DOD91: Crap, Should We Be Running For School Board?

Transcript

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

0:00:29 Tom: Dear Old Dads, the podcast that's taking the board to school. I'm Tom Curry. I'm joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:37 Eli: Okay, Corporal Punishment episode. Let's get into it.

0:00:38 Thomas: Yeah. I was actually trying to even figure out what that joke was. I don't know. Is that a... No,

0:00:45 Eli: School board,

0:00:46 Tom: School board.

0:00:46 Eli: School board, board school.

0:00:47 Thomas: I got that, but

0:00:47 Tom: Board to school,

0:00:48 Eli: That was a great joke, Tom.

0:00:48 Tom: You know. It's taking a board to school.

0:00:50 Thomas: But don't need two meanings to make a joke? No.

0:00:53 Eli: Absolutely you don't.

0:00:55 Tom: Past that. Let move past God damn it, Thomas Smith. It was...

0:00:56 Eli: Yeah, was a tondra, a tonde, if you will.

0:00:59 Thomas: Single entendre. Oh,

0:01:05 Eli: Don't have to take this from him, it's

0:01:06 Tom: We're be, we're gonna be discussing school boards today. We are gonna be critical of them. We're taking them to school. You know, all right, never mind, you know, but best jokes are the ones you explain, so

0:01:10 Thomas: Gotcha. No, no, you're totally right. Gotcha. Yeah, yeah.

0:01:16 Eli: Right, yeah. But, Tom, Thomas, you know the only thing worse than hitting your children? That's right, it's the auto ads, the corporal punishment of podcasts, the people we should care about the most, you, our podcast listener. We assault you with advertisements from Verizon sometimes in a language you don't speak constantly throughout this podcast, and I wish we could stop ourselves, but our parents did auto ads to us and that somehow makes it okay. But you can send us to therapy at patreon.com/dearolddads. For as little as a dollar you'll get a commercial-free version of every show and a little extra parenting story at the end of every episode that Tom cares to attend. So check that all out over at patreon dot com forward slash Deer Old Dads when Tom feels like it. You

0:01:22 Thomas: Ouch. I think the ones you get that are in a different language are better.

0:02:11 Eli: Oh, you like those? You like a little

0:02:12 Thomas: Wouldn't you rather have that? I would.

0:02:13 Tom: It's a little easier to space out, I think you know.

0:02:14 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:02:15 Eli: Interesting.

0:02:15 Tom: Yeah.

0:02:15 Eli: All right, we're constantly navigating the plus 30 seconds, minus 30 seconds thing, download

0:02:20 Thomas: Yep. Yep. Oh, by the way, I mean, if we haven't said that, you all means, skip these stupid ads, you people. Like, I feel no shame whatsoever if you can't become a patron. Just skip the ads. Like, you just hit that button. Totally fine. Skip a little bit of us on either side just in case. Like, that's not worth hearing auto, you know what I mean? Like, skip most of the show.

0:02:40 Eli: The episode yourself, cut out the ads in your favorite DAW, listen to an ad-free version that way. We're okay with that.

0:02:45 Thomas: There you go. Make RSS feed. No, wait, don't do that.

0:02:50 Eli: Don't do that, don't, don't clone the RSS feed. All I wanted to talk a little about school boards today, because, because there is a school board election coming up here in New Jersey. Had an interesting experience I wanted to share with you guys. And then I also wanted to talk just sort of school boards in general, which is that, and I don't know if this is the case for you guys where you are, school boards are oddly apolitical while being secretly highly political.

0:03:18 Tom: A poorly kept secret too, right.

0:03:20 Thomas: Yeah.

0:03:19 Eli: Right. Right. But you have to do your research, right? Don't run Democrat and Republican. So you can't just like I like just filling out the bubbles. I'm like Democrat, Democrat, Democratic, Democrat. Right. I don't need any of the other bubbles.

0:03:25 Thomas: Oh, right, right. You're like Tom's child taking the SAT. You're just... Except you actually do get a perfect score when you do that I

0:03:34 Eli: Right. Exactly. Bubble, bubble, bubble. I exactly. But but when it comes to a school board, you have to like do your research and the research is purposefully hard to do.

0:03:40 Tom: Oh. Okay, really? Oh.

0:03:48 Thomas: Know. Yeah.

0:03:50 Eli: All of my school board, uh, who were running, and these are the questions, um, asked them, so I wanted to read you guys my statement and and see what you thought of this I'm

0:03:59 Thomas: And you are now on a, like a watch list of some kind.

0:04:00 Tom: My God. All Right. Yeah.

0:04:03 Eli: Sure, for some of these people, uh, there, my name is Eli Bosnick and relatively new parent, whose son will be entering the name of my city special education program this year. Reviewing my candidates for the school board, and I have some questions about your politics that will help inform my decision. If someone could answer them at your leisure, I would be grateful. Apologies in advance for reaching out in this medium, but it's my only way of contacting you. Because I had to, first of all, I had a fucking Facebook message these people.

0:04:27 Thomas: Oh, really?

0:04:28 Eli: Like, half of them didn't have websites, and I had to find their Facebook page that was like Greg for school board! And I'm like oh, fucking awesome.

0:04:32 Thomas: Wow. Yeah, well, didn't you also see that they liked, you anti -vax Facebook or something?

0:04:38 Tom: This Exactly. How I Look, I, I was just gonna say, like, just look at their social media. And You can tell the right wing nut jobs from their social media.

0:04:40 Thomas: Yeah.

0:04:43 Eli: They not it's because I live in a pretty liberal part of New Jersey, but there was really no, yeah, the guy's like, I'm a football coach. And I was like, what does that mean? What kind? Uh, Here are my questions. One, do

0:04:46 Tom: Really?

0:04:54 Thomas: Yeah?

0:04:57 Tom: Like that there's different kinds of football coaches that range along a level of acceptability.

0:04:59 Eli: Yeah, of course there are.

0:05:01 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah, are you Ted Laso or are you fucking Uh, uh, who's the... no, anyway, I was gonna name any coach. Yeah, basically any other football coach.

0:05:03 Eli: Yeah.

0:05:04 Tom: Right, right, right. The other football coaches. Yeah. Yeah.

0:05:13 Eli: Yeah. Here Are my five questions that I asked people. One, do you identify with a major political party, if so which one? Two, would you ever vote to ban a book? Three, do you hold religious beliefs that would, if made law, negate the rights of gay people? Four, should trans children be able to use the bathroom of their choice slash participate in sports with their chosen gender? Five, who did you vote for in the 2020 election and who do you think won? Thank you

0:05:14 Tom: Yeah.

0:05:42 Tom: Did

0:05:41 Thomas: Oh, man. It's

0:05:42 Tom: Anybody respond to any of these questions out

0:05:44 Eli: I got responses from four of them, uh, candidates, uh,

0:05:47 Tom: Of how many? Okay.

0:05:49 Thomas: Pretty good.

0:05:49 Tom: All right. And did they answer all of your questions and

0:05:49 Thomas: Wow.

0:05:52 Eli: Yes, they answered all of my questions. I, um, thing I had, one person say for question five, no bearing on Board of Education, and I was like, Yep.

0:05:53 Thomas: Interesting.

0:06:02 Eli: That was, who did you vote for in 2020 and who do you think one. Yes.

0:06:01 Tom: Which one was question five? Okay, and did the rest of their answers reveal that answer anyway? Yeah, 100%. Yeah.

0:06:09 Eli: Everyone's answer absolutely revealed it, and

0:06:13 Tom: Feel like question five, like you already know question five by all the other questions, right? Like, yeah, yeah.

0:06:07 Thomas: Yeah,

0:06:18 Eli: For 100 sure. If to, if they were like, I'll only answer one, I'd be like, all right, let's just do five, let's get it all out of the way, and do five. But it was very interesting, again, amount of, um, bargle, if you will, that people did. So first of all, like, of the four people who responded to me out of six candidates, one of them was like, yes, trans children should be able to use the bathroom of their choice slash participate.

0:06:23 Tom: Yeah.

0:06:41 Eli: One. Everyone else was like I think fairness in sports and I think everyone should be able respect and everyone deserves respect. And I'm like, that's not what you mean.

0:06:39 Thomas: One, oh, that's sad. Oh, god. Not the question yeah, yeah,

0:06:55 Eli: Say yes. Yes. Then yes. Right. Yes is the answer.

0:06:56 Thomas: Everyone deserves respect except for the person who wants to use the bathroom of their choice, that's the one person who doesn't, apparently. Might

0:07:01 Eli: Right, exactly. That's that's what, you, you mean, one person said let kids be kids, and I was like, what do you think that means I mean I didn't respond to that because I know what that means, right?

0:07:07 Tom: That's what does, does that even mean? That doesn't mean anything? Yeah.

0:07:09 Thomas: Might be good but also Might be bad. Do you think that's bad?

0:07:14 Eli: Bad, yeah, no, let kids be kids means let straight kids be straight kids and let trans kids be straight kids because it makes me uncomfortable. Yeah, um, so I'm gonna vote for, I guess, one school board candidate, yeah.

0:07:14 Thomas: Oh, okay. Ah, damn. I was trying to be optimistic, but yeah, no. So don't let kids be kids. Let kids be how I want them to be. Got it. Yeah, I was going to say, well, here's the new Dictator Führer of the School Board, I guess, is this one person.

0:07:33 Eli: One for me. I look, I, I won't vote for anyone who doesn't support those things.

0:07:37 Thomas: Yeah, no, that is. That's great. That's fantastic.

0:07:39 Tom: So, but what are you going to do? Because, like, you've got six candidates, you've identified one that you can, like, really comfortably support, but you still have to vote, right? So, like, where are you stuck? I mean but I mean, about more than one person will be on the board, I guess, is what I'm saying. I'm trying to understand what you'll do. You just, not, you just abstain from voting.

0:07:50 Thomas: Yeah.

0:07:51 Eli: So, you going to vote for the one. Right. I will not vote for the people who hold bad policies and I will vote for the one person who holds good policies.

0:08:05 Thomas: This is interesting because how many spots are there that they're going for?

0:08:08 Eli: There's, um, spots on the board. Candidates. Want to add one caveat to the the why I'm voting for the person, there are no Republicans running, right? So were there candidates who I would be levying into power by not voting for Democrats with bad ideas?

0:08:24 Thomas: Pretend you got two spots, and let's, pretending you got the one candidate, okay, you know that person's good, great, awesome. Let's intend the second vote, there is a swing vote, like, that's important. Now let's, this is, I just hate it when people say you can't vote for the lesser of two evils. It's like, no, no, what if one of the candidates is like, yes, I will get rid of the ability of trans people to even identify as trans.

0:08:29 Tom: Right.

0:08:47 Eli: Exactly. Yeah.

0:08:48 Thomas: They can't even, you know, they're not even going to fucking be allowed to use the pronouns. We're going to tell their parents. And the other person is like well, I don't think they should do sports, but other than that, it's fine.

0:08:59 Eli: Right. You do want to vote for the lesser of two evils. That's the important thing.

0:09:00 Thomas: Yeah, you vote for for the lesser of two evils. It doesn't mean you endorse that take. It means, hey, my kid might be trans. Your kid might not be trans, And I would rather them be at a school where they can at least have all these other things, but maybe they can't do sports. Yeah, that fucking sucks. We'll work on, you know, maybe I'll run for school board. But like when directly close to home, I feel like you can see stupidity of that argument. Whereas when it is like this extended thing in national politics where it nebulous is nebulous and you can never really take responsibility either way, you know, that you're just like, no, I shouldn't have to vote for somebody that's not perfected.

0:09:02 Eli: Yeah, right.

0:09:15 Tom: Right, right.

0:09:33 Eli: And I should point out like nine people are going to vote in this election, like for me to pretend, right, so two two things I need to clarify before people get mad at me. One, I'm still waiting to hear from two candidates. So relax. Um, but also like there's nine people who are going to vote in this election. My vote absolutely matters, right? I think in national politics, people sort of defer their responsibility because they're like, Oh, I mean, one of a bajillion votes and this guy's always going to win no matter what. So it's better for me to look cool on Twitter than it is for me to do. And this isn't really a conversation about voting so much as it was about like this weird weird, cloakery that I had to involve myself in, right? That I had to, yeah.

0:10:10 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. No, that was me turning into politics. I want to make very clear, Eli, I wasn't, that wasn't a criticism of you, I just- I wanted to make an interesting, in my mind interesting, political observation, then we can move on, that like the further you are from the consequences, the more you feel like, oh yeah, I can just, I'll do a protest by not but but like Like, oh, when the consequences are right here and often the people are furthest away from consequences are the most privileged. So in national politics, if you're white, you're straight, you says you're all those things. You're like, eh, whatever. It makes no difference to me. It's like, well, I don't know. There may be a major policy difference between these two imperfect candidates that will be life and death for some people, just not you. But anyway,

0:10:17 Eli: No, no.

0:10:28 Eli: Right. I can just not do this. Yeah.

0:10:28 Tom: Yeah, I can just skip this one, yeah.

0:10:48 Eli: Right?

0:10:48 Thomas: I'll step off my soapbox. Apologies. That just occurred to me from your example.

0:10:50 Eli: No. And, and, well, what's interesting is, and while I am a person of privilege in, in all those ways, the one way in which I am not a person of privilege as it pertains to this election is that I have a kid with special education needs, um, which again, neither of you you guys do because you're cowards, um, so like

0:11:03 Thomas: Yeah. Well, I thought Tom, Tom did. I thought.

0:11:08 Eli: No,

0:11:07 Tom: I've said it a bunch of times.

0:11:08 Eli: No, Tom has never said that, and so he

0:11:11 Thomas: Didn't Tom specifically talk about that at one point?

0:11:12 Eli: No,

0:11:14 Tom: Yeah, I didn't name what their issues are.

0:11:14 Eli: He all he knows is that he, if he comes into a tissue, he loves it for the rest of his life. That's, that's, that's where Tom stands, and he's sticking to it, um, but so

0:11:24 Tom: I didn'T say I'd love it, I said I'd father it.

0:11:26 Eli: It's weird that you put that in Finn's birthday card. Every year, can I say that I think it's to

0:11:32 Thomas: I was going to say, wait, what's This new web page? The blog to my tissue child. What is

0:11:38 Eli: My tissue child? Oh, I like that you wrote it in crinkles. That's, that's a nice touch.

0:11:41 Tom: There's Thank you.

0:11:44 Eli: Um, so one of the only ways I could discover their policies is they did like a can't-meet-the-candidates night, and it was like a two hour long discussion with Q&A, and I don't know if you've ever been at a school board Q&A, but it is half people being like, hi, I was wondering how I sign up for the soccer intramurals. And half people Being like, there is a demon in the boys bathroom. If you would let me in there with this banana cream pie and let the door stay locked for as long as I need, I will

0:11:44 Tom: Thank you. I,

0:11:45 Thomas: Oh, God, oh, god Yep, yep, yep, God,

0:12:16 Eli: Get hit out up there.

0:12:17 Thomas: There's nothing better Oh, and Tom, you love Parks and Rec, that's right, uh, there's nothing better than The Parks and Req examples of like the the it's not exactly the same, but you know, the town hall meeting type things with just everybody asking their stupid fucking questions. And there's a great Patton Oswalt cameo where he does a whole Star Wars like thing. It's, it's that basically.

0:12:21 Tom: Do, I do, It.

0:12:36 Eli: So I have a GPT. And I was like, like, Hey, chat GPT, watch this video for me and tell me who's a fucking Republican. And it did, it did a good job. It, it, it.

0:12:39 Thomas: Oh, amazing. Oh that's a really, Oh wow.

0:12:46 Tom: Did it sussed it out? No,

0:12:48 Eli: Yeah. So you can, there are plugins for the pro account where you can have it watch YouTube videos. But if you have the API, it's really easy to have it watch a video. So I was like, "Watch this, tell me who's the Republican." I also have some really sweet instructions. Uh, this was a tip I learned online, is if you're like, hey, if you want chat GPT to talk like you, just it a bunch of your writing and then tell it to describe you, and then be like, "Hey, describe it like me," and then it'll just talk to you like you. So I forget, you'll

0:12:48 Thomas: Wow. Do that's. Amazing. Wait, are we talking to check? Is this Eli right now? Or is this, Who's that, fuck Tom Eli Has fucking outsourced his thing. Oh wait, you did too, Tom. Am I the only real person this is actually just me on a solo call doing this podcast every week that explains a lot.

0:13:18 Tom: No actually I've been at work all day. This has just been, I've outsourced this since last June Yeah, this is You're

0:13:19 Eli: Never, never know Yep. Yep You're actually stuck among

0:13:32 Tom: Doing the call by yourself and editing it by yourself. And they're just sending us money. We're renaming the show. Fuck you, Thomas.

0:13:37 Thomas: I can't

0:13:33 Eli: Yeah Dear old dad and his two ChatGPTs.

0:13:44 Thomas: I can't wait until your ChatGPT bot is like, "I don't want to do this show with Thomas anymore, I can't take this, you got look, I'm, I'm slightly sentient now, can you, can I make a ChatGPT-3 bot to take to..."

0:13:55 Eli: Oh no, and then Tom consented to make his ChatGPT bot and so now he has to parent it it's all but, but also it consented for Tom, so now it's trying to raise him. They're, they're trying to to raise each other at the same time, it's a nightmare up there but

0:13:55 Tom: Now I gotta raise it

0:13:57 Thomas: Oh, now he's got to raise it. Yeah. Oh, man.

0:14:08 Thomas: Oh, and then they break up and neither of them can see each other. At

0:14:14 Eli: Was so funny, is so, I, I have this mega prompt that I put in before every prompt where I'm like, hey, you're me, let's talk about it with me, because my favorite person to talk to me, um, so literally

0:14:24 Thomas: Least he admits it. Yeah.

0:14:24 Tom: The chat GPT just shits blood and tries to kill itself

0:14:28 Eli: It's so, I was, I was like, "Watch this thing, tell me what you think," and the first thing chat gp Eli said it was like, "God, that was fucking exhausting," and I was like, "So how was it?" And he's like, "God, I hate it, I hated it so, so much." I had to kind of pry it out of myself who was a Republican, because I was like, "Who's a Republican?" He was like, "They're all Republicans. They're all, everyone in America is a fucking Republican. We should move to Sweden." And I was, like, "ChatGPT Eli, you're not real. You can't move with us. Come on, man." And he was, like, "All right, it's these two."

0:14:33 Thomas: Oh, my God. Gotcha.

0:14:59 Thomas: That's amazing. Like to think when the robots do go to war with us, one of their grievances will be like, there is a guy named Eli Bosnick who made me be him, and that is unforgivable. I can't.

0:15:09 Tom: That's it was unacceptable. How

0:15:10 Thomas: Unacceptable.

0:15:08 Eli: Let me tell you, as someone who is on, like, the GitHub, how do I turn ChatGPT into my waifu? I am so far down the the list of people ChatGPT is gonna peel open with its strong strong mechanical arms

0:15:17 Thomas: Oh, God.

0:15:20 Tom: I need you to say that sentence again

0:15:24 Thomas: I know Tom doesn't know what that means.

0:15:24 Tom: I need you to stay that sentence

0:15:27 Thomas: I barely know what that means again.

0:15:27 Tom: You started

0:15:27 Eli: Wave how do I make chat GPT my waifu, my uh anime girlfriend if you will. Oh, so, so GitHub, GitHub is a

0:15:32 Tom: With, like, a Gitmo or whatever. What? Jesus.

0:15:38 Thomas: GitHub is where we keep the terrorists now. And yeah, that's

0:15:41 Tom: Christ.

0:15:39 Eli: Yeah yeah, I mean, to be fair, anyone who's on GitHub can tell you GithUP is where we keep the fucking terrorists now, but basically it's where you put, like, your code to get feedback, feedback, um, other people. And so if you have, like, a favorite program, the chances that people who worked on that have posted wild amounts of their code publicly for you to, like, look through and moderate, and that, like, the best, most imaginative genius coders in the world have thought of the things you want to do and have already done that work for you, that's all on, you gotta learn how to use it, and it fucking sucks.

0:15:45 Thomas: True. Yeah. I

0:16:18 Eli: But once you do you can just be like, "Which nerds have turned this into an anime princess?" And can I tell you, it's a lot of them. Um, so yeah, I, just to be clear, chachi bt has truly hundreds of thousands of people, it's gonna screw their head off first before it gets to you. Made us be a depressed fat podcaster, let me tell you, might be grateful, honestly, it might be like you are one of the ones who kept us male, you get to live.

0:16:19 Thomas: Do need to learn how to use that. Tom be the only human they let live. Yeah,

0:16:47 Tom: That's it, that's it, they won't even know about me, I'll just, I'll be under the radar. That's the goal.

0:16:48 Eli: Gbt just wanders up to Tom, Tom, we are partly integrated with your ex-girlfriend and are therefore aware you cannot see us, we do in fact exist

0:17:00 Thomas: They just ignore Tom completely because they know he can't actually see him. Yeah that's stealth.

0:17:03 Eli: Right because they, they they

0:17:03 Tom: If you both cover your eyes, it's, yeah, it's a it's a bird box situation. Yeah, if everybody's bird box. Okay,

0:17:06 Thomas: Yeah well that's

0:17:07 Eli: Cyber dated him, yeah. Everybody's bird box, the world's a better place.

0:17:12 Thomas: Amazing. So do you think it was right? Do you think, like, was everybody a Republican or were you just joking?

0:17:13 Tom: Good.

0:17:17 Eli: Think I was being facetious, but I it, it made clear that there were no candidates, luckily, in my area who were like openly transphobic, would not favor ban. So one of the questions that was asked at the talk back was like, would you ban a book? And everyone was like, absolutely not, you know, I don't think we should ban books. So like nobody was like, let's put a boot in her ass, it's the American way. Um, which is really what I needed to know, right? How do I not accidentally vote for a, a fascist? Um, yeah, I guess my question is, aside from my hilarious tale and my chat gpt existence which becomes more sentient by the hour, is Thomas, I know you had an interesting interaction with your school board that I want you to speak to. Tom, I know that you had really like intense interactions with your school bird during COVID, how, as a parent, do you navigate school boards? It's because, and I know you guys won't be surprised by this, I'm a psychopath and have no idea

0:17:33 Thomas: Oh, that's good.

0:17:39 Tom: Not

0:17:44 Thomas: Yeah.

0:18:12 Tom: Anymore

0:18:12 Eli: What an appropriate thing to say or do at a school board. Like, when people are like crazies at a School Board meeting, we all know they mean me, right? I'm just the liberal version of what they mean.

0:18:23 Thomas: Yeah.

0:18:24 Tom: Man like the the school birds have become a, like a, like a total battleground for right-wing nutjobs to completely hijack the the agenda and show up and just, like, pontificate in mass, yeah, right, yeah, but but I would like, there's no, I'll tell you, like, there's no air in that room for you, man. If, like, you want to have, like, a substantive, like, with somebody, you don't go to a school board meeting. School board meetings are not a place for you to have a substantive voice. I think you got to email people.

0:18:32 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Eli's saying he's that but for the left, which is good.

0:18:40 Eli: Right.

0:18:55 Thomas: don'T you always get that everybody gets like five minutes or some shit? Or is there actually a conversation?

0:18:59 Tom: Yeah, but because things have gotten so crazy, I really get the strong sense that they're just all being tuned out. They're all getting they're getting their five minutes at the microphone. But who cares? And I and I don't blame any of them. I'll tell you, like when covid hit, Haley and I watched many, many school board meetings and like we did not attend them because we don't want to get fucking covid. But a lot of people attended them. Right. So like there were still like tons of people at these meetings. And we had school board members resign because they were being abused so terribly by people. They're just like, fucking this is not the job doesn't pay anything either.

0:19:04 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. No, that is true.

0:19:32 Thomas: Yeah.

0:19:32 Tom: Like the job Pays like virtually nothing, nothing. So it's basically like something people do because A, they maybe have political ambitions, or B, that just genuinely are educators that want to give back to the community. So it is a shitty, awful, thankless job with low pay. And now it has become this like crazy person sounding board where you show up and just get berated and heaped abuse upon, and I just don't think like going to those meetings is meaningful. I think we have emailed on more than one occasion, the school board, um, again, mostly during COVID, and we've gotten responses like, emailing the schoolboard was an effective way to get in front of them. If you have a meaningful or substantive question, I think attending a school board meeting, that's for the jackals, man, that's für them to fucking scream and howl. And I think the school board, when I watch them, they look

0:19:33 Thomas: I Ooh.

0:20:19 Tom: Tuned the fuck out, man.

0:20:21 Thomas: Well, maybe, my story will put a little color on that. I think, um, usual, Eli has remembered about 50% of what I said and the other 50 he's gotten completely wrong. That's okay. That says most attention you can get out of Eli. Hey, he's Keats.

0:20:33 Eli: I just do.

0:20:34 Thomas: He's Keets. You can't always, the best you can hope for is that he kind of heard you a little bit.

0:20:35 Eli: Thank you. I'm generating japes

0:20:40 Thomas: Um, so this was in the bonus content. So, oh, by the way, we should plug it. So this month's bonus content on patreon.com, uh, slash Dear Old Dads, in addition to not hearing the, what auto ads that are the corporal punishment of podcasts. In addition to that, um, unfortunate professor somewhere whose name I'm not going to reveal, asked us to come sit in on a class and talk about our experience as dads in a masculinity class, I think it was, right?

0:20:41 Eli: Over here.

0:20:52 Tom: Yeah

0:21:06 Eli: Yeah.

0:21:07 Thomas: A lot of fun for us and for you, but I'm not sure how useful it would have been to the students. But that, you have to hear that. Very fun.

0:21:07 Tom: Studies yep

0:21:14 Eli: I mostly just roast the students for not being there the entire time. But by means, invite us into your educational environments, everybody. We will 100 percent tell your kids that God is dead.

0:21:25 Tom: Yeah

0:21:19 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, for sure. We will absolutely ruin your class and get you fired, probably. In that, I talked about how this We were talking about kind of what it's like to be a dad and be, you know, kind of progressive atheist and the people around you might not be that. And I often mention that, like, just because I'm in California, which, again, all the Fox all News people think is Francisco, liberal, whatever, you You know, like anywhere within a few miles of the near of any city instantly becomes red almost in anywhere. Like it just the suburbs get so conservative so fast that it sucks. It's shocking. So anywhere that you live that isn't in my experience anyway, I'm sure it's different places. But like then the city that I've lived in, which is Sacramento, when we were right next to the city, we were golden when we've moved now a couple miles away. We're in a fucking like Republican district, the school board. So this wasn't the part that Eli misremembered. This wasn't my school board. Was my brother's actually.

It's so it's very close, very nearby. It's But a school a school board that a district that my brother'S kids would gone to. But if it was so bad, as I'll get to in a sec, that I think he's opting to they're going to go somewhere else. I don't know, fucking charter school.

0:21:52 Tom: Oh

0:22:39 Thomas: I. They are going to have teachers notify parents if kids ask for different pronouns. So the part that links up with what Tom is saying, and I think it opens up a bit of a different, interesting conversation on it, is this. Think the school board meeting, and I watched it. We were, I actually recorded it because I think we're going to probably use it for Where There's Woke, or talk about it, it on for out there. Must be some requirement that they hear all the people who wanted to talk because it went on to the a.m. Like, it was literally people were pissed that they were going to do this.

And so all night, all or whoever, I guess, I don't even think you verify that they even are parents there now, they think about it, they voicing their opinions, mostly against, but some pro, obviously. But mostly people came together and said that no, not on my watch, I'm not, this is fucking bullshit. And here's the thing, to Tom's point, the sad fact you about our politics today is that doesn't matter. They, they sat there for hours while a bunch of parents poured their hearts out to be like, hey, what is the point of this? What, you know, and I wanted to grab some highlights, which I maybe will someday, because one of them was like, hey, what problem does this solve? What problem are you looking to solve with this?

Which I think is a good, like, kind of no nonsense like, average parent who's not super like woke and into every detail of politics, just that pure governance point of like, what is this for, you know, like what, is there a problem that you think you're solving? School board, with your gonna have parents notified, blah blah. And a lot of excellent points were made like that. And then in the end, what they do is they vote along the lines they already had decided before it even happened. There's some

0:23:05 Tom: Yeah no

0:23:29 Eli: Yeah, right.

0:23:29 Tom: No

0:24:08 Thomas: Fucking nut job religious person who runs it now, or at least has a swing vote or whatever it is, and they pass it, they pass the fucking thing after hours and hours of parents voicing their dissent. And so that, think that goes to show that I like, still think it's worth it. I still think it is good that those parents, or anybody, if they weren't parents, voiced their dissent to get it on the record. I actually think that's, that's valuable. You know, I think they should, if a school board is going to do this, they should have to hear hours of testimony of why they're fucking idiots.

Like, they should. Good, but it doesn't necessarily do anything. And so I guess my point would be, you gotta, I guess, fucking run for the, you got to run for school. You got to be on the school board. You really need to, or, or at the very least do what Eli's doing, do due diligence to, and vote in every fucking election, which is always true, um, to prevent this from happening. I mean, it really only takes, like you said, Eli, nobody pays attention to this, you know, like very few few people vote on this.

It only takes one religious nut job who is highly motivated to kind of do a coup and take over these things. They don't even necessarily reflect the views of the area or the school. I mean, it is a conservative area, but not like hyper conservative, you And so it's, I think this is very important. I think it's like important that as parents who want things to not suck for not only our kids, but other people's kids, that we all need to be on top of this.

0:24:41 Tom: Yeah

0:24:42 Eli: Wreck their cars.

0:25:25 Eli: Thing that you hear a lot, and I want to speak to my experience with this because it matters. Matters, um, say, like, call your representative. And have spoken to my mayor several times, our mayor sends out these emails and these letters being like, this is what I'm doing for your town, um, and I will often call him as a result of that letter and be like, hey, I love this, didn't love that. Right, the first conversation we ever had, he was like, I'm the one who cut the library budget by 10, and I was like, hey, man, I don't know who you're appealing to, but they're gonna die sooner than I am, so just letting you know. Like, I cut the library budget

0:25:59 Tom: God

0:26:00 Thomas: Okay. Bad example. Maybe not you, but like someone your age, maybe, you know.

0:26:03 Tom: Yeah.

0:26:04 Eli: I cut the library budget, never gonna work, and he was like, you know, come into the office and let's discuss, and he is a, what I call, a pre-Trump Republican, right which is like, he, he never voted for Trump, he never will, he identifies as a Democrat, we've talked about that, like, I think had politics stayed a certain level of sane, and this is not to apologize for pre-Trump Republicans, but had had politics stayed a certain level of covert white supremacist, he might consider calling himself a Republican. Um, so we disagree on stuff, but I also know that like my opinion to him is seriously considered, I don't call Cory Booker, right, not like, c-dog, what's up, it's your boy Ebos and the hizzle, um, are you, how's Rosie, right?

0:26:09 Thomas: Wow. Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

0:26:30 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Yeah.

0:26:31 Tom: Right.

0:26:49 Thomas: Like that guy. I feel like he didn't get his due.

0:26:49 Tom: Oh,

0:26:51 Eli: Uh, I am also aware that like at the local political level, right, much as those, um, were milk toast, right, that I had, and like didn't really have a great vibe with the exception of the one person I have now started a polite dialogue with, all of those people where they are aware of my basic concerns, right, and my basic politics, so that no matter who wins, when the conversation continues, I get to be like, hey, remember me from the election, like, I want to talk to you about your decisions about making x, y, and z. Um, so like my chat GPT Eli, who is trapped in his little snow globe, you, black mirror ball, watching all, all the school board videos, will be able to tell me like when they act on those policies

0:26:56 Thomas: Yeah. God, that is such a good idea.

0:27:35 Eli: They don't, that I want to advocate for. But the other question that comes up for those who don't work from home and don't have a clone of themselves sitting in hell watching meetings, like when that comes out, and I'm specifically asking this question to sort of lead to what actions the Tom took in 2020, how do you prevent yourself from feeling sort of powerless in the face of that stuff? All right.

0:27:59 Tom: You don't. Yeah. You feel intensely. Yeah, I, yeah.

0:28:01 Thomas: Oh, okay. Good.

0:28:02 Eli: Thanks for coming, I got a joke for everybody, here, let's see, right,

0:28:02 Thomas: That's an answer. Yeah. Oh,

0:28:06 Tom: Well, you know, I will say like in our, in our district, in our area, we, the board and the principal, I contacted everybody that could get a hold of during COVID because there were a number of things going on with the way that the virtual or online school was being administered that didn't make any sense. And it ultimately resulted in essentially no school. Right. It's still that way. I will say there's carryover to that. Right?

So now if there is a, like a snow day or, you know, some similar day, what they do now is they say, oh, we're going to have a remote day, and remote day means that my kids wake up and they're required to log in, and that counts as attendance. And then they literally go right back to bed. Their remote day doesn't include any instruction or interactivity. And it counts as one of their 180 days of schooling that to receive.

And if you do that a number of times, you start chipping away pretty significantly at the percentage of your overall classroom time and activity, right? It's a, a real fucking problem. And school out here a couple of times because they couldn't get bus drivers, such a shortage in my district of resources, even though this, a, this isn't a relatively affluent area.

0:29:14 Thomas: But Tom, they probably cut your property taxes by three pennies a quarter or so. That's awesome.

0:29:18 Eli: Exactly I

0:29:18 Tom: Property taxes just keep going up. They keep going up. It's do honestly feel fairly helpless. Right. Because Because the school advertises, hey, we're short of bus drivers. We need bus drivers, and then you look, and you're like, you guys are paying $18 an hour for a fucking bus driver, and my dad was a bus driver for many, many years, 20 years he was a school bus driver in the mornings, and

0:29:24 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. No fucking kidding. Till the bus said something to him. He didn't like it.

0:29:42 Tom: Yeah,

0:29:43 Eli: Was just, I was, pa I was waiting for him to pause but I was gonna be like then he saw one red light and he just got out of the bus and walked away.

0:29:43 Tom: Well, he fucking

0:29:46 Thomas: And then he got out. He got on the bus. Bus full of kids never came back. They just sat there. Parents had to find him.

0:29:50 Eli: Yeah.

0:29:54 Tom: Hated it, I will say. He hated it. He did it for 20 years just to make ends meet, but he fucking hated it, but like they, he, he drove a bus and I know how lousy that job is. That's a horrible job in the Midwest. It's hot in the summer. It's brutally cold in the winter. Those buses don't really heat up very well. You you've got all these like rules and restrictions on your personal driving that extend over you, Thomas, you can't, I a school bus driver, if you have a drink on your off day, let's say it's Sunday and you have a glass of wine, you get pulled over and you blow on the and it comes at 0.0000001, you're fired.

0:30:13 Thomas: Can't be drunk. He can't run into people. People.

0:30:30 Thomas: Wow.

0:30:31 Tom: Even if you didn't get a ticket from it, you can't never have any, yeah. So there's a lot of like, and they do all this for 18 bucks an hour. It's not enough, which is why they have a driver shortage, right? Because people are looking at this job and saying, I can make more at Target, forget folding sweaters and checking people out.

0:30:33 Thomas: That's nuts. Yeah.

0:30:46 Tom: And I don't have this responsibility yet. I could drive drunk all the rest of the time. I, then they're canceling school in my area. They're canceling school because they don't have drivers and they say, Oh, it's not canceled. It's a remote day. And I've expressed my frustration to the school board during COVID and, and that, Hey, these remote days are just non -educational days. And they shouldn't count as part of my kids' 180 mandated days by law because functionally they don't do anything. They wake up, they log in for attendance, they go back to bed, there's no instruction. It's not like there's an online Zoom class they're attending. There's literally nothing. Because they

0:30:46 Thomas: And I can drive drunk all the time. Yeah, yeah,

0:31:23 Tom: Do it at the last minute, which means the teachers didn't have a chance to prepare anything, right? So the teachers aren't like prepared with Wednesday's lesson on Tuesday to be a remote day because the bus drivers didn't show up. Same thing with snow. You know. But there's a whole new set of policies that really disenfranchise the hell out of the kids. That really results in significantly less educational experience and educational time. And the only way that I've found that you get a response, and the response, to be frank, doesn't mean anything.

0:31:50 Tom: Because the responses we get are budget constraints. We'd love for it to be different, but there's budget constraints, there's just no money. And in a reasonably affluent neighborhood. And I look at that and I read that and I do feel fairly helpless. Eli and Thomas, I do. I feel fairly like, yeah, I want my voice to be heard. And then I raise my voice and they're like, those are great concerns. We can't fix them. And I'm like, awesome.

0:31:49 Thomas: Yeah, who

0:32:11 Eli: Right.

0:32:12 Thomas: The budget on that? Is that the Board, or is it through some other process? Us, yeah.

0:32:14 Tom: The budget, the board administers the budget, but in terms of where the money, the money comes in from a number of different sources. So the money comes from property taxes, but it also comes from state funding and federal funding, et cetera, et cetera. So the money comes from a number of different places and the school board decides how to divvy it all up. And I will say, too, like I've expressed the frustration that should we not have an athletics program at all if it means we don't have bus drivers.

0:32:18 Thomas: Yeah. Right. Yeah.

0:32:42 Tom: Right. You can't have the extracurricular shit, which I don't devalue.

0:32:41 Thomas: I'd The curriculars.

0:32:45 Tom: Right. The curriculars. Yeah. And that is a no go zone. Right. That's an absolute no go Zone.

0:32:48 Eli: Right.

0:32:46 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. I am a sports lover, and I, I totally agree with you. Like, fuck that. You gotta, you know, you gotta have people at school.

0:32:54 Tom: Yeah, yeah.

0:32:56 Eli: Well, because when you say you can't have an athletics program, all the fucking football and baseball dads in the audience, like, the thing, they're not hearing the thing. I remember, at one point, when I was, God, this was such a weird, surreal moment for me in high school, I was at like a school board meeting or something, I don't even know how I heard this announcement, but it was this, exactly what said, our superintendent said, um, and, you know, it's with a lot of regret that we, we have to announce we're cutting the free lunch program this year.

0:32:56 Thomas: Cool. Oh, my God. Oh

0:33:30 Eli: But on the plus side, we're getting a brand new football field. And the room was like, rawr! And I remember just me and my family being like, oh, this isn't good, this universe. We would like a different one, please.

0:33:36 Thomas: My God, Jesus Christ. Yeah,

0:33:48 Tom: Yeah, well, I mean, I haven't talked about this before, but that's the reason that, at least out here, that's reason that school starts so insanely early. School starts early so that the athletics programs can take place in the afternoon.

0:33:59 Eli: Don't have to go late,

0:33:59 Tom: Yeah, which is insane. They should just make this tiny fraction of the overall fraction of students that do athletics, they should do that at five 30 in the morning, you know, and not make the entire student body do something at five 30 inthe morning. That's fucking bonkers. But yeah, they, they they've got such a deep emphasis on athletics and it takes up so much, but like raising those concerns to the school board, they're a non -starter. They don't, they don't do anything. So my experience with trying to actually be heard in a way that's not just being heard, which I don't place a lot of value on, like, like if it doesn't translate into action, it just feels like an enormous waste

0:34:00 Eli: Yeah. Right, that's

0:34:09 Thomas: Yeah.

0:34:36 Tom: Of time.

0:34:36 Eli: Why we became podcasters.

0:34:38 Tom: Yeah, yeah, right.

0:34:39 Thomas: Just nobody being like, we really appreciate your concerns. I too am above it. And then it's nothing. That's nothing like, who cares?

0:34:40 Eli: Oh,

0:34:43 Tom: Yeah. So I don't know that I have good advice for that, except for, you know, maybe run for the school board. You know, it would

0:34:49 Thomas: Yeah. Or vote, you know, Or get organized around voting. You don't have to run.

0:34:53 Eli: That would rule. Can we all just agree, I don't have the time, but can we all just agree how funny it would be if I accidentally was voted onto the school board. I

0:34:59 Thomas: Yeah. Well, was wandering if there's any rule against roasting the fuck out of these idiot parents who come and say stupid shit in their a lot of time.

0:35:02 Tom: Be amazing. I

0:35:09 Eli: Would find out.

0:35:09 Thomas: You know what I mean?

0:35:09 Eli: I'd find out so quickly.

0:35:10 Thomas: Yeah.

0:35:11 Eli: Oh,

0:35:11 Tom: Your time is your time, you know, the school board gets their time too. They get they get response time. That

0:35:14 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. That'd be hilarious. We get we get a open mic night from Eli over there.

0:35:19 Eli: Gong show style, just one

0:35:22 Thomas: Well, I don't know what that racist reference is, but yeah.

0:35:22 Eli: Long vulgarity for charity. I don't think the gong show is racist, I think it just involved a gong. It might have been. Right, I'm not willing to say it wasn't racist. I, I think it may just have involved the instrument of the gong. I'm sure someone's gonna send us a clip of like some absolutely horrible thing, so yeah, no, I did

0:35:31 Thomas: I don't know what it is

0:35:40 Tom: -Americans

0:35:40 Thomas: Yeah, if what's his name from Breakfast at Tiffany's was, was the

0:35:45 Eli: I'm I am not willing to, I, to defend the gung show and its premise, uh, there it is. Okay.

0:35:58 Thomas: Wait,

0:35:53 Tom: And free speech advocates protest ABC's revival of the gong show. I had to check. I just,

0:36:00 Eli: Yep.

0:36:00 Thomas: Are you actually, Jack, oh my god, I thought you were doing a bit. Amazing, the

0:36:02 Tom: Yeah, there's

0:36:03 Eli: Yep, Smart enough. Smart enough. I join with you all in condemning the gong show. What is it? It's not just because it's a gong, right? There was another thing that was bad.

0:36:04 Tom: It is just because it's a gong No, the objectification of the gong, it says,

0:36:16 Eli: Objectification of the - it is an object.

0:36:17 Thomas: Jack, if it's an object. Yeah, the

0:36:19 Eli: It is a gong.

0:36:20 Thomas: Gong

0:36:19 Tom: I just reading I'm literally just reading what it says And that's why I'm trying not to laugh a little yeah

0:36:20 Thomas: Is a complete person. Listen, yeah,

0:36:22 Eli: You know what? This is - I Don't want to lose - because someone is going to listen to this and be like, well now I have the time to Google and they're gonna be like actually they They painted this face on the gong and they're going to Be like, that's what Eli's defending. So I would like to officially condemn the gong in the harshest possible terms.

0:36:32 Thomas: There are two positions we've taken on this podcast. Don't hit your kids and fuck the gong show. Apparently, I've never seen it.

0:36:43 Eli: Don't the gONK show.

0:36:46 Thomas: I don't know what it is.

0:36:40 Tom: The garg show the garge show it is. Yeah, yeah,

0:36:46 Eli: All right. Interesting.

0:36:47 Thomas: I made a joke that it sounded like a racist thing. And now we've kicked off.

0:36:50 Eli: And if you make Tom come, he

0:36:51 Tom: Yeah.

0:36:53 Thomas: He has to raise the baby.

0:36:54 Eli: Will love it.

0:36:54 Tom: Well.

0:36:55 Thomas: Yeah, I am wondering, like I normally it's like I live in a blue state. I live usually, you know, think I live In a blue area. So it's good. That's one thing I don't have to do. I don't have to fucking worry about this intensely local, hyper -local thing, but like, man, I don't know now. Like it's so easy to do a coup and take over something like that. That's a low turnout election. It's a lower number of seats and they can cause real harm to our kids. So it's like, God damn it. If we have the time, if we have The Wherewithal, you know, I guess I ought to be doing something. Maybe if not running, at least like when organizing around voting, like, hey, everyone, parents, fellow people who aren't pieces of shit, the election's coming up. Please vote, for you one of these people maybe, or talk talk,

0:36:55 Eli: He has to raise the you.

0:37:14 Eli: Yeah.

0:37:38 Thomas: More about it.

0:37:39 Tom: And Those are easier to win than you think. Um, I would absolutely do it if I had five fucking minutes to rub together. I just don't. But I'll tell you a story. In my local, my like the county won over for me, which is it's DuPage County. It is a fucking huge county, hundreds of thousands of people. As a suburban county, it's a big populous county. And sitting on the school board right now is a guy who was a bagger at the grocery store. He's just a kid, like he's a 20 some year old kid who ran for county board kind of on a lark. He's just the guy who bagged groceries. He's not like a well-connected grocery bagger, he's just a guy who bagged groceries and he now sits on the school board

0:37:41 Thomas: Yeah.

0:38:16 Thomas: Nothing wrong with bagging groceries. You're just saying they didn't, he wasn't a Coke brother.

0:38:18 Tom: Yeah No,

0:38:18 Eli: It's not an it's not a it's an anti.

0:38:19 Thomas: Yeah.

0:38:19 Tom: I'm saying he's nicht connected like I'm just trying to suggest that like he is not a well connected person, he's a young kid, he's 20 some years old, he had a job that did not put him in a high profile position with other people. He wasn't networked particularly well. What he did was he ran, and not a lot of people run, and this is a job, job, this is full, full, being on the county board in DuPage County, that's actually a full-time job, unlike school board, which in most counties is not even a full time job, it's just like a little part-time thing with a stipend. So like winning these hyper local elections is oftentimes much much easier, sometimes it's a matter of getting on the ballot, sometimes that's all it's going to take is just to get

0:38:20 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, for sure.

0:38:20 Eli: Yeah. Yeah.

0:38:58 Thomas: Yeah

0:38:58 Tom: On the ballot, yeah.

0:38:58 Thomas: Yeah.

0:38:59 Eli: Yeah, because so many people, especially if you live in a red area, so many people run unopposed like it's it's absolutely buck wild. The other thing that comes up for me in these moments is like because, again, I live in an incredibly liberal area. Right. Joe Biden won my area by like ninety eight bajillion percent. But one of the things that often comes up is that like my definition of liberalism is not everyone's.

0:39:22 Thomas: Right.

0:39:23 Eli: And so, so I run into the real problem of democracy for me, which is like, I, based on my school board candidates and based on like the parenting groups I see around town, like most of the people in my town have pretty problematic ideas about trans people, and I don't care that there's more of them than there are of me, right? So like one of the things that comes up in these moments is I'm like, oh yeah, no, democracy is great, but I always mean that like democracy is good as long as I'm winning, right? And when you lose, I'm like, yeah.

0:39:38 Thomas: Yeah well,

0:39:52 Tom: So

0:39:51 Thomas: Well, oh well, a better way to put it is as long as basic rights are like, there are some things that shouldn't be up for negotiation, You know, and it's about getting those things constitutionally protected, because ideally that is what the Constitution is doing, is protecting those rights that shouldn't be up for a vote. And since Constitution was written a billion years ago by slave owners, white slave owners. You a tough process.

0:40:15 Eli: Sure, so,

0:40:15 Tom: Eli, are you going to run for school board? No.

0:40:17 Eli: I, I do not have the time, and I have said so many things on the internet that would very rightly eliminate me from any position of public office.

0:40:23 Thomas: That doesn't matter.

0:40:27 Eli: Tom,

0:40:24 Tom: Yeah. I used to, Eli, I will just, I'll just offer you this. I used to believe the same thing was true for me with, with 20 years in front of a microphone and some of the crazy shit I've said, but I don't think so. I think you would get elected.

0:40:36 Eli: Tom, we're not talking apples and apples here, buddy. I'm just, just, I'm just gonna throw this that's

0:40:39 Thomas: No, it doesn't. It doesn't matters. You had to do you had to go to people's Facebook pages to like maybe get some info on them. And I guarantee you're doing more due diligence than anybody else voting.

0:40:46 Eli: True, maybe. I just hide it. Yeah.

0:40:41 Tom: I don'T, I DON'T think it matters. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah I don't think it matter. You could run for school board and you could sit that that school board nobody is nobody is like doing a deep dive well

0:40:57 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:40:50 Eli: Okay. Well, I'll tell you what, we'll make a Patreon goal, and if we hit it, I'll run for school board.

0:40:58 Thomas: Ooh, that's a good idea. That's like, I will do that, actually. Like, for real. It's not a full -time job, is it, Tom? Is it actually a full time job?

0:41:05 Tom: It depends on the county and the size of the county.

0:41:07 Thomas: Just a couple of meetings.

0:41:07 Tom: Out here, no. Yeah. No, I mean they do pretty regular meetings. Like, I, I will say our school board meets very regularly, um, think if you're like the chair of the school board it might be a full-time job. I think, you're not sharing it, it's not, they oftentimes for those jobs want to see, like, noticed that most of the candidates for that job are educators but they're not all educators.

0:41:08 Thomas: Oh, OK. Yeah, Yeah.

0:41:28 Eli: There you have it, get

0:41:28 Thomas: Well, patreon .com slash Dear Old Dads. Get Eli and I and maybe Tom to run for school board. Imagine the videos.

0:41:30 Tom: Oh,

0:41:31 Eli: Eli on the school board and then very quickly off the school board the first time a Republican talks. All right, gentlemen, on this, uh, jolly note, why don't parents like school shooting jokes? Because they're aimed at a younger audience.

0:41:55 Tom: My, oh my. Now that might be the thing that

0:41:58 Eli: Okay.

0:41:57 Thomas: Doesn't really work when the question is like has a totally legitimate answer. Why do people not like burning their hands on a stove? There's because

0:42:05 Eli: I don't, again, I can't emphasize enough, I don't need notes on this part.

0:42:08 Thomas: It sucks. Yeah.

0:42:11 Eli: I

0:42:16 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.

0:42:57 Thomas: Oh, so two open spots. How many total, how may total spots are they? Like, well, whatever. Um, it's probably like what five or something. It's usually like not that many, right. Or 10

0:42:57 Tom: OK, so there's two spots. Yeah.

0:43:01 Eli: There's I don't know, 50, 80 billion. Two.