DOD260: You're a Lefty but Your Kid Wants to Join the Military

Transcript

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

0:00:28 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast that definitely should read some reviews before it chooses a date movie. I'm Tom Curry. I'm joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:34 Thomas: Why that's so specific.

0:00:41 Eli: How was I supposed to know what Schindler's List was a list of? I thought it was about grocery shopping!

0:00:46 Thomas: A list of good things about his wife, I don't know, no,

0:00:50 Eli: I'm pro -choice. Why would Sophie's Choice be a sad thing?

0:00:53 Tom: Have you guys seen the movie Kids? Kids is not a good date movie, Like it is an aggressively bad date movie, and like, when I was in high school, there was this girl I had a crazy crush on. We kind of had this like will they, won't they thing going on. We were very much friends, and she would kind of flirt and then kind of back off, and it was all very weird. But like, we were hanging out in my buddy's basement, and like, we're sitting there and she was like leaned up against me, and like, I had my arm around her, and I'm like, hey, like, this is getting comfortable, you know, like, finally. And then my buddy said, hey, let's watch a movie, and I am like, yeah, great idea. And the motherfucker puts in Kids. I

0:00:56 Eli: Yes. Nope. Sure isn't.

0:00:57 Thomas: I haven't,

0:01:29 Eli: Hey man, why do you have kids?

0:01:30 Thomas: Maybe

0:01:31 Tom: Don't even know. Like, maybe he'd rented it or whatever. I don't even know. This is my

0:01:34 Thomas: He keeps it around to cock block when he needs to,

0:01:36 Eli: Yup.

0:01:36 Tom: You know what I thought to myself later? Like, that's the same fucking guy that shot me in the eye. Like, maybe I should have do

0:01:42 Eli: The two worst things that I've ever...

0:01:37 Thomas: Oh, okay, you have a nemesis and you keep him around for some reason?

0:01:45 Tom: You know, I didn't work out, was that, which is fine, but like, homeboy blocked me so bad. Like, I'm like 30 minutes into this movie, I'm not gonna do it again, I'm gonna, well, I feel like I should move my arm. This doesn't feel good right now. Like it

0:01:46 Eli: Mm -hmm.

0:01:56 Eli: Yep. Yeah, this is definitely not the time for the old yawn -a -roo.

0:02:00 Tom: Just, yeah, right. Like, she sat up straighter, I sat up straiter. I'm like, I'll get a drink for us. Like, it was fucking awkward.

0:02:07 Eli: I'm actually gonna pull some school

0:02:09 Tom: It was the worst, worst fucking movie for fucking 18-year-old me. You

0:02:09 Thomas: Yeah.

0:02:09 Eli: Desks in so that we're just entirely separated. I'm here to learn!

0:02:18 Eli: Do you think your secret rival feels bad that the universe has done so much more punishment to you than he ever could? Right. Do you like he writes in his Salieri diary? He's like, I shot out his eye and I prevented Stephanie from giving him that heege in my basement. But this morning I learned he broke his own neck by waking up. What to do, diary? What to doing?

0:02:42 Thomas: It'd be weird if Amadeus turns into Salieri, like trying to help out Mozart. Like he's like, God, I fucking feel so bad for this guy.

0:02:47 Eli: Yeah, that's what happens. He's gonna nurse you in the last moments of your life. It is what it is.

0:02:51 Tom: Know Yeah, just be like, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. Nice.

0:02:52 Thomas: Oh yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, this is also oddly specific. I don't know. I wanted to tell this story. I almost did it as This is an end of show story, but I think everybody should have a chance to laugh at me or us. So Valentine's Day, had a pretty good Valentine's day.

0:03:13 Eli: Yeah, what'd you do?

0:03:15 Thomas: For Thomas, it was like a Tom. It was like, imagine on a scale of me, I did like a tom level

0:03:21 Eli: Remembered Lydia's name on the very first try.

0:03:21 Thomas: Valentine's today. I remembered it. Yeah, I remembered. It was Valentine's. I, ahead of time, ordered some super fancy chocolates and got an extremely nice card. No, I, I. Yeah. No, those are lenders. It's so funny. I made the joke because one of the kids got some of those for Valentine's Day. I was like, oh, look, lenders! Lydia got a kick out of it.

0:03:30 Tom: I seize

0:03:31 Eli: A fancy Brand, like Lind, perhaps? An exotic, unknown brand? No.

0:03:49 Tom: You

0:03:49 Thomas: The kids don't listen. No, I'm just kidding. So here we are, we're having a great Valentine's Day. We're in Valentine's evening territory, which, you know, we'll keep it a PG -13 show, but things are great. Lydia's looking hot. We're all just having a good time. We're going to hang out, maybe watch a date movie, you know, watch something romantic, get in the mood. Just everybody's having a great time. Vibes are off the charts. We're having good time and we're like, okay, we'RE doing this thing, which we do every year, which WE try to watch all the best picture nominees and WE usually get about six of them. Them. That's about how many we can do in a given year. We just don't have time. But we usually get through six of them. We love doing it. And we've seen a few of them and we've both wanted to watch Hamnet as our next one because we love Jessie Buckley already. Jessie Buckle is one of the best actors on earth. One of the best human actors that there is.

0:03:51 Eli: They listen. You're

0:04:39 Tom: Who is this? Just, yeah.

0:04:39 Thomas: She's incredible. Jessie Buckle. She is a little obscure. The stuff I've seen her in is like, did you ever watch the show version of Fargo? Yeah.

0:04:49 Tom: Uh, no, the show? No, uh-uh.

0:04:51 Thomas: The show. It's really good. The show is also

0:04:52 Eli: Alive. So I know you didn't see I'm Thinking of Ending Things, things

0:04:55 Thomas: Good. Oh, wait, I think I haven't seen that.

0:04:57 Eli: You haven't seen I'm Thinking of Ending Things?

0:04:58 Thomas: I bet. You better give me more, you better give me more Jesse Buckley to watch. Oh, she's so good. Oh, oh, the daughter. Is that, uh, was that the name of it, the daughter? Okay.

0:05:01 Eli: Oh, you gotta not see I'm Thinking of endings Uh, I got one, I got one that Tom saw. Tom, she's in Do Little, the

0:05:09 Tom: Yeah, I haven't seen Too Little.

0:05:11 Thomas: What, Doolittle?

0:05:12 Eli: 2020 movie with Robert Downey Jr., where he's Dr. Do little. It's fucking incredible.

0:05:15 Tom: I have not seen that, no. Oh my God, yeah.

0:05:15 Thomas: Oh dear god, she is. Okay, I Haven't seen that shit. Oh, wow. Anyway, she's incredible. And And the vibe of the, Eli, I know you know it. Tom, do you know Hamnet at all? Have you seen the, okay.

0:05:28 Tom: I, I mean, I looked it up when you told me about it, so yeah.

0:05:31 Thomas: So, oh, but prior to this, Lydia and I don't have time. We also don't want to know anything about the movies ahead of time. Like, I love watching movies cold.

0:05:38 Eli: Yeah, it's a spoiler from the 1500s there, T-Doc.

0:05:41 Thomas: No, yeah, it's, you don't wanna know, like, any, anything. Like ,I don't wannanow, like Sinners. Like, I didn't wanna know anything about it. They're much better when you watch a movie and you're just totally surprised. It's just much better. And this is some of the best art.

0:05:52 Tom: Was it this time?

0:05:52 Thomas: It really is some of the best art that there is, and I really love going into it cold. It's, it's so fun. But, you know, we've seen the posters, we've vaguely seen the concept, both of us. I think we're under the impression that this was like a Shakespeare in Love type thing, you know, like a, like a rom-com somehow involving Shakespeare in some way with, yeah, it's just her, she's beautiful, beautiful, really

0:06:13 Eli: Poster. I am examining the poster. They are, they are close together physically, but they do

0:06:22 Thomas: I don't. Well, Jesse Buckley The posters I've seen, it just is her looking, I'll admit, it's not her looking like happy happy, but it's like, it's in the rom-com, you

0:06:24 Tom: Okay.

0:06:30 Eli: Not closely.

0:06:34 Tom: I could see how you could look at this poster and be like, yeah, maybe they look, I don't know, like content or about to take a nap or like cuddling with each other. Like, no, I think you could like a passing glance, a passing glance with no knowledge. I think You could.

0:06:41 Thomas: Know, hold on. Which one? Which one? Let me see here.

0:06:41 Eli: I don't think you can look at it closely. Yeah.

0:06:48 Eli: A Smithian glance at this. You're like, yeah, no,

0:06:50 Thomas: That is a very much in the rom-com realm. Okay, it's, it's in the romantic movie area. It's a man and a woman near each other. Okay.

0:06:53 Tom: I don' t see calm out of that, but I see two people cuddiling. Yeah.

0:06:57 Eli: They're close. And they're in physical proximity. I get it.

0:07:04 Thomas: And yeah. And maybe we both happen to make heart eyes when we see Jesse Buckley. So we did the rest of, maybe that was in our heads that we're like, yeah, of course you're doing the heart eyes of Jesse Buckleys. And just for fun, I know that the surprise is kind of blown, but just to, just to give you an idea of how our romantic, you know, like super romantic Valentine's day lingerie, all this stuff goes. Afterwards, I read Wikipedia and was like, I'm going to read you these two reviews. Oh, man. Variety declared the film to be, quote, so emotionally raw as to be almost excruciating at times.

0:07:04 Tom: There are two people.

0:07:12 Eli: Mm hmm.

0:07:40 Thomas: And then this other one, somebody from Vulture described Hamnet as, quote devastating, maybe the most emotionally shattering movie I've seen in years.

0:07:51 Tom: That's even worse than I

0:07:51 Thomas: It's so good, it's so good. We are watching this movie and we're all, you know, snuggled up, it's all hot, and then we proceed to cry for an hour straight together, just full on bawling for an hour together, like, okay. And then it was great movie, love the movie. And then were like, I guess we'll go to bed. Oh, God, it was so fucking funny.

0:08:09 Tom: Thought. This is so

0:08:14 Eli: Yeah. Kids come downstairs. They see her makeup's all messed up. They're like, I guess someone's having a nice Valentine's Day. Arlo, why are you doing that? I listen to the podcast, you said it's

0:08:27 Tom: Great. Oh my God, that's fucking great, that's so great. Oh, God, I love

0:08:31 Thomas: Oh, so good. Oh, man. If you don't, if you, yeah, it's sad.

0:08:37 Eli: Hard to think of a more boner-killing movie than Hamnet that doesn't directly involve sexual assault

0:08:40 Thomas: Yes. Yeah, the doesn't directly involve the Holocaust. Yeah. Yeah.

0:08:48 Eli: If I was trying not to come, Hamnet might be one of the movies I think about.

0:08:56 Tom: It, it won't help, but I'll give it a whirl, yeah.

0:08:57 Thomas: Oh, so good. And we were totally clueless. This was not in any way foreseen by us. It was so funny. Yeah.

0:08:58 Eli: It won't help. Yeah.

0:09:03 Tom: Hey, Thomas, you know your policy, if I don't want to learn anything, maybe for Valentine's Day that policy should go on the back burner, you know?

0:09:09 Eli: You make a little exception there. We

0:09:10 Thomas: No, no. I actually, I actually love it. I wouldn't change it. I think it was great. It wasn't bad. Look, we have sex all the time. It's fine. It was a, yeah, yeah. No. But this is one of those stories we'll always have. You know, it was, it was so funny, God, we were just like devastated by this. Oh, so emotionally raw as to be almost excruciating.

0:09:17 Tom: You know, for Valente's Day, we don't know anything about the restaurant, we both got food poisoning. It was terrific, I loved it. Yeah, we're shitting our brains out for six hours, but we did it together.

0:09:25 Eli: Have sex all the time.

0:09:32 Tom: Remember the time we trauma bonded over that movie? That was awesome. God, I can't wait to never watch

0:09:41 Thomas: Oh, it's so fucking good. Don't watch it. You won't care.

0:09:41 Eli: Don't watch it.

0:09:45 Tom: That

0:09:51 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:09:52 Eli: Can I say something? When you have a mental illness, there's sometimes you just have thoughts that, when you say them out loud, you're like, oh, that's not a good thought, and then you just deal with it and fix it. I haven't enjoyed a movie in such a long time because every movie I just go, oh, this is like meets, because, like, when

0:10:06 Thomas: Oh, that's rough.

0:10:14 Tom: Oh yeah, well, Gammon's probably killing him for you.

0:10:16 Eli: When I was a young person, I would see a movie, right? I was like a really a movie connoisseur and I took in all the movies and I got my mind blown by Chinatown for the first time, fucking curse of the, and then I would watch this movie and I saw this classic and then they sort of absorbed them all. And then I was caught up on movie history so I could watch modern movies and I would get all the inferences, right. Because when you watch great filmmakers, like,

0:10:41 Thomas: Sorry. You thought you had to watch all the movies so you'd understand the other movies? Oh, I haven't seen movies one through million. Yeah.

0:10:45 Eli: Yeah, you get like a film education so that you know all the Exactly, yeah, you get a film education so you can go, oh, this is so cool, this is just like when they did this. And you know, if you especially if you nerd out on movies and you study like the Weimar stuff, you can be like, oh, this istuch a salute to this kind of filmmaking, that kind of filmmaking. And I watched modern movies for a while, and then the modern movies kind of started to get like a little samey, and so you go through a phase where you're like, ah, movies these days, not as good as they could be, but you know, some good performances, some good performances. But now I just, I can't watch them. My brain diagnoses the movie and then it's like physically painful to try to make it through the rest of the

0:10:50 Tom: I did Not like watching movies for years after doing everyone's a critic for we did everyone's critic sporadically. I can't even imagine after doing GAM where you have to like watch a movie and think about a movie, turn it into a work product, make jokes about it.

0:11:45 Thomas: Jeez. What the fuck is wrong with you guys? I don't know what's wrong with it. No, not this experience in any way, shape, or form. It's weird.

0:11:53 Tom: I stopped reading for pleasure after I got my lit degree for years. I couldn't read for pleasure. After I got my lit degree for God, almost a decade before I could just read a book without thinking about the book so heavily all the time. Cause you just sort of build up this skillset and these rules and and these sort of, like, tools, and it's, like what you're doing while you're watching it, I wonder if that has any bearing on it for you, it's like, when you watch a movie, like a lot of times, you're just activating a different part of your brain, like not the, like enjoyment part, but just the, work part

0:12:01 Thomas: I always have that part of my brain going. Maybe that's the difference. I always had that part of my mind going and that's why I hate 98 % of things, but there's actually still really good things out there if you power past that. Like, I'm sorry, I don't buy the idea that Eli, you've mastered movie making so you know every single movie in the right.

0:12:35 Eli: Movie Oh no, let me, let me be very clear. I don't think this is a movies thing. I don't think they stopped making good movies, to be clear. I'm talking about a thing that my brain does.

0:12:51 Thomas: Oh, okay. That's kind of what it came across as.

0:12:55 Eli: Yeah, no, I think Sinners probably was on to

0:12:55 Thomas: Oh, gotcha. Okay. Yeah, it's so fucking good.

0:12:55 Tom: Yeah

0:12:59 Eli: Something. I'm pretty sure I don't. Yeah, whatever, the black guys are vampires or something, boring. No, I'm saying that this thing that happens in my head, I was wondering if it's just a part of getting older. Because you know what I think about a lot? You remember that South Park episode where all they can see and hear is shit? And so they start drinking Jack

0:13:15 Tom: No

0:13:15 Thomas: No, the hell are you talking? About.

0:13:18 Tom: What

0:13:20 Eli: Daniels. Stan just can't. Every movie he sees is just someone shitting, and all music he hears, is it's just someone shitting.

0:13:21 Thomas: I didn't watch South Park.

0:13:26 Eli: So he starts drinking Jack Daniels. And I feel like that's the experience I have is like, I see, I'll give you a great example. One something after another, the Paul Thomas Anderson movie. I watched that movie and my brain was like, this is a well -made movie. I'm going to say 11 minutes into that movie, my brain went, the professional, this movie is the professional, but with different actors. You remember the professional? It's going to be that.

And I was like, okay, well, let's give it a chance. Let's see, we've got some different actors, the story's not exactly the same, it's just an older guy and a younger lady. Like, let's get a second. And then people would talk and I'd go, that's like when they were in The Professional. It's like The Professional, but I already know what's gonna happen because I saw The Professional. I can't make it through. I can enjoy, I'm just, I find myself, and this is genuinely true, I find myself staring at movies and going, it's really nice that even when you're not paying, because, because I don't do stuff on my phone anymore, because I don't have TikTok and I don't have social media. I think this thought genuinely three or four times a week. It's nice that movies keep going even if you're not paying attention.

0:13:26 Thomas: Whoa. Oh, really? You didn't like that? Oh my God.

0:14:35 Thomas: Yeah. I think that might be your, I think I might be a mental illness. I don't know. Yeah, yeah.

0:14:39 Eli: It's just a mental illness thought. Okay, never mind then. Retracted.

0:14:41 Tom: I don't know. Well, but I will say it, like, I think that if you are in the zone of like trope hunting and archetype hunting, then like, I don't know, man, you're gonna pick out those features.

0:14:50 Thomas: And here's what I was going to say, Tom. Eli is someone who is able to convince himself that I had a black wife and I was from LA for a while.

0:14:56 Eli: That's true. Yep.

0:14:56 Tom: Immediately. Wait, what? That is true. Eli does just straight make shit up.

0:14:57 Thomas: So I think what he's, what he is actually doing, what he actually, Eli just decided, to be fair to Eli, that me having a black Black Wife was a bit he was doing. The me being from LA was not a bit. He was doing, he just decided I was from LA. I never said I was familiar. No one ever said that he just decided it. And it took a while for me to convince him otherwise.

0:15:15 Tom: Yeah, that's my favorite part.

0:15:15 Thomas: And, uh, I think what might be happening, Eli is you decide that something is like another thing, and then you don't see what's happening. Cause you've just decided that. And you aren't actually even watching the movie.

0:15:24 Tom: Okay, I feel like that's hard true. Yeah, I feel like that's hard true. Yeah.

0:15:27 Eli: That's definitely true. That's what it is. Because my brain just goes, we figured it out. And then it moves on. Can't pay attention. Exactly. Great.

0:15:32 Thomas: Can't pay attention anymore. Oh man. One battle after another other was the most, I have never been so anxious during the movie. I thought it was so incredible at maintaining the fucking anxiety. Never have I been so anxious during a movie. It was incredible. Great movie.

0:15:33 Tom: Like, I know how this magic trick works. Yeah, yeah.

0:15:47 Eli: Movie. Great movie.

0:15:47 Thomas: Man, I'm sad that you can't experience stuff. I'm actually sad.

0:15:50 Eli: Yeah, because I want to be very clear for the record, this is not, I think movies are bad, this is like, is this a part of growing

0:15:59 Thomas: It's definitely part of it because I do think the funny thing that happens too is that, I was thinking about this for kids. Whenever kids are starting to consume art, they're going to think all that stuff is like the first that that they've seen, you know?

And it's really interesting that, like, because we all went on that journey where, like, the first time I saw certain narrative, like, structures where it's like, well, the flashback turns into the thing that becomes, you know, like when I The first time I saw, like, I can't name it because I'm not a good media fucking, uh, yeah, I don't, I didn't have an education in it, but just those patterns you notice where it's like the first time you saw that the flashbacks tied in and was actually said a thing about the future in a way, it's like, wow, that's fucking mind-blowing, and you're like, that's the first great version of. And then you realize like, oh, but they just keep doing these things forever. Like they keep using these tools. And then your kids are like, well, now this is the best version of it. And you're like, no, that's a shit version of that. That's someone copied.

0:16:11 Eli: Old. Well,

0:16:21 Tom: Yeah, and I also think part of it for enjoyment depends on what it is in a story that you enjoy, like, because if you boil things down, you're like, nah, it's just a hero's journey.

0:17:01 Thomas: Yeah, it's just a hero.

0:17:01 Tom: You know, it's like, well, okay, but it can be told really well. It can have depth of character. Like, what is it about a story that moves you? If it's, if it is like, I'm only really moved if an original plot element occurs, you're fucked. Like, I do think you're

0:17:04 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:17:13 Thomas: Yeah, no, that's, that's fuck. And I'm the opposite of that. I, I don't care what's happening in the movie. It's like, I mean, it matters, but like, it's for me, it's just the direction, it's the acting, it's everything, the choices that are made. I just love it. I absolutely love it so much.

0:17:28 Tom: Fuckt, I feel like that's why I cannot, and I cannot, I cannot watch an action movie. I cannot make my way through. I just, there's nothing in my life more boring than an action move.

0:17:34 Thomas: Yeah, I really care. Yeah, only a few of them, dude. What about, hold on, what about the, um, well, hold on, okay, I guess we gotta do our first break, but what about, um, the The Mad Max. I almost said again, the new Mad Max, which was from 10 years ago, literal 10 years ago, the New Mad Max? I know, but in my mind, someone called me out on this last time. I said the New Bad Max, and I was talking about the one from 2016.

0:17:44 Tom: I haven't seen it, I haven' seen it.

0:17:51 Eli: No, because there's a new Mad Max now. Fury Road, not Furiosa. Yeah.

0:17:59 Thomas: Yeah, and they're like, oh, you said there was a New Mad Max that came out 10 years ago, and I killed myself. I was like, god damn it. I can't even. I love it. That's my favorite action movie, I think, ever. It's so good.

0:17:59 Tom: Angry Boulevard.

0:18:05 Eli: Yeah, that movie was so good, though. Great movie. Such a great movie.

0:18:11 Thomas: You should try that, Tom. Just out of curiosity, Tom, I'm curious if it would work. Oh, what's your favorite?

0:18:14 Eli: Second best action movie? The Rundown.

0:18:20 Thomas: The Rundown.

0:18:15 Tom: Yeah, what's the first With the Rock.

0:18:21 Eli: The Rock and Stifler.

0:18:23 Tom: I knew that you liked that. You know who else loves that movie? Cecil loves the out of that movie. This is the moment, like, you guys can be best us friends.

0:18:24 Thomas: What?

0:18:25 Eli: It's a great movie. We had Cecil on cam to review it.

0:18:32 Tom: Do you really?

0:18:33 Eli: Yeah, we had him on it to review it for a bonus episode. It's great. It's got Christopher Walken and the head henchman. You know how you always need the head Henchman to have an interesting or cool weapon or way of fighting?

0:18:35 Tom: Oh god, he fucking loves that movie.

0:18:45 Thomas: Yeah.

0:18:46 Eli: Head Henchmen in the rundown? Whip guy. Very beginning of the movie, Dwayne Drock Johnson's like, I don't use guns. You know what he does at the end of the moving? He uses guns.

0:18:49 Tom: Oh, it's kind of

0:18:57 Eli: This is pretty great.

0:18:57 Tom: Great. Oh, Thanks for spoiling it. 30-year-old movie. All

0:19:03 Thomas: Well, anything worse than that fucking movie.

0:19:04 Eli: But, gentlemen, do you know the only thing worse than feeling as though you've seen every movie and can never be awakened artistically ever again? Why? It's the auto ads, the artistic experience of seeing every movie, hearing all pieces of music, and just riding in the car to silence. But you can make all of that go away, especially the riding in a car to silence part, over at patreon.com/Dear Old Dads, where you'll get a commercial free version of every single episode with a little parenting story at the end. Last week, we talked about Tom's kids nailing Valentine's Day, and you can hear all about it over at patreon.com/Dear Old Dads. Like time into my enjoyment of anything and anyone. Rip into it. Wow.

0:19:52 Ad: [Ad break 2 — ad music]

0:19:54 Tom: Right, so I want to do this, uh, email. We got an email here from Dat Dat Dat. That's what it says. That Dat Dat Dot 298, by the way, so not to be confused with the other Dat Dat Dots.

0:20:00 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah.

0:20:04 Eli: Doxed.

0:20:06 Tom: Hey, long time listener of your excellent podcast here. Thank you so much for all the laughs, education, and parasocial friendships. If possible, I'd love to hear an episode on your views of people in the military or law enforcement. I grew up in a military family, defaulted to career as an Army officer and federal agent. I'm generally proud of the work that I've done in my career, like defeating ISIS and investigating scammers. But being on the political left, I don't feel like I really belong anywhere.

My work friends lean conservative. There are no DSA chapters at Fort Bragg. Among leftists, I feel like a stick out as a fit, clean -cut, straight -edge white guy who alternately cages or bombs innocent people for a living. This attitude seems to bear out in my favorite podcasts, dear old dads mentioned here, in which people like me are treated either as mysterious creatures or depraved sadists. If I had a time machine, I'd have done law or medicine. Unfortunately, with kids to support and being most of the way through to two lucrative pensions, it's just not practical for me to change careers or lifestyles. But now that I have children, I'm also conflicted on whether to recommend my careers to my children.

I plan to make good use of my retirement, but for now it's hard not to feel conflicted and isolated. Am I off base? I see what you did there. About how I'm viewed in your social circles. How would you handle it if your children wanted to join the military or a federal criminal law enforcement agency?

0:20:42 Thomas: Well, do you?

0:20:44 Eli: Yeah.

0:21:24 Thomas: Well, OK, this is a great question. Sorry to jump in, but I think this is a genuine concern. And I have actually a lot of empathy for this, because it is true that our circles are talking about all walks of life involved in anything like this as, as being like pretty evil. I get why he would get that impression. I will say the military, fuck no, I don't, I can't think of, for me anyway, I cannot think of a good way or use of, whatever, of joining the military. I will say that I've made this point, I want to make it again on here because I make it on, obviously, the shows that are more like law stuff, but we can't simultaneously be super duper upset about the Epstein files and say, "Why isn't anyone done anything?"

Why isn't anyone done? And also say there shouldn't be anything as such as the FBI, like there shouldn't be any such thing as the very federal agencies and officers that are actually the people who have to do that work. It is true that I think we on the left should recognize that those things have to happen.

Like in order to have people who would go after and investigate people on the Epstine list and all that crap, you do have to have this kind of person in the right place. And And you do want robust federal agencies to deal with stuff like that and stuff like, you know, sex trafficking and especially a lot of the cybercrime, cyber sex abuse stuff going on. Like there's a lot ugly stuff. I'm glad I don't have to deal With it.

And I do think we should have good people. But it's so hard when these agencies have been fundamentally corrupted and ruined by especially now, like the current administration. I mean, this would have been, I think, a whole different conversation and an interesting conversation 20 years ago or maybe, you know, like Obama years. It would be interesting to talk about it. I'm definitely curious to hear what you guys think.

But I do think we have to recognize that if we want people being punished for sex trafficking type crimes across state lines, inevitably that's going to involve federal officers.

0:23:14 Eli: Yeah, I mean, again, I think this is a problem that the Charlie Kirk liars have created, right, as I, as I so lovingly nickname them, because I know a ton of federal employees, and most federal employees, including federal law enforcement, are the best, most selfless people you know. They are like, "I've decided I want to fix roads," right, for their whole fucking life, right? They are, they are nerds of making the country better, and that includes federal law enforcement, as Thomas was just pointing out, right? FBI, CIA, all those people, they're the ones doing and all the kid fucking, right?

0:23:36 Tom: Yeah.

0:23:49 Eli: Theoretically, immigration customs enforcement sounds like a great idea. I'd love for there to be some kind of customs enforcement. You can't just bring a yak into this airport, sir. There's a policy for that, right. I think the misunderstanding goes both ways, right, which is that I think people who don't want to deal with the fact that their jobs no longer represent the career that they signed up for, create a straw man where the other person is saying there should be no customs. And I think the people who recognize the fascist takeover of these federal agencies but don't want to recognize that there are still lots and lots of good people doing really incredible and important work in those agencies want to say catchy, edgy things online like, "All cops are bastards," and, "You know, there shouldn't be any police," and, "I'm an anarchist," and all that fucking badly read, fucking undereducated bullshit.

Everybody wants to say that shit for the internet, but they're Charlie Kirk liars, right? No one actually thinks that. Not a single person in the world, or if they do, they immediately show themselves to be in such dire mental illness that all you can feel for them is empathy, right? Because I remember a couple years ago, I was back on Facebook, so it must have been more than a couple of years, I was like, "Nobody's actually an anarchist." This person was like, "Yes, I am." It was like, "No, you're not. You've read these books, and those books change the word anarchy to mean things that you don't understand, and you're not actually thinking

0:23:49 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:25:17 Eli: About collectivism. You're thinking about a different thing. What you want is this stuff." And they were like, "No, I really do." And then they went on this like nine page post where they talked about how they want all the structures of government to collapse, and they want everyone to have to survive off the land, and they're fine if that means that millions of people starve to death and there's no water and there's no power and all that. And immediately my reaction wasn't, well, at least you're intellectually honest, friend. Touché.

0:25:17 Tom: Yeah.

0:25:33 Thomas: That's the dumbest shit I've ever heard in my fucking life.

0:25:42 Eli: I was like, cool, go to therapy right now. You are in mental health crisis.

0:25:42 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, that's insane.

0:25:51 Eli: If you were like, "I want to get eaten by bears," I'd go, "Cool, I'm not questioning how firmly you believe that. Go see a doctor until you don't feel that. Take a different nummy pill every morning until you stop thinking those those thoughts. Take it from your boy." So Yeah, I mean, I think that's why you feel unwelcome on the left right now.

0:26:08 Thomas: Yeah. I think there's also genuine, you know, for sure. Like, I think I agree with you, but like, yeah, I mean, there's Also a lot of animosity toward certain like, I have animosity towards law enforcement because it is a gathering place for white supremacy. It just is

0:26:24 Eli: Yes, of course, and there's tremendous problems in law enforcement right now, and, you know, much as when, the way that I always put this when people ask me about this kind of stuff is like, you ever talking to someone, you're like a skeptic, and they're like, "Well, did you know that such and such about western medicine is bad?" And you're like, "Yeah, you know who fucking found that out? Western goddamn medicine."

0:26:42 Thomas: Western medicine. Yeah.

0:26:44 Tom: Yeah. Yeah.

0:26:44 Eli: A homeopath has never been like, I don't know, guys, I'm looking at these MRI scans and they're not quite coming together for me. Have we tried some water? Similarly, a tremendous amount of this change, a horrendous amount of his action is coming from within the law enforcement community. I mean, you want to talk about some of the bravest people who have stood up against the Trump administration, federal employees who still show up to work every day and do good at personal personal risk within a system that is trying to do the exact opposite. Yeah.

0:26:51 Thomas: Yeah.

0:26:52 Tom: Well

0:27:08 Thomas: Wait,

0:27:16 Tom: Like look at mark kelly like mark kelli recently like he's former military he like put out that video saying like hey you guys swore an oath not to do illegal shit so remember you cannot do illegal when it comes to orders like and he did that at risk to himself like absolutely yeah

0:27:31 Eli: I mean, truly, you cannot count the number of stories of the fucking guy at the IRS who just took the lockdown key and threw it out the window. And they were like, you're going to go to jail. This is when what's his name? Musk and Big Balls were allowed to go into the IRS and they go in and they're like, well, my friend, it looks like we got our warrant. And obviously the IRS is locked down with like super important security and the guy just logged out and then took his little key thing that allows him to log in and just tossed it out the window. Yeah.

0:27:40 Tom: Yeah I mean good

0:27:41 Thomas: What? The lockdown key? Oh, a big pause.

0:28:01 Tom: For him yeah

0:27:58 Thomas: Oh, shit. Dude, really? I got to read. What's this from? I gotta read this. I think I missed that. I gotta red that.

0:28:04 Eli: He just fucking threw it out the windows and they were like, you're in trouble, and he was like, yeah, it's somewhere out there, oops.

0:28:09 Thomas: That's incredible.

0:28:09 Tom: Who do we think whistleblowers are like whistleblopers are are the the people in these organizations that have like these positions that's why they have access to this in front and whistles it's mostly a whistle -based

0:28:12 Eli: Yeah.

0:28:12 Thomas: Yeah. Have whistles. Yeah, you gotta have a whistle to be able to blow it. Yeah?

0:28:21 Eli: And Federal employees are who are going to fix this Right, like, the the a really important thing to understand is like the private sector is not it's not gonna repair when the dust settles, it will be the federal government that, and fuck, here's a sentence, to whatever extent it's possible, puts this period of history right. The people who are throwing the bad guys in jail will be federal employees.

0:28:25 Tom: Economy yes

0:28:25 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

0:28:51 Eli: And they're going to do the long, slow work.

0:28:51 Tom: Yeah

0:28:53 Thomas: Jack Smith is incredible. If he were Mueller, we would have had a different history, I think. Jack Schmidt is what Mueller actually thought he was. And when you watch Jack Smith, I've watched, I watched all his, uh, testimony both times, the one that came out that was behind closed doors that later came out and then the one in front of everybody. And it's like, oh, you know what? Maybe we should have a few guys like him. We actually do need a few guys like that who are truly, they're like, I do not do politics. I do not care about political parties at all. I look at the letter of the law and if someone's violated it, I'm prosecuting them. And I truly believe that about him, and I think a lot of people say that in our bullshit, but like that guy actually do do believe it about him. And you see that and you're like, oh, maybe we should have that. Maybe that is an ideal that we shouldhave. We're going to need to have people who aspire to that at the very least.

0:29:38 Eli: Yeah.

0:29:39 Tom: Like what are we supposed to do like seed all of these spaces we're going to take like the most powerful positions of authority and like we're gonna seed allof these spaces to right -wing fucking white supremacist lunatics when I think about like what how would I respond if my kids wanted to join one of these things my only two questions would be like if it's the military it's like well which branch because I don't feel the same about all the branches and I don'T FEEL THE SAME MOSTLY BECAUSE NOT ALL OF THE BRANCHES ARE GOING TO OFFER THEM THE SAMe POST -MILITARY CAREER OPPORTUNITIES AND THEY HAVE DIFFERENT LEVELS OF LIKE DANGER THAT ARE INVOLVED AND VERY SELFISHLY FOR MY KIDS IF MY KID WAS LIKE I WANT TO JOIN THE MARINES IT'D BE LIKE NEAT PICK SOMETHING ELSE BUT THAT'S NOT TO SAY THAT LIKE I DON'T THINK WE SHOULD HAVE THE MARines yeah like I think we should have a the marines and I think we should have a army you know but like I am also a selfish dad and at the end of the day I'm like no man join the navy or the air force there's more in it for you if you join one of the more technologically heavy branches

0:29:46 Thomas: Right.

0:30:22 Eli: I can hit your girlfriend for you if you want.

0:30:42 Eli: I also think we should have those people who clean up crime crime scenes. That doesn't mean I want my kid to be one. Whenever someone's like, well, it's gotta be done. I'm like, yeah, but not by me. What are you doing?

0:30:47 Tom: Right I'll recognize like out loud the tension of that right like like that's an absolutely like insane and privileged and shitty thing to say right but like I just

0:30:54 Thomas: Yeah. Oh, that's true with everything, though. There's a million

0:31:01 Tom: Want to say it yeah right but I think for me even for like local cops if my kid wanted to be a local cop like for me it's not like hey

0:31:01 Eli: Yeah.

0:31:01 Thomas: Jobs like that. There'S a millionjobs like that. Yeah, I

0:31:10 Tom: This is a bad job and you can't be a part of this job yeah I thought about being a cop at one point actually but like I think for me for me the question would be

0:31:11 Eli: Really? Is high school that hard? We can get you a tutor, kiddo.

0:31:14 Thomas: Don't know, man. Yeah, you are a cop. The monogamy me police over here. Oh

0:31:23 Eli: Oh, Tom. Tom the cop would have been awesome. Do you know how fast you were going back there? My neck broke while I was trying to look at you. I've genuinely You would lay asking.

0:31:26 Thomas: Man, that's

0:31:33 Tom: Like for methequestion is like why do you want to do it like let's really explore why you want to do this work that's an important element it's like why like whether or not I would support something if my kids wanted to do it and then like honestly if they're going to join one of these I would want to make sure that from a character standpoint they are a person that has significant strength of character because like they we're not going to fix these places if we send people in and then they integrate into those spaces right so like if you send a kid in or a young man or a young woman into this space and what they do is they change who they are in order to integrate into these violent spaces, then you've done nothing except for ceded your kid to these right -wing ideologies.

But if you've got a kid that you're like, okay, you want to do this for the right reasons, you don't want to just go fight people. I literally knew a guy growing up who wanted to be a cop so he could get in fights. It's not that, right? But if he wanted to do it for good reasons, yeah.

0:32:00 Eli: Right.

0:32:29 Tom: I'll be honest, I thought about being a cop when I was in my early 20s because I was out of college, I had a degree in English Lit, I was working at a title insurance company. I was bored. I was sitting at a desk. I felt like chewing my fucking arms off all day just sitting there and I was like, I'd much rather just be in a car driving around and talking to people and doing something a little more dynamic than sitting at a desk, but like, realistically out here, like where I was living. It was like, yeah, these are fairly low

0:32:26 Thomas: 90 of them shooting

0:32:30 Eli: Shooting

0:32:50 Thomas: The odd person. Yeah.

0:32:51 Eli: Them a cage. Oh, you beat me to it. How dare you? Yeah.

0:33:00 Tom: Stakes.

0:33:01 Thomas: Barely even get to kill

0:33:03 Eli: Let

0:33:03 Tom: These are low-stakes jobs and I thought it sounded like a, a little bit more interesting, and I'm like, I can maybe work my way and be a detective or something, and like, I ultimately obviously decided against doing it, but I considered doing it, and not for any reasons of like, I'd love to have authority to lord over people, but more like, yeah, I just, I need something to do where I move my body a little more and I're more involved with human beings and like, maybe I could help people, maybe I can actually be somebody useful in someone's life. No.

0:33:34 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:33:36 Eli: Let me speak to the obvious for a moment and say that there are obviously times and places where joining those organizations is an unwinnable situation.

0:33:46 Thomas: Anyone that's. Yeah.

0:33:46 Eli: I don't think anyone should join ICE right now in the hopes of making it a better, more equitable work environment. And I don't think anyone should have signed up to be a cop in 1940s Germany. Right. I think there are times and periods in history where a federal government has been so thoroughly overtaken that the moral thing becomes giving up your job. Right? If it turned out that iTunes only operated because we fed 100 orphans a day into a giant wood chipper, I would stop podcasting.

I wouldn't become part of the anti-wood-chipper podcast front. I would just stop podcasting. And that's important to acknowledge, too, because I think part of the straw men that goes the other way is this notion of, like, well, if it's possible to change organizations from the inside, then there's no limit to how bad an organization should be where you don't have to resign.

And I think it's important that there are a lot of really good people in law enforcement right now, lots of people in our federal government right now who are doing their best to create good environments. But one of the things that we've seen is that those people have their limits. Yes, a lot of people are being laid off. A lot of people are getting let go for not staying with the status quo, and that's awesome.

But a ton of people also are just taking early retirement or quitting or becoming whistleblowers and then quitting, right? And so that is also a moral path that you can take when the government turns so hard in that direction. But in terms of, like, what federal employees do, I mean, I think they, again, genuinely they are some of the most selfless jobs

0:33:49 Thomas: No, yeah.

0:33:51 Tom: Yeah, right.

0:35:32 Thomas: Yeah.

0:35:32 Eli: Jobs you can take

0:35:34 Tom: You're not in it for the money. I'll tell you that. Like, I've got very good friends, husband and wife. They are both EPA scientists. Well, they're both retired now. Yeah. They're both EPA specialists. Like they work their asses off. I mean, they worked their asses off. Both of them had been courted many times by oil companies and other private industry, and they could have tripled their salaries like no bullshit, tripled Their salaries by going into the private sector, and essentially working against the work that they were doing because they

0:35:35 Eli: On both in

0:35:35 Thomas: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, oh yeah, you mentioned them. Yeah,

0:35:42 Eli: Ice all

0:36:07 Tom: Were effective at it. And like, that's a, I'll tell you what, like, that pretty compelling. That's a lot of fucking money, and that's why they recruit from those, and they're sometimes successful doing it, but like, they certainly weren't doing it for the cash. I think if, like, my kids were like, hey, I'd like to join the military I would very much say, like, alright look, if you want to join the Air Force, there's a ton of great opportunities, very tech heavy. The Air Force is a very technologically driven branch of the military where there'd be a lot of opportunity for you. I would be supportive of that.

0:36:10 Eli: Right, never mind. Yeah.

0:36:23 Thomas: I don't

0:36:37 Eli: Just pretend the outline is like a dog walking on its hind legs, don't worry about what it actually is, and Hey, if you want to join the Navy, just be gay. You don't need to make an excuse anymore. You can just, you just go, and me and your mother are so proud of you now. Thomas, that's probably tough for you because if your kid came out as wanting to go into the Navy, you'd have to choose between supporting the military and being homophobic. So I feel like that would be tough on you and Lydia.

0:36:44 Thomas: Know about that.

0:37:03 Tom: So Thomas, you're making noises. You would not, like, there's no branch of the military where you'd be like, yeah That's fine. No, why

0:37:08 Eli: Oh,

0:37:07 Thomas: No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. What is the function of the military? What does it do that would be like a thing that you're interested in doing? I don't understand. No, I don't think that.

0:37:16 Tom: Wait So you think we shouldn't have a military? That seems insane.

0:37:20 Thomas: If my kid wanted to join the military, I'd be like, why would you want to fucking join the military? That's insane. Saying. I would want to know like what thing they think they're doing. I didn't say that. I didn't think we should have a military. That's not the question. Was it? Yeah. This is what I would ask my kid.

0:37:32 Tom: Well, you asked what the function of the military was, so like, like Oh, I thought you're asking me.

0:37:37 Thomas: Like, what is the thing you're doing that you think you're going to be a part of, you know, like what is that overall project that you would wantto advance by being in the military? I just, I don't get it, man. I don' get it.

0:37:47 Tom: I think if we're going to accept that we have these structures and that we need these structures in place, and I think we do do, then I think it's perfectly reasonable to say, okay, well, I mean, is there something in it for me? I think that personally, I think joining a branch like the Air Force, like I said, which there's a tremendous amount of extremely valuable work experience that would come out of, I think maybe you underestimate that.

0:38:11 Thomas: Yeah. If it was, if it was a heavy technical like function, I guess I could see that maybe. Yeah, no, not drones. No. Cause drones are mainly just killing people, no?

0:38:15 Tom: That's the entire Air Force. That's why I'm bringing it up. That's the entire Air Force. Yeah.

0:38:16 Eli: Come on. Drones. Arlo loves video games. Yeah.

0:38:23 Eli: No, it's like video games are low would love it.

0:38:25 Thomas: It, it would only be if your job within the military was serving some actual pro -social purpose, otherwise it's like, hey, I'm not gonna, my kids can do what the fuck they want, but I'm not gonna like it. Like, why would I have to like it? I'll just be like, no, I think that's dumb. Yeah.

0:38:32 Tom: Huh? No, no. I'm not saying you didn't like it. Yeah, yeah. No, No, yeah.

0:38:40 Eli: Oh see now interesting. Cause we've three bears here because I would absolutely do everything in my power to stop Max from joining the military.

0:38:48 Thomas: Oh, I would too. No, I'm there too.

0:38:49 Eli: I would sabotage that attempt to join the military to the extent that I was physically able to. I'd go down to the recruiter's office and be like, hey, that's my husband slash lover. And I just want to let you know he's a big old mo. He loves it. Loves being gay. And the Navy guy would be like, over here at my booth. And I'd be like, no, Navy guy, I've got a different excuse for you. Here's my favorite thing about this. Whenever I meet a member of our audience who's in the Navy, they're always like, you always make those homophobic jokes about the Navy, and then I'm like, are they not true? And they're like, no, I'm fucking true, it's just you make a lot of them.

0:39:13 Thomas: Oh boy. Okay. I'm not, I won't go so far as Eli as this. I forgot the measures that Eli would take to sabotage something. I wouldn't go, I won't co-sign to that. Jesus

0:39:36 Eli: You know what my mom did, right? So my mom not only brought me to anti-war protests as a kid and took pictures, and then she also got me diagnosed as colorblind when I was a kid. She was like, yeah. Yeah. No, I don't think he sees any of those. And so there's a bunch of stuff on my medical records that are disqualifying. She tried to get me diagnosed as flat-footed. Yeah.

0:39:53 Thomas: Christ Oh my god. Oh, sure.

0:40:01 Tom: I'm flat-footed. My kids would not qualify anyway. So it's all theoretical.

0:40:06 Thomas: You, you with the flat-footed kids, you're trying to sign my kids up for the fucking military, this

0:40:09 Tom: But like, no, I just, look, I, if my, if my kids wanted to join the Marines or the Army, I would be like, Eli, I would break every bone in their body before I would let them do it because I don't think there's anything in it for them. I think that they only have an enormous amount to lose. Very, very little for them to gain. I think there's actually quite a lot for them to gain if they join other branches, and depending on what their reasons were, I'd be like, yeah, all right, I can support that. Like, there's opportunities, if you want to be a doctor, there's opportunity to join the military, go through medical school, have all that shit paid, get a little bit experience, come out and you're a doctor. Like, there's like a lot of people who are like, I don't know, I don't know, I'm not sure. Actually kind of a lot stuff that you can do if you join some of these other branches. Like, like overall the combat roles are less than 10 to 15 percent, almost all the roles are non-combat, they're logistics, intelligence, etc. Then

0:40:58 Thomas: Is, yeah, it's just a weird, I don't understand, like, this is just a total difference, I guess, in philosophy, and that it's like, I'm not looking at it as, like, what my kid could get out of it, I'm looking at it as what is the thing you're a part. And what is the function of it? And I think for most elements of our military, the function of it is imperialism and killing brown people. And even if you're not directly doing that, that's the infrastructure you're a part of. I could see some carve outs for like some of the scientific stuff they do. I know there's a lot of important, what?

0:41:28 Eli: What if we go to war with Russia though?

0:41:30 Tom: We have very little work to do. It'll be a very short moment. Would I be excited? What

0:41:30 Eli: Huh? Well, then wouldn't you be excited though?

0:41:35 Eli: What if he had a virtuous war, Thomas? A virtuous war.

0:41:37 Thomas: Virtuous? Oh, well that we shouldn't be, yeah, we should avoid war at all costs.

0:41:41 Eli: A virtuous war. Indulge me.

0:41:41 Thomas: I mean, does that mean you're going to sign up for the draft or something? I don't understand what, yeah.

0:41:45 Eli: Indulged my stupid argument. Would your children be allowed to stop being honest and intellectual?

0:41:49 Thomas: Well, no, then, then we would, the calculation changes to, this is a dangerous job that I wouldn't want them to join for selfish danger reasons. Then it would, it would shift, I guess.

0:41:58 Eli: Do you know a story about Anna's grandpa's pacifist test?

0:42:02 Thomas: No.

0:42:03 Eli: So Anna's grandfather, Otto Smith, the fucking second, I think, third. I think he's the second or the third.

0:42:09 Thomas: Sounds like a Nazi.

0:42:09 Eli: He was a he was a pacifists. Yeah, Sounds like a Nazi, opposite of a Nazi turns out. During Vietnam, they were like, join the military. You're good at engines. You have autism. And so they do this thing you used to have to participate. You still kind of do, but it's changed now. They do an interview to test your true pacifism. And one of the questions, this is a real question that was from that exam. You can look it up was, what would you do if I were to try to rape your wife right now? Right.

0:42:10 Tom: Sure.

0:42:12 Thomas: Oh, cool. Oh, Oh my God. Really? Oh

0:42:45 Eli: And it's to goad you into going, kick your ass. And then they go, aha, you're not a pacifist. It's 100% real. I know that sounds like the craziest lie I've ever made up, but I promise it's real.

0:42:45 Tom: Jesus Christ, it's

0:42:51 Thomas: My God, that's so stupid. Yeah, no, I actually think you've, I think I've heard that before. Yeah, that is. That's so, that sounds so stupid,

0:42:56 Tom: Not the craziest lies made

0:43:00 Eli: So they're polite people, so they put out cake and coffee, and they're doing it, and immediately the military people are uncomfortable, right? Because they are expecting hippies. They're expecting smelly hippies with tune -in dropout, not a Berkeley professor with several very important farming patents to his name. So they are already off their guard, and so they're kind of fucking up their lines, right, they're like,

0:43:21 Thomas: But yeah, that, that was, that sounded like a, that

0:43:45 Eli: So, um, geez. "Is this because of your Christian beliefs?" He's like, "No, no, not my Christian beliefs." And so there's two different versions of the story. I'll tell you my favorite version, which is that they go, "What if I tried to rape your wife right now? What would you do?" And he looks down at his cake and he goes, "We're eating all Right, gentlemen, before we go: what's the crappiest punctuation mark? The colon.

0:43:47 Tom: Up."

0:43:47 Clip: DEAR OLD DAD

0:44:02 Tom: Oh my God, nah.

0:44:04 Thomas: Look,

0:44:49 Eli: A fancy, fancy brand like Lind, perhaps?

0:44:53 Thomas: We have sex all the time. It's fine.

0:44:55 Eli: Arlo, why are you doing that?

0:44:59 Tom: It's just a hero's journey