Speaker 1: Tim Carney, thank you for joining me on Commitment to Reality.
Speaker 2: Thank you man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right before we started, I was telling you how
Speaker 1: much I love your book Family Unfriendly, And I really
Speaker 1: think that you put your finger on the pulse of
Speaker 1: a problem that we're experiencing as a society, but we
Speaker 1: don't know it. I don't. We might know that we're
Speaker 1: experiencing problem, but we don't know what it is or why.
Speaker 1: And I want to start by telling a story. So
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, my wife was pregnant, about
Speaker 1: seven eight months pregnant, and we had a two year old.
Speaker 1: We still have him, he's just older now. And we
Speaker 1: were looking for somewhere to go on vacation. And so
Speaker 1: you know, I'm a big travel I've traveled a lot
Speaker 1: in my life. Thinking where do you want to go
Speaker 1: with a two year old and a backpack and a
Speaker 1: pregnant wife? And I start doing some research and I
Speaker 1: a country kept coming up, Portugal, Portugal, Portugal, And I thought, okay,
Speaker 1: what it says Portugal they love children? And I thought,
Speaker 1: well what country hates children?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Right, long story short. We go to Portugal and it
Speaker 1: was illuminating. I mean, it's similar to some of the
Speaker 1: stories of countries that you tell in your book. I mean,
Speaker 1: the squares are built for a society, for families, for everybody.
Speaker 1: But you bring our kids into the restaurant, and you
Speaker 1: know in America, sometimes your guard goes up, you start clinching.
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, they're getting a little wild there. We're
Speaker 1: going to be judged and we're not going to be welcome.
Speaker 1: And you know, the waiter would take our kid and
Speaker 1: just disappear. Or we're standing at the bar, you know,
Speaker 1: eating something and having a drink and the bartender grabs
Speaker 1: our son and brings him back there and he's pouring
Speaker 1: a drink while holding our kid, and we're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: now I'm starting to see what they meant when they
Speaker 1: said Portuguese people love children. It's not just that they
Speaker 1: tolerate them. It's that they find joy in them, that
Speaker 1: they incorporate them in their day to day lives. And
Speaker 1: then so that's one thing. The other that really was
Speaker 1: illuminating for us is anytime, whether you're in line for
Speaker 1: a museum, to get groceries, anything in line, whether there's
Speaker 1: a sign or not, it's just it's part of the
Speaker 1: cultural stream. Pregnant women elderly, are disabled, or people with
Speaker 1: kids go to the front of the line, and there's
Speaker 1: no grumbling like I've been waiting. It's like we knew
Speaker 1: that after a couple of days being in the country,
Speaker 1: but we still kind of felt uncomfortable jumping the line,
Speaker 1: and people would look at us like, what are you doing?
Speaker 1: Get to the front, you kids, your wife is pregnant,
Speaker 1: Come on. And so I tell you that as a
Speaker 1: story to say, I didn't understand how family unfriendly America
Speaker 1: and much of the West wasn't is until I saw
Speaker 1: a different example. Right, it's the straight and crooked stick.
Speaker 1: And I came home thinking, we've got work to do.
Speaker 2: And I mean, all the specifics you're talking about really matter,
Speaker 2: but if you think about it, what's underlying this is
Speaker 2: a philosophy. Not a philosophy, just a moral view of
Speaker 2: the human person. So one of the things that makes
Speaker 2: America great is our individualism. Right. I was once in Germany,
Speaker 2: like twenty years ago, and there's this cabinet minister who
Speaker 2: told me Europe historically was populated with two kinds of people.
Speaker 2: There were the go getters and the resk takers, and
Speaker 2: there were the people who were sort of reliable rule followers.
Speaker 2: But the first kind of people all got on a
Speaker 2: boat and went to America. And so our individualism is
Speaker 2: a great trait. If you've read like Alexis to Tokville
Speaker 2: Democracy in America, you know that individualism has always traditionally
Speaker 2: been in the context of tightly nick communities. We have
Speaker 2: a lot less of that now. We should talk about that.
Speaker 2: But I think our individualism has sort of without us
Speaker 2: realizing it has taken over. So why does that matter?
Speaker 2: Because let's say, what you're asking, if you're asking people
Speaker 2: to let you cut to the front of the line,
Speaker 2: or what people are doing, they are saying that is
Speaker 2: not just a group of four or five people there,
Speaker 2: that that is a family unit. They're thinking of you
Speaker 2: as a family unit that has special needs. We think
Speaker 2: that we try to be sort of very neutral and
Speaker 2: treat everybody equally here, and that's a good extent, but
Speaker 2: at a certain point, your two year old is not equal.
Speaker 2: Your two year old's legs are short, his understanding of
Speaker 2: the environment, his ability, his patience is shorter. And appreciating
Speaker 2: that and then what it goes to step further in
Speaker 2: a family friendly culture, they're not saying, oh, well, you
Speaker 2: know what, you made the decision to have kids, you
Speaker 2: got to live with them. Kids are understood in some
Speaker 2: cultures to be a natural part of life. You finish school,
Speaker 2: get a job, you get married, and you have kids.
Speaker 2: Not that everybody had to do that, not that everybody
Speaker 2: got to do not that life always went smoothly for everybody.
Speaker 2: But if that's the expected course of action, then you say,
Speaker 2: the people who are raising kids are doing something extraordinary,
Speaker 2: and they're doing it for a greater good. A. It's
Speaker 2: natural and B we need it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the foundational building block of a civil society
Speaker 1: is get married, have kids. And now, I mean, you
Speaker 1: give a lot of reasons why, but that's a lifestyle choice. Now,
Speaker 1: to get married, have kids. Tim Writing a book isn't easy,
Speaker 1: you know that, Yes, So you have to really care
Speaker 1: about something or feel like it's really worthwhile to do it.
Speaker 1: Why this book, I mean, what was it? I mean
Speaker 1: because you also, I guess, have the audacity to think
Speaker 1: that writing this book might actually change some.
Speaker 2: So I'd written a prior book called Alienated America last decade,
Speaker 2: and it was about the collapse of community, about how
Speaker 2: we're less likely to know our neighbors about how we
Speaker 2: go to church. Last, you know, people are less involved
Speaker 2: in their local libraries. So if you've read Robert Putnam's
Speaker 2: Bowling Alone that he wrote in two thousand and that
Speaker 2: was more true in twenty fifteen when I was writing
Speaker 2: Alienated America, and I came at it from a more
Speaker 2: religious perspective, because the most important institution of civil society
Speaker 2: and in America has always been the church. And so
Speaker 2: I wrote that book. And when I was saying about
Speaker 2: the most important consequences of the collapse of community, I
Speaker 2: realized it was a collapse in marriage and family formation. Because,
Speaker 2: as a wise woman wants put it takes a village
Speaker 2: to raise a child, right, we really do need and
Speaker 2: whatever politicians mean when they say that, anybody who's raised
Speaker 2: kids knows you need like Little League coaches, you need teachers,
Speaker 2: You need neighbor, the neighbor family with three girls who
Speaker 2: will babysit your kid. You need all all of that.
Speaker 2: Right now, my next door neighbor is on vacation. We
Speaker 2: used to feed their fish. Their fish died. I don't
Speaker 2: think that was our fault. But now there's another neighbor
Speaker 2: family that just I see is kind of exploring their
Speaker 2: backyard and like bouncing on their trampoline. I'm just saying,
Speaker 2: only one person on our block needs to get a
Speaker 2: trampoline because everybody all the kids can use it. But like,
Speaker 2: we're also money. No, you're right.
Speaker 1: My wife wanted us to get a trampoline. I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: our neighbors have one. They use it all the time.
Speaker 2: It's okay, everybody's wealthier because all this stuff that's nice
Speaker 2: when you're like a regular adult without kids is absolutely
Speaker 2: crucial the community. Then, looking ahead, I think how we're
Speaker 2: becoming less family focused is the biggest story of the
Speaker 2: next thirty years and it shows up in declining marriage rates,
Speaker 2: declining birth rates, pandemic of childhood and adolescent anxiety, all
Speaker 2: of those things. I think that's the biggest story of
Speaker 2: the next thirty years. And you're supposed to write what
Speaker 2: you know, right. I don't know everything about democrat demography
Speaker 2: sometimes confuses me. I don't know everything about parenting. My
Speaker 2: wife and I have raised six kids and our oldest
Speaker 2: is in college, and so I figure I have changed
Speaker 2: more diapers than ninety nine percent of American males, So
Speaker 2: I know something about those and that I think a
Speaker 2: lot of really well meaning people just because of again
Speaker 2: what's sort of the underlying worldview and our culture think
Speaker 2: of family as just another, as you said, another lifestyle choice,
Speaker 2: and if they have a family, they think they're imposing.
Speaker 2: Because I've had that feeling too, where you're like, I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: I'm bringing my kids, and so trying to change that mindset.
Speaker 2: And there's this book, this children's book, illustrated children's book
Speaker 2: called Babies Everywhere. I don't even have this book, but
Speaker 2: every once in a while I tweet out the cover
Speaker 2: of it, like that would be my view of like
Speaker 2: a healthier society. If I'm in the coffee stop writing
Speaker 2: and somebody brings in a baby, I don't get upset.
Speaker 2: In fact, if I wanted to be quiet, it's my
Speaker 2: obligation to like put in my nose noise canceling headphones.
Speaker 2: But I probably wouldn't do that. I'd probably turn away
Speaker 2: from the article I'm writing and start like making faces
Speaker 2: at the baby and talking to the.
Speaker 1: Mom being present. I mean, you allude to it, and
Speaker 1: I agree with you. I mean, I love kids. I
Speaker 1: love kids. I mean, if you ask me what I
Speaker 1: wanted to do when I grow up, I more often
Speaker 1: than not. Didn't know if you're talking about profession. But
Speaker 1: I always knew that I wanted a family. I always
Speaker 1: knew that I wanted to and I see the face
Speaker 1: of God in children. I mean. Somebody asked me the
Speaker 1: other day, somebody from our church. He texted me. He said,
Speaker 1: how do I balance my love for God with loving
Speaker 1: my family and my newborn child and my responsibilities there?
Speaker 1: How do I balance the two? And I thought to myself, well,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting question. But the more I pondered, I thought,
Speaker 1: I think it's a false dichotomy. I think you love
Speaker 1: God through your children, Well, isn't.
Speaker 2: I mean, so when Jesus was asked what is the
Speaker 2: greatest commandment? And somebody's looking for one of the tank commandments,
Speaker 2: and he comes in and he quotes the shame of
Speaker 2: the prayer juice say every day of love God with
Speaker 2: all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself. I
Speaker 2: remember the first time I read that, because I grew
Speaker 2: up secular, and so I first read the Bible in
Speaker 2: college and before I came into the Catholic Church shortly
Speaker 2: after college. But the first time I read that, and
Speaker 2: they said, what is the greatest I was like, it's
Speaker 2: fine for him to throw back to, you know, outside
Speaker 2: of the tank commandments. But he gave two, right, he
Speaker 2: said love God and love your neighbor. And it was
Speaker 2: only while writing Family and Friendly that I realized exactly
Speaker 2: what you're saying. If Jesus says that's one thing, that's
Speaker 2: one thing. And so much of my understanding of the
Speaker 2: cosmos is that while it's infinitely complex, I think the
Speaker 2: way God sees it is actually more simple than we
Speaker 2: see it. We like break things, and I mean just
Speaker 2: think I'm sorry to get weird and nerdy, but like
Speaker 2: heat and life, heat and light are both solar magnetic radiation, right,
Speaker 2: They're both just radiation. They're like just different frequencies. We
Speaker 2: experience it totally differently. So we experience loving God and
Speaker 2: loving our neighbor as two different things, and we can't
Speaker 2: exclude one of them. We have to do both of them.
Speaker 2: If we're going to do either of them. That's of
Speaker 2: exactly what you just said. And so now Family and Friendly,
Speaker 2: if you read it, you know I'm writing I'm I
Speaker 2: begin with sort of a Christian anthropology, but I try
Speaker 2: to make the case for it with like sociology and stuff.
Speaker 2: It's just proven that when kids are around, people are better.
Speaker 2: And it's tough to say this sometimes because it can
Speaker 2: sound like I'm saying dads are better than people without kids,
Speaker 2: which is and I'm notxious saying to say, you know,
Speaker 2: if you're somebody who wants to have kids and doesn't
Speaker 2: have them or just isn't called for, that to the
Speaker 2: vocation of fatherhood. But so I'm not saying dads are
Speaker 2: better than non dads. I'm saying when kids are around,
Speaker 2: when we have obligations to care for people who start
Speaker 2: off totally helpless and then need lots of our guidance,
Speaker 2: it makes us better. Like the first selfless things I
Speaker 2: did was when I got married.
Speaker 1: That's the key word selfless. I mean you begin to
Speaker 1: see somebody else is more. I mean that's marriage, that's parenthood,
Speaker 1: that's a good healthy society, and it trickles out.
Speaker 2: I think that's that married parents learn the skill of
Speaker 2: putting another person first from being married parents. We should.
Speaker 2: You know, you'd like to think that at age sixteen,
Speaker 2: you're like, Okay, now I'm gonna put everybody first, But
Speaker 2: it's really hard, and then it becomes natural when you
Speaker 2: have a family, and then ideally then you spread beyond
Speaker 2: just your family in that in that skill and.
Speaker 1: Like I said, you know, the getting back to the
Speaker 1: false dichotomy of loving God versus loving your family or
Speaker 1: your child and their responsibilities. And nothing has made me
Speaker 1: understand God's love for us and in consequence help me
Speaker 1: develop a greater love for God than being a father. Now,
Speaker 1: once again we get into tricky territory when we start
Speaker 1: saying that because it's oh, well I don't have a child,
Speaker 1: does that mean that I don't know God? No, But
Speaker 1: you understand that that it's just wow. I mean I
Speaker 1: didn't think that I could love something this much, this unconditionally,
Speaker 1: which then gets into you know, theology and doctrine all
Speaker 1: that if you want to get into it, but go ahead.
Speaker 2: Well, so, I mean a sort of salvation history. A
Speaker 2: lot of the big beats are children. It's like Abraham,
Speaker 2: You're gonna have children, the Nativity, like these these are
Speaker 2: very big moments, and these are the in some ways
Speaker 2: the founding of our religion as a Catholic. We always
Speaker 2: say the Annunciation when Mary says, be it done to
Speaker 2: me according to that will, that that was the most
Speaker 2: important decision in human history, like I, I will carry
Speaker 2: a child, And another way I put it is, I
Speaker 2: don't know if you're gen X, you're probably a little
Speaker 2: younger than I am, a little bit younger. Video game
Speaker 2: a my age will and I might get it wrong,
Speaker 2: but I think it was left left, right, right, abab
Speaker 2: select start. It's a Konami code. It was a cheat
Speaker 2: code for Nintendo video games and the I sometimes joke
Speaker 2: that parenthood is a cheat code for virtue. Anybody can
Speaker 2: and should and has an obligation to be a virtuous person,
Speaker 2: to follow God's commandments, to be a good person, to
Speaker 2: grow in virtue throughout their life. Not everybody, I believe,
Speaker 2: is called to marriage and parenthood, but those of a
Speaker 2: and not everybody can attain it. Those of us who
Speaker 2: can attain it a lot of family and friendly I argue,
Speaker 2: like we should make raising kids easier than it is.
Speaker 2: But then, if you're honest, it's the hardest thing you're
Speaker 2: ever going to do, but it's the easiest path if
Speaker 2: where you're trying to go is a high enough peak.
Speaker 2: In other words, like sainthood being a man or I'm
Speaker 2: in a virtue that's a hard place to get to,
Speaker 2: and I think the path of parenthood is like kind
Speaker 2: of not the short cup, but the gentler path that
Speaker 2: And I think this is someone what Saint Paul was
Speaker 2: talking about in his epistles, that it can be a
Speaker 2: harder thing. Maybe it's a higher calling or something to
Speaker 2: go a different route, but parenthood the Bible says to
Speaker 2: feed the hungry and clothe the naked. You and I
Speaker 2: wake up there are hungry naked people in our house.
Speaker 1: So far, No, and you even went so far as
Speaker 1: to say that, you know, it's a cheat code for sainthood.
Speaker 1: Now we've talked a lot about that on this podcast.
Speaker 1: To a degree, sainthood, what does it mean? I mean
Speaker 1: it feels like unattainable and almost feels like something that
Speaker 1: you shouldn't aspire to, like, well, saints are separate, they're better,
Speaker 1: like you know it almost I can't. I can't aspire
Speaker 1: to be a saint. But that's what we're called to.
Speaker 2: Do, all of us, every one of us, yep.
Speaker 1: And we have to recover that. I think I think
Speaker 1: a lot of it. I mean, you talk about civilizational sadness,
Speaker 1: I would equate that to a soul sickness that as
Speaker 1: a civilization, we suffer from a sickness of the soul,
Speaker 1: and a lot of that has to do with a
Speaker 1: lack of meaning. But even those of us who who
Speaker 1: subscribe to a faith but you're Catholic, I'm an Orthodox Christian,
Speaker 1: saints are very important in our faith traditions. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: kind of ignore it as something that we can attain,
Speaker 1: and I think we kind of need to get back
Speaker 1: to bringing virtues to the forefront. That's something that you
Speaker 1: can critique, right, because one of the core emphasis on
Speaker 1: this podcast is a commitment to reality that truth exists.
Speaker 1: That yeah, you can have your opinion, but there is
Speaker 1: a truth that we can aspire to understand and that
Speaker 1: only you know. And along with that comes the virtues
Speaker 1: that they Hey, you are not living a virtuous life
Speaker 1: something that we can talk about as a society. But
Speaker 1: because we don't, I think that our soul sickness only grows.
Speaker 2: I think that's right. I think virtues is sometimes I
Speaker 2: think that that would be an easier concept to sort
Speaker 2: of reintroduce because it's really close to something that a
Speaker 2: lot of secular especially sort of secular elites, college educated
Speaker 2: people who are career focused. They'll talk about acquiring skills
Speaker 2: and best practices and those that's pretty close to virtue.
Speaker 2: It's not as loaded of a term, but it is like,
Speaker 2: if you're an excellent, you know whatever, a banker, and
Speaker 2: you're really good at it, you've understood that you need
Speaker 2: to develop good habits and that Aristotle's explanation of virtues,
Speaker 2: I fully subscribe to virtue is a habit that you're
Speaker 2: so I don't think we're very very far. I think
Speaker 2: we can reintroduce that idea, but I think the vocabulary
Speaker 2: matters to make it be something that's about a deeper
Speaker 2: human excellence and not just sort of success in these
Speaker 2: measurable ways, not just success in your career or your
Speaker 2: own you know, personal finance or whatever. And so virtue,
Speaker 2: I really think does need to be reintroduced. And it
Speaker 2: is connected to the sadness because because we're fallen creatures,
Speaker 2: we constantly fail in ways that can be super depressing,
Speaker 2: and then we realize a developing good habits can make
Speaker 2: us less likely to fail, but be still going to fail,
Speaker 2: and every time we fail, we're still made in the
Speaker 2: image of God. So I think a lot of the
Speaker 2: sadness is people who think that through their own effort,
Speaker 2: they can overcome their fallen nature failing to do so.
Speaker 2: And I mean, I remember, as I was writing this book,
Speaker 2: I was on social media and somebody said something like,
Speaker 2: why the heck would I want to have kids and
Speaker 2: pass on all my messed upness? Somebody who was very
Speaker 2: professionally successful, so to some degree had their self together.
Speaker 2: This person wasn't a person who had, you know, was
Speaker 2: born with an addiction to crack or something like that.
Speaker 2: They just had had a rough childhood or felt bad
Speaker 2: about herself. And I said, well, you know, however rough
Speaker 2: your life is, you're you're a good person. And people
Speaker 2: shot back and said, you don't know me. Don't go
Speaker 2: saying a person you have no idea. I obviously was
Speaker 2: coming from a perspective of a Christian anthropology. I'd think
Speaker 2: of humans as being good but fallen. That idea makes
Speaker 2: it easier to sort of keep your head up in
Speaker 2: this world where we're constantly confronted with our own failures
Speaker 2: and the sort of the difficult of dealing with other people.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and you talk about other people in an
Speaker 1: interesting way because on one hand, you say that we
Speaker 1: need to do the most Unamerican thing possible, which is
Speaker 1: depend more on others. But and I want you to
Speaker 1: kind of help me figure this out. You say we
Speaker 1: need to depend more on others, but we also need
Speaker 1: others to leave us alone. How do we square that circle?
Speaker 1: Because a lot of the problems And I feel this
Speaker 1: in my core because my wife and I are both
Speaker 1: pretty convinced that we're doing the right thing by kind
Speaker 1: of being more free range with our parenting. But man,
Speaker 1: people who are not free range parents really don't like that.
Speaker 2: I have heard stories of these problems in my neighborhood.
Speaker 2: It hasn't it hasn't happened. But we let our lucky
Speaker 2: man Tim Well, we let our kids roam around and yeah,
Speaker 2: we haven't gotten a you know, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: You have to keep track of that. I wouldn't say
Speaker 2: we need people to leave us alone, because again, that's
Speaker 2: returning to sort of the individualism we need kids to.
Speaker 2: Raising a kid is like your your child is in
Speaker 2: a walled garden. This is a bad metaphor because it
Speaker 2: doesn't quite make sense. But slowly you make the walls
Speaker 2: wider and lower. So I have an college freshman right now,
Speaker 2: so she has tons of freedom. She's nineteen, she's legally
Speaker 2: an adult. So like, if we just follow the lall
Speaker 2: to say, I have no say over her except that
Speaker 2: you know, we're paying her room and board a college.
Speaker 2: But then when she she's having a semester in Europe,
Speaker 2: she wants to go to a Formula one race, which,
Speaker 2: by the way, it's like ridiculous to me. I've never
Speaker 2: watched a Formula one race in my life. I raised
Speaker 2: my kids, so like, you're American, it's baseball, basketball, football,
Speaker 2: and hockey during the Worlds. And so she wants you're
Speaker 2: going to travel from one city in Italy to another city,
Speaker 2: Like I have a little bit of control over her,
Speaker 2: and I was like, I don't think this, and we
Speaker 2: talk about it, and in the end, I let her
Speaker 2: do the thing that I don't think is a good idea.
Speaker 2: With a one year old, you're probably not gonna let
Speaker 2: them do the thing that they think is a good idea.
Speaker 2: They're going to try to shove they see a dog
Speaker 2: poop on the ground and they want to shove it
Speaker 2: in their mouth, and you stop them so slowly from
Speaker 2: like you have no freedom you live in North Korea
Speaker 2: because you're one to like age nineteen, age twenty whatever.
Speaker 2: When they get married, there's a steady increase of freedom
Speaker 2: that you have to give them. Why that that just
Speaker 2: basic framework I don't think is obvious to a lot
Speaker 2: of popular culture, and a lot of it is that
Speaker 2: the people, a lot of people don't have kids or
Speaker 2: haven't had kids in a long time. And then within
Speaker 2: that framework, how much freedom a six year older an
Speaker 2: eight year old can handle is not agreed upon. But
Speaker 2: then the final factor is is the culture and the
Speaker 2: built environment providing the right walls for that garden or
Speaker 2: enough a safeguarden. So do you have neighbors who will
Speaker 2: when they see the kids like chasing after a copperhead snake?
Speaker 2: Be like, no, not that snake. Do you have neighbors
Speaker 2: who how many, especially guys my age, would say we
Speaker 2: were allowed to wander free. My parents let us do that.
Speaker 2: But one time one guy told me that he and
Speaker 2: his friend were chucking gravel at a dog and some
Speaker 2: neighbor woman. It's like, what the heck are you doing?
Speaker 2: And they realized that this neighbor woman was probably about
Speaker 2: two phone calls away from calling their mom. So they
Speaker 2: hop back on their bikes, go back to their separate
Speaker 2: home to try to get to their mom to explain
Speaker 2: it before the so is there a mom on a
Speaker 2: front porch? Is there? And then my old neighborhood in Maryland,
Speaker 2: there was some great stuff right next to us, but
Speaker 2: we were surrounded by these roads that were three lanes
Speaker 2: in each direction, and so our kids couldn't go to
Speaker 2: the grocery store that they could see because just it
Speaker 2: was too dangerous for them to cross that road until
Speaker 2: they were teenagers, basically. And so the built environment, the
Speaker 2: culture need to accommodate free rangeness. And part of it,
Speaker 2: as you're saying, is like, are they gonna call? My
Speaker 2: wife said, I'm not afraid of kidnappers, I'm afraid of
Speaker 2: child protective servant CPS.
Speaker 1: Like, well, and that's I didn't mean leave leave us alone.
Speaker 1: That might have been too strong the verbiage, but it's
Speaker 1: just especially with the helicopter parents right where if you're
Speaker 1: a helicopter parent and somebody else is not helicopter parenting,
Speaker 1: they typically say something and that's that's kind of what
Speaker 1: I meant, tongue in cheek about leave me alone. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not as though we're actively being irresponsible. This is
Speaker 1: by design.
Speaker 2: But the reason I was sensitive to that phrase by
Speaker 2: the way. A lot of what we're talking about is
Speaker 2: leaving kids alone, and that's important. We can talk about that.
Speaker 2: But there was a story I forget where it took place.
Speaker 2: It might have been near DC because they were talking
Speaker 2: about on our local radio station, and the cops got
Speaker 2: called because this kid came home from school and you know,
Speaker 2: his parents were still at work. He was like twelve,
Speaker 2: so he was supposed to just let himself in. The
Speaker 2: doors were locked and the key wasn't where it was
Speaker 2: supposed to be, so he's just shooting hoops in his driveway.
Speaker 2: But it was super sunny, and it was June or something,
Speaker 2: it was pretty hot, and eventually he's sweating and he's
Speaker 2: sitting in the shade of the tree. In two hours
Speaker 2: he's out there. Some neighbor woman calls the police and says,
Speaker 2: these parents have a bandoned their kid. And the callers
Speaker 2: into the radio show all disapproved of what the neighbor
Speaker 2: woman did, but half of them said she should mind
Speaker 2: her own business. And I thought, no, Yeah, go out
Speaker 2: there with some gatorade and I ball stop ice and
Speaker 2: say hey, do you need this? And then if she
Speaker 2: knows her neighbors be like, hey, buddy, come on in.
Speaker 2: And when I suggested that once on social media, people
Speaker 2: like you sound like an abductor the complete collapse in
Speaker 2: social trust and the norm of help. Like that bartender
Speaker 2: taking your kid, a helicopter dad might freak out. Some
Speaker 2: bartender who doesn't even speak English is grabbing me. So
Speaker 2: that our duty to care for kids is is worn
Speaker 2: away by our hyper individualism mindset that other people's kids
Speaker 2: are not our problem. That mindset that leads to the
Speaker 2: helicopter parent.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, it's a lack of trust in others, and
Speaker 1: it's a lack of civilizational responsibility, so you know, they're
Speaker 1: My wife started reading your book and she loves it,
Speaker 1: and it was partially due to, you know, her feeling
Speaker 1: the pressure of helicopter parents disliking our free range parent
Speaker 1: And it's really hard because you want to keep the peace.
Speaker 1: But as you say in the book, I mean, there
Speaker 1: are long term consequences when you don't give your children
Speaker 1: certain amounts of risk and independence and responsibility. And I
Speaker 1: want to talk about that, but about the kind of
Speaker 1: cultural responsibility. There's an expert that you quote in the
Speaker 1: book and she says, oh, I remember that I listened
Speaker 1: to a podcast with this person, and I think the
Speaker 1: person was advocating that kindergarteners should be able to walk
Speaker 1: to school by themselves, and I thought, huh, well, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't trust my six year old, Like, okay, so you
Speaker 1: go down there, turn left once you get to the dog,
Speaker 1: you know, at the red house, then you'll turn right. Now,
Speaker 1: you model it for them, you teach them how to
Speaker 1: do it, and then I think I would probably trust
Speaker 1: him to do it. But there's the other component, which
Speaker 1: is what you're talking about, that you would like to
Speaker 1: hope that society wouldn't see him and go, oh, that
Speaker 1: kid shouldn't be alone. If there's an issue, help him
Speaker 1: with it, guide him. Oh you're going to school, here's
Speaker 1: the way to school, or oh you need help, what's
Speaker 1: your address? I mean, you try and teach your kids
Speaker 1: where they live. I mean, that's the big one. But
Speaker 1: we've addicated that responsibility as a society because we don't
Speaker 1: think that it's ours that's right.
Speaker 2: And so this is why the central chapter of my
Speaker 2: book is about Israel. So I did a religious pilgrimage
Speaker 2: to Israel. It was great. It's all the holy sites.
Speaker 2: It changes how you know, how you read the Bible.
Speaker 2: When you've been there, it's real. There's those and mountains
Speaker 2: they were going up with steeper than I expected. But
Speaker 2: so then I suck around for an extra two days
Speaker 2: to try to interview just random people in the streets.
Speaker 2: And I told my wife at first, I said, I'm
Speaker 2: not sure two days is long enough. But let me
Speaker 2: tell you as a New Yorker, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv
Speaker 2: rival New Yorkers and their willingness to share their opinions
Speaker 2: with a stranger. So everywhere, and so there's this one
Speaker 2: guy who he had two kids, who's like, I want
Speaker 2: to have nine. It's like, okay, that's great, and he's
Speaker 2: rushing to like a photo shoot with their new baby.
Speaker 2: And he tells me, he says, you want to understand
Speaker 2: why in Israel so many people have kids, including the
Speaker 2: birth rate among secular Jews in Israel is two point zero,
Speaker 2: to give you an idea, US is below one point six.
Speaker 2: The rest of Europe is below one point five. So
Speaker 2: this is people who are not religiou like the kind
Speaker 2: of people I talk to, eating like bacon cheeseburgers on
Speaker 2: the Sabbath at a burger jorn in Tel Aviv. They
Speaker 2: have two kids. So this guy who has two and
Speaker 2: once nine told me, he said, you want to understand Jerusalem.
Speaker 2: Look around on a school day in the morning, and
Speaker 2: I had seen six year olds walking to school like
Speaker 2: they've got their little door, the explorer backpack that's too big,
Speaker 2: and they're they're out. Went through the street and says,
Speaker 2: when you get to a street that's like an actual street,
Speaker 2: you will see them waiting on the corner because they
Speaker 2: have all been told you are not allowed to cross
Speaker 2: these big streets by yourself. But if their parents aren't there,
Speaker 2: who are they waiting for. They're waiting for the next
Speaker 2: adult or middle school or high school kid to come
Speaker 2: by and take their hands and cross the street with them.
Speaker 2: So on so many levels, that's foreign here, right, Like
Speaker 2: I I would feel a little uncomfortable if I saw
Speaker 2: a kid I didn't know and being like, hey, let
Speaker 2: me hold your hand into it. Somebody would think I
Speaker 2: was a kidnapper. Right, But so the whole cultural foundation
Speaker 2: there is not only are you're not weird for doing that,
Speaker 2: you would be inconsidered if you didn't help that kid across.
Speaker 2: And then but then so that duty, as you're talking
Speaker 2: about sort of civilizational responsibility that duty. To some extent,
Speaker 2: it's obvious, right, Like to us a disabled person, you
Speaker 2: owe them opening the door for them. Nobody would think like, well,
Speaker 2: it's your fault you're disabled, I'm not going to open
Speaker 2: the door for you.
Speaker 1: Elderly, you say it's obvious, Tim, But I I can
Speaker 1: just hear somebody calling you an able list. You don't
Speaker 1: think that they're able to do it. But that's that's
Speaker 1: where we've gotten, where everything is an offense, everything is
Speaker 1: is controversial, everything is well yeah, but yeah, lost common
Speaker 1: sense are not always obvious.
Speaker 2: But so then, but we should talk about what you said,
Speaker 2: which is definitely true. We owe our children freedom, and
Speaker 2: when we don't give them enough freedom, it harms them.
Speaker 2: And so I cite pediatricians writing in medical journals saying
Speaker 2: there is an epidemic of childhood anxiety and adolescent anxiety,
Speaker 2: and the root cause is a lack of unstructured, unsupervised play.
Speaker 2: And so the root of that we've talked about helicopter parenting,
Speaker 2: but we haven't talked enough about the other root of that,
Speaker 2: which is overscheduling and overplanning. So I focus on travel
Speaker 2: sports replacing like the Little League that I would ride
Speaker 2: my bike to But even more than Little League, like
Speaker 2: pickup stickball or kids inventing their own game so that
Speaker 2: they're like they're that they're bored. I mean, boredom is amuse.
Speaker 2: Boredom is it spurs creativity. But also like figuring out
Speaker 2: what to do when you're kind of in a situation,
Speaker 2: is how you deal with adulthood. And that starting with
Speaker 2: the parents and millennials where they're like, well, we're going
Speaker 2: to make sure that our kid has the best of everything.
Speaker 2: So after school there's piano, then there's tutors, after dinner
Speaker 2: there's taekwon do any one of those things is good.
Speaker 2: Like I'm I wish we had given all six of
Speaker 2: our kids piano lessons. We gave like two and a
Speaker 2: half of them piano lessons, and I think that's great. Well,
Speaker 2: what we have given all kids that.
Speaker 1: Fourth one would have been a prodigy.
Speaker 2: What we have given our kids that's good is a
Speaker 2: bunch of siblings and a bunch of freedom. And so
Speaker 2: that trade off between the freedom and the good things.
Speaker 2: And then some of the good things become so intensive
Speaker 2: that they become bad. And that's my view on travel sports,
Speaker 2: but that that lack of freedom comes from not just helicoptering,
Speaker 2: but the belief that we need to do maximum effort
Speaker 2: intensive parenting. I mean, I just remember these books I
Speaker 2: was reading, and we were expecting our first that you
Speaker 2: should play classical music for the baby, like I like
Speaker 2: classical music, you should play classical music for yourself. Playing
Speaker 2: classical music for the in utero baby.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we played my wife got pregnant when we were
Speaker 1: living in Colombia and South America, so it was a
Speaker 1: lot of like bachata. And maybe that's why it's crazy.
Speaker 2: Or just so experiment one two children who are exposed
Speaker 2: to but chata in.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I think what you're hitting on is
Speaker 1: that we view everything in economic terms. And what you
Speaker 1: were saying earlier about kind of hacking, right, like virtue
Speaker 1: hacking in a sense. You didn't use those words, but
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put them in your mouth. But that's oh
Speaker 1: the virtues that it's a it's a life hack, and
Speaker 1: more often than not, I see a lot of these
Speaker 1: life hacks the missing element is a wife and kids.
Speaker 1: So it's really you sit there like, yeah, you could
Speaker 1: do the cold bloge and this and that, but like
Speaker 1: when it's my aunts I'm like ow, or like what.
Speaker 2: How much is the morning routine where there's no other
Speaker 2: human being in there? I told my daughter it was
Speaker 2: from college. We need to make my morning routine where
Speaker 2: I got up, I make coffee for my wife, I
Speaker 2: wake up the kids, my wife like you know. Now,
Speaker 2: we don't even pack lunches anymore because the all this
Speaker 2: is not like our morning routine is entirely person to person.
Speaker 2: There's no ice bath, there's no like facial evaluation, peels.
Speaker 1: It's filled with humanity. It's real. And that's the thing
Speaker 1: I mean, Okay, with all these life hacks, I watch
Speaker 1: it great, you might live to one hundred and thirty,
Speaker 1: but what are you living for? And that I mean
Speaker 1: to you and me that seems obvious, but I feel
Speaker 1: like people will laugh at us. You're the ones you
Speaker 1: know you're going to die of a heart attack as
Speaker 1: your kid or what.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: I just feel like we've lost the meaning of life now.
Speaker 2: And so that's the thing that's part of the reason
Speaker 2: I use the idea of a chie code or different
Speaker 2: paths to the same thing. We're obligated to serve our families,
Speaker 2: but we're obligated all humans are obligated to serve other people,
Speaker 2: and that you can live for other people even if
Speaker 2: you never get married and never have kids. It's just
Speaker 2: a little more obvious when they're literally not going to
Speaker 2: have food if you don't you know, feed them, and
Speaker 2: so but that I think you're right, that we're lost,
Speaker 2: that we're that idea of not living for other people.
Speaker 2: You will read all these op eds in places like
Speaker 2: the New York Times about how you need to set
Speaker 2: up boundaries and social media is worse. Set up boundaries,
Speaker 2: get toxic people out of your life. The word autonomy,
Speaker 2: all of these things that point at things that are important.
Speaker 2: Family that you choose with, chosen, real family. All of
Speaker 2: these things can be good, but when they become the
Speaker 2: centerpiece of someone's worldview, they become it basically becomes I
Speaker 2: am not going to accept anything unchosen. And so this
Speaker 2: is part of the interesting thing about Israel again too.
Speaker 2: It was after I wrote the book, I was doing
Speaker 2: a podcast with Jewish editor who has lived in Israel,
Speaker 2: and he sort of guided me towards It was one
Speaker 2: of those those things where I the guy read my
Speaker 2: book and he saw things I didn't see. I'm like, yes,
Speaker 2: I definitely intended that theme that you pulled out, But
Speaker 2: it was the idea that for Jews, the idea of
Speaker 2: an inheritance that brings both goods, benefits and burdens. That
Speaker 2: that is how they understand themselves. Somebody who has inherited something.
Speaker 2: Our hyper individualistic, transactional, materialistic culture is different. Like if
Speaker 2: you inherit a ton of money, like in today's culture,
Speaker 2: like you didn't earn that, Like that's not yours. And
Speaker 2: then if you inherit a burden like a a property,
Speaker 2: a pet of something else, you're like, I didn't ask
Speaker 2: for that, So I have no obligation to that. That
Speaker 2: individualistic taken over, and so we we've lost the idea
Speaker 2: that there can be burdens placed on you that you
Speaker 2: did not choose and you still have an obligation to them.
Speaker 2: That says, I mean, that's I don't that's not even
Speaker 2: a microaggression. That's a system of oppression or something in
Speaker 2: today's society.
Speaker 1: No, you're right, And I mean when you talk about inheritance,
Speaker 1: my dad brings that up all the time and says,
Speaker 1: a good man leaves an inheritance. And I always you know,
Speaker 1: my second son I named after my grandfather to my
Speaker 1: dad's death. And for me, the inheritance is the belief structure.
Speaker 1: I mean you it's it's the I don't know if
Speaker 1: you would agree, but I feel like the focal point
Speaker 1: of your book is belief matters. It will make you happier, healthier,
Speaker 1: it will give you purpose in life. And every single
Speaker 1: one of my grandfather's children and then stream their children's children,
Speaker 1: for the most part, are you know, I say, for
Speaker 1: the most part, I can't think of anybody that isn't
Speaker 1: involved in church, that doesn't have a church life, and
Speaker 1: that is rare.
Speaker 2: I have.
Speaker 1: This is almost un unthinkable. That's an inheritance. That is
Speaker 1: an inheritance, and it is because it was never nominal.
Speaker 1: It was always something that mattered. And I think that
Speaker 1: that's a huge issue, even for religious people, is that
Speaker 1: we've imbibed a secular concept ourselves, where faith is something
Speaker 1: that you can park when you go into the secular world,
Speaker 1: as though there's a I really firmly believe there's no
Speaker 1: such thing as neutrality in the public square. You're always
Speaker 1: bringing your world view in and yeah, but you're right,
Speaker 1: it's rare. It's rare, and it's because it always mattered,
Speaker 1: and it was always impacting. You talk about a burden
Speaker 1: for me, that felt like a burden. Is that something
Speaker 1: that I did not want? It was a macro aggression.
Speaker 1: I don't want your faith keep it away, and I
Speaker 1: did keep it away for a long time. But I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, as a parent, kids come back if you
Speaker 1: give them healthy boundaries. I'm not saying they always will.
Speaker 1: I mean their free will is real. And you have six,
Speaker 1: I have two. I'm trying to get on your level.
Speaker 1: You don't do much different. And they're so different.
Speaker 2: That's especially with a girl and a boy. I can
Speaker 2: see the differences. But then we had a boy again,
Speaker 2: and they're back to back rates right now, they're eleventh
Speaker 2: and tenth grade. They are so different, like they're they
Speaker 2: were both had the same Latin teacher and the Latin teachers,
Speaker 2: like do they live in the same house because they
Speaker 2: personalities are different. But I think you're You're very right.
Speaker 2: One of the stories I tell about when my oldest
Speaker 2: was born, we had like we'd picked out her name
Speaker 2: speaking of inheritance, because it was my mom's name, it
Speaker 2: was my grandma's name. Is my great grandma's name, Like
Speaker 2: going back almost to like the mayflower. When the wasps
Speaker 2: of my family came over and we knew that was
Speaker 2: going to be your name. I'd even joke that in
Speaker 2: addition to a name, I was going to give you
Speaker 2: to them a number like in sports. I said, we
Speaker 2: were giving to lose some Jackie Robinson's number because and
Speaker 2: she's like, why why give her that? Well, because you
Speaker 2: can't give it to a boy because it's been retired
Speaker 2: from Major League Baseball, so they can't carry it when
Speaker 2: they when they make the bigs. My daughter thought that
Speaker 2: was a little absurd, my wife. But so anyway, so
Speaker 2: we had, you know, decorated her nursery, and then she's
Speaker 2: born and I look at her, I'm like, I've never
Speaker 2: met you before. You're a stranger. And so one of
Speaker 2: the quotes I have in the book is every child
Speaker 2: is unchosen. Like maybe one day genetic modification and in
Speaker 2: vitro will get to the point where this isn't true,
Speaker 2: but it's still true even if you do it that way,
Speaker 2: that there's infinite question mark and mystery in we try it.
Speaker 2: That is again part of that, like you don't get
Speaker 2: to pick to some extent, you pick your friends, you
Speaker 2: pick your spouse. You don't get to pick your children.
Speaker 2: You don't get to pick your siblings too, which is
Speaker 2: another part of why that like autonomy focused world doesn't
Speaker 2: like it. And so then there's another idea related to
Speaker 2: that picking of the siblings, which is so there's a
Speaker 2: concept that psychiatrists started worrying about long ago and they
Speaker 2: gave it the name parentification. And this was if you
Speaker 2: grew up, imagine your dad is a non functional alcoholic,
Speaker 2: and so the oldest daughter suddenly has to take on
Speaker 2: all these duties and has to try to like make
Speaker 2: sure dad makes it to work on time, and at
Speaker 2: age ten is feeding all that like a really dysfunctional,
Speaker 2: abusive household. This often falls on an oldest child or
Speaker 2: an oldest daughter. That concept have been expanded and now
Speaker 2: there was a recent article on parentification a few years
Speaker 2: ago that described the twelve year old having to make
Speaker 2: lunch for her younger siblings. It's like what or you know,
Speaker 2: the eight year old having to change diapers. That's called
Speaker 2: being part of a family. Absolutely, but the child didn't
Speaker 2: choose that, and so you are giving them a job
Speaker 2: and it's not going to be equal, right if you
Speaker 2: care about equality, the youngest might never change diapers, and
Speaker 2: so how how is that equal if they get different
Speaker 2: assignments based on their age order, YadA YadA, Especially if
Speaker 2: you're given the girls different responsibility than the boys. Oh gosh,
Speaker 2: that's all sorts of awful. And so part of the
Speaker 2: push towards a one or two kids is to make
Speaker 2: sure that each of your kids can be a free agent.
Speaker 2: And so now tell the pursuit of virtue. If your
Speaker 2: kid is training to be, you know, an excellent pitcher,
Speaker 2: that's going to have all sorts of great things. He
Speaker 2: I love baseball, though I hated it when my son pitched,
Speaker 2: I would get as far away as I could. I
Speaker 2: still want it. But he's going to learn how persistence
Speaker 2: pays off. He's going to have to learn, I mean,
Speaker 2: especially pitching, how to deal with adversity. YadA, YadA. There
Speaker 2: will be lots of good things. But then he's like,
Speaker 2: and now I have to watch my diet. That's a
Speaker 2: good thing. And now I have to lift weights, that's
Speaker 2: a good thing. And now I can't, you know, have
Speaker 2: a catch with my little brother because I have to
Speaker 2: rest my arm. And now I'm not going to eat
Speaker 2: what you're serving for dinner because that's not in my diet.
Speaker 2: And now I'm going to miss my you know, my
Speaker 2: sister's birthday because we're doing an extra training session. And
Speaker 2: you realize that that individual pursuit of virtue taken too
Speaker 2: far from other family obligations. That's one of the hardest
Speaker 2: things for well meaning parents in our modern world.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, no, I completely agree that it's I
Speaker 1: think you put it to have lower ambitions for your kids,
Speaker 1: which I mean, there are a lot of things that
Speaker 1: you say in this book that like when you if
Speaker 1: you just read the sentence without any context, it's like, huh,
Speaker 1: it's have lower ambitions, but teach them to aim higher.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there's there's a perception of paradox, but
Speaker 1: it's it's.
Speaker 2: My son who's a baseball player. I think his ambitions
Speaker 2: were like major leagues as recently as like seventh grade, right,
Speaker 2: I just thought, I hope he can make the varsity team.
Speaker 2: And now he's like yesterday and the day before he
Speaker 2: started in left field and was batting ninth I was
Speaker 2: like that, that makes me proud. That was me, and
Speaker 2: so that's great. Another son whose sport now is climbing,
Speaker 2: he once came up to me and Charlie the old
Speaker 2: his older brother, at the beginning of the summer, and
Speaker 2: he said, I want to learn how to catch a
Speaker 2: football just well enough that if one we're playing gym
Speaker 2: football and I'm open and they pass it to me,
Speaker 2: I don't drop it. Because what had happened is a
Speaker 2: quarterback had been like, don't throw to Carney, He's gonna
Speaker 2: drop it. And so Charlie just work with Brendan on
Speaker 2: that all summer, and then there's a new kid in school.
Speaker 2: He didn't know not to pass it to Brennan. Throws
Speaker 2: it to Brennan, who's uncovered because the defense is like
Speaker 2: Carney KG, it catches and he runs for TuS. That
Speaker 2: was my height of like my aspiration for you be
Speaker 2: the guy. If you're open, the quarterback will still pass
Speaker 2: you the ball. So those are my low ambitions. My
Speaker 2: high ambition we already talked about it, sainthood. There's no
Speaker 2: higher ambition. And your son getting into a D one
Speaker 2: school is great, it's something he should be proud of.
Speaker 2: You should be proud of. But if what you had
Speaker 2: to do to get there took away the ass, then
Speaker 2: that was a mistake.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, completely agree that you once again, you have
Speaker 1: to maintain your humanity at every juncture, you know, and
Speaker 1: that these things sports in and of themselves are not bad.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes people get hyper religious and they try
Speaker 1: and leave the world behind in every way. I can
Speaker 1: already tell you're a sports fan, and I sit there, Okay,
Speaker 1: oh this league or that league is demonic. We could
Speaker 1: sit here and talk about my problems with pro sports
Speaker 1: all day long. You know, I think that, you know,
Speaker 1: I've thought that there should be a book written on
Speaker 1: this where you just talk about how professional sports can
Speaker 1: you talk about culture? Professional sports lead a lot of culture,
Speaker 1: way more than we realize.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I just I got to take care of me and
Speaker 1: my family. I got to do what's right for me
Speaker 1: and my family. That is the promotion on a lot
Speaker 1: of levels of selfishness, of greed of but it's been
Speaker 1: turned into a cultural norm where no, that's the way
Speaker 1: things should be. Now, that's not an order of loves.
Speaker 1: I've got to take care because especially when we're talking
Speaker 1: about professional sports and the money and everything like that.
Speaker 1: But I digress. Some of the best moments that I've
Speaker 1: had with my six year old are is there a
Speaker 1: Hornets game tonight, and just sitting there and watching sports
Speaker 1: together and seeing him develop a love for sports like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's not all bad.
Speaker 2: I didn't think I would get into watching football. I've
Speaker 2: never been. If the weather's nice, I don't spend Sunday
Speaker 2: watching football. But when it's horrible weather, it's like, what
Speaker 2: can I do with my kids? It's watch football and
Speaker 2: just putting the things in their place. It's all you
Speaker 2: have to do. But football, football on Saturdays and Sundays
Speaker 2: can become all consumed. It becomes a command performance. And
Speaker 2: if a guy has a nine to five job Monday
Speaker 2: through Friday, well then there's not a lot of time
Speaker 2: outside of his obligations. If one of them is Nebraska football.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this the Saturday and the Sunday, depending on which
Speaker 1: side you follow. And then if you have both and
Speaker 1: help us, whose responsibility is it to raise kids? Because
Speaker 1: in a lot of you know, I was talking to
Speaker 1: my wife and she said, well, what's the big takeaway?
Speaker 1: What's the big takeaway from the book? And I could
Speaker 1: ask you and I will ask you, But you know,
Speaker 1: you talk about how money matters. You know, sometimes just
Speaker 1: giving cash is actually helpful. No strings attached. It's not
Speaker 1: cat because I'll tell you a story real quick. Just
Speaker 1: it's it's a symptom of the sickness. So your HSA
Speaker 1: FSA whatever where you can spend it on childcare. But
Speaker 1: it got rejected because the childcare receipt that I sent
Speaker 1: in said something about school and oh no, we won't pay.
Speaker 1: So if they're learning, you won't pay for it. It
Speaker 1: just has to be pure, like makeing sure that they're
Speaker 1: not dying or like that's a sign of the sickness.
Speaker 1: You talk about how money matters. Okay, I think that's true,
Speaker 1: but I think you're more important. Kind of solution is
Speaker 1: that cultural institutions matter that government and economics. While they
Speaker 1: may be helpful, you're not really going to solve the
Speaker 1: problem unless the cultural institutions step up in a way
Speaker 1: that they've become dormant, whether it's by the state not
Speaker 1: allowing them to do it, like with certain Catholic charities
Speaker 1: or Christian charities. I know the state sometimes comes in
Speaker 1: and undercuts them, but I really do agree with you.
Speaker 1: If you agree with me that culture institutions have to
Speaker 1: step up, that's right.
Speaker 2: And the subtitle of Family and Friendly is how our
Speaker 2: culture made raising children harder than it needs to be.
Speaker 2: When I posted the cover on Facebook, one of my
Speaker 2: high school friends says, I will buy this to see
Speaker 2: why you say coldulture and not economy, and another one
Speaker 2: said a government. They thought that should have been the subtimee.
Speaker 2: I think the economy and the government matter, but to
Speaker 2: the degree that they shaped the culture. And so you
Speaker 2: talked about neutrality earlier. It took me a while to
Speaker 2: realize what I'm saying is, well, I believe in a
Speaker 2: lot of neutrality. The government should not establish a religion.
Speaker 2: We shouldn't. You know, there's lots of discrimination that we
Speaker 2: shouldn't do. We can't be neutral on kids. Like kids
Speaker 2: and parents are good, We're going to be pro them,
Speaker 2: and so you know that means an employer might be
Speaker 2: I think I tell this story in the book of
Speaker 2: when I was an editor of a small opinion page
Speaker 2: about nine people, and we would debate policy. But then
Speaker 2: it trickled into like company policy. It was about like
Speaker 2: pregnancy discrimination, and some guy was like, well, if you're
Speaker 2: getting pregnant and you're going to take time off, that
Speaker 2: hurts the company, so you should be allowed to discriminate
Speaker 2: against them. And I said, I understand what you're saying,
Speaker 2: but we should be four people having families. And he said, well,
Speaker 2: it's interesting, Tim, because you I take off the end
Speaker 2: of Holy Week at least Thursday and Friday, if not Wednesday. Says,
Speaker 2: you take off for that and the te ball league
Speaker 2: I talk about in the book that I founded. I
Speaker 2: had to be there, you know, early on Friday, and
Speaker 2: I would leave work when I was the editor, regularly
Speaker 2: at five o'clock to make sure that I was home
Speaker 2: for family dinner. And then he pointed to the editor
Speaker 2: of the magazine, who was observant to it, said the
Speaker 2: deadline for the magazine is Thursday, so that he doesn't
Speaker 2: have to put the mag to bed on Friday and
Speaker 2: worry about being ready for the start of the Sabbath.
Speaker 2: He said, you guys get these accommodations for your family
Speaker 2: and your religion. I don't get any special accommodation. This
Speaker 2: guy at the time was secular. He didn't have a family.
Speaker 2: And I started to say, well, no, you get and
Speaker 2: then I said, yeah, you're right. We value faith and
Speaker 2: family above other things. That guy got a day off
Speaker 2: when his soccer team is like Arsenal or whatever, some
Speaker 2: British soccer team had a game because they play at
Speaker 2: like ten am. I was like, He's like, I gotta
Speaker 2: be honest, I'm gonna be at a pub at ten am.
Speaker 2: You don't want me working this day. And it was
Speaker 2: a Friday, which is a busier day. And I was like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: you get that Friday off. So your soccer game gets
Speaker 2: you one day all season my kids, and his religion
Speaker 2: gets a lot more because we're not being neutral, because
Speaker 2: we're saying that these things matter, and so we should
Speaker 2: be Our laws should say that. Not there's some levels
Speaker 2: of neutrality we want to preserve, but our laws should
Speaker 2: say that because the laws form the soul. Both Augustine
Speaker 2: and Aquinas say that, but really are broader culture. That
Speaker 2: thing about in Israel about like crossing the street with
Speaker 2: the little kids, nobody's going to establish that by law.
Speaker 2: Minneapolis passing a law saying you have to help six
Speaker 2: year olds across the street is not going to established culture.
Speaker 2: The culture has to be pro family and pro kid.
Speaker 2: So just think about schooling. Our schools are, especially like
Speaker 2: the elite public schools are like, what is your career
Speaker 2: going to be? Are you going to get into an ivy,
Speaker 2: are you going to do this? There's just recently that
Speaker 2: I was teaching a class through AI where I'm a
Speaker 2: fellow these college kids, and two different people made a
Speaker 2: point about made a joke about women going to college
Speaker 2: for an mrs degree, you know that, JA and I
Speaker 2: sort of chuckled that, and I had heard it and
Speaker 2: thought it was funny. And somebody just said, if part
Speaker 2: of what I want out of college is forming lasting
Speaker 2: friendships and one of those lasting friendships is a marriage,
Speaker 2: is that really inferior? Why should you mock that part
Speaker 2: of what I And it just instantly changed my life.
Speaker 2: I had gone four years of my life thinking that college,
Speaker 2: not even that college was about preparation for career. Because
Speaker 2: I got a liberal arts degree, we're reading Plato and Aristotle,
Speaker 2: which ironically I get to use my job. And then
Speaker 2: I thought, one of the reasons I'm always glad I
Speaker 2: went to college was because of this group of like
Speaker 2: six or seven guys that were just permanently bonded together
Speaker 2: and we're close friends intellectually spiritually. One of them was
Speaker 2: just his sponsor when he came into the church recently,
Speaker 2: and I realized that that interpersonal connection and so in education,
Speaker 2: are we teaching people about building lifelong friends, about finding
Speaker 2: a spouse, about building a family. All of those things
Speaker 2: seem like that's weird religious judges stuff. We're neutral, Let's
Speaker 2: keep that out. No, it should be front and center
Speaker 2: and every part of education because it's more important than
Speaker 2: your career. And why are we not supposed to help
Speaker 2: people think about it?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Well, so the reason I brought it up in
Speaker 1: terms of you know, yes, government economics matters, I still
Speaker 1: go back. I mean, I started reading your book, and
Speaker 1: when I read the introduction, I don't know if you've
Speaker 1: gotten this before. I could have run through a brick wall.
Speaker 1: I want what you have. I think what you have
Speaker 1: and what you built is the solution to what ails
Speaker 1: America and what ails the West. You built a cultural
Speaker 1: you built meaning and you know, of course it may
Speaker 1: sound like we're preaching to the choir, but I think
Speaker 1: we all need to preach a little bit more. I
Speaker 1: think that we should be advocates for our religious perspectives
Speaker 1: a lot of the time, because we've clearly built our
Speaker 1: life around it and we shouldn't be ashamed of it.
Speaker 1: Not in a culture war, which once again I think
Speaker 1: sometimes culture wars are fought too much in terms of
Speaker 1: government win culture wars by building culture, and you build
Speaker 1: culture by doing the hard work, and so you talk
Speaker 1: about cultural institutions. I want to unpack that a little
Speaker 1: bit because sometimes it sounds like you're passing the buck,
Speaker 1: like Ah, the pope and then all of the people
Speaker 1: beneath him need to start making these changes in these declarations.
Speaker 1: It sounds a lot like government, it sounds like bureaucracy.
Speaker 1: And what you built, I'm sure it took work, but
Speaker 1: it feels organic. It felt like you were building culture.
Speaker 1: Could you talk about the Friday night on the field,
Speaker 1: because that's what got me hooked. And that's the main
Speaker 1: reason that I want to talk to you, because I
Speaker 1: want you to help me build the same thing. Because
Speaker 1: I immediately I don't even think I finished your book.
Speaker 1: I went to our priests and I said, I want
Speaker 1: to do this at our church. Well, my wife said,
Speaker 1: you still haven't done it, but hey, it hasn't been
Speaker 1: that long, and I was there's a.
Speaker 2: Lot of ways I can tell the story. One it
Speaker 2: starts out Friday night fish fry and I was in
Speaker 2: sort of an abstract conversation with the younger priests in
Speaker 2: our parish talking about how various things had been that
Speaker 2: parishes used to do have been replaced, like feeding the
Speaker 2: Hungary Montgomery County, Maryland massive government system for that youth
Speaker 2: sports CYO used to be the thing. I mean, there
Speaker 2: are guys my age who described they're like, oh, I
Speaker 2: remember Saint Andrews. That's where I hit the home run
Speaker 2: that put us ahead in the top of the six
Speaker 2: And they always hated me for that anyway. So I said,
Speaker 2: the parishes used to do all these things and they don't.
Speaker 2: And so is Christianity going to move away from the
Speaker 2: idea of the local congregation as being a real source
Speaker 2: of identity into something else for the internet? And the
Speaker 2: priest said, we don't need to return to doing what
Speaker 2: we used to do, in part because we don't. We're
Speaker 2: a nonprofit. We shouldn't be competing against these others share
Speaker 2: if it's not our central mission. The central mission of
Speaker 2: the church is the salvation of souls. But as we're
Speaker 2: talking about, there needs to be what we call corporal
Speaker 2: works of mercy. So what he said, what are the
Speaker 2: unmet needs of the people in this room? And I
Speaker 2: looked around fry this is a pretty diverse parish. We
Speaker 2: had you know Eritrean immigrants, we had fourth generation you
Speaker 2: know Salvadorans. We had you know, lobbyists, we had former congressmen, YadA, YadA,
Speaker 2: And I thought, what do they all have in common?
Speaker 2: Basically everyone who was there was married and had kids.
Speaker 2: And I said, I thought about the suburban culture, and
Speaker 2: I said, we all need places, a place to bring
Speaker 2: our kids and ignore them while we hang out with
Speaker 2: our adults. And then I realized what I had been
Speaker 2: involved with was in neighboring parishes Friday night on the field,
Speaker 2: and what it was was a t ball league and
Speaker 2: the games were one and the the dads were involved,
Speaker 2: but it was set up on the backfield of a
Speaker 2: Catholic parish that had multiple jungle gyms that had places
Speaker 2: for kids to wander, so you bring the whole family.
Speaker 2: And also there's food. They sold burgers and hot dogs
Speaker 2: from a snackshack, and I said, we need to do
Speaker 2: that at Saint Andrew's and almost just because I didn't
Speaker 2: want to have to like count change, I said, we're
Speaker 2: gonna run it on donations, like throw in the basket
Speaker 2: whatever you can. My kids brought like a little Venmo
Speaker 2: Scan and it more than paid for the costco runs.
Speaker 2: And so every Friday night we had this tea ball
Speaker 2: thing and the parents would show up and the first
Speaker 2: time they would think they were supposed to watch the
Speaker 2: tea ball. It's like, no, you're supposed to go hang
Speaker 2: out with somebody else. And we would grill. We would
Speaker 2: order pizza before Lent and then we would grill burgers
Speaker 2: after that. I tried to be sort of old fashioned.
Speaker 2: I tried giving away salmon burgers because I was like,
Speaker 2: even though it's it's Easter season, it's Friday, right. I
Speaker 2: was the only one whoever ate the salmon burger. It
Speaker 2: was like dune not but the kids are on the playground,
Speaker 2: and then slowly the parents become more free range. I
Speaker 2: still remember when I was I was not coaching the
Speaker 2: baseball I was. I called myself the grill coach. One
Speaker 2: year and I'm flipping the burgers and there's this woman
Speaker 2: and her husband who are talking to me. The woman
Speaker 2: like goes to the playground and then stops and realizes
Speaker 2: that her four year old is surrounded by twenty other kids,
Speaker 2: including some teenagers, and it's gonna be fine. And she
Speaker 2: turns back over and she's like, where'd you get that
Speaker 2: Miller Lite? And they were like semi legal beers, and
Speaker 2: I had to like reach on there, like you know,
Speaker 2: you weren't allowed to advertise it, but you could have
Speaker 2: this set. And I just thought, like, I am so
Speaker 2: proud of this woman. My Friday night thing has just accomplished.
Speaker 2: It's thing that she is now entrusting her children to
Speaker 2: the community and for me and people are getting to
Speaker 2: know each other. They were school parents, they were parish parents,
Speaker 2: and it was a place where we could bring our
Speaker 2: kids and ignore them because it had the built environment,
Speaker 2: the grass field that had a bunch of other parents
Speaker 2: who were involved in the same undertaking, and the t
Speaker 2: ball was almost an excuse. I don't know that any
Speaker 2: of those kids besides my oldest boy, are still playing baseball.
Speaker 2: But the point of it was you're going to get
Speaker 2: your neighbors, You're going to build up the social trust.
Speaker 2: You're going to have excuses to just stop by the
Speaker 2: parish like I would come by and have breake the field,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden you realize this is what
Speaker 2: it used to be. You'd like be at the parish
Speaker 2: just sort of randomly, not like just set school drop
Speaker 2: off or pickup or just church time. Building that So
Speaker 2: it took work, but also what it took was a
Speaker 2: term I don't use a lot because it's confusing, but
Speaker 2: it was social capital. We were involved in that parish
Speaker 2: in all sorts of ways. Later on I became a
Speaker 2: Sunday school teacher. My wife was on the advisory board.
Speaker 2: One old lady once told me the most important thing
Speaker 2: we ever did, which is put butts in the pews,
Speaker 2: like we showed up on Sunday. We put our kids
Speaker 2: in the school. You know, we didn't pay for tuition,
Speaker 2: so we were probably a net loss because of the
Speaker 2: financial aid. But when I wanted to form this, after
Speaker 2: talking to other dads and talking to the priests, what
Speaker 2: did I do? I emailed the principle. I said, I
Speaker 2: want a list of every kindergartener in first grader's parents
Speaker 2: so I can email. I talked to the pastor. He
Speaker 2: was like, look, cyo sports half of it. They're just
Speaker 2: wearing our name. These kids never show up to church.
Speaker 2: It's just going to be something like that. I said, no,
Speaker 2: this is going to be the opposite. He said, okay.
Speaker 2: Favor to a guy who was a parishioner who was
Speaker 2: a grounds keeper at University of Maryland and says, can
Speaker 2: you come till our infield because it's overgrown and throw
Speaker 2: down dirt? Guy does it at costs, And then we
Speaker 2: get grills from the Knights of Columbus and they're pro pain.
Speaker 2: So the social capitalist we had become part of a
Speaker 2: community almost just by showing up, but also by volunteering,
Speaker 2: and so then we had this massive lever that we
Speaker 2: could then pull to make this thing happen. So what
Speaker 2: did we Obama used to say, you didn't build that,
Speaker 2: someone else made that help. That was absolutely true. I
Speaker 2: didn't build the parish, I didn't build school. I didn't
Speaker 2: build the email list. I didn't turn a grass field
Speaker 2: into a dart infield. But being plugged into a institution
Speaker 2: of civil society made it possible for us to make
Speaker 2: it so that if it was Friday night in the spring,
Speaker 2: you didn't mom didn't have to meal plan unless you
Speaker 2: have going on. Even if you didn't have a t
Speaker 2: ball player, we said, come on down and just eat,
Speaker 2: eat for free.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'd take it one step further. I mean not
Speaker 1: to undercut Friday nights on the field. I don't think
Speaker 1: you need the t ball call me an anarchist, but
Speaker 1: you know, I just like, I'm so consumed by this
Speaker 1: concept because I think that we also fall into the
Speaker 1: trap of and maybe you could weigh in on this,
Speaker 1: and it's one of the reasons that I've kind of
Speaker 1: not initiated what I want to and I'm going to
Speaker 1: follow it and I'm to send you pictures of it,
Speaker 1: And Tim, you did it. You made this happen one
Speaker 1: because culture starts upstream, and it just starts with one
Speaker 1: person at a time, not an institution. Even though we
Speaker 1: say cultural institutions, what that means is the people who
Speaker 1: are members, lay people stepping up, people like you, people
Speaker 1: like me doing this and then kind of initiating a
Speaker 1: contagion of like, hey, I really belong here. And I
Speaker 1: think sometimes we get so bogged down with what's the
Speaker 1: label on this, what do I call this, who's in charge,
Speaker 1: who's running it, that we lose the organic nature of
Speaker 1: just being together without an agenda and doing life together.
Speaker 1: And so that's where that's my goal for whatever happens.
Speaker 2: But doing life together. There's a French verb and then
Speaker 2: there's a Greek verb that Tokeville and Aristotle separately use
Speaker 2: and I remember seeing like living together in Aristotle's politics
Speaker 2: when you're talking about friends, and I was like, what
Speaker 2: does he mean? Does he mean like residing to it?
Speaker 2: But it wasn't residing together, it was like going through
Speaker 2: life together. And then French the word convivial same sort
Speaker 2: of thing. And I was talking to somebody said that
Speaker 2: she had just become obsessed with the notion of conviviality
Speaker 2: and this you joked about the sort of the chosen families,
Speaker 2: and you look at these modern efforts to sort of
Speaker 2: do that and like, you know, group housing, let's build
Speaker 2: the housing so that it's social. And some of these
Speaker 2: might work, some of them might not, but all of
Speaker 2: it is just this natural sense we know God imprints
Speaker 2: on our soul that is not good for man to
Speaker 2: be alone. The message is that a lot of conservatives,
Speaker 2: and a lot of religious conservatives need a nuclear family.
Speaker 2: While it's the most important thing. It's like a cell
Speaker 2: in the body. It is a fundamental building block of society.
Speaker 2: A cell in the body can't survive without the rest
Speaker 2: of the systems. So it is not good for man
Speaker 2: to be alone. And it's not good for man and
Speaker 2: wife and children to be alone. I mean, we need
Speaker 2: lots of alone time. Family dan a, YadA YadA. Why
Speaker 2: I think I should reread the Little House on the
Speaker 2: Prairie books and write about that work because they didn't
Speaker 2: thrive When he was like I'm going to build this
Speaker 2: house with my own acts, all of that stuff was
Speaker 2: like awesome, dude, Like if you could have put that
Speaker 2: on Instagram, that would have been a great real But
Speaker 2: they don't thrive until they're embedded in a community with neighbors.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Now that's the key, Tim. I want to ask you
Speaker 1: a couple more questions. One, this podcast is called a
Speaker 1: commitment to reality. How is building a family friendly subculture
Speaker 1: related to a commitment to reality?
Speaker 2: What we were just talking about the reality is that
Speaker 2: a couple can't just raise their children without cultural support,
Speaker 2: and that cultural support can't be like the city passes
Speaker 2: a bill and now you have universal childcare. That's not
Speaker 2: going to do the tray. Cultural support is the breath
Speaker 2: of what we were talking about earlier. It's the one
Speaker 2: guy said in Jerusalem, the bus drivers have a real
Speaker 2: affection for the kids. Like that's part of it. Another
Speaker 2: part of it is, again, the way our souls are
Speaker 2: made for most of us. Marriage and parenthood are going
Speaker 2: to be the things that are going to steer us
Speaker 2: towards happiness and towards virtue and towards sainthood. Like that
Speaker 2: is the way we are built. You can't change the
Speaker 2: way we are built. And so both of those things.
Speaker 2: It's possible for somebody to tons of people go through
Speaker 2: life and live for others without marriage or parenthood, but
Speaker 2: the reality is that it's a lot harder to do
Speaker 2: that without living without a spouse and kids.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, Derek Thompson just tweeted out something this
Speaker 1: morning and you quote him in your book about workism
Speaker 1: being the you know, the main religion in America, and
Speaker 1: it was about his skepticism about these resurgence what I'm
Speaker 1: sure people in your world, in the Catholic world they're
Speaker 1: talking about, they're talking about in the Orthodox world as well,
Speaker 1: we're just getting a surge of converts. And he was
Speaker 1: claiming a skepticism and I just don't I can't believe
Speaker 1: that numbers tell the full story, because you can't tell
Speaker 1: me that my eyes aren't seeing what they're seeing. People
Speaker 1: are coming in and they're not just coming in young
Speaker 1: people are coming in, they're getting married, they're having kids,
Speaker 1: kids plural, like I mean, it's just I can't believe
Speaker 1: how many of these women are having back to back
Speaker 1: to back. It's like it's like the old times are
Speaker 1: new again, and that you cannot measure that statistically. I don't, well,
Speaker 1: not not as quickly as they're trying. Would you agree
Speaker 1: with that?
Speaker 2: You you've got to You've got to see things on
Speaker 2: the ground. And when people ask me about collapsing birth
Speaker 2: rate or marriage rates, a lot of times they think
Speaker 2: there's one answer, there's a million answers, and there's forces
Speaker 2: that move in different directions. Frankly, religiosity is the most
Speaker 2: important and the most consistent predictor of likelihood to get
Speaker 2: married and have children, But there are different forces moving
Speaker 2: in different directions. And I think and so there's a
Speaker 2: really good religion scholar named Ryan Burge.
Speaker 1: That's who it was with Okay that he was quoting.
Speaker 1: I think he had a podcast with Brian Burge.
Speaker 2: I don't always agree with Burge, but I think if
Speaker 2: we said in the Catholic church, because it's so easy
Speaker 2: to still identify as a Catholic without really practicing in
Speaker 2: the Catholic Church. People still identify as a Catholic if
Speaker 2: they're not practicing, and maybe they more of them are
Speaker 2: stopping to identify, ceasing to identify.
Speaker 1: But then.
Speaker 2: That number who already weren't attending disaffiliating. If that's larger
Speaker 2: than the number of people who come into the church,
Speaker 2: that wouldn't surprise me. But what we're seeing with our
Speaker 2: own eyes on every Eastern vigil is this massive influx
Speaker 2: of very serious Catholics, and the people who we haven't
Speaker 2: seen in mass for three years are disaffiliating. I'd still
Speaker 2: rather have, you know, a growing number, that would be better.
Speaker 2: But considering that we're rapidly secularizing, it is a great
Speaker 2: consolation that we're getting this flood of new converts.
Speaker 1: Amen, Where are we most eager to ignore reality?
Speaker 2: Where are we most eager to ignore reality? I think
Speaker 2: part of it is for me. I think I'm capable
Speaker 2: of doing more single handedly than I actually am capable of.
Speaker 2: I don't think I need help from you know, other people,
Speaker 2: and I don't think I need help from God as
Speaker 2: much as I do. And it's a good thing about
Speaker 2: lent or about you know, reading scripture that it reminds you,
Speaker 2: or just occasional suffering that it's like, no, this is
Speaker 2: not you do not have this all under control. So
Speaker 2: I might just be speaking for myself, but I think
Speaker 2: for a lot of men, we think we are more
Speaker 2: capable of doing things on our own than we actually are.
Speaker 2: So for me, that's a big difference between reality and
Speaker 2: what I think through.
Speaker 1: Okay, and in a world that feels increasingly unreal, what
Speaker 1: feels most real to you, what.
Speaker 2: Feels most real to me? I don't know. I was
Speaker 2: just in my backyard laying sod with my sons, and
Speaker 2: we're trying to lay it on a hill, and so
Speaker 2: we have to you can't really stand that's part of
Speaker 2: why we want to sod there. And so I'm like
Speaker 2: sliding down the hill and my son is hauling me
Speaker 2: a roll of sod. I don't know how much this
Speaker 2: same way. It's fifty pounds, and my other son is
Speaker 2: reaching over to hand me like a ground staple to
Speaker 2: drive it in. And in just earlier, I was trying
Speaker 2: to get them to do work, and they were all
Speaker 2: either goofing off or like telling stories. At one point
Speaker 2: they were arguing about about hiding Jews from Nazis and
Speaker 2: and can you outright lie like having ethical debates and
Speaker 2: I'm like, just grab the rake, and then I finally
Speaker 2: calmed down. So my kids at one moment being totally
Speaker 2: inefficient at the job we desperately need to do before
Speaker 2: all the sod dies, and at the next moment it
Speaker 2: being like an action movie and we're like a well
Speaker 2: oiled machine. So that total variance in life where what's
Speaker 2: flat is they're being kids and I'm a grumpy dad
Speaker 2: who wants to get this sodding done. The variation and
Speaker 2: the chaos from well oiled machine to like what are
Speaker 2: you doing? Why are you spraying the hose into your
Speaker 2: mouth instead of watering the sod? That feels very real
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 1: Well, Tim, I loved your book. I truly did. Like
Speaker 1: I said, if it was just an essay that was
Speaker 1: the introduction, I think it's worth the price of admission
Speaker 1: because I really do believe that the answer isn't government
Speaker 1: programs this that it's it's getting involved. And so you
Speaker 1: inspired me to do my own variation of Fridays on
Speaker 1: the field. And I can't wait to tell you that
Speaker 1: that I finally did it, and I'll send you a picture. Yes, So, Tim, Carney,
Speaker 1: thank you for joining me on commitment to reality. I
Speaker 1: really appreciate you.
Speaker 2: Pleasure is mine, Dave