Episode 40: Transcript

"A big phase of disequilibrium."

Doug French: I think you and I, when we were in that conference room how many years ago, we talked about this. We talked about how April Fool's wasn't great. And I have to say, I've come around now, I kind of like April Fool's Day because that's the one day people actually look at news with discernment. It's like, the most people are the most intelligent readers of the year on April 1st because they're that much more mindful of being tricked.

Music fades in and out.

Magda Pecsenye Zarin: So did you find out why my computer has been wacky this morning?

Doug: Did I find out? No, but I will posit to you that the universe has found a way to start Mercury into retrograde on April Fool's Day.

Magda: I think Mercury into retrograde on its own is enough. As we all know, I loathe, loathe April Fool's Day. It makes me feel genuinely bad every year. It makes me feel like I'm out of sync with what other people think is funny that's clearly not funny. It's the corporate pranks that really, really bother me. Like, I don't care if some kid substitutes hemorrhoid cream for toothpaste. Like, whatever. You know, kids are going to do stuff, even if the pranks are mean.

Doug: Keep the gums swelling down.

Magda: Yeah. It's the corporate attempts to be funny that I really, really loathe. There was one today that I saw that was genuinely funny, but it was because it was just very gentle. And I complimented them on it. But it just makes me feel out of sync with the rest of the world. Like I think that I am more sensitive to things that are mean-spirited than a lot of people have been trained to be. I don't think that I'm more sensitive than other people actually are. I just think a lot of people have been trained by the culture to think that things that are mean are just plain funny. And I think a lot of that has bothered me for a long time. Like, for instance, I never really liked the Harry Potter books because I thought they were mean-spirited.

Doug: Interesting.

Magda: So when it turned out that JK Rowling's a horrible person who seems to not really like kids at all, I was not surprised, and everybody else seemed to be very surprised by that.

Doug: Does this feeling bad live in comparison to other people? Like do you feel judged by other people because you're not in on the joke?

Magda: I guess? You know, what pushed me over the edge today, because when you and I logged into this call before we started recording, I was crying.

Doug: I'm not laughing at your crying. Yes, I recall that.

Magda: The Connections, the puzzle that was all emoji instead of words, I don't have the ability to approach it. I don't know how, because emoji to me don't have any connection to actual words. None. So, and people were like, “oh, just think of the word it represents.” That emoji represents probably 65 different words to me. So, I mean, in theory, it's worth a thousand different words. So.

Doug: There's a bunch of permutations going through your head.

Magda: Yeah, exactly. Like I was like, oh, these three have the same shape. The guy with the screaming face and the alien and the head of lettuce have the same shape. Maybe they go together, right? Like they don't connect to words to me at all. And everybody else is like, “oh, it was so funny. It was so clever.” And I was like, okay. That's great.

Doug: But it's an interesting turnaround, right? Because you say when you do get the Connections, you often get the purple first.

Magda: I wouldn't say that I always get the purple first. I get purple first a lot. So I'm disturbed by the setup of the puzzle in general. I'm disturbed that there are only four possible groups. I want a puzzle that's like Boggle but with combinations, so like there could be all kinds of different groupings of the set of words, and you get more points for coming up with all the possible groupings.

Doug: Gotcha. Well, you know that's not the point of the puzzle.

Magda: You and I met doing test prep, and the whole secret to being good at testing and at test prep is you have to be able to make your mind think like the test writer. I think either your mind thinks the way Wyna Liu’s does, she's the one who writes the puzzle, or it doesn't. It took me three or four days to figure out how to think like Wyna Liu. And now I think like Wyna Liu. 

So I almost always get it in four. If I don't get it in four, I don't get it at all. Because it's just like a combination of words that I had never heard before, didn't think of that way, or wrong part of speech or something like that. Like, to me saying “I'm good at Connections” makes about as much sense as saying “I pushed out Thomas” because I didn't. My body just went whoop whoop whoop and the baby was out, right? And it's the same thing with–

Doug: That's what I was listening to in the other room! Okay, all right, let me ask you this: If you've gotten the first three tiers correctly and you know your remaining four buttons are related, do you just click them or do you wait to see if you can guess what the relation is before you click it?

Magda: It kind of depends. Sometimes in a murder mystery the fun is knowing who did it before anybody else does and sometimes the fun of a murder mystery is finding out who it was and you never suspected it.

Doug: Well, the reason I ask is, you know Michael Chabon, the author, released his official Connections strategy, which is never to click on anything until he knows what all four groups are.

Magda: Okay, that completely makes sense to me. However. Sometimes my brain shows me a set of five or six that are connected. But if it shows me four, I will click those in to get that category gone. So then I don't have to think about those words again. And then I do what he says.

Doug: One of my favorite things to do is when my first guess is one of each of the four categories. And I finally solve it and I go back and the first tier is one of every color. 

Magda: Yeah, I think that's really funny when that happens. 

Doug: It just means that Wyna Lou figured out a way to bamboozle me big time. And by the way, I actually did see, she was on an Instagram story and talked about how these things get decided. And it's not just her. They are vetted by a committee of people whether they agree with her or not.

Magda: I imagine her as being like 75 years old.

Doug: No. 

Magda: No?

Doug: No, she's a kid compared to us. Yeah, I would say she's... 

Magda: Oh my God. Well, because the name Wyna, right?

Doug: Mid-40s, early 40s.

Magda: Wyna could be literally any age, because it's one of those names that's just like, your parents thought it was beautiful, and so they... 

Doug: She's just a nerdy Asian lady. It isn't just her, even though she initiates them.

Magda: Well, then now I feel bad for having wished Wyna Liu a day of nothing but dealing with 12-year-olds’ April Fool's Day pranks today.

Doug: So you're not feeling too vindictive.

Magda: I am always vindictive.

Doug: She tried something new. I dug it. You know, I'm not going to fight you on this. I'm not going to judge you on this. I'm just saying, all right, you had a disconnect for a change.

Magda: It reminds me of those Rebus puzzles. Do you remember? You might have been too old for it, but Rebus puzzles were what every adult thought every kid wanted to solve between 1978 and 1983 when I finally aged out.

Doug: Hey, there's a reason why Concentration, the game show, was rebooted like 11 times.

Magda: Oh, my God. Rebus puzzles. I just hate them. I hate them. And it made everybody always have to speak in the first person because you had the eye. Oh, God. And then the sheep. It's always a ewe. God forbid it be a sheep. God forbid it be a lamb. God forbid it be a ram. It's always got to be a ewe.

Doug: Funny you mentioned that. Funny you mentioned that in Connections.

Magda: Yeah, but today was just a big Rebus puzzle. And there's no combination of emojis that you could make that say, fuck you.

They're going to re-re-re-re-reboot Concentration when you use only emoji.

Magda: I don't know. I far prefer The Match Game.

Doug: Hosted by, what's his name? Ryan Seacrest.

Magda: I don't think Ryan Seacrest is funny enough to host The Match Game. The Match Game, the host has to be able to think on their feet.

9:00

Doug: Alec Baldwin hosted Match Game for a time. 

Magda: What? Alec Baldwin hosted Match Game?

Doug: They rebooted it on network tv a few years ago, yeah, and Alec Baldwin hosted it.

Magda: I think he's a loathsome human being, but I will give him credit for being really funny in certain ways, but not in a, like, Gene Rayburn, like, think-on-your-feet-about-filling-in-the-blanks kind of way.

Doug: He even had that, you know, two-foot metal microphone as, like, a retro kitsch thing.

Magda: You know who should host Match Game? Fortune Feimster. Feimster. I don't know how you say her last name. Fortune. 

Doug: She's funny.

Magda: She thinks on her feet constantly and would be hilarious as the host of the Match Game.

Doug: Well, that's the thing, though. It's like you give these talented women shitty jobs. Like Taylor Tomlinson is hilarious. And After Midnight is unwatchable. She's like, this is a gig and I don't know how long it'll last because it's not a good show and no one's watching it because it's CBS. I'm the demographic for CBS as a man of a certain age.

Magda: You are not. You are 10 years younger than the demographic for CBS.

Doug: Perhaps.

Magda: Yes.

Doug: Although I do watch Sunday Morning and I do watch 60 Minutes, you know.

Magda: Okay.

Doug: Oh, and I also upgraded for a month. I got the Showtime package on Paramount Plus so I could watch March Madness.

Magda: Okay.

Doug: And that means I'm watching Showtime, which means I'm watching The Curse, which is, oh, my God.

Magda: So I made Mike watch The Fifth Element with me.

Doug: Oh, right. How'd that go?

Magda: He didn't love it. And you know why? Because it was made in 1997. And he thought it was “chaotic,” even though I was like, oh my God, it's the most straightforward plot. Like there are no plot holes in the entire movie.

Doug: It's science fiction. How buttoned-down do you want a sci-fi movie to be?

Magda: Right. Exactly. But there are a lot of sci-fi movies that have a lot of really convoluted plots and holes and stuff that doesn't make sense. This one is so, so linear. It just has a lot of different sets of characters. I also pointed out that Chris Tucker's character was one of the first times that I had seen in mass media that gender-bending thing, like, out front. It was this guy who was very informed by drag culture and was presenting as very femme, but at the same time was this real ladies man, like was flamboyant, but was also tough. He got to be one of the heroes. And at the end, he was just like, Hey, I'm out. And so Mike was like, “Okay, I get that.” But what bugged him was the science part of it. Like when they put the shard of the alien in that tube thing and then they're essentially 3D printing the skeleton and 3D printing the skin and all that kind of stuff. He was like, “oh, come on, that's not how it works.” He’s Mr. Physics.

Doug: “Wait a minute. There's no such thing as a floating Vietnamese restaurant.” 

Magda: So it was the science part of the science fiction that bothered him. 

Doug: I want to know what the conversation was between Gary Oldman and his agent when it was pitched to him. He's Gary Oldman. He can have any gig he wants.

Magda: I understand that that gig was fun for him because it was a fun character to play, but it looked like a dog cone on the top of his head.

Doug: Yeah. 

Magda: It's just so weird. The character design was so, so strange.

Doug: But you know, wonderfully new and different and fun. I love that movie.

Magda: Yeah, I love that movie.

Doug: But you're feeling the same way I did when I was at my sister's house for Christmas. You know, whenever we hang out, we always watch a bunch of movies. And I brought Fantastic Mr. Fox. Everybody in my family, everybody walked out.

Magda: Yeah, I showed it to Mike and Hannah, and Mike and Hannah were both like, yeah, eh. What?

Doug: Why do people like the things they do? And more importantly, why do they not like the things they should?

Magda: I still married him. I don't understand it.

Doug: Well, it's a complimentary thing. You don't want to marry your clone.

Magda: Well, it's true. It's true.

Doug: I mean, you and I have conversations like this, and we washed out as spouses, so that to me is a good thing.

Magda: I have to say, a lot of stuff that you like, I don't.

Doug: So, you know, it's kind of predictable.

Magda: So everybody who's been listening to us is well aware of the shitshow that is the FAFSA. If you've been following along at all with articles and stuff like that about it, the media has mostly been saying, “wow, this is a big mess.” “Boy, the Department of Ed really needs to get this in line.” “Oh, no, more delays could cause problems.” Well, over the weekend, I got fed on my Google home screen on my phone, you know, because it feeds me stories it thinks I would like. So I get a lot of stuff about FAFSA and higher ed in general. I get a lot of stuff about baking shows. I get a lot of stuff about knitting, you know, the stuff I do searches on. So I got three stories over the weekend that were all like “Opinion: This FAFSA debacle could ruin higher ed as we see it!!” And it was like all of a sudden on Friday night, the media completely turned against the Department of Ed for this debacle. I got fed three stories that were basically like “Colleges are all going to go belly up because of this FAFSA thing.”

Doug: Well, it sounds like the GOP's ad buys are starting to kick in.

Magda: Well, I don't think this has anything to do with the GOP.

Doug: Well, it might, though. I mean, everything is based on culture wars because the economy is doing wonderfully. But if you're going to find something to fight the current administration on... 

Magda: Oh, so you're saying the GOP is trying to decimate higher ed by way of the FAFSA debacle?

Doug: Well, it's trying to offset all the headlines that Biden's making by forgiving student debt. “Joe Biden's Department of Education who can't get its FAFSA right.”

Magda: You know, there was a story about, there was an interview of a dad of two. He's 50 years old and now he doesn't know how he's going to be able to pay for his kids to be in college because they haven't been able to get the FAFSA numbers and he's really worried about it. And it's like, OK, this is just one of those everyman stories. It's not like this guy has it particularly rough, but it's like, oh, OK. So public opinion is officially turned. It's been very interesting to me as somebody who, I don't feel caught in the middle of it anymore. And partly that's because our FAFSA processed last week after only 55 days. But there are people who are really, they don't know if their kids will be able to go to school in the fall, and there are going to be a lot of people who just walk away. 

Magda: Princeton would never have to charge a penny for tuition for the rest of its days because its endowment is so large that it is more than thriving off just the interest on its endowment every year, right? Princeton is not having any problems with this because Princeton can give any kind of financial aid offer as merit aid to anyone that they want to. I'm talking about schools that are smaller, that don't have endowments, schools that really rely on tuition dollars and the money they get from the FAFSA and from other student loans to operate. 

Doug: Those are the ones that were proactive enough to create their own quasi-FAFSA to get people through it.

Magda: I don't think all of them were that savvy. And if the FAFSA doesn't process, they don't get the money from the FAFSA loans. Like when you apply for a loan, your FAFSA tells you how much you're able to take out in a loan, or if you're under the income cutoff to get a Pell Grant, you as the student take out that loan, but the money doesn't go to you. The money goes to the school that you're going to. So those schools, maybe they can figure out how much money the students should in theory be able to get in student loans from the government. But if the FAFSA never processes, they will not ever be able to actually get that money from the government. And if they're relying on that money to operate, they're screwed. I also think that a lot of public institutions are limited. They are not able or allowed to offer merit aid the same way that private institutions can. Like, if you have ever applied to or gotten an offer from a private college, they use merit aid, quote unquote “merit aid,” as a way to make up the difference for the students that they want to come. Like they look at what they're going to be able to take out in the FAFSA and what the FAFSA tells them that the family can probably pay. And then the rest is just like a slush fund and they just label it like Presidential Scholars Award or, you know, Excellence in Teenagering Award or whatever, right? It's not like that's scholarship money coming from a certain fund, but in public institutions, it is. Those scholarships are designated for certain amounts and the institutions don't have the ability to just sort of lower the tuition rate by putting in an award the way private schools do.

18:30

Magda: If anybody wants my advice about the FAFSA, my advice is: Just hang in there because the FAFSA is eventually going to be processed. You just might not be able to announce which school you're going to by your high school graduation because all of your schools might not be able to put together their financial aid packages. I also predict that kids who go to schools that are less prestigious are probably going to end up getting better financial aid offers than they would have if everything had gone okay with the FAFSA, because I think those schools that are not in the top three tiers are going to be really, really, really worried about not having kids committed in the next two or three weeks. And so they're going to start making some offers to kids that they want, that they wouldn't have had to otherwise.

19:27

Doug: They're going to find some money in the couch where they didn't think they had it.

19:31

Magda: Yeah, exactly. Well, they know they have it but they didn't want to have to use it.

Doug: Right. 

Magda: And I don't think public schools are going to be able to do that. If you're applying, think about do you want to go to a school for less money that is offering you that money because they really want you to come there, even if maybe that's not the most prestigious school for you? Maybe it's worth it to you to save money and go someplace they really want you and are willing to make you a deal.

Doug: Yeah, it's all about leverage, right? You gotta walk in there and... 

Magda: Yeah. Having seen the difference in the acceptance letters from the different schools between our two kids and my stepdaughter, some of them are like, “Well, you're accepted.”

Doug: Right? “I mean, if you've got to come to campus, all right, fine. We'll take your money.”

Magda: We got one for Robert. “We had some qualms about you.” I think it said, “We had some qualms about your admission, but we decided to admit you anyway.” I was like, what? But then there are these other ones that are like, “We are delighted to offer you admission to the class of 20 whatever at whatever college,” right? And the ones that seem delighted, it's like, why would you ever go to a school that didn't want you? Like, it just doesn't make any sense to me. And also, the idea that these admissions departments think it's okay to neg kids. Because to me, though, like, “Well, we had qualms about you” is straight out of the Pickup Artist playbook. They're like, “well, you're not that pretty, but I still want to go on a date with you.” Like, really?

Doug: I mean, I guess it's admissions, right?

Magda: Kids really get this idea that if they go to MIT or Stanford or whatever school, their whole lives are going to be great. I would rather look at college as “Am I going to have a great four years where I have really meaningful experiences with other people, and make friends. Even if they’re not my friends for the rest of my life. Am I gonna have friends? AM I going to feel good about being there? Am I going to feel like this is worth my time? Or am I going to be miserable being a crab in a bucket the whole time?

Doug: Well, for those of you who are listening to us for the first time, and there are a bunch of you because many of you signed on with us after Amanda's episode. I mean, not to switch gears that violently, but I was thinking of Amanda this week. So much of a great turnout to read her story. I'm so grateful to her for offering it up because lots of people came out of the woodwork and said, man, I'm having the same problem with my parents and it's hard. So all of you who are new to us, welcome. We don't always talk random shit like this, but it happens because whenever Magda starts talking about things not working, I'm thinking, huh, Retrograde might be involved in this. And sure enough, the Today Show has a piece on Retrograde, which starts today. And I'm like, okay, first of all, this is an April Fool's joke.

Magda: Oh my God, these planets started from the bottom, now they're here if they're on the freaking Today Show.

Doug: The author's name is Lisa Stardust.

Magda: Okay. The Today Show is actually publishing stuff from astrologers now. I find that absolutely delightful.

Doug: Especially just because Mercury in retrograde is now caught on as a thing.

Magda: Yeah.

Doug: Because it's a way to pin your problems on something else. Oh, okay. It's not just the fundamental randomness of the universe. My computer wouldn't start this morning because Mercury's going backwards.

Magda: Right. Well, but okay, anybody who's really a connoisseur of Mercury in retrograde 

Doug: Knows that it's not going backwards.

Magda: But the worst parts are the shadow periods, which are like the three days before and after it.

Doug: Which is right where we are now because it's officially started today from the 1st to the 25th.

Magda: I feel like I have learned to work with Mercury in retrograde because really what it is is about communications. And it just means you have to slow down and dig in and make yourself actually heard. But I also think for me... 

Doug: Interesting how you were talking about the difficulty in communicating and you were having difficulty communicating.

Magda: But it also for me means just saying no when you know things aren't going to work out. And so that's why I'm not doing Connections today.

Doug: There you go. Why is that just a retrograde thing? Shouldn't that be an always thing?

Magda: I rebuke all Rebus-type puzzles. I rebuke April Fool's jokes that are actually mean-spirited. I rebuke all of that and don't want any part of it.

Doug: Well, thank you for venturing out from under your bed to record this today because I know this is the kind of day you want to sleep entirely through.

Magda: It took me an hour to get in here to record this morning.

Doug: And that's because of Mercury, you're saying?

Magda: I think it is.

Doug: Here's my question to you then, because this brings in a number of elements. 

Magda: Is it bad? Is that your question?

Doug: No, no. No, I'm thinking, all right, so it's April Fool's Day, Mercury's in retrograde, and you're going to see a full solar eclipse. The path of totality is like four and a half minutes. This is one of the longer solar eclipses in the history of solar eclipses because of the way the sun and the moon are going to line up.

24:34

Magda: Yeah.

24:34

Doug: And you're going to travel. You're going to fly here.

24:36

Magda: Yeah.

Doug: So how are you feeling about that overall? Is the universe going to right itself in time or are we just doomed?

Magda: Oh, I don't know. I mean, I don't have any idea if the universe is going to right itself in time or if we're doomed, right? 

Doug: Okay, improv partner, I'll ask something else.

Magda: I am a person who believes in things that you can't see and that you can't touch. I was not a believer in any kind of astrology or any planet-related anything, although I know that the moon influences the tides, so in theory it’s possible. Until the last eclipse. Do remember that last eclipse? The one where Donald Trump looked directly into it?

Doug: Oh, yeah. I was in Kansas City for that.

Magda: I felt just really weird for like a day before and then about two days afterwards, and I could not explain the strange feelings in my body. And then someone was like, well, yeah, the eclipse disrupts, you know, the electromagnetic whatever's out there because it's just a different pattern than is usual. And I thought, okay, maybe there's some truth to this so I started paying attention to stuff a little bit more and there were some things that just, I don't know. There were some correlations that didn't seem explainable in a non-Occam's razor kind of way.

Doug: But that, again, stems from the entire ethos of this podcast, the whole idea of how you get to your 50s and up is down. We're in a Venn diagram of a lot of weird events. And I'm thinking, all right, given all that's going on here, what can we ascribe to this new law in Florida that says it's going to enforce age limits on social media?

Magda: Well, OK, A, good luck enforcing age limits on social media. B, I really don't think little kids should be on social media. Alright, I wouldn't have made it 14. 14 wouldn't have been my cutoff age. And that's because I know enough about child development to know that 14 is a year when kids lose a lot of their senses of organization and they kind of, in Ames and Ilg language, it’s disequilibrium. That entire year is disequilibrium. And Ames and Ilg have this theory that there are times when humans–and they studied children so they say “children” but I think it's humans–are in equilibrium. You really have your feet firmly under you, you are learning new things, you're feeling competent and you are competent. And then you go through phases of disequilibrium where you start to stutter, either literally or just figuratively in what you’ve learned. And it’s because of the way your brain is developing. So it’s all normal. But. The age of 14 is a big disequilibrium phase when a lot of stuff is going on in the background, so kids just kind of get stupid.

Doug: Well, they have to start high school. I mean, good God.

27:06

Magda: Yeah, they lose all sense of perspective. They lose their ability to do things that they were very fluent in before. They kind of lose organizational sense, and they also don’t have any kind of emotional resilience at all. So you tell a 14-year-old “Hey, those pants are too short on you” and it’s like “Oh my God, nobody has ever loved me. I’ll never find pants that are long enough!!” and it was like all you wanted to do was say “Hey, go put those back and we'll give them to Goodwill. Get out another pair of pants from your drawer." But for them, it's like they just don't have the emotional resilience. So the idea that kids would be coming on to the Internet at that particular year is ludicrous to me. Like, I'd rather have them put a 13-year-old on. 13-year-olds are sharks. 13-year-olds are so emotionally fluid. 13-year-olds do not care. 13-year-olds can do everything well and then they go through this 14-year-old phase and they all just lose everything.

Doug: Well, it's not the internet. It's social media apps and there's a difference.

Magda: Well, yeah. There's a difference. Social media apps are rough. They're tough. And I feel like it's where a lot of adults are. So the idea that kids shouldn't be there, shouldn't be there, shouldn't be there. And then all of a sudden, bam, now you're old enough? And it's 14? That's absolutely ludicrous. There needs to be some sort of baby steps into it. I remember when our older one was like 10 or 11. And he wanted to play some multiplayer online video game that was like based on World War One. And people were messaging inside it. So that was social media, right, on this topic. And he would just get so befuddled about why people were getting so mean to each other. But he really kind of toughened up and developed sort of a separate social media persona because of it, I think. And so when he was actually on social media with people he knew and he wasn't as easily hurt or as easily bullied by it because he had watched all of these weirdo adults interacting about logistical details of a war game. Illusion and facade is different in social media than it is in the physical world.

Doug: Oh, yeah. Well, social media is like 98% branding.

Magda: So is a lot of physical life now. I really don't want to say social media is all fake and the real world is all real because that's absolutely not true. I think the rules are just different and we need to figure out a way to prevent kids from getting hurt by not knowing the rules of social media the way they know the rules in their own house.

Doug: You know, it won't work unless everybody's off the apps, right? Or they would have died from FOMO.

Magda: Yes, that's absolutely true. And I don't think people should be putting their kids at a disadvantage with their peers by saying, no, no, you can't go on social media until you're 18 or whatever. That's a different kind of misery for kids.

Doug: Now that you mention that, I want to ask my friend Ru. She started this company, Safe From Online Sex Abuse, SOSA. And she's gone undercover a couple of times. And they've had some sting operations where they've used social media apps to trap these predators and work with law enforcement and all that stuff. 

Magda: You and I are kind of talking about different perils of being on social media, like you're talking about sexual predators. That's not even what I'm thinking about. I'm just thinking about other kids being vicious and mean. You know, there are people who are like, “well, back when we were young, if the kids were bullying us at school, we could go home and be safe in our rooms. And now kids can't because they're being bullied online and they have the social media apps on their phones in their rooms.” I think that's oversimplification. If you were being bullied in school, being at home didn't mean you were safe from the bullying. It just meant you didn't know what they were saying about you at that moment. And that for a lot of us was almost worse.

Doug: Well, I'm not saying that. I'm saying it's just another aspect, another risk of underage kids being there.

Magda: It is. But I don't think age rating is going to have anything to do with that because the kids who are going to fall into the sexual predator traps, it's not age that's putting them at risk. Does that make sense?

Doug: I’m not sure.

Magda: Well, okay, but do you think that any 12-year-old is going to fall into a trap whereas any 17-year-old isn't? Because I don't.

Doug: No, but I do think a 17-year-old is far less likely to get fished in like that.

Magda: I don't think it's because of the age. I think it's because of the experience. And I think that kids who get more validation and have more connection in their daily lives, no matter what their age, are going to be less likely to be sucked in by an online predator.

Doug: Possibly. I just think, ultimately it comes down to, I mean Instagram says they have an age limit, but they’re not enforcing it.

Magda: Right.

Doug: My main issue is, why not make your law align with the rule that the platforms have already announced? You’re not fighting them so much as forcing them to enforce the policies which are meant with the best of intentions.

Magda: Well, I mean, the answer is, the answer to that is this is Florida, so they're grandstanding. Like, was DeSantis behind this? Because he's just grandstanding, right? So he's like... 

Doug: Well, he signed the bill into law. Pending the myriad legal challenges. 

Magda: It's an absolutely unenforceable law, so they can say whatever they want to, right? If they wanted to say, you can only get on the internet when you're 17, they could say that and they could sign that into law because they can't enforce that one either.

Doug: I see parallels to Colorado trying to keep Trump off the ballot.

Magda: Right.

Doug: The court is trying to undo as much federal oversight on individual states in terms of the decisions they want to make. And I agreed with the Supreme Court decision 9-0. Put him on the ballot and let him lose.

Magda: Right.

Doug: Because you can't have asymmetrical options in individual states when something pertains to everything. Like, I'm in Georgia now, and I can use Instagram at 10, but just across the border, somebody can't. I mean, it's fundamentally asymmetric, so it's not going to work. I mean, I just felt weird because for the first time since I've known this self-important man gallumphing around in cowboy boots with heels in them, that he enacted some legislation that I wasn't completely disgusted by. But again, it's also legislation through banning, which seems to be the way things are going now. And that's a slippery slope.

Magda: Can people not just go back and watch the documentary about Prohibition? Like, this is the same thing.

Doug: Yeah, but look at all of the former social media executives who have fled saying, I don't want to be a part of this. We are really screwing things up.

Magda: It's not the age that they're screwing up. It's not if they were like really checking IDs and you couldn't get on until you were 15 or 16 everything would be hunky-dory. It's everything. It's the whole way they've structured everything and there are no guidelines or protections that make any kind of sense. Everything's wrong with social media. The age at which people can get on social media is like problem number 865. It's a buzzsaw. 

There's no safe age to get on social media.

Doug: Well, that's true because you're in danger. You can be in your 50s and buy a Trump Bible.

Magda: Right!

Doug: Right! I have so many problems with the Trump Bible.

Magda: So I have to say, I appreciate the fact that he's taken something in the public domain, slapped his name on it, and is selling it now because it's pure profit. He didn't have to spend anything on the actual contents in there. It's just the King James Version of the Bible. And he picked the worst translation. So I think, like, in terms of admiring initiative, yes, I admire the initiative of this. However, it's so dumb. It's so, so dumb.

Doug: No, it's not dumb if it's making them money. It's pernicious because it's a book that literally combines church and state. And we're finding now, like, Mike Johnson thinks that it was perfectly fine for church and state to be combined. In fact, state should be run by church, but church shouldn't be run by state. It means choosing a unilateral influence, which is total bullshit. But don't put a legislative document in with a bunch of stories that were written 2,000 years ago. They're not compatible.

Magda: Well, the other funny thing is that the fact that it's called the King James Version because it was commissioned by King James, that right there is mixing church and state.

Doug: But that's not what people who are buying it are thinking. They're thinking, I've got to support my cult leader.

Magda: Well, they think it says, like, “he leadeth me,” and that makes it more valid than any other translation of the Bible. Like, okay.

Doug: Yeesh. Well, I would be happy cutting as much religion out of my spirituality as possible.

Magda: We all know that you hate religion.

Doug: Well, I mean, all right, hate is a strong term, but yeah, I'm distrustful of it just because I am all for church as community. As much as I love church for bringing about community, I also wish there were more community among people who for some reason have to be homogenous in terms of their orthodoxy. Why can't we just live and let live? I don’t understand why you live differently means you can't be in the same room as I am when I'm talking to the invisible man upstairs. It's silly.

Magda: Everything's broken. It's Mercury retrograde. I don't know.

Doug: Oh my God. Well, at least you're feeling better.

Magda: Yeah, at least I'm feeling better.

Doug: And your computer's working, so at least it's... 

Magda: Yeah, just in time for me to go completely off the internet for the rest of the day. I saw before this that my friend's high schoolers posted post-it notes all over everything in their house. That, to me, is an April Fool's prank. Completely harmless, not tricking anyone, not making anybody feel bad, it's just hilarious. Open the refrigerator, more post-its, right? And then I saw another feed from a local restaurant that was like, hey, hey, hey, we're officially combining with Chipotle. Like, no, you're not. 

Just why? What’s the point.

Doug: Prank me is fine, but don't make me have to clean something up afterwards.

Magda: Well, and just don't be dumb. I guess I prize humor too much. I don't want people coming in being like, whoa, this is really funny, when no, it's not really funny. It just makes you look stupid.

Doug: Well, I'll say, the favorite thing I look at on Instagram now, speaking of funny and stupid, the thing it generates in Korea is just a couple of guys who have elastic stretched across their chests. And they’re wearing hooded animal costumes that they can’t see out of. And they have a duck toy in their mouth. And so, since they can’t see each other, if they find each other in a crowd, then they get to punish the other by pulling the elastic out as far as they can and it slams into the chest. And if you make a noise to react to getting slammed in the chest, then you have to get hit again.

Magda: I don't even know what to say to that. I would rather watch five hours of Monty Python than five minutes of that.

Doug: Oh my goodness. We have reached a threshold. Five hours of Monty Python. Now is that in the rotation of all the episodes or would you have like three or four that you'd want to watch over and over again?

Magda: It honestly is equally the same to me. 

Doug: It couldn't matter less.

Magda: Yes. 

Doug: And there's the full circle moment when we talk about stuff that I loved and you never cared for.

Magda: Right.

Doug: But still, you got to get Mike on board with Fifth Element.

Magda: I thought it was really, really funny that he was just like, “that's not how it works.” Like as if the idea of taking a part of a robotic alien and putting it into a machine that would turn it into a human being is, as if there is a way that that works, right? The only problem here is the science is wrong. There's no willing suspension of disbelief at all.

Doug: Well, and that's what we're here for. We're here to bring you the stupid science of science fiction.

Magda: Yeah.

Doug: Well, this was a conversation that happened, and thank you for listening to it because it's our 40th episode. Are you aware of that?

Magda: Wow.

Doug: Episode 40 of the When the Flames Go Up podcast with Magda Pecsenye Zarin and me, Doug French. Our guest has been nothing in particular. I think just the fact that... 

Magda: My ire at the world.

Doug: Yes, given our entire incredulity at the world, we've now reached a point of heightened incredulity given the nature of the universe and April 1st and how we're going to be surrounded by darkness for like eight minutes next week. Hey, by the way, when are you, you're flying in Saturday?

Magda: No, I'm flying to Detroit on Thursday and I'm going to Cleveland on Sunday.

Doug: Oh, okay. And I guess I'll see you Thursday. Or will I?

Magda: Well, maybe. I don't know if you will. Because I'm planning on taking the bus from the airport to Detroit, so.

Doug: Like by The Fist? Like that far down?

Magda: I think a little up from the fist. Sort of more toward the forearm.

Doug: And then if you go farther up, you hit the armpit.

Magda: Right.

Doug: All right, well, keep me posted about what your plans are.

Magda: Yeah. I mean, unless you want to go see the eclipse.

Doug: Where will you experience the eclipse?

Magda: I do not know. I think in my brother and sister's front yard.

Doug: So that's who our guest has been: A random conversation of things. When the Flames Go Up is a production of Halfway Noodles LLC and is available on all the usual platforms and at whentheflamesgoup.substack.com. Please subscribe there for our weekly episode every Wednesday and our newsletter Friday Flames every Friday. If you listen to us on Apple Podcasts, please leave us a review. So assuming the world survives all of these weird phenomena once, we'll see you next week for Episode 41. Until then, enjoy and live your life in totality. Bye-bye.