DOD261: Does Inclusivity Have Limits?

Transcript

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

0:00:28 Tom: Welcome to Dear Old Dads, the podcast that's not sure exactly what this episode's about. I'm Tom Curry, I'm joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:37 Eli: Hello, Tomifer.

0:00:39 Thomas: It's like he doesn't even listen.

0:00:40 Tom: I mean,

0:00:41 Eli: Well, he blacked out what I was saying.

0:00:41 Tom: I, you know, I think the episode's gonna be about hockey for some reason, or maybe Trump, I am not sure, exactly. Maybe BAFTA, I not sure that any of this has anything to do with parenting at all.

0:00:43 Thomas: Yeah. No. We

0:00:48 Eli: We might get to hockey. We've got a we got a little smorgasbord.

0:00:56 Thomas: Got a lot of stuff to talk about. I'm excited.

0:00:58 Eli: Yeah, a lot of stuff.

0:00:59 Thomas: We have so much stuff to talking about. I don't even know which thing for the pre -show banter we should even pre - show banter about. I don' even know.

0:01:05 Eli: Well gentlemen, let's let's start with what's going on in my life right now because I am here in the center of Snowmageddon, 17 inches of snow last night. Quadruple what you were used to. And they have closed my son's school for today and tomorrow. They are talking about closing it for the entire week, to which I, as a parent, say, "No, you cannot. I will not allow it. You must take my son back from me after this second day." And they say to me, "Eli, the roads are dangerous. It would literally cost lives," to which I say, "Which?"

0:01:09 Thomas: Wow.

0:01:16 Tom: Braggy. That's braggy.

0:01:32 Thomas: No, yeah. Yeah, which ones?

0:01:47 Tom: Lives.

0:01:47 Eli: "Lives." That's right.

0:01:49 Thomas: That is what he said. He had this conversation on the phone with us on the line. It's exactly what he's said.

0:01:55 Eli: So I'm here in Snowmageddon. We'll see, we'll check in next week, we'll find out how long I was alone with my son. If he is on the next episode, instead of me talking about how his father curled into a ball under the kitchen sink and died from nine straight days of nonstop parenting, then you will know exactly how that went. But gentlemen, do you know the only thing worse than trying to get a simple day of peace in the middle of a bomb cyclone?

0:02:09 Tom: Yeah.

0:02:24 Eli: Why, it's the auto ads. Ruining your podcast experience like a canceled day of school brings joy into child's hearts. Hey, I'll get right back to the pitch in a second. Can we talk about what an amazing job our parents did hiding from us that they hated snow days?

0:02:24 Thomas: Yeah again, can't comment. No idea. Yeah.

0:02:42 Tom: No, my dad went to work on snow days. Like if I had a snow day, my dad was like, cool. I still have to go to work. Have you ever had to explain to your kids that your job doesn't have snow? Well, probably not. Like my job doesn't, doesn't work.

0:02:42 Eli: Oh, okay. Yes.

0:02:47 Thomas: Yeah. Yes. That I have had.

0:02:53 Eli: Yeah, no.

0:02:53 Tom: I don't have a job. I'm like, I still have to work, dude.

0:02:55 Thomas: Whenever they're off, they're like, why do you have to work?

0:02:58 Eli: Yeah, constantly.

0:02:58 Thomas: I don't get it. Yeah, yeah.

0:02:59 Eli: Believe Me, I explained that all the time. I explained it 48 minutes ago because we were in the middle of playing and I was like, "Sorry, I gotta go talk about jerking off into panties." And hey, if you'd like to hear what I had to say about jerking into panties, why not head over to patreon.com forward slash Dear Old Dads, bringing it back to the pinch, where you'll get a commercial-free version of every show with a little parenting story at the end, as well as a monthly bonus episode. This month, we talked about sniffing panties. We talked about podcast drama from the days of yore. And I truly,

0:03:00 Tom: Yeah, like I'm still leaving, dude, I gotta go to work. Yeah yeah.

0:03:09 Thomas: Hey. Mm -hmm. Yep.

0:03:32 Eli: Truly broke Thomas's spirit with a little update on how everyone's doing.

0:03:32 Thomas: Yeah yeah. Yep yep. Good updates. Finally broken.

0:03:40 Eli: It was a breakfast club close that nobody wanted. And Thomas received it involuntarily. And you can get all that over at patreon.com/dearolddads. like news of our former enemy's success to Thomas' psyche, rip into it.

0:03:37 Tom: I

0:03:43 Thomas: Oh, wow.

0:03:57 Thomas: Fun.

0:04:04 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:04:05 Eli: All right, guys. I don't know if this is going to be the main topic of the show, but it is the hot topic of right now. The people are talking about it and I cannot think of three less informed douche bros to weigh in than us. The guy who shouted the N -word at the BAFTAs. Let's talk about it.

0:04:20 Thomas: Yeah Lydia informed me last night.

0:04:25 Eli: Mm -hmm. Okay. Okay, there's a Tourette's Syndrome campaigner named John Davidson.

0:04:26 Tom: I don't know what happened, so you guys have to give me the juice here.

0:04:34 Thomas: Is he like pro or again? No, I'm just kidding.

0:04:36 Eli: He is anti -Tourette Syndrome, pro the people who have it. His documentary, I Swear, it is called I Swear, won a BAFTA or was nominated for a BAFTTA. And so he obviously attended the BAFTAS. Now, before the BAFTAS started or during the BAFTAS at some point, Alan Cumming, who, can I say? I know it's not his fault, just the worst possible host for this moment, right? Sexy Fucking Traitors, "Hello, my lovelies," is the opposite of the guy who you want to have to come out and explain that there's going to be a person who might shout during the show and that's a part of it, please be understanding of their medical condition, because you know he had to put an out-and-coming twist on it.

I haven't seen the clip, but you know, we had to be like, "Now listen up, my lovlies, someone might scream the n-word, and it'll be Jordan, and let's all keep it really sexy." So he did a little warning at the beginning. What most people do not understand about Tourette syndrome, if you are not aware, so Tourette's syndrome, it usually presents itself in the form of small tics or words, sometimes swearing. There is a much, much rarer form of Tourette's syndrome called corpophilia or corpoTourettes. I found a bunch of different language used around it and I don't, I don't want to use the incorrect medical term because it's like a real thing where you say the things you're not supposed to say. Right. So the

0:04:38 Thomas: Okay. Yeah.

0:05:22 Thomas: I doubt it.

0:05:29 Tom: What?

0:05:31 Thomas: I kind of doubt he did that, but that's a good bit.

0:06:04 Eli: Tourette's syndrome presents itself as the worst thing to say at any given moment. And what happened last night or the other night, I'm not sure, whenever you're listening to this, is just as Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo were in the middle of presenting an award. He very loudly and very audibly screamed the n-word.

0:06:15 Thomas: Well, several minutes ago.

0:06:27 Thomas: Yeah.

0:06:27 Eli: Yes.

0:06:27 Tom: Oh, my God. Wait a minute. So this guy was there because he was going to be accepting or was nominated for an award?

0:06:33 Thomas: For the documentary about the very thing that's causing this.

0:06:33 Eli: Yes. So the reason I want to talk about this is actually because when you read any conversation about this online, because look, the answer to this is a reasonable, "Wow, what a horrible thing to happen to Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo. I hope they knew what was happening at the time. What a terrible moment to interfere with their lovely moment of getting an award." Man, it's so unfortunate that this guy had this thing happen to him. I bet he was mortified. Why didn't the BBC bleep it out? They bleeped something out. That's the weird thing.

0:06:37 Tom: Yikes. Okay.

0:07:10 Thomas: Yeah, they bleeped something about Gaza, but they didn't bleep this. Yeah. Free Palestine. Yeah.

0:07:13 Eli: They bleeped out a free Palestine. A dude dropped a free Palestinian and they were like, gotcha, radio delay. This dude threw out an N -bomb for all the world to hear and they Were like, let him cook. Did they think he was going to be like, N -word? Is never acceptable to say in this situation. Like, what did they think?

0:07:22 Thomas: Yep. Yep. Oh, boy. Wow.

0:07:36 Tom: Like, if they had bleeped it out, it would have been an entire non -issue, right? Because the only people that would have heard it were the people that were there. There, well, like, but like, there's not, all told, that many people that are there, right? Like, even if you, like, said it at the Academy Awards, like, at the end of the day there's a handful of people there compared to the number of people that might be viewing it.

0:07:45 Eli: Yeah,

0:07:57 Thomas: Sorry. Tom, cell phones have been invented. It's the year 2026. We have to do this every once in a while, guys. Yeah.

0:08:03 Tom: No.

0:08:04 Thomas: You're okay. You're going to be okay. Well, you're not okay. But the year is 2026, there's cell phones. There's no such thing as like, well, we cut the feed on NBC. CBC or whatever, the net channel three. So no one will hear it. Like that doesn't exist anymore. Like someone would have heard it. It's also, it's just deeply sad and unpleasant that Michael B. Jordan, like these accomplished black people have to, while they're presenting, have a slur shouted at them is, is yeah.

0:08:04 Eli: Except

0:08:25 Tom: No, yeah, of course. Of, well, yeah, no, no, of course it is. I'm not suggesting that it's not. What I'm saying though is that, like, if the BBC had done their job, I mean, it's also 2026, if you go to a concert now for the most part. Right. And I would assume that the Baptist could do the same thing and probably should. They give that like bag to put your phone in that renders your phone not usable during the presentation because you don't want a bunch of assholes using their phone and filming stuff and whatever. Like I would presume. Right.

0:08:55 Eli: For Ellen. Sometimes Ellen's taking the world's most famous selfie.

0:08:57 Thomas: Yeah.

0:08:58 Tom: So that that renders that first point entirely moot like that just goes away. And then if the BBC does their job properly, then you had a moment. It's unfortunate. It''s explainable. Nobody intended any harm, but it doesn't like become this sort of hyper visible moment. It just flatly doesn't need to be like the the visibility of it is the biggest problem here. Not somebody's like medical condition.

0:09:23 Eli: Can I put even more of the blame on the BBC here? Because the statement they gave coming to say later feels like the N -word pwned the libs. Listen to this. This is the quote. Tourette's syndrome is a disability, and the tics you've heard tonight are involuntary, which means the person who has Tourette's syndrome has no control over their language. We apologize if you are offended tonight, end quote. Which, that last thing feels like, sorry if you can't take it, you liberal cucks.

0:09:50 Thomas: That doesn't make any sense.

0:09:50 Tom: Audition. Yeah, that's no.

0:09:52 Eli: I want to be very clear. No way Alan Cumming wrote that backstage.

0:09:56 Tom: Good. Yeah.

0:09:56 Eli: There's no way Alan Cumming was sitting there fucking stirring a cocktail with his nightcrawler tail and being like, I need to tell these liberal bitches to calm the hell down.

0:10:06 Tom: Honestly, This seems like such an enormous failure, mostly of BBC, because the guy didn't do any, like, was he not supposed to attend the award show? Like, he's maybe gonna get an award.

0:10:07 Thomas: Uh, I would argue maybe. Yeah, yeah, I think if you saw it, fine, I guess I'll be the Eli of this one. I think you have a condition such that you would shout the N-word at black people while they're presenting an award or receiving an award. I wasn't sure which, but I think that's maybe, maybe you shouldn't go to that event. I don't think that's something you should do. I don't know. I think that's too much of an imposition on other people, personally.

0:10:41 Tom: Look, I don't actually fully disagree with that at all, but I feel like there's a way to handle that situation. Maybe he didn't know he's gonna set, maybe, you know, like, like, yeah, right,

0:10:48 Thomas: Oh, yeah, that'S not defending how anyone handled the situation. Yeah. Yeah. And here's the thing. He, uh, I saw also that he left after that and no one asked him to leave. He just left afterthat. Cause he, yeah. Yeah. I'm sure. Oh, I have all the empathy in the world for that guy. I don't.

0:10:59 Tom: Sure, it'd be mortifying, yeah. I can't even imagine, like, yeah, but I kind of felt this as soon as you described it, like I felt the same way you just described, Thomas. Like, I don't understand why you would go if you knew that, like, you might do something intentionally or unintentionally that would just embarrass the shit out of you and everybody else. That is confusing, right?

0:11:04 Eli: Yeah, right.

0:11:12 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, well, And traumatically, traumatically. So like, it's not, it's, not like, oh, that's somebody, you know, as, as a IBS and pass some gap. That's like traumatic stuff. Yeah.

0:11:31 Tom: Yeah, but like genuine, like even if it was just gonna traumatize me, right. Like if I had a medical condition where it's just like, you know what? But I might uncontrollably shit myself today. And, like, that's nobody's fault, but certainly nobody wants to smell that, and I don't want to have to deal with it, and it might be embarrassing to me. I'd be like, hey, I will attend virtually. Put me up on the big screen, right, and I can zoom into this thing and wave, and we can have that nice delay that BBC will inexplicably ignore.

0:11:34 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:11:56 Eli: Your Zoom is on radio delay too.

0:11:57 Thomas: Okay.

0:11:58 Tom: Yeah. Holy shit.

0:11:59 Eli: You got your wife there with the censor button. Yeah. So the interesting thing is, right, because the good, there's bad conversation, right, which is not worth having, which is the, like, he shouldn't have gone anywhere and also he's racist secretly because that's a thing that happened because of his disease. That's not a thing that happens. So there's a lot of stuff that's not worth having a conversation. The conversation that I think is interesting, the reason why I wanted us to talk about it, experts though we are, is that what the the entire documentary is

0:12:13 Tom: That's not how that works, yeah.

0:12:29 Eli: About is that you cannot remove yourself from society if you have this illness. The whole point of the documentary is actually not like, hey, I'm sorry, I swear, although he obviously is. It's like, you need to learn to let me live in a space where I might shout something inappropriate. And what I think is really interesting is that this incident is a really good counter to his documentary, if

0:12:30 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:12:53 Thomas: I don't really agree with that.

0:12:54 Tom: I was going to say, like, from what you just described, he left, he left, he wasn't like, yeah, my documentary, I mean, I'm gonna really stick to my guns here and stick around, he

0:12:59 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, he left. Yeah.

0:13:04 Eli: If someone was making that argument to me, I would say absolutely, with fucks and shits, which is what the documentary is about, right? So, like, there's lots of moments where he's, he's like saying fuck and suck a cock in front of kids and they're like, he says suck a cop in front, and I'm like, first of all, suck a cuck in front of kids already a conversation worth having, but second of all, the argument I would present if I were a good thinker like Thomas's would be, yeah, but what if you were like going to scream the N-word at a person of color, wouldn't

0:13:12 Thomas: Right, right.

0:13:17 Tom: Left. Nope, no, sorry.

0:13:23 Thomas: Yeah, that's already a little too far for me, at an award. Yeah, yeah.

0:13:38 Tom: No.

0:13:38 Eli: That be something where you would want to take those precautions as opposed to, like, asking the people around you to adapt?

0:13:44 Thomas: Yeah.

0:13:45 Tom: Wow, his whole documentary was about a thing that he, when it happened to him, was like, oh actually, I've just, I'm going to

0:13:51 Thomas: Well, yeah. I mean, I, I think what Eli's. Yeah. No longer for. Yeah, geez.

0:13:54 Eli: He withdraws the documentary from its nomination. Ah, fuck.

0:13:55 Tom: Leave, right? I just feels, it just feels like, like I feel like if he really meant it, he just stuck around. I'm

0:14:03 Thomas: No,

0:14:01 Eli: Guys, the camera pans over to him, in his arm, and his arms are all cross in front of him, not going anywhere, right?

0:14:03 Tom: Not even lying, like, if it was, like, really meant, it'd stick around. Yeah, it's like, wait till I drop the next one, like, what? Yeah.

0:14:12 Thomas: I think that there's with any disability, there might be feelings people have of like, here's a day I can be around people and here's a day. I can't just for not, you know, not for the same reason, but like for different reasons that I don't think that invalidates his thesis. If it's like in general, we need to make sure to be able to like be inclusive as much as we can. But also, it's not like that's unlimited, right?

0:14:35 Tom: I don't disagree with that at all. I guess I feel like, if it depends on how binary his document as it was described just moments ago to me, I haven't seen the documentary of course, you don't remove yourself from society with a capital S, but also, like, maybe there are parts of society where today is not your day, day, right? If you're having, like, a high verbal tick day, maybe, you know, you have to skip your daughter's dance recital, and like, genuinely that super sucks.

0:15:02 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:15:04 Tom: It super sucks, but like, you can't go to the kindergarten dance recitel and start hurling slurls at little

0:15:08 Thomas: And shout slurs.

0:15:04 Eli: We really hope you'll make it to the little ladybugs' dance recital. I'd love to. I'd like to. What races are present at the dance recitle?

0:15:19 Tom: Kids, and that, and like, I, I want to acknowledge it, like that sucks and it's super unfair and nothing about that is okay, okay, nothing top to bottom, everything about that is just complete ass, but it's like, I know that, like, this guy obviously feels terrible because what had happened, he fucking left. So it's not even just that, like, he doesn't want to hurt other people, but like he understands he doesn't want to hurt himself and, like, ostracize himself even more. I don't know, like, it feels like, don't go, don't go today.

0:15:25 Thomas: Yeah, at the same time, I think definitely I'm 100 % on board with the idea that we need to be inclusive. And also, I'm sure if any of our kids have any sort of disabilities or any sort of, you know, neurodivergence, for example, that all my kids probably have, that would would make them hard to be around sometimes, we wouldn't want to feel like that means they don't get to participate in society. And so I, I do, and I'm not arguing with Tom, I'm just saying like, acknowledging, like, that that's the thing when, when Eli said, like, conversation is dead, or you might have said that before recording, but yeah, like that's the conversation I would have about it, is yes, absolutely, inclusivity 100, I'm all on board with that, but there are obviously lines where it's like, well, okay, the good of this one thing is not worth the harms of this other thing. That's just how life is. I don't think it's particularly hard to be able to draw that line.

But I think the problem is everyone's a fucking idiot and can't handle the fact that you can have a point of view that's not going all the way over to one side or the other. Or, I won't say that, our idiot digital environment is designed to only show you the

0:16:16 Tom: Yeah. Right.

0:17:00 Thomas: Worst views that go to one side or the other. I think there are plenty of people who have nuanced takes on this, but we only see the worst ones.

0:17:06 Eli: 100, and I also think, I think the BBC's behavior here is a really good example of a problem I see in college a lot, right, which is that, like, a lot of my fellow teachers are fake woke because they're terrified of their students, and so they do it wrong and they get in trouble, and then they're like, I'm Adolf Hitler now.

0:17:19 Thomas: Mmm, right. Oh, God, yes. Yep, 100%.

0:17:25 Eli: Right. We were talking about this a little bit on the bonus episode, but like, something that I see on a pretty regular basis is, like, the administration, right, will release a statement that's insane. This happens on, if you listen to Where There's Woke, which I do Uh, This happens all the time, right? Which the administration will release this sort of nonsense gobbledygook response to what is obviously a pretty straightforward situation, and then that makes it 10,000 times worse.

0:17:25 Tom: Yeah.

0:17:38 Thomas: Aw, yep.

0:17:51 Eli: Like the Samantha Fulnecki situation, the girl who wrote, like, Jesus instead of her psych paper, and then the college was like, "We believe every student has the right to worship Christ of Nazareth."

0:18:03 Tom: Yeah. Right, that's nothing. Yeah.

0:18:04 Thomas: Yeah.

0:18:04 Eli: And we're like, "Dude, what the fuck are you talking about?" I think this is a similar thing, right? Which is that the BBC probably had a conversation about inclusion where they were like, well, I think the wokest thing, stares around the room nervously, is to ignore the N -word.

0:18:18 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:18:28 Ad: [Ad break 2 — ad music]

0:18:30 Tom: Isn't the thing to do, and I like is to say, "All right, like, I need some accommodations," and it is reasonable for me to say, "I have this disability," or I have this, like, this this neurodivergence or whatever it is, and I'm gonna, I would like to attend this event, I'm going to talk to the organizers, and I am going to say, "Hey, you know, here's what might happen, let's talk about what those reasonable accommodations might be."

0:18:52 Thomas: And it might be a room very nearby. Yeah.

0:18:54 Tom: That's everybody's responsibility. That's the organizer's responsibility, right? Yeah, everybody had a responsibility here to acknowledge that there were accommodations which would be necessary and fruitful for everybody if they were addressed ahead of time, and instead it sounds like nobody did that and it went poorly, and then the BBC was like, "Air it, that's cool," which seems fucking insane. That seems like every part of this seems like wildly preventable, and we know about accommodations. Like, if you have a kid, like, all of my kids have some amount of accommodations in their classrooms rooms because they all have some 504 or IEP. They all have 504s or IEPs plans. All four of my kids. It's not like we live in a world where accommodations are a

0:19:36 Eli: Aislinn yells the N word all the time. We can't stop her.

0:19:46 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:19:46 Tom: Rarity and workplaces have accommodations, right? Like we are constantly working in this sphere. It seems insane to just be like, yeah, let's not have that conversation ahead of time. Let's nobody open that conversation ahead of time.

0:20:00 Thomas: Well, or they had it badly. I think Eli nailed it with the like, I think I underestimated because my bias is toward since I say things that I actually believe, I tend to assume too much that people say things they actually believe. Which is really stupid on my part, apparently.

0:20:15 Eli: That's crazy. Why would you do that? Yeah.

0:20:15 Thomas: There's way too much fake wokeness and people just expressing beliefs that they don't actually hold. And this is just a case of, it sounds like, that sounds plausible to me. I don't know. I haven't, I don't know that I have all the information on this or, you know, another thing that can happen to give some amount of credit is if you have some people within an organization who might be cool and some aren't. And then the compromised thing that comes out of that is bullshit, you know, where it's like, well, we've got some people who are right, some people are wrong, let's compromise and put out a mealy mouth bullshit. Like, that can happen to just on an organizational level. That's another thing. Yeah.

0:20:48 Eli: It always happens on an organizational level. And you can, and it is incredibly frustrating to people who are not those levers of power, because the thing that they came up with was awesome. Right. And then the dean comes out and they're like, you'll notice I'm wearing a dashiki. My name is Richard Crowland, the 37th. I'maring a dashigi in that little hat thing. And I'm here to talk to you all about Kwanzaa. And that is not what the department proposed when they said, can we celebrate Kwanzea this year or whatever the case might be?

0:20:55 Thomas: Mm -hmm. Mm -huh. Yeah,

0:21:20 Tom: To bring it to parenting, like, because two of my kids are now in college and they both have gone through the high school experience with 504 plans or IEP plans, we've had conversations where we've had to tell the kids like, okay, like once you are in college, then when you move into the workforce, you have a responsibility to advocate for yourself. Like nobody is going to be an advocate for you proactively.

It's nobody else's responsibility As an adult, like you have a responsibility to advocate for yourself and to know what accommodations you have a right to, and then to ask for those reasonable accommodations in the workplace. And like, like genuinely, this seems like a textbook example of somebody not doing that, not saying like, Hey, let's put an accommodations plan together so I can attend this event.

Like regardless of the, like, the wokeness, like, I do wonder if this isn't like a, a honestly like a good example to be like, hey, here's what happens, actually, if you don't, if you know, right, well, if you don't advocate for yourself, is my, is, like, what I'm saying. Like, that I think, like, people put a lot of onus on the organizers sometimes, but like, we also have an onus as the people, like, as adults being in the world. And like, we, I talk to the boys about this all the time, like, you're going to go into the workforce and nobody's going to know, and they're, they're not responsible for caring about this more than you care about it.

0:22:21 Eli: A hundred percent. If you don't make accommodations for a person with a disability, I also want to be. Yeah.

0:22:48 Eli: Mm hmm.

0:22:48 Tom: Like you have a responsibility to advocate for yourself. And if you don't do it, it will not happen. And you can't blame other people for it. Like you've got to be your own advocate. And like I think there's a sort of like reactiveness or like,

0:23:00 Thomas: I think there's a fine line there. Yeah. I understand people being sensitive to that being something that someone would want to say if they don't want to make accommodations. You know, it's hard because it's like I kind of see both sides of it. Well, I, I think that's something that people would offer up if they're the kind of people who don't want to have to make accommodations or something. Like, it's the kind of, like, that I think people are sensitive to hearing that, because like, wait, it shouldn't be on my kid. The difference between my kid versus, like, someone with power, like, it should be more on the person with power to be accommodating. And so I, I think, yeah, sure, yeah.

0:23:10 Tom: Oh, what do you mean? Right.

0:23:31 Tom: Yeah. But I'm talking about like once our kids begin to reach adulthood, there's an interesting shift. Right. So like when your kids are younger, there is a whole bunch of adults that do the advocacy work for your kids. And they do all this proactively for your kids. And then there's this sort of like switchover that has to happen where they're going to be in a space now, I .e. the entire rest of their lives, where nobody will advocate for them proactively other than themselves. The school has all these systems. They have social workers and they've got teachers and they're got state mandated plans.

They've got all these system in place where a whole bunch of well-meaning adults are going going to make decisions and help kids advocate, or they're going to advocate for the kids and for their needs and to try to drive their success. And then you go off into the rest of your life and all of that just disappears. It's pretty much just gone.

And I think that can be really shocking for kids if their expectations are not properly sort of set and they're not properly transitioned from you've lived in a world where a lot of well-meaning adults have worked really, really hard to be your advocate. And now you're going to go into the world and essentially nobody is going to give a shit whether you live or die.

0:23:41 Thomas: Yeah.

0:24:40 Tom: And that's how the rest of life is going to be, you know, because it kind of is. And I think that's a really shocking transition for a lot of people.

0:24:48 Thomas: For Sure.

0:24:48 Eli: Yeah, no, 100 percent. I also think that it's important, though. I'm thinking about it's crazy. Sorry, this might not be good podcasting. I have this situation with one of my students right now. Now, there's been an issue in the classroom and it's a problem. And I wrote him an email, a very nice email being like, hey, I'm not telling you to drop my class. I'm telling you your grade is really bad. And if you drop my class now, you don't get an F. And his answer was, well, I have these accommodations. And I didn't really have a, I basically just got in with the accommodations office and said, hey. This is not, this is not what these accommodations are and this is not what I can do. And it was tough because the accommodations office sends students to me. They know that I make a ton of effort to use the dyslexia font and that I use ADD questionnaire formatting and all that kind of stuff.

I send out copies of all my notes. I allow myself to be recorded and I record myself when I lecture. So I do a lot of the stuff. It was a scenario where, and this is, you know, this is an incredibly young person, so huge grain of salt, right? Because you're allowed to also need accommodations and also be a young person who fucks up.

But it was sort of this person had crossed the Rubicon of good decision making and then sort of turned around and said, well, I have these accommodations. Do those fix it? And I kind of had to be like, ah, unfortunately they do not. And so I think that's an important part of learning as well.

I wanted to talk a little about what I mean by the fake woke, though, because while we are obviously trying to court the right with this new Manosphere podcast, what I mean by fake woke is not well-intentioned people doing it

0:26:15 Tom: Right.

0:26:32 Eli: Wrong. Wrong. I mean people who do not want to do the thing, and so they are very clearly doing it to the letter of the law. Nobody who actually cared about the comfort of their audience. And this attendee had a conversation about what was going on with this gentleman's attendance, right? As is obvious by this episode, you could have run his attendance past Tom and Tom would have been like, I don't know, I feel like maybe we have a room where someone's yelling the N-word, but it's, you know, a little further away from the theater than the rest.

0:26:32 Thomas: Right. Yeah.

0:26:57 Tom: Why?

0:27:07 Tom: Why am I? That is

0:27:09 Eli: Well, look, first, for those who listen to the bonus episode, they know your first suggestion would be "kill yourself." That would be the first thing you would. That's if you're, if you have any mental difference, Tom. As Tom always tells his kids as they leave for school every morning, Aislinn, kill yourself. Amen, kill yourself. Donovan, overdue, buddy. Mwah.

0:27:18 Thomas: Yeah. patreon.com/

0:27:15 Tom: Not my suggestion. It's not my my suggestion. It's never my first. It is a suggestion that is not true. Any mental difference. Yeah. Yeah. I do.

0:27:40 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:27:41 Eli: But speaking of health things and shifting wildly in topic and range, Tom. You've got a little health update for us. A Hayley watch, if you will. Hayley Watch. Is she faking it? No, she's not.

0:27:44 Thomas: Gldads. Yeah.

0:27:54 Tom: Not surprising.

0:27:57 Eli: Health watch. Hayley did not love that theme song when I pitched it to her in the writers room. Let me tell you, she was real cranky about it. Yeah.

0:28:04 Tom: Surprising. Yeah, so, you know, I haven't given a whole lot lot of specifics about this for a long time, because Haley, it just doesn't feel like my news to give. But Haley and I talked about it and she's comfortable with it, and so I'm happy to kind of give people an update. It's also, I'm probably going to, and by probably I mean definitely going to, be missing some shows for probably all of my podcasts for at least a week or two while we deal with some health stuff. So listeners will know Haley's been going through it health-wise. It's taken us a long time to kind of figure out what the problem has been. It's been a very, very difficult problem to suss out. But Haley has something called Cushing's disease. So what that means is that she's got a tumor on her pituitary, which is located sort of at the base of the brain behind the nose area. And it's got to go. The tumor's got it go.

0:28:51 Eli: Not the brain, the tumor. That's

0:28:51 Tom: It's causing no end of problems. Not the brain, not the brain. The tumors got to get the

0:28:53 Thomas: I was just thinking, as he said the base of the brain behind the nose area, I was like, okay, what is a brain? I don't. Now I don' t know. I thought I knew, guys, but yeah, that can't be what. But no, I assume Tom usually knows what the fuck he's talking about with this stuff. So I assumed, I'm like, what? Maybe I don't know. Is the head actually backwards anatomically?

0:29:00 Tom: Brain

0:29:01 Eli: Not, no. Can I say, Thomas, I had the exact same thought where I was like, that's at the base of the brain, that's the front of the grain. It's the front bottom. Front bottom, words have meaning, Tom.

0:29:07 Tom: Like under. It sort of like under the, it's a, it's okay. The front bottom, I don't know. Yeah.

0:29:20 Tom: So, like, underneath, underneath. So actually backwards? Yeah, you gotta spin it around. But so, uh, yeah, so they're gonna go, we're gonna head down to, uh, MD Anderson down in

0:29:20 Eli: You know how I see everything upside

0:29:24 Thomas: Doctors are just like, it's not commonly known, but the head is actually backwards from what everyone thinks.

0:29:36 Tom: Houston. Cushing's disease is a rare disease. It's three. So there's not a, not

0:29:42 Eli: Down. Curry luck, sexually transmitted

0:29:42 Tom: A high rate of occurrence. It's three in a million. It's three in a million.

0:29:42 Thomas: See, what are you complaining for? It's not like it was one in a million, Tom. What the fuck are you explaining for? Three in a million. Yeah, yeah.

0:29:47 Eli: You hear that? You hear that, Hailey? That's what you get for Mary and Tom put the ring on her finger and just a demon appears next to her. Oh, hey, what's going on? Have you met the turtle? Oh, you gotta meet him. He's

0:29:52 Thomas: You know The, the Christian thing about, like, didn't you forget to ask someone their consent and it's Jesus or whatever? Like, that's that. But Tom has to do that with the demon.

0:30:05 Eli: Great. It's, but it's Tom's bad luck demon. Yeah.

0:30:09 Tom: So there, there's, there's not a lot of experts on this. Unfortunately, it's been a, it's been a really, it's been like an unbelievably difficult road for her. So, you know, the health problems that she's had have been life-alteringly severe for the last five years plus now that we've been kind of going through all of this. It's taken a long time to figure out what the problem was.

We got to get down to Houston because there's, like, this is where the expert on this particular surgery is. These tumors are like between one and three millimeters, like they're tiny little things. It's like, it's fucking crazy. The whole pituitary gland is the size of a pea. So they actually, like, they go in through the nose and drill out a piece of your skull, and then they enter the area. The whole surgery is fucking incredible. It's insane. You can watch it, like, you can do anything. You actually watch these things on YouTube and see them. But we're very, very hopeful that this, this surgery, which is the middle of March, can give her some relief, can get rid of this, can stop this problem, and allow her to get her health back and kind of turn things around for her, because she needs it.

And it's been a really intense five years for everybody, for her, for me, for the kids. It's a lot. If you've had somebody in your life who's had like a chronic long -term disabling illness,

0:30:09 Thomas: Yeah. Yep.

0:30:15 Eli: You don't even know where the base of the brain is It's three in a million, that's like, no, nobody's listening to

0:31:34 Tom: It's fucking intense. Like it's genuinely, it'S really intense. And IT'S It's pretty intense to be facing down like, hey, in a little over two weeks now, we'll be heading down to Houston to have brain surgery. That's fucking all. It's all quite a lot. And we'll be down there for at least a week, but I would guess we'll be in Houston for two weeks, possibly three. So we don't know exactly how long we'll be down there. A lot of it depends on how the surgery goes and how she feels after and how soon you can get back on an airplane. So there's a lot of kind of unknowns and variables that are in there. So if I'm not around, it's not because I'm being lazy. It's just because I've got to, you know, hang out and make sure that my wife recovers from brain surgery.

0:32:16 Eli: That all the other times he's missed are Because he was being lazy, though. Don't you know, try not to confuse that with the other time he's messed. Then that would be confusing for you. Those, those were just laziness.

0:32:19 Tom: So it's all.

0:32:18 Thomas: 100%. Yeah, I think he's still being lazy in doing this, but

0:32:23 Tom: Yeah, probably.

0:32:28 Eli: Yeah, you're not getting brain surgery.

0:32:29 Tom: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:32:29 Thomas: Yeah, but he's, he's kind of put us in a position where we can't really complain about it. Yeah.

0:32:32 Eli: If she needs a Jell -O cup, she can push that button by the bed. She'll be fine.

0:32:36 Tom: You know, for a fucking half of an eighth of a second, I thought, you know, if I'm stuck for a long time, maybe I can bring like if we just can't come home for a while. I was like, I could bring a microphone. But then I'm like, if we're down there, It's because she feels so bad we can't get on an airplane. So how in the world are you going to like do anything other than care for her, you idiot? Like, I don't even know why that thought occurred to me for a second, but like, I'm so stuck on, like, well, I have to work, you know, I can't take an infinite amount of time off, like, at some point people are gonna get tired of this shit.

0:32:48 Eli: Yeah.

0:33:08 Eli: Also, I know there's not a hell, but if we were the kind of work environment here at this podcast that was like, Tom, we really need you to come in and make some dick jokes and talk about people fucking around at the BAFTA. Like, we would deserve the hell if it doesn't exist. Of all the jobs, right, where you can take time off and it truly should not matter to anybody, podcasting, we're not the daily, right? No one's tuning in to find out if we're going to war with Iran. If there's any job you should be able to take off from, it is ours. Well, we are wishing Haley the best. We hope she recovers soon. Have you thought about when the doctors open her up and they're like, oh, my gosh, she was faking this whole time? How are you going to handle that conversation? Well,

0:33:17 Thomas: No,

0:33:53 Tom: Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, there is a zero percent chance she's faking this whole time.

0:33:58 Eli: She should debate me on series inquiries only about whether or not she has a brain

0:34:02 Thomas: I'm not hosting that one. Yeah.

0:34:03 Tom: Yeah. Nope. Let me tell a quick dad story that's related to this though, because I it really, like, like, grab me. So going through this process is like, it's a fucking labyrinth, right?

0:34:04 Eli: Tumor somehow. I still win. It's been a lot of

0:34:15 Tom: Like, It's the worst. It's the actual worst. Most endocrinologists don't know how to deal with Cushing's, so they won't deal with it. They just keep referring you to somebody else, referring youto someone else. Then there's all this testing. The testing takes, it has taken over a year to get all the testing done, and then imaging, and multiple images, different kinds. It's a nightmare. So when they finally come back, and both the endocrineologist, who's a specialist in this out of UCLA and then this guy at MD Anderson in Houston, they both were like immediately like, yep, there it is, we can get it. And it was this incredible sense of like relief and then fear, because it's like, awesome, that's the problem, let's fucking take it out. And it's like, holy shit, brain surgery. That's, that's a lot. That's, and so it's kind of, you know, like there's a, there's a, a lot of emotionality that comes with all of that. More than anything, I want my wife to get her life back. I want her to get her health back. I want to feel like herself again.

I want it to be able to reenter all of our lives, including her own in a healthy and like physical way, you know, that she's not been able to do in half a decade, like half a decade plus. And like, so we're telling family like, Hey, here's what's going on. And we've got to go to Houston and all of this. We told my dad and my dad's fucking first response was, if you need me, I'll fly down there.

I'll fly down to Houston because if you need me, if you want me there, I'll fly down. And like my dad can't just get on an airplane for three hours.

0:34:16 Thomas: Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

0:35:48 Eli: Fun, that's a huge offer.

0:35:50 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:35:51 Tom: Like my dad has to stand like every 15 or 20 minutes. He can't stay seated or stay standing. He's in a lot of pain all the time. And there was not a heartbeat of time between him, like hearing about it and being like, I'm going to get on the airplane. What do you need? And then like Haley's dad, I told him no, you know, I don't, I thank you, you know, I love you, but like, I can't think of what I would need, and I would honestly be like, I gotta take care of dad too, cuz like he's not in great shape, you know, so would not be like a cut, you know, but like, we told Haley his dad and the very next day Haley said, like, I'd like to come down for moral support, can I please be there for

0:36:07 Eli: Right.

0:36:19 Eli: Right, yeah, exactly. It's not going to be

0:36:32 Tom: You? So like both the dads were just immediately like, yeah, we'll be there for you. Like we'll just drop everything and we'll be there for you. And I was like, that's how it should be, like, that, that's fucking good stuff right there. That's how you fucking dad. And it was really very moving. It's still very moving to think about, because the response was just so immediate and it was so unequivocal.

0:36:37 Eli: It's

0:36:32 Thomas: Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. My dad's response is like, oh, I am dead. Like, fucking asshole. Idiot. Yeah. Yeah. But seriously, Tom, the world is lucky that Tom is Tom and not me, because they would have heard no end to my complaining that I would have done about how hard your life has been. People have no idea. Like we joke, Tom has taken on just an enormous amount. Like it's unfathomable how much Tom takes on and still jokes and laughs about it. This has been like years, right? I mean, just like years of everything being a lower priority than trying to figure this out for Haley and to make everything work. And like, you know, you've put you, you have been no priority to yourself and it's like been years. Like it's the kind of thing that like some people can do for a little while, but like, Tom's just been this for God, as long as the show's been going, almost, right? Or it's been

0:36:58 Eli: Awesome, classic about

0:37:00 Tom: Classic dad. So

0:37:12 Eli: Lydia's brain tumor. Yeah.

0:37:13 Tom: I'll

0:37:52 Eli: Yeah. Yeah.

0:37:52 Thomas: It's been a while, like, and I just can't believe you've been able to do it. And it's like, I, people, you don't, you aren't a complainer. You aren't me. So you, so people don't know. And they really have no idea how much you've, you've you and Haley have gone through and like how hard it's been. Yeah.

0:38:07 Tom: Tell you what, like, it's impossible for me to think about complaining about my life. I still get to wake up and feel good. I know I still get to wake up and feel good in my body, you know, like I do, I like I had, when my fucking neck got all fucked up, I had a hurt for 17 days, then they fixed it and I was

0:38:12 Eli: You should think about it.

0:38:13 Thomas: You should, you should consider it. Yeah. That feels nice.

0:38:26 Tom: Fine. Haley's had to wake up for five plus years and feel like shit and we had no idea even how to get her out of that. Yeah, five plus years, so, mm-hmm. Yeah. I have no complaints. Like it's like, I'm so intensely conscious of what it means to have a healthy body and what a, an unbelievable, genuinely, like what an unbelievable gift that is that like, I feel bad if I'm like, oh, I fucking hurt my arm a little bit there working out.

It's like I can work out. You know what I mean? Like I get to work out, I get to wake up today and be like, uh, I'm a little tired and I have, uh you know, I gotta do do this thing. It's like, fucking, I get to do this stuff. Like my, my perspective on all of that has shifted. I get to do it. I get to, I get to wake up and work out. I get to wake up and go earn a living.

I get to wake up and like move my body around the house and take care of the kids and do these things and have this life because like, I can see what it means when you can't do it and I can see how, how much bigger that piece is.

0:38:30 Thomas: Five. Oh God, man. I didn't even know it was that long. Wow.

0:39:27 Tom: So I'm like, yeah, I, I get to do it. I get to wake up today and I get to have a body that does what I ask it to do with minimal complaints.

0:39:33 Thomas: See, I disagree with this. You should still be able to be like, Yeah, But Relatively Speaking, speaking, relatively speaking, this particular thing was still shitty and inconvenient. So I should be able to complain about, you know what I mean? Like, have you considered that point of view?

0:39:36 Eli: Your body can't do that much, Tom. We've seen you.

0:39:46 Eli: Yeah. Also, the bad thing's happening to your wife. So you should definitely complain about that, Tom? Yeah.

0:39:52 Thomas: Yeah. You don't even complain about that.

0:39:52 Tom: Yeah, right, like, yeah, no way.

0:39:56 Eli: I mean, honestly, how good a help meet can she have been while she was in excruciating pain? You know what I'm saying? Think about it biblically. Hey, I hope her recovery is slow enough that I could leave the country and change my name. She just spins around a pole and kicks me a couple hundred times in a row. That's how you'll know she's fully healed.

0:40:04 Thomas: Biblically.

0:39:59 Tom: Oh, my God. Oh, my God, yeah, You're fucking toast when she gets back in shape. Man, you're just, you're fucking toast when she gets back in shape. Yeah, they're

0:40:21 Eli: I want to say, I hope for a full recovery, yeah? Like, that's a thing? It's not one of those bullshits where they're like, nah, you won't be able to live a life.

0:40:24 Tom: Yeah, I, you know, she's gonna need a lot of No, no, there's like, right now her quality of life is pretty much zero, and like, I think, no

0:40:38 Eli: You should stop telling her to kill herself. Huh?

0:40:40 Tom: No, no, no, no, no, never, not for a second. But like, I mean, she would say the same thing. She has a very low quality of life, unfortunately. She's not able to, you know, do a, a lot of things that make a person, like, happy and, and feel like themselves, and so it's been very tough for her. But like, with this surgery, if it is successful, that's for you, Haley, and knock on some wood if it's successful

0:41:03 Eli: Ah, I'm walking through a stone

0:41:05 Tom: Yeah, no, don't curse me, you motherfucker. I will fly to New Jersey and I will rip you right in half. Yeah

0:41:05 Thomas: Yeah

0:41:05 Eli: Circle at the same time, Haley, though. So we're back to zero.

0:41:11 Eli: You're kicking from the other side on a different bowl.

0:41:13 Thomas: You're already so cursed, Tom. Any change in the amount of curse is a positive one for you. There's no, yeah

0:41:18 Eli: That's true. You should see if there's kind of a luck threshold that you can flip over the political horseshoe.

0:41:21 Tom: Right so but there's there is a possibility like Like she'll she'll need a lot of rehab and physical therapy after all this. But yeah, if things are successful, it's like, yeah, like after rehab and physical therapy, she could have her life back, like her real, honest to God, full life back, which would just be unbelievable. I sometimes just sit and think about, like, what it will feel like to drive her to physical therapy that first day, just for her to be able to do that work and start down that path. That's a big thought for me. That's a thought that I think about a lot. So

0:41:29 Thomas: Yeah Incredible

0:41:57 Eli: Sure. Do you ever think that stuff about me, like doing nice stuff for me, too? Because I feel like you haven't talked enough about me for the last couple of minutes. I feel like people really want to hear, like about your love for me and what you would do for me. I have heartburn from

0:42:05 Tom: Dude enough about you yeah it's too big it's true I don't know I don'T HAVE THE WORDS ELI I DON'T HAVE THE

0:42:16 Eli: The GLP-1 that I'm on, and I just feel like you never mention it on the show.

0:42:20 Tom: WORNS I that's you haven't really given me permission yeah

0:42:22 Thomas: Do you Never mention it

0:42:23 Eli: Oh, here's a question. If she gets better, do we get another season of Talking Ship?

0:42:27 Thomas: Oh yeah

0:42:27 Tom: Oh absolutely yeah we've wanted to do that show for a long time but uh her voice has changed as a result of this so she yeah yeah so no

0:42:35 Thomas: Oh shit, really? Wow. I

0:42:36 Eli: It's actually me. Yeah, I'm doing, I're Haley doing a voice.

0:42:39 Thomas: Think this is just him setting up the lore for the new co -host. I'm just kidding

0:42:42 Eli: Yes.

0:42:42 Tom: It's been fucking crazy, like, to say that this has upended her life. It doesn't. I mean, her voice is changed a bit, it's like, it's, it's pretty gravelly and different than it normally would be. That should go back, uh, to normal. That's the result of some medication, I think, that she's been taking to try to help this problem until we can get to the surgery piece. So yeah, her voice has changed, and she also has, having a hard time with word recall at the moment

0:43:07 Thomas: Oh shit, wow. Maybe I have a fucking tip. No, I'm kidding. Yeah, yeah, yeah

0:43:09 Tom: So yeah, we've

0:43:11 Eli: She has trouble waking up in the mornings, and she's late for everything. To be fair, that was Haley before.

0:43:18 Tom: Not wanted to do this show because, you know, it just would be difficult to do the show and she wouldn't feel like herself and wouldn't feel like she's, like, yeah, here we go, like, this is the right product to put out to

0:43:27 Eli: Tom knows Tom Jones? That's fucking cool. Well, we wish her the best and happy healing, all of that, and if she comes out of surgery with n-word Tourette's, we hope that you bring her to a bunch of live shows

0:43:38 Tom: People

0:43:40 Thomas: It's very appropriate first part of the show we did. I'm glad we did

0:43:45 Clip: DEAR OLD DADS

0:43:51 Eli: All right, gentlemen, before we go, my only plan for today is to get new glasses, after that I guess I'll

0:44:00 Tom: Accommodations. That was stupid. I liked it

0:44:02 Thomas: That, yeah

0:44:48 Eli: See, sorry, I gotta go talk about jerking off into panties

0:44:52 Tom: And essentially nobody's gonna give a shit whether you live or

0:44:56 Eli: Is she faking it? No, no, she's not. HEALTH WATCH!

0:45:01 Thomas: Is the head actually backwards anatomically

0:45:05 Tom: Die! Don't curse me, you motherfucker

0:45:08 Eli: I hope her recovery is slow enough that I can leave the country and change my name.

0:45:13 Tom: I might uncontrollably shit myself