are and it's confusing or disorienting. I hate that feeling. But there's like an energy-giving time frame for a nap. And people kind of have to figure that out, but it's usually sub-30. So I would say any kind of resting, probably sub-30. similarly is probably the most effective anytime longer now if you are laying there and can just

be with your thoughts and you're meditative and you feel good i mean i don't think there's a problem until you're ready to get up but for many people that's just long and they don't spend a lot of time in in the quiet of their own minds and so build and think of it is like you know stretching getting more flexible or something like that where you try for five minutes and see how what happens your brain and then get up and go live your day and try it again the next day and just see if you can start because we can train ourselves like think about anything you've done multiple times your brain is doing incredible things like let's say you go on the same walk every single day the same route um your brain will stop noticing lots of

things because it's used to it now and they're not threats so it just kind of stop seeing certain things right um and then anything out of the ordinary your brain is going to pick up you have just manipulated your brain by doing something similar every single day to do some of the magic work that it does, which is to take a million points of stimuli and ignore most of them. And then just give you what you need to survive, right? So you can do the same thing with any kind of training. You can train yourself to rest. You can train yourself to nap for 20 minutes. You can train yourself. You just have to repeat it and do the thing. And eventually your body and your brain is like, oh yeah, the couch, this is what we do on the couch, is we lay back.

and we rest. And that's why a hammock, I think, works really well, is it's not used for anything else. Yeah, right? You're not like, also watching TV. It's not in front of a computer. Yeah. Yeah, totally.

And so, I'm going to put my, I'm going to set up a hammock right here in the room for the cool ones. I like it. You get one of those like sitting, the sitting kind that just enough reclining, but you're still kind of sitting. That might be good. They have those are pure one imports and now there's no more pure one imports.

They went away. Yeah. so let me i know i was sad about that okay so real quick let me go back to just these small couple things you can do so putting your smartphone away in these journals what they found is two groups of people who had the problem with conflicting work and home and this is 2014 by the way so before everyone was doing the same problem um but the work home conflict what they found is that people who put their work whatever which is usually always your cell phone this point, right? They just put it away. They didn't take, they didn't do texting or email after work

hours. Those people recovered way faster than the ones who didn't have that line, right? So these are people that are already burned out in order to do these daily things to try to help, right? And so disengaging from work and not using work phones or work email or that type of thing, very important to recovery and so have a have a timeline like when do you want to stop working now so you guys do shows at night like you're kind of all over the map so you just have to find when is your off time back in the day it would be eight to five and then you were off right like find find your five to 10 p.m. Where is that five hours where you do hobbies where you relax where you hang out with friends where you know where is your I'm not working time and then protect it right

create boundaries around it. Yeah. And then more journals, more data on this. They found that spent social, like I was saying, some social activities really, really helpful in protecting against burnout. And it can be, you know, lots of versions of that. Other things like lying on the couch, doing nothing, napping. And then physical exercise, there's just nothing that works the same way.

It's just the most effective at getting our brains happy. I was a lot better at this during the height of the pandemic, during the initial part of the lockdowns because I had all these minis. I still have them. But I'd paint them and I basically would just carve out an hour a day and just paint minis. And I think I need to go back to saying, all right, from 1230 to 130 to 130, that is my, I'm protecting that time frame. That is my respiratory, even half an hour would be fine, 1230 to 1 or something.

when you tell people to put their phones away what does that entail like just not use it for a while it's still in your pocket but you're not thinking about it you lock it away do you turn it off like what do you suggest people do in that regard because i'm guessing that's a huge thing today people are just so tapped into that thing they don't and they don't know where to put it or what to do with it yeah so one thing we're working on in real steps right now is having everyone cold turkey eliminate a social media drug

and it can be anything. It doesn't even have to be social media we're just calling it that. It could be something else, right? But to find one thing for the next month that doesn't actually make you feel good at all and you don't realize it. So what we did is everyone opened their phone,

found their, you know, you could do it with your eyes closed, you find the app, your thumb knows right where to go, clicks on the app, and the first thing you see, we had everybody sort of check how it made them feel, right? And the responses were like, stressed, fear, anger, you know,

like the stuff that the first thing you click on for your drug of choice is fear, anger, doom, stress, hopelessness, not great, right? And so just for a month, we're going to, everyone's just going to take a little break from, and it could be as simple as like you go through your social media feed, and anything that makes you feel crappy, you mute it. But you have to take a second and feel it. Like, ooh, that does make me feel jealous. Mute.

That makes me feel sad or frustrated or scared. And this is not to avoid feelings. It's to avoid feeding yourself a steady diet of crap. Right? And so reducing some of that just and living your life without it to try it. So it's a really powerful strategy to go through. So I'm going to have you guys do it right now. No, let's do it.

Okay. Pull up your phone. Yeah. And I want you to open your crack of choice. Oh, I really, you asked me at a weird time because I'm actually cut way back on stuff like Twitter. Okay. That's fine. So pick anything, though.

All right. It could be an email from your mother-in-law. Whatever it is. Oh, my gosh, dude. Okay. I'm glad I don't get those. That feeling. Okay.

So find your first thing, the first thing you pop up, that pops up. Yeah. And then take a. second and just look at it, read it, whatever it is. Look at the picture, read it. And just sense in your body. Like, what is your physiological emotional response to the thing you're saying? Oh, that's an interesting way of thinking about it. My physiological response is, oh, it's like, okay, I just opened up Twitter and it defaulted to the for you, page, which is kind of a nightmare now.

Yeah. And my first thought was, I'm preparing for the worst. I'm like, I mean, I have this feeling of like, oh, crap. I hope these first few thumb swipes don't reveal something stupid, like a feeling of like, I don't know, anticipate, yeah, not anticipation, but dread, I guess. A little bit of dread, yeah. Dread's good. Okay.

And anticipatory angst. So we could call that your amygdala swelling just a little bit. Yeah. Right. Okay. So, Brian, have you done it? I have, yeah. And I have, like, almost completely given up Twitter.

I reply, like, if I see a notification that somebody tag me in something, I reply, so Twitter is almost completely gone for me. Facebook is the thing that it's like, all right, if I look at one thing on Facebook, I doom scroll and just keep going. So I've pulled up Facebook and just the thought of doom scrolling has given me that like, I'm going to waste so much time if I stay in this stupid app. Okay. So time wasting, again, dread.

So you both just took one second and went from living your life to feeling dread. Right? All the choice. Thanks a lot, Wendy. Great. You're welcome. It's been great. So what I would suggest for someone and this, and again, this is just the best.

baby small step to try. And that is now mute whatever the thing is. Let's say it was a post from your neighbor and pictures of this raging party you were not invited to. Okay. Just mute it. They're not told they're being muted. You're just going to take a month free of hearing about your neighbor. Okay. And then go to the next image. If it's Instagram or something, the next one, what is it? And if it's not, doesn't make you feel like the world's a better place. or that you're cared for or that there are cool things to learn or it's NASA.

I don't know, like whatever the things that feel like good and inspiring and a lot of people do this where they were like, well, I follow these artists and it's really cool.

And then when they really go to how it makes them feel, what they find is either maybe there's jealousy or there's drama in that weird community and they're like, wait a minute, there's actually way more

than I'm just looking at their art. And then others is like, I look at their art and feel awesome, right? That's what we're getting at. And that's just right there. Think of this as like small doses of the good kind of dopamine or, and that's, you know, curating what you're seeing that actually makes you feel good, inspired, energized versus curating what you're seeing, not on purpose, but algorithms doing it for you to create rage and resentment and all the other things that really get likes and clicks.

I mean, that's how this works. So you would just take a little time, designate for yourself, maybe a month off, six weeks off or something, where you're only seeing things that feel good and just see what freaking happens in your life. And then you realize like, oh, hold on, I have energy for this or that, right? And then oftentimes people, go ahead. I was going to say, is that your, is that, how do you, how do you gauge whether your amygdala wall is building up again? like how will you know well you'll feel it pretty quickly like in terms of you can get real angry and you know all that like fun resentment feeling or not resentment feeling that um righteous indignation and how can this person be so stupid and just like the power of that drug is real and so suddenly

if you're not having that on a regular basis it's kind of like having sugar cereal for breakfast over and over and over, and then you can't. So you eat some protein or something that actually gives you energy, makes you feel better. You'll just feel better. Right. And so that's the thing. You'll feel better.

If you don't feel better, well, then maybe there's something else going on. But you should feel a little boost of energy. You should feel like a few more minutes of your life opens up. That's a really common experience. People are like, whoa, I suddenly have time. A thing you thought you had none of, you suddenly can feel you have more of. And so you're just, here's the thing, you may be less tempted to go to that app because you're only seeing things that are like happy go lucky and that doesn't drive you there.

So you're like, oh, do something else. Right. And so everyone's going to have a different response to it. And that's just be curious about it. See what happens. But what we're, in essence, if you take these daily ways to reduce burnout, one is to not give your precious life energy to something that doesn't matter to recovery. Right.

And most of us are convinced that whatever. we're doing online is for work or it helps me feel informed or we have so many good lies we tell ourselves but the truth is if you don't check with your body and your emotional response you're lying to yourself it's your brain telling you a story like oh this is fun and it's because it loves dopamine um and so check check with your body and your emotions to see how something impacts you and then you can play around with you know not not imbibing and see what happens um And then, you know, go back to it and see, like, oh, yeah, I didn't miss this or, you know, whatever it might be. There are a lot of people who have quit certain behaviors because they're not good for them.

This is historically true. And so when you're stuck and you're feeling crap and you don't know where things are coming from, it's kind of like finding out what you're allergic to. Why stop eating the cheese and then slowly introduce the cheese and see what happens. Problems come back. Yeah. Yeah. That's always a good feeling. Overall, though, I would say this like versions of detaching from work is really important for reducing burnout risk and recovery.

So you have times and limits and, you know, sometimes, you know, pre-pandemic I used to have people do this where, you know, if you worked from home, they would put a line on the floor from their office to their other living space and they could only be dressed for work across that line. and then if they're not dressed for work, they can't come back. They have to get redressed again. Kind of ways to just create, there is a boundary in my life between my work and my life. Really hard to do for a lot of us, right?

And so finding ways to create some of those boundaries would be good. Then practicing small de-dress things that your nervous system gets regulated, soothed. So, hammock with the dog is a perfect example, nap, hanging out on a couch. Nice walk, fresh air, big glass of water. All this stuff we know is good for us actually is good for us.

And then if you're religious or you're into meditation or any kind of brain-centering activity is also incredibly powerful here, is just gets your brain in a totally different space. You're thinking different thoughts. You know, again, it's like humans need the diversity of a and balance in life. and because work can just consume everything, it will, right? And so finding some ways to set some of these boundaries and doing them in small ways is, and then if you can take vacations, really plan a restful vacation rather than a stressful kind.

If you can take weekends and make sure there are a couple hours every weekend where you are really giving yourself something that you need to recover. You know, we're creatures of habit as well. And so breaking some of this can be pretty tricky. But with some concerted effort, you know, you can prevent burnout. You can heal burnout. You're just got to, you just can't keep doing what you're doing. Yeah, you can't.

And it doesn't just stop. You have to do something about it, which is often the theme here in Wendy's segment. Take care of your own stuff. Take out your own trash. You got to, you got to do the work. There's no freebies out there. Sorry. No supplement you can take will make you.

feel less burnout. Keep trying the red pill. I keep trying the blue pill. Neither of them work. Sure. My guess is if you do a lot of mushrooms, you might think that you're taking care of burnout, but you might only be delayed. I haven't tried that, though. Yeah.

We should actually have a whole session on a whole session, a whole conversation about mushrooms. Yeah. Because we're running into more and more accessibility and use and then and recreational slash therapeutic use. not guided therapeutic use and we're finding a couple of things emerging people just escaping

reality in a really fun new way of escaping reality that is therapeutic but like it also is really hard to live in your normal life when the color blue is the most beautiful thing you've ever seen if you just take a little much from. I met a guy a few weeks ago

who was coming to Colorado to study psychedelic psychology or psychedelic psychedelic treatment and learning how to like figuring out what the doses are that benefit people but don't go so far as to like you say, ooh, I love the color blue. It's awesome. Yeah. And I never want to go back and talk to my wife. Right. Exactly. Because that's, that's the risky run. And there's some really cool stuff happening. I mean, I don't know if you guys remember, but it was probably a couple

years ago. I was like, hey, everybody, the future is psychedelic. You heard me predict that. But it is on its way. And, yeah, the microdosing is kind of what you're talking about here, where smaller amounts that are effective, they're trying to figure out exactly what that is. Where that line is. Yeah. The old lyric.

There's some awesome stuff. The old lyric, everything counts in large amounts. Do not apply that to mushroom dose-taking. Okay? Don't do that. I mean, it counts. If somebody has a question or they've had their own experience or I mean, you can talk about your fun recreational thing all day long, but more from a

therapeutic perspective, it'd be fun to use that as a launching path to talk about some of the I would like to talk about it because I don't understand it at all. Like, I don't get how we went from, I felt like the last time anybody talked seriously about quote-unquote mushrooms or psychedelics was like, I don't know, 70s, maybe part of the 80s or whatever. And it felt like it kind of disappeared and all anyone talked about senses. Yeah, it was the 50s and 60s when the researcher was. really getting started, and then the 60s kind of turned the public opinion against it.

And lots of folks in it, it's a bit of a, yeah, the history of it is really pretty fascinating. The book, oh, dang it, my brain will not remember his name. He wrote the Omnivore's Dilemma. Oh, um, oh. Michael, no. No. I know this. Hey, who has Google?

Dilemma. That does. I'm looking right now. Here it is. This is from a formula's nonfiction book written by American author. Michael Poland. Poland. Paulin.

Paulin. P-O-L-L-L-A-N. So he wrote a book about psychedelics fairly recently that I think has helped popularize a little bit of just like, here's a dude who's written other books we like, and he goes through and explores some stuff and the therapeutic stuff. And this kind of, he goes through the history, too. It's a pretty good primer if you're interested from that perspective. But the research has started up again. It was basically illegal and just looked down on for so long. And so we missed a good 20, 30 years of research that would have probably been better had we had access to it.

Because it does some really, really cool things to the brain that nothing else does. That if we could harness can really alleviate. I mean, it is drug-resistant and treatment-resistant depression. It's the only thing we found that can touch it in a way that nothing else can. Anyway, so we can get more into it, but if anyone's interested, his books, his books good. Yeah, he also has some great stuff on. And it's his own personal experience, too. It's kind of fun.

His stuff on Netflix, I can't remember this show. What's it called? Whatever it is. He's got some stuff on Netflix. That's very good where he talks about food and origins of food and stuff. Yeah. He also, fun side. note, his brother-in-law is Michael J. Fox. So there's that. Oh, really?

Tracy Paulin. That would make sense. Yeah. I just happened to be in his Wikipedia page and it says, famous brother-in-law, Michael J. Fox. Anyway, all right then. I hope this helps Crondoor with his question and query and any of you out there experiencing perhaps symptoms of burnout, whether they're work-related or otherwise. Let us know your thoughts and feelings. You can keep those emails coming or send us texts about it, and we'll talk about it on the show. And do, I think, look forward to an eventual episode, if not sooner than later, a discussion about what the hell these mushrooms are all about, man. I want to know. I want to understand. I talk to somebody who says his microdose, something he did, which probably legally dubious, changed his life

for the better, he claims. Sure. And I imagine a lot of them say that. And I'm, you know, curious. Why? Why? Technically, probably will change anybody's life. Is it for the better? Is the Yeah, that's the question, right? So find out more on a future episode. Wendy, as always, it's a pleasure. Do you have anything you'd like to promote or push or say or do? No, I'm coming to Vegas and I'm excited and you still need to give me assignments. You'll have them. We're going to, during the game thing, I want to do like a Lucy booth where you just get to go and hang out with Wendy and ask her questions. And beyond that, we want you at the table for the live show. Oh, yeah, I've got plans for you. So don't worry. Don't you worry about that. And we'll figure out we might need to talk offline because, as is the case with Vegas, things could change. Things might be changing with regard to what day things are happening now. We're finding out. Oh, okay. So don't make any firm plans around the TMS events because those TMS events might change.

Oh, all right. Okay. That sounds good to me. I would just plan to be in that city for those four days. Yeah, that's my house. That's all I got. Yeah, that'll be good. And you're coming with Misha, which will be fun.

Yeah, I get two thirds of my sisters will be there. That'll be fun. I would argue the most responsible. I wouldn't just argue it. Yeah, I would guarantee it. Anyway, so that's coming up. So watch for that. And Wendy is always a pleasure.

We'll have you back next week for more. Have a great week and we'll see you then. Bye. Bye now. Yeah. All right. That does that. That does that for us there.

Yeah, that does that. It sure does. I do want to do a quick note here. I want to mention this. If any of you out there are musician types, all right, especially electronic musicians. You don't have to be. It can be whatever. What about folk musicians, Scott?

Whatever they want. All that's fun. Clezmer. Sure, skiffle. Sure. Why not? Bringing the skiffler's. Finish death metal.

What about that? Are they skiflers? If you do the skiffle, are you a skiffler? Yeah. And skifler's mom is hot. Skiffler's mom. Still got it going on? Oh, that's Stacey's mom.

Or no. Yeah, it's Stacey's mom. Yeah, that's it. Rest in peace, that guy. Anyway, if you would like to let us know, if you are musically inclined enough that you might want to take a crack at an arrangement and or new take

on the TMS intro theme, I want to do a little contest for that, but mainly I want to gauge interest first. So I want to see who's, like, sort of end with this idea. So send us emails or text and let me know because I'm very curious about it. I'm thinking about just shaking that up a little bit and having additional versions of our theme. I love it.

If you like the TMS Skyhawk one, great. Do a riff on that. If you've got something wholly new in mind, I'd be happy to hear it. So if you're a musician, let us know. It doesn't have to be a cover. It can be a totally original thing like Bo Schwartz did, which is a totally original thing or the guy that did the 70s, the morning stream, that guy. Yeah, that guy. Which is amazing.

Yeah, we love that. The morning and stream. His name is. I used to call him Goebers. Oh, that's right. Rob Go Gaborz. I think they actually say it, but I always said Goobers. Anyway, if you want to be one of those people, let me know I would love to hear from you.

Okay. Some shows today. Coverville, 1 p.m. today. Anything special going on there? You bet there is. Celebrating the birthdays of Poison. A friend man of Poison. Vince, not Vince Neal. See, I keep wanting to, Brett Michaels, I keep wanting to swap Motley Crue and Poison. They have the same hairstylist.

Brett Michaels celebrating birthday and Mark McGrath celebrating birthday. So let's just get Sugar Ray out of the freaking way now. But we'll slather it with a healthy dose of poison to help the medicine go down. Actually, I've got some really cool. I've got a country cover of a Sugar Ray song that will blow your mind. It makes you feel like, weird. Like, this song should have been done by, in-country style, from the get-go. I love it. Wow. All right. As well as some poison. I mean, you're going to get, you know, covers of Talk Dirty to me. Squeezebox, The Who's Squeeze Box, covered by poison, nothing but a good time, unskinny, bop.

Of course, every rose has its horn, because we got to do that one. But, and then you'll also hear some sugar rain. It's going to be a fun, fun show. Be there, 1 p.m. twitch.tv. slash coverville. Nice. That'll be today, one. Core at 5 p.m. tonight.

We've got a lot of gaming stuff to talk about, so show up for that. The Big Diablo 4 beta starts tomorrow if you pre-ordered, so excited to talk about what the hell that might mean. Tonight on Core, 5 p.m. Mountain Time for the live show, and you can check it out later on the podcast. If you'd like, we'll be doing Film Sack this weekend. I do not remember our movie. I don't either, actually. I don't just say that. It was something that we were looking forward to.

after the joy that Spree brought us. It's funny how much I still think about Spree. Breakdown. Oh, yeah, Breakdown from 1997, Kurt Russell, and a bunch of actors you know from playing bad guys, character actor bad guys in movies. Yeah, actually looking forward to this one. Yes.

I haven't seen it, but it is worth looking forward to because it is such a damn good movie. Sweet. So that's all coming up. Check that out this weekend. Patreon.com slash TMS is how this show is supported. and if you haven't jumped in yet, there's no reason not to now. If you'd never like ads, if you want pre-show content every day,

couch parties on the weekend, speaking of which, are we doing the... Yeah, couch party tomorrow. Playday, two weeks from tomorrow. Are we doing that Pedro Pascal thing tomorrow? I can't remember. Yes, the Pedro Pascal thing tomorrow. And prior to that, if you like to get your morning started with a little trivia, guess the connection.

Just follow Coverville. It's the only thing that I tweet because it's automatically done by Stream Labs OBS. So if you follow Coverville on Twitter, you'll get notification of what I'm giving away prizes if you can figure out what six songs have to do with each other. Nice. Check that out. Lots of reasons, though, to join. So patreon.com slash TMS is the place to go. For all other inquiries, head on over to frogpants.com slash TMS. And now, music exit. Music, we should place on music. Paul Jigger, aka Jiggerdad from Canada, wrote it. Hello Scotch and Bourbon. Today marks my fourth decade of escaping the womb.

Oh my gosh. Let's party. Big 4-0, man. No kidding. It'll also be my first week in my new role at my job, my first foray into a sales position. Oh, so if you get hit up by Jigerdad, just walk away. Just walk away. I'm very excited to challenge myself and take a new step in my career to celebrate.

I'm requesting the Dolly Parton cover of the collective soul song, Shine. I only found this recently and enjoyed it immensely. As always, love the show, though. Yeah, this is such a great cover. This is, you know, that... Dan, na, na, na, na, na, na, nina, girl. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, covered by Dolly Parton.

So, speaking of songs, covered in a country style, I'm amazed that I've never played this on the show. Came out in 2001 from her album, Little Sparrow. Here is Dolly Parton and Shine. That'll do it for us. We'll see you guys next week. If we don't see you this weekend, we'll see you on Monday for a brand new TMS.

lay me on the ground fly me in the sky show me where to look and tell me what will I find what will I find yeah yeah oh

heaven lets your light light shine now love is in the water love is in the air show me where to go and tell me will love be there will love be there oh teach me how to speak teach me how to share teach me where to go and tell me will love be there will love be there Oh Yeah Oh

Heaven let your life shine now Oh Heaven let your light shine now Oh Heaven let your life shine now Oh Heaven let your light shine Give me

Oh, give me a word, give me a word, give me a sign. Show me where to look and tell me what will I find What will I find Lord teach me how to speak Teach me how to share Teach me where to go and tell me will love be there Will love be there Yeah

Heaven let your light shine now Oh Heaven let your light shine now Oh Oh Heaven let your light shine now Oh Oh

Oh heaven let your light shine Heaven let you light shine Heaven let your light shine down Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine Oh, heaven let your light shine to be Heaven let your light shine down Oh, let it shine

Let it shine, shine. Yeah.