Welcome to “Ear Biscuits”. The podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time. I’m Rhett. And I’m Link. This week at the Round Table of Dim Lighting, we’re talking about where you been, what you been up to? I’m back. You went to Florida. Some people go there, they never come back. I’m back and I love the Red House. Some people start there and they never leave, Florida. Can I just say before I talk about where I’ve been, is as I’ve gotten older. And you are. It’s so good to come home. Coming home is the best part of leaving. Oh come on now. It is. Sounds like it would be a great slogan for a home goods. Coming home is – Coming home is the best part of going away. Coming home is the best part of leaving. The best part of leaving home is getting back to your house. I mean, and let’s be more specific. The best part of leaving home is coming back to your toilet. When you got a toilet that’s the best toilet. Yeah I had some bidet-less moments. Yeah man. Had some bidet-less moments. What do you love the most about coming back home? Well. Is it just the cumulative effect of everything being how you want it? ‘Cause I’m a how you want it kind of guy. Well here’s the thing Link, you’ve rubbed off on me apparently. I know. Actually, I think that you just got older, faster than I did. Because old people are routine-oriented and you’ve just always been an old person, I think is what it is. I actually spent some years as a young person. Well I have the, I’m not an old person but I’m routine-oriented as if I were an old person. We’re both old. And as you get older, the routine becomes more routiney, more important and also, might I say, I carry so much shit with me in my toiletry bag now. Like I know you’ve gotten the fanny pack, the thing that I’ve got. The man purse. Is the toiletry bag. And when I left for this trip, I have accumulated things that I need. For getting ready. Ointments, creams. I’ve got several ointments and creams. I’ve got – Brushes. Several things for this mane of hair that I have somehow committed myself to which is no small task, friend. Keeping it looking like it does. And it requires special creams and special hair dryers and. Hold on now, are you telling me you travel with your own hairdryer now? No, well. Because welcome to the club. Well I’m going to have to. You’re going to have to. What I discovered on this trip is actually, ’cause I spend half of this time in North Carolina which we’ll talk a little bit about as well. Oh, that’s right. And I got a hairdryer because we’ve got our cabin that I actually stayed in for the first time which is still not done but we stayed there, we squatted a little bit and of course, when you’ve got curly hair like me, that diffuser attachment that as a child, and really as a man up until four years ago I was like, “What this alien-like thing “that women put on the end of their dryers?” You talking about? Is it a vibrator of some kind? Oh come on now. The big disc. The big disc with the points. That has the points coming out of it. You don’t know about this? I’ve seen it. I don’t think you need it ’cause you don’t have curly hair. I don’t know, would he benefit from it? I don’t know how hair works. From what? A diffuser. No, he wouldn’t. It’s more of a curly. No what he’s been doing is working for his hair. Yeah he doesn’t need that. Thank you for saying that. You’re welcome. But I got this one on accident right? At Target, and not, it wasn’t just a diffuser that was flat. It looks like one of those things that lets you spy on other people’s conversations. The Whisper 2000? Yeah, you blowing your hair on a Whisper 2000. And there’s a new one, I don’t know if this is new or not but it did say on the box “Innovative diffuser technology.” And what it is, is. You’re such a sucker. The disc. It said it on the box. Well I got it because it was the cheapest one at Target that had a diffuser but I just stumbled into greatness. This diffuser is cupped. It’s concave. So when you go like this. He is bending over and all his hair is falling forward. This is the cup right? And you’ve got it on a low heat and you go . Oh so – Then your hair stays in a dome like this. So he’s gathering all his hair on the satellite dish of this thing. It’s so wonderful. Then he’s pushing it back up to his scalp. It’s so wonderful. I just, I would like to say that this isn’t a new thing but I’m so happy you found it. I’ve had the diffuser for a couple of years and it was a great discovery but the cupped diffuser. The cupped, yeah, yeah. It’s next level. Like it’s a ball. It’s like it’s a ball that gathers all your hair. Yeah and so your hair crimps up into a perfect ball of curl and then . Then when you let it go it’s just boom. And now. When you let it. I will say. Hold on, hold on, you just said, “When you let it go, it’s just boom.” It’s just boom. I did not do that to my hair today because I have the flat one at home. Your hair’s not boom today? I was able to pull it off but I got the cup one, it’s coming from Amazon so I can have them at home as well. But what you’re really moving towards here is when I would be staying with my nana as a middle schooler, sometimes she would take me to the beautician with her. I’d have to sit there and watch her at the beautician and you know they got that thing, it’s like they do the thing and then they move you over to the chair and they put the big dome down over your head. That’s a perm thing. It’s a dryer. But it’s more of a perm thing. It’s a dryer, but if you want. But that’s when your hair is set in a certain way and you want it dried. You need to get one where you suspend by your ankles. Nope. And drop your whole head into one of these things. I think I’m doing okay. Have you looked at me lately? Yeah you’re getting older, as you said earlier. Okay. Name an orifice, start at the top, name an orifice and I’ll tell you all the things I have in my toiletry bag for it. I don’t want to start at the top, I want to start at the bottom. Name a body part. Well I want to get the butt hole over with. Okay, currently I don’t have anything for my butt hole. It’s doing just fine. Thanks to that bidet. I used to carry hemorrhoid ulcer cream. So did I. Preparation H and I’m good now because the bidet has saved my B-hole. But what about a portable bidet? I had one of those. The camping squeezer. It’s like a sports bottle and you just put it down there and you just squeeze it with such force. Let’s not, we talk about butt holes too much man. Let’s just. Let’s move on. Let’s move on. All right. Ask me about another orifice. Ask me about another body part. Obliques. No, it’s too specific. Okay, I know face has a lot. But there’s multiple things on my face. Eyes, I got two types of drips. How am I not giving the right answer here? Because you haven’t said a body part yet, you’re just like face. Earhole. Okay, Q-tips of course. That’s a no-no. If you know how to use them, it’s fine. Okay, mark this you know? Let’s come back to this statement. Rhett is not a doctor and it does not give. Right. If you’re not a moron you can figure out how to use them. Earplugs, ointment. I had this prescription ointment. For your ear holes? Well let me explain it, it’s called Promiseb and I will, if Promiseb is listening I will do an ad for you. They’re not. It’s a moisturizer that I think is made with like Brazil nuts or something. I don’t know why it’s a prescription medicine but my dermatologist gave it to me for, you may remember I used to get redness, I’ve always been a little bit of a red guy. Okay. But I would get red splotches on the side of my nose and around my nose and you don’t really want to put hydrocortisone cream, which I also have in my toiletry bag on your face because it thins the skin. I’m starting to think you might need to go on a beauty channel. Then, I’m open to that. So I started using it and it completely eliminated whatever that eczema was but I also get the, I get the dry skin in the ear and so I just kind of take it, my little Promisebibble fingers that are still a little bit wet with it and I go. Just do that a little bit at the end. So I got something for the ears. And one eye gets smaller and they cross a little bit. Also, I have an ear and nose trimmer. That’s in there. Oh, hell yeah. Okay. Nose, also the trimmer but also my allergy medicine, gotta get in there. You snort that? I have an electric toothbrush that has a stand that I want with me at all times. I have my little mouthguard that I wear sometimes at night. I have a tongue brush. My toiletry bag, I got the biggest one they got on Amazon. It’s an XXL, I don’t know the brand. This thing is as big as a small carry-on. It has wheels. No, it comes with a strap that you can wear over your shoulder. Holy crap. And, so when I went on this trip, I had. Doubles as an anchor if you’re on a boat. I started this trip with four toiletry bags. What? So three normal sized ones and then just a Ralph’s bag. Dude. I started the trip and then I was like, “My life is so disorganized, I have so much shit. “What do I do?” You go on Amazon, and I had one delivered to North Carolina. XXX. And I spent 45 minutes going through, this is not my personality. I know. You’re rubbing off on me. I’m jealous. What was happening is, for me, it’s when the pain gets, the pain gets high enough. So like, the inconvenience of four bags and not knowing. I used to have a system and then it got mixed up. Now I took the four bags, I laid them out, I took the big toiletry bag and I got everything from the bags into the toiletry bag and I walked around with it in the house. Yes. And I was like, “Jessie look at this, all my stuff is in this.” Yes. She was not as happy as I was. No, it’s good that you did that though. I have a brush, I have a water mister. I have one, two, three. You should’ve called me. Products for my hair. I would’ve celebrated it. I have shampoo and conditioner. In travel sizes. Yeah, I just have so much stuff. Anyway, I’m feeling great. I’m proud of you. Because you know we’re going on tour. Oh yeah, I’ll have the big toiletry bag with me. I might start wearing it as a purse. The thing I have not done that I want to do is create an entire duplicate of everything. When I got home, I ordered. So that I don’t have to pack it every – Another toothbrush. Another electric toothbrush, the same one. Yeah. Just keep hitting it. And I was like, I want this bag to be totally intact and I don’t want to have to take anything out of it ever. Right. We travel a lot. Yeah. So I’m on my way there. But it was so, also the thing that I really fell out of, again, you’re rubbing off on me. The smoothie. Oh yeah. My morning routine which is like, you know, basically like typical middle-aged douchebag, you know what I mean? I get in an icebath, yes I’m one of those guys, I try not to talk about it a lot because I’m annoyed when I hear people talk about it. Yep. I work out and then I have a smoothie which is really just a collection of nutrients designed for optimization and not for taste. You wouldn’t want to taste it. I don’t taste it. I don’t taste it at all. If I could put a tube all the way into my stomach and just deposit it into my stomach, that’s what I would do. But I take my pills with it. I mean you could get a bottle that had a tongue depressor that was really wide and went all the way down, like halfway down your throat and it would create a slide. I could do that, I can open my throat. Go over your tongue. I take my big smoothie, it’s still in the canister, whatever you call it. The blender, the blender bottle. Pitcher? The carafe. Carafe? I go into my laundry room which is where the medicine cabinet is and I just take supplements with the smoothie. I’m becoming a robot in my old age. Yeah. So I was taken out of that routine. Your old age. You, you took your stuff with you in your shaker. I take my powder, I take my meal replacement powder. Yeah, which I think I might need to. And my, I have a few pills. I don’t really. That’s got protein and fiber in it. Which is why I might need it to do that while I travel. There you go. Anyway, when I was, I was just violently ripped out of the womb of my routine for two weeks. Oh yeah. And I just wanted to crawl back into the warm place and now I’m back and I did that this morning and it was just like, I feel electric, I feel electric. You feel at ease. But I did have a great time and I do think there is something about taking a break from the routine versus trying to maintain the routine on the road. First of all, even if you try to maintain the routine on the road, you can’t, it’s different. Everything about it’s different. It is, but there’s certain things. It makes me so happy to come back. That are non-negotiable. You gotta have your fiber. Like fiber. You gotta have your fiber. Even the young folks, you need your fiber. I mean we really got hooked on fiber in college. We were 20. Fibering it up. You’re not too young to start with the fiber. If you have a typical, Western diet, you’re not getting enough fiber. It’s just that simple and you need it. Psyllium husk. Yeah these boys. Give it a shout. That recently got colonoscopies together and had nice colons, a lot of that has to do with how much fiber we’ve consumed. So I’m happy. It’s a delicate ecosystem. I’m happy to be back but I will tell you, I actually did go somewhere and did other things other than just take a big toiletry bag. I’ll tell you about that in a second but let’s focus on grooming because we were just talking about that. Oh yeah, segue just waiting to happen. We do spend a lot of time with our heads and our hairs. We should sell a blow dryer you know? We could. We gotta team up with Dyson. Well I have been trying to figure out, is there a way to get, because I’m not able to use our, with your hairstyle and most shorter, to medium length hairstyles, the Mythical pomades work very well. Pomade doesn’t work well when you have really long hair but what does work well is our beard oil and our beard balm and our brush. Brush is great. This is all at mythical.com, we have a grooming collection and we have lip balm. If you got hair like mine or shorter, Mythical pomade. I use a clay pomade. I swear by it, it’s tip-top. Get you some. If you want to how his hair is. Try it. Constantly defying gravity, it’s with the help of clay. That’s nothing, it’s nothing, my blow dryer and then my clay, my Mythical clay, nothing else. Mythical.com. There you go. “Ear Biscuits” is brought to you by BetterHelp. You know what? It’s spring now, I’m thinking about getting outside more. I’m thinking about being even more social but you know what? You kind of gotta figure out exactly how social you’ll want to be. You gotta think about your social battery right? Because it can be easy to ignore our social battery and spread ourselves thin. Especially with social gatherings picking up after the winter. Therapy can give you the self awareness to build a social life that doesn’t drain your battery. Now you know, we’re huge advocates of therapy here on “Ear Biscuits” and we want it to be accessible to everybody. So if you’re thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try. It’s entirely online. Designed to be convenient, flexible and suited to your schedule. 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Terms and conditions apply, need to hire, you need Indeed. First stop on the trip. So it was Shepherd’s spring break. Yeah, as you know. Shepherd is your youngest son. And. He’s 15. He’s 15 and Locke’s in Miami. So we wanted to go to a place where we can kind of like spend a little time with Locke but also, go scuba diving. Florida Keys, Key Largo. Yep. Great spot for that. This is your third time going down there at least. Because you went with Chris and Ashley and you were talking about. You mean Florida Keys. The Florida Keys. I think we may have gone twice. Key West is a distinctly different experience than Key Largo. Oh really? Okay, so you told me about Key West which is like – Party Central. Yeah, going around on the bikes and stuff. What’s Key Largo like? Key Largo is way bigger. It’s interesting because there’s this road that is the road that connects all the islands. Okay. And there’s one part and there’s like a seven-mile bridge, that’s pretty interesting. Pretty far. But for a big portion of it and for most of Key Largo which is the first. If you look at the little, the archipelago or whatever it is, the island. Like just south of Florida, there’s a big one and that’s Key Largo. There’s a, you know those highways where it’s two lanes in one direction and two lanes in the other direction and then, but real estate in between them. Like businesses and restaurants and gas stations in the median? This is not something that happens very often in America but there are places where it happens and the Keys is one of them. But you’re not talking about the bridge anymore. Once you’re on the island. There’s these large portions of the road, two lanes in one direction, two lanes in the other direction, real estate in between them. Okay. And of course. So you. Houses and resorts and stuff on each side of the outside. So you tend to forget that it’s not, that both lanes are going the same way. It just, I feel like it kind of defines the way that it feels. Like it’s, because that setup is fast cars. You know what I’m saying? I was kind of picturing this just like, lazy little, sleepy little island vibe. But it’s just like trucks, going by on this road. And once you kind of get off of that road, it’s nice. But you can kind of still hear the highway a little bit. Especially in that Key Largo area. Okay. But the thing that we kept talking about was “Road House”, the movie. Yeah, oh because it was set down there? At least the new one. In a fake, I don’t remember what the old one was but the new one is set in a Fake Florida Key called Glass Key and Shepherd and I watched it because it was like okay, yeah, this is like a fighting movie with Jake Gyllenhaal and Post Malone is in it. I didn’t know to what degree he was gonna be in it and Conor McGregor is in it. And it’s just. People were talking about his walk a lot. They’re memeing his character’s walk. The whole movie is ridiculous. Especially Conor McGregor. Austin did great, he’s at the beginning. Okay. And I cannot say that it is a good movie. But what I will say is that apparently, it’s a memorable movie and especially if you go to the Florida Keys right after you watch it. We kind of watched it not knowing that and then a week later we’re in the Florida Keys. And there were so many “Road House” references the whole time because like, you know there’s a biker gang and you know, Florida, it’s one of the few places in America, maybe not, maybe there’s more places. But you don’t have to wear a helmet if you ride a motorcycle and lots of people are like okay, I don’t need a helmet. Yeah. Which is just a crazy, it’s just a crazy thing to do. South Carolina is that way. To ride a motorcycle without a helmet is just a, it’s crazy. You know, it’s like the most American thing that you can possibly do. But it only puts you at risk, so. I think that’s the rationale behind the law, it’s like well. It only puts you at risk but then like, when you show up at the hospital, we gotta put your head back together. That’s important for everybody else. Oh, so you’re talking about the medical infrastructure of Florida. Yeah, I don’t really know about. Is impacted by. My personal philosophy on people’s responsibility to protect themselves. Wearing a seatbelt, wearing a helmet or whatever. I understand the people who are like, “I shouldn’t have to do anything “if I’m the only one that’s gonna get hurt.” It’s like, yeah well I get that but yeah, we kind of have to kind of worry about you when you get hurt and now all of a sudden we’re like, the ambulance is taking you to the hospital. My argument is more of, do I like the government legislating, strictly personal safety? My, I don’t, I don’t like the feeling of that. I don’t like the ring of it but the practical application if you think about it, you know, it’s basically creating a cultural norm to wear your seatbelt or, I’ll go with another analogy. Like when we grew up snowboarding, nobody wore helmets. Oh yeah. And you know, I, we both suffered greatly, from. You a little bit more than me. Feeling like, the choice was reinforced to not wear a helmet. Now when you go out, if you’re just starting snowboarding or skiing. Everybody. And you’re not wearing a helmet, you’re like, well apparently I have to wear a helmet because everybody’s wearing a helmet you know? And whether there’s a law or not and I don’t think there is. It’s still the right decision. There’s this cultural norm, you’re reinforcing a positive decision that you know, it also extends to when you’re making decisions for minors and things like that. So I think practically speaking, it’s a good thing. Because people tend to follow these cultural norms. I mean I think that, I don’t know anything about it so I’m just talking out of my ass but I do that most of the time. The seatbelt law I think is simply about revenue for police departments. Isn’t that true? I’m going to, if you assume the best, it started out as, it’s safety. No, no but there, yeah I guess. So they can give you a ticket? No I know that obviously wearing a seatbelt is, even though there are some people who try to make the point that a seatbelt will kill you sometimes. Yeah, an airbag will too and sometimes you will, yeah but 90% of the time when you’re in a wreck, it’s better to have a seatbelt on than it’s not. Or 99, whatever the number is but I think that these laws are attractive for local police departments because it’s like, “Oh this is another reason we could pull people over “and they have to pay a ticket and it helps with revenue.” Right? Okay, I don’t know. That’s gotta be part of it. Anyway, I don’t know how we got off on that but “Road House”. You said they got a lot of people helmetless going down the streets. But then, well, in the middle of our trip because this contributes to the “Road House” conversation I met TJ and Ben for a little location scout. Right. For the show that we’re making. And that was very fun. I can’t, I’m not gonna tell you the specifics of the location scout because then I’m gonna spoil something for you but I will say is that we ate lunch at a restaurant that looked exactly like the restaurant in “Road House” and we were all talking about it. Then every time we brought it up, Jessie was like, “You keep talking about ‘Road House’, “I’m gonna have to watch it.” Then there’s this, they talk about Fred the Tree in “Road House” and then we see the sign for Fred the Tree. Then we’re like, well we gotta go see Fred the Tree. This is an attraction? What is Fred the Tree? I gotta say, even though it has a 4.9 rating on Google, I do not recommend Fred the Tree because you can’t get to it but they make you think that you can. What kind of tree is it? What’s the, you can’t even see the tree? You can see it, that’s all you can do. Well what did you think you were gonna do, climb it? That bridge, I wanted to touch it. But you can’t even touch it. Okay. You wanted to touch the tree. That bridge that’s seven miles long, that you’re driving on, right next to it, for most of the way, if not the whole way, there’s an old bridge that’s closed. That’s completely decaying and falling into the ocean. Oh wow. And in the middle of that bridge, there’s a tree that is growing up through the old road like a seed fell or something and that’s Fred the Tree and they make a big freaking deal out of this thing. If you navigate to Fred the Tree, it navigates to a parking lot. So Jessie and Shepherd and I navigated to the parking lot, we get out and I’m like, “Well now we gotta walk to this tree.” And you can see it. And you walk. On the old bridge? On the old bridge. People are like fishing off the old bridge and stuff. So it’s allowed to walk on it? Parts of it. But right when you get where you can kind of start making out maybe some details of the tree, the bridge stops and there’s a gap and just ocean and you can’t get to the part. You can’t get to Fred the Tree, you can just look at him. Oh that is a triggering image for me. That’s a recurring nightmare of mine. A bridge to nowhere? I’m driving on a bridge that’s. Well you can’t drive on it. It ends, but I keep driving. Right into the water. Just free falling. You have this dream. Yes, I haven’t had it in awhile, I think I’m in a good place but yeah, that’s my recurring dream. Sometimes the bridge is going real high. It’s like a ramp kind of thing and phoo, there I am and just being launched. Do you wake up? No. I had a nightmare last night now that you say that. But I don’t remember my fate at any point. I had a nightmare that is related to, I guess something that I saw in the Florida Keys now that I think about it. Shepherd and I got kayaks, I’ll talk about scuba diving in a second but we got the little ocean kayaks, to sit on top kayaks and because there’s a reef all around the Keys, there’s no waves. It’s very lake-like, you know what I’m saying? It’s kind of like when we went to that, that, in Fiji, when we were coming back from Australia, from the tour and it just like, it’s kind of like a lake. Yeah. It’s like this beautiful ocean but there’s no waves. Right. And so you can kayak all up and down it and people were talking about, if you go up there into the mangroves, you can see manatees maybe. So Shepherd and I going up in there and we found like this little path that you couldn’t even see until you got right up on it. To cut through and we came out into this lagoon. Like a path in the brush? A path in the mangroves. So the mangroves are like those big swampy trees. That kind of grow. Out of the water. They’re just bushes basically. Like thick bushes and most of the islands in the Keys are just mangrove islands where there’s not even any beach. It’s just like, they come right to the, they’re still important because they keep the islands there you know? They keep the, that’s why you can’t rip them out and build, they did a long time ago but you can’t really do that anymore. So you found a way through. Found a way through, we come out into this lagoon and in the middle of the lagoon there’s a crocodile. What? A saltwater croc and they had told us that these, they travel. And first of all, there’s all kinds of alligators, different species. Alligators in the Everglades but they kind of stay in the Everglades but the saltwater crocodiles migrate from the tip of Florida or somewhere, down to like, somewhere in the Caribbean and there’s not many of them. There’s a few hundred I think that are left in this group that migrate. Really? And they don’t, now in “Road House”, spoiler alert but you really shouldn’t care about having anything in “Road House” spoiled. There’s a dude that gets eaten by saltwater crocs, so they really, when you hear crocodile, you get a little bit scared because they’re bigger and nastier than alligators right? So we saw this crocodile but they had said they’re kind of shy. How far away were you from it when you spotted it? 100 feet. Oh. And it was like eight feet long. So it wasn’t one of the big ones. So you saw more than just eyes poking out. Eyes, head and back and tail. Like I could see, I could tell and I’m going for it. I’m going right at it. Okay. And Shepherd’s like, “Dad, you’re crazy.” I’m like, “They’re shy.” They’ve told us they’re shy, they don’t bite anybody, so I’m chasing this crocodile. Oh. Through the lagoon. It goes, I got maybe 20 feet from it and he’s just going away from me. But Shepherd’s scared. And he’s like, “You think he could bite the kayak.” I was like, “Yes, but he won’t.” Because he’s shy! And Shepherd’s like very, he’s like, “I’m gonna kind of stay behind a little bit.” You don’t want to fall out. I’m not gonna fall out, there’s nothing, I’m not gonna fall out, it’s like very stable and then he goes under. And Shepherd gets really freaked out at that point but he kind of went. I was like, “Yeah he’s off to the side or whatever.” You didn’t know where he was. So we kept going and we’re trying to find manatees, mermen, mermaids. Yeah, yeah. We didn’t find any of those but we found a bunch of cool, little. Did they think that manatees were mermen at first? It’s like mermaids are like beautiful fish women and then mermen are like pudgy, like the, like the guy in “Doom II” coming out of the oil slick. Yeah, right. Yeah yeah yeah. Well I think it was people that didn’t see exactly what they thought they were seeing, probably. Yeah. But you know. Naked fat men swimming. We had a really great time. You didn’t see a manatee. I didn’t see a manatee, I did see a manatee in the, when we were getting ready to scuba dive. Okay. Just hanging out in the harbor. I’ll take that story. Now, have you seen a manatee before? No. Because you know, when we were getting trained for for our Campus Crusade for Christ. Yes, for the summer. Panama City, is that where it was? We took seminary classes. El Caribe? And Christy’s grandfather passed away so we had to go up to the funeral. Oh yeah. And when we did, I think you went swimming with manatees without me. Yeah, Jessie and I and another couple went to these beautiful rivers that come out of these springs in Florida that are just this clear, see all the way to the bottom and they let you, they did at least, they let you just put on snorkel gear and fins and just swim up the river and it was just like these manatees, they don’t care about people. They love people and you can’t feed them or touch them but they would let you, they don’t care. But you don’t. You don’t and you shouldn’t because it makes them bad. It makes them into bad boys. Okay. When you start doing that kind of stuff. Didn’t see manatees, did see that crocodile, it was pretty cool. But then, we were gonna go scuba diving three times. We were gonna do two two-tank dives, you know when you say a two-tank. That means you dive using one tank and you come up, you switch out to another tank and you dive again. After a rest. Shepherd was getting over this cold and this cough and they recommend that you don’t, he was coughing real bad the first day. I was like, well I’m gonna go, I’m gonna go by myself and I dove and saw the first dive saw a shark. First time I’ve seen. I’ve seen a shark before but not. How big was it? It was like a six-foot reef shark. So a shark that could actually bite you which I was excited about that. Oh, was he shy? Yeah, he didn’t get close. I swam right at him though. Wow. They don’t do anything to you. Have you, they don’t bite people who are scuba diving. They bite people who they think are seals or something on the surface when they’re surfing. Is that what they told you? No, I just saw it on the YouTube. Okay. If you have food or you’re in a cage or something and you’re trying to provoke them, yeah. If you’re like, bleeding. And I saw a big ray, big stingray. Like big, turtle. It was a cool dive. Then the second time, Shepherd went with us. Because he was two days later was feeling a little bit better and they’re like, “We’re gonna do a drift dive.” Okay. And they’re like, “It’s gonna be a little rough today.” When they say a little rough, and I’m like, I take my Dramamine because I get seasick so easy. Did it work? I mean I would hate to have seen how I felt without it because I felt horrible with it. Ooh, yeah that’s the thing about it. So we get out there. Sea legs. Takes like 30 minutes to get out there and then you know how you have to get all the stuff on and I’m so tall that trying to sit and get the thing on and you’re trying to fasten things and focusing on something that is right in front of you while the boat is going and I’m saying, these waves were like five to eight feet coming through. So this boat, it’s going up and down and we get situated and they were like, we’re gonna jump off and then this lady is going to have this rope. And this rope goes to the surface and there’s like, it’s a floating flag. We’re gonna all drift with the current, with her and so the boat on the surface can see where we’re at because she’s holding on to this line. Okay. And we jump in and I guess I didn’t ask any questions or I didn’t listen, equally likely. We jump in and you know how, you let your air out of your BC and then you start going down and you’re adjusting as you go down and I’m like, “Boy, we are going down really deep.” You were following. Shepherd’s supposed to go to 60 feet. Yeah. So we had a guide with us, just me and Shepherd but we’re also with a group that has a couple other guides. And you know, I’ve got my little watch, tells me how deep I am and we’re going and going and going and I just begin to see the bottom and then I look at my watch, we’re 85 feet deep. What? And I’m like, “Whoa whoa whoa, whoa whoa, this is, “I mean I’ve never been this deep.” I don’t know what to do, it’s fine. It’s not like you’re gonna die but it’s unsettling right? Yeah. So I’m like, looking at the guide and I’m pointing at Shepherd and so we go up to like, 75. I don’t really know, he’s 15, he’s open water certified, I don’t know what the limit is. But, and then we just proceeded to drift in this, it was the most being in space. Because of the depth that we were at, we could no longer see the bottom and it was just endless blue in every single direction and we were kind of like, is it like? We wanted to see a hammerhead because that’s what they said we might see. That’d be cool. That’s an ugly-ass shark though. Ugly, it’s beautiful, it’s crazy that that happened. It’s crazy that that happened, it shouldn’t happen man. Maybe it shouldn’t have happened but it did and now we should appreciate it. It shouldn’t have. I mean I feel like it’s, there’s certain things that evolution created that I think are morally wrong. Ooh well that’s an interesting take. Yeah, yeah. It is crazy how it happened, it’s crazy. I mean you just don’t want, you just don’t want your face to just start clubbing out like that, like going to two, it’s like. Then why did it happen? And then the eyes are at the end of that. And the funny thing is. It’s like you don’t want your eyes out, that’s dangerous. But the funny thing is, is like. I also don’t think that snail eyes are, I think that’s an abomination. But from a creationist standpoint right? You don’t want to really put your eyes at the end of something that could easily just be lopped off by a weedwacker or like. Well that, yeah weedwacker. What is the, not evidence, what is the explanation if you’re a creationist and you just think that God made that that way? Versus that evolution created it. Because in both scenarios, neither one of them makes a lot of sense. I’m sure there is an evolutionary explanation, it’s just like well, one-time this shark got stuck behind a pole. Right and he wanted to see. And he was stuck behind a pole for a long time and the whole family was stuck behind a pole and then they realized that the one that had eyes a little bit further out. Yeah. Got, survived more and then they kept just running into poles and the next thing you know, there are hammerheads. I think from a creationist standpoint, it’s kind of like, you know, when you see one of those runway models, like one of those supermodels. Like damn her eyes. Her eyes are so far apart. Are really far apart. It’s like, that’s almost unsettling. Yeah but still kind of sexy at the same time. It’s strange. It’s alluring. And alluring. Yeah it’s alluring. So I think God’s like, “I’mma do that to a shark.” Oh yeah, so you’re thinking hammerheads are sexy. To God, yeah. Well that’s, you need to ask forgiveness. But I think it’s immoral. God made hammerheads because he thought they were sexy. Well alluring. Alluring. Alluring. I still go, I’m going with my pole theory. Maybe whatever they hunt they have to see around. Oh, so they can, so when they’re hunting something, they’re also hunting the next thing? No no no, I’m saying that like, the wider my eyes are, I can see you on both sides. But it doesn’t make sense that it’s the only shark that that happened to. It’s so weird because it definitely. Right. Because evolution is all about modification right? It’s about the repurposing of the existing things. It’s not like you grow wings. Your arms slowly turn into wings, all the same bones, it’s fascinating right? If you’re a bat, yes. But it’s modification over time. Right, right. So it continued and its evolutionary pressure pushes things in certain directions. Like one of the most fascinating things that I studied when I was really into this evolution stuff was the evolution of the whale right? Because. Yeah. It’s so fascinating that there was some sort of land animal like a hippo or something like that. Not a hippo, but like an ancestor to a whale that was kind of like that. You know, semi-aquatic. And then eventually, evolutionary pressures, maybe through food supply or something pushes them into the water and they begin to develop webbed feet and you can imagine these little modifications over thousands of generations right? But then the really interesting thing that starts happening that you can observe in whales is that there’s a repurposing of the, different bones but there’s also the migration of the nostrils onto the top of the head. To the top of the head. And the fusing of them. So there’s actually you know, transitionally, over the course of whale evolution, there’s nostrils that were like here. Front of the face. That kind of, they were kind of moved out and then they moved up. So there’s two blowholes basically and the funny thing is, is if you look right at a blowhole. It looks like two. It looks like a, it’s got like a membrane in between because it’s just the nose. It’s the nostrils that moved to the top because obviously that’s the best place for them to be because you want that to be the first thing that breaks or the only thing that breaks the surface. It’s really fascinating. Anyway, what were we talking about? Spotting a hammerhead. Hammerhead. But you were out there floating in the middle of nothing which actually sounds like a pretty boring guide. It was horrible. No hammerhead. If you don’t see anything, it’s bad. And then we did a shallow reef dive and this is when I started noticing something. All the coral, coral was dead. So much of the coral is dead. Like white? Yes. Ashy? And with that comes you know, lots less life. Lots less fish and cool stuff to see. We saw some really cool fish and saw some blue parrot fish and some really cool things but. Maybe a little sad. Very sad. So then we get back up and I’m asking the guides, I’m like man it just is, so all that like white coral that’s broken, that’s just dead right? And they’re like, “We had a major bleaching event.” This is something that’s happening all over the world right? Because ocean temperatures are increasing like crazy. It’s you know, climate change, very complex but one of the things that’s happening is the ocean is taking a lot of this temperature increase. Like a heat sink, I don’t know how it works. Lots of crazy shit is happening and will continue to happen. The jetstream or the Gulf Stream, whatever it is, might stop. Anyway but the Great Barrier Reef, it’s bleaching. They lost a huge amount of coral in the Keys because of how hot the water got last summer and it’s gonna get hot again this summer. And there’s all these people doing all this really incredible work to restore the coral and there’s some people who are breeding heat-resistant coral and planting it and then there’s other people who are like, “Well we don’t want to do that.” So we’re supporting it in this way. There’s people, just multiple people. It’s funny ’cause I talked to one group that was doing the heat resistant coral and then I talked to another group that was just doing something else and they were kind of like, had a difference of opinion but they were like, but we’re all trying to address the problem. That was super sad, I’ll come back to that when I talk about a book that you’ve read that I ended up reading while on vacation. And the kind of way that all these things come together. If you think that’s sad, don’t let me tell you about the Drake Kendrick, Rick Ross beef, oh my God. So sad. But go ahead. Well maybe you tell me about that next week. Okay, yeah. The dive that I was most looking forward to was our last dive and it was a night dive. I’ve never done this. You’ve got to and Chase was telling me, “This is the best, you’re gonna love it.” So it is what it sounds like, you dive at night and you dive with a light and the way they did it on this particular dive is they take you out at sunset. The good, well first of all, I didn’t tell you about trying to get back on the fricking boat after that drift dive. Yeah. The boat is going up, up and down. Like how am I gonna get on this? Because there’s a ladder. It’s like slapping the ocean. Oh yeah, and you have to get on the ladder. And you’ve got this heavy. Oh yeah. No one realizes how heavy the equipment is. You see people on movies here and oh they’re just walking around. But it’s a lot of weight on your back and in the way the ladder on the boat is hinged right? So it’s like this. So it’s hinged at the top and the bottom is freeflowing. Flapping. And I think it’s just so as it hits the water, it doesn’t kill the person who it’s landing on. But I kind of put, I grabbed the ladder and when I grabbed the ladder, the boat went up and then came back down and it’s like boom, like slamming. Then the guy was like, “You gotta put your weight on it! “Put your weight on the ladder!” So I got my one foot on there and then we went up and down again. Oh God. But it didn’t flap. Because my weight was on it. I got out and then Shepherd got out but that was harrowing. But the night dive. Shipwreck. It was the best dive because not only was it a shipwreck, it was at night. But this was the first shipwreck that was a, it’s like the ones we did in the Caribbean where it was like an intact ship. Oh, cool. A ship that was like a hundred feet long. How deep is this? 45 feet. Okay, that’s good. So at that depth, in the night, zero visibility without a light? So you start at sunset and you see the light slowly go away and they were like, “You’re gonna get down there “and there’s turtles settling down for the night.” Oh. And there were turtles. There were sea turtles, green sea turtles that were finding their little place to kind of like settle in. And they were very particular about these animals are going to sleep right? Don’t shine the light at their face. Huh. Because if you shine the light at their face, A, it blinds them in the same way that it blinds us. But also it messes up their rhythm because they’re like, “It’s nighttime, whoa the sun’s out.” Whatever, you know they get confused. Oh. They’re dumb, they’re dumb. Yeah. They think a flashlight’s the sun, they’re not real smart. Okay. We’re better. Don’t get twisted but there’s all these sea turtles settling down for the night and we’re shining on their butts you know which kind of eliminates that. And they just hold their breath all night. Yeah. I guess they might go. I would hate to have to do that. I wouldn’t really be looking forward to sleeping if it involved holding my breath. I wonder if they go up, like wee take a pee break. Oh, I’m sure they have to at some point. Just get a little gulp of air, they don’t sleep all night. But then they go up in the dark, I don’t know. I should’ve asked this question. But this giant ship that had lots of holes that I wanted to go into but they weren’t quite big enough to know. It wasn’t like that one that we did, that me and Shepherd did where we went into the ship and went all around. Okay. You couldn’t go inside the ship but I would stick my head in and shine it all around. There’s like fish doing stuff and then by the time the dive was over, like if you cut your light off, you couldn’t see anything except the other lights. Oh wow. And it was a little unsettling. Because I’m constantly worried about Shepherd. He’s a 15-year-old. Yeah. Not paying a lot of attention to anything and I’m like, I’m the dad. I’m responsible. Try to be. You know, can’t be too much about me having fun here. So I’m constantly checking him, checking his air and making sure he’s not gonna leak or something you know? Because everything feels a little bit, the stakes feel higher when it’s nighttime. Same thing as with a night shoot. We’ve only done a few night shoots. Night shoots. Everything’s different with a night shoot. You feel like you could trip on anything, you’re trying to stay awake. It’s a totally different world. I don’t like it. I don’t like shooting at night. Oh I do, the part I don’t like is not sleeping. Highly recommend a night dive though and boy. If your light malfunctions and then you’re just floating out there. I almost took two lights. Yeah. But I was like, “I’m with these guys and they both have lights, “what are the chances that all of our lights go.” Yeah, but when your light goes, unless they shine a light on you then they have no way to know where you are. But you can see them and you just swim to their lights and hit them on the back and say. Oh that’s a good point. My light’s dead. Stay with me. Okay, yeah. That’s right, you can do something. I think I would just sit there, “Oh no, no I’m gonna drift away.” I will say, I’ve made this observation about scuba diving and I think this applies to a lot of things which is, while I’m doing it, there are times when I’m thinking, “Oh I just wish I was back at the hotel.” You know what I’m saying? Because it’s like, it’s a little bit, it’s hard. Especially when it’s like you’re sick. Shepherd threw up after that. When we got done with that drift dive. It can get cold. Wasn’t cold there right? The water temperature was, they were wearing, the guides were wearing five mil. Because it was cold to them. I don’t remember what it was, but it’s beginning of April in Florida. So it wasn’t anything like July in Grand Canyon which you feel like you could just have a bathing suit on. So you’re a little bit cold, you’re getting kind of seasick. Yeah. But then when you get back and you start thinking about what you did, you’re very glad that you did it. And I’m trying to get better at I’m in it right now, oh there’s a turtle settling down for the night. I’ll shine a light on his butt and see what happens. Trying to really take it in and enjoy it as it’s happening. I know what you’re talking about. You really have to, you’ve gotta get past the discomfort and really start to, I think there’s a certain level of practice to know how to enjoy it. Oh yeah. Anything that takes work and that has discomfort. The longer you do it, the better you get at it. Yeah because you kind of know where to put your energy. And when you get – And you know when it’s, this is the best part. This is the part that I’m supposed to be enjoying myself. You’re not like, is this it? Am I? Is this where I’m supposed to be having fun and then you have expectations of how much fun you’re supposed to be having. And once you trying to buoyancy down which I’ve kind of got that. Yeah. I’ve kind of dialed that in. Yeah. Where I’m not, like once we get to where we’re diving, I just control my buoyancy with my breath at that point. I don’t worry about the BC anymore, so. But it is a, it’s a skill that takes a few years unless you’re going every week. Yeah. As much as we’re able to go. It’s a few years. I had to watch a refresher course. Oh yeah. Little 10-minute refresher about what do the symbols mean. But okay, I had one of those moments where something that I’m reading and something that I’m experiencing in life have this sort of interaction, I love when this happens. Some sort of synchronicity. Okay. And so you told me about this book a couple of years ago and then when I found out it was gonna be a show, I was like, “Oh I gotta read this.” Because when you told me about it, it sounded really interesting. Yeah I’ve talked about it on here, “The Three-Body Problem”. Yeah, and it’s, you know it’s a trilogy. “The Three-Body Problem” being the first of the trilogy, I just started the second one but I read the whole thing last week. And just the first one. And boy, I cannot recommend it highly enough. Now if you don’t like science fiction, you’re not gonna like it because it’s hard science fiction meaning that this guy’s really smart and he’s actually. There’s stuff that he’s saying and talking about is like, he’s got reasons to think that it’s grounded in some sort of scientific knowledge. Not that I understand any of it but I understand enough to be able to appreciate it and kind of be wowed by it right? I don’t know if you remember, like just the chapter about the proton unfolding and folding. Yeah. Every time he, every time he introduces a concept I’m just like ooh. Right. And then the other thing we didn’t talk about is, it’s a much more sophisticated story but it’s interesting how close the, the premise is to that pilot that we wrote. Which pilot? The Kurt Sutterer thing. Oh. How? I don’t remember. So the same exact, you remember, I created that doc that was like 15 pages unbroken just text that was. Well it was like – The background of how, the worldbuilding and it was that there was an alien civilization thats world was dying. Yes. And they needed to get to another planet but the way that they wanted to get to another planet was by inhabiting, basically there was a spiritual element to it. So it was, they had figured out that they did have souls and your soul could be transmitted across the universe in a quantum way and they could inhabit and possess humans and that was how they were migrating. They weren’t actually traveling here physically, they were traveling here spiritually. That was the premise of the thing we came up with. Which is not exactly what these aliens are doing in “The “Three-Body Problem” but yes. I’m just saying the fact that it’s, it’s a. Yes, yes. Alien civilization that found a way to communicate and there were these transmissions that take place. Don’t you remember the transmissions? Yeah, yeah yeah. And they were in this, and I hadn’t read that book and I read this and I’m like, “Oh this is how it’s actually done.” It’s like, and I don’t think you had read that book at that point because you would’ve said something. I don’t know, yeah. But I was like, oh this is the same thing, aliens. And it’s probably, it may even be a trope. I don’t read a lot of science fiction, I’m going to now though because ever since I, and I talked about it a few weeks ago. This, the speedreading in quotes. Yeah. Which really was just a new way of forcing myself to actually pay attention and get through the text. And I’ve like, modified my reading and I actually, I read. Actually read, not skimming. I read every word and comprehended every sentence. I’m gonna recommend another novel I read in an afternoon. It was like a three-hour reading session, it wasn’t that long. It was a short, like 250 pages. Read that and it’s been a long time since I sat down and read a book and finished it and it gave me this sense of, “I can read.” I don’t just have to listen to books you know? Because I’ve gotten into this thing where I’m just listening to books. Right, I can read. I can read! I don’t think I can read, so I know what you’re saying. Well it’s tough, we’ve been you know, social media, attention span. It’s really hurt us. Yeah. But I sat down with “Three-Body Problem” and got like 50% of the way in the first day and then over the last week was, and finished it on the plane on the way back. But was the synchronicity with the book? Yeah the synchronicity and then I’ll say, it also happened while I was watching “Dune: Two”, the same thing because it explores a similar concept. So in “Three Bod Problem” he really, he talks about the influence of, there’s an anti-science movement that is being perpetrated by the alien civilization to stop the progress and first of all, spoiler alert if you want to read this whole thing. I don’t think this is gonna step on too much stuff. I don’t know how quickly they get into this on the show but. Oh you haven’t watched the show? No, I was waiting to finish the book. Ah, yeah it’s a spoiler for the show. Okay. For the first half of the first season. It depends on. Little late to say that I guess. It depends on, your definition of a spoiler is any information. I’m not telling you an outcome, I’m just telling you worldbuilding, premise stuff. But if there’s a certain amount of time that it takes for an alien civilization to arrive at Earth and they know based on where we’re at in our technological progress that by the time they get there, our technology will exceed their technology, the only way to guarantee that they will win any sort of battle is to stop our technological process. Our progress and the one way to do that is to undermine confidence in science, in scientific institutions and of course this is very near and dear to my heart because one of the reasons that I’m no longer a Christian is how my view of science changed. But specifically in the way that, the type of Christian I was which really didn’t let any, it created this false dilemma where there was some you know, science and religion were against each other. Which I actually don’t believe that now. I don’t think that that’s ultimately the thing but there is a, and then in “Dune” again, there’s this. Right. Religious thinking and religious commitments like cloud the way that you interpret events right? When I say religion, I’m not talking about just spiritual things but there are people who are just ideologically committed to something, left, right whatever. That can be religious in their thinking and then they interpret all possible evidence. Right. To make sure it falls in line with their pre-existing, their pre-conclusions. And it was just funny being down in Florida which obviously, you see some Trump flags. You’re seeing some of those. Not so much in the Keys. And I thought, I was like, “This is interesting because these people “are on the front lines of the effects of climate change.” These people who work for these dive companies, they go out, they see what’s happening to the coral. Yeah. They know that it’s because of temperature increase and they know that this isn’t part of a cycle of nature. Cycles, natural cycles of nature don’t result in unprecedented bleaching of coral in this way. This is, this is something that’s happening because of the way that we have warmed the planet. It kind of hit me that this is like, “Oh man, what are we gonna do about this?” Also, sea level rise and everything. The Keys are one of those front lines where people are experience, hurricane strengthening and intensity and in quantity. Every sort of impact resulting from climate change, they’re gonna feel the brunt of it literally. But we kind of live in this time where there’s this undermining of science and scientific institutions and we can’t even agree that we have a problem that we caused that we need to correct. You think it’s the aliens? No, it was so interesting because I was like, in the book, it’s very much like, oh this helps to explain. This helps to explain sort of the state of the world in this nobody, everybody thinks that everyone is in somebody else’s pocket and you can’t trust anybody. And of course, there’s whatever, the Russian propaganda stuff in the past couple of elections where it’s like, bots saying things to create and increase the polarization politically in America and that kind of thing. I don’t know, I wasn’t hopeful. I’ll just say when I was down there and I was like, man this is a huge problem. There’s these people trying to fix this but when you just get back to your normal life, the average person is like, “I just don’t have time.” Well. I don’t have time to think about this and I was just reading this book and thinking about how people. It puts it, it puts it on the forefront of your mind which, that is the struggle that I’ve had in watching the show. I haven’t finished season one because I’ve started feeling like it’s pretty bleak. And I think. I don’t have a lot of hope. It’s had an impact on my attitude. And it’s just like, it’s kind of been a bit depressing. You know, start to think about, impending doom. You know this impending doom of these aliens come in and everything that you’re talking about. I start to feel that in other ways. “Yeah, I’m thinking about my own death.” Of course I also rewatched the “Barbie” movie yesterday. That helped. No, because she was thinking about her own death too. She had her own existential crisis. But it’s a good ending. She can’t go, yeah what’s that sequel gonna be like? Not as good. And I don’t know if they’re going to order more seasons of this. If I knew that they had ordered a second season, I think I would finish the first season but now I’m on the fence. But the concepts that they set up, it’s like I enjoyed it because it was so creative and scientific and it exposes you to all of these different concepts and this pretty, they’re varied a lot. It’s very large in scope. I mean the guy is so intelligent. To be able to. And it was adapted by the creators of “Game of Thrones”, the television show. I’ve gotta watch it. It’s pretty high quality. Because it was my favorite book in a long time in just how innovative it is. But there’s just something about how susceptible we as a population are to having, all you need to do to succeed in stopping our civilization from addressing an existential problem like climate change is to just find one or two things that you can make people think are more important. And it’s just they did it. It’s so difficult to imagine any other outcome other than just, we’re just going to collectively experience the effects of climate change and then we’re just going to deal with them. And I, I’m hopeful that you know, through, I don’t think that the human, I don’t think the human race is gonna go extinct over this. And you know, I mean it’s possible longterm maybe. But I think we’ll figure out how to counteract some of these things, maybe with really crazy technologies that we really can’t even imagine right now. But we’re already experiencing the impacts of it and I was just talking to this other lady when I got, and I was like, “What were those fish?” Those blue fish that came in and they were all chomping on the coral, it was crazy. She was like, “Oh yeah those were the midnight blue parrot fish.” It was so cool, they were nuts. They were crazy, they were really big and they were all chomping and it was loud and you can hear it. Oh. She was like – They were eating the dead coral? No, they were eating some live stuff. They were eating something off of the live parts. Okay. There was still live parts and we were diving the live parts but we should cross over graveyards of coral to get to other parts. She was like, “Yeah and you’ll see some of the rainbow parrot fish, “you’ll see a few. “When I started working here, they were everywhere. “And now there’s just a couple left.” It’s kind of crazy that. So quickly. This person who, in their lifetime, in their time that they’ve been an employee at this place for like 12 years, they see this drastic environmental change around this species and this isn’t something that we think, we just don’t think about it. We don’t think about it. We’re like, “Yeah I think maybe there’s something to this “but I don’t know what I can do. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” Then if you were to even bring this up, it’s just so crazy how it is in the U.S.. It’s just like, if you just pick a random person and you bring up this bleaching, coral bleaching, there’s like a 50% chance they’ll be like, “I don’t believe that’s happening.” Or, “I don’t think that we have anything to do with that. “I don’t want to talk about it.” Yeah. And you’re just like, “How do you counteract that?” You can’t even have a conversation. Step one is agreeing that we have a problem that we should be solving. Right. Yeah, it’s ideological right? Yeah it’s just a commitment. It’s just like my ideology is so intact that you cannot penetrate it with a problematic piece of evidence or effect. And again, I’m not saying that this is just one side. Because there, it does happen. Regardless of your, but I’m talking this particular issue which is like the existential issue for civilization. There is one side of the political spectrum that is admitting that it’s a problem. Whether or not their solutions for it are going to be adequate is an argument that we can have but if we were in a place where the entire political spectrum was like, “Yes, we have a problem. “We have created it, now let’s solve it.” There might be somebody who says, “Well I’m a little bit more on the right “and I think that solving, “we can’t solve this problem in a way “that completely neuters our economy. “We need a strong economy in order to actually solve it. “We need private institutions to innovate technologies.” Okay, we can have that conversation but we’re not having that conversation. The conversation we’re having is whether or not it’s happening or not. Yeah and. And all you gotta do is just go and look at it and see it happening. I think the parallel with “The Three Body Problem” is that all of that is explored on a global, cultural level of all right, the really bad news, you don’t want to hear it, you got these aliens coming. By the way, they’re like you know, how many generations away? 450 years. Yeah. 450 years away. And so it’s like, “What do we do with this?” And even amongst the people who agree that they’re coming, there’s a great division. Right, right. People just want to be divided. That’s just, that’s what we want. We want to just be in our little group. It’s like okay, you can be in your group but we gotta do something about this shit y’all you know? We gotta do something about it. We can still, we can have a discussion about how we solve it okay? Let’s have a discussion about how we solve it. Let’s stop having a discussion about whether or not it’s a problem. Yeah. It’s fascinating. And it seems, it just seems like a, it just seems like an unsolvable problem. Because everything that is happening right now in terms of people’s trust, people’s ability to manipulate the media. People’s ability to like, literally make people say things that they didn’t say. It’s difficult to be hopeful. We’re, I mean. Yeah. What I will say is that we’ll make people laugh right until the end Link. That’s what we gotta do. Right until the whole world burns. That’s what we gotta do and you’re not, you haven’t done a lot of that. We will be making you laugh in the last few months. Oh I think I’ve done a good portion of it. A little bit early on in this. Maybe it got a little. Towards the end this got. It got a little bleak. It’s like you came back from, you were so excited at the beginning of this podcast. You were back home, you had all. Well I was face to face. You had your toiletries in. I was face to face with it. Yep. It’s so easy to not be face to face with it. I mean, you know, we can be, once we’re back here, it’s like, “I’m not really, I don’t experience directly “the evidences for climate change here.” Right. But the people who live in the places that are seeing the change and when you go and visit the places that are seeing the change, you’re kind of like, “Oh gotta get a.” Oh man I gotta think about this, I gotta talk about this. Something’s gotta be done about this. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well we didn’t solve it. No we didn’t, we didn’t solve it. No we didn’t. I do have a rec though. The other book that I read. Okay. Let me bring up the title, it’s called, “What Strange Paradise” by Omar El Akkad. Very. “What Strange Paradise”. Super short novel about a Syrian boy who’s a refugee and his story of, you know, getting out of his country. And like I said it, I read it in an afternoon on the beach and it kind of was this, it was like a spark for like oh I can read. I can read again. Why are you recommend it? Well I mean first of all, it’s just this guy is an incredible writer. This won a few, I was like, best novels of 2023 or whatever. I wanted to read something that was current, that was like people had thought was great and was short. That’s why I picked it, that’s why I recommend it. Timely issue, thinking about a whole nother global problem that we’re. Yeah, you’re really piling it on. We’re trying to, trying to solve. But I always find these books that put the question of other problems that people are experiencing in the world, tell it on their terms versus what happens most of the time is that you filter those people’s plight and their stories through your terms right? Okay. If you turn on the news, you’re like, “We’re being invaded.” You know? By people from other countries or whatever the way that it’s said and it’s just like, what does it look like to see that story from the perspective of the person who’s trying to change their lives? And it’s just, it’s a beautifully written book. It’s just you know, not a word wasted kind of writing. You know what I’m saying? It says a lot with a little, it moves through it very quickly. Okay. So “What Strange Paradise” by Omar El Akkad. All right, well I’m glad you made it back and I don’t know what else to say Rhett. You’ve made me. Will you cheer us up next week? You made me kind of existential. Yeah I’m gonna try to cheer you up. Blah, I’ll bring some bleh energy. To next week. Well I’m looking forward to it. As always, we want you to call us, leave a voicemail with your response to what we’ve talked about. 1-888-EARPOD1. EARPOD1. We’d love it if you leave us a review. Oh yes, please. You know, be honest but be complimentary if you can get it going. Well I’ll say it like they do at the end of your, when you go diving. If you had a great time, leave us a review. If you didn’t have a great time, leave a review on another podcast. Oh. You know? The joke I always hear is. If I did a great job, my name is Bob. If I didn’t do a great job, my name’s Rob. That’s right. That’s what I was trying. They all say that. I was trying to say that, but. They all say that. Hi, this is regarding the newest “Ear Biscuits” with Link and Jenna. Just wanted to thank you both for that and Jenna you’re awesome and I hope you have a great time with your aunt around Europe in Budapest I think you said. I really admire your adventurous spirit and your ability and willingness to just grow as a person. I think it’s just, wonderful quality to have and I hope you guys have a really great day. Thanks a lot, bye.