DOD233: This Is Your Brain on Sports

Transcript

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

0:00:28 Thomas: Let's see how long it takes me to remember what we're doing for this one, because I can't, my memory is so bad. What the fuck did we agree? What do we agree to? I know, look, I know it. I know. It say one of the letters.

0:00:33 Tom: Whoa. Let's not tell him. Eli, let's not tell him the whole episode.

0:00:36 Eli: Ooh. Let's not tell him. Yeah. He has to intro it. Yeah, yeah. Do it. Go for it. No, don't let him work on a thing. Just start right away because he's going to check the slack. But if you just start,

0:00:48 Thomas: No, you know me. I won't check the Slack. Yeah.

0:00:48 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast that Thomas totally knows what it's about. I'm Tom Curry. I am joined as always by Eli Bosnick and Thomas Smith. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:52 Thomas: I barely hear. Hi.

0:00:53 Eli: Oh man, I'd love to talk about today's topic, but I need, I need Thomas to jog my memory.

0:01:06 Thomas: Yeah. Uh, man. And it's gotta be an email.

0:01:08 Tom: There's a deep irony to the you not remembering this, actually. I love this. Yeah, yeah.

0:01:10 Eli: This is great. Yes. It's so funny that he doesn't remember it.

0:01:13 Thomas: I think there's an email there. Is there an email?

0:01:13 Tom: It's our episode about retrograde amnesia.

0:01:17 Thomas: Mail.

0:01:17 Tom: Hello everybody.

0:01:17 Eli: Yep.

0:01:17 Thomas: Yeah, oh man, and scene. Hi. Retrograde amnesia is no joke. No, I don't know. That's

0:01:25 Tom: And Thomas Smith's going to show up to QED with just tattoos all over his body as reference points.

0:01:29 Thomas: True, yeah, yeah.

0:01:29 Eli: Yeah, I wondered why we had those downloads. It turns out there's just one guy with really bad amnesia who's trying our podcast for the first time. We

0:01:35 Tom: Thank you, by the way. I appreciate that. That's great. Yeah.

0:01:36 Thomas: 50.

0:01:40 Eli: Appreciate it. Please don't get better. Don't

0:01:42 Thomas: First downloads. I don't know.

0:01:42 Eli: Hit your head again. Hey, hey, question while Thomas desperately searches his imagination and our Slack for what this show's about: does hitting your head again when you have amnesia make you better?

0:01:50 Thomas: I told you, I'm not checking the Slack. I'm not. There was a lot of misinformation around hitting your... I remember you, you hit it with, with CTE. I remember now.

0:01:56 Tom: There's only one way to find out.

0:02:03 Thomas: All right. Sports or something. Oh yeah.

0:02:06 Tom: Sports.

0:02:06 Thomas: This is going to be no one's allowed to do sports. That's the episode everybody.

0:02:09 Eli: Because No one's allowed to do sports. Two versus

0:02:09 Tom: That's it. Yeah, yeah, that's it, though.

0:02:10 Thomas: No one's allowed to do sports. Oh my God. That is funny. I took a big spill yesterday on the hockey ice.

0:02:15 Eli: One on the hockey ice into another man's knee. Okay, but, but this is my question, right? Because we got that misinformation a lot, right? TV shows.

0:02:18 Thomas: Yes, dude. There's the hitting someone. If you hit someone, they conveniently pass out for the amount of time you need them to be knocked knocked out. Yeah, that's insane.

0:02:30 Eli: Oh, the bonk. Yeah.

0:02:33 Tom: Well, they also, like, when you watch TV, like getting knocked unconscious was kind of not a big deal when you watched TV and movies. And then you come to find out like no, anytime you get knocked the fuck unconscious like that's a TBI, like you have a fucking TBI, right?

0:02:39 Thomas: Yeah. That's what I'm saying. You, especially if you got knocked unconscious for that long, for like the time for the murderer to drag you over to the whatever. And then you wake up like you're fucking dead. There's no way.

0:02:48 Tom: Right. Yeah, you can't, you're not gonna put your pants on by yourself for at least nine months if that happens. That's, yeah, well, that was a little

0:02:59 Thomas: But in the movies, they're like, "Oh, what happened? I took a little nap." You know, if that worked, this is how Tom would be taking naps. That's how you know it's bullshit. Tom would have been hitting himself in the head for a quick five minute nap.

0:03:08 Tom: Weird. Just walking around my sleeping mallet, just whack.

0:03:12 Thomas: All day, yeah. Safer than the shock watch, you know.

0:03:18 Eli: Yeah. Yeah. No.

0:03:18 Tom: That's, yep. Hey, the shock watch is officially retired. I haven't used it in months.

0:03:22 Eli: What?

0:03:22 Thomas: Whoa, whoa, you can't just give me that kind of news. Fuck yeah.

0:03:24 Eli: Tom, can I say you're getting a little soft. You're not texting us pictures of your sleep anymore. And it's like two hours. Go to hospital now.

0:03:29 Thomas: Yeah. Wait a minute, are things, yeah, we're

0:03:32 Tom: Yeah, yeah, well, that's because it just got redundant. That didn't change, but it just got a little, like, eh, what's that, I

0:03:37 Eli: What was the language? It had this great language in the app that was like, take note. Was it take note? I feel like it was pay

0:03:42 Tom: Use an Aura ring in it. Like, it's like my sleep is like, between sometimes bad weeks, my sleep will be like three hours and 49 minutes for a night, or four hours 15, you know, it's always like under five, and like the Aura ring is always like kind of gentle. It's like, "Hey, uh, you might want to pay a little attention to this, you know, this seems not good good."

0:03:58 Thomas: Calling the hospital. Yeah.

0:03:59 Eli: Attention. That's what it was. Pay attention. Yeah. Yeah, and wait, before any of you ask, no, he's not that Mormon family that don't need a certain amount of sleep. Tom desperately needs that sleep and is in psychosis most of the time because he doesn't get it,

0:04:09 Tom: So I'm not in psychosis.

0:04:10 Thomas: Yeah, and it's not getting it. Tom, thank you for having psychosis so bad that it makes my psychosis not a big deal by comparison. You

0:04:19 Tom: Thank you. I'm here to serve. I've bought it because it's supposed to be one of the best sleep trackers, but because I have a sleep disorder, it doesn't do a particularly great job. My Apple watch does a little bit of a better job. I don't believe those numbers when it's like three hours and 49 minutes. I got at least four and a half hours last night. There's no fucking way.

0:04:19 Eli: Right?

0:04:19 Thomas: Know, yeah.

0:04:43 Thomas: You don't believe the numbers? There's more hours in between the clock hands than they tell you. You

0:04:45 Eli: You're not fooling me. I was asleep for hours. That's what they're lying about. I was sleep.

0:04:52 Thomas: Know, there's more, uh,

0:04:52 Tom: No, it's because I'm restless. I move a lot. So it interprets that movement as like waking up. And that's just because my body's a giant piece of shit that's trying to kill me all the time.

0:05:03 Eli: Yeah, that's true. But you know, the only thing worse than the living hell that is being Tom at all times in all places, why, it's the auto-rants. The auto-rants, they're like accidentally saying, saying the wrong name at the end of a Patreon plug. Frustrating, annoying. That's

0:05:09 Tom: It's not that bad.

0:05:11 Thomas: It's pretty bad, man, it's pretty bad. I'm not gonna... yes, and you, there, that's, uh, Oh yeah, who's Patreon are we plugging this time? It's a fun, it's fun raffle. Who's, ace, right, right in, we, Eli might plug your, your Patreon.

0:05:27 Eli: Right, yeah, forget her.

0:05:27 Thomas: If it starts with a D, all you got to do is make one that starts with a D. Eli has an equal chance of plugging it.

0:05:33 Eli: PCTE recipient. Yeah, so you can get all that over at patreon.com. Oh, I don't think I actually said what you can get is a commercial-free version of every show. Little parenting story at the end last week, I talked about the very first Minecraft exploration that I took with my son. It's a lot of fun. We're crafting the minds together, or are we? Find out at patreon.com forward slash Davel, Davel, that's right, Davel, Davil.

0:05:39 Thomas: Oh, so good. So good.

0:05:57 Tom: All right.

0:05:59 Eli: You can hear me be michael cohen on there it's It's a lot of fun. Check it out. Patreon .com forward slash dear old dads rip into it.

0:06:00 Thomas: Oh man. Hmm.

0:06:15 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:06:17 Tom: So let's do a little two bears probably for this episode.

0:06:21 Thomas: How many bears?

0:06:21 Tom: I'm not sure we'll get to three, but I was reading the other day, I was reading the news about that shooting took place in the NFL building. If you didn't follow it, guy, shut up, fucking NFL building, and they took a look at his brain scan, died, opened him up, took a Look at his brain, and you know, CTE, so guy had traumatic brain injuries, one after the other after the another, as a result of playing football in high school, and I was just thinking, like, we've seen this happen now, how many many times. The evidence around sports, especially full contact sports and kids and its impact on our lives and our brains at this point, I think it's as definitive as, hey, smoking is bad for you.

0:06:21 Eli: Because

0:07:01 Thomas: Well, hold on. You say kids, but just for the record, I'm not going to, I don't know how much I'm arguing with you, but there aren't any high profile kids shooting up an NFL building, are there? Or do I not know?

0:07:06 Tom: Yeah. No, no, no.

0:07:11 Thomas: Because it's always, I just want to say, like, right from the start, my skepticism on your three bears, no one's allowed to do sports thing is this is always professionals from an era in which they did the hit yourself on the head and then take a nap thing. And so it, like, I just, to apply some amount of skepticism, it's not kids yet that have done this, right? I mean, it's all, it's, oh

0:07:31 Tom: Well, the guy who shot up the NFL building was not a professional. No. He was a former high school football player.

0:07:34 Thomas: Really? Oh, oh, okay. I didn't catch that. Well, there you go. That's, it's important information.

0:07:38 Tom: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was a casino worker for his day job, but he had played football in high school. The football in higher school, the repeated traumatic brain injuries caused him to have CTE, and they, they've done a lot of studies that, like, it doesn't actually take a whole lot of traumatic brain surgeries to injure your brain, and I, I just keep thinking, like, we've gotten to a point where I feel like it's kind of like smoking, right? Like, at some point you have to say, this is just bad for us. There's no amount of, like, well, maybe I can and smell, like, how bad is five cigarettes? It's just not good. Like, it's zero percent good and significantly bad.

And like, my take on it at this point, honestly, and like, just, I'll use strong language to be ridiculous, but like, I don't know that I don't believe this, I kind of think that letting your kids play full contact sports is abusive, knowing what we know now about how damaging it is to receive concussions. I can't even think of how these sports continue to be allowed, but even more so as a parent, there's literally no way I would let my kids, and it's a bummer, like, but I wouldn't let my children play football. I wouldn't play any of the sports that involve a very high likelihood of concussive injury to the brain, because there's just so much evidence now. I, I don't feel like it's, like, how do we square that circle with, but I like it, which is the alternative, right?

0:07:48 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm.

0:09:06 Eli: That's really the thing, right? Is it's a huge part of your childhood. It's a huge part of your fandom. And like, I also think that it's important for us to understand and acknowledge when we talk about this, because I'm about to come out on the exact same side as Tom. This is a huge cultural thing for people. Right. And so in many ways, I mean, Noah's talked over on Scathing Atheist about how like football is very much like religion and leaving football can be as hard as leaving some religions in some families, right?

0:09:28 Thomas: Hmm. Well, plus, imagine if religion except fun, you know, like it's one thing leaving a religion is boring as fucking bullshit to ever happen. Imagine leaving something is actually fun to do sometimes, you know, that's hard.

0:09:39 Tom: Yeah, right.

0:09:38 Eli: Right. Right, exactly. It's fun to do. It's where your friends are. It's where your social activities are, especially if it's already happened. It's the way a lot of kids participate in things. It may be your touch points for culture, right? Because like, we're smart and have other activities. But most people, like the activities they have are like sports and fucking, and so like, you can't just be like, hey, time to find a new entire livelihood. Yeah, exactly. Fuck with your kids. Exactly.

0:10:07 Thomas: Just do more fucking more time for fucking.

0:10:08 Tom: Yeah. Right, yeah. Or just do it, like I guess I'm not anti -sports, but I think that the risks aren't the same sport to sport. The risk in track and field is not the same as it is in football. It's just not. And the risk in, like wrestling is not the same as it is in swimming. There are big differences. Yeah.

0:10:18 Thomas: Yeah.

0:10:26 Eli: Yeah, but you could get Cauliflower Ear, which is actually, yeah, cauliflower ear is actually worse than CTE. Um, so that is important for us to point out here on the show that there is no worse fate for your child than CT. I would let, what's that fucking gymnastics coach, the fuck, I would let him be my coach before Nassar, I would like, Nassar be my kids coach before I would give my kid cauliflower ear. No, but like 100%, I am team Tom. And like I've said, Max can play two sports. Like when I say it's a hard no on all but two sports, I am not in any way joking. Nobody gets to French kiss my son if they're 10 years older than him and he's not playing any except the two

0:10:28 Thomas: Just use ear protection. Yeah.

0:10:45 Thomas: Nasser, I think. Yeah. Hmm.

0:11:05 Thomas: What? Oh, I thought that was a sports. I thought, I thought there was a sport that you thought they French kiss. Yeah, I genuinely was not falling. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, sure.

0:11:11 Eli: Sports where they French kiss your kid. Gymnastics, weren't you paying attention to the national trail? Yeah, that is how I feel about it. There's absolutely nothing out there. I think the reason this is hard, and I love that you used the metaphor of cigarette smoking, Tom, because I think the reason that this is such a touch point for people is, one, it's a huge part of their culture. It's a big part of that is painful.

But I also think it's got a little bit of the smoking is bad for you thing, right? Which is that, and they've actually studied this quite a bit. When they first started to put out anti -smoking messaging, one of the big points of resistance they got from smokers is that smokers insisted that they already knew smoking was bad for them. So anti-smoking messaging and anti-smoking stuff that was just shaming, it was just judgmental, it wasn't working, it didn't change their minds, didn't do anything. Now the truth is, anti-smoking messaging was for young people who hadn't started smoking yet or for people who had quit smoking early enough that they weren't addicted to nicotine and therefore wouldn't go back to it, or for people who lacked the education as to just how bad smoking was for you, because when they then tested those people who who said, I know smoking is bad for you, on just how bad smoking was for you, they were always underestimating how bad it was for you.

0:11:17 Tom: Right.

0:11:52 Thomas: Right. Really?

0:12:28 Tom: I

0:12:28 Eli: I think the same is true for football. Cause I look, I grew up in a football family. There was a solid two and a half seconds where my father thought I might be a football player the way he was a football player. Cause my dad was a professional football player. He was in Canada, but he was, he was in a college football. Yeah.

0:12:43 Tom: Looked your dad up, your dad was a big fucking deal. I remember you talking about your dad. I'm like, yeah, really. This is probably a Bosnick thing, and I looked him up and he's a big fucking deal. Yeah.

0:12:49 Thomas: Wow.

0:12:50 Eli: It was a huge fucking deal. He held a bunch of records at ECU before they started, they Yeah, and so there was definitely that in the family, and

0:12:51 Thomas: Oh. Yeah.

0:12:56 Tom: Yeah. Didn't he win a Lee Bennett Hopkins award? Yeah. Oh.

0:13:00 Eli: No, no, that's, uh, that's the other, it's the another side, but like, that was a huge influence on me, and I remember hearing about concussions, just it was sort of like, hey, sometimes you'll get your daylights knocked out or something like that, right? I remember the first time I got a concussion, I was like, walking home, and someone was, I was like, what's for breakfast, right? It's, it's this like weird, and again, if you didn't grow up in this family, it's an insane thing to describe to people, right? Because he's like, my colon bled for the first time today.

0:13:23 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:13:30 Eli: But it was just, it was juste sort of like a funny story that was part of being in sports. I think now it is fair to say we have enough information that you should not weigh those risks as worth it.

0:13:42 Thomas: You know, around here a lot of people are doing just flag football, like even high school sport flag football, which is great, you know, like non-contact basically. Obviously there's still gonna be some. Oh, you don't know what flag football is?

0:13:52 Eli: What is flag football? No.

0:13:54 Thomas: Oh.

0:13:55 Tom: Flag football is great.

0:13:55 Thomas: It's instead of tackling you wear a little, little belt that has two little flags on it, and a tackle is just someone grabs the flag off you. I mean, there's always risk if you're running around, someone could, you know, you could hit somebody, but I feel like flag football, I think, is down at the risk of the sports, probably. I haven't studied it, but it's probably down at risk level of sports that you'd be more comfortable with, like it is running around, but it is not supposed to be contact at

0:14:02 Eli: Ooh, they'd

0:14:02 Tom: Yeah.

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0:14:25 Tom: I was looking up, in preparation for this show, I was looking up some of the sort of numbers on this stuff. And it's like, they think that concussions in football are reported or underreported by somewhere around 50%. And you're still looking at a rate of about 10% of kids in a given season are potentially getting concussions and it's bad. And like soccer is just as bad, if not worse, depending on like, kind of where are you? If I just, yeah. And they could make rule changes to these games. Here's the thing that's not going to to happen. They could make rule changes to these games to make these games much safer, right? They just could. Yeah.

0:14:45 Thomas: All Oof, that's so bad. Yikes. Yeah, really well.

0:15:00 Thomas: I had a scientist on that does this stuff way back in the day, so I'm not super refresh on it, but one thing you said is, like, they could just wear helmets playing soccer because it's like they just don't do it because it's not cool. But like, you consider, like, soccer should not be that dangerous. Like, it should not be anywhere near, just based on what the sports are, it should not be at the level of football. Like, there's no fucking way. And then you realize, oh, they're not wearing any head protection.

So like, if they were wearing helmets, I don't know if it would completely go away, but like, I have to imagine that would make a difference. And they can wear the kind where it still leaves, like, the part of your head where you do the headers. Like, there's a kind they make that still leaves that available for the headers. But I, I don't know soccer, so I'm not sure how practical that is, but point is, like, that is hard to believe, like, that that's just from unintentional collisions, whereas you're saying it's the same as a sport where they're trying to hit each other, like, in the head.

0:15:11 Tom: Right.

0:15:40 Tom: Yeah, I don't either. Well, I don't know, it might Yeah, I don't know exactly what it's from. Like, maybe it's those headers, like, whacking a fucking ball against the top of your head over and over can't be good for you, you know? Like, there's also a lot of trauma that happens because of repetition.

0:15:55 Thomas: I don't think so. Yeah. Hmm.

0:16:03 Tom: I don't get too far afield, but I was reading an article, I don't know, six months ago or so, that, like, a lot people were having brain damage in the military because, because they're in these boats that go whack, whack, whack against the waves, or they're firing cannons and the percussive blast. But it's a repetition thing. It's like, yeah, maybe the first time it happens it's not gonna, but over time these things aren't good for the fucking brain pan. And I just keep thinking, like, as parents, like, one of the things that we are responsible to do for our kids is to not be negligent in safeguarding them against obvious

0:16:12 Thomas: Oh, right, right, yeah, that, yeah, that the weapons make that, yeah, that's a really bad one

0:16:40 Tom: Harms, right? We can't safeguard guard them against everything where, but like, I'm not indifferent. For example, to use the same metaphor, I am not indifferent to whether my kids smoke. It would be negligent for me. I think if I were to enroll my kids in a fucking smoking league after school, that would be an insane thing to do.

0:16:56 Thomas: Yeah, make

0:16:57 Eli: Be so fucking cool though. Oh my God, they be so fuckin' cool. School, the vape squad, the

0:16:58 Tom: They would be fucking awesome, right? They wouldbeawesome. And I just feel like at this point with everything we know isn't it at least negligently abusive, genuinely abusive, to be like, yeah, I'm gonna roll, I'm going to sign these papers and write this check and, like, drive my kid over to fucking concussion town and I'm just gonna be like, yeah, get a concussion? And I say that, I would have loved, I was just talking to Hayley about this the other day, I still, like, the only real regret I have from, like, high school is I really wish I'd been able to play sports.

0:17:02 Thomas: Varsity, yeah

0:17:05 Eli: Fighting cottons, the best.

0:17:37 Thomas: That's your only regret from high school? Jesus Christ.

0:17:40 Tom: I think would have changed a lot of things for me. Yeah.

0:17:41 Thomas: What a life you, maybe your current life is karmic for, yeah. I regret everything from high school, yeah.

0:17:43 Eli: It was the only thing that happened to him in high school. He just went home and was grounded.

0:17:48 Tom: Yeah, I think if I had been allowed to play sports, it would have change a lot other things in a really good way. I'm not anti -sports here. I think I would have really benefited from it.

0:17:56 Eli: You've already got a brain damage disease. What do you fucking care?

0:17:59 Tom: It's true. What's the difference? The Parkinson's is coming anyway. But I would've chosen wrestling. That's what I would love to have done.

0:17:59 Eli: Let me

0:18:06 Thomas: Well Tragically, you almost did, but then you couldn't do it. Yeah, sad story. Yeah.

0:18:09 Tom: I know, yeah. I tried to choose wrestling. So I say that with real sympathy for the desire to do these things.

0:18:15 Thomas: So what's your position? Is it just tackle football that you know, are you saying suck? I gotta do research on that. I, that is blowing my mind that it would be that level of thing. I would also wonder, like, what level is that true? Are you, were you talking about high school, like, it's

0:18:19 Tom: I think it's soccer. I think it's football. I think you can't do it. High school level.

0:18:31 Thomas: Really? Wow. Wow.

0:18:33 Eli: Say something brave because I got to take the crazy to the next level. I think it's weird to set your kid up at a peewee level of a sport they're not going to get to fall in love with. Like if they're not allowed to do it at level A, they don't get get to do it at all, one because it's probably not good for you

0:18:36 Tom: Yeah, let's do

0:18:43 Thomas: Hmm. Like you're risking that they're going to love it.

0:18:53 Eli: Right.

0:18:53 Tom: It, right.

0:18:53 Thomas: And then you tell them, no. Yeah. Yeah. That's fair.

0:18:53 Eli: And then, and then you've got to take your kid's passion away for, like, what if they love it more than anything in the world? No, we're just gonna find something else now. Like, it just seems like you're exposing a kid to a level of risk that just doesn't make sense under any circumstances.

0:19:05 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Wow.

0:19:06 Tom: Yeah, a thousand percent. Just to give you the number that I looked at, Thomas and I, again, like, I'm not trying to say this is, like, aggressively vetted, but over one season, 11 of soccer players and 10 of football players sustained a concussion based on the symptoms they reported, according to the survey of 778 student athletes. 69, 69 of those with concussions reported playing with symptoms, and 40 reported their coach was not aware of their concussion. That's the other thing, the majority of them are playing with these symptoms, so they're not doing the after I got a concussion maintenance stuff. And I just think, like, can you ethically enroll, and I don't mean this, like, rhetorically, can you as a parent ethically enroll your kids in these sports? Is it possible, knowing what we know about how dangerous they are, to your long-term brain health? And I guess not even all that long term, like, some of these kids suffer really significant consequences, like, right away too.

0:19:23 Eli: And that's just the ones who remember.

0:19:25 Thomas: Yeah yeah, that's really bad. Yeah Yeah.

0:20:05 Thomas: Boy, I sure wish that

0:20:05 Tom: What do you think? Because I know you love these sports. Like, I'm sure hockey can't be good for the brain.

0:20:10 Thomas: It's, yeah, it's not good. I still would need to study, like, at what level that matters, because a lot of the hockey ones, and maybe that was my frame of reference before.

0:20:15 Eli: Now I'm picturing Serious Inquiries Only in six years, and Thomas is like, how come hot dog go into bun? How many, too many. Lydia, cut that, the

0:20:25 Thomas: That's already what it is. You know, hockey, it depends on, yeah, if you're playing at a higher level, the contact is pretty rough. It's also going to the boards is really rough, which could happen, you know, even if you don't have like checking or whatever. And I don't know how much of the classic CTE was from the fighting. I think number one is like, I wish we had a Congress or somebody who makes laws. I don'T KNOW WHAT SOMEBODY. Yeah.

0:20:52 Eli: End, end of sentence.

0:20:53 Tom: Man, yeah.

0:20:53 Eli: I wish

0:20:54 Thomas: I wish they just made them

0:20:56 Eli: You'd just stop saying that for no reason on our show.

0:20:57 Thomas: Fully make them fully understand what's fucking happening. Like that's at a baseline. I wish we fully understood. You know what I mean? Because there's so many efforts by the NFL and the NHL, I think is not great either to like not allow this to be looked into in ways, you know, into like do propaganda the other way to confuse the issue.

0:21:15 Tom: Right.

0:21:15 Thomas: Like I, number one, just wish we all had like somewhat some semblance of an agreed upon set of facts, like which which sports are most dangerous? Why are they most dangerous, you know, which sports is there like a safe version of it? Which sports is, they're not a safe portion of it. Like, I just wish we knew all this more uncontroversially, but it feels like there's a lot of misinformation out there.

0:21:35 Tom: Yeah, I agree with that.

0:21:36 Thomas: And I also wish, yeah. And it's like, it is the kind of thing where I could imagine, and I don't know, I'm not a scientist, but a doctor, but like, if it was the case that there's a way to be able to tell, like at a first sign of something that like, okay, you're done kind of thing where in a way that would like still preserve you know like you're not going to go down the road of CTE like then it might be a different story if it's like okay these athletes are monitored fucking weekly or whatever and like the first sign of something they don't get to play anymore maybe that would be a different story I don't know like I don'T KNOW HOW THE SCIENCE OF IT WORKS or if it'S THE KIND OF THING THAT YOU JUST CAN'T DETECT UNTIL IT'S TOO LATE THEN YEAH MAYBE WE'RE FUCKED AND YOU CAN'T DO IT

0:22:10 Eli: Yeah, I would argue the same thing I said last week, which is, like, just get out of that fucking pool. Why are we rolling these dice on our kids' brain health?

0:22:13 Tom: Yeah, right.

0:22:14 Thomas: Yeah, oh For, oh yeah. As a personal choice, I'm just meant, just societally, yeah, as a personal choice. I think I agree, like I wouldn't let my kids play tackle football for sure, like I would

0:22:24 Tom: The problem is, like, we're not going to do this work. And we're not even going to, like, we're never going to change the games to, quote, sissify them. Not in our current culture. I think we would all agree that we're living in a culture right now. I just read an article this morning. Maybe it's time to bring back bullying. Right.

0:22:39 Tom: And it was like it was a satirical article. Like, no, it's not. But there's a huge push online to like, hey, maybe there should be more bullying. Hegseth stood up in front of the military and basically said the same thing. Like, let's make things tougher and angrier and worse.

0:22:39 Thomas: Not Yeah, start with him, fucking bully that

0:22:53 Eli: Yeah, my Jameson give it back. Come on, give it. I love

0:22:55 Tom: I don't hold out any hope, Thomas, that the things that make sense that you're proposing are gonna happen because we're in this, like, hardened up, toughen up environment right now.

0:23:02 Thomas: Guy. Yeah.

0:23:05 Eli: You Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hoping for structural change, change at this level.

0:23:05 Thomas: Yeah, no, for sure. No. I was just saying I wish we had this. I don't know, yeah, I'm not sure it has any chance of happening.

0:23:13 Eli: Yeah, yeah, sure. Oh

0:23:13 Tom: Oh, same. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just commenting on it's, yeah.

0:23:16 Eli: My grandma had wheels, she'd be a wagon.

0:23:18 Tom: Right, so

0:23:18 Thomas: Yeah, uh, no.

0:23:28 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:23:29 Tom: Even if your kids, you would not let your kids play hockey, how would you handle it if they're like point

0:23:33 Thomas: I would let them play hockey up to a certain point. I, yeah, because it isn't contact for a long time, and if it's contact, I think they reserve the contact for for the really competitive higher levels, I'm pretty sure. Like, youth hockey, I don't... I don't... Well, I dunno. I might be wrong about that. I dunno.

0:23:50 Eli: But Thomas, picture this, Remy, because it's not, come on, it's not our own, it's nothing to me, Remy fucking loves hockey and he plays fucking poo-poo pants hockey, whatever it is, whatever little kid hockey he's allowed to play, and

0:23:55 Thomas: Yeah, no. Arlo's not playing sports. Yeah, he might.

0:24:04 Tom: I hope it's called poopoo pants hockey.

0:24:05 Thomas: Yeah,

0:24:05 Eli: He's fucking, to me, you put some gugamug at the other end near the goal and he is fucking plowing through these, his other three-year-olds, like nobody's business. He's the most gifted hockey player, and then he gets to blank level and you're like, well, time to pack up your skates. Kid, you're not doing

0:24:19 Tom: Yeah, yeah.

0:24:18 Thomas: That's true. It's pretty hard to... Pretty hard to get... I think you could play the odds that so few of them do get to a high level. Like, yeah.

0:24:25 Tom: I'm only letting you do this because you have no hope of being good son. It's fine, right?

0:24:28 Eli: It, yeah,

0:24:27 Thomas: Yeah, I mean, honestly. Like, odds -wise, I think your pretty safe there. You know? Like, you know, it's a very low percentage. But, yeah, no, I hear you. That could be fucking rough. I dunno' know.

0:24:31 Tom: Early

0:24:37 Eli: You gotta crush those dreams early and off, if I've said one thing on this show, it's that you've got to crush your child's dreams early often. Yeah, it's just not, it's not worth the risk. Not to mention, like, even in those really little kid leagues, there are unnecessary injuries Unnecessary injuries for a sport that you agree they're not going to get to continue with, like, it just becomes this wildly absurd, like, well, and then when this third action triggers is when I'll finally do that. You just gotta, I think you gotta cut it, because the other thing is on top of that is when you put money and time and energy into that activity, people will rightly, according to them, use it to create more of that activity, right? So when you sign your kid up for peewee football, you are creating a strong football culture within your neighborhood, right?

Which then becomes a strong Football Culture within your local high school, which then becomes in your college and then kids going pro like that's, that's the point of contributing to a football program is that so that your football program grows, you can't contribute to those things without also participating in the bad parts of it,

0:24:43 Tom: Yeah.

0:24:52 Thomas: Sure. Yeah.

0:25:41 Tom: Go and, like, raise money and, like, do a fundraiser and be like, yeah, I raised a whole bunch of money in the booster club so the fucking my neighbor can get a fucking traumatic brain injury. It seems like a, it seems like a weird thing to do, but it also feels like I want to acknowledge, like, it sucks, like, it's super sucks, because there's so much good that comes from sports in general, and these games are fucking fun and they are, like, woven into the fabric of our culture. And I also want to acknowledge too that, like, we cannot live lives that are free from all harms, and that's not what I'm trying to suggest either. So, like, I just, I'm kind of heading off the messages of the past there, but, like a sprained knee though is a way different thing, or even a fucking broken elbow is away different thing than I ruined my

0:25:50 Eli: Right.

0:25:57 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't get it.

0:26:30 Thomas: Yeah for sure. For sure.

0:26:30 Tom: Brain. Like, they're just not even in the same league with one another.

0:26:33 Thomas: I just wish we knew had clear answers on like, cause I know it's been so fucking badly mismanaged. I want to know just the truth, like in May and whatever it is, maybe the truth is, is not going to be great. If there are proper protocols and things are handled well, like perfectly, what is the level of risk? I'm not saying, you know, like what is that? It may be it's negligible difference.

0:26:54 Tom: Right.

0:26:54 Thomas: Maybe it's still just just as bad. Or maybe it's like, I don't know, there's a lot of places where they don't give a fuck. And a lot OF these cases we're seeing is you had a concussion, get back out there, rubs dirt on it. I don'T know. You know, like I don' t think we have the information of if this is managed really well, is the level of risk maybe more down into something you would consider acceptable or not? You know?

0:27:13 Tom: Yeah, and, like, maybe these games can be adjusted, right? Or the way that we play them, or the rule sets, or the equipment, or any of that stuff. And I would love to live in a world where we were like, hey, we should take the safety of these people that are playing these games for our entertainment, we should take these things maximally seriously.

0:27:17 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:27:30 Tom: But the problem is that, like, all the stuff that leads up to the, like, so let's take football as, as our example, even though it's not the only example, football is this giant cash cow, everything lives under the NFL, is aimed to drive the cream of the crop into that sport in order to create these players, to put them on TV to sell Bud Light, like, that's what the whole game is, right? So, like, all the steps that lead up to the NFL are all designed and structured to sort of build that pyramid into it.

So you can't make changes at the peewee league and the junior league and the youth league and the high school league that don't match the ultimate goal. So if you don't change the NFL and then change everything that feeds it, for example, then it doesn't matter what you do at the beginning, because that all that stuff is building these other players. All that's all that machinery is there.

It exists in order to push this tiny percentage of people into this fucking Bud Light advertising game. Like, that's what that is really for. So if you don't change it at the top, you can't change it in the middle, you can't

0:27:47 Thomas: Mm -hmm.

0:28:38 Tom: Change it at the bottom. And I know that's real because it won't feed the machine. It's less true of sports that don't have as much financial incentive. So I think that, like, could you conceivably make changes to sort of, like, say, let's say wrestling, let's say there was some common sense thing you could do that made wrestling safer, then yeah, like, because there's, you know, there's not a lot of fucking money in big wrestling. It's not like the NFL.

0:28:38 Eli: No,

0:29:01 Thomas: Yeah, and actually, just as an example, that is is a sport where the kind we do at the high school level, isn't what they do at the higher levels. Like it already like freestyle wrestling is what they do in the Olympics.

0:29:10 Eli: You're not allowed to use chairs at the high school level. They frown on that, and they It's never rage in a cage.

0:29:14 Tom: Right.

0:29:13 Thomas: I mean, it's similar, but they do freestyle wrestling and we do this different like collegiate style and it's different rules. So like, just as an example, like it's kind of funny to your point that it doesn't matter as much in that sport.

0:29:23 Tom: Yeah. So recognizing that, like, all of that child machinery exists in order to feed the FIFA, right? It exists to feed FIFA, it exists the feed NFL. Is FIFA not, right, is that not a thing anymore?

0:29:34 Thomas: No, no. It's feed the FIFA just as a funny thing. Yeah.

0:29:39 Tom: The FIFAs, yeah, the FIFAns. You can watch it on the YouTubes. But, like, all that stuff, it, like, it's there innocently, it's their commercially. It all exists within this commercialized structure, so if you don't make those top changes, it's not gonna work.

0:29:46 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Cause if it wasn't, it would have changed a while ago, like if it wasn't for, yeah, no, 100, yeah, I

0:29:55 Tom: What a change a million years ago, yeah, yeah. Everybody would recognize, like, this doesn't make any sense, why are we doing it? It's, well, because we want to feed 0.3 percent of the people that will ever play this game into the FIFAs, you know, so I think sometimes when I, when I think about parents that are feeding their kids into this machine at this point, I think to myself, do you, you not know, or do you not care? And I don't know which one it is. I hope it's, I don't know.

0:30:04 Thomas: Agree, feed the FIFA Yeah, yeah.

0:30:17 Thomas: Yeah. Honestly, I think what it is is they convince themselves it's not going to happen to them, and then it's just like the cognitive dissonance, you know, ease, ease their cognitive dissenance, like, oh yeah, it just won't happen to my kid, you know. I think that's how they think of

0:30:31 Tom: Right.

0:30:31 Eli: Or it's the other version of cognitive dissonance, which is like, all of a sudden I want to be a fucking judge of scientific stuff. Like, the amount of people I know, look, we've all been through this, right, where you're telling someone something that's obviously true and they're like, I'd have to look over the studies myself, and I'm like Really, you would, you're an insurance salesman, man. It's

0:30:45 Thomas: It, yeah, yeah.

0:30:46 Tom: Right, yeah, are you gonna Yeah, I know. Well, and all of it flies in the face too, like, the other intersection that I think is important to talk about is all of that stuff flies in the face of the toxic masculinity machismo shit. Making anything safer is a less manly thing to do.

0:31:02 Thomas: Oh yeah.

0:31:04 Eli: The South Park episode, right, where they all have to wear bras?

0:31:07 Tom: What, I

0:31:07 Thomas: Yeah, I haven't watched that, but

0:31:08 Eli: Oh, you guys haven't seen this?

0:31:10 Thomas: I don't really like South Park. Wow.

0:31:10 Eli: It's, it's from old school South Park and it's phenomenal, and it is them talking about the CTE problem, and it turns out that the way to solve it is for all the kids to wear bras and they don't want to. It's fucking brilliant. It is a brilliant analysis of the problem.

0:31:20 Tom: No, we're

0:31:26 Thomas: Oh

0:31:27 Tom: In a place where the idea of somebody getting hurt, whether it, because it's always one, it's alway going to be somebody else's kid that gets big hurt, it's never going to be your kid that get's big hurt. So that's always the thing that it's

0:31:36 Thomas: That's good. You heard it here first, everybody. I'm glad we can offer some people some good news.

0:31:41 Tom: We're living in a toughen up culture, you know. We're livin in a culture that, like, is rejecting actively in the, the moment of sort of, like, rejecting these ideas that, like, hey, maybe we can do

0:31:44 Thomas: Yeah, I know. It's so funny. We're to the point where they do dangerous and harmful stuff just because they think it must be good since we said it's bad. Like that's how far we are. Can we kill them that way, everybody?

0:32:00 Tom: Better Right, yes, yeah.

0:32:00 Eli: Right.

0:32:05 Thomas: Scientists, can you just, can we just start lying about, yeah, no, it's actually, it's bad to inject bleach. Oh, that fuck

0:32:06 Tom: That's, yeah.

0:32:05 Eli: Yeah. Oh, we ran into reality again.

0:32:11 Tom: No

0:32:11 Thomas: Try to use an example that happens every time Yeah, I want to make clear when I'm asking those questions, I'm actually saying it doesn't sound like it's safe, and so for the time being, don't do it. But I'm just saying I wish we had these answers, because I'm, I know a lot of people do the thing we're like, well, I can ask a question and poke a hole and so therefore I'm gonna keep doing whatever I'm doing. I'm saying no, I, I

0:32:13 Tom: Yeah, yeah.

0:32:14 Eli: Oh, exaggeration. You're physically impossible.

0:32:35 Eli: Yeah, of course. I would love to know we

0:32:36 Thomas: Yeah, I don't think it's safe. I agree with you, it's certainly on football and probably, I got the soccer thing is blowing my mind.

0:32:40 Eli: Just don't know enough about the COVID shot. We don't

0:32:43 Thomas: Yeah, exactly. We just don't know enough.

0:32:45 Tom: What?

0:32:45 Eli: Know enough. Yeah.

0:32:46 Tom: It's also such a huge bummer, like, to think about, well, you know, Dad was a football, so I think about your, you, Eli, and you said, like, I come from a football family, or I come from, like, a hockey family, or come from, like, a... So, like, there's a sense, too, it's like, I was fine, you'll be fine, like, I was good, and then you look up some of the symptoms of something like CTE, and it's like, some of them are kind of insidious, you know? It's...

0:33:01 Thomas: Mm -hmm.

0:33:08 Tom: Like, well, depression, anxiety, it's like, yeah, I was fine. Well, I don't know, man, because you seem angry and depressed all the time. Were you fine? Maybe this is fucking a concussion, you know, like...

0:33:14 Eli: Yep.

0:33:08 Thomas: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Are you emotionally volatile in a way that blends into toxic masculinity so you can't say for sure it's a concussion?

0:33:23 Eli: Yeah, now.

0:33:23 Tom: Right, yeah, that gets, it's rewarded by toxic masculinity. Right. Yeah. A hundred percent.

0:33:27 Thomas: Yeah.

0:33:29 Eli: For those of you who are wondering, like, okay, how do I break those generational curses, musicals I found, uh, was a really great, really, I think when you star in Fiddler in the Roof, it's really that's, uh...

0:33:36 Thomas: Yeah. Just be extremely unathletic. Yeah. But then he fell off the roof. Got a, got a concession. Got a concussion. Uh.

0:33:44 Eli: I got a concussion, I have terrible CTE ever since. That's, uh, it's my secret. All right, gentlemen, hey, speaking of those numbers, did you know that 77% of Americans struggle with basic math? Luckily, I'm part of the other 33%.

0:33:50 Clip: DEAR OLD DADS

0:34:07 Thomas: I

0:34:09 Tom: And

0:34:54 Thomas: Remember! You hinted it was CTE! Woo! I remember now!

0:34:59 Eli: Pooh-pooh hockey, whatever it is.

0:35:02 Tom: That's just because my body's a giant piece of shit that's trying to kill me all the time.