DOD275: Does Banning Phones at School Work?

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 banned cell phones from the studio. I'm Tom Curry.

0:00:33 Thomas: Uh, oh, from the... Yeah.

0:00:33 Tom: I'm joined as always by Thomas Smith and Eli Bosnick. Hello, gentlemen.

0:00:36 Eli: Thomas wishes

0:00:38 Thomas: I thought you were gonna joke like we're banning the cell phones from the listeners, like that's how they listen, Tom. They can't... Everyone has to download the show on their computer now. Put it into their record player.

0:00:43 Eli: Onto

0:00:44 Tom: No, you guys get your cell phones. We just don't. We can't have them in the studio

0:00:48 Eli: Their computer and listen, carry your laptop around your house. Like an old person reminds me of a story of my mom. I love my mom so much. She really wants to support the shows, but a lot of the time she'll get to a part of the show where I'll be like, and then I fucked a goose and she doesn't like it anymore. Yeah, I get it. I'm her baby.

0:01:06 Thomas: Weird, I wonder why.

0:01:07 Eli: Like she, she held me and like sang me to sleep and now I'm like fucking bitch. And she's like, okay, that's enough of that. I did something I'm wrong and I'd like to not dwell on it so when she finds an episode where I don't swear at least a little bit longer into the show she'll listen to it a bunch of times and so yeah so

0:01:23 Thomas: Oh my gosh. Yeah.

0:01:26 Tom: That's so sweet. That's so sweet and adorable.

0:01:29 Thomas: Yeah, it is.

0:01:30 Eli: My mom has her podcast player set up I don'T KNOW HOW I DON'T KNOW WHAT SETTING SHE ACTIVATED TO DO THIS BUT SHE HAS IT SET UP SO IT STARTS THE EPISODE FROM THE BEGINNING EVERY TIME SO SHE HAS LISTENED TO DOLLY PARTON'S CHRISTMAS ON THE SQUARE OUR EPISODE OF GAM ABOUT THAT LIKE 20 TIMES NOT THE the full episode she's listened to the first like 36 minutes while she does her morning walk she never just pauses it and continues she just starts it fresh and enjoys the content And that's what we want you to do, podcast listener. But hey, you know a great way to listen to this podcast?

Why, it's over at patreon.com forward slash Dear Old Dads, where your repeated listening will not be interrupted by auto ads. For just a dollar a show, you get a commercial-free version of every Every single episode. You get a little parenting story at the end. I made a 6-7 joke at a very inappropriate time, and you can find out when and where that was over at patreon.com forward slash Dear Old Dads. Like Lee Bennett Hopkins Award winner Liz Rosenberg ripping into the hot, fresh, two -and -a -half -year -old episode of GAM that she enjoys so much. Rip into it.

0:01:52 Thomas: Wow. Wow. Wow.

0:01:54 Tom: Oh, my God.

0:02:35 Tom: Hey.

0:02:48 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:02:50 Tom: You know, I actually have queued up in my Kindle a Liz Rosenberg book to read.

0:02:56 Eli: Oh, which one?

0:02:57 Thomas: You should just read the first

0:02:58 Tom: Uh, I don't know, I have to Yeah, it's it's I think two or three down from where I'm at now, so I have to go back through my list and double check, but I I thought of it the other day and I was like, I'm gonna add one of this is maybe a couple of months ago, but I'm like, I'm going to add one whatever books to the list. I add it to the list, and it's coming up in the queue, so I'll be reading some Liz Rosenberg. Which one should I read?

0:02:59 Thomas: Paragraph over and over.

0:03:00 Eli: Yeah. I'll teach her.

0:03:18 Eli: Laws of Gravity. So here's the thing about Laws of Gravity. Laws Of Gravity is so good, it will actually make you permanently mad that my mom isn't famous. Because LawsOfGravity, my mom's written some brilliant stuff, and Heartbreak Diet is fun, it's a nice family sort of story about recovery and divorce, it's lovely. Oliver writing his lovely Moonrise Palace is this very interesting examination. Yeah, Moonrise Palace is a very interesting examination of culture and violence and antiquity. My mom's a brilliant writer no matter what. Laws of Gravity is just an arrow in the heart that never comes out, and then you remember that my mom isn't like a Nobel Prize-winning number one best-selling New York Times author, and you're like, well, that's not right. I can't just be the one reading that. Everyone has to read this book. When I get famous, that's what I'm making mandatory, is that everyone has to read

0:03:44 Tom: That's the one I downloaded, yeah.

0:04:16 Tom: Oh,

0:04:16 Eli: Laws of Grab because to the person, everyone I have I've ever recommended that book to goes like, I think that might be like the best book I've ever read in my life. And I'm like, I know, right? She's so good. And they're like, that's crazy, why isn't she famous? And I'm like, it's a fucking cold, uncaring universe, right? That or people will read Mom's poems and realize that she's like, she's not just a good poet, she's an incredible poet. And then they're like, ah, fuck, because

0:04:41 Tom: Eli, this is terrible. I can't read it on Kindle. No, it's not on Kindles. It's not. It's terrible. No.

0:04:44 Eli: I don't want

0:04:47 Thomas: What? How is it not on Kindle?

0:04:47 Eli: Laws of gravity. Oh, that one was, I thinkthat one was published by Amazon.

0:04:50 Tom: Hardcover and paperback only right now.

0:04:54 Thomas: What?

0:04:54 Tom: I'm looking right now, I was literally going to add it on my list, but I will say that this is an old man thing to say, but I have gotten to where I struggle to read paper books. Because I read almost all Kindle now. So unless the lighting in the room is perfect, I can't really read a paper book.

0:05:05 Thomas: That's an old man thing. Oh, yeah.

0:05:06 Eli: Unless blue light is forcing Tom awake like an Abu Ghraib patient.

0:05:09 Thomas: Boy,

0:05:10 Tom: Yeah. I can see well enough to read apaper book unless the lightning is really good.

0:05:14 Thomas: How do you, Tom, I know we've already talked about this recently, but how do not fall asleep instantly when trying to read something? Like with your life?

0:05:17 Tom: I find reading really engaging for the most part. I find it more engaging than a lot of television. I like TV, don't get me wrong, or a movie, but I can get kind of lulled into sleep a little easier sometimes with TV or a movie because it's like I'm just sort of staring fixedly. My eyes aren't sort of tracking back and forth. It feels less active, so it's actually kind of like more mesmerizing and easier for me to fall asleep watching TV than reading a book when

0:05:26 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Me too. Yeah, man.

0:05:49 Thomas: It's so, so funny because I, I am the night person and I don't have the hard time sleeping, you know, watching anything doing. But when I read stuff for the kids sometimes it just, fucking, oh my god, there's times where I feel like the kids probably think I have a disorder because I'm just yawning through it. Like, I'll just be like, "And then, and the bear went down to the," like, because it's, I don't know why my brain is like trying to put me to sleep so hard. Oh, yeah.

0:06:10 Eli: Oh,

0:06:16 Tom: I used to read to Finn. I would fall asleep while I was reading to him.

0:06:20 Eli: 100%. Yeah. Yeah.

0:06:20 Tom: All the time. Oh, and then he would just very quietly get up and go walk into another room and go play and, like, let me sleep.

0:06:20 Thomas: Uh, oh, it's so cute. Oh, really? I wouldn't just sleep with you.

0:06:28 Tom: Yeah, yep. Yep. You did it all the time.

0:06:30 Eli: I think it's an emotional release slash relaxation thing because like it's been 3000 years that parents have been reading to their kids. Right. Like I don't quite have my finger on the pulse of when we first put pen to paper. But pretty quickly afterwards, someone sat down next to their child and read to them as a means of comfort and love. And so it's so deep in your veins that this is what you do, that whenever you have that moment, your body's like, I will die now.

And so just fucking, I try to read to Mags on, we do, we read, his bedtime story is 10 pages a night. And it is not because we don't want to read this kid more. It is because Anna and I turn into, you ever see that video of those parents who've OD'd in the car and their kids are in the back and the cops rescue them? That's us trying to read 11 pages of a Dog Man coming. You haven't watched that video of those dead parents and their children and their parents, kids are trapped in the bank and they're almost gonna die, but the cops get them? I've

0:06:57 Thomas: No, I

0:07:00 Tom: No,

0:07:21 Thomas: Don't watch the most disturbing shit in the world for no reason.

0:07:23 Tom: Yeah, that's fucked up. Yeah, no, you need to not have a telephone at all.

0:07:29 Thomas: What is wrong with you?

0:07:29 Tom: You should not have the internet. What is happening?

0:07:31 Eli: Seen that video a couple of times. You should check it.

0:07:33 Tom: I will tell you too, though, like part of the thing, like especially kids at a certain age, they'll like, they're find a book, they love that book. And then you're reading that book for like six months every night. Eamon did that like crazy. There was this car book that he wanted to be read. And like, Like, if you were like, okay, I'll read you another book, you'd be like, well, just fucking read this one again. What the fuck is wrong with you? Oh, God. Dude, my brain just shuts the fuck off with that stuff, though.

0:07:53 Thomas: I know. I do. You still have books memorized from that? I totally do. Oh, There was a book, well, I know the kids never made me read them a book twice in a row, but I did have to read the same book every night for a while. Phoebe loved that. So for her second birthday, and I can't believe that this isn't yesterday. For her second-birthday party, she got a book from somebody that was like a Sesame Street thing that was specifically for like her second birth. And it was a birthday party book, you know, and it's just like this thing. And it's like, "Let's have a party with a great big cake. It's time for fun. Make no mistake." It's been six years,

0:07:59 Eli: Out yep.

0:08:30 Thomas: Six years. Although, to be fair, I think she forgot about it and then found it for her third birthday and then I read it, or sometime around then. I remember thinking like, oh yeah, this was from a year ago. So I, I had to read it like for a, at least a month, I don't, I have no concept of the time, every night.

0:08:44 Eli: Oh, fucking years. The Going to Bed Book by Sandra Boynton. Gun to my, wake me from a coma and gun to my forehead, I'll give you every syllable of The Going-to-Bed Book by Sandra Boynton. No fucking problem.

0:08:49 Thomas: God's the best. Oh, it's so good. Oh, the best thing too is like, I still remember like her, her little voice saying the, the words kind of wrong. Ah, it's the best.

0:09:05 Eli: Yep. Yeah.

0:09:07 Tom: Do you remember your favorite childhood book?

0:09:09 Eli: My parents hit it. This is a famous story in my family. Is I made them read Fat Santa and The Prince Has a boo -boo so often that one day my mom just hid them and we and was like, "We lost those books. They're gone. They died." Chicka

0:09:16 Thomas: Oh yeah.

0:09:24 Tom: I

0:09:25 Thomas: Oh man. Yeah. I loved, uh, it was funny cause it's the same one. Some of the same ones are still good. You know, like chicka, chicka boom, boom. I remember my mom reading that. Yeah, and I thought it was so fucking good. That's one of my most visceral, like mom reading to me memories. And then also, um, Tiki Tiki Tembo.

0:09:34 Eli: Chicka Boom Zoom's a fucking classic.

0:09:44 Thomas: Is that one one's still cool, or is it like racist now or something? I don't know, but I love that book.

0:09:44 Eli: Yep. I think it's still good. I'm not sure. It feels

0:09:48 Tom: Think it feels racist to me.

0:09:50 Thomas: Probably. Yeah.

0:09:50 Tom: I feel like you're canceled for saying that. Yeah, that doesn't...

0:09:50 Eli: It feels like it might be on the, yeah, hopefully. That feels like one we could revisit and we'd be like, ah, yeah, no, yeah, it's a tough one. I feel like, have I told you my thing about parenthood bits?

0:09:55 Thomas: I love that one because the art is really nice too. It's really nice. I like that book.

0:09:55 Tom: I don't approve of whatever Thomas just did, by the way.

0:10:04 Thomas: I don't know.

0:10:05 Tom: No.

0:10:05 Eli: Okay, so I feel like everything everyone tells you about what kind of parent they are, it's bullshit, right? Oh, this guy, we really emphasize, all you need to do is watch a parents read their kid a story and you see who they are as a parent, straight up and down. Nobody can hide it. Me, I'm doing 27 voices, three bits, Mr. Bear, "Squash you all flat," is Trump, and 99% of it is improvised, right?

0:10:34 Eli: If someone does a straight-up-and-down reading of a story for their kid, they fucking hate their kid. If you just read the words on the page, that's a failed abortion in that parent's mind. That's all. As long as there were bits before the unconsciousness took you, I know you love your children. Other one?

0:10:34 Tom: Jesus Christ Okay what if they fall asleep Halfway through the story And the kid walks away Okay Alright yeah

0:10:52 Thomas: You know what's so funny is I don't, I don't really do that. It's the weirdest thing.

0:10:56 Eli: You don't do bits? You love bits. You do bits with me.

0:10:58 Tom: I don't do bits either Yeah

0:10:59 Thomas: No, so the kids have these toys that we got them at Disneyland that are Star Wars, the new Star Wars, is it a Porg or something? What's the new puffin?

0:11:07 Eli: Yeah, porg.

0:11:08 Thomas: Okay, they have one of those and then one of another thing and they're like puppets so you can do their mouths and I do that, they love that, I do bits.

0:11:13 Eli: Yeah. Porg's hard. It's a bit.

0:11:16 Thomas: I do, dude, I do some of my best fucking improv with those kids and those, it's pearls before swine. Those fucking assholes that first off they can't go with the amazing storyline I've already constructed on the fly with them. Like, this is going to be great, it will involve all of you, it'll be a way, no, Remy has to try to eat the fucking puppet and, and I

0:11:20 Eli: Yeah. Oh, 100%.

0:11:30 Eli: Oh, they can't yes and at all. Yeah, it sucks. Mm -hmm.

0:11:35 Thomas: I literally have gotten to the point where as the puppet I'll be like, "Why are you, you doing that, Remy?" "Stop hitting me." Like, it's like that bad because if nothing's happening to him for four seconds he starts attacking the puppet, like, take, I was, I was like, I'm not gonna do this then, like, you have to or just, he wants the attention, so like yeah.

0:11:36 Eli: Mm -mm. Ha ha ha ha. Yup. Mm -hm. The only bit that he wants to do is I punch the puppet and the puppet doesn't like it.

0:11:56 Tom: Well it just needs to be about him Yeah right You

0:11:57 Eli: Yup.

0:11:57 Thomas: So like he, he, his way of like getting that as he attacks the puppet, and so I had to start doing a thing where I'm like, "All right, I'll just not do the puppet show if you do that," and it's, it's kind of worked, but I do all, all kinds of, I had these great storylines, hilarious fucking improv. And then Phoebe will just have to be like, "No, what if we do? No. What if it's this? No, what is this?" And then Arlo will start doing it too. And they're like trying to, I'm like, you're four storylines away from the thing that I already was doing. And nevermind. It's fine. Yeah, I

0:12:17 Eli: Yeah. You

0:12:23 Tom: Gotta do three different puppet shows man You gotta one for Phoebe

0:12:25 Eli: Gotta get it rotating schedule. A Pope, but shows, everyone comes in and they can sin.

0:12:28 Tom: You know Now,

0:12:28 Thomas: Know. I really do. If they're by themselves, it's great. They love it. That's really fun. But I don't do with books. I don't know why, it just doesn't feel like natural to me.

0:12:36 Eli: If aliens came down and they were like, "Prove your wife is a good mom," I would have her read Chick Chat. So here's the thing you need to understand about the book Chick Chat, which I recommend, if you got a funny wife, get in there, Chick Chat. 99% of that book is the word "peep" because it's about this little chick that won't shut the fuck up and then it uncovers an egg and it meets a turtle and, and the turtle's real quiet, and so the chick just gets to yammer all day at the fucking poor-ass turtle while the turtle tries to live his life. It rules. But here's the thing. 99% of your duds out there in the world would just be like, "Um, I don't understand. Why does it say peep, peep, peep over and over? This isn't educational."

0:12:54 Thomas: Oh.

0:13:06 Tom: Oh,

0:13:15 Eli: How am I going to give my kid a mantra story block while I'm na -na -na? My wife's delivery of Chick Chat is so fucking good. It's comedy. You can track what the chick is saying each beat. It's fucking flawless. It's a flawless performance. That's what I'm saying. What were we talking about?

0:13:15 Thomas: Nice.

0:13:18 Tom: Yeah,

0:13:31 Thomas: Wait, what was the topic? Yeah, does anyone

0:13:35 Eli: Cell phones in schools. Dear Old Dads, patreon.com Rip into it.

0:13:35 Tom: You said

0:13:38 Thomas: Remember? Oh, No, we already did that. We're past

0:13:40 Eli: I said that. I already said that. Yeah.

0:13:41 Tom: That already. Yeah, we did that already, so we really wanted to talk about this article from the New York Times. Did cell phone bans work? New study finds mixed results, and I think we ought to talk about it because I don't care what the study says.

0:13:54 Thomas: That, well, so yeah, it's a New York Times article. What is it specifically saying though? We gotta

0:13:54 Eli: I mean,

0:14:00 Tom: Let me, because I actually, I have the article called up, and so, Eli, I know you want to focus on the parts of the study where it failed. So I think importantly, it failed. This is important. Yeah. It failed to change test scores

0:14:10 Eli: That's my general approach to everything, but that is true for that.

0:14:15 Thomas: Okay, wait.

0:14:15 Tom: And it failed to do anything about bullying. However, teachers are thrilled with the change. They report fewer distractions from personal cell phone use and students in schools with strict bans reported a greater sense of personal well -being.

0:14:31 Thomas: Angela Duckworth is on this. Huh. She's one of the listed

0:14:33 Tom: What? I don't know who that is.

0:14:37 Eli: Who's Angela Duckworth?

0:14:38 Tom: I have no idea.

0:14:35 Thomas: Uh, That's interesting. Oh, okay, sorry. Isn't She the grit person. That am I getting the wrong name?

0:14:42 Eli: Who?

0:14:42 Thomas: Nope. If you guys don't know, I'm probably wrong. Sorry. I'll

0:14:42 Tom: I don't have any idea what you're talking about.

0:14:45 Thomas: Silently disregard me. No, no, Tammy Duckworth. No.

0:14:46 Eli: Is she the lady who got her leg shot off in the war and Republicans are always like, "She doesn't know shit"?

0:14:51 Thomas: Angela, yeah, I'm right. Angela Duckworth is the one who did that, like, grit stuff, you know, like she had a TED Talk and was, yeah, it was a, how do you not, you guys know?

0:14:52 Tom: Okay. It's a sandpaper reference. I

0:15:01 Eli: You keep saying the word grit. Seems like a smart thing.

0:15:01 Thomas: Everything usually about this.

0:15:01 Tom: Think, no, I have, I have books about grit at the house, actually. Yeah, I'm just fucking with you. Okay.

0:15:04 Eli: Tom only knows moral panics and I only know celebrity deaths. Yeah.

0:15:04 Thomas: Yeah, she kind of start, well, they just did, they just did a, um, If Books Could Kill on grit, the book, like her book, and it's kind of interesting. Apparently she started the whole grit thing, but then was like, "Actually, it's bullshit," after, but people are still doing it, like, but she's, she's a name on the, on the study, which is interesting. I didn't

0:15:20 Eli: I love when people do that.

0:15:25 Thomas: Notice it until just now. Sorry. Yeah.

0:15:26 Eli: I'm always impressed when someone's like, "Hey, fuck me," that's always awesome, because look, I, it's easy for me to be like, "Hey, I didn't see a Yik Yak," but it's way harder when you have a New York Times best-selling book to be like, "So there weren't a million little pieces," right? It's

0:15:42 Thomas: Oh yeah.

0:15:42 Tom: That is interesting. I fucking forgot about that.

0:15:42 Eli: Fucking, that guy just got caught. He didn't actually turn around, but you know what I'm saying, like, they're, Gladwell was big on the fucking blinky part or whatever. That

0:15:50 Thomas: That, that shit was stupid.

0:15:50 Eli: That stupid, your eyes can tell things right away thing. Yeah, he's been pretty harsh on that and he wrote a part two where he was like, "Ah, here's the thing about not being a scientist."

0:15:54 Tom: Yeah.

0:16:00 Thomas: Yeah, all his books are dumb, though.

0:16:00 Eli: Here's a thing we need: just a scientist who can write a single sentence solves that problem. But nope, they're all fucking nose down into an Andy Weir book, so we, We don't, we gotta, that's true.

0:16:06 Thomas: Yeah.

0:16:11 Tom: Yeah. But then what would Jonah Lair make up for a living? Me. Yeah.

0:16:14 Eli: Yeah, we need professional liars to make us feel like science is understandable. So good, so good.

0:16:17 Tom: I loved Jonah Lair so much, but it fucking hurts me. Yeah. All right, so I think, like, what's important is that the really most, like, easily measured items, like, did it change test scores? No. Did it adjust bullying? No, it didn't. If that's what we're looking for, if that was the goal of getting cell phones out of schools, total failure, like total failure, it had no appreciable impact on that at all. I will say though, that, like, if students have a better sense of wellbeing and the teachers are like, yeah, they're less distracted. I'm like, that's enough.

0:16:50 Tom: Like that's enough. Cause like for me, when I look at this and I'm really curious for you to take, like the cost benefit here is there's no cost to this. There's no, there's no downside at all, but people have not had cell phones for most of schooling and human history. Like it's okay.

0:16:50 Thomas: Yeah,

0:17:01 Eli: You find out your dad died 20 minutes later.

0:17:08 Eli: Yeah, and your dad was just as dead that 20 minutes earlier.

0:17:10 Tom: You know, nobody's life was that impacted. We think of it as this, like, necessary thing like water, but it's like, we know it's not true, right? Like, we no it's fine. It's

0:17:13 Eli: Yeah. What, are you gonna fucking tweet at the school shooter? You're fine.

0:17:22 Thomas: I would say, OK, here's what blows my mind, because when we were first talking about this, I was like, yeah, I don't even care what the data says. You shouldn't have a cell phone going in class, like, I just don't think that. Yeah, I didn't think that was going to like improve everybody's life. Well, but here's the thing. If you read the article, it sounds like, if I'm understanding this correctly, the study is 110 pages, so I'm not going through that. But the article says that the control group was schools that also limited cell phone use, so they didn't compare it to like everybody

0:17:35 Tom: Ubiquitous in school, ubiquitous and classes, you know Yeah, just to open usage.

0:17:51 Thomas: Has cell phones out, but it says, okay, so from the article, those control groups typically also limited cell phone used but less strictly. They sometimes allowed students to use phones between classes or to keep them as long as they stayed hidden from view. Cell phone uses climbed at those schools too, but not by nearly as much as the ones that used Yonder. And apparently Yonder is like this fucking, this is like product research bullshit.

0:18:13 Eli: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:18:13 Thomas: Yeah, so this could be bullshit. Yeah.

0:18:15 Tom: Right. So yeah.

0:18:17 Eli: Yeah,

0:18:23 Ad: [Ad break 2 — ad music]

0:18:26 Tom: I just, I guess I feel like just fucking don't have yours. When a lot of the classrooms they walk in and the teachers like, great, put your phone in this. Like they've, you've got basically like one of those shoe things that you

0:18:37 Eli: You got a shoe thing.

0:18:37 Tom: Yeah.

0:18:38 Thomas: I do think they should have that. Yeah.

0:18:38 Tom: Yeah, and then it's great. Yeah So you just you can't you you have your phone in the classroom, but you can use it at all Yeah as a teacher, how do you feel about it?

0:18:43 Eli: I might have to do a shoe. Yeah, I mean, I tell you, I love my students. I've always been pretty open about out use your cell phone when you need your cell phone. I taught one class that required quiet concentration this year, because it wasn't like a activity class, and the amount of times I had to like do the the nice guy lip purse. You ever seen that? You know I'm talking about. Someone's on a cell phone and you do half Now listen very closely, this is important. You do have a kiss in their direction not a full

0:19:06 Tom: Yes. Mm -hmm.

0:19:14 Thomas: What?

0:19:15 Tom: All right, so Eli kisses his students. That's what he said You heard it here.

0:19:16 Thomas: Yeah, yeah. What's happening right now?

0:19:16 Eli: Kiss. You just move your lips forward enough. And that language is, "I see you have a cell phone. We both know you shouldn't have a cel phone. Please put that away." And I had to do it a bunch.

0:19:30 Tom: I also think it's really important practice for young people to have to exist in a space where 50 minutes goes by where they have to concentrate on something thing entirely because that's a really hard thing for me to, I'm 48 and I have a cell phone addiction like everybody else, especially because of my work. I am glued to my cell phone. I carry it with me room to room. I care it with me without even thinking about it. Like, I'll carry it with me to just like, if I go get water in another room, I grab my phone and walk. Like it's just, it's crazy. That's crazy person behavior. It's pathological. So I think it's really a good thing, just as its own thing, just to be like, hey, you know what? You can exist for 50 whole minutes without a distraction box like you can actually be bored a little, and that's a good thing too. Like, there's a value to being bored.

0:19:42 Eli: Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Yeah.

0:19:59 Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

0:20:21 Tom: Pass a note to another kid, you know, like

0:20:22 Thomas: Yeah, do drugs, fucking make out.

0:20:25 Eli: To a hate crime. Oh, have you tried being homophobic? That was a big thing for me in high school. It was really fun.

0:20:30 Thomas: Drive drunk. Come on, live a little.

0:20:32 Eli: Get in there. So this makes me happy for a lot of reasons. And I want to be very clear that the science on cell phones being bad is unquestioned. There is so much fucking evidence that cell phones are bad. Social media is bad for you.

0:20:48 Tom: And All the studies start off with fucking duh, and then they go into it, right?

0:20:51 Thomas: Wait, for for who? For

0:20:53 Eli: Yeah, everyone, every, name a thing, name it, plants. They erode the cover of your books. Yeah, they're all, cell phones Are bad for everyone and everything. Thing, but since most of us are addicted to cell phones, the only people who are willing to ban them are crazy people who have to tell a crazy lie in order to ban the cell phone, right? They can't just say, "I think cell phones are pretty bad for you, and there's a lot of evidence that they're bad for you." No, they bought a bunch of Mantrasori blocks, and they're pretty sure that if their kid's not on Roblox, they would be inventing the next time machine. So they go, "Well, if we were to ban cellular phones in school classrooms, yeah, I am certain that little Jimeneth, my son who's never made eye contact with anybody

0:20:56 Thomas: What plants? Oh, but I just bought the new plant.

0:21:30 Thomas: Phone the next time machine. I'm sick of this current time machine. Yeah, I just need it. They need to iterate on that whole time machine

0:21:34 Tom: Yeah, because these 1.0 time machines are bullshit. Yeah.

0:21:45 Thomas: Thing. Yeah.

0:21:45 Eli: I'm sure he would be socially robust if he were allowed to just play with a wooden duck at school, and his test scores will magnify." And so the reason we have these bullshit metrics, and this is what makes me so happy about this study, is it's just fact-checking a bunch of lies that the the scientists never asked us to make up about cell phone bans, right? The scientists were never like, if we stop people from having cell phones for five hours a day, there will be no more bullies. The scientists Never said that.

Some mom on a mom group was like, I'm pretty sure that crack million would have a real social safety net. If only cell phones were banned from 9 a .m. to 3 p .m.? And because people are so fucking stupid, they can't even read the study. Again, the studies back up their bullshit. You can just be like, cell phones are bad for, and then say a noun, and you're right. But people have to make up a crazy lie. It's like the fucking White House correspondent's thinner shooter guy. There's so much bad about that situation, and then they have to be like...

It was a false flag by a famous alcoholic incompetent Cash Patel to get Trump a ballroom bill. By the way, hey, folks, I'm not on social media anymore, but my wife tells me when there's an especially juicy social media. And if you would like to watch our dear,

0:22:17 Thomas: Yeah.

0:22:17 Tom: Yeah.

0:22:25 Thomas: Crack million. Yeah.

0:23:13 Eli: Sweet friend Thomas Smith drowning, physically drowning in his attempt to help other people know true things about the universe.

0:23:17 Thomas: They Probably already have. You can't, you can't start this conversation. I'm just gonna start fucking yelling.

0:23:29 Eli: I can. I can and I will.

0:23:30 Thomas: I can't fucking, can we all grow the fuck up? You know what the number one response to me is from all these assholes? You're trying to say false flag didn't really happen. The number one response is like, "You're being really mean about that." Not being, you know, like, it's nobody can even argue. They're just like, "I can't believe that you would say that it was dumb to believe those conspiracy theories." That's it. Like, that's the number one thing, because nobody can actually argue them, and they don't want to even admit that they're that. But they just keep being like, "I mean, you can understand, like, people. People don't believe stuff because the administration." It's like, I don't fucking care. Like, this is wrong. It's easily debunked. Like, why are we having a conversation?

0:23:45 Eli: So you're saying George Bush was a good president and that's why 9 -11 happened because George Bush was an amazing president?

0:24:18 Thomas: God, I keep almost making this post, but it might as well be like they're claiming Donald Trump did a triple backflip. And I'm like ,I don't think he did. For one, those never happen. Like, nobody does it. Maybe, maybe there's been one triple back flip ever. Maybe. I don'T think Trump can do it. And then they're like, oh, yeah, well, he said he didn't do it. And I'm like, yeah. So so we did like, no, you can't just say because he said he didn'T do a triple backflip. That means I bet he did a triple backflop because he always lies. That's not how it works. I can't always lie my way into being superhuman. Oh, I went to space.

0:24:47 Eli: He did it.

0:24:59 Eli: He's not like a sci -fi character where everything he says becomes a lie.

0:25:03 Thomas: Yeah, magically.

0:25:01 Tom: Right, yeah, I Like, I don't want to, like, live too far down this road, but, like, I was talking about this with Cecil the other day, and I, I really have come to the conclusion that conspiracy theories have moved away from what people believe, by and large, to what they find useful rhetorically and politically to say out loud. And I think it's more the second one than it is the first one. And I think it's a problem to fight the first fight, because it's like, well, the right has been using conspiracy theory to great effect for a long time.

0:25:34 Thomas: Oh, see, I had this conversation, too. Do. I don't think they're using it. Yeah. No, sorry to interrupt. No I see your point. I think it's a valid point to think about.

0:25:34 Eli: Yeah, right. Right.

0:25:36 Tom: And I think that there's some rhetorical, yeah, go on. No, I So I think, like, if we debunk, like, the truth of it, but people aren't actually that concerned with what's true so much as they are concerned with creating an effect, then we're, we're talking past each

0:25:53 Thomas: Yeah, so here's the cool thing about this is that we've all three of us have existed in exclusively the circle of people who's been the, this for conspiracy theories for everything else. So we're like, hey, you shouldn't believe those, and also, you know, there's reasons these people believe this stuff that, you know, it doesn't have to do with actual fact beliefs, it's an emotional thing, it's a psychological thing, and then it's as though that's our podcast, that's all of every this movement for pretty much everything, and then all of a sudden half of us were just like, okay, but this conspiracy theory, and then I'm like, no, factually that's not true, and then they're like, wait a minute, you have to speak nice to me because we decide, and I'm like, no, you know, you know all this You're already in that Conversation, it's not, you know what I mean, I'm not going to a different group of people, it's this, we're in the room right now, like you were here for all the other ones, and they literally will tell me, yeah, no, but these, that's different.

0:26:39 Eli: We did this. Yeah.

0:26:41 Tom: Other, yeah.

0:26:53 Tom: Yeah.

0:26:53 Thomas: Like it's not different.

0:26:55 Eli: It's Like how Richard Dawkins is wrong about literally everything except whether or not there's a god. Do you guys see that he thinks Claude is, is sentient? It fucking rules. And yeah, Claudia, as he calls her. And what's really funny about that is, like, it makes me go, like, am I wrong about whether or not there's a god? Because I thought

0:26:59 Thomas: Yeah. The Claudia. Yeah, you mean Claudia? Yeah.

0:27:03 Tom: No, oh my god, oh my lord, no.

0:27:17 Thomas: Yeah yeah.

0:27:17 Eli: This guy, there's no way he, he accidentally landed on good arguments on just one possible topic. Like, you can't just be right about one thing. It's about the process by which you arrive at stuff. And then you realize that it's really just about, again, what you said. It's just about like, what are we invested in? And to be fair, look, nobody empathizes more with the notion of truth.

0:27:45 Eli: Nobody feels that more deeply than Jaboi. Boy but there is this notion of like it's a little rude of you to point out that I'm lying when other people have been lying for so much I'm just trying out lying and you're this is like my fourth lie ever and you're being SO FUCKING MEAN ABOUT IT LIKE JUST LET ME LET ME TELL HERE'S WHAT I SHOULD SAY HERE'S What They Should Say They Should Be Like Thomas Let Me Tell One Or Two Lies to see if I like it yeah

0:27:45 Thomas: Yeah

0:28:03 Tom: I

0:28:00 Thomas: God it's so fucking stupid. I can't. I'm sorry. All right.

0:28:14 Thomas: I, there are people who have said that like they're like, literally there are people who are like, Hey, and, and that's why, like, I, I think it's not a crazy thought necessarily. I think there's a valid like point to make that like, hey, they've been doing it and now, you know, turnabout or fight fire with fire. And I just think that reverses the causation. I D I think that people, they're pointing to like, well, now people are believing conspiracy theories about Trump and that will spread it. It's good. And it's like, they are not listening to us in either case. It is because they also are starting to hate Trump. The conspiracy theories come first for them. They're not listening to us about it, so we ought to keep our fucking circle in the world. We ought to keep ourselves in the facts, otherwise we're not, we're going to lose it. You can't just decide, well, we'll do a little bit of non-reality-based thinking here, and then we'll just see how that goes. It doesn't, that's not how it works. It's not

0:28:44 Eli: Yeah

0:29:02 Tom: Feel like we can just do a just the tip conspiracy. I don't know. I feel, come on, let me in there just for a minute, just to see how it feels. Come on.

0:29:02 Eli: Yes

0:29:02 Thomas: How fucking works. Yeah, that is totally what they're trying to do. God.

0:29:05 Eli: Tom's been on board come on just to see how it

0:29:11 Thomas: And I also have gotten to the point, guys, you can, you can stage an intervention, I've gotten to the part where I I don't fucking care. If people are like, you got to be nice, they're going to be mad that you're calling. I don'T. You stop listening to me. I'm not going to do. I didn't spend 10 years or more of my life criticizing the other people who do the conspiracy theories to then be like, well, that's okay. When we do it, it's okay, it'S fine that they're. Fuck you.

0:29:35 Thomas: It's always dumb. It's always dumb. I don't care. And if you think, oh, you ought to be nicer, leave. I don't care. Everybody does tone policing because they can't actually argue it. So they just criticize me about, like, yes, everything you said is right, but, like, there's, they just want to still be right for some, they want to still, like, have their dumb beliefs, and I don't care anymore. Fuck it.

0:29:35 Eli: Feels you're like trotsky right who sort of realized that stalin was just using communism and you're like guys guys I think this stalin fella is not trying to redistribute the like put the hands of the people on the means of production and everybody's like oh yeah no we know we're going to be the kings now and you're like guys guys guys remember carl wrote a book and we all read it's like 11 pages we all ran it and we always said why are you carrying me somewhere oh poor thomas hey podcast listener I want you to know that whatever you decide is true I'm right there with you he already has to deal with me the thing that's so wonderful about the truth being malleable to me is that if we

0:30:33 Thomas: Yep, yeah, I already have to deal with Eli. I don 't

0:30:43 Eli: Just logged on collectively and you and noah and maybe three other smart people like maybe marsh right no question if marsh was on board I'd be like fuck it's all fucking faking absolutely like that's the notion that I would see a post by marsh and be like well let me see for myself like can you fucking imagine marsh could post literally Literally anything you want. And here's the thing, and I don't want to give him an idea for a prank because it's a pretty good one. You know how you can post things that are like block for everybody except this group of friends? Marsh should make a post every three days that's just for me because I don' t fucking check who his audience is. That's just like lizards attack again. And I'd be like, fuck, that's a real problem, I guess.

0:30:54 Thomas: Oh yeah, like if we decided to do the conspiracy theories Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, right. God. Well, you know what's funny is that is actually bringing back to the Richard Dawkins thing, that is actually a lot of what happened to those fuckers. I remember them specifically having these conversations where, and it was a long time ago, where they actually, it might have been in the, the original fucking, like, Atheists' For Horsemen video, where they're like, well, I trust, you know, I trust that you will have checked your source on something, and I remember thinking like, oh yeah, okay, that's pretty reasonable, and then you think of where they got to, and they all did that to each other, where they are just well, he would have checked that this fucking trans thing is bullshit, or he would check, you know, and then they just talked each other into believing all this dumb numbshit. Yep. Yep, sure is. Sure is. He respects the pronouns of a computer.

0:31:58 Eli: Yeah, I would check that. And now they think Claudia is alive. It's weird that he gives more credit to the claim of femininity to a computer than he does actual trans women, huh? That's a real bummer. That's a real bummer. Heath could have scissor-kicked him in the chest and he didn't. Think about that. Next time you're about to respect Heath Enright, podcast listener, know that he could have been on top of Richard for two and a half minutes solid before the cops would have gotten there. Could have done any of a series of imaginative things and he didn't because he doesn't really care, but I do. Back

0:32:49 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:32:51 Tom: All Right, so back to the cell phone thing, Eli. All

0:32:53 Eli: To the cell phone thing. So I think this is really funny because this is so, again, the cellphone companies obviously wanted this to fail, and I, to me, this New York Times article reeks of fucking, like, our buddy Jeff Bezos asked us to make an article called "Cell Phones: Why Not? Why Not Cell Phones?"

0:33:13 Thomas: Well, no, but that's no, no. But actually, this is why it's confusing. The study is partially funded by Jeff Bezos. And so they're trying to, what's actually weird is they would want the study effect to be like, wow, this is amazing, because they want the stupid nutsack that you put your, that the Amazon nutsack that you put your phone In that they're making, they would want that to be super effective. The New York Times is saying it wasn't as effective, so I guess, you know what I mean, like the biases in the study, if anything, would be in the study, not in the New York Times article along those lines, but that doesn't mean, yeah, it could be, could be. Yeah.

0:33:19 Eli: Yes. Yeah.

0:33:45 Eli: Or both could be. Both, yeah. But what's exciting to me about this is, like, this is such an easy conversation, right? Like, there are very few, we might as well be having the "should kids smoke cigarettes" argument right Now as a society, right? It is just so clear what the answer to this is, and again, just speaking to what we were talking about, the good guys don't care what is true. So because they made up a bunch of crazy lies about why test scores would be higher, why would test scores be higher? Because your cell phone's not in

0:33:59 Tom: Right.

0:34:20 Thomas: Maybe, like, you're paying attention in class a little more, I don't know. It could, could be something.

0:34:22 Eli: School, maybe, but they made up a crazy stupid lie, and now the lie's not true, and so now a bunch o' people are gonna, it's so, for those of you who missed it, in 2014 and 2015 a buncha anti-feminists made up a bunch a lies, and me and Thomas destroyed our psyches debunking those lies over and over again. It feels like, you ever have an anti-feminist tell you like the rule of thumb thing isn't real? Yeah, that's the one.

0:34:27 Thomas: Uh oh. Yeah.

0:34:38 Tom: Right, oh.

0:34:46 Thomas: Like, because from that movie that

0:34:47 Eli: That Christina Hoff Summers lied about it, and then you read the whole quote and it's like, "And by the way, you fucking punch her right in the mouth," or whatever it is, right? Like that Thing, it's this for cell Phones, right? It's just like someone making up a lie about a disambiguation of an untruth. I just think it's fucking, I think it's GREAT.

0:34:47 Tom: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

0:34:55 Thomas: Sort of.

0:35:04 Tom: It feels like we studied the wrong things and came up with the wrong result anyway. Uh, how do you guys feel? Well, everybody just inherently knows we shouldn't have these fucking things in the classroom. Awesome, awesome. It's not going to change anything. Like, if you, like, poll parents, you could walk up to every parent in America and be like, "Hey, should the kids have a cell phone?" I mean, there's a study that says their test scores didn't go up. I feel like every sane parent would be like, "Well, no. If I can get these phones out of the goddamn classroom, of course not. I don't care about their test scores."

0:35:15 Thomas: Remember

0:35:16 Eli: Nice.

0:35:31 Thomas: That's what I'm saying. Yeah, they shouldn't be in the fucking classroom. Yeah, I don't care if their test scores went down. They should. Yeah.

0:35:40 Eli: Can't ask ChatGPT what the answer to six plus Seven is anymore, and it told me to kill myself. Solid point.

0:35:44 Thomas: Yeah.

0:35:43 Tom: Right. There's a little bit of a pushback that I think is interesting and warranted. You guys have heard about what Australia has done, right? When they banned social media for kids under

0:35:58 Eli: They gave them guns instead.

0:35:58 Tom: 16. So there's just a complete ban in Australia on social media for kids under 16, and social media companies were like, "We can't figure out how to do it," and Australia was like, "Well, then you'll get fined." Fucking enormous amounts of money, and they were like, "Yeah, exactly." Oh.

0:36:12 Thomas: Yeah.

0:36:13 Eli: Yeah, hey, we figured out how to do it. It's actually crazy easy. It's super

0:36:15 Thomas: Every time, that's how I currently feel about all. There's a lot of pushback on the age verification, like, "Ah, there's no, you know, and privacy." It's like there's got to be a way, you know. I Don't think the UK is doing it right, but there's got to be a way. Fucking figure it

0:36:25 Tom: Yeah.

0:36:28 Eli: See, I don't like it because then how will you know that she's 18?

0:36:32 Thomas: Out. Sorry, what?

0:36:33 Eli: Wait, what kind of age verification were you talking about? Sorry. No, no, you're talking about a different thing. No, just forget it. You do a new thing.

0:36:33 Tom: Right. Oh, my God.

0:36:41 Eli: Never mind. Crazy. Stupid.

0:36:38 Thomas: I think

0:36:43 Tom: So you're, this is, this is interesting, because I would have thought you'd be on a different side. Not your pro-age verification, like Thomas.

0:36:46 Eli: No, no. I think that shit's awful.

0:36:51 Tom: Yeah,

0:36:51 Thomas: They should do it by the device. So I think in principle, if we can have age, you know, ages for drinking, ages for smoking, age for, we have ages for a bunch of things, but then if this thing, they're like, "Well, but it's a phone, so you can't," it's like, I don't know. There's gotta be a way, figure it out. I don't care.

0:37:05 Tom: Yeah, I feel the same way. It feels crazy to me to say we can figure out all of these other technological solutions. I mean, hell, like to some degree, there are people saying, well, we'll just figure out a technological solution of climate change. I mean it will all work itself out, right? It will figure out a technological solution to everything, but figuring out how old a user of a cell phone is?

0:37:27 Tom: Oh, that is just beyond us and we'll never be able to know.

0:37:27 Thomas: Yeah, Exactly. And you know, all the companies already know not only our age, but the age of our pets and the age of the next pet we might get. Yeah, they know everything. They already know it. They actually already know it. It's just a fucking bullshit thing. They want more business. So they're going to be putting, that's the thing I never know. And this isn't like a conspiracy thing. I haven't looked into it. I never knew, like, okay, which of these studies that people are referencing about whatever

0:37:37 Tom: Right, right. Right.

0:37:38 Eli: And where your eyeballs are, but the age of those eyeballs?

0:37:56 Thomas: Anonymity, whatever, like, which of those is going to be funded by whomst, and like, what is going to be good info out there. I haven't looked into it. I haven't checked, but like, I don't know.

0:38:04 Eli: I hate age verification for a lot of reasons, and some of them are good, but those are boring. Let me hit you with a great reason why I hate age verification, and I think really take this into your heart. Tom, is your heart open? Okay. Asked and answered.

0:38:16 Tom: No. Why would you think it was? That's crazy. What? No. No. Yeah.

0:38:21 Thomas: Yeah.

0:38:21 Eli: All right. Right. Here's why I think age verification is bad, because if your kids do not see hardcore Internet pornography, the people who will teach them about sex are sex educators. And if you have ever met or heard a sex ed, when I say I would rather spin the wheel on the dark web and have my son watch 12 hours of it a day, than I would rather one of these fucking undercut sporting sex educators come in with their charts and their condoms to give the most milquetoast fucking formalist version of sex possibly imagined by an overfunded nonprofit. Yes, exactly. By an overfunded non-profit, I would rather my child die in a school shooting than be visited by a properly trained sex educator, and not a lot of parents are brave enough to admit that, but we're all thinking it. Alright

0:39:02 Thomas: Are you into gorm shit. I'm into heavy gorm heavy gorn porn.

0:39:06 Tom: Yeah. Wouldn't want anything gormless without gorm. To say that, yeah, there's not a lot. Yeah, right. Yeah. Nope.

0:39:22 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. We're all thinking. We sure aren't

0:39:30 Tom: Oh.

0:39:31 Clip: DEAR OLD DAD

0:39:38 Eli: Gentlemen, before we go, the prosecution moved their case using a cigarette found stuck at the end of a semi-automatic. They called it a smoking gun.

0:39:49 Thomas: Do

0:39:49 Tom: My god.

0:40:34 Eli: Tom only knows moral panics and I only know celebrity deaths.

0:40:39 Thomas: Drugs fucking make out

0:40:42 Tom: I feel like we can just do a just the tip conspiracy. No.

0:40:46 Eli: The thing that's so wonderful about the truth being malleable to me Tom, is your card open?