DOD235: Passion or Pragmatism?

Transcript

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

0:00:02 Clip: I'm the cool dad, that's my thing I know now what I can offer you that no one else can Complete and under-dependent I'm a man, I'm sensitive I need to feel loved, I need part of being a father that I enjoy

0:00:28 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast that's not sure what it wants to be when it grows up. I'm Tom Curry. I'm joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:34 Thomas: Well, we can't do this. There's no fucking way.

0:00:38 Eli: Hi, Tom.

0:00:41 Thomas: This is a dead-end job. Podcast? The podcast can't be a podcast. That's a fucking deadbeat job. There is no way.

0:00:41 Tom: Well, Eli, you've got multiple jobs. When people ask you what you do for work, do you tell them that you do podcasting?

0:00:49 Thomas: Oh, I hate it. Nope. I do everything

0:00:52 Eli: No, no, no. No.

0:00:54 Tom: Oh, you don't either.

0:00:54 Thomas: Until they start waterboarding me. That is the only time.

0:00:57 Tom: Yeah, I was curious because it does have, it's also got kind of like a negative cache now, like a fucking white guy with a podcast.

0:01:04 Thomas: Yeah, from me. I've had that for a decade.

0:01:05 Eli: Well, yeah, because you gotta fight through the I'm a white guy with a podcast but I swear I don't sell Omega Brain and then, right.

0:01:13 Thomas: Well, and I swear people actually listen to it. There are no upside to sharing what I do at all.

0:01:17 Eli: You gotta fight though that and then you get to the other side of that, and then they're like, what's the name of your podcast? And it's like fuck the precious connection between you and your grandma. That's what my podcast is called. Oh, my podcast? My podcast is called Someone's Gonna gonna come on your daughter's face one day you should check it out on itunes it's a lot of fun I know I say this all the time but it's so important to me people would rather live next to a child molester than an atheist a convicted child molestor than an atheist there's no worse title for my podcast now I will say here's one of the benefits is that occasionally someone will drag the title out of me and then I meet a fellow atheist and they're like oh fuck yeah I'm an how cool is it that god is it real and they're like it's so cool and I'm like all right let's never talk to other parrots it's the best you know it rules it rules but you

0:02:09 Thomas: It's weird that all atheists make that sound that's a weird I don't know why why we decided to do that I know

0:02:10 Eli: It is that's the special and honestly I think people would like us more if we didn't always make that noise when we met each other

0:02:16 Tom: It's a little awkward, yeah, no wonder they confuse us with sex predators, you know, it's kind of a weird, yeah

0:02:17 Thomas: I would yeah

0:02:17 Eli: Yeah no but uh it's true well no they we're below them we're above the sex predators

0:02:23 Thomas: Yeah they're not confused they're pretty clear on

0:02:26 Eli: But yeah no I always do a teacher and then people are like boring good don't care and then if they insist or before I was teaching regularly enough that I had come because I was always worried someone would be like show me your university ID I'd be like I'm a comedian but that was no better because they'd be like oh where do you do you stand up and I just

0:02:42 Thomas: It yeah yeah oh where's your netflix special entitled I'm being triggered or I'm no I'm being

0:02:51 Eli: Triggered yeah no I I just tell them to search for triggered and they will eventually find my special they scroll through several pages of unfunny white men and then eventually they'll make it to me another unfunnie white man

0:02:54 Thomas: Censored yeah somebody yeah yeah I think we've talked about this before but I I just there's no upside for me because for one I don't want to talk to anyone like why would I possibly try to share anything that would invite more talk so I'm always desperately trying to find a way to be as as boring as possible. And two, there is the political component of it that I just don't want to talk. Like if it's my fucking doctor, I'm like, I don't, what are they? I don't want to risk that I find out this person has shitty politics. I just don't even. Yeah, or they'll just say, oh, I listen to Joe Rogan.

0:03:34 Thomas: Virtually every time that I've actually said I do podcasts, they're like, yeah, I listened to Joe Rogan.

0:03:34 Eli: My doctor's a bigot right yeah

0:03:39 Thomas: I'm like, I don't know what to do with that. There's no. Yeah. Ready, go.

0:03:40 Tom: Yeah that's literally my doctor my doctor is like

0:03:43 Eli: Let's go back and forth about the things we believe about the universe do you want to go do that because I now don't trust you with my medical care because the fucking fear factor guy has filled your brain with

0:03:55 Thomas: Yep. But I'll just be like, oh, I do just internet. I'll be like I do. Oh, just media edit audio. Audio. I sometimes say audio. I do audio. Yeah.

0:03:58 Eli: Poison yeah radio I've said radio

0:04:06 Tom: I just do the internet yeah it's hard for me because my day job nobody knows what my day job is like it's just like I'm in title insurance people like oh so it's like and like yeah like people are like oh you sell houses no I don't fucking sell like if I'm just like I'm in real estate like I sell I don't sell houses

0:04:12 Eli: Fill houses with money

0:04:15 Thomas: I deny mortgages to witches.

0:04:20 Tom: Now oh you give loans I don't do

0:04:22 Thomas: Yeah, no, you do. We know you do stop trying to pretend.

0:04:22 Tom: Loans I have nothing to do at all with loans yeah so nobody knows what it is at all so I actually sometimes will tell people podcasting because it's easier than trying to explain my day job to

0:04:34 Thomas: That's funny.

0:04:35 Eli: But gentlemen do you know the only thing worse than trying to explain your profession as a

0:04:37 Thomas: Then a conversation with a stranger.

0:04:40 Tom: People

0:04:40 Eli: Podcaster it's the auto ads yes

0:04:42 Tom: It's just a friend you've never met yet

0:04:43 Thomas: What's a friend?

0:04:44 Eli: Because what are we as podcasters but a container for auto ads yet you can have our purest most golden form over at patreon.com/Dear Old Dads where for as little as a dollar yeah where for his little as a dollar an episode you'll get a commercial free version of every single show you also get a monthly bonus episode we got amas on there we got a movie review we did a movie review one of these

0:04:59 Tom: Thomas oh we got

0:04:59 Thomas: It's dear old dads, everyone. One you know you can do that

0:05:13 Eli: Months we got behind the scenes stuff with friends quiz shows all kinds kinds of fun stuff and you can only give it over at patreon.com/Dear Old Dads rip into

0:05:26 Thomas: Again

0:05:34 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:05:35 Thomas: So I wanted to talk about something eli got my kid well I was gonna say my kids but probably just arlo I'm guessing really um eli bought arlo essentially uh really really cool gifts this past christmas I think it was which was mario maker which uh arlo was dying for and then I think I think he forgot about that game but he did he did really love it he played it for a while and then he moved on to something else and that's how arlo is but then Then recently he started playing this other one you got that was like this more obscure. I don't, I don'T know. Maybe it's, yeah, it looked a little more like, oh, this is like a real kind of programming thing in a way. This is more, more educational. That's what I'm trying to say. Like it looked like, Oh, this, this looks like homework, you know, a little bit.

0:06:06 Eli: It Game Builder Garage yeah

0:06:19 Thomas: So I was worried that he wouldn't be into it. And I think for a while he was a little too hesitant to try it because it looks intimidating. Then the other day he started trying it because he's been talking about, he wants to make a video game. He always tells me about his video game and it's so delightful. He's like, when I have Arlo, what does he call it? I can't remember. But he's like when I have Arla game or something, I'm going to have this. And it's usually just the same as whatever the last thing he played was. And I'm like, oh, that's interesting. It's good.

0:06:42 Thomas: You're just combining, you know, Stardew Valley and like Zelda. Yeah.

0:06:43 Eli: Yeah Legend of Arlo yeah

0:06:45 Thomas: Oh, it is Legend of Arlo. Fuck. I think it is legend of Arlo. I Think

0:06:48 Tom: Yeah Legend of Arlo is fucking awesome

0:06:48 Thomas: He's damn it. Oh nice. I think that's what he calls it, but it's great though. He does designs. He does characters. And then one time he and Phoebe were like, you know, we're like, Oh Phoebe could do like the characters and you could do the stuff. So they love it. It's really fun. And he starts playing.

0:07:02 Eli: Oh that rules hey can I take a second to shit on that inclusiveness that you tried to bring to your family I hated that so much as a kid when they'd be like yeah and then this fucking asshole who hates your shit is gonna be a part of it too and you're like no it's mine legend of arlo

0:07:17 Thomas: Well, he did like it and they did like working on it for a second until Arlo did realize he was like, well, no, because I want it. He was it was funny because he was open to it. He's like, yeah, you do the characters. She's like OK, maybe it'll be this. He was like oh no, it's this. It was like he already had what it was, but he wanted her to just do what he already did. Yeah.

0:07:31 Eli: Oh no oh he got his first taste of a cooperative work environment cool

0:07:40 Thomas: So that did end pretty abruptly.

0:07:42 Eli: Did you make sure that he and her entered an equal llc right away so that if anything ever went wrong they would have to spend eight billion dollars to get out of

0:07:50 Thomas: Yeah. Uh, so funny, but he started playing this, uh, game builder game and it's cool. It is cool. It's really cool. And last night he was doing a little more and I could tell, God, I, so I'm good at programming and I'm Good at logic and that kind of stuff. I've just always been naturally naturally very good at that kind of stuff. I wish I did it more because I actually enjoy it quite a bit. And I could tell this kid's got a talent for it because he just was figuring things out and anticipating what they were going to be. And I could also tell that he he really responds. You know when you give your kid a compliment that really matters to them it's the best feeling in the world. You know and you're like buddy that was so smart that you anticipated what it was going to be in the next thing. And I could tell I could see his little face like get all kind of like like proud and like a little bashful, you know, it's the guy, is there any better feeling? Is there any bitter feeling? Oh, no compliments that have gone. I mean about anything. Like when you, well,

0:08:34 Eli: It oh I haven't had it yet but I imagine it's great no usually just flips me off and then and she keeps doing whatever the fuck he's doing.

0:08:44 Thomas: It is great when you can finally give your kid a compliment that really means something to them. Yeah.

0:08:47 Tom: I'm just waiting for one of them to earn one you know like just it's been like 18

0:08:51 Thomas: Jesus. Okay. I guess it's just me, everybody.

0:08:51 Tom: 19 years but just fucking earn something you know like just

0:08:54 Eli: Here I am, flipping the chart back to zero days. Someone has earned their rest. All right. Now to sit in a chair. If you listen to the bonus content, you got that. Yeah, that was like chair being on fire.

0:09:06 Thomas: I fire. Yeah. Okay.

0:09:08 Eli: If you listened to the bonuses, you caught it.

0:09:09 Thomas: I love it. So good. So anyway, it was going great. I could tell you really excited about it. And then I had this thought, this thought this annoying shitty thought, where I was like, wait a minute, I just heard a whole podcast and a real one, not a fake one, like a real podcast about how, well, because of AI, nobody needs to know this kind of programming anymore that you're just going to be able to like tell the AI like, well program thing and I've seen I've used it. I've used AI to program. It is really, really good and helpful. You can't try to make a whole thing with it, but it's great if you're like, oh, I need this one thing. Hey, write me the program that does this. And at the very least, that does like 90 % of the work. And it's great. And sometimes it does it really well. And I'm sure it'll only get better. Well, I'm not sure of that, actually. I think that's going to crash, but It could get better and I have this thought that like, wait, shit. And especially with programming and with logic and with this kind thing that I love. And it's so meaningful to me. I had this feeling of like, wait, is this irrelevant? Is this going to be, am I teaching him to do, to change the fucking wheels on a, on a wagon?

0:10:10 Thomas: You know, am I getting him excited about a technology that just will not fucking exist and will not be valuable anymore? And it got me worried, but like, it's also like, fuck it. I'm going to just, he likes it anyway. And I'm sure hopefully it'll still be relevant, but I kind of wanted to talk about like, how do you guys think about, you know, talking to your kids about what they should do for a living? If they ever think about that and how you look at that and also just in particular because I know eli you know a lot about this like do you actually think that ai is going to make this kind of thing irrelevant and I just kind of want to get your thoughts on those things

0:10:40 Eli: I'll do the quick answer, which is the idea that AI is going to make coding irrelevant is absurd to anyone who knows coding and watches AI code, right? Because it's like a Spanish language dictionary. It knows all the words of Spanish, But you know what a Spanish language dictionary is terrible at? Talking. Right? The dictionary contains all the words. It can produce the words very easily. You can pull those words out. It cannot make a sentence. And so the problem and the reason why it feels like all the coding jobs are going to disappear, and don't get me wrong, a ton of coding jobs jobs are going to disappear. But the sort of badly kept secret in the programming community for the last 15 years has been a lot of people were making low six figures, changing carriage wheels.

0:10:58 Thomas: Hmm yeah

0:11:29 Eli: And now we got a machine that can auto change carriage wheels now. Don't get me wrong. You still need to know about carriages. Carriages aren't going away. They can't drive the carriage. They can't build the whole carriage. They can't even really understand where the carriage is, right? What they can do is they can change the wheel. So a lot of the useless jobs, a lot of the pointless sort of fly -by -night jobs, those are going away. And the other thing, and this is the one that is actually sad, is that a lot OF corporate idiots are going to try to replace people with AI because they don't understand it's not a carriage.

0:12:01 Thomas: Yeah and shit just won't fucking

0:12:06 Tom: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've read a fair bit about this, that one of the things that is going to be really problematic in that field is that a lot of what you're describing were the entry level jobs. And the thing is for our kids, when we're looking at trying to help our kids plan out their futures, whatever they do, they're going to have to get an entry level job doing it at some point.

0:12:15 Thomas: Work yeah yeah right it's not like you can teach them how to be not entry level to be above that

0:12:25 Eli: Right. What entry level will mean for coding is going to change tremendously over the next 10 years. That will be one of the big, some of them will, it will be much more about high level coding architecture and much less about, do you specifically know how to write JavaScript? Yeah.

0:12:35 Thomas: But will the same education be relevant will the some skills be relevant to whatever that is you think yeah

0:12:51 Tom: And I think, too, that like the number of people that are going to be needed is lesser. And because I think about this because like we've got two kids that are in college. I've got Aislinn, who's 14. She's really wrestling with what to do next. Next. Eamon, he's only 11, so not so much, not as pressing. It's so crazy when you are a young person, you've got a young person, and you're saying like, I would like to predict what fields will have growth seven, eight years from now when I get out of high school, get out of college, go through this whole process. And it's like, yeah, first of all, you're going to fucking get that wrong. If you got it right, you got to right by accident, stop patting yourself on the back. You got that right entirely by accident. We're working with like Aislinn right now to try to help her figure out what she wants to do for the longest time she wanted to be a teacher then over the course of the summer she did a counselor and training program with a bunch of little kids and she's like I fucking hate working

0:13:13 Thomas: Oh yeah forget about it there's no way yeah

0:13:46 Tom: With little kids she's Like that was terrible yeah absolutely

0:13:48 Thomas: I love that fuck this those little shits that's so funny oh I love

0:13:52 Tom: Man she is dunzo with that idea absolutely rock dunzo and like I will say on our side and this is really informed a lot by

0:14:00 Thomas: That did you have any moment Tom we're like yeah no it's uh it's pretty pretty It's pretty hard dealing with kids sometimes. For you. Come here.

0:14:05 Tom: Yeah hard relate hard well it's It's funny because like I still think she would be a great teacher. Not only do I think she'd be great teacher, but one of the things that Haley and I talk about a lot because we feel like it is our obligation to help guide our kids into a career path. Like we are not figure out whatever you want, what you want to do, and we'll support you parents. I think that's bad parenting. I honestly believe that strongly. I think you as a parent have to say, I see you. I understand things about you that you don't see in yourself quite as clearly because you're living it and I'm seeing it. And we have a responsibility to sort of guide our kids into career paths and educational paths that meet their needs and not just their wants. So like Aislinn, for example, does not, I think one of the things you have to take into account is somebody's constitution for work.

0:14:53 Tom: Aisling is somebody who would benefit from more frequent breaks, just in terms of like her constitution for work, and when I think about my job, you know, for the longest time I worked at a corporate job, which meant you got 10 vacation days. That's what you got. So you had six holidays, 10 vacation days, 16 days off the rest of the time you're working. And that's a big difference from teaching where you get Christmas break and spring break and a little Thanksgiving break and a summer break. It's a Big, big, big difference. So one of the reasons we were guiding her toward teaching is because as a personality and in terms of her constitution for work and her need to take breaks, it made a lot of sense for her. As she's getting older, I think that there's a possibility that that may be changing. And I think we're more open to sort of a more corporate world kind of a job. But I do think that we have a really strong obligation to not just be like, hey, whatever you want to do, just do it. I'm here to support. That is bad parenting. That's really, really bad parenting to offer no feedback or advice or help them determine their path and be like yeah, I I don't fucking know either. Pick out the ones that you think look fun I don't know fucking shrug emoji that's terrible like we should not do that yeah

0:16:07 Eli: Because I think a lot of people often think of themselves as like, I'm a supportive parent. I'm going to tell my kids to do whatever they want in life. But if you aren't guiding them, children don't know what they want to do. And so waiting until your kid finds a thing that they want to do and then supporting them in that means that you're only helping them with half the work, right? The other half of that work is helping them find the thing they'll be good at and enjoy and then pushing them a little harder than they want To be pushed about those things, right because that's the other big thing to everybody loves it. The first time their kid sits down to play piano and they're They're like, oh my God, my kid's playing piano. I'm so excited for them to play piano. And then it's like, okay, you're going to make them practice when they don't feel like practicing? Because if the answer's no, you don't want your kid to play piano. You want to have a kid who plays piano. Can't

0:16:59 Tom: A lot of our viewpoint comes from like neither hayley nor I were guided in any way in terms of our education and so like for hayley her parents were very much like hey whatever you want to do just do it you know make your own path be your own person and like really for her the problem was she was good at everything and so that's not a lot So if you're just academically good at everything and your parents aren't offering you any guidance at all.

0:17:22 Thomas: ADHD problem, baby.

0:17:23 Tom: And then, so what she ends up doing is, is trying out six or seven different majors and minors and, you know, certificate and degree programs. And she's extremely well -rounded, but it took years longer than it should have taken for her to get like, you know, for anything to coalesce into something that would have approached a career. And like, for me, I had like, nobody in my home had gone to college. So it was, my dad had no idea how to help. And I thought I wanted to teach. I'm kind of like Aislinn. I thought I wanted to teach. I did the whole student teaching thing. I'm like I literally hate this. This is terrible. And then I had an english lit degree.

0:17:57 Eli: Give you a hot tip on the teaching thing, by the way, that might save it. A lot of kids who want to be teachers actually want to teach at the college level. She's not there yet, but that's what a lot of, that's what I discovered about myself during my teacher certification investigation is I was like, I love teaching. And then I was like, Oh, not children, not children.

0:18:08 Thomas: Interesting.

0:18:15 Tom: Well the revelation I came to too late is that I loved english literature. I didn't love teaching. So if you major in your subject because you love your subject which I did I really loved reading and writing I loved it so much I still do if that's the thing you're most interested I didn't give a shit about the kids I really did it was not teaching was was never about the kids. It was just a job I could do that I thought I could do with this degree. And then once I started doing it, I'm like, this has nothing to do with the thing that I love. This actually makes the thing I love feel worse to me. I hated it. But I think we have an obligation with our kids to be like, yeah, I know what your interests are, what your talents are. Very importantly, what's your constitution for work and your aptitude for work is, what you're energy demands are and how you respond to those things. And to help guide them into a career path. Because they're gonna get that shit wrong man they're kids they're going to walk out of school like I did with a fucking english literature degree which literally opened zero doors for me my entire life nobody has ever given a shit that I have a degree of any kind

0:18:22 Thomas: I like arithmetic. Sorry. They're going to be denying bank loans to witches, and they're going to be miserable.

0:19:18 Eli: Right now to be,

0:19:18 Tom: Now I'm denying bank loans to witches yeah I

0:19:19 Thomas: Living in a drag me to hell universe and not knowing it.

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0:19:28 Eli: To be clear. And, and maybe this is a disagreement. Maybe it isn't. I'll be interested in your thoughts. I think I want to read and write for a living is a fantastic start because like there's a million jobs that are reading and writing for a living. And there's a very sort of jaded millennial gen X, like nobody's hiring English majors mindset, but like there is a billion people people hiring English majors. You can be an academic for a living. There are a million jobs there. It's about the next hard step that's really difficult, right? One, affirming to yourself, hey, actually what I like is reading and writing, but then affirming to yourself, okay, now I have to do the hard work so that what I get to do is read and write. What are the things that will facilitate reading and writing for me.

0:20:17 Tom: Agree with you and I disagree with you to some degree I would look at something like hey I want to be an academic and say no I would not support that I would would not support that because the amount of money you're going to spend on your education, yeah, you're not going to get out of school with a bachelor's degree and be an academic, right? So you're gonna at least get a master's.

0:20:24 Thomas: The job won't exist in a minute you need a job that the new regime is gonna like a little better than that

0:20:38 Tom: That's also true. The intelligentsia is not where it's at right now. But like the return on investment for the amountof years and dollars you're gonnaspend getting that education versus what you'regonna earn in academia, it doesn't make sense. It just doesn'tmake sense. You're goingto pursue a master or a PhD. Youre You're going to be six figures in college debt minimum when you walk out the door in order to be a fucking adjunct professor somewhere making thirty eight thousand dollars a year on my side of the equation. I'm like, no, we're not doing that.

0:21:08 Eli: I totally disagree. Yeah.

0:21:09 Tom: I know. Yeah, I just I can't support that. And I know we've talked about this before, but I can support that in large part because I can guarantee I'll always be able to support them. I would love to be their backstop for life, but like there is no guarantee that I remain remain financially solvent forever or that I don't die or something bad doesn't happen to me. So they've got to get out of college and be financially independent at some point in the near future, because that's it. If I'm the backup plan, fuck me, man. What if something happens to me? Because I got no backup plan. Yeah.

0:21:42 Thomas: What if something happens to you when the date is gonna be happens to I think

0:21:44 Tom: When? Right. That's fucking true. So, yeah, I just like I look at stuff like that. I'm like, no, you've gotto be financially viable. You've gotta be able able to provide for yourself. And not because I don't want to, but because I just feel like I, I can't ironclad guarantee I'll be able to. And then what did I do? I gave him advice that said, Hey, I got your back, go make $38 ,000 a year as an adjunct professor. And now what? They're waiting tables all for the rest of their life. I don'T know. Or they're in my job, right? Where like I spent 15 years working 80 hours a week, killing myself in order to finally be one of the the few people that does fairly well in the end like no way

0:22:22 Eli: Here's the argument I will make. There's no job security anywhere under any conditions. Capitalism's a joke. The notion that there are good careers and bad, right? Because we have the best career. We just have like remarkably far and away. Like, can you imagine a fucking garbage man switching with you for a day? I'm not talking about you Tom I'm talking about me uh switching with me for a day where I'm fucking free to do whatever I want and then at one o 'clock I come on and fucking jerk around and say whatever I Want for two hours and that's fucking it like the amount it's not like would someone kill me for that job the ways in which someone would kill me you'd have to be like okay what if you have to use two pairs still yes all right so the impracticality of the job this is is practical and this is not this is setting someone up for success this is saying none all of that I think is bs all of that

0:23:31 Tom: Gosh

0:23:31 Eli: I think is is wildly based on an old economy that just doesn't operate that way anymore the only thing we have is what we love and what we're passionate about the only things that doesn't change is the things that you actually care about yeah

0:23:36 Tom: You really believe that oh god no I couldn't disagree more yeah

0:23:39 Thomas: I believe that now more than ever

0:23:41 Eli: Let me admit the other side of things let me meet the other side things I think I speak from a position of a lottery ticket winner talking about how good an idea buying lottery tickets is let's

0:23:51 Tom: That's kind of what I'm saying right like sure there's no guarantees but there is still you know probability and likelihood it's not like going to college is free you're spending tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars no bullshit shit to do something, that has to be considered an investment. I mean, it just has to be, in my opinion. I'm going to ask my kid who may not even want to go to college, like, what do you do to let me let me actually set this whole thing aside, because I think there's actually a more practical question.

0:24:23 Tom: Yeah, no, no. Because most people aren't passionate about anything.

0:24:23 Thomas: Honestly

0:24:22 Eli: Talk about something else well that's a big part of it yeah

0:24:28 Thomas: Well okay if that's gonna be true then

0:24:30 Tom: That's just true. Most people don't have a big passion.

0:24:32 Thomas: I don't have any advice for people that you know like then my advice any advice I give wouldn't be for those people because I don'T get

0:24:39 Tom: Most people are going to school because they are going for some kind of like professional job job training. Most people are not lucky enough to have a passion in their life that is something that can be career tracked. And a lot of people just don't have a fashion. People wake up. They want to like wake up and they want to love their family. They want to have enough money to go on vacation and live in a nice home and then to come home and do their hobbies. That's how most people's lives are structured. I think this idea that we all have some passion and we just have to find our passion I've never found a fucking passion I don't even know that I'd want to read and write for a living like I think if I had to do it for a loving it would go from something I loved and enjoyed and was relaxing and and satisfying to me to something that I was like fucking obligated to and I would feel different about it so I don'T I DON'T know that I like that I don' t think I've ever really like except for like a handful of niche cases I'm like I don''t know like it doesn't jive with almost any of the people I've ever met in my life

0:25:39 Eli: I mean I I have had the opposite experience because I come from a family of artists and academics so first caveat that I think is important is like the privilege with which I grew up is very reflective of my mindset versus the lack of privilege with which you grew up right because like I grew up with a poet in my house who wrote poetry all day long she taught also but she was a poet and a writer of books so not only was that a thing one could do it was first and foremost the thing someone did it was the work that one had to get back to now I think the backstop of privilege that my family had that she had a wealthy dad who could support us if things went wrong that my dad had a business that for that nanosecond was successful Right. Like I want to acknowledge the privilege that's inherent in that mindset, but I don't think it's impossible. I also think that we often misunderstand this calling, this passion idea for like it has to be the one driving factor in your life when actually people are sort of multifaceted and they love a variety of things. Right. So like for me, being funny, being a comedian was very obviously what I was meant to do from being a really little kid. I get to do that. But I also have this call towards teaching right now. I didn't get my teacher's education. Right. I don't have a teaching degree. I don't even have a master's. But 15 years ago, I decided that I wanted to teach and I have had the privilege of other jobs, the privilege of other situations that allow me to pursue that. And now I'm in a really good position right now, I'm like a senior teaching professor at a really awesome university super near me, but it's because I had the privilege to pursue that thing. What comes to my mind is not, oh, Tom, you're being unrealistic or Tom, you're Being Pessimistic. It's how do we facilitate those opportunities for our kids? How do we make it possible for our kids to pursue those dreams? Because, you know, and we've talked about this a couple of times on the show. I'm interested in your thoughts on it. Like, I think what it comes down to is privilege.

0:27:43 Tom: Massively

0:27:43 Eli: Like, yeah, you You know, it's the joke about, like, why are your favorite musician's parents always blue on Wikipedia? But it's like, certainly the three of us on this podcast are in a position to give our kids a huge privileged leg up in the world to find their passions. Capital P passions. And I think when we are that lucky, right, it doesn't mean that we're going to be able to support them forever. I think that's a really true thing and an important thing to acknowledge. But I think it does mean that we can maybe make the space for them to have the privilege to pursue that thing without quite so much practicality.

0:28:17 Tom: Yeah well Yeah, I don't know. I feel very reactive to the framing of the passion idea. I just don't believe that everybody has a passion. I really just don'T believe that idea. I don'T want to be as shitty, because I donT mean this in a shitty way to you at all. I think you come from a family of people who were very immersed in education and the arts.

0:28:41 Tom: And that is a super tiny niche experience of people like that is a subset of people that is statistically a very, very small group of people. I don't think that's most people. I don'T think most people have that.

0:28:52 Thomas: What's what's the disagreement though because I don't I don' t is eli saying everybody should get

0:28:57 Tom: I think Eli is saying like like everybody should have room to pursue their passions and that that's what education should drive toward. If I'm understanding we should help our kids do that, but I I'm suggesting that most of what we're going to do with our time and money as parents and our energy as parents is not so much to help kids find their passion but to help kids find what is the best way for you to get through your college experience and emerge from it with something practical and utilitarian that you can use in the real world that's what I'm saying because I don't think one that most kids have a passion I just think that very few of them do and I think that most people who have passions most not all are not going to turn those passions into fucking hoop dreams my passion is playing football yeah I mean like your plan can't be to become an NFL player, man. I'm not helping that. I am not going to make that our life reality because the possibility of success here is vanishingly small. I would not be like, hey, man, let's go major in the fine arts. If Azam was like, I want to major in fine arts, I'd be like great, you can get a double major.

0:30:04 Thomas: Double

0:30:05 Tom: That's awesome.

0:30:06 Eli: I like that compromise.

0:30:07 Tom: Yeah, look, I'm saying no. Yeah.

0:30:08 Eli: You may also do fine on business.

0:30:09 Thomas: Major in fine arts and shitty arts less refined

0:30:13 Tom: For real though, I would be like I'll pay for a double I'll pay for the double major. Yes, let's do it. If you're passionate about it, like truly actually passionate about it, but there is a very, very slim path to success there in terms of like life success, in terms of financial well -being. Yeah, let'S get a double major, but we're not just going to walk out of school with a degree in illustration. That's not happening. Yeah.

0:30:18 Thomas: Arts yeah well I agree with that but I think my my main take right now and I think this is so hard because it could be subject to again the federal government's demolishing school and everything I think my main take is don't spend money on college, like find a way to not spend much money, you know, whether it's community college, whether it's, you know, find the cheapest possible education and then that makes the like stakes a little lower, you know, like if you pick a major that's not the most useful thing in the world, you're not completely stuck because you didn't spend $100 ,000 on your education or whatever.

0:31:11 Tom: I would, I would say, I absolutely think we do.

0:31:11 Eli: No, your dad did. Fuck else's money for.

0:31:17 Tom: I do think we have to try to reduce those costs as much as possible. But I do think if you're going to spend an irreplaceable four or six years of your life, because here's the other thing, and this is maybe too anecdotal to be universalized. If that's the case, you guys should tell me. But, I told you, like, I decided I didn't want to teach. And then I got into the corporate world and I decided, oh my God, I've made a terrible mistake. I want to teach. I hate the corporate world with every fiber of my being. It's killing me every day. And I wanted to go back and teach. But by the time I had that realization, I now had to go back to school because my certificate, my teaching certificate had expired. I needed to take more classes. It was going to take me about six months of additional education to renew my certification. It's impossible. It Was Literally Impossible.

0:31:59 Eli: Right, but Tom, this is my privilege argument because I had exactly that situation with my life like I had this big moment of like oh I I'm trapped in this corporate job that I don't like I don'T want to do the thing except my mommy paid my rent for six months that's the difference so pay your kids rent for six month you fucking piece of shit take a few less vacations you god damn lazy piece of

0:32:16 Tom: Right. So like I'm saying, like as a piece of like I yeah I'm taking on so many of them

0:32:25 Eli: You fucking relaxing you selfish self -centered motherfucker all you do is think about tom don't you here's the thing that would be great right I would have to be careful if I was talking to anyone except for tom because like it would actually be kind of a mean thing to say to say take less vacations but as our patrons know tom's not allowed to sit in a chair for a moment so I'm truly free to call him out for the selfish piece piece of shit he is work harder work harder what are you on this planet for

0:32:57 Tom: Yeah I don't know why I didn't think of that stupid stupid stupid

0:33:08 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:33:09 Eli: Let me give you my hot take because I haven't been wrong yet on this podcast because here's what tom's dancing around right how do you get rich enough so that your kid can make a fucking mistake and I'll tell you how first of all embezzle from your fucking job bunch you idiots are just running money in the cash register oh I dropped a dollar fucking embezzled do crimes do whatever you gotta do and also put in the work the minute you shoot a baby at 72 miles an hour into a lady it's his show all right and if you're not setting him up to be the star of the show that's on you that's on you tom

0:33:22 Tom: Yeah I don'T KNOW I like

0:33:47 Eli: I'm gonna say the cruelest thing I've ever said in my entire life are you ready for this Max can go to Bennington University Max can't go to Oberlin University do you know do you, you know the shambles of civilization, of the pale, wispy imitation of education they offer a child that goes to Oberlin University. Truly, the dads who take their kid on their 18th birthday to fuck a hooker look down on the parents who send their kids to Oberlin University. I'll send him there for regular school and then a master's. I'll let him get a master in the feelings of invisible pottery.

0:33:49 Tom: This do it do it yeah

0:34:25 Eli: I'll do it two times on Sunday. Because why are we doing this? Tom, Tom, look at me. It rocks to be me, but it sucks to be you. Why are we dealing with this if not so they can do that? So that they can live by practicality as well? Jesus. Someone. What are we working towards, Tom? Someone gets to sit in a chair.

0:34:26 Thomas: Good I don't know it's

0:34:45 Tom: Dude I don't look. No chairs for any of us

0:34:51 Thomas: True someone gets to sit in the

0:34:52 Tom: You will grow up without a chair You will work until you bleed no I god you know what I would love it I would love it if I could guarantee that I will be able to provide like a trust for life for the kids you know like if I thought I could do that because I do think that your take is the right take if you can buttress it with enough financial privilege I am just always afraid of what it means because I like I do so like I walked out into the world with an English degree and no idea how to use it now maybe there were plenty of people who would have been like, that guy's got a bachelor's degree in English. Sign me up.

0:35:28 Tom: Here's enough money to pay the rent. But I never found that guy. I found plenty of people who were like, your degree doesn't mean anything. Start from the bottom, work 13 hours a day, six days a week for the next 10 years, and maybe we can turn you into something. And that's how I made my way through the world. And it wasn't good.

0:35:28 Thomas: Chair it didn't make your punches hit any harder in the car wash you know it was like

0:35:45 Tom: And It was bad. It was bad and it was bad for me. And the time that I realized I wanted out, by the time I figured that out, there was no way for me to buy that six months. That six months had to be purchased and I didn't have the money to purchase it. And so even though I did actually want to be a teacher, and I think it would have been a good one, I wasn't able to do it. And so now I look back and I'm like, well, shit, my kids are going to go to college and they get one shot at this. They get one bite at this apple, right? Because like I could have a heart attack and die. And then they've got nothing. They got nothing underneath that, but whatever's in the life insurance. So they get four to six years to figure this out. And I feel a tremendous obligation to help them do it well, to help him set them up because it's the most selfish time of their life is when they're in college. It's the only time that they're ever going to have where all the arrows are pointed at them. All the financial arrows, all the social arrows, everything is pointed only at them there. They get one shot at that usually. And I'm like, fuck, let's not fuck that up for him. Like, I don't want you to get a degree in english lit. It like if one of them came to me it's like I want to get a degree in english lit I'd be like neat what are you doing for your second major don't do it not one door got opened because I had that degree and I actually really loved my degree and actually it gave me a lot of skills that I use every day and it's it's helped me advance my career but it didn't open a single

0:37:02 Thomas: I think I want to say a couple things, mostly held my tongue for this one. For one, I will say, I don't know how this will come across, but I will say that as someone who grew up poor, I would say, yeah, I know if I could say poor, but very, I did have to fight snakes, very not wealthy, and then had quite a bit of success, particularly right up until the end of a certain era of a certain show I didn't that no it didn't

0:37:15 Eli: Super poor. You had to fight a snake to eat an apple. Is it this one is this how we're announcing it

0:37:35 Thomas: Really make me any happier now is that just depression brain stuff is that whatever and I will say that at the very least I don't feel like I did as a kid where I genuinely and part of it might have been you know Republican upbringing I thought money equaled happiness and I know it's a cliche to say this but it really doesn't and also combine that with the fact that like like wages have stagnated, our economy is being ruined by billionaires that like I feel like it's maybe less return than ever to focus on like finding the job, finding the work thing that's going to pay the less return. Than ever in terms of like how likely that is to even be that great of a wage and to even work out because of our economy and more miserable than ever in so many ways. So part of me is kind of like, I don't know, fuck it. If you have a passion, maybe that's just more important. Like you figure it out.

0:38:26 Thomas: Is there anything to that? I'm not really joking. Like, I just don't, I don't want, like, imagine if you try to put your kid into like a particular industry and it's like, cool. Well, now I'm making $38,000 a year in that industry. It's not like wages are that good for anything, really.

0:38:23 Eli: Fuck it we ball

0:38:26 Tom: Door no I hear

0:38:41 Eli: Yeah, I mean think about all the people all the top level experts in government positions in our government in the last two years I'm talking fucking I have my doctorate from Harvard and then I went to Yale where I invented and then Trump was like whatever Jew get the fuck look out of here. Ain't no such thing as trees. Like, I think the universe is just too unstable for there to be safe. My Trump impression is flawless. How dare you? For there to be safe choices. So, and the only safe choice, look, and I am aware that this comes from a position of privilege. The only safe choose in the universe that you can make, and let me make a bold claim, is being rich. Being rich is a safe fucking

0:39:05 Thomas: Terrible Trump impression. I don't know. Jeez. I'm going to work on that. Yeah.

0:39:27 Tom: You choice

0:39:28 Eli: Bet. It's worked out 100% of the time throughout history. And anytime you might have a counterexample to that, I would argue that person just wasn't rich enough. If Marie Antoinette had had cake for everybody, that would have been a super chill thing to say.

0:39:44 Tom: Yeah, I have no counter argument to the be rich argument I think that's great I

0:39:44 Thomas: Yeah is that an

0:39:49 Eli: It's an option for our kids. It's not an option. It's a good option for us, snake fighter.

0:39:55 Tom: I get like the wages have stagnated and all that but like I mean do you really think that there's no difference so like let me let me explain like go into detail so like we were talking yesterday with Aislinn about maybe moving to like occupational therapy as a career or a major or a registered dietitian. And one of the things we do is we look up like, what are the average? Well, it's specifically because she's so interested in that stuff.

0:40:15 Eli: Ew, that's gross. Don't eat that either. Honestly,

0:40:21 Tom: We look up, like, what are the average salaries in and around Chicago for these jobs? And they're pretty good salaries, right? So now there's no guarantee that an occupational therapist job is gonna exist in numbers in the next 10 years but with an aging population occupational therapy is very likely to pay well it seems to pay pretty well from what we looked up to pay well and to be reasonably in demand yeah

0:40:21 Thomas: Option

0:40:45 Eli: Just the amount you injure yourself, I think she's got

0:40:47 Tom: I could use some fucking help around here right yeah

0:40:47 Eli: A client base right in the house. I can't feel my fingers. Cha-ching.

0:40:50 Tom: I feel like that's not the same thing as like I don't know get a degree in drawing pictures and then hope for the best

0:40:56 Thomas: Well you a moment ago you're talking about her being a teacher that's a poverty level wage and that didn't seem to oh okay really

0:41:01 Tom: Oh it's not out here no no yeah I mean out here is 60 70

0:41:08 Thomas: What, what kind of teacher, what? Freaking Eli.

0:41:09 Eli: You said it wasn't a poverty wage. I don't understand. That's crazy, Tom.

0:41:16 Eli: You know what I love? What I love is that Thomas and I don't make the same amount of money. So whenever I'm like, I'm fucking rich, Thomas is like, hey man, shut the fuck up. Lydia, don't you cut this. Don't you cut this, Lydia, you coward. I see you highlighting my words. I hear you dragging, deleting my words in Reaper, the program I'm convinced you edit in.

0:41:37 Tom: 000 do a reaper

0:41:43 Thomas: He made it. It's another one of his.

0:41:44 Tom: Yeah it's a made-up thing yeah okay all right fair

0:41:44 Eli: It's a thing I invented and now I've stuck to it. Lydia just got a name two years ago. I'm growing. I'm learning and growing as I go.

0:41:52 Tom: Enough I don't know maybe we're backwards around here I'm just trying to help them not be poor

0:41:52 Eli: You're welcome, Lydia. There you go. Yes, agreed. We all agree. Yay, we all ended on Eli's point, like so many episodes. Yes.

0:42:03 Tom: Without using my money shower

0:42:06 Clip: DEAR OLD DADS

0:42:12 Eli: All right, gentlemen, before we go, my wife's been getting angry that I eat cabbage whenever I bathe, but I just can't stop doing it. I love shower kraut.

0:43:13 Thomas: Fuck this. Those little shits.