Speaker 1: Welcome to the Parenting Roundabout podcast. I'm Terry Morrow.
Speaker 2: And I'm Catherine Hoileco.
Speaker 1: Every Thursday, we're bringing you a library find, a pick
Speaker 1: from our archives, and a parenting or pop culture tidbit
Speaker 1: or two. Let's start with Catherine's library find of the week.
Speaker 2: So this book came past me at work, and you know,
Speaker 2: the cover definitely caught my eye, and especially the subtitle.
Speaker 2: The title is the minimum Method, and the subtitle is
Speaker 2: the least you can do to be a stronger, healthier,
Speaker 2: happier you.
Speaker 3: Yes, what we need?
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, I like this self help you know, weight
Speaker 2: loss blah blah blah, and this guy says less really
Speaker 2: can be more. Discover how to maximize your sleeping, eating, exercising,
Speaker 2: even thinking and breathing with minimum effort. See.
Speaker 1: I would think that would include not buying books to
Speaker 1: tell you what.
Speaker 4: To tell you what to do.
Speaker 2: Yes, no, well I'm.
Speaker 1: Just giving it away for free, right because you got
Speaker 1: to do the minimum?
Speaker 4: Yeah, they certainly aren't giving away the book.
Speaker 3: And learn from it. Then you do the minimum?
Speaker 4: Yes, so you have to start by buying the book.
Speaker 3: Apparently or checking out the library.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: See, then you don't give this guy extra in his pocket.
Speaker 3: Yep, yep, yep. So, yeah, that's interesting, he says, you
Speaker 3: read it.
Speaker 2: What he says is the truth is most people don't
Speaker 2: actually need grueling, extreme workouts or aggressively limited diets to
Speaker 2: lose weight and feel proud to flaunt their bodies in bathings.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what they need is.
Speaker 2: Some ozempic and they'll be oh no, no, he doesn't
Speaker 2: talk about those something. They need a plan that is
Speaker 2: focused on efficiency. Okay, you'll learn a wealth of practical advice,
Speaker 2: simple nutrition truths, minimal effort.
Speaker 4: Recipes, and how to exercise smarter.
Speaker 3: Or not harder.
Speaker 2: All right, Joey Oh sure, sure, sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, why has no one thought of that before?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this book came out two and a half
Speaker 2: years ago.
Speaker 4: Why haven't we all?
Speaker 3: Yeah, if that's all we.
Speaker 2: Need, Yeah, I should see how often it's been checked
Speaker 2: out from the library and.
Speaker 1: Whether Yes, that would be very interesting. So yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I agree, it's very hard to do a lot for
Speaker 1: a long time. Yes, Yes, anything I've talked about in
Speaker 1: terms of habits and restrictions on myself on this podcast
Speaker 1: have already gone by the wayside. And oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: last week how I talked about how it was we
Speaker 1: strict with my daughter with the credit card. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: already gate in on that lasted a few days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then I realized that we pay for her brother's haircuts, so.
Speaker 4: But anything else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, his haircuts doesn't cost doesn't cost fifty dollars. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I said, I mean this makes sense, but
Speaker 1: somehow I have trouble, Yeah, believing it is quite this easy.
Speaker 4: Yes, we need.
Speaker 2: A suspicious saie to be.
Speaker 3: Like, what, that's right?
Speaker 2: Cool?
Speaker 3: We think the author is compromised.
Speaker 2: Easy for you to say Joey Thurman personal trainer. Uh
Speaker 2: but yeah, I mean yeah, whether it was the author
Speaker 2: or his quote contributor, which usually means ghostwriter, or it
Speaker 2: was the publisher whoever came up with the least you
Speaker 2: can do for a subtitle was brilliant, brilliant.
Speaker 1: That is very smart, Yes, because that's what we all want.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 3: Easiest. Well, well, I bet there's.
Speaker 1: A lot of people who want to do the most
Speaker 1: and show off, but average civilians, how can I do
Speaker 1: this easily? And the fact is, I don't know what
Speaker 1: this guy's got up his sleeve, but he can't right exactly,
Speaker 1: It's not possible.
Speaker 2: Well, it's just we'll have the same critique as we
Speaker 2: have of parenting books. You know, yes, you can say
Speaker 2: that this is the way it will work all you want.
Speaker 2: You are not living in my house with my children.
Speaker 1: So yep. It's just like Michael saying, we'll go through
Speaker 1: the jungle. We'll we'll get them. They're just simpletons living
Speaker 1: in rags.
Speaker 3: Yeah easy, Yep, he's a Dharma brown cake.
Speaker 1: Well that's interesting though, but that, Yes, kudos to whoever
Speaker 1: came up with the least you can do. A tip
Speaker 1: of the hat to that person sitting in a cubicle
Speaker 1: writing writing subheads for a publisher.
Speaker 3: We see you, We salute you.
Speaker 1: It's the least we can do, yes, exactly, And that's
Speaker 1: probably what they said when they give that person a paycheck.
Speaker 3: Well, oh you wanted a percentage. No, at least literally
Speaker 3: the least we can do.
Speaker 1: Well, speaking of the least we can do, I do
Speaker 1: not have so much of a random recommendation this week
Speaker 1: as I have maybe what will be a recurring feature
Speaker 1: called explain it to Me. Okay Grandma, Here, old person
Speaker 1: wading through the uh hellscape of the Internet, trying to
Speaker 1: understand the way things work, and feeling sometimes a little
Speaker 1: dumb because maybe I'm not getting it. So I've talked
Speaker 1: here about the fact that I can easily get ensnared
Speaker 1: by Facebook reels. You know, I'm just gonna watch this
Speaker 1: one clip from Georgie and Mandy's first marriage, and suddenly
Speaker 1: it's an hour later. And I've watched clip after clip
Speaker 1: after clip of all sorts of different things, And lately
Speaker 1: I have been seeing a lot of these clips. I'm
Speaker 1: guessing they're from TikTok and then just recycled onto Facebook. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's a ton of different ones, some of them
Speaker 1: with different actors, some actor overlap, but different characters, different scenarios,
Speaker 1: but they're all the same basic morality play, which is
Speaker 1: rich person who's full of themselves being horrible to somebody
Speaker 1: they perceive as a poor person, just rude, loud, awful, awful, awful,
Speaker 1: awfullest possible, and then it turns out that that person
Speaker 1: is not a poor person, but an even richer person.
Speaker 1: And then there's a comeuppance. Now the come upance they
Speaker 1: usually the come upance is, in short, is not in
Speaker 1: frequent rotation. You get a lot, a lot of the horrible, horrible,
Speaker 1: horrible treatment, and I think they want you to click
Speaker 1: to get the come ups and I ain't gonna click,
Speaker 1: right so I but you don't want to keep You
Speaker 1: keep watching them thinking, Oh, is this the one where
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a come up? And no it's not.
Speaker 1: It's just more awfulness and just over the top stupid
Speaker 1: awful us, you know. And there's so many scenarios of it,
Speaker 1: so many sort of looked like, wasn't that the actor
Speaker 1: who is the heiress in disguise and the other one
Speaker 1: is now the mean person in this one? Or it's
Speaker 1: got to be a thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thing?
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of this?
Speaker 4: I have not heard of this, and I have not afraid.
Speaker 1: To any of the links, you know, link in comments
Speaker 1: or Lincoln here click And I don't want to click
Speaker 1: because I don't trust you. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: I do want to know what is this? Is this
Speaker 1: like does some production company just make these little you know,
Speaker 1: and to only get like a tiny little segment at
Speaker 1: a time, and then you see another segment with the
Speaker 1: same characters. Oh, is this gonna be the come up?
Speaker 1: But it's no, it's more awfulness. No, it's still more awfulness.
Speaker 1: Awfulness here awfulness there. This person's awful. That's person's awful.
Speaker 1: You know. The lady runs out of gas and somebody says, well,
Speaker 1: with my car, I have so much gas, but I'm
Speaker 1: not giving you any because you're a pathetic loser. And then,
Speaker 1: of course later on it turns out that that's their
Speaker 1: boss or something. There's a lot of bosses, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of My father is the richest man in New
Speaker 1: York City? How dare you talk to me that way?
Speaker 1: And then it turns out that really that girl that
Speaker 1: that you're yelling at, her dad is the richest man
Speaker 1: in the world. I can't wait for the cum up ands,
Speaker 1: but I can never see the cum up ands?
Speaker 2: Where's the cup up ands?
Speaker 3: I don't want to pluck for the come up and no,
Speaker 3: don't click.
Speaker 1: Occasionally I see a come up and and it's delightful,
Speaker 1: but it's so formulaic and it's so stupid.
Speaker 3: Why does it?
Speaker 1: I can't help but watch it, which is why I
Speaker 1: am seeing more and more and more and more and
Speaker 1: more of them. If anybody knows what that is is
Speaker 1: on our website, what is this? Explain it to me.
Speaker 1: Gradma is confused, and I would think it was just
Speaker 1: like part of our zeitgeist now that we hate rich people,
Speaker 1: but the heroic people are even richer people, right, they
Speaker 1: just for a moment looked disadvantaged. Right, And the awful
Speaker 1: rich people are just stupid. I guess they can't google,
Speaker 1: you know, take a picture of this person and ask
Speaker 1: roc to identify them. No, they just assume if you
Speaker 1: are a random young person in my car dealership, you
Speaker 1: can't possibly afford this maserati. Well I just sold my
Speaker 1: you know, just just inherited a million, ten million dollars. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just it's just so silly and so stupid. And
Speaker 1: there's so many of them. It's like a mini little
Speaker 1: soap opera, just like a thirty second soap opera.
Speaker 4: Right, that's bizarre.
Speaker 1: So I really want to know. You've never heard of this,
Speaker 1: You've never.
Speaker 2: Know, I've only ever seen like it'll be like all text.
Speaker 2: So you see the preview, you know, and you don't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've seen those two and it's just.
Speaker 2: Text and it's like you wouldn't believe what this mother
Speaker 2: in law said, you know, or whatever, And I'm.
Speaker 1: Like, this is so fake, you know, I really want
Speaker 1: to know. So yeah, I'm not going to click on
Speaker 1: any of this stuff. But it's kind of irresistible to
Speaker 1: watch it. But that people are so hateful. I need
Speaker 1: to see them get the come upance, which is what
Speaker 1: they want to do. So there's maybe it's a psychic experiment.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's like another one of the others, the others,
Speaker 1: the others, that's what it is.
Speaker 4: It's explained, it's.
Speaker 3: The others behind it.
Speaker 4: That makes sense.
Speaker 1: Oh well, the Internet it is a treacherous place for
Speaker 1: an old person.
Speaker 3: You see things, not just an old person. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's stretcherous for everybody.
Speaker 4: Young people too.
Speaker 1: Oh well, what do we have from the archives?
Speaker 3: Is it's safe? Will it confuse me?
Speaker 2: Well, we back in twenty twenty one, which is somehow
Speaker 2: four years ago, we were talking about the parent portal.
Speaker 2: You know how at school you have the parent portal.
Speaker 1: Loved the parent portal.
Speaker 2: I did not like the parent portal, especially because in
Speaker 2: the last few years of my son's high school, I
Speaker 2: could check the portal and I could see his grades
Speaker 2: and I could either be relieved or concerned. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it meant nothing because they could change drastically at the
Speaker 2: end of the semester, and so there was no point
Speaker 2: in looking at them. It's like, you know, if you
Speaker 2: ever turn on a basketball game and it's the beginning
Speaker 2: of the game and one team might be winning by
Speaker 2: twenty points, but it seriously doesn't matter, because the only
Speaker 2: thing that matters is what happens when what the score
Speaker 2: is when you know.
Speaker 4: Time runs out.
Speaker 2: And that's that was what the very portpol was for me.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it was some people just want the score
Speaker 1: at the end of the game, and some people want
Speaker 1: to watch every up and down of the game, every
Speaker 1: hold their breath through, every every basket thrown, every that
Speaker 1: that was me.
Speaker 3: I want to know.
Speaker 1: I want to know everything. Tell me everything. I did
Speaker 1: not tell me every every time. I how many times
Speaker 1: do my son, you know hiccup today? Tell me everything.
Speaker 1: Did you put a camera in the classroom and put
Speaker 1: that on? Because I would watch it?
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 1: But as I I mentioned the last time we talked
Speaker 1: about this, parent portals came very late in my kids seling,
Speaker 1: so but I was all over them. And in college
Speaker 1: my kids did not do anything with their own portals.
Speaker 1: I ran their portals, took care of them, and if
Speaker 1: they needed to do anything, I would tell them. But
Speaker 1: it was wonderful I would be the one where fresh refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In both of my kids, like there was there was
Speaker 2: a two tiered parent portal in college, there was here's
Speaker 2: the parent portal that lets you pay the bills, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: and then there was another portal that foreseeing the grades
Speaker 2: and so, and your child would have to give you
Speaker 2: access to that. And you know, there's there's definitely parents
Speaker 2: who say, like, look, i'm paying for it, you will
Speaker 2: give me access. But with my daughter, I was like,
Speaker 2: I don't need it. She's she's totally like you just
Speaker 2: don't even have to think about it with her, like
Speaker 2: and then with my son, I was I was like,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to go through four more years of
Speaker 2: this like s service. Yeah, I will find out on
Speaker 2: a need to know basis.
Speaker 4: On that one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But I still wish that the parent portal concept
Speaker 1: could be extended into all parts of a young person's life.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 1: That's where it would the job job portal, where the
Speaker 1: boss would put up a nice little comment every day
Speaker 1: how your kid did.
Speaker 3: Right, there's a problem.
Speaker 1: You know, little ratings every day everywhere, every week, how
Speaker 1: they're doing. And you know, maybe their friends could have
Speaker 1: a portal where they would report in on you know,
Speaker 1: how the social life was going, all the things that
Speaker 1: I would worry about. There could be a portal that
Speaker 1: what's in the car could be connected to a portal.
Speaker 1: How many miles did they drive?
Speaker 3: What was their average?
Speaker 1: Out every aspect of my young people's life like to
Speaker 1: have easy access to data, because it has always been
Speaker 1: true throughout their lives. They don't talk about things much,
Speaker 1: so I need to I need to have the information.
Speaker 1: And now that they are not, there's not a paraprofessional
Speaker 1: who can tell me things. I am in the dark
Speaker 1: and I do not enjoy the dark. I need to know.
Speaker 1: I need to know things so I can make them right,
Speaker 1: you know, so that I when somebody asks me to
Speaker 1: tell me them about my kids, I am not like you. Right,
Speaker 1: You're not fumbling for answer, and I can tell you
Speaker 1: this last week and they have not appeared anywhere. They're
Speaker 1: not supposed to be right.
Speaker 3: But it's just it's the decline.
Speaker 1: In data available to a parent after college. Yes, unsettling.
Speaker 1: And somebody could make some money if they could find
Speaker 1: a way to discreetly surveil your children.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the problem is that the children have to consent
Speaker 2: to this, and.
Speaker 4: That's where you're going to have a problem.
Speaker 1: I have a tracker on one kid, but if she
Speaker 1: leaves her phone home, that doesn't help me any The
Speaker 1: other kid doesn't seem to be working on his phone,
Speaker 1: and he won't let me access the phone to try
Speaker 1: to make it work, even though I pay for the phone.
Speaker 1: Well he bought, he bought the device. I pay for
Speaker 1: the thing, but he could pay it if you wanted to.
Speaker 1: So I don't know. I just would like reassuring information, right,
Speaker 1: And where am I going to get that.
Speaker 3: From them?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: No, I should just you know, just somebody.
Speaker 1: The other day was we were talking about tracking, and
Speaker 1: the discussion turned to the possibility of micro chipping our
Speaker 1: family members, including husbands, right, and just so you know,
Speaker 1: just so you know where they are.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean we do it with our pets.
Speaker 3: We do. You know, it's important.
Speaker 1: I mean, like there was the time that I my husband.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I talked about this on the podcast.
Speaker 3: I think I did.
Speaker 1: He went to into New York City to see his sister,
Speaker 1: but he took a wrong turn and suddenly he went
Speaker 1: through a tunnel and then he was in Queen's and
Speaker 1: he didn't know where to go or what to do.
Speaker 1: But fortunately I had we had an AirPod in the
Speaker 1: car at the time that had been in the dogs collar,
Speaker 1: so I was able to find an air AirTag. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had an air tag in the car that had
Speaker 1: we had taken out of the dog's collar, and I
Speaker 1: was able to use that to find him and look
Speaker 1: at a map because he doesn't have GPS in the
Speaker 1: car or in his possession at all, And I was
Speaker 1: able to talk him back to his sister's house. So
Speaker 1: that was very useful. Wouldn't it be nice to have
Speaker 1: that all the time. He has a flip phone, so
Speaker 1: I can't put a tracker on it, but but you.
Speaker 2: Could take an air tag and scrape it onto the
Speaker 2: flip phone.
Speaker 1: Yes, I guess I could. The air tags are temperamental.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The thing is the air tag is meant to like
Speaker 1: be on your keys, so when you can't find your keys,
Speaker 1: you can get them to ding. It's not meant to
Speaker 1: be driving around. It has a limited range. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: also apparently it just sometimes beeps for random reasons. And
Speaker 1: fathers we had in the dog's collar, but then when
Speaker 1: the dog was staying with family while we went away,
Speaker 1: it started just beeping, and probably because somebody else had
Speaker 1: an air tag on their dog and it was they
Speaker 1: were like trying to play it, and it was the
Speaker 1: upset the dog. So that's why it came out of
Speaker 1: the collar and was loose in the car. But I
Speaker 1: found them to be undependable for long range. Right, Sometimes
Speaker 1: they work and sometimes they don't. They have to be
Speaker 1: near a tower, I think, or a near a They
Speaker 1: have to be near somebody.
Speaker 3: Else's phone, which means.
Speaker 1: That all of our phones are being used to locate
Speaker 1: track other people. Yes, which is you know, concerning. But
Speaker 1: I don't know how much you could a microchip. How
Speaker 1: much trouble could a microchip?
Speaker 2: Yeah, they say it's painless when they inject it into
Speaker 2: a dog.
Speaker 3: A dog, right, right.
Speaker 1: I just want to know what's going on. You just
Speaker 1: want to be constantly informed.
Speaker 4: Is that too much to ask? Really?
Speaker 1: Not too much to ask. I do good things with
Speaker 1: the information, you know. I help navigate I uh, you know,
Speaker 1: instead of nagging where are you why aren't you home?
Speaker 1: I could go see oh she went to target. So yes,
Speaker 1: we need I need an immediate and constantly working portal
Speaker 1: that will just allow me to spy twenty four to seven.
Speaker 1: Seems like the logical mixed up.
Speaker 4: It's not a big doesn't sound like a big ask.
Speaker 1: Doesn't sound like a big ask. No that I could,
Speaker 1: you know, see what they're doing at work and possibly
Speaker 1: you know, text them little. Your boss seems upset, maybe
Speaker 1: you should do something different, or maybe you should do
Speaker 1: this or that, or you know that doesn't look very
Speaker 1: clean what you just cleaned there. Maybe you should go
Speaker 1: already again so you don't.
Speaker 3: Get in trouble.
Speaker 1: I could, like you, like maybe if if they had
Speaker 1: a chip in their ear, gonna have a little speaker
Speaker 1: on it. Yeah, just the possibilities are endless. The next
Speaker 1: the next wave of portals are going to be extremely invasive.
Speaker 4: And and you're here for it.
Speaker 1: Made four moms who need to know. See if Michael
Speaker 1: had had access to that technology, he wouldn't look like
Speaker 1: such a bubbling idiot. Listen to our lost episodes to
Speaker 1: know what we're talking about. Anyway, they could listen to
Speaker 1: our podcasts through the microchip. Also, we could just forcibly
Speaker 1: play them, and then they'd have to listen to the boy.
Speaker 1: We'd have to take out all the parts where we're
Speaker 1: talking about them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that would that would take a lot of time.
Speaker 1: What's that portal?
Speaker 3: Tight?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening. You can find all our episodes
Speaker 1: on Spreaker, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. You can find recaps, links, and an opportunity
Speaker 1: to comment on our website at parentingroundabout dot com.
Speaker 2: You can also talk to us on our Facebook page,
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Speaker 2: dot com, slash Shop slash Mamitude, where you can find
Speaker 2: links to a lot of the things we've talked about
Speaker 2: over the years.