DOD231: How to Handle Not-Cash-Money Things That Happen to Your Kid

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, ooh, gotta write an intro for this topic. Anyway, I'm Tom Curry, joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:35 Thomas: How's it going? I didn't write my response either, so I don't know what to... Uh, hello. Greetings.

0:00:46 Tom: I can't believe you didn't write a response with that well-rehearsed and well-choreographed intro. I obviously gave you a lot of time to really prepare. A little lazy on your part, honestly.

0:00:51 Thomas: Yeah. Everything I do is scripted. I'm lost right now. So what's going on with you guys? Mmm.

0:00:59 Tom: Well, this awkward.

0:01:16 Thomas: Oh, nice. That's fucking... I'm so hard right now!

0:01:23 Eli: As I'm getting ready to sleep, I sleep in that.

0:01:26 Tom: Yeah,

0:01:26 Thomas: You're talking to two other special neck boys right now, and Tom, the most special of neck boys. Anyways.

0:01:29 Tom: Right.

0:01:29 Eli: Yeah. Put my arm underneath it. I can sleep like that. That pillow stopped working about one month ago.

0:01:31 Tom: What do you mean it stopped working?

0:01:40 Thomas: Stopped pillowing.

0:01:40 Tom: It stopped pillowing?

0:01:39 Eli: Stop working. Stop. I wake up, stop pillowing, and I wake up with a neck ache and have a constant neck ache all day, every day.

0:01:50 Thomas: Oh, so you had one that worked. Oh okay. I had one that I just did as my like comfort thing but it never worked. My neck still always hurt.

0:01:56 Eli: Oh no, it worked amazingly.

0:01:57 Thomas: So you had it and lost it. That's much worse.

0:01:59 Eli: Yeah.

0:02:00 Tom: I'm just curious. Can either of you guys sleep without your arms falling asleep? I've discovered as I've gotten older that I have, there is no possibility for me to sleep without one or both of my arms falling asleep.

0:02:10 Thomas: Oh man. I found a way around that Tom and it took half my adult life. Like literally.

0:02:16 Tom: Please enlighten me.

0:02:17 Thomas: Well, so for me it was that I needed to. Well, okay. What's your default? This is really important. Stop everything else. What's your default sleep position that's doing this? Is it on your back with your arms like up? Is That why they side sleeper. So where are your arms going? That, okay.

0:02:24 Tom: Yeah. No, side, side sleeper. And so here's the thing. The arm that is not underneath my body is the one that falls asleep.

0:02:35 Thomas: Yeah, are you reaching it up? Are you doing...

0:02:39 Tom: No, just laying it on my side. It's just like my arms just fucking falls asleep. It's a piece of shit. It's a fucking piece of... I fucking hate these things.

0:02:40 Thomas: What? Okay, well, all right, I don't know. Never mind. I have nothing to say. Never mind. You're just completely...

0:02:50 Eli: Tom, I've always wondered this because I was looking for new pillows and I was unclear about terminology. When you say side sleeper, do you mean that your body is balanced on its edge, or do you mean that you are lying on your stomach but you are not facing entirely down?

0:02:52 Tom: Yeah.

0:02:58 Thomas: Undermined. Yeah.

0:03:01 Tom: What? No, I'm on my side. I'm not on my... I am on the edge.

0:03:07 Thomas: No, yes, people like laying their edge. Yeah. Yeah. They're fine balance.

0:03:10 Eli: I don't believe that's real. I think that's fake.

0:03:12 Tom: Yeah, that's what...

0:03:15 Eli: I'm a stomach sleeper, but whenever I hear side sleep or describe tummy sleeper, well, whenever I here side sleep is described, I'm like, what, are they a sleeping acrobat? No, they're not.

0:03:17 Tom: I believe it's tummy sleeper. Tummy sleep. Yeah, thank you.

0:03:25 Thomas: Yeah.

0:03:25 Eli: No. One's a fucking side sleep. I sleep on my toe. I sleep standing up like a horse.

0:03:30 Thomas: You don't have to stay totally straight up and down. Like you can, you know, yeah.

0:03:33 Tom: Yeah, you kind of curl up a little bit and you make a... Yeah, right. Yeah.

0:03:36 Thomas: You know, like the old paper thing you do at school where it's like the paper can't hold the book, but if you crinkle it up into the little folds, then all of a sudden you can set a book on top of it. So it's kind of like that.

0:03:46 Tom: Well, also some of us are... Well, some of us are quite wide, so there's plenty of space for me to balance my body onto. Yeah, it's

0:03:47 Eli: There. That's, yeah, no, that's fair. Yeah, you're kind of a square.

0:03:52 Thomas: Yeah, I, I didn't, I don't want to say anything, but I feel like, is that a problem you would have?

0:03:58 Eli: No.

0:03:58 Thomas: You can't sleep on your side?

0:03:58 Eli: No. Am I downright wispy on my side? Downright wispy. I come to a point at either side. I'm basically a triangle.

0:03:58 Tom: Fine. Oh. I

0:04:02 Thomas: Oh, okay. Well, what I was going to say that is not helpful to Tom at all is that my arms used to fall asleep because I start off, I have like, do you guys have like a sleep cycle? Like I have a sleep cycle. Yeah. You go through. Oh, fantastic. Fantastic. Go ahead.

0:04:14 Eli: Absolutely. That's what I was actually about to explain, my sleep cycle, as I was talking, and then I was like, oh no, no, I'm not gonna do the cycle. That's too much.

0:04:19 Tom: Can't wait to talk about.

0:04:24 Thomas: Well, I'm going to go through it. No, but I'm just going to say enough to say that it starts on my back and my arms, I put my arms up, you know, and I also have a thing where I have to try to like cover one of my ears with like my arm and my pillow. So I can't hear anything, you know, and so like my arms will fall asleep because they're up. And so that's what I wasn't sure if you were doing that. But the way I found to fix it is that I got a different pillow to where instead of going straight up, I can put like a secondary pillow that allows my arms to angle up a little bit rather than like straight right up on the bed, if that makes sense. That solved a lot of problems for me. If that helps anyone else, it'll be a miracle. Otherwise I just wasted, uh, 30 seconds of everyone's time.

0:05:01 Eli: You know, know what, but, but Thomas, if there's one person out there who you've just rescued their sleep...

0:05:02 Tom: Mine. It's Worth it. It's worthy.

0:05:06 Thomas: Yeah. Even one. Yeah, we'll hear from them.

0:05:08 Eli: It matters. Yeah. So I've just been waking up with a neck ache. I have a neckache all day long. It's gotten to the point where I basically, I'm just constantly asking Anna to rub my neck. There's no point at which she's done rubbing, because, you know, sometimes you just get a little shoulder rub: "Oh, that felt so good, thank you so much." Now I'm juste like, "Please keep me in the stasis of my neck." I'll tell you how bad it is. I know more than most that chiropractic isn't real, and that chiropracty of the neck especially is dangerous pseudoscience that can only do you harm, and I'm willing to give it a shot.

I'm unwilling to give it, I'm thinking maybe I go see old Mr. Cracky Bones. I'm gonna see if I can get Kevin Sorbo's guy, have a little stroke, end up in some Christian films. That's how much I am just in a constant level of pain. And I'll tell you, I don't know what to do. Can I tell you why I don't know what to do? I have asked the internet for products, and the products are too bullshit for even me to try, right?

0:05:15 Thomas: God sucks.

0:05:33 Thomas: Yeah yeah yeah

0:05:41 Tom: Yeah. Yeah, man.

0:06:05 Eli: They're the, like, hang your neck from a door, and I'm like, all right, David Carradine, nice try.

0:06:07 Thomas: Yeah you're like I'm already doing that.

0:06:09 Tom: Right. Well...

0:06:10 Eli: Right, yeah, the chi points thing or whatever it is. And I also, it doesn't hurt enough that I feel like I can go to the doctor because it's not an injury.

0:06:18 Thomas: Yeah they will tell you the same nothing every time.

0:06:22 Tom: Well, wait a minute. So I feel like this is great content, but like the neck pain that you have, is it like neck and then radiates and then it's like into the trapezius, into the top of the shoulder muscle? Is that where it's at?

0:06:33 Eli: I mean, it's mostly just in my neck, but yeah, there's a little bit in the traps as well.

0:06:36 Thomas: If you're doing trapeze shit, then And I think that's on you, you know, like your neck's going to fucking hurt.

0:06:38 Eli: Yeah, he's a,

0:06:40 Tom: Have you tried a TENS unit?

0:06:41 Eli: What's a TENS unit?

0:06:43 Tom: A TENS is a, it's a, it's, like, a little box. You throw some batteries in.

0:06:43 Thomas: Oh, Tom is a big fan of shocking himself in every different way possible.

0:06:50 Tom: Here's the thing. When I get a muscle cramp in my neck or my traps, it's fucking horrible. No, this is not fake.

0:06:54 Eli: This Looks fake. Fake. I, podcast listener, I know nothing. I know nothing. I'm looking at boxes on Amazon. Looks fake. It's

0:07:01 Tom: Yeah, look, you get a TENS unit, right? Right.

0:07:03 Thomas: It's not fake. It just doesn't work.

0:07:05 Tom: For me, they have worked in the past.

0:07:06 Eli: What makes them fake? That's

0:07:06 Tom: So, again, fucking give your baby a bottle of Tylenol or whatever. But like what oftentimes happens for me is that the reason that it hurts is I have a muscle cramp that won't let go and it just is seized up and it's tight and it won't loosen. A TENS unit provides like an electrical stimulus in there. And basically, I don't really know if this is how it works, but what it feels like is it fucking artificially wears that muscle out.

0:07:29 Thomas: Oh, wow.

0:07:29 Tom: And when you take it off the cramp is gone and it helps for

0:07:32 Thomas: I genuinely thought that it mainly just distracts you. I actually think that'S what it is.

0:07:38 Tom: Me, if I take a Tent, like, and it doesn't always work, but it has worked more than it has not. And that's part of how, when I broke my fucking neck like six months ago, it started off as like, I'm like, God, I have the fucking worst neck cramps. My neck and shoulder is just like locked up, and I was doing everything that I would normally do to try to like uncramp it, and it was like, yeah, it's never gonna work because I just had a nerve outlet problem. But like, yeah, try a TENS unit, bro. See, they cost like 30, like worst case scenario

0:08:05 Eli: How? The other reason I think they're fake is that nothing that works is is

0:08:09 Thomas: I don't know. On the other hand, yeah,

0:08:09 Tom: Yeah, give it a whirl. There's, it's not like big TENS unit is out there, you know, like it's no money.

0:08:14 Eli: Affordable. Yeah.

0:08:14 Thomas: Sometimes the stuff that works is super cheap. And the reason you don't know about it is because, like, everyone else is trying to sell you a more expensive thing that they can actually make money on.

0:08:23 Eli: Oh. Yeah, it's possible.

0:08:24 Tom: Yeah.

0:08:24 Thomas: So that can be true. I'm not saying all the time, but it can be truth that the thing that works is actually just like a cheap nothing.

0:08:29 Tom: Do you guys fall asleep cuddling with your wives where you have like the problem of like what do you do with your arm that goes under her neck?

0:08:36 Thomas: Yeah, there's nothing to be done with that.

0:08:36 Eli: Oh, I wake her up and tell her it's time to get the fuck away from

0:08:41 Tom: Hayley and I would fall asleep that way. Well, let me rephrase. I would follow sleep that way, you know, and then what What would happen is not only would that arm fall asleep, but then like Haley's neck would also be all fucked up. Like it was like it's like, oh, this is so nice to cuddle this way. Fall asleep, fucking big spoon, little spoon. But then you've got like your arm under her neck and her neck is like at this fucking extreme shitty angle. And then if you both fall asleep. It's like this was so nice. To cuddle ourselves into oblivion into just a horrible muscle cramp of hell.

0:09:09 Eli: Me into agony for the next 11 hours.

0:09:09 Thomas: Aren't you just too hot instantly, though? Like, aren't you? Just too hot.

0:09:13 Tom: Yeah, I'm hot all the time, man.

0:09:13 Eli: No, because we don't live in California, man.

0:09:14 Thomas: I'm always too hot, I don't. No, man, like it's I'm still just hot all the time, like my, I keep my house pretty cold, but it's still just its body heat is fucking warm, man, like it's crazy. Yeah.

0:09:19 Tom: I'm not all the same. It doesn't matter. Yeah.

0:09:25 Eli: No, no, no, it's all good at it.

0:09:26 Tom: Yeah, I think that's the only reason Haley likes me. She can cuddle up against me and warm up. Yeah.

0:09:30 Thomas: Yeah.

0:09:30 Eli: Genuinely, my consistently my favorite part of the day is our snuggle, but the minute I am done, the second I am gone, I'm like, get off, get off, get off, now get off right there. I don't know. You know, I remember that episode of Friends where it was like, you hug and you roll. I don't have any, my body is not doing a thing that is physically uncomfortable for it for any amount of

0:09:39 Thomas: Yeah, Tom.

0:09:53 Thomas: I'm with you. Lydia is definitely only with me for the warmth, and so I developed a bit where I started trying to treat her cuddling me for warmth like as the same thing as her just being in it for sex, and like just be like, you just want one thing, huh? You just want a fucking typical woman. Can't even. Oh, I bet you want warmth. I bet she wants to cuddle. Fucking gross.

0:10:07 Eli: Seconds.

0:10:06 Tom: You just want one thing out of me. That's it.

0:10:13 Eli: My eyes are up

0:10:13 Thomas: God. Disgusting. Yeah. No, my dick is down here. You're trying to.

0:10:18 Tom: This is like a fun new thing that my body started doing, especially more as I've gotten older. So like, oh yeah, just screaming silently.

0:10:22 Eli: Here.

0:10:25 Tom: I think I mentioned before, I have a sleep disorder. I have a sleep disorder called REM behavior disorder. So when I fall asleep, sometimes, yeah,

0:10:25 Thomas: Oh, that's what Remy has. REM behavior disorder.

0:10:32 Eli: Screaming.

0:10:32 Tom: REM -y behavior disorder? Disorder. So when you fall asleep, if you're not a giant piece of shit like me, your body goes into sleep paralysis when you dream. And that way you don't act out your dreams, right? Because that could be dangerous. So my body doesn't do that all the time or does it ineffectively or only intermittently. So like I move around in my sleep, I yell in my asleep, I'll sit up in my sleep. It's a it's a problem. So it's not great. But I also have a lot of like jerkiness that happens when I fall asleep. Now, if I fall sleep and Haley and I are like holding hands or cuddling or whatever. I have to try to make sure I don't fall asleep because as I fall asleep, my body starts to like jerk and I'll just, I'll accidentally hit her. I'll actually like pop her one. Yeah.

0:10:33 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, man. Wow. Well, everyone has that to some degree, right? Don't you have the thing where it's like when you're falling asleep, sometimes you jerk awake because your body like rejects it or something?

0:11:18 Tom: It's super common for me. It's constant. So like, yeah, it's all the time. Yeah, so it's awesome. Well, I have make sure that I face away from her while I sleep so that

0:11:20 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. It's like all the time. Jesus. How have you not killed her by now? Maybe. Yeah.

0:11:29 Eli: So you just lie there being like, "But..."

0:11:29 Tom: I don't accidentally like lash out while upper one. So it's great. It will. Thankfully I get enough sleep so So that it doesn't matter if it's not restful. I get a not rest full four and a half hours.

0:11:40 Eli: Gentlemen, do you know the only thing worse than the living physical hell that is Tom's every waking moment? Why, it's the auto ads. Yes. Yes, the auto-ads interrupting your podcasting experience the way night terrors interrupt Tom's psyche. But you can make them go away over at patreon.com/dearolddads. Wherefore, you cannot make Tom's night terrrors go away. That's for our other podcast, Tom's Night Terrors

0:11:58 Thomas: You can't make his night terrors go away. Sorry. They're not going away.

0:12:05 Tom: So we're going to

0:12:05 Eli: After Dark. It's just the tiny whimpers of the child that's still deep down inside Tom. Over at patreon.com/dearolddads. Oh, yeah, I'll be into it.

0:12:19 Thomas: Eli

0:12:25 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:12:27 Tom: Take a listener email. This email comes. What, what, what? Okay.

0:12:30 Eli: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa, Thomas Marion Curry. You're telling me that I can write an email to this podcast and get my question read on the Internet's webs? How is such a thing possible?

0:12:35 Tom: What? Yeah. It's even more than that. If you write a question into us, you will have your question read. Because if you say we are not, well, no, we reserve the right to read it. Let me say. Yeah. That is the more accurate way of saying.

0:12:50 Eli: Wow, interesting. Okay, there we go.

0:12:56 Thomas: Just quit the show.

0:12:57 Eli: I was like, we got a pretty full list of these questions we haven't got.

0:12:59 Tom: We got a lot of backup. We got to live back up. It's just going to have a whole episode of just reading your email.

0:13:02 Eli: I promise you, we will read your question.

0:13:05 Tom: We won't comment on them all, but we'll just read them out loud. And that'll be the episode one day. Here's just some questions. What if they send us an email? They want just private advice, Eli. Yeah. Okay. All right. Yeah. All right, all right.

0:13:13 Eli: But wait, wait, wait, Tom, don't get ahead of me. Don't get ahead on me, baby. Where can I send that?

0:13:19 Tom: You can send it to the dads at dearolddads.com.

0:13:22 Eli: Email the dads at dear old dads.com, you say?

0:13:25 Thomas: The dads at dearolddads.com.

0:13:28 Eli: Now, Tomifer, importantly, what If I would like some private parenting advice, I don't want this read on the show, I just want you and Thomas and Eli to sit down, put your heads together, and respond to me like the friends we very much are, what should I do?

0:13:31 Tom: You can become a patron at the $100,000 level. That's it for just $100000 per episode. We will entertain your questions privately. If you notice there is no level there, you know, you send me the check personally. I'll deposit it. I promise.

0:13:45 Thomas: Oh,

0:13:54 Eli: Then that's right, patreon.com forward slash the Patreon, uh, there's a price, everything

0:14:01 Thomas: And I forgot to plug the bonus that's out, by the way. We answered questions from an old pirate ship that we found from 100 years ago. They were preserved in bottles, some Q &A questions. It was like, wow, or the Sumerians or whatever. And we answered those.

0:14:15 Eli: That's right.

0:14:10 Tom: We're almost done with that Q that

0:14:16 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:14:17 Eli: Yeah, we've only got 16 pages left.

0:14:17 Tom: AMA. We've worked our way through, yeah, the 16 of 22.

0:14:20 Eli: It's almost there.

0:14:20 Thomas: Most of you are dead. But it's interesting to hear the questions of dead people at patreon .com.

0:14:24 Eli: Most of you are. Dead. All right.

0:14:28 Thomas: Not D&D minus, as Eli almost always says.

0:14:30 Eli: Do I almost always say it? I thought I only mess it up occasionally. But you know what?

0:14:34 Thomas: I'd say half, half the time.

0:14:35 Eli: I mess itup on Dnd minus, and Morgan has to text me all the time and be like, you said Dear Old Dads again.

0:14:41 Thomas: Okay. Well, at least it goes both ways then.

0:14:41 Tom: You can't have any more alliterative shows. There are no more alliterative shows, yeah.

0:14:43 Eli: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

0:14:44 Thomas: It makes me, it makes me feel better. Yeah.

0:14:46 Eli: Tom, read the question, you whore.

0:14:48 Tom: All right, so this question comes from someone. It doesn't say who. This person runs a biweekly D&D gaming group for a few friends. Last weekend was our session. Like always, I check in with them to see how everyone's doing. One of my friends informed me he was having a rough time because of some stuff that happened with his daughter. According to him, this is what happened. She's a freshman in high school, And after school a week ago, she was hanging with some friends and her new and first boyfriend. At some point, she and the boyfriend ended up alone. And after kissing, he presented himself to her.

0:15:18 Thomas: Ooh.

0:15:18 Tom: And when she did not do anything, he said to her, Are you going to do it or am I going to have to force you? Yeah, not good. And that's it. She told her parents and they filed a police report that night. My friend, understandably, is furious.

0:15:25 Thomas: Yikes.

0:15:28 Eli: Just the rest of the episode is Thomas yelling yikes.

0:15:30 Thomas: Ah. Oh, God. Oh, yeah.

0:15:39 Tom: He vented for basically the entire gaming session, which we all understood, and attempted to calm him down. It only went so far.

0:15:44 Thomas: But we couldn't play our game and it was kind of fucking annoying. No, I'm just kidding. It's just the rest of the email is just about the game. Yeah. Oh, man, that sucked. Did you roll? Did you? Oh, that's so.

0:15:47 Eli: Yeah, right. But it's, uh, it's your turn and he has dark visions. So

0:15:57 Thomas: So what was the roll?

0:15:58 Tom: There's

0:15:58 Eli: We're all rolling a dexterity check right now. We

0:16:00 Thomas: Damn. Yeah, that is rough. So was it a six? Or yeah, yeah, well, so

0:16:02 Tom: An orc or something that's not going to kill itself. I don't... unless we give a chat GPT. My question is, how do I help my friend? He was still talking crazy and making wild suggestions on what he could do. I believe we talked him out of doing stupid stuff, but he is rightfully furious. Serious. He also thinks the police are just going to turn it into a he said, she said situation. He's obviously scared for his daughter, who has to see this kid at school, and I just don't know how to help. Also, this happens to be one of my fears for my own daughter, who's friends with his daughter and only a few years younger. Any advice would be gratefully appreciated.

0:16:37 Thomas: The girl got out of the situation, right? I mean, or do we know anything else on what happened, you know, like did anything happen? Yeah, but okay

0:16:42 Eli: Do not, I assume she got out of the situation. I feel like if that's not where the situation ended and that's where the friend

0:16:44 Tom: Yeah, we assume she got out. Yeah.

0:16:49 Thomas: Yeah, I'd be

0:16:49 Eli: Ended the story, that's its own line of

0:16:50 Tom: That's a whole different, yeah, so I, there's a couple of things that I think are really, really interesting and thoughtful I want to touch on. So the first, I think, is that impulse. Like when he says, we talked him out of doing anything crazy. I really got stuck on that for a minute when I first read this email, because I think there's this idea, and we hear it all the time, and I've probably said it, and everybody I know has said it that like, if anything ever happens to my wife or my daughter or my son or my, you know, whatever, I'll fucking kill that guy.

I'll beat the shit. I better never run into that person or whatever. And to some extent, I I think there's like a lot of good intentioned truth in that, right? Because like we want to think of ourselves as both having the capacity and the willingness to protect people, but not just to protect people, but also to sort of like avenge those people who are vulnerable in our circle, right, to meet out some kind of justice. And I think we've been sort of conditioned to believe that that's our responsibility as parents and

0:17:15 Thomas: Weird not

0:17:49 Tom: As husbands. You don't think we've been conditioned in that way? Oh

0:17:52 Thomas: That it's a responsibility? Okay, I've never thought about that way. It's more just like we're angry. Like anyone who's imagining that is, like, fucking really upset and thinks, like, yeah

0:18:02 Tom: I think it's, I think it's super legitimate, and don't get me wrong, and I'm, men and women all feel this way, so I don't want to say this is unique to the male experience.

0:18:08 Thomas: Yeah, I will say we've been conditioned to deal with problems in a violent way, whereas the mom, I'm sure, isn't thinking I'm going to go, you know, physical. Well, maybe sometimes they're thinking that, but I bet men are more apt to be like, I'm gonna settle this with violence rather than, you know, some other method.

0:18:23 Tom: Yeah, I have people in my life that have had, as Eli has put it, really not cash money experiences, and there's a sense that I have too in the back of my head that's like, well, I should fuck that guy up. Right, like I should fuck that guys up. That guy needs to pay a price. Yeah, right.

0:18:38 Thomas: See me in the carwash, you fucker. Watch your back next time you're getting your car washed.

0:18:43 Eli: Problems

0:18:45 Tom: Yeah, this one won't be touchless, you motherfucker. But I, I have, I do, I feel that, like, in my bones, like, I feel like that sense of, like, if I ever run across that guy, dot dot dot, right? But like if I do that I ruin my life and I ruin family's life because we live in a society where you can't do that. You can't just go beat the shit out of people. As an adult, you had like a handful of years as a teenager where the law would probably look the other way if you got in a fight. And now it's assault and battery. That's just what it is now. You can't tell the judge and the jury like, well, they had a come and that's why I beat the out of them. Like, that's not a thing. You might not beat the of them, they might beat the outta you, you know, but

0:19:01 Thomas: Yeah, might get some lenience depending on how bad they were, you

0:19:34 Tom: Like you're still gonna ruin your life.

0:19:35 Thomas: Know, yeah, no, for sure.

0:19:36 Eli: Yeah.

0:19:36 Tom: You know, you're still gonna fuck your, your life up.

0:19:38 Eli: First of all, you want to fight a child, and that if you show up to a if you shows up to child's house wanting to fight it, that child has a parent who has the same violent mindset as you about protecting their kid, and then you show up and you're like, I want to find a child again. Like, all of these systems are conflicting, and and they don't result in anything good, and also our country is full of guns, right? Like, that mindset was designed by people who didn't live in a country where just everyone had death machines all the time at all times and places forever. So that's also another problem, is, like, you can't fistfight in the way, and again, I would argue it was never appropriate because hurting other people isn't appropriate, but, like... That way of solving things via fistfight just isn't tenable in 2025.

0:19:40 Tom: Oh yeah. Yeah. In this case. Yeah. Right.

0:19:40 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That too.

0:19:49 Tom: Yeah, right.

0:20:00 Tom: Yeah no.

0:20:29 Tom: Right? Yeah.

0:20:29 Eli: You do not know who has a gun. You don't know if that child has a gun, because lots of children have guns in this horrible, terrible country. Right? So maybe that child has a gun, right? There's just no way to do that, except to go through systems.

I think it is very easy to write off systems, because we know how bad they have been in this country and how hard it has been to get justice, especially for violence against women, but you need to go through those systems first. And so when we talked about doing this episode, I said sort of we had a similar experience to this, and I actually can't talk about it, but I can be vague about it and say that almost exactly, not a situation where someone was sexually inappropriate, but someone was inappropriate, and so we turned all the systems up to 10 on that person. And I will tell you from experience what happened is when we turned those systems up to 10, everybody said, hey, let's sit down and talk it out.

And that is where justice gets waylaid, right, is when a principal, when a teacher, when an authority wants you to sit down rather than maximizing your legal rights in that situation. Now, we have been through that scenario before. I and I'm Jewish. So just being a lawyer is in my blood. They read you the Talmud and then they also assign you a lawyer on your 13th birthday. It's very nice. Right. So so we just kept the clock ticked up to 10. And I will tell you that whatever violence you imagine happening, even if you imagine it going maximally well, right, where you get to beat up that child and then the parents walk in and they're like, oh, I'm so glad you beat up our child. We hate that fucking thing. Right. Right?

0:20:36 Tom: That's true.

0:22:15 Thomas: Yeah, in

0:22:15 Tom: We

0:22:16 Eli: That's not as much as the system is going to do. And that the things that you can do that are perfectly legal, like get that kid kicked out of school, get an actual legal restraining order against him so that he's not allowed to be in the same building as your child, distribute information publicly about what he did and where he did it, all of which are within your legal rights. All of that is catastrophically worse for that little child than you punching him in the head three times before his dad shoots you.

0:22:54 Ad: [Ad break 2 — ad music]

0:22:55 Thomas: This case, how old is this person, this kid, the boy is 13 or Just, do we know that both it. Okay.

0:22:58 Eli: Thirteen. Yeah.

0:23:00 Tom: Don't know. We know the girl is 13. This is her first boyfriend. So we don't know.

0:23:02 Thomas: Assuming the boy is 13, assuming now, if it's obviously, if it's like older than whatever, I mean, I at least want to put it out there that there should be some amount of not wanting to murder a child that could learn better, you know, like there's still hopefully time to learn better at that age. So maybe that's another reason to not do instant violence. That's all I'm saying. Yeah.

0:23:06 Tom: Yeah right.

0:23:20 Tom: Well yeah I was gonna say the same thing. I think if you you know one of the problems with especially in this particular example like here's a kid and we don' teach people how to be better versions of themselves through through violence. We just, that's, we all know, like you don't do that. You don't teach. It just is not a way to teach people. What it is though, is a way for us as bystanders who care about and love someone else. It's a way für us to say, I took this maximally seriously and I care enough to take action, John Wick style, right? And that appeals to a part of us that we should not appeal to. That I think is like a problem. You can't beat the shit out of a 13 year old kid and now Now he's not going to show his dick to somebody else.

0:24:04 Tom: You can beat the shit out of a 13 -year -old and then you beat up a 13 year old. And the same is true of adults. It's not how you fix problems. It's Not How We Fix Problems. I am so sympathetic to the idea, though, that I want this person who I am responsible for, that I love, that was vulnerable in this situation, who was harmed by somebody else, I want them to know I take this maximally seriously. Seriously, that's what that idea of violence, I think that's part of what that speaks to is the idea of saying, like, look, this horrible physical thing happened to you, I'm gonna take maximum action on your behalf. It's wrong, you can't do it, because the effect is not the effect you want.

0:24:04 Eli: I

0:24:44 Thomas: That is so interesting that you feel that it's, like, that premeditated of a thing. Because, like I'm usually a pretty premeditated guy

0:24:50 Tom: No, I do. I'm just trying to explicate the psychology underneath.

0:24:53 Eli: Think

0:24:53 Thomas: I guess but I I think this I I guess I'm still saying like the psychology underneath it to me is just like that person hurt person I care about hurt them that's interesting I'm just curious I don't know I just think it's as simple as that for most men but I could be wrong

0:25:05 Eli: It's both. Right. I think that one is initial reaction and then the second is sort of an underlying ideology that supports that initial action. Yeah, and how you hear about it and where you hear about it. I want to be clear. I am not saying that I want want to give as was the case in my situation, this was not about someone learning or getting better. It was about doing the maximum amount of harm to them as a human being. I promise you, if you were to interview this person who we turned it up to 10 on, they would have begged for me to have fist fought

0:25:12 Thomas: Yeah I guess it depends on the yeah could depend on the situation for sure yeah yeah

0:25:36 Eli: Them. They would have loved that, they would pray to Jesus, who I'm pretty sure they believe in, that I would have fist fought them instead, because the legal ways you can ruin someone's life, Thomas, you have a little bit of experience with this, uh, the legal ways you can ruin someone's life. I stole this podcast, that's what I did. I stole his podcast. Are plethora and

0:25:47 Thomas: Yeah so you stole his podcast fuck okay dude

0:25:52 Tom: It Yeah, I fucking changed all that motherfucker's passwords while he was sleeping.

0:25:56 Thomas: Yeah yeah

0:25:58 Eli: The other thing is that there is just an assumption of goodness that when you stay within systems and are not, and I am not, those people make mistakes. Those people try to reach out, they try to talk, and if you're using legal systems, if you're using punitive systems against those people, they will put themselves themselves in a bad position in a way that lets you genuinely ruin their life. So again, I, I maybe Tom and Thomas want to talk about how to redeem this child, but I am saying that genuinely, if revenge and care for your loved ones are your goals, the system is significantly better at doing that than punches are.

0:26:39 Tom: I want to address though the real worry in this, and I think the statistics bear it out. The thing is, the systems when it comes to this stuff really are not very good most of the time. A lot of stuff does come down to he said, she said. A lot of cases are not prosecutable. A lot of police are not very good. A lot of, you know, the justice system is set up to favor certain people and to disfavor others. So depending on who you are and your skin color and your access to resources, all of those things can impact, can and do impact your ability to navigate and reach in and get those systems, also statutes of limitations. You might find out that something happened to somebody years or decades after the thing has happened, and then your abilityto engage those systems might be zero.

0:27:20 Eli: 10 years ago, yeah, yeah. That's a great point.

0:27:27 Tom: It happens all the time. The problem is, and I think that the email touches on this, the problem is that it's systems are nothing, because everything else is crazy, right? Everything else is really understandable and explicable but just ruins lives. It just ruins your life. Yeah.

0:27:43 Eli: Well, and it's been spelled out through fiction, right? Like, it's not like it came out of nowhere, right? Every movie tells you that that's what you do. You go and you beat up the person. You go and fight the person, you go and do the thing. Right.

0:27:46 Thomas: Poor

0:27:53 Tom: Because If you don't, you don't love that person enough, right? Like, you didn't love them enough to put yourself on the line and show them what for, you know?

0:28:00 Eli: And it's right. And again, like, look, there is a very hard truth. That is that most people are not violent. Most people are not fighters. And most people who imagine themselves to be secretly violent are wrong. Right? And I've told very funny stories on air about this, but like that was me because I was my father's son and my dad was a violent guy. And I was like, Like, don't worry, everybody. When the time comes, the doom music will kick in. And nope, still a fat kid in the drama club. Like, it never changed about me. And when we live in those fantasies, that's how things get dangerous for us, dangerous for our loved ones. Because we live a fantasy fed to us by action movies, right? And so having that realization that you need to do other things. Because believe me, when the situation with my family occurred, I instantly had—and I talk about it on air—I instantly had the impulse to do violent, illegal things. But I was lucky enough to be surrounded by people who had better ideas.

We did those better ideas, and we did them maximally, and more importantly—and again, I really want to acknowledge what Tom said. Exactly. Because there was a moment where everyone said, hey, I think this is a learning opportunity for this person. Let's figure out a way for them to learn and be okay. And I said no to that.

0:28:31 Tom: Right, right. Yep, yeah.

0:29:09 Thomas: Guy who kept reporting your car being parked in the I don't

0:29:26 Eli: And instead, that person just had what I imagined to be the worst year of their life. And I'm fine with that. I sleep. I'm my neck hurts, but I sleep fine. Just fine. Knowing. Yeah, I can't talk about it on air, otherwise I would, um, but like, that the point being, reporting guards, and so I, I had no choice but, I, so sorry, I was like, I, the so funny thing is, like, I can't, I can't do a bit. I don't have a good bit. I had to tell the Billy Goats Gruff to knock him off the bridge. There you go. There's

0:29:34 Tom: I would be too, yeah. Yeah.

0:29:38 Thomas: Know what the fuck you're talking about so I don'T KNOW FUCKING I'M NOT GONNA ENDORSE THAT JESUS ALL HE DID WAS REPORT YOUR CAR PARKED IN THE WRONG PLACE COME ON YEAH UNLESS

0:30:01 Tom: Yeah.

0:30:01 Eli: My, there's my Toy Story version of whatever it was, but I actually do want to acknowledge what Tom said, which I think is important, and I wish I had laid it out when I initially said thing, which is that systems do fail and your access to those systems depends largely on means and resources, both of which I had. I also agree with what Tom said, which is that it's systems or nothing,

0:30:22 Tom: That's such a shitty solution.

0:30:25 Thomas: YOU TAKE OUT A SUPER MAJORITY OF MY FAMILY IN WHICH CASE I 'LL KILL YOU but if it you know it's like you can yeah I'll do systems for you know because the filibuster unless we reform that I don't know 51 and a half percent but if you take out enough of my family then it's the no systems

0:30:29 Eli: Nothing

0:30:40 Tom: Well, that's that's why it's that like that joke of like, well, I got nothing to lose. You know, it's like, Well, most of us have so much to lose, and I think about that from time to time. I think I told this story on air before, but like a couple of years ago now, two, three years ago, I had a. I, I had, I had a medic I had a medication that I was taking, kind of unbalanced my hormones a little bit, and I had to take a couple of, like, anger moments that I don't normally have, like, yeah, you know, "He should have gotten me my Cherry Garcia faster, you know, show him what a fucking Chubby Hubby can do." But, like, I had couple of moments where I had, like, outbursts of anger, and I look back on those moments and I'm like, guys, so fucking unacceptable. It's like, I can't have these. I'm a 47 year old man, like, I, I have so much to lose.

Like if I go and beat the shit out of somebody, you know, and, and, and be like, ah, they fucking had to come and they did this thing to somebody that I love, you know? And it's like, yeah, but like, if I end up hurt, that's no good. If I endup killed, that's worse. If I ended up in jail, like every, like how many of my, how many, how many other loved ones in my life now suffer even worse? And the answer is like a lot, right? Like I've had a household with six people. I'm one of them. If I go down five people, eat shit.

0:30:43 Thomas: Yeah exactly

0:30:56 Eli: To lose. Can't confirm everybody. I've been here.

0:30:56 Thomas: Yeah yeah

0:31:09 Eli: He killed a guy at Ben and Jerry's everybody.

0:31:58 Tom: It's just unacceptable. So it is, it's systems are nothing, and the problem with that is sometimes the system is nothing, and I think it's worth acknowledging sometimes the system is bad, you know. There's how many, there's has how many women that have gone, you know, and reported some kind of a, you know, an assault or something similar, and they are treated poorly, the case isn't prosecuted. It's a lot, it's, it's, I think the majority, you know, so I think oftentimes the, the system is bad. And the problem is still, that's the best we can do. And that's super sucks.

0:32:07 Thomas: Yeah

0:32:31 Tom: And I think it's worth saying out loud, like some problems don't have good solutions. And I think this is one of them.

0:32:24 Thomas: Easily yeah So you're gonna do your turn though because I mean we're trying to kill the monster here if you roll can you roll do you mind rolling

0:32:42 Eli: Yeah,

0:32:43 Tom: Right.

0:32:48 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:32:50 Thomas: And going back to the question if you're asking like how to help a friend in that situation because I think we're kind of talking about if that's us, you know, it seems like. And so, like, for example, if your friend Eli talks as though, you know, he seems to be some sort of psychopath and is like trying to kill a kid or whatever you talk about. Yeah. How do you how do you talk down your your murderous friend?

0:32:56 Tom: Right.

0:33:04 Eli: It's over now. It's over. Now it's all done. Yeah.

0:33:13 Eli: You don't talk to anybody about, you don't talk to anybody about your revenge plans. That's what you do, because they'll be like, "Don't do a revenge." I'm Thomas and I'm right about everything. So you're just like, how Was my Thursday? It was great. That's not crying. You're here in the background. Can

0:33:18 Thomas: Yeah.

0:33:24 Tom: Always.

0:33:25 Thomas: Oh boy. Yeah, it's hard. It's, that's a tough, I mean, I don't know how much responsibility you feel as a friend, but sure.

0:33:37 Tom: Yes.

0:33:34 Eli: I say something brave, gentlemen? If you guys know about Brian Kokomo, the guy who killed the sleeping people in the dorm, all right.

0:33:43 Thomas: Oh, is that the thing that was in like Mad Men or something? They talked like it was nurses or something.

0:33:43 Tom: No.

0:33:47 Eli: Yeah, they were like nursing students and

0:33:47 Thomas: What was it? Was it, was it from a long time ago or am I thinking of a, oh, okay. This is more recent. Oh yeah. Sorry. God, I

0:33:49 Tom: No, you're thinking of something from a long time ago. This is something very recent. This is someone from just a couple of years ago.

0:33:53 Eli: Yeah, this is a recent guy and he's having a bad time in jail, and so there's some clips of the trial that have come up on TikTok because the family have all given, like, witness statements and tell him what a piece of shit he is, and I enjoy those. I enjoy them a lot. A sister especially is like, if she'd been awake, she would have kicked your ass. It's really, it's a lovely moment. It's very good. Can I say something brave? I think that guy did it. I think we should let the family kill that guy on TV. I think, and let me say something now, because that guy wanted to be, that guy wanted to beat me to my point, which is excellent, so pin in that. That guy wanted to be like Moriarty, the serial killer, right? Because all we do in culture is make serial killers look like these brilliant minds, when actually they're just like broken in a way that's the most basic way to be broken. Like the third caveman ever was broken in in a way that makes you murder people. It's

0:34:11 Tom: That's great.

0:34:17 Thomas: Have no idea oh okay we're Not regressing enough as a society you're right let's do more

0:34:50 Tom: Yeah

0:34:50 Eli: The most boring thing you can be, but they do it because we're constantly glorifying it in society, that murderers must be these, like, special magical monsters. Yeah, he wanted to

0:34:51 Thomas: Stuff is that what it was fuck jesus a

0:34:59 Tom: The Hannibal Lecter yeah right

0:34:59 Eli: Be the such-and-such killer, right? Exactly. And the way you can actually discourage people from doing those things is torturing them to death on national television. Now, I know what you're thinking. Stay with me, stay with me. First of all, it really works, okay? You can't be like, it doesn't work. It does work. In the countries where they torture people to death on national television, people don't do that shit. If you don't believe me, go to Thailand and buy some weed. What's that? You can't, because they're constantly torturing people to death on national television for... I don't think they do it on national television, but that's what I'm saying too. I think it would be super fun to watch. I would like to see what happens when I, her sister or looked like in her late 20s, I'd like to see her hit a guy in the head with a sledgehammer.

0:35:08 Thomas: Bummer

0:35:10 Tom: Yeah Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, I think you're thinking of Taiwan though yeah this

0:35:51 Thomas: Jesus Christ

0:35:51 Eli: I've only seen it in TV and movies. I want to see it. Now, I know what you're thinking, because you've got one objection left. You, Thomas, in your moral high ground, you're

0:35:59 Tom: Is a lot right

0:35:56 Thomas: Are you okay this is can we air this

0:36:00 Eli: Holding on to your one thread, and you're like, oh, but what about society? Wouldn't that be a bad world? Surprise! It's already a bad world. Here's what I'll argue. There's nothing we could do as a society that would make us worse. Maybe torturing serial killers to death.

0:36:15 Thomas: Oh boy that's a mistake that is a big mistake that's what people have said Since 2016 and they've been wrong every Year and it's really bad, yeah

0:36:16 Tom: Now Oh man this is gone uh Yeah, oh there's

0:36:22 Eli: But They haven't tried any of my ideas, and my idea is simple. You didn't even let me get to my favorite part, which is that there's a guest celebrity as a part of it, and the guest celebrity for this one, really think about how excited you'd be to see this, John Cena. They've been working this kid over with bats and knives and spikes and nails, and they're tired, and so they go over and they push the big red button, and then who's there? John Cena! I would watch that. First of all, the pay-per-view alone would set those families up for life. But I would watch that on repeat until my eyeballs fell out of my skull.

0:36:29 Tom: A good reason for That this is like what this is very that

0:37:07 Thomas: Jesus Christ and this everybody is why society is ruined

0:37:12 Tom: Is a Charlie Kirk adjacent rant like a hundred percent he literally said he we should do that that

0:37:20 Thomas: This is yeah

0:37:15 Eli: Hurtful. Hurtful. You heard that. Tom tried to murder me just now, everybody. Lose

0:37:23 Tom: Is kirk talking point like

0:37:23 Eli: Tom his job. No, he said Kirk and the thing I don't like, you have to fire Tom now. Now, everyone go and get, I disagree with Tom. Kirk was said, go get Tom fired twice on a Tuesday. He has to, no, you have to get, no. You have to be a full-time podcaster. That's your punishment for disagreeing with me.

0:37:31 Thomas: Yeah

0:37:37 Tom: Just, no. I need that job I don't get me fired I need a lot more podcasts son

0:37:44 Thomas: Boy. I feel like people go a couple of ways when they have kids. You either go like, "Wow, everybody is a baby once, and maybe life is more precious than I thought. Maybe we should be chill to each other." And then other people are like, "I'm gonna kill every man when a child ever looks at my kid wrong because I love them so much." Both come from a place of love, I want to emphasize. They both come from a place of, like, I love this kid so much. I love, well, I think if you didn't have Max, I don't think you'd bother with any shit, you know?

0:38:04 Eli: Tell me I come from a place of love. That's fair.

0:38:12 Thomas: Like, I think you needed that amount of love to give a shit about this, and, uh, one is why society is ruined and the others would help society, and, well, I'll go ahead and leave that leave that to the side. Yeah, yeah, yep, I know you do.

0:38:07 Tom: Yeah Which one is which, Thomas, oh my

0:38:21 Eli: I know which one I think has ruined society. How's the high road up there with Barack Obama?

0:38:25 Thomas: We're never ever, man. We just haven't been tough enough on crime, you know. What they say, we haven't done enough of a war on crime is what they said. Like, we need to do good

0:38:31 Eli: Obama, look, I know one felon that I wish we had been a little bit tougher on. All right, gentlemen, before we go. The other day, my son challenged me to name a country without the letter R in it. I said, no way.

0:38:36 Clip: DEAR OLD DAD

0:38:53 Thomas: Like it. That's good.

0:38:55 Eli: It's a good one, right?

0:38:34 Tom: God, oh God Oh God

0:38:55 Thomas: That's a good one, yeah. I got it's a thinker you know it takes a second yeah

0:38:59 Eli: It's nice. It's an old one.

0:39:44 Thomas: So you're talking to two other special neck boys right now

0:39:47 Eli: And then the parents walk in and they're like, oh, I'm so glad you beat up our child. We hate that fucking thing, right. Don't do revenge on Thomas and I'll write about everything.