DOD43: Explaining Religion To Our Kids

Transcript

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

0:00:28 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast that's way too interested In seeing your hanging chads I'm Tom Curry. I'm joined, as always, by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. And my joke is very, very dated, gentlemen.

0:00:35 Eli: I was going to say, is this week's episode about the 2000 Florida election? I misread our notes?

0:00:46 Tom: Everything the moment of shift. I'm convinced that was the momento it all went south.

0:00:50 Thomas: Yeah. It Really?

0:00:52 Tom: So everything is about the 2000 Florida election.

0:00:52 Thomas: Was Sure.

0:00:55 Eli: So I actually think about this a lot. 2000 election is a good one. I think the moment of shift was when we all walked out of the theater of Avengers Endgame, so- I think the last time we were united as a nation was when all the portals opened at the end of Avengers end game and all the heroes we loved came out because they were back alive again and we beat the bad guy and we were, we as a national, were like, "All right, everybody, we tried unity, now 40 of us will become evil monsters forever, okay, one, two, three, go," and they flashed the little men in black thing at us so that we didn't remember the contract and it's been been downhill ever since. I-

0:01:08 Tom: What?

0:01:10 Thomas: Wow.

0:01:39 Thomas: And true to form I wasn't in there, I never saw a theater of that I Never, yeah.

0:01:40 Tom: I never saw this either, so...

0:01:45 Thomas: Okay, Tom. And I No.

0:01:45 Eli: Didn't See And this is

0:01:47 Thomas: I did I Did Subsequently I just didn't give a shit enough to, ago.

0:01:47 Eli: The Best It's The best moment In history, it's the best moment, people- Full grown men, full grown men, women, children, Old, young, gay, straight, everybody unite. The fucking hole opened up and Black Panther came through and and we were happy for the last time. My fucking brain squeezed out its final endorphin. It was the best.

0:01:52 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. That

0:01:55 Tom: Wow.

0:02:16 Tom: I've never seen any Avengers movie I've, I've never watched one

0:02:17 Thomas: Was Me until

0:02:19 Eli: You need to watch them all. They're the best, they

0:02:20 Thomas: I Started Being Made to watch them and then I eventually was like, all right, Fine, I'll fucking watch all of them and I did and, you know, they're okay, it definitely made It made, yeah. That's They're fine, there's Always There's that, I've done that, always something just stupid enough that I'm like, "Ah, fucking kids movie, I just can't do it," you know? It's always like, "Oh, this is good." And then suddenly I hop in and I'm like, "Oh, it's a bullshit fucking kids movie."

0:02:28 Eli: Rule and they fucking rule. They rule.

0:02:42 Thomas: I can't deal with it.

0:02:42 Eli: Have you tried cheering at the top of your voice the entire time? It's the only time I don't think it's the, the only, the only thing I've ever done in my whole life.

0:02:47 Thomas: Yeah. Do think I've ever uttered a sound in a movie theater, Eli? There's no... I mean, I'll laugh if something's funny.

0:02:56 Eli: No, I'm a, I'm, a big movie like I've gotten better over the years but I'm a big movie talker I'm a big movie talk yeah if you I'm a big I I will admit I'm a big movie talk now I

0:03:05 Tom: Like, in the theater in the theatre I would fucking kill you I,

0:03:12 Thomas: That's so funny because we went and saw a delightful, amazing, heart-rending musical together called Into the Woods. And Eli is just silent. I thought he was dead at some point. And I was like, well, he must have fucking hated it and then and then Anna's like Eli was so affected by it he just loved that music I was like what I thought he died I was I thought he just hibernated oh

0:03:28 Eli: Loved it oh my god no I love that so my I have the opposite when it comes to theater because I know they can hear me like I know I'm not changing the movie but

0:03:42 Thomas: Yeah okay that makes sense that makes makes sense yeah

0:03:46 Tom: It's okay, that's, that'S okay Okay.

0:03:47 Eli: I but I've been on stage when an audience member does anything to distract me and I'm like that's the one thing you're not supposed to do so I will like literally silent I was silently weeping the entire in a movie I'm openly weeping I'm going around I'm shaking hands I'm asking how everybody's feeling I'm adding suggestions to the screen I've gotten better I've got better because Anna is a decent human being and she shushed me enough times throughout the years now that it'll I'll mostly just turn to her like the old Jew that I am and be like that's really sad and she'll be like thanks for destroying

0:03:51 Thomas: Yeah yeah so good uh good

0:04:07 Tom: Oh my God.

0:04:09 Thomas: Stuff be like Wakanda forever it's

0:04:22 Eli: This moment yeah

0:04:23 Tom: I sometimes wonder, cause we're all so far apart, you know? And so like, I sometimes wander like, yeah, what would it be like if, you don't know, Thomas or Eli was close by and we could hang out and like have more like interact. And, but I think I would just kill you, Eli. I think we would, we would hang out for, we'd be like, oh, we're going to hang out for a few. This is why I can't go to Patreon. I feel like I would fly in.

0:04:39 Thomas: Possible well

0:04:38 Eli: Yep sure would I'm I was gonna say I make Thomas and Noah and Heath hang out with me once a year and at the end of the week everyone's like oh it's good that was a good amount of Eli

0:04:52 Tom: Yeah. We, we, We would rent a house. You would leave the whole kitchen open, all the cabinets in the refrigerator. Then we'd go to the movie theater. You'd talk during it. And then I'd slit your throat in your sleep because I would feel like I had no other moral choice.

0:04:55 Thomas: My god whole

0:05:04 Eli: Don't worry everybody I'm gonna murder him I promise the

0:05:08 Thomas: Crowd cheers I would just be living in Eli's basement fixing his recording setup non-stop like it would just every single recording you would undo it somehow be like you don't Don't literally touch nothing. Touch nothing. Just come here and talk.

0:05:13 Eli: Whole time yeah exactly

0:05:21 Tom: Will say it like to the moving thing because it's funny because it just came up this past weekend. I've seen no movies. Like I am not. I have seen like nothing. So if you're like, oh, have you ever seen it? I've never seen it. I've never seen movies that are like wildly iconic movies. Like I've ever seen the breakfast club. I've seen fast times at Ridgemont high. Haley was like making a joke about fatal attraction. I was like, Oh, I've Never Actually Seen Fatal Attraction.

0:05:37 Thomas: No, I've never seen that.

0:05:38 Eli: Movie

0:05:45 Tom: I'm just like culturally familiar.

0:05:44 Thomas: Yeah. Do you just know all the references? I do that with a lot of those movies.

0:05:47 Eli: Sure.

0:05:47 Tom: Yeah. I'm Just Culturally Familiar. Right? Yeah. So over the, over this weekend, like she made some comment, like, I know I've never actually seen it. It's like, okay, that's it. Like we're making a list and you're going to start watching some of these things. So we watched fatal attraction over the weekend. We just put it on and watched it one night, and I was surprised. It's a very, very, very, morally weird movie. That's a deeply morally weird movie, where you're kind of watching this modern day morality play about infidelity, and then it ends, and you're like, no, I wasn't. Actually, no I wasn't. I don't know what that was. And so then she's like, there's actually a more modern, by the same director, he did another film on infidelity called Unfaithful. Let's watch that. So Sunday, yesterday, yesterday we watched Unfaithful, which is way worse by the

0:05:48 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. The

0:06:09 Eli: The fuck, is

0:06:34 Thomas: Dude's

0:06:34 Tom: Way than Fatal Attraction by yeah and it's the whole time I'm like, Adrian Lane, who fucking hurt you, man, who hurt you. And it's just like, again, it's a weird more, it's, it feels, it plays out like it's going to be this like weird morality play about infidelity, and I'm like, okay, fine, like there's plenty of movies that like kind of, and then it ends and you're like, I don't know what that was about. I don't know what that movie was about, or why it happened, or why any character did anything, actually.

0:06:34 Thomas: Wife is like, you're doing another one? Okay, another. All right.

0:06:38 Eli: Okay. Yeah. No.

0:07:06 Tom: It is so fucking weird I

0:07:06 Thomas: I think Tom just yells that after any movie, though. I don't know what that was about. Why did I? That wasn't reality. That was a pretend thing. Why are we doing this? Yeah.

0:07:15 Tom: But like, I, I love stories, I mean, I fucking majored in English lit, like, I love stories, I'm like, I, and a good movie can be fucking amazing, but like less than one percent of movies fall into that category, and then everything else falls into this bucket of like, the fuck was that all about, why did, why that, why any of that. And but these two in particular, I don't know if you guys have seen them, but they are am I wrong, Eli?

0:07:31 Thomas: That's fair, I

0:07:37 Eli: Oh, I sure have, Tom, I sure. Well, You

0:07:44 Tom: Am I wron?

0:07:40 Thomas: Have not seen them yeah

0:07:45 Eli: Also, you're not, only are you not wrong, you are, I don't know, I know, how, there's a target audience, what's the opposite of target, the opposite up, a target audience for those films, because it's a pretty basic like, oh, don't cheat on your wife because, you know, the other one could go crazy, and then, oh, you're trapped in this world of intrigue, and also she's gonna murder a rabbit outside your house, but then towards the end of it, it's like, but aren't we all really the villains, and you're like, wait, what, no, sir, could you come back. Both movies have a very weird moment at the end where it's, I mean, sometimes you murder, right?

0:07:54 Thomas: What the fuck it

0:08:22 Eli: Sometimes you murdered

0:08:16 Tom: So I well I, in it, I know this is, but it, Unfaithful, like right before the murder scene, I'm like, oh, I, I would actually beat that man to death with that snow globe. And then he beats that man at death with the snow globe, and I was like, all right, I'm on board. And then all the rest of the movie happens, and I'm like, well, none of that makes any sense. Like, noneofthatmakesany.

0:08:31 Eli: Okay I don't understand why the rest

0:08:41 Tom: The only part of that movie that made any sense was the murder scene. Everything leading up and after was nonsense.

0:08:41 Eli: Of the movie, yep. There was one that was on HBO recently, I forget what it was, but it was one of those murder mysteries, um, I won't say the name because I don't want to spoil it, but it was a thing where I was watching it and I was like, oh, it's probably the husband that did it, and then it was the husband who did it. So we just watched four episodes of me being like, yeah, no, because it's always the husband it's just always that you

0:09:06 Tom: Right.

0:09:05 Thomas: Always is it's always the boyfriend. Oh, unless, um, it was a murder that took place in a high school in uh late 90s, then somehow it wasn't the uh, I

0:09:14 Eli: Dungeons and dragons and hating motherfucker. Well, who paid you to say that? Paizo. Not on this podcast, Thomas, not on this. Oh, no, not Paizo, the other one. I forget, I forget what I'm mad about. I

0:09:28 Tom: Whicheverone's evil. Wizards.

0:09:27 Thomas: Don't it or not, this was not what we were gonna do the episode about, I know it's well

0:09:32 Tom: Yeah let's we gotta, we gotta go back to the hanging chats, we gotta go back the politics

0:09:33 Eli: And the reasons people are mad at us. Yeah, now.

0:09:37 Thomas: I, uh, I had something happen that I, I was, uh, really interesting, you know, constantly as a parent, I'm sure you, well, okay, not Eli yet, but I'm, I'm sure, Tom, you can relate to this. I'm sorry, Eli, you will. You know, all the typical, like, fucking TGIF sitcom moments of conversations that, you know, that you're going to have with your kids. It's like, and that's why we are actually this of the, you think of all those conversations. Like, I'm going to tell my kid about religion. I'm gonna tell my kids about politics someday. And it'll be like, it'll be like a TED talk, you know? It'll be really formal. It'll be, there'll be notes. There'll be a handout. Out

0:10:11 Tom: There'll be a slide presentation do you guys have

0:10:12 Eli: You'll

0:10:11 Thomas: Yeah yeah you feel like there's going to be yeah and really happens is you're on your way back from the grocery store and like one kid shit his pants and another kid is doing god knows what, and then your kid will just ask you like, hey, what's the meaning of it all? And you're just like, fuck, what, now, now we're gonna do this now it's, they really just pop up and you're like, oh, I wasn't ready for that, oh shit. But this one caught me off guard because we were driving home, almost what I said, uh, there's a church that on our drive home that is in a really weird building, you know, there's buildings that just should be churches and there're buildings that shouldn't, you know, it's just like, this one is a strip mall, you know, it's like, yes.

0:10:13 Tom: Yeah

0:10:14 Eli: Draw some genitals. Oh,

0:10:30 Tom: Love

0:10:31 Eli: Yeah

0:10:53 Tom: When they're next to the UPS store you know, just like yeah

0:10:55 Eli: He's

0:10:55 Thomas: It's literally next to the UPS store, that's so funny, I just stopped there because I was trying to find a place to drop off a return for a, like a Christmas present. And I was like, oh, this is a UPS drop-off. Hmm. It's right here. Oh, it's like in the church. It's so weird. That's funny. And so Phoebe, for some reason though, I don't know if there was something going on or something, you made the building noticeable to her. Cause really it's just fucking strip mall office building, but it's a massive church. And she's just like, what's that building? And I Was like, ah, what level of thing am I willing to get into to right now. There's always granularity options with kids. That's a place people go. You can get out of most things.

With Phoebe, it's a little tough because she has 8,000 follow-up questions. So it's little tougher. But I was like, all right, I can do this. I'm ready for this. Fine. Why not? I was Like, oh, that's called a church. Okay. A little hard to explain, but there are a lot of people. I Was, like. There's some people. Well, it's actually most people. There's actually. It'S actually most People believe in stuff that mom and dad don't believe in.

And so they have a building they all go to to, like talk about it and stuff. It was kind of how I was doing it. And So she says, oh, you know, she's processing and she's, like like, oh, is it like ghosts? I was like, yes, it is. It's a, yes. It

0:11:10 Tom: Right

0:12:14 Thomas: Is like, they believe in ghosts. They believe in a fucking magical ghost that's going to solve all their problems. It just in the, you know, not really. But I said, I did have that first reaction. I was, like, yeah, it is a lot like ghosts. And then she goes, oh. But ghosts aren't real, right? And I said nope, they're not real. And she said, well, but some people believe they're real. I said yeah, it's like the same thing. And then she said, this is so funny. This is why I specifically wrote down this language because Phoebe blows my mind with her turns of phrase. She, she had just asked like, oh, but ghosts aren't real. Right. And I was like, yeah, ghosts aren'T real. And Then she says, but dad, do you want to hear something so strange? Okay. Arthur Conan Doyle.

0:12:14 Eli: Like ghosts yeah

0:12:15 Tom: Yes yes sure

0:12:53 Thomas: I don't know. I was was like, whatever, and she's like, um, said that she saw a table move and no one was near it, like no one bumped it or anything. I was like, okay, yeah, sure, whatever. And then, and then she goes into an unrelated but also delightful thing. I'm curious if, uh, Tom, if you have any experience with this, where you start hearing things from your kids' friends that could mean there's an emergency in their home, or yeah or it's just their kids, you're like, I don't know what's happening here, but

0:12:54 Eli: Always of course

0:13:28 Tom: Oh

0:13:28 Thomas: Phoebe has a friend, and this is tangential, but it came up at this point where she's like, yeah, and then this friend one time, she woke up and her dad's face was all red and she had to go to a room, and I was like, what, what is, I don't know what this is what are you telling me, she's like, and then she's, and this yeah and this same friend, same friend, she's like, and one time her house was on fire, I was like, what, she's like, yeah, there's fire, and she had to go into her room. I was like, well, this there's a weird pattern happening are they, yeah are they, like, you know coming up, up with reasons to just, I, it was so weird.

0:13:41 Tom: What is that what is that oh what

0:13:45 Eli: Oh that's a lot of possibilities, Tom.

0:14:01 Tom: Go to your room, there's a fire what is

0:14:08 Eli: Gets it yeah, I was gonna say, also sometimes they'll like then call backsies on that thing, they'll be like, and then the cops come, and they did a whole arrest of the family, and you'll be like, wow, I, we should like see if they're okay in my dream, and you're like, hey, dream at the top motherfucker, dream at at the top.

0:14:08 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm.

0:14:09 Tom: That, my mom, well that that's the trouble, right, like kids are full of shit and they just tell stories just for the, like, like, it's developmentally appropriate for them just to tell stories and kind of test out narrative storytelling. And they test out lying, too. And they don't know the difference. There's a time in their lives, developmentally, where they don't know the different between storytelling and lying, and even sometimes their own truth. And that's a normal part of development.

0:14:52 Thomas: That's interesting. So that, does that come later? Because I, what I love about kids right now is they're, an age at least for my kids where whatever they're saying, it may sound like nonsense, but there's some truth there that they're telling me. Like, they'll be like, they'll say something that sounds insane because they don't have the language to describe things properly. And they'll Be like, yeah, such and such. It's hard to think of an example because it's nonsense language, you know? And you're like, what the, that's just made up. And then it's always something.

Like there's always, especially Phoebe when she was sort of a baby, there'd always be some, whatever she complained about something or she said like, oh, such-and-such thing is, like she'd pick out little details and it would often take us a long time to figure out what she was talking about. But it was always based on a true thing, like every time, and it's so, I have kind of, I don't know if she doesn't really make up stories, she's, she kind of is, it when they get older, like maybe when they're a little older, because she just reports facts. She's like a stenographer. It's weird.

0:15:17 Tom: Yeah.

0:15:50 Tom: Kids most kids start testing out basic lying around the age of three. And then lying for most kids, again, really kind of ramps up about four to six. And that's that's when they're lying to sort of test boundaries. They're lying. They're sort of understand the difference between truth and fiction, because it's not like for kids. Those things are experimentally determined. They're developed. It's developmentally appropriate for them to sortof play with those ideas and to see what people will believe and what they won't believe. And so there's this period from about 4 to 6 where that kind of reaches its peak.

0:16:26 Thomas: That's weird. Okay, I think Phoebe might just be weird because she won't do that. She's like, she's a stickler for the truth. If we say something slightly inaccurate, we have to get a lecture from her. Like, it has to be right.

0:16:37 Tom: But was the same way. When Aisling was—I mean, fuck it, AISLINN's 12, when she was from 6 to 12. If she would ask what time it was, and it was like 3:27 and you said 3:30, she would be like, fuck you.

0:16:48 Thomas: You are a liar.

0:16:51 Tom: You are a lying piece of shit. Shit, you should die in a fiery... Me, I mean, she would be like, oh, she'd be like, that is untrue, it is 3:27. You're like, yeah, it doesn't matter, I round it up. Let's fucking, we do things by 15s. I don't know why, fuck. Fuck.

0:16:52 Thomas: Yeah. Yep. Yep yeah Yeah. Yep. Have I told you the jacket sweatshirt, God forbid I say, oh, grab your jacket, it's a sweatshift, or vice versa, like I have to get the precise fucking article of clothing. It can't just be, yeah, for me it's the thing you need for warmth, that's all, I don't, my brain is like, that's fine, that's enough, that's enough detail, you don't need any more than that

0:17:24 Eli: They correct you. They correct you with that attitude, and then they'll be like, what's an Alamogator? And you'll be like, do some fucking long division. Look at that. Hey, I just Googled the war of 1812. How about that, asshole? Huh? Sweatshirt.

0:17:30 Thomas: And for

0:17:36 Tom: But that lying stuff for a lot of people also continue into the preteen and teen years with exaggerations and other kinds of stories that have a social effect. So like if you guys ever met

0:17:53 Thomas: Some people continues into their podcasting career, yeah.

0:17:54 Tom: Yeah I'm sure you guys have met like, especially again, like in the teens, the people who tell like really just outlandish stories that, you know, didn't happen. You're like, I was fucking at that party, that thing you're describing did not happen. That's, that is for some people a moment of kind of developmental stickiness. That doesn't

0:18:09 Thomas: Oh I hated that okay so now it must just be a genetic thing, because I, could as a kid, I was like, what the fuck are you talking about, there's no I could not handle the lying sack of of shit kids. I was like, that's not, that didn't happen.

0:18:19 Tom: Yeah Yeah. Yeah. Because it's the fucking worst because those people are the worst.

0:18:32 Thomas: Oh no, I was the worst because those kids were all play together nicely, making up their fucking lies about the world. And I'd be like, that's a lie. And they'd be Like, fuck you. You're out of social circles. It's over.

0:18:45 Thomas: It was so interesting to me, and I'm always impressed. Yeah. Sorry. I'm always impressed by everything Phoebe does, but she went from, "Oh, you know, this is a ghost story thing too. You want to hear something so strange." And then told me she rattled off like three ghost stories that her friends had relayed to her. She had that all like in the fucking, you, the decks of her brain, of like, "Oh, ghosts aren't real, where here are these three things," and it was all like a table moved. And then she said, "And Brooke says that every morning her room changes." I was like, "What, what the fuck is this?" She's like, "Yeah, it changed."

0:18:59 Tom: Yeah.

0:19:18 Tom: And Brooke is the same age as Phoebe.

0:19:18 Thomas: Yeah. They're all, they're in her little class or whatever, right?

0:19:21 Tom: Yeah, so so their kids, those kids are experimenting with that exact stage. Right. So that's what's happening.

0:19:26 Thomas: Or they're just saying something that actually makes sense, but they just, the words they use are fucking weird, you know. And so if you, who knows, like

0:19:32 Tom: Yeah? Maybe. Yeah you're right. Right. Right, right, right.

0:19:32 Thomas: Yeah

0:19:32 Eli: I remember when my sister was around that age, and this is, this is why it's important not to like lie to your kids or introduce your kids to the grown-up lies we're supposed socially not supposed to debunk, which is like, our dog died when Lily was like four or five, I don't remember, but our dog dead. And instead of them just being like, "Yeah, the dog's in the void," my parents decided to explain to my four-year-old sister the concept of reincarnation. So then for the next however many months, my three or four-year-old sister, every time she saw a dog, would be like, "Dodie" - that was our dog's name, Dodie - she'd be like, "Dody's soul is in there."

0:19:47 Thomas: Yeah yeah

0:20:10 Eli: And my parents, but here's the problem with telling those big lies that you're not allowed to not lie about, my parents would be "That maybe, I guess, so we can't say no, because" yep

0:20:20 Thomas: Some other little kid who owns that dog is like, "What, that's not right."

0:20:27 Thomas: So I want to talk about it because I'm wondering how, how you guys are going to approach this, because it's, it's hard for me to not just be like, "Yeah, that's a fucking stupid thing that everybody believes it's ruining the world. And it's a make -believe thing. And they pray to a make believe thing and they ask it for stuff. Like it's their dad. It's stupid. It'S fucking stupid. Dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard of in my life. I can't do that. Cause that will ruin her life. Like she will have no, she'll go to school and be like yeah, my dad says that's the dumbest fucking thing he's ever heard of. And then it's over. Like there's no, we live in America.

0:20:35 Eli: Right Well, because an adult, the problem is, if it was kids I'd be like, "Yeah, yeah, go ahead, make as many kid enemies as you want, whatever." They don't remember shit. But adults in your life will be me. This is the thing. Adults in your child's life will be like, well, that's not a nice thing to say. You go into the sad, sad corner for saying that Christ isn't my personal redeemer. And then I've got to hit someone with my Volvo in the parking lot, you know? So for me, I've said this before, and I feel like you guys shot it down the first time we talked about it.

I really feel like You Guys Should to hear me out. You just explain to the kids, you're like, "Look, that's a pretend that grownups need, right? The grownups need that pretend. It's very important to them. And the bosses, we're the bosses, control them using that need, right? So someday, someday you might be talking to a homeless man, and he's, he's very loud and he seems very scary, and you'll say an angel is here, and that man has a mental illness, and he'll listen to you because he is part of them, and we're part of us. Okay, so why don't you run on over to the playground and play some block. Oh, kiddo, your

0:21:06 Thomas: Yes yes yeah all right let's do this again oh boy

0:22:06 Eli: Teacher's mom died when she was young, and that's why she needs that, we're gonna use it to get you an A." Come on, so like I'll, I'll use an example from my own life, and our, my father was so pleased with me, um, we had a shitty, we all had shitty overtly Christian teacher, right, as a learning experience, just one teacher who, apropos of their subject, just decided, "Hey, I'm evangelizing, evangelical as part of my teaching," and would just fucking say the craziest, most horrible shit that you could never say if you were anything except an evangelical Christian in this country. It's a grand old tradition.

And what mine was, a social studies teacher, who among the many insane lies he told us, about dinosaurs existing at the same time as people and dragons being real, also told us that jewelry was based on the word Jewish, which was a lot of fun. Um, I was old enough, I was a high school student, I was old genug, and I knew what was going on. And so I came to him, well, like halfway through the school year, and I was like, "You know, I've been reading the New Testament, you know, my, my parents are Jewish, and I'm really interested in in learning about salvation." And this dude gave me like a Jesus pamphlet, which I immediately threw out, but he also gave me an A because I provided him his opiate of the masses, really.

0:22:24 Thomas: Yeah, sure sure

0:22:25 Tom: Uh -uh Jesus what

0:23:26 Thomas: Yeah, but the

0:23:28 Tom: Feel really lucky, because I don't, I can't recall any of my, my teachers trying to evangelize at all, so yeah and I just, I don't know, man, like, where I'm at, I feel like I just, like, went through life without anybody trying to shove religion down my throat at any point in 45 years of living. Like it's just been such a non-issue in my life yeah I know, and I I I

0:23:34 Eli: Oh

0:23:47 Thomas: What country do you live in

0:23:50 Eli: It's nice to be on the other side of this, oh, you're in the hammock now, yeah

0:23:53 Thomas: Right

0:23:54 Tom: Feel super lucky about, it's never been, I don't have like a lot of family, when I say I don't have a lot of family, I have virtually no family. So like, you know, I don't have extended family. It's just my dad.

0:24:04 Thomas: That helps a little bit yeah

0:24:07 Tom: Right. So, so that helps for sure.

0:24:07 Eli: No one ever mentioned Jesus in Car Wash Fight Club, they never they never started fight club with a prayer

0:24:13 Thomas: Oddly enough that would be the place

0:24:13 Tom: Nobody talked about Jesus and car wash. That was, that was the one rule.

0:24:17 Thomas: That would be the, where he would hear about it, we've, we've talked about this, but I got a fucking, I won't tell this story, but I went to a wrestling camp summer before senior year, and it turned into a fucking Jesus seminar. Those kind of people are the most Jesus-y, the fucking MMA fighter wrestler God they're all about Jesus, they love Jesus while they beat the living fuck out of each other, it's, it's so funny, right?

0:24:33 Eli: They love Jesus absolutely

0:24:35 Tom: Oh, they love it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, like I, I had a babysitter who was very religious that we, that at their house for like a year after school. Like they were were like an afterschool babysitter. Um, and they were super religious, but they like, they didn't, it didn't. They weren't trying to like push it. They just, I just found the rules of their house kind of like obnoxiously conservative, you it was like, Oh, I'm sick. And I, you know what I'm going to stay home and like, I want to watch a movie. And it'd be like, okay, we can watch these Christian movies. And like, actually I'll just take a nap. So like, I'm not watching that. I just ,I'll go to sleep instead.

0:24:59 Thomas: Yeah yeah

0:25:10 Tom: So, no hardcore evangelizing. I will say for my kids, kind of that thing you said you can't do, Thomas, is exactly what I did, just told them, but I added one to it, right? So, you, for all of the kids, I would tell them things like, "Look, there are people who think the world was created by magic and it's run by magic, and that's what religion is, but we don't believe in magic. Other people really do, do, and so it would hurt them if we said I

0:25:10 Eli: Out on a whole podcasting career, Tom

0:25:40 Thomas: Yeah you

0:25:41 Tom: Don't believe in your magic because that makes them feel good to believe that the world is magic, but that's just not how we do it here, like we don't, I don't think the world is magic, I've never seen, have you ever seen any magic, no, I've never seen any magic either. Magic is fun but it's always tricks, and there's people who don't think it's tricks, and we're not taking that away from them, just don't get into fights with people about it, don't argue with kids.

0:26:02 Tom: And I would just tell like, don't argue with people in the school bus.

0:26:02 Thomas: Know it's like how Santa isn't real meanwhile Tom's three three-year-old kid is like, what, yeah yeah

0:26:05 Tom: Yeah. And it was very simple. Like, like the kids got it. They understood like, okay, we're going to be a little on the outside, but other people would be upset if they heard us kind of, you know, pick that apart. And then as the kids got older, it was harder. Actually, it's funny, Thomas, it was harder for me to push back against general supernaturalism than it was to teach them that religion was nonsense, right? Because they didn't grow up with religion, none of our family reinforces any religious concepts, like the time Aislinn went to Lutheran school, she went to for two years, she was already 10, like, she, you got to get them young, like at 10 she is a pretty hard -headed little girl, and she was already like, "That's fucking nonsense." And I'm like, "Yeah, don't say anything." It's fine like don't don't

0:26:30 Thomas: Yep yep oh

0:26:48 Eli: Yeah don't say that don't say that all the grown-ups will get mad at you, that's why they work there

0:26:55 Tom: Yeah and I would say like don't make them feel bad they're just gonna feel bad because like you know you believe something they don't and they're gonna feel really uncomfortable with that and she got that like she's mature enough to understand that so she she would just go and enjoy the school and not like buy into any of the super but general supernaturalism ghosts and all that occulty bullshit that's all nonsense you know, like, yeah

0:27:17 Thomas: That I have no problem just being like, that's fucking stupid, it's the dumbest fucking shit Yeah Everybody Ever It's more Yeah, it's all the Jesusy People plus more people somehow, yes

0:27:25 Eli: Yeah

0:27:20 Tom: But It's Harder Because it's every It's It's more everywhere And It's All over. There's a lot of great YouTube channels that are like reinforced supernaturalism. And so, and it is. And it's fucking awful.

0:27:27 Eli: Also There's A lot Of liberalism that includes supernaturalism As A part Of Social Justice

0:27:37 Thomas: Yes

0:27:37 Tom: So much of it that includes it's, And there's so much like this, like crazy, you know, like on the, on like the left where it's like, I identify as like a Norse mythologist. And it just like, what? It's just none of that. Just none of all of, all of it is nothing. Doesn't matter what fucking flavor your nothing is. It's all nothing but Like The Ghost stuff was really hard for me to counter, and I, all I did was continue to ask them questions, I Like when they were little, and I keep doing it, and I'm like, anytime that that shit comes up, I'll be like, well, I mean, I know you saw it on YouTube, but you know that like you can edit anything on YouTube, right? So there's no real reason to believe something on a screen ever. Like, you should never Believe Something Out of screen, right. And

0:27:38 Thomas: Yeah Yeah

0:27:39 Eli: Yeah I mean You you, oh my god, I could spend 11 hours trying to understand the minds of people who make fake videos on YouTube and TikTok, just weird, oh, look, this is a fight, or this is a car crash, or Oh, this a drug addict breaking into my house, and then you're like, oh no, it turns out that it was his sister, it was just a thing they made up, and I'm like, why would you choose to do this with the precious little life You have, I

0:28:22 Tom: Yeah Man, it's all over, yep

0:28:37 Thomas: Yeah

0:28:48 Tom: There Were some super super popular YouTubers that my kids were watching a couple of years back that they've gotten away from it in the last couple of years, but they were watching these super big channels that would have, like, they would purport to be a Big Brother style filmed house, and then the house would have all these paranormal goings on within the house, you know, and they would run around and this shit would move, and like the kids were like, it was filmed in a style that suggested reality and

0:29:19 Eli: Know exactly The channels you're talking about, Tom, because I, I literally got a call from a press outlet asking me my opinion on it, and I was like, oh, it's all fake, it's 100% fake. They did not use my quotes Sadly, I was like, I think it's really unethical and maybe these people should get like dragged Behind a bus for a couple of hours, or for some reason they didn't use that, right

0:29:20 Tom: Yeah That Shit Was harder to counter that shit because like At least For me, if you don't grow up religious and you get somebody who's, you know, fourth, fifth, sixth grade, and they're they're fairly, you know, interested, and you try, try to explain from scratch, without any, without any of the sort of like prerequisites, you try to explain Jesus and God and Christianity, the story makes no fucking sense and It's, I Can't even explain it to him in a rash, in a way that's like fucking coherent at all, and I'm like, well okay, hang on, he died for sin, but now you have to understand what sins are, they're like fucking, can, like, rule, and the kid's like, their eyes glaze over and they lose interest, and they're, they're Like, that, why would anyone believe that? You're like, I don't know, they just do They, and I Just Tell them like they believe it because they heard it their whole lives, that's Why they believe it, and the reason you don't is because you didn't hear it your whole life

0:29:44 Thomas: Yeah Yeah, uh

0:30:08 Eli: It bounces Right Right And They're Right And You have to abandon chunks of the story, so it's like, oh, so everyone's descended from Adam and Eve, well no, God killed everyone on the Earth, you're not letting me finish, there was a flood that killed all the animals, fish too, which is weird, I know, but yeah, so we're all descended from a guy who fucked his daughter, well, his daughters fucked him, he was, was Drunk, anyways, I was really hoping not to get to that part yet, no Honestly, the, the, the time that I find it hard to have this conversation, and it's the same as with family, I'm sure it'll be the same as with Max, is when it's times of mourning, right, because That is When people

0:30:55 Tom: You

0:30:59 Thomas: Yep There You Go That's when they fucking know they can take advantage of that, they know that they can say and do shit that you're not going to be like, do I, do I interrupt this fucking morning session right now to say, hey, you're trying to push your religion on my kit, nope, can't do it, can't Fucking socially do it, they have, they have the floor, even if it's some, somebody not related to who died, like it's just, you know, they take advantage of it, yeah

0:31:11 Eli: Nope Right And because, and when you give those a pass, it comes back to visit you, right, chrysanthemums Grandma grandma dies, and chrysanthemum comes to your kid and is like, my grandma's up in heaven with Juju. And you're like, okay, don't, don't break up chrysanthemums. But then your kid's grandma dies and your kid comes to you and is, like, I'm so sad. I feel this loss that is a part of what it Is essential to be human. Can I relieve that pain by believing grandma's up in Juju? And you gotta be like, no, no, no, grandma's in the void, you know how, when you go to sleep

0:31:36 Thomas: Oh Geez Yeah Yeah Our Grandma Your Friend's grandma is in heaven, our grandma's in the void, it sucks, yeah, it's a bad deal, yeah Yeah, would put it even further in that everything is fake, this is what, this is why I have a hard time in life, every single thing is actually fucking fake, like all the, you, you know how Facebook will show you videos of whatever, like their fucking video channel they're trying to make happen, and it's always like, husband catches, or some fucking scenario, you know, that's gonna be, wife discovers that husband's got, and, and one second into watching it, I know, like, oh, this is stage, this is like, is it, no matter how much you try

0:32:09 Eli: Sucks, yeah, yep Yeah

0:32:42 Thomas: It people aren't actually good actors, like maybe you could get like fucking, I don't know, know, Anthony Hopkins to do it, but it's all just a bunch of very B-minus internet people doing it, so it's Like, oh, that's fake, I know it's fake, but like somehow that's not obvious to everybody, I don't fucking know why, it's incredibly, and then you're ruining something for something, like if I do it a lot, I don't know, it is hard, it is a tough thing, I think as skeptics, often we are the people who are like, yeah, that thing you are really excited about, it is not real, you know It, that's a shitty Position To Be In.

0:33:12 Tom: Did, did I,

0:33:12 Eli: Well Thomas I Thomas I, I have all the empathy for you, because of all,, I mean, we all debunk stuff on our shows, but of the people who get like requests to debunk stuff the most often, you definitely carry the heaviest end of that stick, and it must fucking suck when there's some faked police brutality video or faked court video, and they're like, what does Andrew think of this on Opening Arguments, and you have to be, I think that's a set, whether that's someone's living, or There's a fridge, you think there's a fridge in the courtroom, like that's, that's tough

0:33:38 Tom: Yeah, Curious. This is a, this is an, this is a corollary, but I'm curious. Did either of you guys, when you were a little ever believe that wrestling was real?

0:33:53 Thomas: No, I never had. A, I had never had any whatever channel that was. And B, no.

0:34:00 Tom: Eli, did you, did you watch like, it was called WWF when we were kids.

0:34:03 Eli: No I, I never, my parents were very anti-violence in my TV watching, so I wasn't allowed to watch wrestling Of

0:34:09 Tom: I, I, Well, then I guess it's just me, but I think other people watch wrestling. So when I was a little kid, and I mean like under 10, I would go, so the I would, after school I'd go to this family's house, they would babysit me, and they would watch wrestling, and I would watch rustling with them.

And I was like, oh, my, watch wrestling, within, there was, it was me and my brother, and then they had two boys, Jason and Dan, and so myself, my brother, in Jason, Dan, we'd be in the living room and like we would watch wrestling all the time, we'd like bouncing off the couch and like playing wrestling, you know, know what I mean, and it was like so much fun, and we watched this wrestling, and we just, I fucking loved it, and you'd be like, oh, like Hulk Hogan is gonna beat the Iron Sheik, and it's like super racist and I don't really get it, and, you know, and you're like, cool, and but we loved it.

And then I remember the dad walked into the room one day, and he just glanced over at the TV, and he's like, wrestling, you guys know this is all fake, right? I was like, floored,

0:35:05 Tom: Floored by that, right, Right. And I looked at him and I was like, it is, it is not, you know, and he was like, yeah, that's all fake. He's like that, you would die if somebody, like, you would literally die if somebody picked you up and jumped six feet in the air and dropped you on your fucking skull. You know, like nobody would survive one of these matches for one minute. And he's like, this is how it's done, they're bleeding, you can't fake the bleeding, it's like, now they cut their foreheads with razor blades, they're hidden in their little wrist wraps, that's why, why they wear them. And I was like, oh, and I remember, I, I remember the day I heard it, and I never watched wrestling again another day in my life. And I didn't mind, no, it's not a sad story, 'cause I realized, like,

0:35:04 Eli: Course I so

0:35:11 Thomas: Yeah.

0:35:48 Thomas: Tom gives

0:35:49 Tom: I really, God damn it.

0:35:50 Eli: Yeah.

0:35:49 Thomas: His usual disclaimer. Why don't we record that? Tom, let's get a clean take of you doing that. And then that way I can just hit a button. No, this is not a sad story. It's not. Guys, it's very happy.

0:35:56 Tom: It's not. Why does everybody, I that. I remember that

0:36:02 Thomas: I'm glad this strange man took my innocence. I'm Glad.

0:36:02 Tom: As a moment where the curtain was pulled back.

0:36:06 Eli: It's Good.

0:36:06 Thomas: Give me more time.

0:36:06 Eli: And then he brought me to the car wash and it was, I won that day. It was fantastic.

0:36:10 Tom: You know what? I was nine years old. It was time to grow up, goddammit.

0:36:11 Eli: Yeah. I vomited and my dad said thumbs up and texted me back a thumbs up, it was great, can

0:36:20 Tom: But I didn't, like, even as, like a young person, I didn't want to believe things that weren't true.

0:36:23 Thomas: Yeah, same.

0:36:24 Tom: You know what I mean? I didn't want to watch things that weren't truth. I didn't, like, it was, I knew TV wasn't true, but it didn't purport to be truth. It didn't play itself as if it were truth. Wrestling in my kid mind, mind played itself as true and then it wasn't, you know what I mean, and then I was like, oh, well, then it's just, pat, I just don't want this, like, I just, I don't want it anymore, like, this is not interesting to me, I don't ever want to see this ever again.

0:36:39 Eli: You

0:36:48 Thomas: There's A weird kind of overlap for me that I don't think is going to apply to either of you at all, where this was a tactic by my narcissist dad to get one over on everybody, buddy, so he would point out everything fake all the time, and including stuff that wasn't fake, you know, as a way of like fucking gaslighting you, is the worst, so

0:37:08 Eli: Give an exam of what he said was fake that wasn't fake, oh

0:37:10 Tom: Yeah. Bury.

0:37:11 Thomas: That that's putting broad words and not saying something was fake, but it would be be like, um, of everything can be, especially stuff that like you were telling him, uh, it was very much like a thing you were feeling or doing. There's always this skepticism applied, you know, like inappropriately, I would say one that, one that really frustrated me and it was toward the, I was older. So it was one of those things where I was old enough, I think, to just be pissed about it and not like take it seriously and actually think, but I, uh, had to get a, oh, it's one of the many fucking things I've gotten to try to figure out what my stomach is, and uh, I don't know if you've had this one, Eli, but it's the one where they put some fucking shit in your stomach, like beryl, beryllium, berylla, or something, something and then they, yeah, that might be it, and then they put you on a fucking batman sleeping mechanism to turn you all around, so that it coats your stomach.

And then they can, because of whatever the thing is glowy, the, the whatever that stuff is, the barium stuff is glowie. They can then scan and kind of see stuff. So I'm getting that procedure. I'm, I don't know, probably 18, freshmen high school, some, or sorry, freshmen in college or something like that. I can't remember. And during the part of this procedure, uh, the guy's like, all right, so I'm about to inject, you know, the stuff in there. And, uh, this will actually, what it will most likely do is it makes your body instantly feel, I can't remember, it's either freezing or hot.

0:37:26 Eli: Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

0:37:51 Eli: Barium. Warm

0:37:51 Tom: Him and

0:38:30 Thomas: One of the other, like, is it warm?

0:38:32 Eli: You feel warm? And you taste pennies, a

0:38:34 Thomas: Okay. Whatever it was, it was either, no, it That's just, you peed yourself during a procedure, Tom. That's, they told you that to make you feel better.

0:38:35 Tom: Isn't that the one where it also feels like you're peeing yourself? There's okay No. Edit. That out, edit that out.

0:38:44 Thomas: They're like, oh, yeah. And this, you know, that thing where I knock your knee and see if it flinches, that also makes you pee yourself, right? That's definitely, you guys all pee yourself during that, right, um

0:38:53 Tom: You guys

0:38:54 Eli: You're doing wrestling with Gilligan the monkey, he gets you in an especially dangerous headlock

0:38:54 Tom: Okay All right, edit edit, uh, one, two, three, edit.

0:38:58 Eli: Right

0:39:02 Thomas: But Whatever it was, it was either makes you cold or hot, it might be hot if Eli's saying it's that, probably is, and it fucking did, like, he put it in and I think it's because, you know, it makes sense that however your own body monitors your temperature to know if it should fucking sweat or shiver, which are, you know, whatever the responses are, I think, you know, fucking with that, it stands to reason that like, oh yeah, that's going to make you feel really cold or hot or whatever it was.

So I was relaying the story. I was like, yeah, it was interesting because it was like a switch. It was like he did the injection. I was like, oh, there's nothing. And then like two seconds, like bam, like sweating or freezing, one or the other, whatever it was. And it was, it was amazing. And so my dad, of course, this is a prime example. It would be this kind of thing every time, he had to be like, oh yeah, that's the power of suggestion there, that'll do it. As though what was actually happening was mentally, I was believing that he was telling me it was going to happen, so I was making it happen, like it's that times a billion, I don't know if that does, that make sense or no, like it, whatever the story was, if there was an explanation for it that would mean he was accessing the truth about it that you weren't, that would be what he would default

0:39:38 Tom: Yeah

0:40:06 Thomas: Toward because then he's the one who's who's fucking in control of everything and you're just the the suggestible idiot who felt cold because the doctor told you to.

0:40:14 Eli: Also That's also, it's, it's an insistence on a lack of empathy, right? It's the denial of your experience no matter how minor, right, because if he's gonna admit that the barium made you warm, then maybe he, but you might say you were sad next and he can't acknowledge that so We're stopping at barium.

0:40:18 Thomas: Yeah. Yep. Yep. And sister did that exact thing to me recently. And I was like, oh, fuck. That's the same. Okay. That's what happens.

0:40:39 Eli: How?

0:40:40 Thomas: That's what happens. You start just fucking doing these things that your parents did to you. And I was like, no. And then I just didn't make a conversation about it. It Was Tough. Tough. So

0:40:48 Tom: That's great, you

0:40:50 Eli: To end generational trauma, the one the one CD course with Thomas Smith comes packaged in with Tom's How to Be a Man of course.

0:40:53 Tom: No

0:40:59 Thomas: The The point of that history was to try, there's also that mixed in where I, is a constant fucking theme for me, and I think anybody listening who has this kind of, you know, shit in their backstory, is all right, but what's the appropriate level of being able to say, nah, it's fucking stupid, you know, like, it's because if if a guy comes and tries to sell you fucking fake fucking shit on the street, we're all like, yeah, you can be like, no, that's fucking stupid, you don't have to buy a fake watch, you don't have to be like, like, oh, I believe you for the sake of fun, of not bursting anyone's bubble. There is some line of, yeah, it's okay for you to be like, yeah, this is a piece of shit fake thing. But where is that line?

0:41:18 Tom: Yeah because I don't, that's a great question because there's, you know, one, the power of suggestion is actually a real thing right, so I mean, it's, and it's a, and it's real and very powerful thing, and then I also am keenly aware that as parents we can to a large degree set the stage for how good or bad or neutral an experience might be, and and like I, there is a tendency for some people to sort of pre catastrophize for their kids, you know, and then there's a tendency for other people to go the direction of your dad, which is to aggressively minimize.

0:41:42 Thomas: Sure. Yes. Down.

0:42:12 Tom: And both are a problem. Right.

0:42:13 Thomas: Yeah. Minimize everything. Yeah, for sure.

0:42:15 Tom: And what I mean, like the pre catastrophizers, like what I've encountered in my life that I've had to combat, where it's like I don't want to minimize an experience, but I don't want to suggest that experience is going to be bad before the bad has begun. Right. And I don't want to be like, okay, there's this thing and it's going to be terrible, we're going to need to, you know, have fucking therapy for it, and you know, and then you sort of like build up before this thing has happened that this thing is going to be traumatic, and therefore you have helped create that trauma, rather than to say, all right, I'm going to keep a close eye on this event or on this, this issue or on, on this thought process, and I'm going to monitor it as we go and make sure that I'm there. Of Those are different ends of the spectrum.

0:42:29 Thomas: Yes. Yes.

0:42:57 Thomas: Kid falls down. I actually believe in this. I try to do it. Your kid falls Down, wait for them to react. Right? Do you guys do that?

0:43:02 Tom: Yeah, 100%, right?

0:43:03 Thomas: Unless it's like really bad obviously

0:43:04 Tom: Yeah. And you guys have seen the parents that swoop in like, oh my God, you fell down! And it's like, fuck, what are you doing?

0:43:06 Thomas: Yeah yeah yeah and it's hard that's a hard impulse to resist, you know, like it really is a hard pulse, but it's actually true that they've, sometimes it doesn't really hurt and they'll just be like, no, I'm fine, like as long as you don't react to it.

0:43:22 Tom: Exactly right. And I think that that doesn't end, right? People look to the people in their lives, oftentimes for context clues about how they should feel about things. I don't know that like we like we, we're social animals and we look oftentimes to our peers, to our role models, to people in authority to understand how to process our own feelings. And if they bounce back this sort of echo of, yeah, that's really fucking bad, that's a really terrible thing that happened, like, yeah, fucking that was really fucking, or the alternative awful, which is Thomas's dad, which is where it's like, whatever, shake it off, rub some dirt in it, didn't matter, didn't happen, doesn't, you know, and you're like, oh fuck, like there's a, there's a space there that has to be navigated. It's real important to get it right. Um, and I think the way to try to get it right as often as possible is exactly what you said, Thomas, which is to don't react, take your cues, don't act, take your queues, because like erring on either side of that spectrum is really, really fucking troubling. We

0:44:25 Thomas: Another thing that just occurred to me, Tom, was what's really funny about my mom. You know how she's constantly a chameleon, I have no fucking idea what she is or who she is. She absorbed that trait from my dad, but did it wrong and would just sometimes, just for totally normal things, would be like, I don't believe that's real. And he'd be like, what? So one time I remember telling her in college about the great great Pacific garbage patch, I was like, yeah, no, there's this fucking garbage patch no I told her about this, is what, college, I was, again there's a fucking garbage batch, this, yeah, it's huge, like it's just, whatever, she's like, I don't believe it, I was, what, I was that's not a thing you get to just not believe, I didn't even, yeah it was

0:44:47 Tom: Watermelons never, nope watermelones are not real wait what she doesn't believe in the, the what

0:45:02 Eli: Doesn't not not required your belief, that's not how that works, if

0:45:08 Tom: What

0:45:09 Thomas: So funny, I was, okay, whatever, fucking, what, and I think part of that was a little bit of politics overlap of like, oh yeah, the left's probably making up fucking environmental whatever, but it was self, but it's that she would, she would do that where she would do her impression of my dad a little bit, but it made no, like it was not only was it shitty, it didn't make sense, it's made up I've

0:45:26 Tom: Like did you, like if you showed her, like, oh, I'm gotta know, if you showed her a website or something, would she believe it then, you don't even know

0:45:36 Thomas: I don't fucking know, maybe if I showed her enough things, I don't know, I was like, no, it's real, and I didn't care enough to, that's, look, I had something happened with my mom that I wanted to tell you guys about, and I'm just tease the audience, I think I'll try to squeeze it in a future episode, because it'll, it'll maybe enlighten some of this a little, little bit, because I learned a lot within recent interaction with my mom. So I'll put a pin in that for later.

0:45:59 Eli: Will say, as someone who has family that, uh, disagrees on very obvious truths about the universe, a lot of the, the time there's just sort of like, um, well, you know, agree to disagree, and you're like, no, nope, no, and they're like, well, you win some, you lose some, up is down, left is right, penny saved is penny earned, they're just like, it's like if I can say, if I an say something vaguely folksy at the end of the conversation, I win, right?

0:46:19 Tom: It is what it is

0:46:29 Thomas: Yeah.

0:46:29 Eli: It's not different

0:46:30 Thomas: Yeah, exactly. They're trying to get that last folksy word.

0:46:32 Tom: Live life love live life love

0:46:33 Thomas: Well, it just goes to show you there's a reason for everything. No, no, there's not. There's not a reason. That's a hard I have to do that. I do that all the time whenever anybody does the fucking and that might be important. You know, where's the line? How do we decide? Because if my kid, let's say my kid is, Is it, I don't know, some vague school, whatever parent thing. And the message of whatever the thing is, is, oh, you see, so everything happens for a reason. Because talk about things that even more people believe. That's like 98.4% of all humans are like, yeah, well, yeah.

0:46:33 Eli: Folks different folks yeah sure

0:46:33 Tom: Oh yeah

0:47:06 Eli: No

0:47:07 Thomas: I'm an atheist, but everything happens. For a reason, you're like, what the, no, that's not what he's, what are you talking about? It literally doesn't. And so do you, nope.

0:47:10 Tom: Yeah right that those Same people will be like, well, what goes around comes around, and you're just like, no, it doesn't lots of times

0:47:19 Eli: Actually

0:47:18 Thomas: Look at Trump. It doesn't, the evil people live forever.

0:47:19 Eli: Evil people have historically done

0:47:21 Thomas: Ever. They live, Trump will outlive all three of us and never.

0:47:22 Eli: Great yeah

0:47:19 Tom: Nope super no yeah sometimes babies get brain cancer so I'm not sure how you deal with that, but

0:47:27 Thomas: Yeah. Yep. And so like how much of that, to much OF that at what age is okay? Cause I am very much the person who, whenever this comes up, I have to point it out, especially, you know, you're watching a show, you're doing whatever. And it's just a little joke that I kind of do with Lydia sometimes where I'm like, yeah, or not, you don't want it when they give you the, yeah. So you see, that's why God God did this and made me whatever. And then the funny joke is always like playing that out. Oh, okay. So God first killed your dad and then he did that in order to make you be inspired to win the football game. Okay. I get it. Yeah, I understand. So he murdered your dad so that you would get a first down on, uh, yeah, no, that makes sense. It's just a fun thing to do because it's so fucking stupid.

0:48:00 Tom: Think it's appropriate to do that around kids, kids beginning at fucking conception, I really do

0:48:13 Thomas: Thank you. Okay. I'm not, I want to hear no more. I get permission now. Nobody say anything. That's fine. No more discussion.

0:48:16 Eli: Must

0:48:14 Tom: Absolutely yep yep 100 100 because I mean, like going into like preparing for this conversation, we're gonna have today, because we also wanted to talk about, like, how do we talk to our kids about politics, right? Like these are all, we, I don't at all believe that we should take these ideas and sort of set them aside as different than any other ideas, because we happen to be like, me and you, and like we happen to be culturally outside the norm.

0:48:39 Thomas: Hmm. Yes.

0:48:42 Tom: These are my values. These are my valores.

0:48:43 Thomas: I was going to make the same exact Point, Tom. Totally. Because I was going to suggest we were talking about the religion and not fucking spoiling it for people like Eli's explanation. What about racism? What about, you know, like, do we, oh, some people just prefer to believe that black people commit more crime. You know, like, no, we don't respect that. We don't expect like certain political beliefs that really border. And then, then you're trying to draw some line. Well, if something's a political belief or a racist belief then we're fine being like fuck you you fucking racist no we're not gonna I'm not gonna uh your ideas and make you feel like they're valid but there isn't really a clean dividing line between these types of beliefs to your point Tom I Totally Believe that, yeah.

0:49:21 Tom: No. Yeah. They're religion and your politics are just a couple of different buckets we use to help explain our values. That's all that it is. And, you know, the their friends that they're going to school with, their parents are teaching them religious values. And so So we don't get to sidestep that same responsibility. Right. I just don't think that we do. And we shouldn't. We shouldn't like I'm not ashamed of my values at all. And I'm Not uncomfortable with my values. I am aware, like you pointed out, that having these values might put me might mark me and my family as cultural outsiders, but also less and less depending on where you live. Right? I understand that that's not the case everywhere, but depending on where you live less and less. And it's also still just these are my values. And I'm not going to raise my kids to have like secret fucking values or like values after the fact. I talk about politics.

0:49:29 Thomas: Yeah.

0:50:17 Eli: Be So nice to have admirable values, Tom, you fucking snob. What if, just hypothetically, if we had terrible values, terrible, terrible values.

0:50:22 Tom: I talked Terrible values.

0:50:30 Eli: Yes.

0:50:30 Thomas: It's Hard though, because I'm so sensitive to making my kids be the fucking freak aliens. I'm I'm so sensitive to it because that's what My family did. My idiot, weird dad and mom made us the pariahs of every single thing. Had a weird fucking Smith family thing about it. There was always, oh yeah, we only eat at McDonald's ever.

0:50:37 Eli: Absolutely. Yeah.

0:50:50 Thomas: You know, there's all the, a thousand of those where it's like, fuck. And I'm such a, I do not, I don't know where, again, I don't know where the fucking line is. I don't want to make my kids be that. I want them to have a fighting chance to fucking just get to be in society and just go along with it.

0:50:50 Tom: Yeah. Same, Man. Yeah. Yeah.

0:51:07 Eli: Let Let me let Me take that A step further, it's it is so much more important to me that Max have an easy social time Than my values. I was, so I don't care about any of my values because they're not real, they're just thoughts in My head, they're just, they're my little believees I have about the world, and they're changeable, which means they're nothing, they're fucking nothing. But I don t if anyone, one is mean to Max, that's a demonstrably Worst Thing In the world. So I for me, I'm like, I need whatever maximizes Max's chance of success. I'm not gonna lie, I was like, when you were talking about racism, I waslike that's really a good point, but like, okay, but what if someone in power is racist? I don't want my son fucking standing up to the principal over racism. He could get expelled.

0:51:16 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yep, yep.

0:51:23 Tom: But No.

0:51:38 Tom: Yeah.

0:51:58 Thomas: Eli really just would follow orders. Eli would just follow orders also

0:51:59 Tom: No. That You Don't You Believe That, I I love you, Eli, you believe that because Max is so little. You, you will not believe when Max is 15 or 16 You Won't

0:52:08 Thomas: Picture Eli, the person that You're trying, who's asked, you're tring to kiss for Max's benefit. Picture them being a real piece of shit and you not respecting them. Cause that's what, I'm not gonna lie, for that person, fuck that Person.

0:52:10 Tom: Yeah.

0:52:19 Tom: You're You're the person that doesn't want Max to apologize unless He feels deeply personally remorseful. Like you can't, you can'T walk away and be like, you CAN'T like, that's just a value. That's just the value. And it's weirdly socially maladaptive.

0:52:23 Thomas: Yeah.

0:52:29 Eli: I This This.

0:52:37 Thomas: You weren't Really Receptive To our peer pressure to have your kid not be a psychopath who doesn't apologize to anybody. You stuck to your guns there. What, the fuck, are we not powerful enough, Tom? We need to be more powerful. Yeah.

0:52:38 Tom: This is right.

0:52:49 Tom: We're not, we're not strong enough to bend his mighty will. That's the,

0:52:52 Thomas: I Gotta Become a CEO or something, so This fucking guy Will listen to anything we say.

0:52:54 Eli: Look, you head up a private school or you start working in college admissions, you're going to get a lot more yeses. That's all I'm saying.

0:53:00 Thomas: We Should

0:53:01 Tom: I think

0:53:13 Eli: Gentlemen, speaking of peer pleasure, I've got some bad news. On this podcast is actually possessed by an owl.

0:53:21 Tom: Who?

0:53:23 Eli: I knew it!

0:53:24 Tom: I was like, he's going to make me do it. I knew you were going to do it, Thomas.

0:53:29 Eli: All.

0:53:29 Tom: I was, like, all right, fine.

0:53:35 Clip: Want to meet sexy DILFs in your area? Email the dads at DearOldDads.com or, better yet, send us a message on Patreon. You can follow us on all social media by checking the links in the show notes. And if you need more podcasts in your life, you can find Tom on Cognitive Dissonance, Thomas on Serious Inquiries Only, and Eli on Godawful Movies and all the Puzzle in the Thunderstorm shows. Dear Old Dads is edited and produced by my favorite DILF, Tom Smith, who also wrote and recorded the intro music, which is used with his permission. This podcast is a production of Daddy Issues LLC. Copyright 2022. All rights reserved.

0:54:14 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dad Welcome to Dear Old Dads Goddammit!

0:54:17 Thomas: Fucker. Can't read Yeah. Know, I'm very lost in this joke, I don't even know where the fuck Just, okay.

0:54:24 Eli: There's The people were mad At you about that, people were bad at you about the Adnan thing, I thought I would mix Them together, throw them in there, whatever, it's fine, I

0:54:25 Thomas: Okay. Believe Percent of stories you tell, have you never told anyone before on the show? Because I've, I'm just realizing for me it's like, I don't know, 97, like, yeah. Because

0:54:43 Tom: I've never told Anybody, like, even my wife.

0:54:45 Thomas: I'm Realizing that I think the way I am, I just retain a shitload of stuff that I just never tell anybody and

0:54:45 Tom: No. I've, I've told all this stuff to Hayley, like, you Know, like

0:54:54 Thomas: And Not For any reason, like, oftentimes it'll just be like, eh, I'll just keep this one for me. You know, like, just like out of, I don't want to have to put, I don't want have to do the emotional labor of having them react to the story of like, oh yeah, that, that sucks for you. And I, you know, I just weird. I'm realizing like, I it's so funny. Cause I love, I love doing the show. Cause I'll remember this stuff and I'll be like, oh, I've never told anyone that like literally never told him.

0:54:54 Tom: Yeah. So Lydia's Learning About you through the show Yeah. That's Got to, yeah, that's got to be kind of cool, we

0:55:17 Thomas: Oh, for sure. Oh for for sure yeah yeah