SIO234: Podcasting the Apocalypse

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:30 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to, I don't know, how's it going, Jamie, I got nothing, welcome to the end of the world, I guess, what's a jackfruit,

0:00:37 Jamie: Hello?, I got, um, Yeah. So, I bought a jackfruit today, um. I had no idea, and it was ridiculous. It was like, it looks like an avocado, but the size of a watermelon.

0:00:57 Thomas: Is this like your end of world thing, like, finally, I'm gonna buy a jack fruit, I've always wanted to, yeah,

0:00:57 Jamie: Um, No, Like, I just, so one time I was in the grocery store with my, my younger child, who will eat like anything you put in front of him, and we were walking past the fruit section and he picked up, uh, it's called a horny melon, um, and it tastes sort of like a cucumber on the inside, but on the outside, it was like yellow and spiky, and it was really weird. And he's such an adventurous eater, and he, you know, really wanted this fruit at the grocery store. So I bought it for him and he ate it and he loved it. And so he went through a phase where he like always wanted horny melons at the grocery store, and they very infrequently have them because it's very odd fruit. So anyway, I'm walking through the grocery store today, and it's like a scene out of a zombie apocalypse movie.

0:01:44 Jamie: The shelves are bare, like even the frozen vegetables are missing in the grocery store, store, but in the fruit section, where they usually have their unusual fruits, they have this watermelon sized avocado, and it just, yeah, I know, And it, just, it, like, exactly, it was so weird, and it just like stopped me in my tracks and I picked it up and I had no idea what it was or what it would taste like, um, but I knew my eight-year-old would find it hilarious And eat it, um, so I put, put it in the cart, and I bought this ridiculous jackfruit. I spent $30 on one piece of fruit. This was, I know it was ridiculous. It was my apocalypse reasoning, but I decided that's about as much as it costs for a thing of vodka. So if I just like modulate my alcohol consumption, it's like even.

0:01:43 Thomas: Yeah. Wow, weird, yeah, yeah, there you go, I like that logic, well,

0:02:33 Jamie: Yeah. So also it was worth every single penny I spent on it when I saw my kids' faces, when they saw what I came home from the grocery store with this enormous infamous jackfruit. Um, but apparently it's supposed to be very delicious and sweet and you can grill it and make like a pulled pork substitute. Um. So that's what I'm going to be doing this weekend is grilling some jackfruit because I bought a lot of it at the grocery store because there's an apocalypse.

0:02:43 Thomas: That's nice. Nice.

0:02:56 Thomas: Well, it sounds like Jamie's doing great living her best life, everybody. Uh, yeah. So a couple of notes first that I meant to say, um, as you can no doubt already tell I, this is going to be unedited. We're coming at you live. I just am not able to keep up. Here's the thing about me here. I thought, you know, maybe two weeks ago or so, or a week ago. God, it's been a long year this past few days.

0:03:20 Jamie: Yeah.

0:03:20 Thomas: Um, I don't know, maybe a week and a half ago. I, I, uh, I quarantine, that's already what I do. This is my, I joke about it, but for real, like I don't, um, I'm bad at going out now. I play hockey at nights, you know, so that used to be fun back before the world ended. But other than that, like, I don't go anywhere. I sit all, you know, I work at home. I sit too much, all that stuff. And I thought this is great. I'll be, you know, better equipped to handle this than your average person, uh, because of that. And then it starts to hit and everything starts getting canceled and I just fucking, I got so depressed and I was like, oh, I didn't realize that so much of my feeling okay relied on the world still going. I was like, I haven't literally nothing had changed in my day.

0:04:08 Thomas: Like I, for a while, nothing was different. Cause I stay in all day. I did blah, blah, you know? And then when stuff started just crumbling, I just really didn't take it well. Um, so I've been, I've been not feeling great, but it's, you now we're adjusting. And, uh, I guess the point. Point is, while on one hand, I keep thinking, oh, you know, I'll have these instincts because you see posts about projects and stuff that people are doing like, oh, this is great, I will do a new thing, and then I realize, wait, the bad side of my life being exactly the same as it was before is I have way less time because I am at my schedule the same, but my kid's schedule is definitely not the same. They are at home and I am raising two rambunctious kids and a baby, one of them being a baby that you have to watch, you know, like an eagle the entire time.

0:04:54 Thomas: So, uh, I have no time. It's been really hard to keep up with everything. I'm doing my best and we're adjusting. And not only that, by the way, it is, being a stay-home parent is fucking hard. I know we all already knew that, but Jesus Christ, like it's so hard. And, uh, yeah, we're trying, we both trying to have, Lydia has a full-time job, I still have my job, and you know, it's to try to do that and watch kids all day is just not possible. And it just goes to show how much child care, universal child care, when and if we get out of this mess, uh, you know, we've already been advocates for that, but this drives the point even more. Yeah.

0:05:37 Jamie: So I was a stay at home mom once upon a time and I I absolutely hated it, um, and hated it and really, really Desperately wanted to go back to work and, you know, felt at the time, you know, I remember like feeling really guilty. Um, one of my husband's friends had once sent to me that like, when I was like complaining about just how hard it is to be a stay-at-home mom and like adequately managed the care of like two young people and tried to find any space in there to like exist as a person. And I'd pointed out how awful I was for being ungrateful that I got to be a stay-at-home mom, which, like, yes, very true, but also really hard. And so I do not envy you having a little baby at home and trying to like do work because, oof, man, that's not

0:05:45 Thomas: It's tough. Yeah.

0:06:27 Jamie: Easy. Crazy.

0:06:28 Thomas: But At the same time, I don't envy you the the fact that your kids are the age that they need to actually be learning stuff, like, my kids don't need to learn any, just being in the world is enough learning for them at this age because they're, you know, they're tiny, but that's That's really hard for all the people out there trying to homeschool, wow.

0:06:40 Jamie: Yeah, no. Yeah. So, I'm, I've been very lucky so far. Um, my oldest logs into his computer and school is like four hours and he's done with the work super quickly, and then he talks to his friends and he logs back into the next class and he does the assignment and he is done. Um, and this is like I

0:07:01 Thomas: So, is that that's all already set up like through your whatever your school is, they've got online learning all figured out, well,

0:07:02 Jamie: Um I don't know if they've got it all figured out, but it seemed pretty obvious for like two weeks before school closed that they were preparing to close the schools, and And so they put up, they put a curriculum basically online. And so it's as structured as it can be, I guess. And so, they meet in Google Classrooms and they get their assignments and they have their books online and they're able to communicate with their teachers in real time and, you know, do science slide projects or whatever. And honestly, this seems like a much better way to do middle school than like interacting acting with like other middle schoolers and hallways and having to change for gym.

Uh, the 11 year old seems to really prefer this style, so that's that's good. So, like, have I would take this over being a stay-at-home mom to a toddler and a baby. Um, if I had to choose, like, if if there were a gun to my head, it was either, you know, homeschool an eight and eleven year old or be a stay at home home mom to a toddler and a baby, I would choose this.

0:07:16 Thomas: Oh.

0:08:08 Thomas: There's so much, I've had so many thoughts over the the days that I've wanted to share, so this is probably just going to be, we're going to be, we're going to be having a discussion of venting process, you know, of, of all our thoughts and, and a, uh, you know, people just aren't still aren't taking this seriously enough. And it just, it's, it's unbelievable. You know, it's, it, I guess I wouldn't expect anything different, but you know, I post about this on Facebook, that it really, it, exactly like climate change in that the scientists are all correct and nobody listens to them, except like the, the effects are a little more immediate, so that some people are listening to them. You know, and we're actually doing some stuff slowly, but you know, it, it just goes to show that it really is harmful, as much as we already kind of knew it here. Um, it really is harmful to not have good information.

0:08:55 Thomas: This just like, Oh, I, again, I'm sorry. I posted about this, but this is not, not more people listen to this than our friends with me on Facebook. But I had an interaction where I, you know being an introvert, being somebody who stays in, I don't go out my way to talk to my neighbors necessarily. I'm friendly or whatever, but I'm not, you know, I'm just not outgoing. Uh, but I was, I've been thinking of my elder, we have a, uh, kind of elderly couple neighbors that are next door and they're always very nice, but they're all, you don't know, we give the indication that they're super religious. You know, they have some, some very religious stuff, you Know, sticker on their car and stuff like that. But, uh you know so we're friendly, but I'm always like, uh I wonder if they're conservatives, I wonder they're Trump voters or whatever it is, but whatever. Um, and I, I've been thinking about them and I hadn't seen them in a while.

0:09:42 Thomas: I was worried. I was like, gosh, they're older. They're, they gotta be at least in their seventies and are they going to be okay? And so I saw the garage door open yesterday. And so it was like oh, I'm just going to go try to say hi.

Obviously going to keep my distance, but I'm going to go say hi from a safe distance and see what's going on and offer like, okay, if you need, you know, we, I can go out, you know I'm less of a risk obviously at my age than their age. So I can. Go out and do anything.

And uh, the guy was just like, oh no, we're still mobile, we're still going out, let us know if you need anything. I'm just like, fuck, man, are you, do you, what's, I don't know, I don't know, I'm not in their heads, I don't know what's going on, but it just, it just goes to show that if your sources of information potentially are Fox News, it might cost you your goddamn life in this situation. You know, it's really important to have somewhat of a grip on reality, you know, everybody's wrong about some stuff, we're all wrong about some stuff, but like the broad strokes scientific questions, we can be mostly right about the biggest questions, the most general questions, uh, and use the best advice available. And that's better than the system of information that the right wing is, is, uh, feeding off of. And it's really gonna cost lives and it's bumming me out and it just sucks. Yeah.

0:11:03 Jamie: Yeah. So I think that's all true. I've been sort of kind of zoning it all out because it's all so big. It's almost too overwhelming to take in that these sorts of experiences, I don't even know what to do in these circumstances. And then just at the end of the day, I still somehow need to manage to raise my children through the the apocalypse.

0:11:31 Jamie: And I think part of it, and I think you're right with connecting it to climate change, because I think what we're seeing now is what people who have been warning about climate change were saying our children were going to face. Maybe not through a virus or a pandemic like this, but because by the time our children where our age, there would have global economic impacts because of the destruction of the ice caps, or maybe some crazy virus would have come out as the permafrost thawed and and now it's

0:11:31 Thomas: Yeah they killed all the aliens that lived on the planet oh no sorry that's x files I think I'm mixing it up oh

0:12:04 Jamie: Right. Right. So something. So this is the sort of global scale crisis people who have been worried about climate change were warning us our children's generation were going to face. And I think there was this sense, right, where these really weren't our problems, or they were, but that we had to prevent them before they became the next generation's problems. And the timeline has just sped up, and instead of it being climate change that's left us in a humanitarian crisis because we didn't address it, it's this crazy virus that's spread across the globe and now we're the ones who have to somehow usher ourselves through, like, I don't even know, it's hard to even talk about it because it sounds like you're just being dramatic and and hyperbolic, but it's hard not to feel like this is the beginning of just a real breakdown of the U.S. society because it just, I just, I don't know, it doesn't seem like we're going to be up to the task, so

0:13:11 Thomas: We are not, yeah, we are, it's, it just, ah, gosh, it has been a process. It's been a long process for me, you know, again being raised conservative and thinking that America is just the best and everybody else is an idiot. I already thought America sucked especially after you know going into 2016, that was abundantly clear, and I thought America sucks and a lot of reasons on a lot different levels for a while, but this this just drives it home.

This belief that we are the best and we're just magically like better than everybody. It's just not true. Look at the graphs. We have like the worst response. It's going to be worse at this rate. It's going to be worse than Italy. And Italy was quite bad. You know, it's going to be, it could be even worse if we don't get our shit together and social distance and do all the things that we need to do. Um, we don't have it. It, ah, it's — sorry, so mad about this stuff — I also was going to say that if there's one thing that I think maybe we could do as a country, as America, you know, things we were good at back in the day, you now, in World War II, we were really good at, like, eventually, after being terrible at it for a while, if you've watched any, you know, World War Two documentaries or any, know the history, yeah, oh, quite a while after, for a little while as we entered the war, we were like terrible.

Everyone was like, these guys can't even do anything. But we eventually kicked it, you know, like refigured out our production lines and all this stuff. Why can't we do that with ventilators right now? I hope that we're working on that. I hope somebody, I've seen headlines here and there of like, this factory is going to whatever. If there's one thing, look, we, there's no real hope that I've seeing from what I've read. And we all have limited information. Granted, of course, there there's not really any hope of a vaccine for what a year, year, 14 months, because you just have to test

0:14:23 Jamie: You mean after we were attacked, right?

0:14:57 Jamie: Yeah.

0:14:57 Thomas: These things to make sure if you're going to give this to the entire population, essentially, you better be damn sure that it doesn't just kill you in like 10 months. You know, you have to wait and see and make sure that you have the data because that could be catastrophic. There is some, I guess the best hope that I'm seeing is maybe if there's a treatment option that either if there is like a malaria medication, I'm saying that maybe could could help treat it faster. And especially if it's something that already has been tested for another illness, then that's probably like our best hope for something fast to happen. But, you know, it could just not. And if it doesn't happen, then we're just doing this for the foreseeable future. We really are. But ventilators is one place where I would think, couldn't we, with all the disruption to our economy that's happening right now, and it's it's catastrophic.

0:15:52 Thomas: Isn't there an, aren't there enough, isn't there enough will for any company, whatever, whoever it is, just be like, "Fuck it. We're now a ventilator factory and we're going to increase that line that we need to get to to flatten the curve." Cause that's the main, from my understanding, that's one of the main bottlenecks is if everybody gets this at once, you run out of ventilators and instead of the death rate being 1% ish, you know, it has been different, different reports. We're not a hundred percent sure yet, but but something like 1% without flattening the curve, there's the hospital overflow and that death rate skyrockets. That could be 5%, it could be 7%, it could be worse depending on how bad it is. And I feel like ventilators are a thing that we could be trying to switch into overdrive and mass produce to try to ease that a little bit.

0:16:38 Thomas: But yeah, I don't hold up that much. I have no faith in the administration. And I'm rooting for them. This is not a joke. This this is not a political thing. I'm fucking rooting for somebody to get their shit together. And I know there are a lot of good people working on this, but, you know, Trump's delay in taking this seriously and claiming it was a hoax and claiming is the Chinese virus and all this crap is costing lives and we're way behind.

0:17:05 Jamie: So I did see, and I don't, I don't know what's real anymore, just as like a general statement, but I did see that Donald Trump had invoked the Defense Production Act, so, or app, Jesus Christ, um, act, that enables the government to dictate what industries are manufacturing and to to set prices and to negotiate, um, I can't even talk, um, to negotiate prices and labor contracts to get things back to work. And then I had seen something in Michigan that the workers of a factory there were ready to shift production to ventilators. So I'm with you.

I would totally be rooting for the federal government to succeed on addressing this because there was a report this morning in the Wall Street Journal that we've already run out of hospital beds in California and that they're talking about about having to convert potential college dorms into temporary hospital wards in order to treat everybody. And as you pointed out, what really is going to make this the most dangerous is that we run out of equipment. And it's not even that the disease itself is so fatal, it's that we're going to run out the things that we need to treat it, which if we had, would make this disease significantly less fatal.

0:18:01 Thomas: Yeah.

0:18:30 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's pretty fatal, but yeah, like you say, and not only that, there's also the the question of if the, you know, the healthcare system is completely flooded with this, anything else is going to be a problem too. Like you're going to have more deaths from, you know, if you need an ambulance to take you to the whatever for a heart attack or for whatever, it's going to increase the death rate for everything.

0:18:51 Jamie: Right.

0:18:51 Thomas: It's a huge problem. And so many, like I, we're sitting here right here. I think you and I are reasonably well informed on this. And I, I, for one, I'm taking this very seriously. We're locked down. Well, you know, and, and we have been for not long enough, honestly, like we, Lydia still had to go to work there. You know, we, people haven't reacted fast enough. Employers haven't interacted fast enough and all that, but we're at least, you know we're taking it seriously. There are people everywhere around us who are not. And it's God, it's so scary. I mean, there's beaches full of people still.

0:19:23 Jamie: Yeah, I had seen that video from Clearwater Beach where they were just crowded and packed and it was like virus soup in the ocean. And so I've mostly been very good. I had mentioned a professor that I had had at NYU wrote an article for the literary supplement on the coronavirus a couple of weeks ago. And she had said that it was going to be heading in this direction and to be prepared for quarantine. And so I had been slowly buying more things at the grocery store over time just to make sure that we were stocked up on essentials and it wasn't overwhelming in any one period. And we had been practicing social distancing and doing self quarantine because I'm in sort of a hotspot of a hot spot.

0:20:08 Thomas: Hmm.

0:20:08 Jamie: In fact, my college was appropriated by the county government to be a drive-through testing facility. The president of the college didn't even know this until he had heard it on the news. And so even within New Jersey, I'm in the area of New Jersey where they're having the majority of these cases. And yet I did end up having to break quarantine because I needed to pick a friend up from the airport. She was stranded. She had been in Texas.

She's a nurse's union organizer and they sent her home saying, "You know, we don't know how much longer it's going to be before this shutdown is declared to last months, months, and the health care system cracks and we don't know if we'll be able to get you home then. So we need you to go now, you have 24 hours." And so I left to pick my friend up at the airport and asked her, you know, "How was it, what was it like in the airport?" So they're not doing any testing, there's no screening questions, nobody's taking any temperature. This thing is still just spreading all over the country because nobody's even bothering to look to see where it's going. Yeah.

0:21:11 Thomas: Yeah. You Know, I've got a couple hopefully positive thoughts to try to, to try to sneak in here. Maybe it'll, I don't know, maybe it'll make somebody feel better, but a couple of things. First off, I do want to say, you know, from the bottom of my heart and for my kids, thank you to everyone out there who still has to work in a vital, um, industry. If it's healthcare, if it's food or, or by the way, even if you just have an asshole boss is making you work for no reason. I mean, that sucks. And, uh, thankyou so much to everybody who is doing this critical work to, to help people get through this. You know, like we, ah, the real it's, we don't, you know, we're not going to have war heroes anymore. We have people like nurses and doctors and, and, And even people working at grocery stores are fucking heroes right now.

0:21:57 Thomas: Like they, they are literally putting their lives on the line so that people can eat and, uh, and have healthcare. And it's it's. I just can't thank those people enough. If somehow that's you, you, although I don't know if you have time to listen to podcasts, but if somehow that's you or someone you know, you know I just really truly thank you for doing that. And also the other thing I was thinking about that, I don't know, it kind of made me feel just a little more positive about the world is when you think about what we're doing, as much as I think there are so many ways that we haven't done enough and we haven' t reacted enough and all that, it still Still is remarkable, you know, and again, not relative to other countries.

0:22:44 Thomas: We're doing terribly relative to most all other countries, but still relative to just the normal way of things going, you Know, like normal everyday business. It still is remarkable that we are grinding our economy to a halt. And as we are doing that, we aren't doing that because for the most part, it's not for anything anybody can see, you Now, like I'm not sick. I can't really, you now, most people yet aren't sick. Um, maybe they don't probably don't even know anyone who's sick yet or has died for that matter. You know, it's still, the numbers are still relatively low yet. Again, it'S going to increase, but we're all doing this because we have information, you know, It's all about information. It's changed every, our behavior. It's ground our economy to the halt and to a halt. And every time we are doing that every day that we're not going to work all the, you know, just zillions of dollars that this is costing.

0:23:36 Thomas: That's all humans making the choice that other human lives are more important than money. And that's really, I don't know, it's really inspiring in a lot of ways.

0:23:48 Thomas: You know, it's not something that we do every day, I guess. So it makes me feel good.

0:23:55 Jamie: I don't really know what I'm supposed to say in response to that, that's good.

0:23:57 Thomas: No, that's okay.

0:23:58 Jamie: Yeah, I hope we hold on to more of that. I think that's really what we're going to need to pay attention to, to get through this, because I think, as you mentioned, I don't even, I think we're still two weeks away from feeling the impact of what this is. This really right now is the calm before the storm. We haven't even seen the crisis yet. Yeah.

0:24:25 Thomas: Yeah, I think we will start seeing it. I think you got to keep in mind the delay on the incubation period, you know, and all this social distancing. If we still, that's a quick point. Things are going to keep getting worse and it's not because social distancing doesn't work. It's because there's a big lag time on it. You know, everything, everything that's happening now is the result of decisions somewhere between five days and two weeks ago. I'm not totally clear on that. I've seen different information. I've seeing 14 days and I've also seen five days, but either way, it's something like that. You know? We didn't make, we weren't making decisions soon enough and everything, it is to to be a while of lag time before the great sacrifices that so many people are making are going to result in a turnaround.

0:25:13 Thomas: You know, the only other bright side is there are a few countries who, at least for the time being, I don't think it's permanent, you know, because you can have another outbreak at any time, but there are countries who have handled this for the most part. There are countries, Singapore has basically stopped the spread. Um, now I, uh, I know China's gotten a lot better and they're actually sending us a lot of stuff. There are people sending us, they're sending us masks. They're sending US, I think some amount of ventilators, you know, there's, there, there is encouraging info out there, but the problem is we're just not, we're not there at all. You know, when we have people still filling beaches, we are not there. And, um, I guess one thing I was going to say, uh from earlier is it makes me so infuriated that Trump and Republicans are causing untold more deaths and people with the bad information are going to cause untold, more deaths.

0:26:05 Thomas: It would be one thing if we could look at these people who are saying, Oh, I don't believe it's big deal. I'm going to go out and please, I'm still going to the restaurants, you know, like let's, uh, protest against this draconian measures that are not necessary. One, it'd be one think if it was like, okay, that person's going to get sick and then they'll deal with the consequences. But the problem is they're going to hit somebody else sick. You know, that's, that'S what's so frustrating about it. It's like, it's, they're going to hurt innocent people. They're going to hurt healthcare workers. People who are hoarding masks and stuff inappropriately are just killing doctors and nurses essentially. That's who you're doing that to. So it just really sucks that it doesn't seem to always be that it's not the people consequences don't get distributed fairly essentially.

0:26:51 Thomas: Life's really not fair and everyone's irresponsible behavior is going to punish people who were doing everything right, you know, just it's really, uh, so as I tried to be hopeful a minute ago, that's, that, that's the kind of thing that's very frustrating.

0:27:03 Jamie: So We're now ending the positive portion of the episode.

0:27:05 Thomas: Oh, we're, yeah, we're Totally, totally, done with the positive portion. Oh,

0:27:07 Jamie: Yeah, Yeah, So, I, yeah, I guess that's, you're right, you're, you're right, and I don't know what else to say. We really have to see this staying home is this like great act of social solidarity on, on the upside, you know? So I'll bring another positive note, since this is so depressing.

0:27:34 Thomas: Good, Yeah.

0:27:35 Jamie: And also there is like locusts apparently. I had seen that headline earlier too. So it's really just like end times. But I'll do my best to try to get us through this.

0:27:46 Jamie: Things that keep me going is we're seeing this opening up of all of these cultural resources. Museums are putting displays online. JSTOR made many of their journals open access. We're seeing different publishers put, make their stuff open access. Disney is releasing Onward digitally at 8 p.m. tonight and is going to be out on, I think, April 6th for everybody else on Disney Plus. So we're seeing this sort of resurgence, and I, and I hope we remember the importance of the arts and, and culture, and the way that just connecting with, with one another and sharing these can be meaningful to human existence once we're off the rat wheel or the hamster wheel long enough to sort of settle in and appreciate them again.

0:28:36 Thomas: Oh, it has been so interesting having my kids home, you know.

0:28:42 Jamie: How many times have you watched Frozen?

0:28:44 Thomas: Well, that's, I mean, that hasn't changed. Yeah. Well, So we've, we've done our best to try to get some, some sort of schedule going. Um, it's really hard. I'll tell you one thing that was funny. I'm sure a lot of people have had this, but never have I felt more like I was in a movie, you know, there's such a, such a typical, like whether it's a zombie movie or any of those disasters thing, where I had to tell Phoebe, like, okay, a bunch of people are sick outside. I just felt like, God, I'm in a stupid zombie. Phoebe, a bunch of people are sick, outside, we can't, everybody has germs, we talk to them, we go, you can't touch anything, you, it's like, we got to stay, stay inside, you know, and the kid not really understanding at all. That's a problem is in the movies, kids will kind of understand stuff, but maybe mine's too young, but two and a half or whatever the hell she is by the time this is all, let's see, where's my math?

0:28:47 Jamie: Same number of Frozen? Okay.

0:29:34 Thomas: Two years. And now let's say, yes, seven months. So yeah, a little over two and half. She doesn't, she doesn't get it. I mean, she, she listens to us for the most part, but they can't really comprehend it. But But I'd be curious to hear, like, what is it like with your kids, you know? How are they handling the information? Do you get the sense that they understand what's going on?

0:29:57 Jamie: No. So my two children span the spectrum of human personalities. And so the joke that I have is between the two of them, I have like one perfectly ordinary normal child, because they're just on opposite ends of the extreme. Both of them, though, are sort of taking it in stride right now. When it was first happening, maybe a week or two ago, my 11-year-old was on John Hopkins, John Hopkin's website every day checking the number of cases and monitoring it, and he sort of obsessed over that for a little bit, and every time there was a new case he would tell me about at it.

Now that schools have been closed and my job has been closed, we're all home and quarantined, he's less interested in it, and he's just sort of taking up Pokemon again once his school work is done, and he's been surprisingly more helpful at home, you know, trying to like pitch in, because it's quarantine time now, so he's been fine. And the eight-year-old, I don't think anything would, would ever phase that child. His temperament is such that he could just be in like the literal pits of hell and he'd be content, because he likes it, more like he's just never phased by anything.

And so, same, you know, as far as he's concerned, like he gets to sleep in a little bit later than he did when he was getting up for school, and he gets more computer time now, which he never did before, because mommy and his brother don't share their laptops with him. And you know, quarantine is, it's good. He likes it. We've been

0:31:31 Jamie: Going to, we've been, there's a resort, like a hiking trail sort of state park by me. That's not terribly crowded and especially not during the week and especially not once you get into the hiking trails. So now that it's finally warming up again in New Jersey, every day that it's not raining, we'VE been going for monster hikes. I make this kid walk like six miles in the woods every day that it's not raining. Well, I may have mentioned this, but he's sort of like a puppy, and if he's not exercised enough, like he

0:31:31 Thomas: I know.

0:31:55 Thomas: Nice. Yeah.

0:32:02 Jamie: Will start to chew on the couch, like he just cannot, he cannot just sit still.

0:32:03 Thomas: Yeah. That's what I'm worried about with Phoebe, too. It's hard to – we don't have that great of a surrounding area for that.

0:32:05 Jamie: Yeah, So that's been my saving grace. I take him on these monster, like legitimately six mile hikes, to just wear him out and get him into the woods, and you know, he names different parts of the woods, like the Mushroom Kingdom, and you know, his particular brand of nonsense. We took the, he's got a master sword from, from Zelda, that he took into the woods with him one day, and he was, you know, swinging at trees and stuff, and he had himself a blast. It was a foam sword, no trees were harmed in the making of his adventure.

So he's good, because I don't, they don't really get it, you know, from their perspective, and I, for my thinking, is at least at this stage of the apocalypse this is the right way to do it, because they're kids, right, and so they don't really get a sense that the world possibly might be changing and life as they know it may have ended already, and so there are just still thankfully blissfully oblivious to the reality of what the world is and what the implications of it might be. They're just living their best life, sleeping in, playing video games, and you know, not having to deal with middle school nonsense. Yeah.

0:32:48 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:33:29 Thomas: Yeah. I can imagine. And maybe this is the way I, the reason I am how I am, but if I was, you know, eight to 10 to whatever, this would have been heaven for me back in the day. I would, we, we lived on in the country. So there's property. We would, this was, it would have just been summer. Basically summers were this for me as a kid, we didn't go anywhere, do anything. Thing. But yeah, no, it's a lot different as an adult. And also, I, man, as much as I am worried about the fact that, you know, it sucks that my kids, mainly Phoebe, Arlo's not really old enough to realize it, but Phoebe does have all her little friends that she doesn't get to see anymore at daycare. You know, It's really sucks that it's been pretty depressing that she hasn't gotten that interaction.

0:34:16 Thomas: And every, the hardest thing on me is when she's in these moods and I just don't, it's already hard enough as a parent to know what the fuck's going on. Like, you take a guess, you know, you hope you're doing the right thing, you hope everything, when, when she has an insane tantrum, you know, I'm like, I hope this is normal, this is hopefully normal kid stuff kind of like.

And now adding this variable where it's like, she, she seems pretty down a lot recently, and it's just so hard for me to take, because I can't, I don't, there's nothing I could do, and I don't, it could be completely unrelated, you know, it could be she's not getting enough sleep or something, like maybe Arlo's waking her up too much, or who knows, but it just sucks, it's really rough.

So we've been trying to, we've bee trying to take walks at least a little bit, it's hard, we can't, she, the problem is anywhere we walk she can see the park that she's not allowed to go play in right now. Just hell for her, I'm sure, but that's not safe, right? I can't have her go play on equipment that people probably been all over recently. I think they're closing those down in some places. Yeah.

0:35:17 Jamie: So all of our playgrounds have been officially closed and we're not allowed on them, so I imagine it's probably the same in California. But you said she's two and a half, that's just a hard age. You can do everything, everything right and not have a pandemic outside, and two and a half just be really hard with tantrums and, you know, crankiness and and the just inexplicable mood changes. Two and half year olds are hard, so

0:35:26 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:35:51 Thomas: Yeah. I'll try to, I'll just hope it's that, it probably is for the most part. I mean, I think about it once again, I think about my life. I didn't, I had nothing. I didn't know activity, no, or well I had activity because, again, the country, so we ran around outside all day, but I had no, you know, contact with other kids until kindergarten. Really? I got very little. So I don't know, if at worst she gets, she gets less contact for, you you know, months, a year, one, one way or the other, we will get back to normal, but it could be a year. It could be. A long time. Either it will have been because a bunch of people died because we didn't do enough and the virus took its course through all of us, or something changes and we have treatment or something, you know?

0:36:36 Thomas: And one way Or the other we'll eventually get back normal. So I think long to, for my kid anyway, I'm not, you You know, if she has a weird year from two and a half to three and a half, I hope that that's recoverable. But these are the kind of thoughts I've been having, you know?

0:36:52 Jamie: I don't know if this will make you feel better or worse, uh, but when my little one was maybe about a year younger than than Phoebe is, when my husband died, and he was able to recover from that, so I feel like maybe so so My point though is kids are pretty resilient. In fact, when that same younger child went face down a whole flight of stairs, the doctor in the emergency room, where we had obviously brought him for a CAT scan, had said don't worry, babies bounce, they're, they're very resilient, and so even if it is the pandemic and missing her friends and not going on the playground, even if a hundred percent of what she's struggling with right now is like strictly reducible to the plague, eventually, I don't know when, there will be some return turn to normal, right? Like even World War II ended eventually, and she'll, she's young enough that she'll be fine, she's got two parents

0:37:07 Thomas: Yeah. I feel like that's worse. I think it is.

0:37:32 Thomas: Yeah.

0:37:59 Jamie: Who love her and oh

0:37:59 Thomas: And baby boomers went on to control the whole world for way too long after that. So there you have it.

0:38:03 Jamie: God look and look what they've done look

0:38:05 Thomas: Yeah. Maybe we'll shoot.

0:38:06 Jamie: What they've done. Yeah.

0:38:07 Thomas: We don't have a pandemic, boomers that like ruin everything. Hopefully that doesn't happen. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, if I'm trying to bright side, I get, again, want to try to continue that a little bit. I do have to say this is, again, I can't emphasize, you all know, anybody has kids, I'm sure, you know, knows how freaking hard this is, but in the middle of it being really, really hard and just taxing and just like stressful and all that, still bottom line is I get to spend way more time with my kids. And I, you know, I, I really like that. Um, it's hard, you know, kids are hard. They're, uh, it's a, it' a tough relationship, but, you know, one thing, one thing about having super young kids is I think they're more fun. So it's easier for me to say that, you should just be like, there's more of the good stuff without the bad stuff, so far anyway.

0:38:56 Thomas: Um, but, but you know, I also really, you know, I just love the fact that I get to be with my kids more. So trying to look at that bright right side, and it can be challenging. Now, so

0:39:09 Jamie: It's definitely gonna be hard, it's gonna be hard. Yeah.

0:39:13 Thomas: I I wonder if you, uh, have any thoughts on on the economics of all this. I've been, you know, I have a business degree, I've taken some economics, and I don't fucking understand anything, but uh, I understand less than ever. I, I just don't know how, how economically this is possibly going to go. I feel like maybe that's a place where a lot of of people haven't fully reckoned with how bad this is, you know, like this is not, gosh, when you talk about the housing crisis in 2008, that was bad, it was very bad, but this scene strikes me is unambiguously worse. Um, you know, it's all sides, it's supply, it's demand, it's people, it's entire industries not being able to function, multiple industries stopping, you know. This is going to be incredibly rough.

0:40:05 Thomas: And I, again, back to the anger phase, fucking Republicans. Honestly, it's not just Trump in this case for this particular thing. It actually might even be more the mainstream Republicans' fault than Trump. The 2017 tax bill absolutely fucked us. We were in a period of historic growth, historic growth. And that was exactly the time when you needed to maybe put aside for a rainy day cut your deficit. Normally I don't, you know, deficits aren't the end of the world, but when you are experiencing monumental economic growth, that's when you want to be like, okay, maybe we trim the deficit a bit, lower the debt slightly, give us more room to operate. If a recession comes, when a recession comes, you can't worry about deficit at all.

0:40:52 Thomas: I mean, you just have to, you have to spend your way out of it as a government. That's, I think it's pretty, pretty unambiguously what everybody thinks on either side of economists. And the Republicans who basically raided the treasury in 2017 and gave, you know, $1.5 trillion, some morsels of which went to you and I, the rest went to rich people and companies to buy back their own fucking stock. You know, we don't have the resources we should have right now to deal with this. And I think the consequences are going to be absolutely horrible as a result of that. This is going to to nuts. Yeah.

0:41:28 Jamie: So I do not have a business degree. I have not ever formally studied economics. So I am not somebody you should take any advice from when it comes to retirement planning or investment portfolios. But the person in me who studied a fair amount of philosophy feels like screaming that this should be a wake call about the metrics we use to determine what's actually valuable to society and what should drive our economy and our culture. I saw before I get on this podcast that the CEO of Goldman Sachs just got a 19% raise, bringing his pay up to 27 million dollars. Meanwhile people who are are ringing up your groceries so that you can stay home and potentially flatten the curve enough to keep grandpa alive for another couple of years, are making federal minimum wage in how many places across the United States. And what I think this really does is shine a spotlight on just how unjust our political economy is and the disproportionate, think, morally repugnant ways we have undervalued what's actually vital to society and inflated what it turns out is utterly meaningless.

0:41:43 Thomas: Gosh. Right. Yeah.

0:42:16 Thomas: So True, you know, well put. I, I've seen so many great memes along these lines, and they're all, there, there's a lot that are right on, you know, when, when this shit hits the fan, you see who is, uh, the most important to your society. You see which, which jobs. All of a sudden you're like, holy shit, I hope there is someone working at the grocery store, holy shit, I hope there's like delivery people. Gosh, I mean, they were already so overworked and underpaid. I mean, they're still operating for the most part, you know, from what I'm seeing. I don't know if that's subject to change, but the demand has gone obviously through the roof. So there's even going to be even more stress on that system. Yeah, go ahead.

0:43:37 Jamie: Yeah. And so you brought up the economy, and this is just something that I want to point to, and this is just something I noticed when talking about how these things get framed. Very often we talk about supporting small businesses, supporting your local communities by supporting local business, mom and pop shops, right?

And so even where I am, where at one point the county executive had put out an executive order closing all retail, there was an exemption for restaurants so that they could continue doing takeout and delivery services so that we could keep these small businesses going, right, because we have this idea that they're what feeds the local economy, and in a lot of ways that's true, but what it sort of elides over is that what's really necessary for these small businesses that do, I'm sure, provide good lives for the people who own them is all of the people making minimum wage or less, than that, if you're a tipped worker, right, it's like $2.13 an hour or something obscene that it actually depends on, and so these delivery people who are making the small businesses possible, in many cases are still only getting paid seven or eight dollars an hour to do work that is literally putting, if not their lives in danger, their elderly fathers with asthma who they still live with because they make eight dollars and hour. And it's a real disparity between who's actually on the front lines, who's actually necessary for keeping all of this going, and who gets to, you know, kick back and drink a a martini at their infinity pool overlooking the cliffs of Malibu. Like, it's just something I think we should maybe be

0:44:34 Thomas: Yeah.

0:45:20 Jamie: Paying attention to and keep in mind when life gets back to normal and we're talking about who should be in charge and what our policy should be and how we organize society going further in the aftermath of its collapse. Yeah.

0:45:33 Thomas: Yeah, there was a fantastic tweet that was due to emergency, the government will provide be temporarily providing human rights, I saw. And yeah, like, wouldn't you know it, once the shit hits the fan, all of a sudden you're like, hey, you know what's a great idea, and basically all of Bernie's policies, you know, like turns out those are actually good ideas. Never mind, just because there's an emergency, though, it's like, no, maybe if we did, if we had the safety net, there wouldn't be such a problem, you know. We've talked, uh, in a a lot of different kind of applications. We've talked about means testing. I don't know. This is something I'm only just starting to really think about, but lots of people are talking about guaranteed income for everybody and that kind of thing in situations like this.

0:46:20 Thomas: And part of me thinks that I really hope that at the very least, is there some way to just first and foremost, give money to anybody who was fired or let go or that kind of thing first. Now, I don't, I'm aware of like, I'm not trying to means test. I don't want that to cause more problems. Like if that would cause more problem or be more expensive or something, that'd be one thing. But gosh, I really hope, you know, if there is such a stark difference between how a salaried worker is doing right now and how a non-salaried, you now, part-time, whatever you want to call it, But the employees that just do not have the same protections right now, there's a huge difference in how those two kinds of broadly speaking kinds of employees are faring. And I just hope that whatever Congress throws together, I hope that it addresses the most needy first.

0:47:11 Thomas: But I don't know. I've already told Lydia if somehow we get any check from this, I'm just donating it to somebody, or maybe to, I hear food banks are a good place to put your donations if you're able to right now. I don't know if you have any opinions on that, but that's, that's what I've seen so far.

0:47:27 Jamie: So I have not had a chance to really wade too much into this. I think you're right that the money should just go out to everybody without means testing, because it's just too urgent. There are people right now who have been laid off, who aren't going to get a paycheck this week, who are already living paycheck to paycheck, and who have to pay rent, who have to meet their insurance premium in order to be able to get care in case they get sick. And so I hope it's done quickly. I don't know what sort of organizations are being put together right now to allocate funds to where they're most needy. I know I saw a couple of friends very quickly put together an organization that they worked with local restaurants in the area to feed the local community, to provide meals for kids at lunch, to sort of fill in some of the gaps from the schools that were closing and just structure breaking down.

0:48:23 Jamie: And they raised a bit of money very quickly. They were able to put food in people's hands who otherwise wouldn't have it. So there may be things springing up in your local community that may be effective and that are worth looking into. But I don't know off the top of my head if there's some national organization that's targeting grocery store workers right now. Because again, this is what's blowing my mind.

0:48:36 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:48:46 Jamie: The people who are working at the grocery store right now, which is where all of this is going to be getting transmitted, those people are making $8, $9, $10, $11 an hour, and they are literally putting their lives on the line, I just John

0:49:02 Thomas: Yeah. They shouldn't have to pay for any medical care. Well, I mean, obviously we should have a universal healthcare system, but even, even within like just going within the bullshit understanding that Americans have healthcare, they should not have to put, just like I think any veteran who received a wound or something should never have to play for their medical care because some asshole sent them to do some stupid thing in the Middle East somewhere that we shouldn't have been doing, it's not their fault, you know, like they should never have to pay for medical care. Similarly, at the very least, if we're not going to adopt a sensible universal health care system, the people who were in critical, uh, areas, you know, like it's almost like a 9/11 responder thing, you know, um, when, uh, John, uh, I'm blanking who was it John Stewart was yeah they did it, I mean he eventually got them to put it back into of the bill, but they, they played politics with it.

0:49:45 Jamie: Stewart but they didn't even guarantee them health care, Thomas it was like this past year yeah

0:49:54 Thomas: Well, it was a renewal. No, it was so it was up. They weren't without care for, for, I think it was a question of renewing the ongoing funding. Um, but, but yeah, I mean, the point is, yeah, that, that that should even be a question is just ridiculous. Like of course, nine 11 responders shouldn't have to fucking pay for the treatments that they need for running into a building that was about to collapse. Similarly, anybody who's in a critical area, uh, you know, and, and again, not to mention that nobody should have to really pay for health care, but even I hope within our stupid system that at the very least we can guarantee free health care to people who, you know, doctors, nurse, anybody who, uh, delivery people, grocery store people, anybody who kept our economy going, kept our food supply going in a time like this, and their health was, was, uh, put into jeopardy for that.

0:50:45 Thomas: I really hope that something happens. God, who knows? And there's so much more we could talk about. You know, there's, there's the election, you know, there's, there's all this stuff, but I, I think I, uh, I've, I've, uh, I've, I've made Lydia fend for herself long enough. I gotta, I gotta go. But, uh, any, any final thoughts for that? I'm sure we'll have more of these, Jamie. I'm sure there's plenty more to talk about, but, uh, what are you, what are your final thoughts for today's episode?

0:50:56 Jamie: Yeah.

0:51:11 Jamie: So I'm gonna dive back in and read Revelations to, uh, best prepare us all for the end time, so I'll be sure to let anybody know if I come up with any tidbits so

0:51:15 Thomas: Yeah I don't think that was very accurate, that book, but, uh, that's just me

0:51:25 Jamie: I'm gonna go I've, I've long been of the belief that the answer is always in books, and so I just feel like now that there's, you know, pestilence, famine, locusts, that it just, it's probably not true, and it's possibly not a real prophecy, but I feel like due diligence just requires me to go back and be familiar with it, just to be sure, just an extra level of safety safety because

0:51:26 Thomas: Yeah yeah you you uh you're you're a reader, you do, like books

0:51:53 Jamie: Yeah well you know, like this universe is so ridiculous that I swear if someone was writing this as like post-apocalyptic fiction and like handed it into their editor, the editor would be like, no, no, to, to clean it up, it's, it's just too, too heavy-handed, too on the nose, um, too many things happening at one time, nobody, nobody would believe this. You have to you have have to clean it up

0:51:56 Thomas: God you know we make we make jokes but like Jesus Christ wait is this not just a simulation where people were trying to check out the weirdest fucking time to be alive. That's probably what it is. It's just people running a similar simulation of the weirdest goddamn time. And it's ever since 2016. Do you remember that long ago? I'm not talking about the election. I'm talking about when, uh, I think it was just due to generational, whatever that people, celebrities started dying. You know, we lost like so many, remember that? That was the thing. Ah, 2016, the worst year. And that was all pre

0:52:15 Jamie: Yeah and here we are yeah yeah yeah that's right

0:52:47 Thomas: pre-Trump. Over and over. Ah, 2016. Ah. And every year since then has been the worst fucking year ever. Like it, it's just, and every time when you think, well, I can't get any worse, we've got a pandemic and we're locked indoors. Like, come on. Surely can it get worse than this? It'll find a way.

0:52:47 Jamie: That's fine

0:53:06 Thomas: It'll found a way, uh, yeah.

0:53:05 Jamie: Don't do not do not tempt the fates do not they don't like it, um, so do not do not temp the Fakes, yeah, it's been, it's been a really wild couple of years. And same, I can't keep getting much worse than this. And then it does. And so it's really an exciting time to be alive.

0:53:12 Thomas: No kidding. All Right. Well, um, thanks for listening, everybody. Uh, we hope you're safe out there, we hope you're doing well, we hope you are, if you have the ability to, we really hope you are sheltering in place, you know. Do no- No, Exactly, stay the fuck home, no unnecessary trips, all that stuff that you hopefully already know and already are doing. We're gonna, we're going to do our best over here too, and I hope, I hope this helped people, and I, you know, Jamie will find a time to record. Still, I'm, there is an initial tough period here to adjust, but I think I'll be able to at least get back to a semi-normal recording schedule, so hopefully, hopefully you're in for it as well.

0:53:41 Jamie: Yeah, stay the fuck home.

0:54:10 Jamie: Yeah, yeah, I'm in. I spent the last week preparing all of my classes to be moved online, staring in horror at the news and I'm ready to record with you here during the apocalypse. Bye.

0:54:23 Thomas: It'll At least be a documented apocalypse, that's, that's for sure. All right, folks, we'll see you next time.

0:54:40 Clip: Thank you so much for listening to Serious Inquiries Only. If you like the show, the absolute best thing you can do is support us at patreon.com/seriouspod. The second best thing you can do is please share it on social media or by word of mouth. Speaking of social media, if you'd like to follow Jamie on Twitter, she's at Euthyphro. And follow me at SeriousPod. If you'd like to be Facebook friends, send me a request at facebook.com Thomas podcast. If you're not up for that level of intimacy, that's fine. Maybe you want to join the discussion at facebook.com/groups/SIO members. Thank you again for listening. We'll see you next time.