Episode 71: Transcript

"Planning Ahead"

Doug French: We'll see how far this goes because the universe is ganging up to annoy me this morning. And so I don't want to subject you to that. I just want to be alone in my home and be annoyed and we'll see.

Magda Pecsenye Zarin: Why don't you lead with that?

Doug: I mean, it's just the computer didn't cooperate and the cat is just conscientiously avoiding the linoleum whenever he barfs and I have an allergy attack. And it's the cold, too. I got to say, I've had enough. I've had enough of 38 degrees. You know, it's been four months. Do you remember I used to take the kids to the cold room at Fairway?

Magda: Yeah.

Doug: You know, you walk in and you can put on these skanky jackets that tons of other people have worn.

Magda: Yeah.

Doug: And the kids love them because they look like 1920s strong men and they would flex in them because they were 80 sizes too big. And that's fun for 15 minutes, but not for four goddamn months.

Magda: Ah, boy.

Doug: So, yeah. We had our fake spring. We had three days of 70-degree weather. And now we're back in this unstable polar vortex. And so I'm like, all right. Let's just make lemonade out of lemons. Or at least curd. Lemon curd out of lemons. How about that?

Magda: Lemon curd out of lemons. That's delightful.

<music plays>

Doug: Glad to be podcasting with you again.

Magda: I know, it's been a long time.

Doug: Like a month, maybe? I don't know.

Magda: I think it's been a month.

Doug: I had to look up what number we're on. We're on episode 71.

Magda: Wow!

Doug: It's been a minute, but at least I've been busy in the interim, so that's something. But I'm glad to be back with you.

Magda: Right. It's true. Well, you've been doing a whole lot of podcasts without me, your bicycle podcasts.

Doug: I've been, yeah, I've been getting some podcast business. I'm really enjoying that. And all right, no fair. You're getting me into a better mood. This is not good for content.

Magda: I know. I think it is good for content, though, because everybody really doesn't want to listen to like old man shaking fist at cloud for like 40 minutes or however long this is going to be.

Doug: Well, and for what it's worth, it is a cloudless day. So there's another step in the right direction.

Magda: Well, suddenly the sun is out here. And I said to you right before you hit record, “and suddenly it's snowing.” So I don't really understand.

Doug: Yeah, it snowed yesterday here. And on the same day, I got my first new glasses in six years. That was a revelation. I'm not doing the Schumer thing with my glasses anymore.

Magda: Did you get the progressives?

Doug: Oh, yeah. I have progressives. I have transitions. Whenever I order them, once every six years, I do get the full package.

Magda: I've had mine for like three months now, and I'm finally over getting the vertigo when I look from the top to the bottom of the progressives. Getting old, man.

Doug: I was roundly chastised for waiting six years. But I had to wait until the glasses were almost completely occluded by scratches and crap that would not come off no matter how much you try to clean them. Even the professionals in the store are like, are these barnacles? What are these things? The glasses had cataracts.

Magda: The glasses had cataracts.

Doug: Right. So it is nice to have a nice view of everything for a change.

Magda: Yeah.

Doug: For the first time since before COVID.

Magda: That's excellent. So what are we talking about today?

Doug: You know, the other thing is in the interim, I have had ideas for more podcast topics.

Magda: Okay.

Doug: So I thought I'd float a few by you. One of which came about, I had this really great weekend. I got a text out of nowhere saying a classmate of mine was coming to New York to clean out her parents' house out on Long Island.

Magda: Okay.

Doug: And they were going to build a dinner party around that. She's going to be in town in Brooklyn. Let's have a dinner party. And we got 12 people together and had an amazing night, which I flew in for.

Magda: That's delightful.

Doug: It was delightful, which means I think I've reached the age now where I think we should have some semblance of a college reunion like once a quarter and talk about our parents. Once a quarter? Oh, yeah, for sure. Why the hell not?

Magda: That's good.

Doug: I mean, so many amazing discussion topics around that table. Even my friend's kids who happened to be home were sitting through it and were like, God damn, is this what's ahead? But they were very sweet. But one topic people were talking about was a lot of us are now kind of planning out what the next phase of our lives is going to be now that the kids are kind of out. And now it's about intracouple negotiations about retirement locations.

Magda: Retirement locations.

Doug: Right. Or just philosophies. I mean, because like if he wants to be near the golf course and she wants to be near the ocean and wants nothing to do with the golf course. Whether you want to be near family and whose family do you want to be near? Do you need to be near? That's a thing. Like every couple that's still together and has been together for 30, 40 years is now kind of daintily approaching these negotiations about if they sell out where they are, where are they going to go? And how will they find a happy medium if there is a happy medium to find?

Magda: I think that's a good topic, but I think we need to find somebody else to talk about it with us because, you know, Mike and I have a very different negotiation about that because we weren't married and had our kids together, you know? So from the very beginning, when we were dating, we were already talking about that. And you don't have to negotiate with anybody at this point. Like, you know, which is not to say that you couldn't meet somebody next week and end up having to negotiate with them. But at this point you get to be the one who decides by yourself.

Doug: Which I really am not hating, I have to say. But yeah, everybody there is still in their first marriage, and it's a whole different dynamic when you're negotiating with someone you've known for 30 years versus someone you've known for, you know, five or 10. And the other news we talked about was, you remember that movie, The Four Seasons with Alan Alda?

Magda: Maybe? Is that the one? No, I'm thinking about Same Time Next Year. That's not the one you're talking about.

Doug: Right. That's the one where he has an affair with this woman.

Magda: Every year.

Doug: One day a year. Yeah. Which is also a great movie. But Alan Alda wrote and directed this in 1981. It's about three couples who are all best friends and they go on vacations together. Kind of more often than couples would. But Alan Alda's married to Carol Burnett. And Jack Weston is married to Rita Moreno. And Len Carreau is married to Sandy Dennis. Many of these actors, you're going to have to look up. Ask your parents about who these people are.

Magda: Okay, you have to cut all this out just so you know. Because describing a movie that came out when the majority of the listeners were like eight is not...

Doug: Listen, people should know, right? Like I told you, Thomas and I had a Gene Hackman marathon after he passed. Because people need to know Gene Hackman.

Magda: Right, and it's fine, but I mean, you're talking about this movie as like a touchpoint. Absolutely not a touchpoint for people.

Doug: Well, it's not a touchpoint like The Big Chill, but it came out at around the same time, and it's about these three middle-aged couples, and then one of them breaks up. One of them gets divorced, and Len Carreau, who marries a much younger woman, played by Bess Armstrong, who is the kid in this movie. She's now like, you know, 70. but she's like 28 in the movie. And so it's about this dynamic of these three couples and what happens when one of them breaks up and the guy meets a much younger woman and the fraught relationship with the ex-wife now, and they need to kind of balance because they don't get along as well as you and I do. It's really awkward between the two of them and the kids are adversely affected.

Magda: Most divorced people don't get along as well as you and I do.

Doug: Right. It's a bad situation. And It's in the news just because Tina Fey is kind of rebooting it as a Netflix series starting in May 1st.

Magda: Oh, God, that's weird. Okay.

Doug: But it's an interesting dynamic. I think a lot of the reactions are genuine, I thought.

Magda: I mean, I just... How did you even see it? It came out when you were 16. Why would that be a movie that was even remotely on your radar?

Doug: Well, it's one of those things you see it when you're 20 and you're like, oh...

Magda: Yeah, but how would you have seen it when you were...

Doug: Because it's Alan Alda. He was in MASH. He was a big deal. He wrote and directed this.

Magda: Yeah, but God, this is a movie about old people. Who would watch that at 20?

Doug: You're looking at him.

Magda: Oh, boy. You are so sentimental. You are so sentimental, Doug French.

Doug: Say more. I mean, I agree, but say more.

Magda: You have always had this very strong emotional connection to movies that are full of the kind of sentiment that a lot of people are just like “too much!” somebody else's feelings.

Doug: So you're talking about I lean into emotions where others avoid them.

Magda: Yeah, but like a specific type of...

Doug: And you're saying that like it's a bad thing. I mean, I'm proud of that.

Magda: You love The Big Chill.

Doug: I love The Big Chill.

Magda: And you love... Oh, God, why can I never... I always forget the name of this movie. The one where they're dancing and they fall in a swimming pool. Where she should have been a librarian, but she marries him instead.

Doug: It's A Wonderful Life?

Magda: Yes, It's A Wonderful Life.

Doug: Well, first of all, the thought that you could even forget what that movie's called says a lot about your movie taste.

Magda: I never remember what that movie is called.

Doug: You know, there's like this document that Jefferson wrote on July 4th. It's like the Decla- something.

Magda: And also the fact that what I take out of the movie is they're dancing and they fall into a swimming pool, and she should have been a librarian instead of marrying him.

Doug: It is an interesting takeaway. There's a bit more going on there. You know. He lost all the money. When's the last time you saw that movie?

Magda: Oh, it's been a long time. I don't enjoy that movie, so I sort of actively avoid that movie.

Doug: Are you kidding me? You don't even enjoy it?

Magda: Every time I see that they're showing it at the Redford movie theater, the old-timey movie theater, I always feel like I should tell you to go see it.

Doug: It's on every Christmas. I mean, there's no need to go sit among a bunch of people.

Magda: I am never tempted to say, hey, you and I should go see it, as I am with other movies, right? Like when Roadhouse came out, I was like, oh, let's go see Roadhouse, right?

Doug: Right.

Magda: But I just lean into a different kind of emotion.

Doug: Tell me you're not moved when he says “to my big brother George, the richest man in town.” Nothing?

Magda: No, I think it's a portrait of a narcissist.

Doug: My sentimental self is tearing up just thinking about it. Portrait of a narcissist. That's also interesting. All right. Wow.

Magda: Yes. All right. So I want to talk about what I want to talk about today. And what I want to talk about today is that I have gone on to the Alzheimer's diet for the last, I don't know, week and a half maybe. And the background to this is that many people know that I have this family history of Alzheimer's.

Doug: This is your thing. Yeah. This is something you think a lot about.

Magda: Yeah. Paternal grandmother died of Alzheimer's. My dad is actively in the middle of Alzheimer's right now. And I just came across this research by this guy named Dr. Dale Bredesen. And he thinks that what is diagnosed as Alzheimer's is actually possibly five different things. And one of them is strong inflammation of the brain caused by the foods that people eat and the substances that they ingest. One is a lack of substances that people ingest. One is exposure.

Doug: That seems like the yin and yang of the medical community, right? It's like too much of this is bad. Not enough of this is bad.

Magda: Exactly. And one is exposure to toxic things like heavy metals or mold or fungus or stuff like that. So he has developed this protocol that involves testing the crap out of somebody who has Alzheimer's to try to identify what it is that's causing their specific symptoms, and then just going on a program to fix what they're eating, give supplements if they need supplements, have them stop taking supplements if they're taking the wrong supplements, you know, if they're in a situation where they're around mold, like mitigating that all that kind of stuff, right. And so he has this book that's written about it. And then he has a book that is called The End of Alzheimer's Program. And so you get the book and you think, “oh, this is going to be the program that tells me how to operationalize this for my parent who has Alzheimer's. Oh, and by the way.

13:41

I'm going to go on the diet too, just to see if I can prevent it.” Right. But then you open his program and it's not actually laid out so anybody can use it. It's really literally just the scientific studies that he referenced. So it's kind of like a grad school science textbook. So I read it in a disgusted huff and then looked at all the reviews of it on Amazon and everybody else was like, “I bought this thinking that it was going to tell me how to do his program and oh no, it was like, way thicker than anything I've ever read.”

Doug: So another idea for your epitaph, a disgusted huff.

Magda: There's a little bit of a complication. I mean, essentially the basic diet that he's recommending for people who have not been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, have not been noticing any symptoms of any memory loss, but are concerned about it because they have a family background in it. It's essentially a ketogenic diet because his theory is that If you can go into ketosis, that's going to stop these amylase proteins or whatever it is that develops in your brain. And that if you are actively in Alzheimer's, you need to be in ketosis for longer. But if you're just trying to prevent it, you need to be in ketosis for three to six months. And then after that, you need to spend about 25% of your time in ketosis, which means like you just spend a week in ketosis every month and then the rest of the time you eat sensibly. So it's not like you spend a week in ketosis and then the rest of the time you're eating like Nerds Clusters, which are my drug of choice at this point.

Doug: It sounds like there's some overlap with intermittent fasting, right? Same kind of ketosis gospel.

Magda: In that it can be an on and off thing. Yeah. And I mean, he does recommend eating in a time bound kind of way, right? Like you're not supposed to have like a midnight snack. You're supposed to give your body a rest from digesting stuff for part of the day. But it's not like the 16-8 thing of intermittent fasting or anything like that. It's just like you eat in the morning and then you finish eating dinner and then you're done eating for the day.

Doug: So how does digestion affect the onset of Alzheimer's or nutrition, I guess I should say?

Magda: Well, he doesn't really talk about that in a super expanded way. I mean, basically, remember when we talked to Maya Gangadharan, she was talking about how the digestion and all of those signals coming from the stomach. And that's essentially what he's saying. So what he's saying is that one type of Alzheimer's is probably caused by inflammation from the stuff that you're eating and that your stomach can't completely process. So everything that Maya said about leaky gut, about all that kind of stuff was the stuff that he reiterated. So I have to say, like, I kind of skimmed through that because I've heard that from plenty of people, including–

Doug: And that tracks. That makes sense. Because, yeah, your fundamental existence relies upon how well you process whatever you eat.

Magda: Right. So it's essentially a ketogenic diet because you're trying to put yourself into ketosis. Right. But it's a little bit about switching the way the times you eat things. And he also wants you to eat no grains whatsoever, which is a keto thing. But he also doesn't want you to eat dairy, which is different from a lot of the ketogenic stuff because it's like dairies, you know, they're like, hey, just eat cheese until the cows come home because it's fat. And he's like, well, you can eat as much fat as you want on this diet, but you're not supposed to eat dairy unless it's fermented, right?

Doug: So the cows would come home to say, stop eating our cheese.

Magda: Yes, exactly.

Doug: Thank you. I'll be here for the rest of the afternoon.

Magda: So the other thing is, you know, people who did keto back in the ‘80s or ‘90s or whatever, were eating bacon all the time. And he's like, hey, not so fast. Processed foods are the worst. So like if you want to eat a fatty pork chop, OK, but you cannot eat bacon because it's just too processed and it's going to kill you, not to mention the salt is horrible for you. So anyway, I then stumbled on this book called... Reversing Alzheimer's, that is by Dr. Heather Sanderson. Dr. Heather Sanderson runs an outpatient clinic and also a residential living center for people with Alzheimer's. And she took Dale Bredesen's research and basically operationalized it. So the subtitle of the book is “The new toolkit to improve cognition and protect brain health.” She has seen great success in instituting all of the protocols that Dale Bredesen discovered, but she has also written a book breaking out how they do it at this residential center. So this is the book that I thought Dale Bredesen's program was going to be because it essentially tells you, here's how to do the diet. And if you haven't been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, but you're just worried about it, here's how it works. And here's how you should operationalize it, right? Because the idea that I, at the age of 52, would be in ketosis for the rest of my life for fear of Alzheimer's is just absolutely not workable. So she says again, ketosis for three to six months, which, OK, that's fine. Three months is a lot more likely than six. And then a week every month. OK, that's fine. I can do it if it gives me my wits about me. So anyway, her version of it is she allows more dairy than Bredesen does on his. So I've gone with hers. And I have to say, I've been on it for a week and a half, and I feel measurably more alert, like not necessarily smarter.

Doug: Well, I was going to ask that. So you're still putting dairy in your coffee?

Magda: No, I actually, part of the coffee thing is that I've been trying to use my morning coffee to help put me into ketosis. And so I'm making bulletproof coffee with coconut oil, but I am eating dairy at other times. I'm not necessarily every day. And I feel measurably more alert.

Doug: See, I wonder about that. I mean, I'm happy to hear that, but how much of that do you think is the power of suggestion? Yeah.

Magda: I think very little of it is the power of suggestion. And I think a whole lot of it is the fact that I was just eating too many carbs and too much sugar and sugar makes you cloudy and weird.

Doug: Yeah.

Magda: Like, I mean, we know sugar doesn't do good things for people's bodies, but it also just makes people kind of, you know, it makes everything feel like that week after Christmas when you're doing nothing but eating like cake and pie and cookies and drinking coffee and no water at all. And you just sort of by the end of the week, you don't even know where you are.

Doug: See, I can relate to that specifically just because it still feels like the week after Christmas in April because it's still 25 goddamn degrees out. And I have been gobbling down Girl Scout cookies.

Magda: Yeah, well.

Doug: Six bucks a box, by the way.

Magda: I remember when they were like $1.80 a box.

Doug: But I get it. I'll own up to it. I've been having a bit of sugar and I'm not feeling great about it. So I do think. Once my full cycling schedule returns, when the temperature gets above 50 again, maybe this weekend, then that'll help metabolize all the sugar I'm having because I am eating too much of it. All right. Well, I mean, that's good. Now, I wonder, based upon what you've said about this book, what did you think about that article that was in Friday Flames last week about the blood test that tells you if you have Alzheimer's? Did you read that?

Magda: I don't know because Bredesen talks a lot and so does Sanderson about getting the APOE4 test, which tells you if you have the marker for Alzheimer's. And the question is, do you want to know or do you not want to know? And Bredesen very strongly believes that you want to know because he thinks you can stop it. And, you know, not that there isn't always going to be that underlying thing there, but if you don't want to lose function, you can act in a way that's going to help you not lose function. And the sooner you start, the better off you'll be. And I absolutely get that. I mean, you know, like my whole thing has always been, I will do tests if I can act on the knowledge I get from a test. to prevent something bad from happening. But if it's just a test that they're like, hey, you've got this coming and there's nothing you can do about it, I don't know. Do I want to know? Maybe I want to know. That's the conundrum.

Doug: Yeah, you've got to have real faith in the treatment.

Magda: Right. And so that article didn't tell me what was the difference between the tests that they were suggesting and the APOE4 test. So I would have to do the research to figure out which one makes more sense to take.

Doug: So what other aspects of the diet are the most prevalent?

Magda: I'm just not eating carbs like I used to. I'm just not eating–

Doug: I'm just intermittent fasting all day.

Magda: You know, we're having salmon for dinner tonight, salmon and Brussels sprouts, and Mike's having potatoes and I'm having spaghetti squash. So it's just like choosing the non-carb thing. And we went to the protest on Saturday and he brought granola bars along with him and I just brought a bag of cashews.

Doug: Interesting, because people avoid cashews like the plague.

Magda: Why?

Doug: Because of how fatty they are.

Magda: You're supposed to have fat on the ketogenic diet.

Doug: There you go. But not bacon.

Magda: Well, yeah, because bacon's processed and too salty.

Doug: Yeah. So you did protest in Boston.

Magda: Yes, we did.

Doug: One of the other things I learned at this cocktail party was that many of my friends have their kids nearby. Some are working in the city and some are living at home still. which is, you know, right there nearby. Because it just laid out our situation in bolder relief since the four of us are splayed out all over the place.

Magda: Well, but I mean, you know, we've got a kid who's off at college, right? Like, I don't think that, that's not like he lives away from us.

Doug: And speaking of our kids, I think another topic that our older kid wanted to talk about was investments. He's been watching the stock market crater. He's been watching the volatility and the uncertainty. about investments in general and wondering like, where's the best place to put his money now? Because he's starting to amass a little bit of something and he wants to put it to work. So we had a long discussion about whether or not to have faith in the long-term merits of the stock market.

Magda: Right. I don't think there's any way to really predict because I think the priorities of the people in charge are so radically different than at any point in history that you cannot rely on common sense or the history of things to predict what's going to happen.

Doug: I think that was the point we came to, just the idea that whether or not American assets remain the quintessential gold standard of investments to have nationwide or worldwide, whether or not the dollar is strong. I mean, investments in the dollar have survived big swings like this in the past. And savvy people recognize, including, I'm sure, people who knew these tariffs were coming and saw an opportunity to sell short. You know, someone's making money off this market. Anybody who knows anything about markets can make money in any market. But I really like the fact that he's already thinking like an investor at 23. But it's an interesting discussion as well when you have adult children who look to you for financial advice.

Magda: Financial advice in the most unprecedented situation. with psychopaths in charge of the stock market at this point. Like what the hell?

Doug: Well, let's be fair. Psychopaths have always been in charge of the stock market. Psychopaths. Well, yeah, but I mean, all they want is money. They don't care about emotion.

Magda: But this isn't like 2008. This isn't like any previous time. This is the people in charge of this country are deliberately trying to tank things. And I don't know what to say to my kids in the middle of that because I don't know what to say to myself in the middle of this.

Doug: Well, I had a sandwich parent moment because I talked to my parents about it. Clearly, you know, when you look at my parents and me and our children, we have three very different investment windows. You know, when you're 80, whatever investments you have, to make a cataclysmic change in your portfolio now is probably a terrible idea because the capital gains tax is going to be crippling. So... all they're kind of doing is just crossing their fingers and hoping that the people who manage their money know what to do with it, unfortunately.

Magda: Right.

Doug: So that's going to trickle down to me as well, just because our generation is thinking, okay, they're coming for Medicare and they're coming for my 401k. So what kind of expenses am I going to have? And what do I need to diversify and guard against this kind of thing. I've been actually listening to my broker's analyst calls. For what it's worth, they're pretty phlegmatic about the whole thing. They're just like, look, we've seen this before. We've seen big changes in things. There's too much powerful infrastructure that wants to guard shareholder value And let's face it, this administration is doomed. It's just a question of how long in advance that doom comes. And we've got a weird window because in theory, I should be retiring in two years. Ah, retiring.

Magda: Okay, come on. Why would you... Here's another topic for another show. When do you want to retire and why? And I can't imagine you ever completely retiring. I mean, you know, you don't work a full-time job right now, but I can imagine you not working full-time at a regular job.

Doug: Oh, I never will work at a full-time job ever again. No, I'm not working for anybody.

Magda: I can't imagine you ever not trying to create stuff, whether you got paid for it or not. I just cannot imagine a future for you that is entirely leisure. Like creating things is such an encoded part of your personality. I just can't imagine you ever retiring. You're going to be like 90 years old and you're going to be like, “Hey, I was reading about this thing. So I decided to start a new podcast on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” Like, okay. Right.

Doug: Well, I've been thinking, you know, one of my podcast guests told me a lot about Bike and Build, which was this itinerant subset of Habitat for Humanity where you just bike off. You do a long distance bike trip and you arrive and then you build houses for people. And then you hang out and then you get back on your bike and you bike another thousand miles. It's itinerant biking and building stuff.

Magda: That sounds 100% like you.

28:34

Doug: And I would have loved to have done it had it not folded a couple of years ago, but it's an awesome idea. I know there's an RV version of this that still exists. There are people who just roam around the world in RVs and there's a bulletin board of like projects happening,” show up in Tempe, Arizona. We're building, you know, low income housing there” and people just drive their RVs there. That's a great thing. I mean, I was actually messaging with a friend of mine. I'd be happy just working at Trader Joe's, helping short people reach the tallest shelf. You know, I just, there's something so wonderful and immediate about that.

Magda: Yeah. I can kind of see you doing that. You're a Trader Joe's kind of person.

Doug: I am. And as you know, my twin brother works there.

Magda: Yes, exactly. The one who's your doppelganger.

Doug: David, if you're listening out there, we're talking about you and it's been great being your fake twin. But yeah, whenever I walk in, if he's working and we see each other, it's always a conversation. And there's another guy there who pretends he's our dad. So shout out to you, Big Ron. If I can find ways to keep engaging people talking about themselves a bit or having a discussion about their lives or like, that will carry me to my grave for sure.

Magda: Yeah.

Doug: But that's an interesting topic. That's a good idea too. The idea of like what retirement even is. You know? Yeah.

Magda: Yeah. Well, okay. Let's, I mean, do you feel like we need to go any further?

Doug: Well, I think if we're looking for a theme of today's show, it's kind of like what we want to talk to going forward. That's part of a whole new dynamic in someone's relationship. It's like, Hey, the kids are gone. Now it's just you and me. We got to rediscover our couplehood and have this big decision to make together. That's, that's gotta be heady.

Magda: Yeah, I agree.

Doug: And it's headier when you've been together for a bunch of time. That's apart from, you know, you two giddy honeymooners. Just nothing but joy.

Magda: I would hope that if you'd been together for a long time, you'd have been talking about it for a long time.

Doug: Well, but not a lot of people have. In fact, one discussion was we know we need to go somewhere. We just don't know where.

Magda: Right.

Doug: Because as you look around, if it's political or otherwise, there are places that you may have been considering 10 years ago that are off the table now. I mean, I know a handful of people who had Florida on their mind until three years ago.

Magda: Why would you ever go to Florida?

Doug: Because that's God's waiting room. That's where people go to die.

Magda: Yeah, but even 10 years ago, the politics in Florida were untenable.

Doug: Well, some people are willing to make that sacrifice. They're more tenable to some people than others. I mean, it's more of an issue of could you even afford to live there? I mean, it seems like everything is so uninsurable now.

Magda: Right.

Doug: That's a shifting issue, I think. Yeah, and these are just kind of some of the topics that I was thinking about. And so I hope we get to talk about them because I think they are important and they're more prevalent than I'm experiencing firsthand. I mean, that's the goal of this podcast. The bottom line was we needed to podcast again. We needed to get back in the booth. I needed to see your face. It's been a month.

Magda: It's been a month.

Doug: You look exactly the same as a month ago.

Magda: Except now I'm wearing an Aldi sweatshirt that I bought while you and I weren't podcasting.

Doug: And I'm wearing glasses that don't make me feel like I'm walking through a hailstorm. And thank you for listening to episode 71 of the When the Flames Go Up podcast with Magda Pecsenye Zarin and me, Doug French. Our guest has been all the stuff we hope to talk about in the next few months. 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 for... something every Wednesday, usually a podcast, but it's been, you know, we've been writing a lot these past four weeks. I've enjoyed that by the way, we've gotten some great feedback on just the writing. So, um, there will be something every Wednesday, but they, there will be more podcasting in the near future. And we also have our Friday Flames newsletter every other Friday. Thanks again for listening.I hope you guys have been okay this past month and we will see you next time. Bye-bye.