DOD71: How Much Should We Force Our Values On 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 maybe got a little kale in its teeth. I'm Tom Curry. I'm joined, as always, by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:37 Eli: Tom's mad about technology, everybody. He's trying to cover it up, but he had to use .

0:00:39 Thomas: Yeah.

0:00:40 Tom: I'm trying to calm down, Eli. You're not going to help me, right? I'm doing a funny show where we do the bits about parenting and not the fucking handshakingly angry desire to smash my fucking computer a la Office Space every time I look at it. So I

0:00:53 Eli: He didn't get to eat any food. He gave up food for a webcam he can't use.

0:00:56 Tom: Didn't. Yeah, that's not helping either. Like you take a guy like me who's hangry to start with strip away my time to eat.

0:01:02 Thomas: Tom, you could just eat eat some of your cables or something. Just eat. You're so mad. Just eat like eat some computers her stuff dude

0:01:06 Tom: Jesus Christ. It's just Christ.

0:01:08 Eli: Don't know what this week's show is about, but for me, it's about picking fights with Tom. So I just want to say for the record, Haley's faking it, okay? I feel like it's been a while since I've said it, and I just wanna get it out. Feels good.

0:01:10 Tom: Oh,

0:01:14 Thomas: Think

0:01:17 Tom: Fuck. Oh fuck. All right. Let's move the hell away from that. Actually, I so want to ask, because this is just a kind of a related to my, my silly little intro, but like, if you see somebody, if you're with somebody, and because this just happened to me the last couple of days, I had to go away for work for my stupid golf thing the other day, so I just got back, uh, last night, like about one in the morning, but, um, are at a work thing or you're in a polite company and you see something and you're like, oh, my God, not say something has this happened to you because

0:01:22 Eli: Oh. Yeah.

0:01:51 Eli: No.

0:01:49 Thomas: So I I can't think of a specific instance, but yeah, no, you say something.

0:01:55 Tom: I'm going to give you my answer, but I want to know what yours is.

0:01:55 Thomas: Oh. What?

0:01:57 Tom: Okay, so Thomas, you're, you're on the side of yes, Eli, so

0:01:55 Eli: I'm on the side of no. I'M GONNA GO AHEAD AND SAY NO.

0:02:03 Thomas: Just for fun. Well

0:02:04 Eli: SURE.

0:02:03 Tom: I'm gonna go with it depends on who it is and how much I like them, so I was sitting at dinner or

0:02:08 Thomas: Yeah, if it's your mortal enemy and it's like the interview to get the grant for the sun, yeah, okay, fine, whatever, Tom.

0:02:12 Tom: If I just have a chance to be a little bit petty through inaction with somebody I don't like. I have, there's, to go away to this work thing and, you know, we, we together and we do, you socializing know, and meetings. Um, and I've known, I've talked about in the show before, so I don't get too much further into it, but, you know, my industry is very internally competitive. So, you know, these folks that I work with, they, many of them are, you know, I mean, like, we can be friendly, but like the next promotion that comes up, like we're not going to be all that friendly. So, and like everybody's kind of always secretly vying a little little bit for customers or territory, etc, etc, because we're all very, it's a very internally competitive environment.

0:02:50 Thomas: Works for the cartel By the way, I don't even mentioned it, so

0:02:51 Tom: There's so, so we have these pretenses toward collaboration, but they are, they are in many ways pretenses towards collaboration.

0:02:55 Thomas: If El Chapo Guzman has lettuce in his teeth, I'm gonna say, don't, I'm going to say just don't comment on it, like, I wouldn't even do it.

0:03:05 Tom: Well, Well, there's Somebody, there, there, there is a, there's a young lady, um, works for our company who is, um, way up there, she's a, she's a terrific salesperson, but she is just insufferable, she's just insuffERable and impossible for me to like, and I just don't, and she's treated some of the people that work for me very poorly in the past. And we were sitting at dinner, and wouldn't you know, and she was right across from me, and she had something just right in her front teeth, right in our front teeth, and I know she's very deeply image conscious, and I, I recognized all of this and the insecurity that that she would feel when she got back to her room and realized that after several hours of mingling and socializing. And so I was very happy to not report back to er with the universal little something up here gesture and just let it go. And hours later into the evening, I noticed, oh, it's still there. Good.

0:03:57 Tom: It hasn't dislodged all evening. And I am not going to lie. I got a little kick out of that. I got little joy out of it. Got that moment of inaction.

0:03:57 Thomas: Jesus, like the beginning of Emperor's New Groove. I love that movie. I'm so glad when I could get my kids to watch a movie that's actually good. I'm like, oh, this is a good kids thing, and I got into it it's Oh, so I'm so glad to hear this.

0:04:10 Eli: It's such a good movie. Oh, god, I love Ember. I, I will watch and re-watch Emperor's New Groove. To no end. So

0:04:20 Tom: It's a great movie.

0:04:21 Thomas: I thought you were giving me a polite laugh, that it is so fucking funny. I love that movie so much.

0:04:22 Tom: Great movie. Oh,

0:04:26 Eli: Good. There, there are comedic beats in that movie that are genuinely among the best, like, inscribed into history. No touchy when the fucking logs about wrong.

0:04:27 Thomas: Oh, yeah. Oh, my god, this is the best yeah,

0:04:39 Tom: Yes.

0:04:39 Eli: Lever everything with crunk. Everything with like crunk.

0:04:40 Thomas: It's so good, that's so great. It's

0:04:42 Tom: Absolutely,

0:04:43 Thomas: The best. This is am I dreaming right now, this is like Eli, wait, Eli, are you doing an impression of me? Oh, like this is exactly what I would say about that, it's so fucking good, it's the best.

0:04:43 Eli: The no, I fucking love that movie. I love that move, movie, yeah.

0:04:43 Tom: That that movie is an underrated Disney movie. Oh, so Will I will add to that, the sound design in that movie is deceptively fantastic. I used to, I know I've said before, I used to sell speakers and audio equipment and home theater equipment, and real, I can't tell you, like, because you had to find family-friendly movies that still had a lot of dynamic, you can't put on in like a big box store, you can'T put on the movies that would very typically have the kind of set and sound design that really impress.

0:04:55 Thomas: Ah, nothing sold more bullshit monster cables than Emperor's New Groove, ladies and gentlemen. Ah, good point. Yeah, so

0:05:23 Tom: So you have to find really family-friendly movies that STILL have, like, like low-end sound and like immersive home theater sound with, like, lots of, you know, stuff going on in the rear speakers and surrounds rounds, yeah.

0:05:33 Thomas: You got, like, some seven -year -old kids, now you can really hear the bullets whiz through this guy's skull, like, you can hear, the I can actually hear the brain matter in addition to the skull, let's put on the Zapruder film, actually, that's a good one, you can hear, oh my,

0:05:34 Eli: It's

0:05:37 Tom: Because They well, well, what you're supposed to do is, you're supposed to find and select your scene, and then you're supposed to, and we had equipment that was made to do this, you're supposed to keep that scene on constant repeat in your in your right.

0:05:59 Thomas: I I'm out.

0:06:00 Tom: So I never

0:06:00 Thomas: I'm out, fired, sorry, take this job and shove it, I would die.

0:06:02 Tom: Did it, I just refused

0:06:03 Thomas: Yeah, I would died, yeah, oh,

0:06:03 Tom: For years. Thomas, I, for years I refused to do it because you'd go fucking mad listening to the same three-minute clip. But I picked Emperor's New Groove very frequently. I had maybe eight or nine movies that I think really had great sound design. And I picked that one. It had amazing sound design, and I would just be like, I'm just going to put this on play. If somebody comes in and they want to hear something, I can just fast-forward or rewind into wherever I need to find my space in about a minute. But, yeah, I've watched that movie maybe 150, 300 times.

0:06:35 Tom: I don't know because it was on in the background, Never got tired of it, I never got tired of that one.

0:06:34 Thomas: Yeah, Oh, it's so good, whoa,

0:06:37 Eli: The best. Now, Tom, side note about speaker sales and movies, do you know that an entire movie was created to solve that problem? Okay, so there is a movie that is shot from the first person called Hardcore Hank, uh, it came out as an action movie, it made almost no money. And there was a really, really interesting article about that movie, that basically it started out as a demonstration for speaker systems.

0:06:48 Thomas: Really?

0:06:48 Tom: What movie? God,

0:07:04 Thomas: What?

0:07:05 Eli: They were like, oh, we could do this.

0:07:05 Tom: Damn, it when did this? Come out it's probably came out for

0:07:07 Eli: And then they were like well how much would it cost to like shoot the rest of this? And they were, like, I don't know, like $100,000 bucks? And they we're, like oh, fuck, let's do it. I would love to have 90 minutes. And so if you look at the sponsors for Hardcore Hank, they're like Sonos, Soundbar, fucking Bose. Like it's it is it's truly and of course no one will admit to it because that would be a horrible way to create art but like when you look at the producers of it it is a sound it is an entire film produced for demonstrating various forms of audio and video

0:07:18 Tom: Real, oh so

0:07:35 Thomas: Really I I want to know, do they do the equivalent that used to be the big joke back in the 90s of the 3D, where you do, oh, we're sticking something out in the camera. That used to be like the go-to joke of like, oh, it's coming at you. Do they do that but for sound? Where it's like, Oh, I'm spinning around and there's sound in all five 4.1 points of this room.

0:07:50 Tom: Right, Yeah, Well, Here's what I discussed. But, so, so, Eli, I just looked that up, that's 15 years after, I'm so old. That's 15 years after I got out of college and stopped spelling speakers But I will say, like, customers... Customers hated when you put on custom-made demo DVDs or custom-made, like, audio CDs, because they felt like it was obviously gimmicky, because it was like nothing actually performs that way, so I never used it because it was never effective. I will, and I know we'll talk about something important.

0:07:58 Eli: Oh,

0:08:02 Thomas: I didn't know they had sound back then, Tom. Wow.

0:08:19 Thomas: Yeah.

0:08:26 Tom: But when when nobody was when when Nobody was around I always kept and this is such a weird one. I always Kept a DVD of the movie Outbreak and that movie has terrible sound design, except for in the very beginning. If you were selling subwoofers, Yeah, yeah, there's nothing interesting going around and going on in, like, the surrounds. It's a lot of just, like, dialogue in that movie, but there's an opening scene where they drop this fuel bomb, and it had the most unbelievable explosion I'd ever listened to. It's just like it's like they spent all their money on the sound, and the one moment in the very opening, like, prologue to the film, like, "We're just going to have this one exciting moment, and the rest of it's going to be people talking about a monkey." That's it's gonna have two hours of people talking about a monkey and being afraid of a monkey.

0:08:26 Thomas: No, this is very important. Wait. The Dustin Hoffman one? Okay.

0:09:10 Thomas: Yeah,

0:09:10 Tom: That's fine, but we're gonna have this one moment. And so, like, I would have it, but I had to hide it, because, like, if the management came by, it wasn't family-friendly to watch this, like, fuel bomb blow up, like, this village of people, in order to, like, ostensibly hide this, you know, outbreak. That's how the movie actually opens up.

0:09:26 Thomas: All Right.

0:09:27 Tom: But holy... Holy shit, did I sell a lot of subwoofers with that thing?

0:09:27 Eli: Of

0:09:27 Thomas: Few things, first, off. Um, what I haven't watched this movie in a thousand years, and I'm sure it didn't age well, but 30... 40 Year Old Virgin, I joke that they were always playing "Yamo, be there!" Or whatever, in the, in what Best Buy that they essentially worked in, was so fucking... I love that joke, because he's like, "If I have to hear 'Yamo, be there' one more time, Yamo..."

0:09:49 Tom: Oh.

0:09:49 Thomas: Shoot myself in the fucking head. So it's that exact thing. Secondly, this, uh, is exactly my kind of motivation, Tom. If I were in your situation, I would literally have invented, like, new inventions in order to play different, like, I would have been like, "Okay, here's the thing, I can't listen to one thing, I'll invent, like, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm going to do homework for weeks, and I will find 41 different good examples that are all perfect for what you need, and I'll invent, like, a shuffler that'll just, because I can't all that to not hear repetitive thing. I would do anything to do that.

0:10:21 Thomas: I would. I would never have stopped working, and if the boss had said no, I just been like, "I'm sorry, I'm leaving, I can't fucking do this." Yeah.

0:10:14 Tom: Yeah. Oh, my God. On the TVs that were, like, hard-mounted all over the store, they had these DVDs. They changed them once every four weeks, and they played a series of, like. Pop songs. Like, again, family-friendly pop songs for the most part, but, like, the most, like, the, you know, a handful of whatever they could license that were, like, popular pop songs at the time. And I will never forget the month of my life that I spent listening every, like, 18 or 20 minutes when it would come back around to M-Bop, because

0:10:53 Thomas: Oh oh that's one of the better ones that could have happened, honestly.

0:10:57 Eli: Course all

0:10:58 Tom: Oh My god, are you... You see it, like, oom -bop?

0:11:01 Eli: Right all

0:11:00 Thomas: Oh yeah yeah are you kidding me. Oh, Tom, why don't you go get that job, right now, go apply to Best Buy, and you listen to the fucking horse shit pop music. I'm not saying Oom Bop is good, but it's way, oh, it is now, okay, that's now 25 years old or so.

0:11:01 Tom: No, no, no. That is... Oh, it's so bad, my friend. It

0:11:02 Eli: Right Max, all right now,

0:11:18 Thomas: If you looked at any pop song from then, there'd be very few that would be quite as not bad as that one.

0:11:20 Eli: Guys.

0:11:19 Tom: Is, yeah. It's not... It's so mad.

0:11:26 Eli: I don't want to be a story topper, but as someone who worked in FAO Schwartz for seven years and whose only music for three years of that was the clock tick tock song over and over and over again. Hear the clock tick-tock while we go to work.

0:11:30 Thomas: Oh.

0:11:31 Tom: Oh, brother. Oh. Oh.

0:11:40 Thomas: What is that? No. Nope.

0:11:46 Tom: No.

0:11:46 Thomas: Nope!

0:11:47 Tom: No.

0:11:47 Thomas: Done. Bye. I can't work here. Sorry. Here,

0:11:48 Tom: The CIA It

0:11:48 Eli: Yep, 12 hours And during the holidays, 24 hours a day

0:11:52 Tom: Actually

0:11:54 Thomas: No, that's psychological abuse, you can't, they, they did that to Gitmo, yeah, like, there's, you Can't Do That, why would, why, why why, this is like, by the way, this is really like you telling me, oh yeah, in my job, we had, um, child slavery, actually, we just had, yeah

0:11:58 Eli: Yeah,

0:11:58 Tom: Is The CIA uses that to get like Noriega out of places. You know, like, yeah,

0:12:12 Eli: We just waterboarded each other Well, here's the amazing thing The

0:12:13 Thomas: Yeah, it was like,

0:12:15 Tom: That's worse than Car Wash Fight Club. Yeah.

0:12:17 Eli: Clock

0:12:17 Thomas: It is, I would rather fight in a car wash than do that, at least there'd be some variation, like I might get, you know, my fucking black guy one day and then my teeth broke and the next day it's a different thing.

0:12:20 Eli: Here Well, hear you're yeah

0:12:21 Tom: I'd rather I'm a 45-year-old piece of shit with a bad back. And if you were like, "alright, bare knuckle fights again in the fucking detail bay," or the TikTok song for 8 hours, he'd be like, "cool, loosen up your shoulders, boys." Here we go.

0:12:37 Thomas: Yep, not, not even Tom, listener, I'm not, this is not a bit, I would choose the car wash fight club. I'm not even like, it's not a bet, I have a chance of surviving that, I don't have a chances.

0:12:43 Tom: Yeah,

0:12:45 Eli: Well well, so Here was the best part, all right? So this was at the front doors to FAO Schwartz, it was by far, everyone had to walk past, you, so it was by far the best sales spot, and you were entirely alone because everyone else had either already been driven to Lovecraftian madness by the song, or stood there for a minute and a half and was like, "no way." And so I genuinely believe one of the reasons I was a record -breaking salesman my first couple of years is because I was just like, "yeah, no, if I think about it, I am constantly being waterboarded. But if I don't think about because of all the drugs I'm on, it's actually fine. And I do have to emphasize that I I had so much narcotics in my body at that given time that, like, you also could have slowly been welding metal to my spine and I'd have been, like... Itchy!

0:13:23 Tom: Yeah, yeah, it,

0:13:45 Thomas: So anyway, this thumb looks like a real fake thigh, I still don't understand it. Yeah.

0:13:49 Eli: Yep.

0:13:46 Tom: It, really Is a tactic in Gitmo, and to get Manuel Noriega, I was just to repetitively play annoying fucking music like like it's funny to think about and know that and to realize that that was the reality, yeah, like that was the reality of, like, retail life is essentially the same thing as being locked up in Guantanamo Bay. Retail life is the same fucking experience, and I think the pay is worse, I think the pay is actually worse.

0:13:53 Thomas: Tom knows because he works for the cartel yeah, probably

0:14:14 Eli: There's so much nicer... Yeah. There's SO much nicer to you in Guantanamo Bay than people were to me in a toy store.

0:14:19 Thomas: Now you know, they're like, "look, I know we had a reputation, look, there's a bad, there's a bit of, we had some bad customer service reviews in the 2000s, but we're better now here at, we at Gitmo."

0:14:24 Eli: I got spit on.

0:14:24 Tom: We had our moment, went our early. Yelp reviews down here in Gitmo really didn't help us out, they really hurt. Yeah.

0:14:36 Eli: Here's how bad it was. Was I got spit on so many times, I don't know how many times of full -grown adults spit in my face. Like, I know it was a lot.

0:14:44 Tom: Jesus Christ, at a toy store? What?

0:14:46 Eli: I know I was keeping track at one point. And then I was just like, I don't know, man. Sometimes people get mad and spit at you. This is just a thing that happens.

0:14:44 Thomas: Why why why are they spitting at

0:14:52 Tom: That's Nobody's ever spit at me in retail. I did like a lot of years of retail. What the fuck, what, who's that mad at a toys store? Oh,

0:14:53 Thomas: You, what, is, is

0:15:00 Eli: Everyone. Tom. Who's not that mad at a toy store?

0:15:03 Tom: That

0:15:01 Thomas: This connected is this connected to the sound, or what, what is this, is just your general appearance?

0:15:07 Eli: Nope. Nope. People were... so, again, it was Black Friday. There would be major sales there, people were in a rush, um, you know, people wanted toys that were sold out often, people wanted to move physically through you, like, I remember that being a sensation to really get used to, is like, I would sit behind this little table and people would like try to move their body through my table, and then they would look down and they'd be like "solid," and then THEY WOULD SPIT IN MY FACE AND I'D BE LIKE, I don't, I want to know what happened between the solidity of the

0:15:09 Thomas: Oh, Black Friday, yeah, well, that's definitely Eli's fault. Yeah. Yeah.

0:15:19 Tom: Sucks, yeah, okay, oh,

0:15:41 Thomas: Yeah.

0:15:41 Eli: Table I'm standing, standing behind our

0:15:43 Thomas: How Eli invented quantum mechanics, which is the reason atoms actually, you know, can't go through them. So naturally, it's your fault. Don't even have time for our main topic. Let's just talk about it is

0:15:51 Tom: My God, shit, alright, so do you know what's worse? Do you guys know what is worse than repetitive Hanson?

0:15:58 Thomas: That.

0:15:58 Tom: Um bop.

0:15:59 Thomas: Yeah, it'S the same. It'S the SAME thing.

0:15:59 Tom: Yeah, pretty much.

0:16:00 Eli: Auto Ads.

0:16:01 Thomas: Yeah. Wait, are WE get mOWING people? Is that what?

0:16:01 Tom: Yeah,

0:16:02 Eli: The mbop of a podcasting, if you will, no, quite are you kidding, in my state, in my estate, where you get, only I'm a child who was dying of cancer, but now I'm not, thank you, and this poor lady, I don't know how much this lady spent on hair health ads, but wherever she is, because it's very, she made it in her garage, right, you can tell this is recorded on a fucking cell phone, she's like, "oh come on down and check out Becky's Healthy Hair," like, whatever million dollars this poor lady paid, I want to personally return whatever percentage of it goes to our show.

0:16:17 Thomas: Oh, man, You know, I will say though, it would have been a little, I'm not saying it would have been good, but like it would have been better if at Gitmo they're like, "hey, you know, for $3.99 you can uh, get to," I Know. You

0:16:51 Eli: That's right, but it's far less than 3 .99 in this case, because for as little as a dollar an episode, Thomas, as little is a dollar in episode, you can head over to patreon.com/dearolddads and not only do you get an ad -free version of every show, but you get a special bonus story, story at the end, that's where the mythos of Car Wash Fight Club comes from.

0:16:53 Thomas: Oh, yeah,

0:17:12 Eli: If you're listening to Car Wash Flight Club and saying, "what, what, what's Car Wash Fight Club, I thought I've listened to all the shows," no, there's deep, deep lore in the Patreon bonus, and you can get all of it by heading over to patreon.com/dearolddads, correct?

0:17:11 Thomas: Shit, oh, uh, the other day, I gotta say, um, we are, people know, and we've mentioned, I'm sure, uh, I'm vegetarian, vegetarian, not vegan, 'cause I can't give up cheese and the fake cheese fucking sucks, and Eli is full vegan, 'cause he likes bad things like fake cheese. No, I'm just kidding. He's more ethical, more ethical than I am. Um, and I get this constantly, uh, even from like totally, you well -meaning, whatever friend, even like, like whatever that when I mentioned that, and then sometimes they'll ask about my kids and they'll be like, Oh, do you, what are to your kids? And I was like, Oh no, we don't, we, we'd, they just, they eat chicken nuggies. I mean, they're going to have to eat their nuggets. Like we don'T, we haven't, we're goingto let them choose for themselves. You know, like they'll, you know, we'll see one day if they want to, if they care or not,

0:17:39 Eli: Correct you're

0:18:12 Thomas: Or, you Know,

0:18:12 Tom: So Lydia is vegetarian as well, that

0:18:13 Thomas: Yeah, she decided it was funny. It was a decision I made shortly after, after, before COVID, after COVID. Oh shit, I don't remember. It's hard to remember what those times, but it was 2020 ish, I dunno. And I was just, I think, think I finally just heard enough, like, I always wanted to be vegetarian. I actually have always, I didn't, this is one, wasn't the point of the story, sorry, I don't want to get into it. I actually have never really liked eating animals. I love meats delicious, don't get me wrong. I've never liked the part that it's an animal, like, I don't like that part. And so I finally heard enough Ezra Klein Show interviews or something where I was like, you know what, fine, I'm doing it, finally I'm fucking doing it. And Lydia was like, oh yeah, okay, she's like, I'll do it too. I was was like, you don't have to do it.

0:18:50 Tom: Makes it a lot easier though, like I know we don't get too far, but it makes it a lot easier if you both can get on the same page with your dietary sort of like restrictions or whatever, right, because like if you're a couple like, and you're not on the same page, like in our house, we are frequently eating, we're frequently making and eating, if we all, if we're all together as a family, three or four different meals for every meal, because we don't all have the same dietary requirements it's a, yeah, you got to be a goddamn, so everybody is kind of to a large degree sort of like fend for yourself over here, so like, I'll be, I'll make it my thing, and Hayley has a much more restricted diet, so she's got to make kind of her food which is set aside in the fridge and freezer especially so nobody gets to her stuff, because it's so much more restricted, and then her kids have some, you know, issues with food that are pretty significant, and so they've got their things that we all kind of know, like, don't touch those things, because we don't want to run out, there might not be other options, so everybody

0:18:51 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, oof, yeah, yeah.

0:19:13 Eli: You're running a a restaurant, and poor

0:19:42 Tom: Is like Amen. And finnelly, they're like, "we'll eat anything." If it's in front of me, the three of us are like, I don't even care if we like it. If we're hungry enough, it's like, yeah.

0:19:42 Eli: Amen's just hungry. Amen.

0:19:53 Eli: Amen, just wants more. That he's just wants more, right?

0:19:55 Thomas: The three of you have a little pen where the other ones put any discarded food, and then you go...

0:19:56 Tom: Yep. Please, sir.

0:20:01 Eli: Exactly.

0:20:01 Thomas: Yeah,

0:20:01 Eli: Yeah.

0:20:02 Tom: Well, believe me, my kids are not wanting for quantity. No curry wants for quantity, I'll say that.

0:20:05 Eli: See,

0:20:10 Thomas: It does make it easier, here. And I think, I think Lydia has always, you know, been pretty sensitive to stuff anyway, you know? And she's like, yeah, okay. And, and tell you also, like, I dunno, I'm just realizing in the moment, I think it's nice that Lydia really trusts me with things like that. I dunno. I think there's a lot of her that's like probably, and she can tell me after if I'm wrong, but cause she always listens to the show. But I think a part of her as like, well, if Thomas is thinking like, this is the ethical decision like we probably should be doing this because she knows I just like you know think about these things and consume that kind of you know media all the time and I think she just kind of trusts me with that. I'm just realizing in the moment, it's kind of sweet, it's nice, she didn't really question it. Um,

0:20:40 Tom: Mm -hmm. It is. It

0:20:46 Eli: Is like, "Oh yeah, no, that's right, I will not be doing that." Yeah.

0:20:50 Tom: Is? Ha, ha, ha.

0:20:50 Thomas: Yeah, which would have been fine, like I expected that too. From, I was like, whatever, it's your decision, I wasn't gonna make it. But anyway, the only point of the story, I promise, it's not, you know, related to just going about that, but Tom asked me a question. No. No, I'm just kidding. Um, so I'll get, we'll say, yeah, no, we're, we will, you know, kids will let them, you know, we 'LL kind of tell them when we tell them, when they figure it out. And if they want to join us, they can, if not, not.

And I, I'll, it's something I just really resent is I always get the, oh, that's good. That's good that you don't, it'S really good. Okay. Then all that's, that'S good that YOU'RE not having your kids being vegetarian. That'S good. Yeah. Like you, it 'LL, it''s fine that you, I get that you 'Re a piece of shit and I hate everything everything you're doing, but it's good that like your kids, you're not teaching your kids to be a weirdo like you are. And there's something about, I'm exaggerating, but there's something about that tone where it's like, I know it means well, but it's the overemphasis of like, oh, see, that's good.

I'm like, all right, I don't need your fucking approval. Here's what I want. Here is a short thesis statement that I'm sure we can discuss forever, which is I either want no one to fucking say that to me, or when When you learn that someone is a Christian or a Catholic or something like that, I want that same fucking reaction. I

0:21:03 Tom: Ha, Ha, HA, HA. Oh, Yes.

0:22:06 Thomas: Want the, oh, but are you, are you? You don't take your kids to church, right? Like you don't, you don'T make them go. Oh, you do. You, you DO? Oh, oh. You're taking your kid, you're making your kids believe that you're eating the body of Christ when you, are you kidding? I want, I just want equality. Equality, I, so if we're gonna, you're gonna do that to me, for, by the way, having, making an ethical choice to not fucking, a thing that's real, the, the by theway, the fucking abusive animals is real, I don't have to pretend that exists, and then pray to it, and be like, no, if you, if you really believe, then the animal cruelty actually is out there somewhere, like if you really just wish upon a star, and you're going to fucking treat, it's just, ah, drives me nuts, Well,

0:22:11 Tom: Oh, Shocks me. I'm not going to lie, because like I do agree. Like I actually think, and I'm real curious how you, how you get here. Here. So like, food and culture and values are inextricable. Like your decision not to eat meat is a value driven decision. And we've talked about like how our politics are our values. And we have absolutely no, like, none of us on this show have any issues or concerns or qualms or reticence to discuss politics with our kids, because we are of course going to talk about our values with our kids, right? Our values are part of like what this is, that these are the sort of like things that we cherish morally and ethically as, as being, you know, part of our life and part of our identity. So I'm really curious why you don't feed your kids vegetarian, because this is a value you deeply hold. It. You hold it so deeply that you have adjusted your life and your your lifestyle and your choices in order to reflect that value, so I'm actually surprised about that, right?

0:23:45 Thomas: That's just it. It is me adjusting my value. Like, it is better than ever to be a vegetarian, of course, but it is quiet a bit especially for kids. You know, you don't get to have the McDonald's meal. You don't have to get, there's so pizza with the kids, like there's such a so much stuff they miss out on that the other kids are doing. I do want them to be able to choose that.

I mean, I recognize that it's a cultural norm norm, to eat meat as much as I disagree with it. Or I, by the way, I don't even disagree with eating meat per se. If we could just change the fucking system so that it wasn't horrendous, I'd be totally fine with, you know, eating the occasional meat. Um, I, I just think that that's something that for one, I'll be honest, a fair amount of it could just be, it would be impossible for us. Like, you Know how hard it is to get kids to eat anything in general, like eating chicken nuggets with ketchup. And that actually is like, it's somewhat nutritious. Like Like there's protein, there's, you know, just like just chicken in

0:24:19 Tom: Yeah. Right.

0:24:38 Thomas: Itself, you know, is one of the healthier options for kids. And it's easy. Would be pretty hard to prepare like a vegetarian meal. I, Know, I'm sure we'd figure it out. I don't mean, I'M SURE THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO ARE DOING THAT. I DON'T WANT TO SAY IT'S IMPOSSIBLE OR ANYTHING, BUT YEAH, NO, I WANT, 'VE ALSO, I'D BEEN WAITING FOR IT TO HAPPEN. I 'VE BEEN WONDERING IF IT WOULD HAPPen. And here's the funny thing, just while I'm on the topic, I, Phoebe's faked me out like two times where cause she, you you know, kids notice everything and we'll just say, oh, mom and dad don't eat meat. We don't eat meat now. And, and she'll be like, why?

And we'll say, well, we just, we the meat is animals and we just don't want to be mean to animals. And for I've Been expecting my empathy sponge of a kid, Phoebe. I thought the first day that we said that she'd be like oh my God, you're telling me that these are, you know, Bambi or whatever, you you know, like it pulls out her fucking mutton chop of whatever, you know? And faked me out a couple times.

The Uh, other is pretty recently, like a few weeks ago, she was like, well, I don't want to hurt animals either. So I'm not eating meat. And then it's like basically five seconds later,

0:24:48 Tom: Right.

0:25:40 Eli: Uh.

0:25:40 Thomas: What do you want for dinner? Oh, can I have salami and chicken? You know, that she just doesn't, she doesn't make the connection.

0:25:45 Tom: Veal. I just want veal, just pour veal and foie gras directly into my mouth, so. You're vegan, how is it in your household, as far as like, you're at the intersection between your values, like, do you feel any sense of like tension there personally? Personally? Okay.

0:25:46 Thomas: Yeah. Yep. So

0:26:01 Eli: Not tension at all. I mean, Anna's an omnivore, so there's three, well, there's two different diets in the house already, which I think would make it easier for Max if he ever asks those questions. Um, so for me, I think it's about, uh, for me, veganism is a soft moral choice versus a hard moral choice. So a hard normal choice is something that you think is right, and also you want enforced, right? So, like, I think there should be laws against rape no matter what society thinks, right?

0:26:31 Thomas: Right.

0:26:31 Eli: Like, Even if everyone agreed rape was okay, I would still want anti-rape laws.

0:26:31 Thomas: Right.

0:26:37 Tom: This is an interesting take. On it, yeah, okay.

0:26:38 Eli: Right. Whereas, where

0:26:38 Thomas: That's an interesting I think I disagree. Yeah.

0:26:41 Eli: It, yeah.

0:26:40 Tom: No. Not the rape thing, the hard versus soft moral choice, I've never heard that phrasing before. So that's new to me.

0:26:44 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:26:45 Eli: Which is Which is, for me, like, soft moral choices are things that are, like, I believe personally are good, but I don't believe that they should be enforced on other people. Like recycling. Even my child, right? Because for me, for soft moral chooses, I think it's super duper important to present those ideas and let people make those choices themselves, as opposed to enforcing them, because if there is disagreement in culture at large, and it's not important enough for you to stand your ground on, and there are things that I, I do stand my ground on even though I disagree with culture, right?

But, uh, if there's disagreement and you stand your ground on that, later when they're exposed to culture, what you've done is you've, you've cheated, and then the trust that you can have with them about discussing moral questions has been violated, because you violated their, like, ability to make those choices when they were younger. Um, this is why I wouldn't enforce it in my house. One of the hard moralities that I have is like bodily autonomy for my kid.

Um, so he would not be able to eat meat, or would have to, it would make himself sick if he ate meat or dairy if he didn't incorporate those into his diet early enough. Um, and so I'm, I'm basically taking away the ability for him to do, he doesn't get to make that choice, or has to go through a very painful illness filled period to

0:26:52 Thomas: Oh.

0:26:55 Tom: Even your kids Huh.

0:27:13 Tom: Interesting.

0:28:11 Thomas: Is that true? If you start out vegetarian forever, is that truth, or

0:28:11 Eli: Yeah. You you get really, really sick the first couple of times you, you eat dairy, so the the transition from mom milk to dairy milk is actually relatively smooth, because you still have, um, like, lactose in your system that is sort of training you, and you can, you can adjust to that new milk, but you, you guys know, because when you switch a baby from mom's milk to regular milk, they're like, hey, go easy on the fucking milk, right? And this, the same is true with meat products, is that they often recommend like mashed this or ground up that, or you know, know, because the body needs to get used to digesting those things.

But if your kid, as they will, gets peer pressured into eating a piece of pizza, and they're made, like, violently ill by it, which they would be, um, not how I want to enforce my moral ideas, right? I'm aware that the culture at large is not vegetarian or vegan, and that the punishment for a slip up or wanting to try a new thing that I hold a soft moral position on should not be like physical discomfort.

Just as I wouldn't like punch Max in the stomach for eating a piece of cheese, I don't want to put him in a position where if he chose to do that, um, he would have to go through like physical discomfort more

0:28:14 Thomas: Oh. Huh. Didn't even know that, yeah.

0:28:29 Thomas: I

0:29:25 Tom: What

0:29:26 Eli: Importantly than that is, I think that the, like, zeitgeist around this food is bad and this food is good, um, is like really, really damaging to psychology. My parents meant well, but like they wanted me to eat healthy, they could see I was fucking fat, and and they were like, "He's fuckin' slammin' the craisins," so while they never fat -shamed me or talked about my weight, and they weren't really wonderful about that, they did say like, "Hey, no chips, no candy," et cetera, which created a really unhealthy relationship between me and food that I have spent the rest of my life sort of trying to figure out and trying to make work. And so for me it's much more important that Max grow up feeling that you only bad food is food that has gone bad or poison, right? Then, when he's an adult, or at least old enough to make moral choices, I will explain to him the Peter Singer arguments without the part about getting fucked by a dog, and he can make it. There's an essay that used to be in the, it's fine, it's funny, it's not in the book anymore.

0:30:20 Thomas: Don't know that Jesus.

0:30:21 Tom: Wow.

0:30:26 Eli: It's on the book anymore, so and the point is, you may or may not be able to consensually get fucked by a dog, and that's, we're not here to discuss that today, Tom.

0:30:27 Thomas: Holy crap.

0:30:36 Thomas: Okay, wait.

0:30:39 Tom: Well, that, that is, I've ever heard that take, it's an interesting take, I don't think I have, never thought of it that way, I, from what you just described, I don't think I did I agree at all.

0:30:47 Thomas: The dog fucking or just

0:30:48 Tom: The dog fucking thing. Yeah, no, they're not, the hard versus soft moral choices and how that interacts with your kids, I like, because I, I don't have anything as an omnivore, I don't have a, I've thought a lot about the vegetarian thing, I was vegetarian for about nine months in my life, um, have no moral issue with with meat eating personally, so like, I mean, I'm comfortable with eating meat, I'm okay with it, um, but there are soft moral choices that, like, for example, if my kids wanted to go to church, I would say no. I don't think we should enforce that there shouldn't be religion, right? But

0:30:48 Thomas: The yeah that's

0:31:20 Eli: Yeah.

0:31:20 Tom: If my kids wantedto go to Church, I wouldn't take them to Church. I would not support that. I wouldn't drive them there. I wouldnot make that at all easy for them to goto Church. I would make it difficult, maybe not impossible, but I wouldmake that annoyingly difficult.

0:31:24 Eli: Rock

0:31:36 Thomas: It, I think you're missing out, I think that's the wrong take, because church if church is so fucking boring, Tom, that I think that problem fixes itself. No, I'm telling you, now, make sure, here's what you should do, scope it out, they have these new mega churches with like kid fucking playroom, whatever, yeah like who knows they're God.

0:31:39 Tom: If my kidswanted to be Republican, Iwould push back every day on those values.

0:31:51 Eli: Music stuff, yeah

0:31:54 Tom: Yeah. I was, I was gonna say like they're pretty good at the indoctrination. I think I think I, I don't know that I believe that they're pretty good at the indoctrination.

0:31:57 Thomas: Well, it depends. The church, the Church that I went to, I mean, yes, it's a, it probably had fucking pioneers and people who are still panning for gold in it. Cause I was in Angels Camp, California. It was a hundred year old, uh, old people, but it was so boring.

If physically, I think I've, I don't remember if I told the story, but, um, one thing that as a kid, I didn't know any better than to do was like when I was, you know, eight, nine, is like, sometimes could almost never have friends over, like it was it, it was mainly because my parents just didn't want to drive me places or do anything or whatever, so like I didn't get to have friends ever that often.

One time, you know, one way to make it happen would be like my mom would be okay, you can you them to church with us, like they can come to church and then they can maybe, you know, like hang out after.

And so I'd be like, yeah, you want to go to church, and I took one of my friends, and I remember this guy also was kind of a bit of a rebel kid in in general, like later on too, he turned into way more of a, like, I of a better term, that like stereotype of a rebel high schooler, rock band kid, whatever. But before this, it was still a little early.

And I remember we were just, you know, in the peak boredom, coma inducing boredom of church, which is some old guy just talking to you about God for an hour, which for as a kid, is that's eternity. That's just a mind prison.

0:33:10 Tom: Yeah.

0:33:10 Thomas: And I just remember looking over and see my friend with his, we're in the pews, and I see him leaning forward with his head against the pew just bonking it, like bonk, bonk, but on the just like with This look of just, and it's one of those things where it's pure pain, there wasn't any show to it, like he literally was just like his brain hurt with how fucking bored he was over This. Oh God, it's so, I'll never ever forget that image. So fucking boring. So Tom, scope it out, you know, if

0:33:32 Eli: So. Bored. Yeah, yeah.

0:33:40 Tom: Yeah, all right, yeah, so it's funny though, because when I went to church, I went to a Methodist church that didn't have like school or anything, like everybody just went and sat in the pews, um, and you just, but I loved church, like when I Went when I was a kid, I thought church was great, um, I liked the singing, I liked liked the hymns I Liked What

0:33:51 Thomas: Wow. It Is It possible it's because it's the only one of the few times your life wasn't in danger? Yeah.

0:34:01 Eli: I was gonna say, no snapping Turtles, it Was The Best, I

0:34:04 Thomas: Yeah.

0:34:02 Tom: There's No No I went to church with my dad, my dad was like, most of my mom, so yeah, no, I I thought Church Was great, I looked forward to it, everybody was really nice to me, there was like, I didn't find it boring, I actually thought the sermons, like, but again, I went to a Methodist church, so it wasn't like a bunch of readings from the Bible, it wasn't like, okay, now we're going to read from First Corinthians, like, it was a lot of like talking about like how to live your life in a way that was like ethically valued and valuable, like I actually didn't, I, I didn't dislike church at all, I Just Didn't Think it was true

0:34:08 Thomas: But Still That's Funny Yeah

0:34:32 Eli: Loved Church I Jew church, I loved You church Not

0:34:34 Thomas: Jesus

0:34:33 Tom: Yeah I So I was like, my dad would be like, we went twice a week, we're going on Wednesdays and Sundays And I looked forward to it, because I was, every, and then we, after church, everybody got to eat like danishes and like, like The Adults Had Coffee And Like Every

0:34:40 Thomas: Christ Yeah That Part I loved That Part It. We were just, oh my God, we were just waiting for the fucking school bell to ring so that we could, you know, eat the, all the shit.

0:34:48 Tom: Yeah

0:34:54 Eli: Not to cross the uh podcast averses too hard, but for those who've been following the donut versus danish feud and wondering where Tom's position comes from, I think we just cracked That bad boy wide open Psychologically, it

0:35:04 Tom: Danish Thank You, thank you, hard, hard Danish Guy, right Here, yeah

0:35:09 Eli: Represents Safety And Comfort when he was a child, and this is great, if everyone's listening to all the shows knows, they're fucking loving this. People who don't listen to Cogdiss have no fucking idea what's going on right now, but I do, so...

0:35:16 Tom: Right I've Been Listening to Him for 16 years, and he Never made sense until the last 18 months, so

0:35:24 Eli: Yeah. Exactly. Is the podcast averse for if not putting together a psychological profile of Tom?

0:35:32 Tom: Of Strangers, yeah Right, well, that's interesting, the soft versus moral choices, that I, because I think that that's an interesting take on it, I hadn't thought of it that way, but I think it's funny that as the person on the show who doesn't, and I guess maybe because it's an easy position because it is theoretical for me. But, like, I think that if I were vegetarian, I would just, – I don't think I would be a dick about it at all, but I would like, yeah, we just don't eat meat here, and, like If you want to eat meat outside with your friends, like, I'm not going to stop you from it. But we are just not going buy, purchase, or consume meat in the house, because I just, – it's a value that, – it goes against my values. And my values are part of what I want to impart to you, like as a parent, I want to impart my values to my kids, because I think those values have been well considered And they mean Something to Me, I

0:35:33 Eli: Yeah.

0:35:53 Thomas: Yeah, but okay. But here's the thing. I, do too. I'm, I'm rooting for my kids to, well, but I don't find values to be that that valuable if it's just enforced. I think that I would rather see my kids come to that decision, you it be something that's more rooted within them. I don't know. I think that,

0:36:18 Tom: Know You do That's Why I think This is interesting But Is church a good corollary, because like you, like the culturally most people go to church or believe in something, and you don't, and so you just by default don't do It, right, so like by default you could just, and I'm not pushing on you, I'm just kind of wondering if it's a good analog or are corollary. There are lots of decisions we make that that look without expressly or explicitly sort of like clubbing you over the head with something. You and I, and all the three of us on this show, like we make a lot of choices that are culturally abnormal. So I just, this seems to be one that kind of falls outside the line.

0:36:44 Thomas: Yeah,

0:37:09 Eli: The analog that I use all the time is recycling, right? Like, recycling's good, right, but there are also arguments against recycling, like, uh, there are good arguments made that like recycling can be wasteful or some of the stuff that gets recycled actually takes more energy, and this is an inefficient system, this, that, and the other thing, but like overall, I think when you take in all the information, you're allowed to make the choice that, hey, recycling is better for the earth, and you should really do it. Would I make my kids recycle? No. Uh, if I found out a friend didn't recycle, would I, you know, sever ties or otherwise sort of, uh, that on their life? No, because it's, for me, it's a soft moral choice, so for me, recycling is often the better metaphor, because when you use, um, it's, it's things that generally people agree with, and it puts people into the mindset of a soft mortal choice, which is like, yeah, I care about this but not super much, um

0:38:02 Tom: Well, that's a great analogy. So let me, so let me ask you this, kind of like the core, because I'm just trying to understand the difference in the position. So like in your house, do you recycle or do you not recycle? And Do You teach Max To Put certain things in the recycling bin, okay, so you are teaching him that soft moral value, so that's why I'm just trying to pull this apart, like if that was a good analogy, I was just trying make that connection So Well

0:38:10 Eli: Do recycle, sadly, I Fucking Hate It Yes Yeah No Absolutely, so my, the difference would be one, like, Max chose to not recycle, at another place he wouldn't come to physical harm, which I've talked About A Little Bit, right

0:38:36 Tom: Yeah No Of Course I and I Don't think anyone is suggesting that for veganism or vegetarianism either, like

0:38:37 Eli: Oh No, there are there, are parents that are like, you cannot give your kid milk or cheese, and then, you know, if they go and have a slice of pizza at a pizza party and their stomach hurts, well, that's a great way for them to learn a lesson, like, I, that is a big thing that gets put forward, yeah.

0:38:41 Tom: Oh I didn't know that's fucking insane, okay, I didn't realize I guess I, because that's insane, saying that didn't occur to me, right? Because that's that just is insane

0:38:57 Eli: Thank you oh

0:39:00 Thomas: I've actually never heard of that either

0:39:02 Tom: Yeah

0:39:02 Eli: It's you're it in the veeg space, and can I say, I am in the vague space, uh that, that is, the this conversation is usually had from the opposite and completely insane thing, because the straw man argument made there, and this is why I talk about hard versus sophomores, they'll be like, well, if your kid wanted to rape someone, would you let, let them rape someone, and I was like, no, I wasn't, who, we, can, this is such a bad argument, have you ever been, have you ever been on someone's side and they're making such bad arguments that you're like I'm gonna eat a fucking

0:39:02 Thomas: Yeah I'm not

0:39:03 Tom: That's

0:39:25 Thomas: Oh yes all the time are you kidding

0:39:26 Tom: A terrible yeah

0:39:33 Eli: I'm going to eat a cheeseburger right now just to spite you I'm gonna get please

0:39:33 Thomas: That's that's all of existence post internet there's always someone on whatever side that's arguing so badly you're like, oh fucking, no, not he's

0:39:43 Eli: Don't

0:39:39 Tom: There's somebody makes such a bad argument, I look over and like Eli's in the same tree stand, I'm in, like we're both deer hunting together or something, and it's just like really and

0:39:51 Thomas: Got one of those like bibs with rib rib

0:39:53 Tom: He's like the internet did it to me, Tom, the internet, it did it, load me up here we go

0:39:53 Thomas: Yeah yeah yeah

0:39:56 Eli: I'm sorry Tom, people were actually trying to use carnist as a slur, so I'm gonna kill exactly three deer and then I'm back to my side again, see

0:40:05 Tom: Fascinating, yeah

0:40:06 Thomas: Here's another thing I could see going a different way, which is maybe you, if, if I were to like have them not eat meat kind of as the default, but if they had it somewhere and asked, like they wanted to, then I could let, like, I can make the choice go the other way. I don't know. Honestly, I just don't, I it's, um, a massive problem. I think that it shouldn't come down to the individual. I think as a society, we need to change. So it's, it's a little bit different in that way too.

I think moral choices that are immediate, you know, like I'm not gonna let my kid like punch someone and be cool with it, like they're gonna, I mean, either gonna stop them from physically hurting, I'm gonna do everything I can to stop them from making those kind of like individual moral choices, those immediate kind of moral choices, whereas this is like a systems problem, you know, like the reason we can't eat meat, or in my opinion, like the reason why I don't eat meat is, is more to do with the system than with individuals, like I, I think that we just need to change what we're doing, uh, and so I, I don't think it's fair to put in the same way like climate change, like I, that's not, we, corporations are super interested in us blaming each other for climate change. Like, oh, you, you took

0:40:21 Tom: Right right yeah

0:40:41 Eli: There we disagree exactly

0:41:17 Thomas: A commute when it's like, okay, that's fucking zero point zero percent of anything, like we need to just change our entire goddamn system. And so, while I think we should do what we can, I, that it's less of an immediate, you know, like you're a bad person if you aren't doing this kind of thing versus, you know, Eli's kid who just can punch people and it's fine with Eli. Like, that's a bad person. Eli's making a bad person.

0:41:40 Eli: Yeah, no, but Thomas, you actually make a really good point there, which I think is sort of essential to my vegan philosophy, which is that mine is about diminishing suffering, and so often, like, because listeners find out I'm vegan and they think it's a joke because of how fat I am, and then they're like, no, really, and I'm like, yeah, no, you can eat a lot of vegetarian chicken nuggets, and they're like, wow, good job, uh, but then after they realize that I'm really vegan, there will often be that sort of olive branch of like, yeah, I do meatless Mondays, or we only use a local butcher, blah blah, and they're waiting for me to be like, you carnist son of a bitch, but like, we're great, you have also added bricks to the less suffering pyramid, like this fucking rules, and I, again, my way to get there, there's a really good documentary that I really like called Earthlings, and the guy who made it is very fiery, passionate speaker, one of the things that he uses as sort of a um rhetorical trick all, all the time is he says, look, you can kill all the animals currently in production for meat, just stop making new ones, like I am fine with you eating all the cows that are slated to be eaten right now if the system itself stops, right?

0:42:19 Tom: Right sure, yeah

0:42:52 Eli: And so that's often where I met with people, is that, like, I find people are more likely to choose vegan meals around me, more open to the ideas of vegetarianism, like I can say, more than any other vegan, I have more meat eater friends who openly and happily admit that my worldview is the right one than any other vegan I know.

0:43:13 Thomas: That was me forever. I was like, yeah, I got to stop eating meat. And I finally did.

0:43:13 Eli: Right and well, and that's the thing, is because I am a safe and this is true of max as well, because I am a safe person to have these moral conversations with without feeling judged, or in Max's case, without having that enforced on him, I hope he feels safe enough to experiment in his own morality, that he will eventually make the choices that I've made, but I also just think it's, like, I don't know, and maybe this is like ooey gooey hippy dippy, I think when you're a kid, whatever choices you make morally, and when adults tell you them, you're making a moral choice, there's a hint of whether, whether or not I'll love you under that, right? And it's not because we say it. It's not cause we mean it. I think just as a kid, you hear it, right. And I, I, what's really important to me is that Max feels loved no matter what he does in that situation, loved and respected in that solution. Like, that to me is more important than the specific philosophical choices.

0:43:20 Thomas: Yeah.

0:44:16 Tom: We aren't gonna have time for this, but that, that's, that brings up a conversation we absolutely have to revisit, which is like, because I don't know how, now, now that my kids are reaching a point where they are coming into a sort of like quasi adulthood, I've come to understand that there are choices, soft moral choices that they could make that would make them, make me at least, not like who they are.

0:44:41 Eli: Sure.

0:44:41 Tom: That is a that is a true thing. If like, if, if the kids be, and I'll just throw this out, like if the kids became right-wing Republican manosphere guys, right. Those are soft moral choices that I don't like to, if you're definitely like, I would not want those choices enforced by law, right?

0:44:51 Eli: Mm-hmm.

0:44:52 Thomas: Yeah. In fairness, Tom, you're on a pretty hair trigger for like, I'll never talk to my I'll never love my kids again.

0:45:02 Tom: No, I, but I, I love

0:45:05 Thomas: I'm just teasing.

0:45:06 Tom: My kids, but I realized that there's things they could do that are soft, moral choices that would make me not like who they are and

0:45:12 Thomas: Yeah. They put on a movie I don't like. Get out of here.

0:45:15 Tom: I'm out.

0:45:15 Thomas: I'm not move out.

0:45:15 Tom: I'm out now. I just I and so I think that that's like a real interesting tension that like that exists where I know that like my my to them is a peopled connection. Right. So like when they're real, real little, my connection to them is this caretaker connection, which is a very different connection.

0:45:18 Thomas: No, I'm with you.

0:45:33 Tom: It is a connection that requires that my love for them be unconditional because their reactions and their movement and their development in the world hasn't coalesced into these sort of defined personal and personality and moral choices. But as they get older, those things change and my interaction and my, my feelings for them could change. And I know that like if, if Finn and this would never happen, I know who that boy is. I've known his heart his whole life. But like if Finn became some Tate following manosphere right wing Peterson dick bag, have to contend with being like, I don't like who this person is anymore.

0:45:33 Thomas: Yeah, absolutely.

0:45:47 Thomas: Look.

0:46:13 Thomas: Yeah we all Know that when our boys inevitably go out, right? All of them. There's going to be only one of them who will still be loved just as much as he was before. And it'll Be Max. Eli,

0:46:23 Tom: Yeah, it'll be Max. Yeah, It'll be max. And I it's it's that's

0:46:25 Eli: Yeah. Oh,

0:46:27 Thomas: But You Know, he's Got a point. You know, when he says that all the women, uh, are the gatekeepers of sex, and that, you know, it's, they shouldn't have the right to do that, you...

0:46:27 Tom: Yeah. Yeah, well,

0:46:35 Eli: I wouldn't bother to pretend to care about his opinions. I'd just be like, "Fuck yeah, buddy, whatever you said, Daddy wasn't listening." Oh, Gentlemen, wife left me because I have an unhealthy obsession with pasta, and now that she's gone, I'm kind of lonely. Okay,

0:46:45 Thomas: Wait,

0:47:03 Tom: That's terrible.

0:47:03 Thomas: I actually don't get it. What, what,

0:47:05 Tom: That's a type of pasta.

0:47:06 Eli: Cannelloni.

0:47:06 Thomas: Is what is The Cannelloni Is the type Of pasta.

0:47:07 Eli: Is It Is It Kind of pasta, yeah.

0:47:10 Thomas: They Didn't have that in Angel's Camp. We only had spaghetti. We didn't add any of your liberal noodles.

0:47:10 Eli: Okay.

0:47:22 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 Law'd Awful 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.