THOUGHTCRIME Ep. 129 — The Death of Reading? AI in Cars? Pet Translator?

Summary

Human Events Daily with Jack Posobiec

THOUGHTCRIME Ep. 129 — The Death of Reading? AI in Cars? Pet Translator?

Date: May 30, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on cultural decay, focusing on three provocative themes: waning reading habits (especially among younger generations), the decline in quality and appeal in major film franchises (notably Star Wars), and shifting parenting practices, specifically the return (and controversy) of corporal punishment. Hosts Jack, Blake, Andrew, and Tyler weave these themes into a larger critique of modern American society, often with biting humor and culture-war rhetoric.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Star Wars Boycott, Culture Wars, and Generational Fandom (00:57–34:44)

Star Wars Boycott: The Mandalorian & Grogu Movie

• Hosts admit to boycotting the new Star Wars film in response to Mark Hamill’s controversial comments about Trump and conservatives. Andrew confesses to breaking the boycott, taking his kids to see the film for his son’s birthday. The group has a spirited (and comedic) debate about loyalties, fandom, and what it means to enjoy “problematic” pop culture.
• Memorable take:
  Jack (07:57): “How did you feel during the scene where the Mandalorian turns to the camera and he says, ‘We need to work together to win back the White House in 2028, this is MAGA country?’”
• Andrew defends breaking the boycott for a father-son moment:
  Andrew (10:14): “I honestly couldn't tell you if it was that good—my son loved it and I had so much fun watching my kid be happy.”
• The conversation meanders through cultural hypocrisy, affordability, and the economics of big-budget movies.
  Blake (11:11): “There's only like five people in America who lead boycotts and you're one of them... and then took your kids to Disney World!”

Movie Economics and Merchandising

• The hosts analyze how movies need to gross massive amounts to break even, citing Matt Damon’s rule of thumb that a $180M movie needs $720M due to advertising and revenue splits.
  Blake (19:57): “I don't think this thing's gonna make $720 million dollars unless China just goes gaga for baby Yoda.”

On Star Wars Storytelling and Fandom

• A segment of the show is dedicated to comparing the original Star Wars trilogy, with hosts lamenting the “decline” of storytelling in modern franchise extensions.
• Jack (24:18): “The original Star Wars film is the best one… that’s the only one that’s transcendently great.”
• Blake and Tyler argue about the quality and memorability of later films, the role of plot twists (like Vader’s parentage) and the commercialization of the saga.
• Generational differences in accessing media are discussed—how the experience of watching on TV reruns differs from today’s on-demand options.

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2. The “Death of Reading” and BookTok Trends (34:44–43:45)

BookTok and Dialogue-Only Reading

• The hosts react to viral posts about young readers (especially through BookTok) skipping all but the dialogue in novels, effectively “reading” novels in a fraction of the time.
  • Jack (36:19): “This is deeply revealing... it explains so much.”
  • Blake (36:37): “These people like saw themselves or saw characters as themselves, not as separate. This makes so much sense to me.”
• The “achievement obsession” is mocked—people padding their reading stats by skipping descriptive or thematic passages.
• Audiobooks at 2x speed are critiqued as another symptom of “reading as a background activity”—an erosion of focus and depth.
  • Andrew (40:47): “You miss all the joy of a book… the only reason I like to read is because it’s like, I put the kids down and I sit there with a book, fully consumed.”

Cultural Decline and Dumbed-Down Literature

• The group laments the rise of “juvenile,” “amateurish” bestselling books (e.g., Housemaid, 50 Shades of Grey) and its link to social and cultural dumbing down.
  • Andrew (42:13): “Are we just becoming dumber as a culture? I think, like, the answer is undoubtedly yes.”
• Matt Damon is quoted on filmmaking for distracted audiences:
  • Matt Damon (42:30): “Now they’re like, can we get a big one in the first five minutes to get somebody… and can it hurt to reiterate the plot three or four times in the dialogue, because people are on their phones while they’re watching.”

Metacommentary on Attention Spans

• Jack (43:15): “This is the fall of civilization in a nutshell.”
• Tyler humorously argues that watching while distracted is simply part of today’s world (“Life is different… It’s not about that [literacy], it’s about attention” [43:49]).

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3. Parenting, Corporal Punishment, and the Generational Shift (49:59–68:07)

Corporal Punishment Debate

• The team discusses a new study showing a “shocking number” of millennial and Gen Z parents use spanking. They each share their practices—some employ “timeouts,” others endorse rare, measured spanking, some use creative punishments (push-ups, Tabasco).
  • Andrew (51:05): “If you’re gonna spank your child, you need to be controlled. You can’t be going like ‘I’m gonna get…’—you could do some damage there actually, psychologically.”
  • Jack (53:53): “If it’s gonna happen, I don’t think it has to—it doesn’t have to be done often, but a child benefits from the awareness that their parents are capable of hurting them if they need to.”
  • Tyler and others agree on the “peace through strength” model: spanking may only need to be threatened or used once for the lesson to stick.
• Blake introduces a “thoughtcrime”: the efficacy of corporal punishment may depend on the child's IQ—smarter kids require less physical discipline, for less responsive (lower-IQ) kids, it might work better.
  • Blake (59:38): “If you’ve got more cognitively aware kids, the threat works better than the actual thing.”

Personal Anecdotes and Broader Reflections

• Hosts share their own childhood discipline memories—the rare but memorable slap or spanking, the effectiveness of taking away phones or favorite items, and the generational softening of parents over time.

• Jack (63:31): “A parent ultimately…they have to have authority over their child. The apex of that is: if you do not listen…I will use physical force on you.”

• The conversation touches on biblical references, the pitfalls of “therapeutic”/“best friend” parenting, and concerns about overcorrection in both directions.

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4. Quick Hits: Animal Farm Adaptation and Michael Jackson Movie (69:16–70:17)

Animal Farm Film Adaptation

• Brief, critical review of the new adaptation—starts faithful, then becomes overtly anti-capitalist and “off the rails.”

Michael Jackson Biopic

• Tyler and Blake discuss how the biopic is resonating in their homes, highlighting themes like the American dream, family hardships, and media bias against Jackson. Blake praises the celebratory, family-inclusive production.

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Notable Quotes & Moments (w/ Timestamps)

• On BookTok Reading Trends:
  “Finding out people on BookTok skip everything but dialogue... that's not reading or writing. The descriptions are the book.”
  — Blake (36:07–36:19)

• On Disney/Star Wars Boycott Hypocrisy:
  “The guy who runs boycotts took his family to Disney World and then led the boycott after.”
  — Tyler (11:32)

• On Cultural Decline:
  “This is the fall of civilization in a nutshell.”
  — Jack (43:14)

• On Corporal Punishment:
  “A parent ultimately…they have to have authority over their child. The apex of that is: if you do not listen…I will use physical force on you.”
  — Jack (63:31)

• On Modern Movie Plotting:
  “They're like, can we get a big one in the first five minutes...and can it hurt to reiterate the plot three or four times in the dialogue, because people are on their phones?”
  — Matt Damon (42:30)

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Conclusion and Takeaways

This episode provides a “thoughtcrime”-flavored cultural diagnosis—arguing that America’s intellectual and moral fabric is eroding on multiple fronts: passive and superficial media consumption, the infantilization and politicization of entertainment, the decline in reading depth, and shifting boundaries in parenting. The tone is irreverent yet serious, mixing humor, nostalgia, and strong opinions. The hosts see themselves as guardians of traditional values—calling for a return to discipline not only in parenting, but in cultural life, media literacy, and personal habits.

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For listeners who missed the episode, this summary encapsulates the core arguments, spirited debates, and comedic moments that define the show’s commentary style.

Transcript

[Jack]

from the age of big brother if

[Blake]

they want to get you they'll get

[Jack]

you dnsa specifically targets the communications of

[Blake]

everyone they're collecting your communications ladies and gentlemen welcome to this week's edition of thought crime thursday we are here it is an audacious week an auspicious week i am in a button down but i am not in a jacket normal i ever be norma as is tradition now andrew carter is here andrew there were some comments that it looked like you were in a jacket last week

[Tyler]

now andrew shut up i was giving

[Blake]

you the benefit of the doubt it looked like a windbreaker no no jack

[Tyler]

jack andrew showed up for this show just a few minutes ago with no shirt on and only a jacket jacket

[Andrew]

that's not true that's and we were

[Tyler]

like oh dude you got this totally

[Blake]

wrong savage kind of thing you're supposed

[Tyler]

to wear no jacket and a shirt he got it backwards he was wearing no shirt and a jacket i'm confused

[Andrew]

i'm dyslexic oh you got it backwards i did come in with a jacket so here's the thing so i don't wear jackets very often and it's funny because i think people just assume i do because of the show but i come to work and i have an outfit on and i don't have a second outfit i don't have like a wardrobe i'm not like some diva that has like multiple wardrobes i'll never forget

[Jack]

actually so you just deliberately always bring it in here to well i get

[Andrew]

cold because they keep this place like a fricking icebox because all the studio equipment anyways so yeah i'm in my t shirt this is this is what i do it's you look like you got the swingers the nineteen fifties what

[Tyler]

golf shirt or something this is just a nice pacific somewhere shirt that was

[Andrew]

on sale there you go i try my best but you know it's funny when i talk about it go ahead

[Blake]

jack are you seeing what the white house just did no they just announced the existence of aliens oh i'm sure

[Jack]

all right yeah if they say so

[Blake]

can we can we pull this up whitehouse dot gov aliens yeah that's been

[Andrew]

that's been live for a while what

[Blake]

yeah they just send it to me now bro they walk among us yeah okay wow you guys seeing this the

[Jack]

us government has kept a closely guarded secret that you can tell is definitely real based on this obnoxious website they've made aliens oh this is gonna be about illegal aliens this is gonna be

[Blake]

about aliens have been walking among us

[Jack]

living in our neighborhoods they've shopped at

[Blake]

the same store daily lives i like

[Jack]

it they tended the same classes and they live seemingly normal human existences with one exception they do not belong here oh oh that was clever that was

[Andrew]

clever i like that millions arrived under the COVID of darkness and embedded themselves directly into our society truth is not countless presidents congress right here senior officials knew exactly what was happening three million

[Blake]

one hundred twenty nine thousand encounters i

[Tyler]

want to know how many i want to know how many real aliens are also on government subsidized wait scroll down

[Blake]

there's like a what is it alien arrest map live oh wow this is actually cool okay this is taking way

[Jack]

too long to load i don't have time to read all of this but

[Blake]

speaking of alien there's a live map so you scroll down and there's a live map of like arrests

[Andrew]

oh i

[Blake]

love this that have taken place and you can zoom in anywhere in the

[Andrew]

country on it look at texas it's like pure red in florida based man

[Jack]

you know speaking speaking of aliens we have to shout out most of thought crime's listeners for holding the line and not going to the new star wars movie the mandalorian and grogu which grossed a mere about one hundred million dollars in its first weekend which in modern

[Andrew]

inflationary star wars movie it did the same as solo yeah but it's been

[Jack]

about a decade but you have to

[Andrew]

change to inflation seven years seven years well yeah solo was at nineteen i think yeah so so solo but it

[Blake]

was the first solo was eighteen first

[Andrew]

release in seven years first theatrical release

[Jack]

yeah first theatrical release of anything it barely made one hundred million

[Andrew]

it's like

[Jack]

half the debut of star wars episode three when you adjust for inflation and everything else but even if most of our viewers weren't holding the line it seems like there were a lot of defectors in our own studio hold on

[Blake]

hold on let's let's let's let's at least let's at least take a second to say that congratulate and appreciate those who actually went along with the assignment boycotting this because mark hamill called for donald trump to be killed and of course by extension all conservatives this of course led to a you know we we saw something happen where a star wars super fan apparently beat to death a trump the guy who ran a trump house in san diego so i mean this was i did see that

[Tyler]

i'm i'm gonna play both sides you

[Jack]

didn't see that i no i did see that i did see that that some guy had a trump house and a guy a guy in a literal star wars shirt brutally like beat him to death beat him to death on

[Blake]

the street like an elderly man was

[Andrew]

he like inspired by mark hamill i

[Jack]

don't think he's inspired by mark hamill but he was probably inspired by being a star wars fan he's probably inspired

[Blake]

by i mean it's it's pretty pretty one to one like mark hamill says go kill trump and he goes and finds like a guy who runs a trump house and beats him to death

[Tyler]

look i'm going to play both sides of this debate i did live by the commitment to not go see it and that was a tough commitment to keep because i am actually i like star wars and i actually think so that jack's totally wrong about star wars in general and his hatred for star wars is terrible and it's anti american and so many different things but here's what i will say no i mean

[Blake]

i'm just against lg people who want

[Tyler]

to let him finish so i live by it i didn't go see mandalorian and grogu but i'm gonna defend andrew

[Andrew]

because you outed me already i'm gonna

[Tyler]

defend andrew for doing this and breaking the creed because there's only so much time you have with your kids and if that's your time that you have was just last week you know i don't think it's up to hollywood or jack posobic to dictate when you can use your free time with your children

[Jack]

so that's what we have to announce everyone andrew saw the mandalorian he didn't just see the mandalorian he went to like the special sit down like dine in theater he says he was telling us it might be his favorite movie

[Andrew]

ever made that is not true are

[Blake]

you sure i don't know what did

[Andrew]

you eat what did you eat i ate a burger okay yeah wait which

[Tyler]

dine in movie theater was it no

[Andrew]

free ads it was just be will be vague but it was central phoenix area so here's what central phoenix you

[Tyler]

went to the bluest part of the

[Andrew]

state too i mean it is what it is we went to the bluest

[Jack]

part of the state i don't even know that to view basically the given republicans how did you feel during the scene where the mandalorian how did you feel about the scene where the mandalorian turns to the camera and he says we need to work together to win back the white house in twenty twenty

[Andrew]

eight this is maga country yeah yeah

[Jack]

like the bad guy that i will

[Tyler]

say this the mandalorian and grogu made a huge mistake and i don't really understand why they made this mistake i

[Andrew]

don't like the graphic of the title

[Tyler]

no no in recent years the star wars the only thing that's really been successful in the star wars play has been them reintroducing hayden christensen into the into like different parts of the ip and people love that because he was

[Andrew]

hated and now he's like loved he was so bad but now he's loved he was the worst actor i've ever

[Tyler]

not like reintroducing darth vader and stuff into stuff has been has been like super super successful and and again i'm gonna i'm gonna use the spider man when they teased like intentionally made it try to make it secret that they were gonna do the multiverse thing and all the two previous spider men were gonna show up in the movie and then it got leaked and all of that it like hyped up the movie so much that like so many like you had to go see even if you were jack you would have and you were anti that you would have had to go see and be part of that there was no hype for this movie so there's nothing exciting there was no like special let me explain got leaked there was nothing it was just like this is just like an extended episode of the mandalorian yeah so

[Andrew]

let me explain what happened so my and i don't even feel like defending myself that much because i had a great time with my son and it was awesome and so like you know come at me my son had a birthday he turned six and he got we had a little party for him he got presents some of those presents people got him expecting him to like the mandalorian because that's just what people presumed so he gets a little he gets a little mandalorian figurine that he freaking loves he won't leave this thing alone he takes it all over the house when he's out in the yard he's got it in his hand so he starts like inventing all this stuff about mandalorian he finds out there's a movie coming out and he's like can we go please please please please and so anyways i show him like the trailer and he's freaking out so they beg me all memorial day weekend to take them to the movie i find a little pocket at time and i was like you know what i'm gonna take my son and my daughter to go see the mandalorian he was sitting so the dine in theaters they have these big seats you can like recline or whatever he's at the front edge of his seat the whole time and he's like he's like swinging his arms like get him get him having a blast i loved with my son and i so it's great i mean that's

[Blake]

why i said it jackson you the

[Andrew]

children are in trash you know i think you asked me if the movie was any good i was like i honestly couldn't tell you if it was that good my son loved it and i had so much fun watching my

[Tyler]

let me defend you jack's a hypocrite and you know why because he totally yeah he totally took his kids to disney to i think it was disney

[Blake]

world this is fake news for a long time tyler no that was you

[Andrew]

took your kids to disney world the

[Blake]

disney boycott that was prior to the disney boycott and tanya posted the picture late hey jack remember the same thing no jack tanya posted the picture late after the disney boycott began there's only

[Tyler]

like five there's only like five people in america who lead boycotts and you're one of them so you're saying you you didn't have the gumption to lead the boycott and then took your kids

[Blake]

to disney world no this is a pre boycott i know it's a pre

[Tyler]

boycott you took your family to disney

[Jack]

world this is like it was a

[Blake]

pre boycott photo no this is like

[Tyler]

insider this is basically insider true the guy who runs boycotts took his family to disney world and then led the boycott after knowing that he was gonna and then just to rub it in all our faces it make me feel

[Andrew]

bad it's like it's like pulling off

[Blake]

which is really which is hilarious because this is from like what four or five years ago yeah where there was this whole media like freak out on me because of this because i was like leading a disney boycott over

[Andrew]

crazy

[Blake]

stuff what yeah one of like the lgbt they were doing but it was like the first one and i called for a disney boycott but then tanya of course like not paying attention to what i'm doing on twitter decides to post our disney photos from like a month before like at the same time so they're like what sovik is at disney while he's like calling for a boycott of disney actually funny enough i

[Tyler]

can remember insider trading i think i

[Blake]

remember the actual day we were there because it was like randomly enough it was the day that the ukraine war started in twenty twenty two so i think i think that's like the very day that we went there it was like that day or the day after was was when we were there and i remember noticing that like everybody's still at disney and like nobody's yeah nobody seems to be really jack so we

[Andrew]

can control your woman so so so i'm kidding i'm kidding children run his

[Blake]

house the situation child power i'm sure

[Andrew]

you had a stern conversation children run his household it's very clear listen i had a great time with my son

[Blake]

so by the way my kids my kids know how to make fun of the kids who like star wars like we mock them in our household we deride them we talk about how inferior they are we talk about how their parents don't you talk about how you're

[Jack]

better because you went to the star wars st before the boycott my kids

[Tyler]

do that with lord of the rings

[Andrew]

i see i never ascribed to the boycott first of all i don't think i was on that episode of thought crime and i was not i wasn't so i i listen here's the other thing i would say this has been a ten february john favreau directed this and i thought he did a pretty good job on the mandalorian and it's not like wussy stuff he's like a masculine director who actually understands really like

[Blake]

can we show the picture of pedro pascal when he was on stephen colbert

[Jack]

i mean masculine director we should show a picture of john i always farvo because it's spelled exactly like swingers baby come on i don't i've never heard of this movie actually but i've always

[Andrew]

said you've never heard of swingers no what well first you've heard of swingers

[Jack]

right okay well you're mad i haven't heard of this movie that gross four million dollars in ninety six a year when i was well aware of it

[Blake]

but watching power rangers maybe i saw

[Andrew]

it but like forever ago anyways well

[Jack]

anyway i've never heard this anyway i actually also saw star wars but not the mandalorian i saw the return of the jed at the phoenix symphony orchestra with a live symphony which i will say excellent i will say i went on friday night this time i'd gone to the prior two original movies on saturday and sunday and you could definitely tell there was a different crowd at the opening performance of this it was

[Blake]

a slightly wait what did you see

[Jack]

definitely saw more people in costumes the funniest thing i saw there was a

[Andrew]

woman jack wants to know what you're talking about right now oh i saw

[Jack]

i saw return of the jedi and

[Blake]

no you said but you saw other original movies what what original so no

[Jack]

original so i saw empire strikes back and a new hope they've done each

[Blake]

of the trilogy though is like almost

[Andrew]

impossible to find the original original oh yeah and that was part of the

[Jack]

cgi yes this one had that it had the terrible yeah it had the terrible pop star that's singing you know yeah i hate that yeah they kept that it was unfortunately the full george lucas they had to do that but

[Andrew]

make money off true story true story

[Jack]

because i don't know why the true

[Tyler]

story why don't they fix that now because so much better now it's like why can't they just make that better

[Jack]

now let's just not let's just undo all this undo all of this but since it was opening night there were more people in costumes more people in strange t shirts more people who are of various spherical death star shapes i saw a mom with her daughter and i'm not making this up she was basically in blackface because she was dressed she was cosplaying as an ewok and so she had the ewok hat which is kind of orange that the wicket is the name of the ewalk character but then she she painted her whole face dark brown and it was basically

[Andrew]

jimmy kimmel yeah it was yeah it

[Jack]

was basically it was basically blackface and i got a big kick out of it i don't think i was offended

[Andrew]

so i apologize jack but worth it so that's how it is i didn't get him a bud light or something

[Tyler]

so i'm gonna i'm gonna say right now i'm gonna go watch the movie with my my kids but i it's

[Blake]

literally it's literally the bud light of

[Tyler]

movies i i know but this is this is the thing is like i've heard it's terrible actually it's not bad

[Blake]

no i've heard it why not go

[Tyler]

see michael but here's the the favreau

[Andrew]

the argument the kitty diddler i'm just

[Tyler]

kidding so i saw michael i saw

[Blake]

michael my take the one who was falsely accused my take on my on

[Andrew]

the mic still don't know what i think about that but yeah my my

[Tyler]

what's obviously fake my take on on the michael movie was that it wasn't as good as everyone said it was but it was well made better it was well made but i thought so but anyways go back i still think with the favreau thing excuse me like he was like executive producer i think on like like a ton of marvel like good movies that like every single one of those movies had like a major hook into it that had like like it was just chock full of what do they call them when it's like a set pieces no like just like a special thing that happens in it like that that's unexpected what they call twist not a plot twist no

[Andrew]

a jump scare it had something that

[Tyler]

they had a bunch of stuff a bunch of things in it and this movie has none of that yeah it's just very like a lot of straightforward yeah no no but it's just like an action straightforward there's nothing that's like the star wars cinematic the universe that star wars is in has so many different things in it now that it's actually criminal to me to not have any like secret things that are pop up in it that aren't easter eggs easter eggs that's the word there was like no easter eggs in this movie

[Andrew]

yeah well i would tell you that you know me and faz were having this conversation because it's like a lot of people like to crap on the movie it's not good or whatever it's like well okay but imagine kids it's a movie that kids would really get into and i had so much fun with my kids so i appreciate it for that i'm not like gonna do the full movie critic thing on it i don't you know it's a it's an action film in the star wars universe and tisk i know how about we do this is it going to break even that's a question jack that you might appreciate it probably still was successful so here's a quick clip of matt damon discussing it is actually how much a movie needs to make clip thirteen or clip three sorry clip three oh that's probably thirteen now let's do

[Jack]

clip three clip three clip three abort

[Matt Damon]

abort you're trying to get everybody spending

[Blake]

about what the budget was to make it to advertising because you got fifty of the theatre yeah because you split

[Matt Damon]

it with the the movie house right through the exhibit twenty five million dollar

[Blake]

movie to break even you got to

[Matt Damon]

make one hundred million dollars to publicize

[Jack]

like you're trying to so that movie that movie mandalorian cost about one hundred eighty million dollars so that would mean

[Tyler]

wait that costs one hundred eighty million dollars to make that movie but but

[Andrew]

and it's one hundred eighty million you

[Blake]

have to double that because of three

[Jack]

hundred sixty that's why that's why it's

[Andrew]

four times three hundred sixty which means you need to you need to make three hundred and sixty times two seven

[Jack]

hundred twenty million dollars to break even

[Blake]

seven hundred and twenty i don't think

[Jack]

this thing's gonna make seven hundred twenty million dollars unless china just goes gaga for baby yoda yeah wait is it

[Blake]

three hundred sixty times two or is it to break even or is it

[Jack]

one we were taking three hundred sixty times two because one they split it

[Andrew]

with the movie houses so if you bring in seven hundred because one hundred eighty times two seven hundred twenty million you take half of that as profit the movie houses take the other half so if you're gonna break even you need that much so i mean and there's no like dvd sales anymore there's

[Jack]

no dvd there's no the television rights you can put them on streaming platforms

[Andrew]

but that's not you could get it off of merch like a lot of mandalorian maybe baby but do they do

[Jack]

they get new merch out of this really they already had baby yoda came

[Blake]

out that's what i'm saying the merch already existed for this yeah but it

[Andrew]

would it would it doesn't have to be new merch has to be new sales yeah but think about help new sales think about my son got a action figure for his birthday party because

[Tyler]

somebody bought it listen listen i could

[Blake]

see my my my my people in my our area know not to bring that crap into my household i could

[Tyler]

be better than favreau at this than he is right now like think about if they would have introduced another another baby yoda or a child yoda did

[Andrew]

you know grogu is not baby yoda

[Tyler]

no i know it's not i know

[Jack]

but we call him baby i really don't care i don't know the lord

[Tyler]

i just don't care no but but imagine a sibling to baby yoda like think about think about when guardians of the galaxy came out and they cut down groot and then he turned into baby groot baby groot and it was regular groot and there was baby groot

[Andrew]

you're thinking about the merch when i'm saying characters in the storyline how do

[Tyler]

you run a billion dollar multibillion dollar franchise and nobody thinks about the merch and was like they produce no like your point is a really good point it's like they produce nothing in this movie that could be its own merch when baby yoda was introduced in the mandalorian that produced like the biggest boom

[Andrew]

in merch the only part that was kind of cool was that jabba the hut's like what i don't know it's like his son yeah is in this and he's like he's like a he's

[Tyler]

like an oh one's buying stuff which

[Andrew]

is really stupid yeah but it was like that's not what's kind of stupid

[Jack]

but it was a character who's famously a scary slug that just sits there and is like lazy and has everyone else yeah but now they fight now we have jacked you know squats five

[Andrew]

hundred yeah no like it'd be like five thousand but yeah so wait okay jack just so i'm clear if you just take the nine movies in the series right from the original four then the sorry four five six one two three and then seven eight nine which is your favorite of that or do you just like you're so boycott that you don't care or i mean i

[Blake]

i mean i will send you i will tell you that i just texted you the link to watch all the de specialized star wars editions from the originals so you can you know if you really want to you can watch

[Andrew]

genuinely the most important thing to me i cannot stand the like boo boo cgi from like what was it like

[Jack]

nineteen ninety eight i think because

[Andrew]

but

[Blake]

this is a fan a fan project and you can find it on archive so what the fans did was they went in and they like upscaled you know to like i think it's this is seven hundred twenty k or seven hundred twenty p rather you know to make it look crisp you know on a on a modern screen but also preserving the original of the original series which yes so the like if i were still watching star wars i would watch the original originals i would not

[Andrew]

be watching which one of those is

[Blake]

your favorite i would not be watching the lucas edited editions with like the ewok eyelids or han shooting second okay

[Jack]

or anything you're evading the question here what's your favorite yeah i just said that no no your favorite film not

[Blake]

your favorite these these are the ones i'd be watching if i were watching

[Andrew]

which one of these three which episode

[Blake]

oh which one of these three i don't know i never thought of it i i guess probably jedi i'd have

[Andrew]

to say jedi that's my favorite i'm

[Jack]

i'm an absolutist the original star wars film is the best one and it's actually i would say new hope a new hope but i'm just i just call it star wars most of the time because i think that's the only one that's actually a transcendently great film i think that is a genuinely great film start to finish every scene is good amazingly edited amazing scored caboose what's

[Blake]

the best standalone i like the just just to give the answer i like the on jedi i like the story of redemption the story of like atonement redemption yeah you know a lot of a lot of christian themes i like

[Jack]

that back on that i think the story of redemption in star wars is actually kind of bad it's it's bad in the sense it's presented in this bizarre facile way that almost doesn't make sense so first of all all we've know of vader is that he goes and he commits genocide and does insanely evil things and chokes people and then you show up in return of the jedi and luke just says i know you're still good father i know they're still good in you what why where is there any evidence that there's good

[Andrew]

in him there's been none but there's

[Jack]

there's just been no actual external evidence

[Andrew]

of this well there is if you

[Jack]

watch the first three and it presents rationalizing presents becoming a good person he just is watching his son get tortured to death and then he goes like no and then he grabs the emperor and throws him down the elevator shaft spoilers for everybody and then like oh he's now good and he's on the light side again i think a lot of bad art has come out of that like the presentation of good and evil almost like a light switch you're on the light side one moment oh bam you switch to the dark side and then you could switch back again comic books do this he didn't just

[Blake]

vam switch back when no i that you're like you're just like leaving out a lot of the plot of the movie what happened what does darth vader

[Jack]

do in that movie that's that's good other than other than throw the emperor

[Blake]

down very key things like he delivers his son to be tortured by the emperor the emperor starts torturing him it's through that torture that he starts remembering what his son says and then he goes and kills the emperor okay so

[Jack]

it's like it's like a light switch

[Blake]

suddenly is a good guy automatically switch

[Jack]

he's just a good guy again i guess he just all the and then and then we're treated this as his great redemption i don't think i would totally disagree i think if like i think if i think if like hitler had a son coming in with i think if like if i think if some guy like worked for hitler and saw hitler torturing his son and then suddenly threw hitler down an elevator shaft but that guy had otherwise run auschwitz i don't think we would say that that undid running auschwitz i totally disagree

[Tyler]

you're totally skipping over an empire when the interactions that they had together that led him to the moment of him like recognizing and reconnecting with his son yeah isn't there and identifying i mean the most the most famous line in star wars history is not in a

[Jack]

new hope and that's also bad i think that is everyone remembers that and yet that's also a sign of not just decline in star wars but decline in our pop culture as well which is let's make an out of nowhere plot twist that's kind of irrelevant out

[Tyler]

of nowhere of course it's out of

[Jack]

nowhere they only made it up for the second movie it wasn't in the first movie george lucas goes back and says oh i totally had it planned from the beginning george lucas is full of crap george lucas is making that up george lucas is making it up as he goes throughout the entire trilogy

[Tyler]

i totally think that that plot twist and the way that they were able to keep it under wraps for so long is like one of the greatest parts it's one of the greatest moments in american cinematic history is that they were able to keep that completely secret and again you talk about twists that's like what made star wars like a long lasting franchise it wasn't a new hope that was good and that made everyone go bonkers it was the fact that they followed it up with such a crazy plot twist that it basically forced america to like star wars unlike jack like real americans like star wars you have to like star wars if you want to actually consider yourself a

[Jack]

citizen it also it took us down the dark path which we remain on today of you have this giant universe where anything can happen and there's quadrillions of people in infinity planets and actually everything is just the family drama of one group of people that's actually like real life though no it's not in real life not everything is a family drama with one family or at least it wasn't like that until donald trump

[Tyler]

there's only so many families that people

[Blake]

care about tyler's tyler's dumping on me so i want to dump on him and he's like his like weakness in in not being able to actually like hold on to a boycott because like it's not hard you just don't give money to people you hate who hate

[Jack]

you especially if you already gave money to them right before announcing them i

[Tyler]

showed up today so that you could convince me to not follow the the path of the dark side with andrew and and go watch this movie i

[Blake]

held out a week in fact you're not watching it right now like you're you're you're actively not watching it there's

[Tyler]

nothing that's been said so far that actually makes me not want to watch

[Andrew]

this movie so here's here's homosexuality it promotes people who hate us so subtle hints what's the gay fighter still had good in him in a new hope they show hit that one scene there is a one the human vulnerability where they reveal vader's scarred face in the meditation chamber yes that is i believe

[Jack]

in this isn't that in the second

[Andrew]

no that's a new hope they show

[Blake]

like a movie that's definitely the second

[Andrew]

movie bro definitely second movie okay this write up says it's in the first

[Jack]

one is your write up generated by

[Andrew]

a robot on the internet so i

[Jack]

gotta watch out for the robots on

[Andrew]

the internet city duel vader dominates but doesn't kill luke that's also i'm saying that first second movie i'm saying the

[Jack]

first movie this is why i made

[Tyler]

my argument was empire the empires up

[Andrew]

for the second movie so so that luke you can destroy the emperor this is from empire strikes back you can destroy the emperor he has foreseen this it is your destiny join me and to together we can rule the galaxy as father and son yes all right so so protective but hesitant actions he wants luke to turn but stop short of lethal force at key points okay but episode so that so he's he's trying to bring him in okay this

[Jack]

is weak why ai generated bad arguments

[Andrew]

this is all good like and then luke this is the stuff you're talking about luke says i can tell there's good in you search your feelings father you can do this i feel the conflicts within you let go of your hate vader denies it but hesitation proves

[Tyler]

luke right yeah yeah so episode five is the best because because again it solidifies episode four as a if there's only two movies that ever get created it would be four or five five was a great follow up to a great movie which i agree is standalone is the best movies four but if it's not we're not talking standalone we're talking about a lot of different movies five starts to show the cracks in invaders sithness or whatever right and then six is just kind of like you expected that to happen even six they're

[Jack]

making it up like the whole like leia's luke yeah it's totally made up made it up on the fly you

[Tyler]

know this is like going into watch six again putting myself in the eighties i'm going in to watch episode six in theaters you're in the eighties it's

[Blake]

not called episode six it's called return of the jedi yeah return the jedi

[Tyler]

in the eighties right the third the third in the trilogy third installment you are expecting that vader turns in that movie yeah are you not i don't

[Jack]

know i didn't okay so what's the

[Tyler]

most exciting movie the most exciting movie is empire where it's like you were blown away your socks were knocked off you loved one two blew your your mind with that he's your he's his dad you're dying to go to episode or to the third installment of the trilogy and the trilogy delivers exactly what you expected it to do yeah i'm

[Andrew]

gonna have to agree with that so

[Tyler]

and then by the way the most the next most exciting moment in cinematic history in the star wars realm was in episode one and the poor guy that played jar jar binks got hated his entire life for something that he had to do like without jar jar binks you do not have the positives in that movie and it and at the time i remember going into that

[Jack]

jar jar was really making a hard

[Tyler]

sell here i'm just saying if there's if there's three movies in a row to like i agree four and five but four and five are a package duo you have to like them one or two or two or one like like that has to be you're either the the fit the fifth episode empire has to be your number one and and new hope has to be number two or vice versa but my argument would be the next best the next best moment actually comes in episode three not because the movie because the movie sucks except for the end part the last five minutes of that movie like it doesn't leave you you know what's

[Blake]

really funny actually just to talk about like how media is consumed differently today than when we were kids i i don't think i when i was a kid i'd only ever seen you know star wars and jedi i never saw empire until i was in like high school really and yeah because i i used to just like not you know rent it or was it because jedi

[Tyler]

was on tv all the time dude i remember jedi being like it would

[Blake]

be on tv or something and i would see it and like just the way the way that you would interact with media was so different because like you would turn it on and be like oh yeah i would watch the star wars for a while and then you'd watch this other one and then for whatever reason i just never watched empire probably until like ninety eight or so oh you know what it was when they when they released the the special editions which is right before the prequels came out so i guess it was like the twenties i watched them

[Andrew]

in the theaters i remember i watched the re releases in the theaters because they about it like lucas re releases the originals in the theaters with all this new cgi and i thought okay here we go and i don't think at the time i had the lens to see how bad it was but if you watch them back now it's like it's awful what can you imagine only watching star wars but only watching the dialogue jack only what are you

[Blake]

talking about that doesn't make any sense

[Jack]

that doesn't make any sense movie is

[Blake]

like basically not only star wars but

[Andrew]

media like that is an interesting segue then jack because that's our next topic yes the trend of reading dialogue instead of an entire novel all right blake

[Jack]

loves this idea i really like it so this this came out in a recent discovery this was a tweet i believe so throw up number four on screen but this was someone remarking on x the other day finding out someone says can we please normalize achievable reading goals thirty or more books a year is not common and then this other person ali b replied finding out that people on booktok that is tiktok book readers they skip everything but dialogue which makes reading thirty plus a year books make a lot more sense and let's see i think they said another thing and then someone goes but this is smart i hate all of the descriptions like i can't even envision it and it is boring although when i write i feel like like i need to add stuff like that in to make a good book crying face and then ollie v says that is not reading or writing the descriptions are the book and the person replies i prioritize character development and plot others prioritize prose declaring one real over the other is such a weird form of literary gatekeeping literary gatekeeping if you want people to read the whole book and not just this

[Blake]

makes so much sense and it's really

[Jack]

deeply revealing like no this explained like

[Blake]

dude this explains so much about what i've experienced deal you know doing like this kind of stuff and media commentary whatever on on content over the last funny enough so today i guess is my twitter anniversary my xiversary i've been on on twitter for fourteen years as of today and and you know people who know the backstory know that i originally got on to crap on the hbo game of thrones from the perspective of a book reader who was very upset about it and long story short we're here now and what's what's hilarious is that i used to encounter people like this all the time who were just filthy casuals who clearly like they would these we used to call them sjws back in the day but they were like these supporters of the characters like oh i'm a daenerys supporter or like oh i could never be friends with the stannis supporter i'm like what are you talking about like just just watch the show or like read the book like why do you have to like be on a side of a character or something like do you like it or not and i came to find that these people like saw themselves or saw characters as themselves rather than as their own you know a character that was objectively a separate individual and so this makes so much sense to me because we're dealing with people now and booktok is huge by the way it's all over the place you see it you see it everywhere when i talked about that that one show or that that one book series that got turned into a movie with sydney sweeney about killing your husband called the handmaiden or excuse me the housemaiden you know it house house made housemaid that like it it was a you know really rode the you know the book talk carousel if you will and that's what's going on they're not actually reading these things they're not meant to be fully read it's just like a oh here's what it'd be like if you killed your husband la la la la la and then women go out and like start thinking that way and start like hating i think there's a lot to

[Andrew]

that blake has read more books than

[Blake]

any of us this is so revealing

[Andrew]

to me blake blake but you read a lot of history i know and

[Jack]

it so it fluctuates a lot certainly in the number i can read so like this year i think i probably read like eleven or twelve books this year but they are pretty hefty i'm getting through i'm reading imperial china by

[Andrew]

fw mote yeah but what i'm saying is that is distinct from a fiction

[Jack]

true true i fluctuate a lot in how much fiction i read i've read because when you're reading it you kind of go on a streak and read a lot by one author or in one series i haven't read i read that i read cs lewis this year i read that hideous strength and perilandra so the later parts of his space trilogy those are all right i read i'm reading a big long novel about ancient rome which is like okay i'd say it's the masters of rome series have you ever heard of that one colleen mccullough just wrote went and wrote seven thousand page long books about ancient rome but they're all right they're all

[Andrew]

right yeah but could you imagine reading fiction and only reading the dialogue what would you miss i feel like you'd

[Jack]

miss a lot among other things you probably miss what's actually happening you miss like everything sometimes in a book they'll describe major events in the plot that

[Andrew]

are not dialogue i love that like the first tweet that you guys sent in the chat about this one was like what is happening what what what yeah like somebody's freaking out discovering that this is like a trend and by the way i feel like this is keeping up with the joneses energy like they want to be able to say oh i read all these books but you actually didn't read the books it's like you didn't actually do a thing and you want to claim credit for it and that to me is the most offensive part about this it's yeah you're missing the art you're missing everything but it's this weird drive to sort of say like i read fourteen books

[Jack]

or something and that gets into another part someone pointed out that in addition to people just skipping large chunks of the book the way a lot of these books are consumed is they'll just take an audiobook of it and they'll run it at one and a half two times three times speed as like constant background track of their life and

[Andrew]

you miss all the joy of a book like the only reason i like to read is because it's like i put the kids down and i sit there with a book and i i'm fully consumed yeah and i really don't

[Jack]

think anything can be read any other

[Blake]

way we don't count children's books quickly

[Jack]

is kind of a book not read at all if it's of any so

[Andrew]

she's like i got to count children's books in my book total in my

[Blake]

in my wait andrew's like i'm engrossed in this really big series it's called c spot run this is it's amazing he just he just this dog if

[Andrew]

i could count children's books in my book my book total in a year it would literally it would be in the hundreds i know right well the

[Jack]

funny thing is so many of these books they're reading even frankly even if they have graphic sex or like whatever stuff is a lot of them are still effectively children's books they are written at a child's reading level that's really

[Blake]

depressing very depressing it's actually a really good point too because if you i i did read housemaid and then it was very very juvenile writing very amateurish it's it's kind of like i guess this started with was that series fifty shades of gray where it was like a fan fiction of twilight that later became a you know like like book series in its own right and then a movie series in its own right where you just get this like really

[Andrew]

really just so no but this is

[Blake]

a big you know like grade school

[Andrew]

level writing it's a big concern because are we just becoming dumber as a culture and i think like the answer is undoubtedly yes which is troublesome it's problematic i want to we played one of these matt damon clips and so i'm going to play another one because i think it's really telling clip seven

[Matt Damon]

netflix you know standard way to make an action movie that we learned was you know you usually have like three set pieces one in the first act one in the second one in the third and you know you kind kind of ramp up and the big one with all the explosions and you spend most of your money on that one in the third act that's your kind of finale and now they're you know they're like can we get a big one in the first five minutes to get somebody you know we want people to stay yeah tuned in and can and you know it wouldn't be terrible if you reiterated the plot three or four times in the dialogue because people are on their phones while they're watching

[Andrew]

you know what i mean it's the

[Jack]

most it's really bad this is totally

[Tyler]

true though this is how i watch

[Jack]

movies though oh bad no you're this

[Andrew]

is how you do the show this

[Jack]

is this is the fall this is the fall of civilization in a nutshell and you're and you see it everywhere and i think we would be see

[Tyler]

this is this is how we this is how you plan the show for me is you get me drawn in the first part and then i and then i sleep through blake's part in the middle and then i show up

[Andrew]

at the end oh oh okay that's how it's gonna be well dude tyler's just throwing out zingers just banger after

[Jack]

banger well this is this is the fall this is the fall of civil civilization though it's as simple as that

[Tyler]

i totally just i i totally think that this is fine this is fine

[Jack]

yeah it's fine that we can't follow a plot or a book and people

[Tyler]

are so literate life is different yeah it's not about that it's about attention

[Jack]

yeah life is worse yeah life is worse and that is the fall of civilization in a nutshell it's not going

[Tyler]

back it's like like we're not gonna get rid of cell phones we're not

[Jack]

gonna like i know and eventually everyone will just implode we're not able to achieve great things anymore no i mean

[Tyler]

like it's gonna get worse yeah we

[Blake]

can achieve great things though because the movie michael is right there for all of us to see and it's amazing and everyone should go see it why

[Jack]

so what if okay i can understand not thinking michael jackson are you invested yeah you seem really invested are you

[Andrew]

invested are you financially are you financially

[Tyler]

tied to the success of michael look

[Blake]

at you conspiracy theorists like you're just trying to take away my joy you're just trying to take away my joy of of loving michael jackson no

[Tyler]

top

[Jack]

thirty favorite michael jackson songs no who

[Blake]

cares about that top thirty i don't

[Jack]

know about thirty no i bet you you have a list in your head

[Blake]

i can tell top five so i could here's here's here's the thing though is my kids will get home and then jack jack will be like like daddy can you put on thriller and i'll put on thriller and he starts like moonwalking throughout the living room or you know he'll put on we'll put on beat it we'll put on bad we'll put on whatever you know and he or billie jean obviously like man in the middle black and white black

[Jack]

or white you've already named more michael jackson songs than i could name we'll

[Blake]

put on no i mean he's legitimate

[Andrew]

you think i've always been a michael jackson fan you think you think michael was like a ten out of ten

[Blake]

movie no well it's it's it depends on what you're you're you're going for like the experience that we had was ten out of ten yes if you

[Andrew]

want to judge like mandalorian and grogu

[Blake]

super film critic hat on like i don't know if i'd go all that all the way in i just know that like in my family and cernovich was saying the same thing by the way that it's totally infected his household do and so like we're now both living like the michael jackson life where like it's like the music's on all the time the kids love it we love it you know it's just a

[Andrew]

good time yeah no that's cool but see i support that if that's your like

[Tyler]

can i say this about the michael movie i thought the michael movies i learned a couple of things like generally most americans know like way too much about michael jackson than they really

[Blake]

you do learn some stuff i think

[Tyler]

yeah i didn't realize how they had like i learned about and by the way i thought it was really cool how the family came together to really honor michael to make that movie and do all that and i thought i thought that was really tasteful it's his nephew yeah and it's his nephew that's

[Andrew]

that was really cool oh that plays

[Tyler]

him yeah is it so his actual

[Blake]

that's not cgi that's his actual nephew i mean yeah i think i'm sure he uses like a little bit of makeup or something whose son is it

[Tyler]

is it jermaine's son

[Blake]

shoot i think

[Andrew]

it's jermaine's straight out of compton where it was actually ice cube's son who played ice cube yeah that's cool i

[Tyler]

think it's cool like it tells a story about a family and there's a lot of heartache that's involved with her family like like and that that's cool and like everybody clearly disliked the dad and like they wanted to get that point across and like kind of sucks if you're a dad but the dad said such a jerk you know but like don't be a bad day like i mean don't be a bad dad is kind of a theme that comes out of that i thought it was really interesting that i didn't realize they had so many exotic animals just running

[Andrew]

around i didn't know that's either yeah

[Blake]

it wasn't just the monkey no they

[Tyler]

had like giraffes and all sorts of

[Andrew]

stuff like medieval that's kind of cool

[Blake]

that's kind of that was a kind of when we have it um my my aj will be like will be like daddy daddy get to the snake part i want to see the snake

[Tyler]

part well it for me like actually like one of the things i pulled away from it and maybe this is subconsciously for america hopefully was that like how cool is that like one of the themes that was in it too was that a family went from basically nothing you know to like living like quite literally the american dream and nobody nobody's like nobody like like psycho psycho leftists came out of that like you

[Blake]

want to work in a factory like

[Tyler]

me boy how dare they have safari safari animals like living on their property and that like but i thought that was pretty cool and i think that's

[Andrew]

a cool thing shay though that we like teach the american dream it's going to be through like you're going to be a rapper or an nba no

[Tyler]

but it played it but it played into this whole thing of like clearly michael jackson like in part one of the themes too in that movie was that like he never like he never progressed or grew up like he goes

[Andrew]

because kind of trapped he kind of

[Blake]

was trapped they show that yeah they

[Jack]

totally show that that he was like

[Tyler]

and i think that actually gave a lot more insight to a lot of the misnomers that people took that kind of claimed that he was like this this terrible person but he was like really like what they were saying is like this this guy was a kid since the time because the dad made like kept him in this kid zone that he never got to experiences i

[Andrew]

don't i'm not saying we're done with this topic but i do think this is a weird intro like we haven't this other topic talking about millennials and

[Blake]

gen z no it's an interesting segue

[Andrew]

yeah it' no we got we got to dive into michael jackson's dad definitely believed in corporal punishment well and then

[Blake]

and then so andrew you haven't seen

[Andrew]

the film right no i haven't and

[Blake]

they blame so this is a huge scene in the movie and you know spoiler whatever but there's a huge scene you know pretty early on where he he you know michael doesn't want to perform properly and this is back when he's like jackson five michael jackson like really young and before they've even taken off and his his dad he like talks back to his dad and he's like you're gonna show me respect and just pulls the belt off and just starts whipping him and they show it on screen and he's like freaking out he's crying and that's that's what tyler's referring to when he says it kind of you know it kind of shows you you know perhaps some of those forces and family dynamics that maybe well and you know made michael kind of like have this like childlike you know personality even as he grew up kind

[Andrew]

of well i think culturally like psychologically frozen there we heard these stories you know like and then i think as a culture we got away from spanking and apparently according to new study or new reporting i guess gen z is returning to this apparently can we see number nine put it on the screen shocking number of millennial and gen z parents spank their kids study says necessary to raise a child proper so go around the corner go around the horn i believe in spanking i don't do it very often but i've not opposed to doing it do you believe it

[Jack]

i see no reason to oppose it

[Tyler]

tyler no i i don't oppose it i think it's i i think it i think there's like anything limits yeah

[Andrew]

i don't believe in like just taking off your belt and whipping the crap out of your kid for like i

[Tyler]

think there's people that probably take like like it's a it it it's as close to like getting to child abuse like from a physical standpoint like you

[Andrew]

shouldn't you shouldn't well you can't do it in anger if you're gonna if you're gonna spank your child you need to be controlled you need to have your emotions like in check you can't be going like i'm gonna get like that's you could do some damage there actually psychologically but if you do it and be like listen i told you i'm gonna like so we do a thing in our house like i'm gonna move your body if you refuse to like come to me when we're asking i'm go you have one more option one more chance and then they either come or they don't and then if it escalates like well listen like you know so we'll do like soap in the mouth we actually do that oh wow okay i never ran into they they hate it or put like a little like a little like tabasco on their tongue they can't stand that it's like i think but but like so there's other ways to do it so we don't really spank that often but we do find ways to just like you know make make it so that they don't want to experience the accountability jack are you pro or against yeah

[Blake]

i think i'm more in your like the camp that you're saying there were like we don't like spank but there are lots of things that we do in terms of discipline i haven't i've ever done the tabasco thing and it's like i almost don't want to say this out loud but i just want to say that we i remember my parents doing that because i had a bit of a mouth when i was a kid and still do and definitely remember the tabasco in the song and i will just say i have not encountered a situation that necessitated it yet and you know praise god and and hopefully we won't have to but you know that's certainly on the on the list one thing that we do though is you know we definitely do push ups we definitely you know you do something wrong it's like dropping any ten

[Andrew]

and if you're not make them sit and playing for well and it's like

[Blake]

and if they don't it's more push up than plank but it's like if you don't go down far enough then daddy gets out the fist and you have to like go down and you have to get to daddy you like come all the way down you know we do you know timeouts obviously like that's a big one just a variety of things and depriving you know kids of things i think i think there's there's a lot you can do i'm not sold on the science i mean there's plenty of studies that are you know that show that that spanking is is like like really bad and and you know leads to like michael jackson style issues well that's what i'm saying

[Andrew]

you gotta do it i think there's other ways controlled but i don't think i i and to be fair i think some parents probably can't control themselves and do it in like kind of a dispassionate way i hate to say it spare the rod spoil the child so spare the rod spoil the child but we're assuming that's a physical rod it doesn't have to be it could be tabasco could be soap in the mouth but the point is you gotta discipline your kids like the bible says that god disciplines his children he loves

[Jack]

them right i think it's if it's gonna happen i don't think it has to i think if you're using it right it doesn't have to be done often but i think a child benefits from the awareness that their parents are capable of hurting them if they need

[Tyler]

to yeah i think it's important for kids to have a little bit of fear like i i think i got i think i got belted one time when i was a kid yeah and i don't think my parents i mean my parents were young are old gen xers and so i think gen x is kind of like known as like

[Andrew]

forty five of gen x admitted to

[Tyler]

spanking their children how much of millennials

[Andrew]

millennials so it's like the research revealed that when this demographic appearance was asked whether they had ever spanked their child or children with their hand about twenty

[Tyler]

said yes so millennials is twenty like boomers were probably like ninety yeah and

[Andrew]

excuse me yeah and did it have

[Jack]

boomers in there and no i just had gen x i bet boomers like

[Tyler]

legitimately it's like well over eighty percent

[Jack]

spank their kids it's just it i think so it's gone down better behaved than they were no they're worse yeah they're like worse and also just it's i'll just say it this way it's an overly it's like longhoused and overly feminized and i think that actually undermines the authority of parents a lot no

[Tyler]

let me say this without exposing like my family but i'm the oldest in my family and i have four brothers and sisters three brothers one sister and i definitely got i got belted at least one time maybe two like not like but it was memorable enough where it like i never wanted it to happen again but the kids in my family definitely didn't get like as time went on my parents yeah they always get softer softer and they didn't and

[Andrew]

i also think parents get better like i've become a better parent as i've my kids have gotten older and i think actually in truth i've used spanking way i think like my daughter probably was the only one if i'm actually thinking about it i think my daughter's the only one i've spanked is i got all i got better at being a parent and using other tools and understanding like how to avoid even having to get to that point so i think there's some of that i think there's an element you get softer you

[Tyler]

might just get better but i was just i was gonna say this is the point i was gonna make was that if the kids are close enough together and they observe the corporal punishment of like the one of them older then you don't need to yeah so like i think that i mean i was like for sure like definitely instilled in like my younger siblings like you don't want to get spanked so the threat actually became real because like they they knew that i was serious about it because it was like the look they could see in my eyes of like oh yeah you don't want that to happen to you and so you don't have to use it but if you if you don't do it at least once right like there's no threat i think i think i spanked my

[Jack]

son one i think my dad maybe did it once or twice and it

[Andrew]

was that that level so you don't like doing it yeah and he had

[Jack]

other ways here's the way to put

[Blake]

it together because you know i'm still kind of like you know you look i mean you could see all the studies out there that say that spanking in general like is is not is not good for cognitive development but those are done by lips it's true but at this university of texas no lives

[Jack]

ut austin okay that the the a

[Blake]

lot of it is like lack of creativity but but the problem though though i think though is that people saw that stuff and they thought like oh we have to go full in on like the therapy style like i'm gonna be my kid's best friend and i'm gonna do this and this whole like non confrontational parenting we're like i want my kid to trust me where i'm one of the i'm i'm one of the buds like i'm a cool parent and you know like i'm gonna give you a sip of beer i'm gonna give you a smoke a cigarette or whatever like it's it's it's really stupid and the and the issue that's now created with the unruly kids is that it's been too permissive and the kids don't actually have any boundaries when they're in that situation and so like you do need to you do need to drive back so i think if anything with what they're saying about the shocking rise is that i think that perhaps like some millennial and gen z parents are like okay you know the whole like talk therapy version of parenting is stupid so i'm going to move in the opposite direction but then they go too far in the opposite direction and

[Andrew]

then you create terrible kids so yeah i mean i agree i think actually like if you're reading the article and

[Tyler]

then your kids actually beat you yeah

[Andrew]

exactly once they get big enough but like you're you're right i think the article is like saying it's shocking still how many parents do this i think it's actually like to tyler's point is if there isn't an actual threat of it being real then it kind of loses its effectiveness it is like peace through strength parenting but yeah if you enforce authority and you firmly establish that they need to answer to you and that you're in charge at a very young age i do think that you can tend to keep those boundaries more established but there are going to be times where kids try and defy the parents you know like and i would say to your point on the oldest like my my daughter was she's great now she's like our easiest kid now but when she was kind of like spreading her wings and trying to establish kind of the boundary lines with us she was the hardest that we've had and so you know there needed to be a little bit of like set the pace here that's in theory like but maybe i just wasn't as good of a parent either because with the other ones i have so many more tools in the toolbox to kind of establish you know order in the house

[Blake]

can i can i can i introduce so here's my thought crime on this is and and it's something that i just don't see addressed in any parenting literature at all is that i think i think that iq plays a role in this i think if you have kids who are or you know people who are lower iq then perhaps you know perhaps this might be more effective and we certainly have talked about that in the legal process and and the judicial process and you know the lee kuan yew sort of version of corporal punishment for adults and i think with kids it's the same way like if you've got if you've got smarter kids if you've got kids that are more cognitively aware then the threat works better than the actual thing but if they don't seem to have that you know ability to put that all together then perhaps it is those ones that are lower iq where this is more effective because i like i have people texting me right now who are watching the show saying like oh you know i tried that and it didn't work like my kid just just kept you know was was like outsmarted me or not outsmarted but was smarter than the punishment and was like just kept going so you know you you you've got to find something that meets the kid but that's the thought crime is that you know it's not a one size fits

[Andrew]

all strategy well i thought that i experienced that with my daughter i basically became convinced that it was not the most effective discipline that we could mete out so here's this ut i guess ut austin study in the us seventy six percent of men and sixty five percent of women agree that it is sometimes necessary to discipline a child with a good hard spanking spanking seventy percent of mothers of two year olds report spanking their children by the time they reach which is interesting by the way so seventy percent of moms but only sixty five percent of women agree that it's sometimes necessary by the time they reach fifth grade eighty percent of american children report they have been spanked by their parents i don't know if i believe that i think a lot of children are like yeah me too anyways but according to unicef sixty percent of children around the world experience physical punishment from their parents this study basically i think think agrees with you jack that it's probably not the most effective you know spanking does not make children more compliant

[Jack]

let's remember i just don't buy

[Blake]

these things that phrase isn't actually in the bible of spare the rod spoil the child that's not what the bible says no it says he who spares the rod hates his child he who loves his son he who loves his son disciplines carefully yeah so it's it's

[Andrew]

about it also says don't just the bible says do not it doesn't say

[Blake]

you have to spank them yeah but

[Andrew]

the bible says do not exasperate your children which is another thing which like as a parent like that has come into focus a lot because you can feel when you're if you're trying to like drive home a point you can feel when they've kind of had enough and like sometimes you need to pivot to a softer approach but anyways i

[Jack]

just think i think the people who go out on the i bet people can generate studies that'll tell you that any form of punishment is actually bad because a lot of people they like the anarchy of there being no authority and something that's pointed out that i think is useful is any law we have if we want it to exist it does ultimately need to be backed up by force it comes up when the you know the police end up you know choking or accident or shooting someone you know they're trying to enforce the law the guy decides to resist arrest and they end up up shooting the guy and everyone says like why do you get shot over a loose cigarette why do you get shot over cartex well in the end you have

[Blake]

to obey the twenty dollars counter and

[Jack]

if you don't obey the police something bad will happen to you and i think spanking is the micro version of that for a parent that a parent ultimately they have to have authority over

[Andrew]

their child there has to be ultimate

[Jack]

apex of that is is if you do not listen to what i always say i will use physical force on you and i think we have to have it be acceptable for a parent to do that i think it's ideally it's actually quite rare all of us who have said it's okay have said we ourselves experienced it maybe once and so among other things i don't imagine any of these studies they're doing are very good at capturing the value that comes from a parent who spanks their child literally once ever while they're growing up i think that's difficult to capture but i think the value is real

[Andrew]

did you guys ever experience any physical punishment when you became like teenagers my

[Jack]

dad the longest thing he would do and this is gonna sound extremely funny today but i did once possess hair atop my head and if my dad thought i was giving him lip or being sassy he would grab me by the back by the short hairs in

[Andrew]

the back right here which ones you still have to be clear well i

[Jack]

don't really have them there anymore he couldn't grab them anymore for sure one

[Tyler]

time my mom used to do that when i was a kid but one

[Andrew]

time when i was i must have been like fourteen or fifteen and i remember i sort of vaguely remember it i actually look back just to be in my dad's defense i look back and i'm like totally respect it but i'm i got really mouthy like really mouthy said some like really like nasty things and i think he slapped me you know not very hard but he slapped me and he said you will respect me you will respect me and and i like i remember in the moment i was so shocked i can't believe yeah seriously that was that was basically the general energy and then it like it like dawned on me when i was like twenty five i was like i like had this like grudging respect for my old man i was like yeah he put me in my place like good for him actually because i was i really deserved it and now as i get older as now as i get older i like i don't grudgingly respect it i'm like that was that was rad like good for

[Jack]

you now i'm just thinking on the other i remember freak out so they can have from punishments so we reflect on spanking but i wonder if the experts would now say like taking your child's phone away for a prolonged period

[Andrew]

that would be the most dramatic and

[Jack]

i am thinking i'm sorry i'm gonna drag one of my sisters here for a bit i remember one time my parents grounded my sister by taking her phone away for i believe one or two days and i remember her literally

[Andrew]

screaming you have ruined my life maybe

[Jack]

we did i don't know how her

[Tyler]

life could have gone as a teenager i got my dad to use the f word one time sorry dad i was exposing you that was like the only time my dad never cussed my dad's like really slow to anger he's like really chill and he never got

[Andrew]

gets angry he always you pushed enough

[Tyler]

buttons i pushed enough buttons where he like dropped f bomb on me and i i started laughing because i was like i was like shocked and nervous all at the same time but i was just like like laughing but it left like an impression with me i was like i actually felt bad that i made my dad so mad that it probably similar situation where it was like like like i made i felt bad that i made my dad so mad that he did that and i know he was like disappointed in himself afterwards that i like got jack anything

[Andrew]

for you when you got older and got off philly the one thing that

[Blake]

i just have to reflect on is this is going back like you know i guess seven seven six or seven years now is that you know just over the six or seven years that i've dealt with andrew colvett i mean i'm right there with his dad i

[Andrew]

totally get it totally get it i

[Tyler]

do have that one time when you slapped andrew in the office yeah that

[Andrew]

was weird jack i thought we weren't on air i turned the other cheek yeah i mean listen maybe i was just a bad teenager i don't know i was actually a pretty good kid in general but i definitely had that coming i went through this phase where i would say out of line things trying to get a shock i think out of my parents anyways faz says when i was five all the kids would talk about spankings and i was curious and jealous that i never got spanked since my parents were against it so i kept doing things that were naughty to try and get spanked and then it finally happened and i didn't love it never happened again let's see there you go fo a good kid f's still a good man so i don't know i'm i'm kind of with you blake my instincts say that this is woke garbage and it's probably okay sometimes you have to do it dispassionately you can't be like doing it in anger and freaking the kids out you can't be like beaten with a belt for forty minutes like you have to have it has to have boundaries and limitations but if you don't have that as an option on the table it's kind of like you know well and

[Tyler]

there's a lot of other things i was going to bring up that are non physical but it's the same thing if if it's just a threat and you never do it then it then there are no team hold your word

[Andrew]

you're not your kids friends you're not

[Tyler]

friends i mean there's two things you're

[Andrew]

the authority one thing my dad is

[Tyler]

i know we got to go can't do that my dad did one thing not to me but to my brother he had his car and he threatened like hey if you do i can't remember what he did something like goofed off or he broke curfew or did something he's like i'm gonna take away your car and my my dad did take away my brother's car without him knowing he had an extra key to it and then parked it in a storage locker like it fit perfectly in the storage locker closed the door and gave the storage locker key to my brother but didn't tell him which storage locker is in or where it was at right so he had to live with like hey if you lose this now you're responsible for the storage locker key and if you lose the storage locker key right you're never getting your car back because i'm not going to tell you where it is like it's gone and so you have to be responsible enough to keep the storage locker key for as long and then why decide to let it out it's really

[Jack]

funny to put it in like one of the extremely large storage locker complexes we have in phoenix nicks and just

[Andrew]

say like it's one of them just make them do every lock all right animal farm jack take us home on

[Blake]

it yeah i do have to report back that i did finally get to a chance to sit down and watch the new animal farm i think i was actually like live commenting on it in you know in our group chat while i was watching it and yeah i just totally agree with blake i mean within like the like the first twenty five minutes or so are kind of of it's pretty much like beat for beat the same story as like the book and then it just takes a wild turn becomes extremely anti capitalist it just it just is yeah like

[Andrew]

you were like it's not so bad

[Blake]

by the way and it's also just

[Andrew]

not a good story you i was i was surprised because i was watching your your live commentary you're like it's not that bad it's pretty whatever right now and then and then yeah like

[Blake]

the first third was like kind of the same and then it just goes

[Andrew]

off the rails completely all right well it's been a fun episode a very culture culture like media star wars star wars trashy books animal farm bad novel adaptations we should get back into the thought grimy stuff next week i think we got it we gotta like be tempted to say things we we don't

[Jack]

want clips but we gotta bail so thank you everyone take us home jack

[Blake]

ladies and gentlemen as always go out there and commit more thought crime