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Hi, it's Kelsey McKinney from Normal Gossip, and

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I want to share some exciting news from Radiotopia.

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is finally coming back for two months of

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starting in June, listen at yougetapodcast.com

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or wherever you listen to podcasts.

1:09

Hi, I'm Kelsey McKinney, and in each episode of this podcast, we bring

1:11

you an anonymous morsel of gossip from the real world. Welcome to the

1:13

season finale.

1:13

After this week's episode, we're gonna be on break for a little bit, but we're

1:15

gonna be back with more of you and more of your favorite podcasts. So, if you're new

1:17

to the show, make sure you subscribe to our channel, and we'll see you next week.

1:19

Bye. We're

1:27

gonna be back in a little bit. When we know when that break is ending, we will

1:30

tell you, I promise. Before

1:32

we get into the show, let's do a little bit of business.

1:34

Business is, one, between the seasons,

1:37

we are going on tour. You can find

1:40

the dates and the tickets at normalgossiplive.com.

1:43

We are

1:43

so excited to meet you on the road. There will

1:45

be glow sticks. There will be secrets. There

1:47

will be special guests. It's very exciting. We're

1:49

thrilled.

1:51

Second piece of business, we do have merch. At

1:53

normalgossip.store, we have T-shirts.

1:55

We have a new sexy T-shirt that has

1:57

little hidden things from...

2:00

episodes in it, which is very cute. And

2:02

finally, just a reminder that if you think that

2:04

you are going to die without gossip

2:06

between the end of this season and the beginning

2:09

of the next season, we do have monthly

2:11

episodes for subscribers. You can become

2:13

a subscriber at supportnormalgossip.com.

2:17

Okay, no more business. I am all amped

2:19

up about our guest today. You may know

2:21

him from the subscriber episodes talking

2:23

about chess players cheating with anal beads

2:25

and the Wagatha Christie scandal. I know

2:27

him because he's my coworker at defector.com

2:30

and my buddy. He writes about soccer

2:32

and basketball and how to make noccino

2:34

and 5 million other things. It's Patrick

2:36

Redford. Patrick, welcome. Oh,

2:39

thanks for having me. It's so good to be back.

2:41

I guess slash here for the first time. This is going

2:43

to be fun. Yeah. How do you feel about being

2:46

on your first public episode? It's

2:49

it's it feels good. I realized that before

2:52

we did the first chess drama episode, I

2:54

typed up like this whole long relationship

2:57

with gossip thing and I was so ready. And

2:59

then you didn't ask me and then I was like, oh, I should

3:01

be I

3:02

should be a little fucker and ask Kelsey about her relationship

3:04

with gossip. But that would have been that would have

3:06

been way too rude. So no, it feels good. I'm excited

3:08

to be

3:08

good. I'm glad that you're excited to be here. I'm excited

3:10

to have you. Do you want to answer that question

3:13

now and tell the listeners what your relationship with gossip

3:15

is?

3:16

Yeah, my relationship with

3:18

gossip is that for about

3:20

the first two thirds of my life, I did not have

3:22

much of like a conscious relationship with gossip.

3:24

I thought you were going to say consciousness. And I was like,

3:26

what was happening? Okay, continue. Yeah,

3:29

I was very, I was very empty headed for the first 20 years.

3:33

Like, you know, I loved rumors, love gossip,

3:36

all that kind of thing, but didn't really think about it until

3:38

I started working as a journalist for

3:40

Deadspin in 2015.

3:42

And I learned I learned two things that

3:45

you know very well, which is that like, so

3:47

much of our job concerns,

3:49

like gossip in a professional sense, or like stories

3:52

you write either involve like, gossiping

3:54

with people or like finding out what people's

3:56

gossip is and like putting that raw material

3:58

through the blog factory.

3:59

and having a story pop out the other end.

4:02

But more importantly, and the

4:04

thing that really changed my relationship

4:06

with gossip is finding out how much journalists

4:09

love to gossip about each other. And

4:11

finding out that there's this sort of just

4:14

pantheon of media gossip that you

4:17

learn more and more about the longer

4:19

you work in here.

4:20

Was there a moment that made

4:22

you realize this? Or was it just the steady

4:25

over time trickling of information

4:28

about people you didn't know?

4:29

I joined Gawker Media as one

4:31

of the last people there during it's like,

4:33

I know. Twice. I think that my first

4:36

official day as a staff writer after being on contract

4:38

for eight months was like,

4:40

you know, some Monday in April and then that

4:42

Friday the whole Kogan decision came down. So we had

4:44

a good, very short run. You

4:48

had a good one day. I remember just

4:50

joining Slack as like this fresh

4:52

faced little Californian guy and then just instantly

4:54

learning like,

4:55

who was scabbing and who was screwing? I think

4:57

those are the two great genres of media

5:00

gossip. Can you tell the people what you mean

5:02

by scabbing, just in case they aren't

5:05

sure? Yeah, so I mean,

5:07

through union efforts you find that there's like a

5:09

real world utility to gossip because

5:12

so much of unionizing is just like finding

5:14

out who's making how much money,

5:17

which bosses are bad, and sort of

5:19

creating this shared lexicon of

5:21

grievance that you can then like unite and

5:23

fight towards. And then in unionization

5:26

processes, you find out like who's

5:28

against it. And you find out where a lot of people stand

5:30

on a lot of things and

5:32

people love to gossip about that kind of stuff, including

5:34

me. You have your little lists of like,

5:37

who's a scab and also who's

5:39

screwing. That sounds ominous, but you

5:41

do. The two

5:43

genres, you're right. It's like, what are you doing at work and

5:45

what are you doing in love? Okay, I would

5:47

like to talk about, I would like to do something that we don't

5:50

usually do, which is something topical. This

5:52

week in the news, in the news, ha ha,

5:54

this week on twitter.com, people have

5:56

been taking a food disgust

5:59

quiz.

5:59

that I have demanded you take as

6:02

part of this experience. And now I would like to discuss

6:05

how it went for you. For people

6:08

who haven't taken the quiz the way it works, is you're

6:10

given like 25 questions that vary

6:14

from things like, would you eat in a restaurant

6:16

where there were insects in the bathroom to

6:18

will you eat Wilte spinach? And you say,

6:20

agree or disagree. And then it gives you like a little radial

6:23

chart that shows what kind of food you're disgusted

6:25

by. So it's not a picky eater chart. How

6:28

much of a garbage disposal are

6:29

you? How did your

6:32

quiz go? What was your experience

6:34

like? A little shocking.

6:37

A lot of scores I saw were hovering around, you

6:39

know, a disgust score of 50% average. Mine

6:43

was 14% Okay, mine was 9%.

6:45

So we

6:48

are actually the disgusting brothers. Give us the

6:50

garbage. We love bad

6:52

things. Why were

6:54

you surprised to see yours at 14%? Like

6:57

how do you feel? No, no, no,

6:59

because I'm not, I

7:02

guess I am a somewhat picky eater in one very specific

7:04

way, which we can get to, but like

7:06

I'll kind of eat, you know, anything. I just

7:09

assumed the digestive system, you know, however

7:11

many years humans have been evolving,

7:14

it's gotten good. Our bodies kind of

7:16

know what to do. If like you cut the moldy part

7:18

off of a piece of bread and eat the rest, like we

7:21

got ways of dealing with that. It's not my problem.

7:23

Yeah. The one I had was

7:25

insect contaminants. And I think that

7:28

was because I answered a question where it's like, if

7:30

the worm is in one part of an apple, you eat the other

7:32

part. And I said no, because

7:34

like that's the worm's house and I don't

7:36

know what he did in there.

7:37

So it wasn't that you were

7:39

afraid of the fact that the worm was in there. It

7:41

was that you felt that that was the worm's

7:43

home. I guess it was, I was

7:46

afraid because it was his home. No,

7:48

I mean, I don't want to evict a worm, nor would I want to

7:51

bite a worm. And if I did both at the same time,

7:53

I would feel bad in multiple ways.

7:55

So I don't want to bring that into my life.

7:57

Famously, producer.

8:00

Su-John Laughlin once bit into an apple

8:02

and bit a worm in half. So that's

8:04

her trauma.

8:06

I would like to know how many

8:08

apples she's had since then. Alex

8:11

says, would you evict me if I was

8:13

a worm? I

8:15

would never evict you if you were a worm, Alex. Wow.

8:18

That's beautiful. What is your opinion on worms generally?

8:21

I'm for them. I love the really weird

8:23

long ones after the rain. I

8:26

took a class in soils in college.

8:29

I was trained as a geologist for some reason.

8:31

For some reason. You like it. Yeah,

8:34

that's true. I like it. I mean, I don't do it

8:36

professionally, but I enjoyed it. Yeah, but I think

8:38

I want you to finish your story, but I do think that

8:40

you and I both believe that college is a

8:42

place where you should just learn shit you think

8:45

is cool and then you can

8:46

find your job later. It's

8:49

fine. Yeah, unless you want to become a chemical

8:51

engineer, you probably shouldn't go study English

8:54

Lit or whatever. The good thing about

8:56

the adult world is that it's messy

8:58

and silly and changes constantly. If

9:01

you're a young money hustler, you can find your way

9:03

in. Okay, continue.

9:05

You took a class in soil. Yeah,

9:07

and the main thing you learned about soils is that

9:10

the really important thing is like the level of organic

9:12

matter and worms plays such a huge role

9:14

in that, breaking leaves

9:17

and mulch and things of that nature down into usable

9:19

bits. Because they're chomping

9:20

it up as a snack. Yeah,

9:22

they're going to town. They're burrowing, they're tunneling.

9:26

It's going in one end out the other, enhanced. I

9:29

respect the mighty worm. Wow, okay.

9:32

Well, that's important because we're going to come back to worms later.

9:35

Oh, lovely. Oh,

9:38

wait. My one specific food disgust thing

9:41

is small, round, bursty

9:43

objects.

9:44

Oh, I knew this about you, like gushers.

9:47

No, gushers are fine because they're not round enough. They're

9:49

like peas, blueberries. Those

9:52

are the main two enemies. If there's

9:55

peas and a fried rice, I'm

9:57

not eating that fried rice. It's not happening. It's

9:59

said to you. Is there anything else besides peas

10:01

and blueberries? I can't even think of anything.

10:03

Cherry tomatoes? Grapes and cherry tomatoes

10:06

are sort of like 1B on the list. Yeah.

10:10

If any of these products have been

10:12

thoroughly destroyed, I can have blueberries in a smoothie.

10:16

I will blend that smoothie for 15 minutes if I have to

10:18

get any remnants of blueberry texture out of there.

10:20

Safety first. Yeah. Look,

10:23

I got to take care of myself. Yeah, it's nice

10:25

to have one manic pixie

10:28

dream girl food decision that you

10:30

keep inside you.

10:32

I know of one other person

10:34

in my life who has this exact thing, and I felt

10:36

so seen in that moment because I thought I was the only one

10:38

who was like this. And I'm sure there

10:40

are dozens out

10:41

there. I feel that if this does not get cut, it

10:43

will be like when Caitlin said that she had 200 people

10:45

on her close friends, and suddenly

10:48

all of these people were DMing us and being like,

10:50

I do that.

10:51

She's normal, actually.

10:54

So perhaps you can create a support group. I

10:57

would love to enter the Kaler zone. We

11:00

all want to enter the Kaler zone. It's a rare place. It's beautiful.

11:03

Are you ready to do some gossip? I would love

11:05

to hear some gossip. OK. I can't wait, yeah. OK,

11:08

great.

11:08

Yeah. OK. All right.

11:11

Yeah. Yeah. Cool.

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11:43

Our friend of a friend today, her name is Gladys.

11:46

Gladys. Gladys. She's one of those people

11:48

who is like always outside.

11:51

She's like pressing flowers into a little

11:53

book. She's learning tree names.

11:56

She's always been like this. Like as

11:58

a girl, love to play in. as a

12:00

teen, loved to climb trees.

12:03

Young adult, she was lying in fields, right? She

12:05

had two kids. She spent all of their childhood

12:07

trying to imbue the same love of nature

12:10

in them.

12:11

Pointing to various mushrooms and saying, eat that one, don't eat that

12:13

one. Exactly. That sort of thing. Exactly.

12:16

That whole sort of thing. This kind

12:18

of bark is cool. This kind is not cool. I

12:20

don't know anything about bark. I think we all

12:22

need a Gladys in our lives, because

12:25

I've spent a lot of time outside. And the one thing I have

12:27

learned is there's always more you can

12:29

learn. Wow. And so

12:31

my advice to you is find the Gladys. I mean, I guess

12:33

we'll find out more about Gladys. So maybe this is

12:35

bad advice, but I will say, find the Gladys

12:38

in your life and seek out their advice in this

12:40

one specific area that's contingent

12:42

on learning more about her. Love that. Sorry

12:44

to derail.

12:45

In Gladys's 40s, she joined

12:47

the local nature preserve in her

12:49

city and started volunteering on the weekends. She

12:51

was like, this is great. Her kids went off to college,

12:53

and she was like, what if I did this full time? She became

12:56

the director of this

12:56

nature preserve. By the time Gladys

12:58

retired a few years back, she'd been in that role for 10 years.

13:02

Now she's 62. She's gone Gaia

13:04

mode for a long time. Exactly. She's retired.

13:07

She still feels young. She still has energy.

13:09

She just is like, I don't want to work anymore. You

13:11

know?

13:11

Stay outside, Gladys. Yeah. Put that sun hat on.

13:14

What do you think she should do? I

13:16

think she should take

13:19

a perhaps smaller position at that nature

13:21

reserve or go

13:23

do something like

13:25

the Pacific Crest Trail. Yeah. That's a bad

13:27

idea. It could be fun. You never know.

13:30

At least do segments of it. You know? Sure. Just

13:32

take a bigger adventure. See a different kind of outside.

13:35

Yeah. Gladys does go out west because

13:37

her son lives there. And she's like,

13:40

my son, I raised him right. He lives

13:42

in the woods. He loves nature. I

13:44

will go visit him and see if he can help me

13:46

figure

13:47

out a future for myself. And

13:49

her son is like, I have an idea to help you figure out

13:51

how to find a future for yourself. What if we

13:54

did mushrooms? Gladys

13:56

has never done mushrooms. What do you think?

13:58

I think this is a great idea. You do.

14:01

Yeah. Why? Yeah.

14:04

I think there's a real therapeutic

14:06

value in psilocybin. I think there's

14:08

sort of this

14:09

justifiable worry that if you take

14:12

basically of taking too much. And

14:14

I think the thing about mushrooms is you

14:16

can creep up to that line very slowly

14:18

and gradually and find it yourself. And even

14:21

at low levels, you can get a lot out of it. So

14:23

I think Gladys has done the exact right thing.

14:26

She's found the Gladys in her life.

14:27

Gladys is like, I don't have a job. Why

14:29

not? So Gladys does her little mushrooms

14:31

and the whole world like opens up before her. She's

14:34

like, the trees are so green. The moss

14:36

is so soft. She like pet a

14:38

bush and cried, right? She was

14:40

like, this is the most magical experience I've ever

14:42

had.

14:43

Gladys is never going inside again. Yeah.

14:46

So that's the problem. How do you think Gladys felt

14:48

when she returned from this trip to

14:51

her like small beige apartment?

14:54

Oh, yeah. She probably thought this

14:56

is all there is. I've

14:58

had my world has been cracked open.

15:00

Like the window of possibility has been thrown

15:03

wide open and I have

15:05

to live at like a higher intensity.

15:08

Yes.

15:09

So then how do you find a higher

15:11

intensity? Four words.

15:14

Ay-Yo, Waska. I don't know. I

15:17

like that you're just like doing different drugs. That's

15:20

a bad idea. No,

15:22

Gladys. Maybe

15:25

she should get into like psychedelic therapies like someone

15:27

who uses like who is training

15:30

to be like a psilocybin. That's a very Bay

15:32

Area sentence. That's true.

15:33

I'm going to call that person. That sounds great.

15:36

Gladys is like,

15:37

she's like, well, one of my children helped me. I'll

15:40

call my other child because

15:42

she has this idea. Her oldest daughter, Courtney,

15:45

lives in a co-living community.

15:48

Oh, yeah. These are places that used to be called communes,

15:50

but they've since rebranded.

15:52

And Courtney let Gladys come visit

15:54

her like a few months ago and it was like a movie.

15:57

And Gladys is like, what if I lived in

15:59

the same

15:59

co-living community as Courtney. This

16:02

could not possibly go wrong. You don't think so?

16:04

Are you being sarcastic? No, no. Living

16:07

in a co-living community, even with people who

16:09

don't probably have some deep-seated

16:11

trauma you need to work through, is like,

16:14

that's never a problem. No one's ever leaving

16:16

their stuff everywhere or taking

16:18

the good acts and leaving it embedded in a tree until

16:20

it gets rusty. Nothing like that ever happens.

16:23

If anything, bring family will just lower

16:26

the dramatic tension. This is a great idea.

16:28

Patrick, the acts thing's so specific.

16:32

That has never happened to me, but I have some

16:34

experience in

16:36

light co-living community type

16:38

things. My partner was working at a

16:40

nonprofit and I had no job there

16:43

or job period. Did you really? Because we

16:45

quit ours? You and I had just quit our jobs.

16:48

I found a niche which was I would just take

16:50

this truck into the woods and just find a dead tree

16:52

and chop it down and break it down every day and that was my job.

16:56

I have probably been the acts person now that I think

16:58

about it. They're working through

17:00

some stuff. This is good. Wow, it is good.

17:03

It's important to work through things. Okay. Gladys

17:05

calls Courtney and she's like, what up, babe? What

17:07

if I came to live near you? We will

17:09

have so much fun. Courtney

17:12

is like,

17:13

abs of fucking Lulee not. She's

17:15

like, no. I

17:17

love you. You cannot live in

17:19

my co-living community with me.

17:23

That is too much.

17:24

That's for being

17:26

able to set the boundary. Agree. It's

17:29

hard to set a boundary with your parents. If she successfully sets

17:31

it. She sets it. She's like, no. But

17:33

Courtney does say she's like, I would be happy

17:36

to help you find your own co-living

17:38

community if that is your goal here.

17:41

That's great daughtering. You think so? Yeah,

17:43

I think that's finding a nice synthesis.

17:46

Yeah. Courtney's like, another thing

17:48

you could consider is a retirement community

17:50

because you are 62 and those exist.

17:54

Gladys is not going to like that. Why? Because

17:57

she's just done mushrooms and she wants to experience

17:59

life. Yeah, there are actually two specific

18:02

reasons that Gladys isn't like that. The first is that

18:04

most retirement communities are air conditioned

18:06

and Gladys hates air conditioning and thinks

18:08

it's very bad for the earth. The second

18:11

is that a lot of retirement homes and senior

18:14

living communities receive federal funding

18:16

and if you receive federal funding,

18:18

you cannot allow people to smoke weed there

18:21

and Gladys wants to smoke weed.

18:22

Gladys

18:25

is so cool. I want to hang out with her. She's

18:27

like, Courtney? No. No

18:30

retirement community, but yes, help

18:32

me find a co-living community. That's

18:35

what I want. I'm now just imagining

18:37

Gladys on a sort of like

18:39

very like Looney Tunes chase

18:42

running around the senior living facility, toking

18:44

up. Yes. She runs behind her with a big butterfly

18:46

net trying to get her

18:48

back. Exactly. That's what she's trying

18:50

to avoid. Maybe she doesn't like running. Yeah,

18:53

she wants to chill. Gladys is like, you know, while

18:55

Courtney's looking, maybe I'll look too. She does like

18:58

some Googling, but she's like not very

19:00

good at Googling. She really can't find

19:02

anything. She's like, maybe I'll move to Canada.

19:05

She's like, there's a lot of nature in Canada, but

19:07

it turns out that it's kind of hard to move

19:10

to another country. She's like, that's not going to work.

19:13

While she's doing this, she's kind of like, okay, I

19:15

think what I've figured out is that I would like to be in

19:17

the Southwest.

19:18

I like the desert. I love turquoise.

19:21

I think it would be fun. All

19:24

true. Yeah. So she

19:26

tells Courtney, she's like, the thing is, I've decided I

19:28

want to go to the Southwest. And Courtney's like, okay.

19:31

Yeah. A couple weeks later, Courtney calls and

19:33

she's like, guess what? I found a place for you to live.

19:35

My friend who I live with in this community told

19:38

me about it. And it's still small. It's

19:40

like 30 people and five of them are children.

19:42

Lovely. She's

19:44

like, the website says, we

19:47

live light on the land we own together

19:49

and value mindful connection in our work

19:52

and decision making process.

19:54

I'm trying to figure out where the drama

19:56

could come from. You

19:59

look stressed. Well, just foregrounding

20:01

decision-making process in that I'm just I'm

20:03

putting a pin in that. Uh-huh. Okay Gladys

20:05

is like that sounds great That's exactly

20:08

what I want Perfect. The

20:10

community is called

20:12

Coma Numo. What does that stand for?

20:15

Thank you for asking. It means community

20:17

in Esperanto. Do you know what Esperanto

20:20

is? Is that like that's like

20:22

someone tried to create like a universal language

20:24

at some point in the past and that's

20:27

Esperanto Yes, Esperanto is a

20:29

language. I'm doing air quotes here quote-unquote

20:31

language created by a Warsaw

20:33

based ophthalmologist

20:36

What is not is that eyes eyes?

20:40

Yeah, you famously use your eyes

20:42

to scan written language I see no problems

20:44

Wow. Yeah, it's basically the same as being a linguist And

20:48

it was made to like blend all

20:50

the languages What that means is

20:53

that if you listen to Esperanto it

20:55

kind of sounds like what English speakers

20:57

think Spanish is

20:59

Whoa that have you ever watched those

21:01

like those videos of what

21:03

English sounds like to a non-English speaker?

21:06

Those those weird me out so much.

21:08

It's like it's like reverse ASMR.

21:09

Yes, I don't like them either They make me really stressed

21:13

Okay, Coma Numo is a co-living

21:15

community that is closer to a commune. It's a mix

21:18

of older grown-ups who just want a vibe

21:21

Everybody's there to have a good time, right?

21:23

Sweet. There are also a lot of young people there who

21:26

have read a lot of theory and are like trying

21:28

to build stuff What do you think I? Think

21:31

this is great. And I think she

21:34

should she should grab her SPF She

21:37

should put those TV's on she should go to Coma

21:39

Numa. I think Gladys's next chapter is

21:41

gonna be a good one

21:42

You think so? Yeah, great. Well,

21:44

the fact that this story is coming up on this podcast makes me

21:47

think it's gonna get complicated But

21:49

right now if I'm just locked in on Gladys,

21:51

I'm thinking you're feeling this is gonna be great 63 is

21:54

gonna be her year.

21:54

Hell. Yeah, Gladys is like I'm in

21:57

she applies she gets accepted

21:59

Let's go. Hell yeah. The

22:02

only day that new people are allowed to arrive

22:04

at this community is summer solstice.

22:06

Okay. All right.

22:09

It's that. All right. Let's

22:11

go.

22:12

I love it. That's when new members are welcomed. So Gladys shows up. She's

22:15

got all her stuff, right? Immediately she's introduced to her buddy.

22:17

She's given a buddy to show her everything. Her

22:20

buddy is a man named Duncan. Duncan.

22:23

Duncan is in his early 30s. He's like very

22:25

tall, very tan. He's

22:28

wearing like Birkenstocks. He has long

22:30

hair, but it's like very luscious

22:32

for some reason. And he's wearing

22:35

what I have learned are called Baja

22:37

hoodies. Is that like

22:38

the poncho kind of thing? Yes, exactly.

22:41

Yeah. Okay. Gladys

22:43

is like great vibes already. I'm loving this. She's

22:45

like, what kind of shampoo do you use? Right? Duncan

22:48

is like, here's your small cabin showing

22:50

her around all the things, right? He's like, here's the central area

22:52

where we eat. Here are the chicken coops. Here are like

22:54

the big freezers. Here's all our

22:56

stuff. Beautiful. Yeah.

22:59

He's like, he's like, the way this commune runs

23:01

is on committees. Our

23:03

company runs on committees. Can you explain

23:06

the way that committee places work?

23:08

Yeah. So,

23:10

all those ding dongs who make $800,000 that we talked about at the

23:12

start, we have to

23:16

do all of their jobs ourselves too. Because

23:18

we co-own our company. Yeah. Because

23:20

Defector is a worker run subscriber funded company.

23:23

We have two business people

23:25

and then

23:26

you and I have to help

23:29

buy our company's health insurance and

23:31

work on the logistics of throwing events and

23:34

things of that nature. It's

23:36

very fun and rewarding. You

23:39

have to treat it as an essential part of your job.

23:42

I'm guessing that if they're living there, that

23:44

these committees are equally essential. Yes.

23:48

It's a way of making sure that everyone

23:50

is helping by giving everyone

23:52

a job. So it's like everyone is assigned a committee

23:55

and then within the committee you have a role. So

23:57

Duncan is on the community co-own.

23:59

cohesion committee. The

24:02

CCC. Yeah, the CCC, classic,

24:05

which is basically like events and

24:07

also making sure that no one's mad.

24:09

Yeah, this sounds like the vibes committee kind

24:11

of. Yeah, it basically is a committee full of

24:13

vibes. Which in a place like that

24:16

where vibes are like

24:18

kind of the whole thing, very important. Yes,

24:20

and in this community, people can be like on multiple

24:23

committees. Just, that's important to know. Okay,

24:25

so Duncan is like really busy today because

24:28

as part of the CCC, he has to like welcome

24:30

new people

24:31

to the community, right? And they have like a little event.

24:35

So he's like Gladys, I'm so glad. On summer

24:37

solstice. Yeah, it's summer solstice. So

24:40

Duncan is like Gladys, I'm so glad you're here, but

24:42

like,

24:43

I got to run. I have things

24:45

to do. And Gladys is like, that's

24:47

fine. I have to reattune some

24:49

vibes over in the

24:51

northwest corner by the sump area. And

24:54

in 45 minutes, that should be fine.

24:55

Exactly. It's some vibesmithing to

24:57

do. He runs away. Gladys is

24:59

like this is fine. She puts on her big hat. She's

25:02

like meeting a few people. Around

25:05

six, Duncan like comes and herds her,

25:07

right? He's like, it's time to go to the like center

25:09

square area. He's like, there's a huge

25:11

bonfire to welcome everyone.

25:13

Nice. Never ends poorly. Gladys

25:16

is

25:17

not happy about the bonfire

25:19

because apparently, they're very bad

25:21

for the environment. Lots of smoke.

25:23

Apparently one hour of bonfire is

25:25

like something like the equivalent of a car

25:28

idling for a year.

25:29

Whoa, that's is that wow. So

25:31

it's like the equivalent of like a third of a Bitcoin. That's

25:34

why. Yes. And

25:37

Gladys is like it explicitly says

25:39

in the rules of this community that no like

25:41

it is forbidden for cars to idols. So

25:43

how come we can have a bonfire?

25:45

Okay, so being

25:48

in these types of spaces, I'm

25:51

sort of familiar with the Gladys

25:53

archetype of like person who comes in and is

25:56

immediately like, no, that's wrong.

25:58

This thing that you have all communally.

25:59

decided because of X. And traditionally

26:02

that does not go over well. Gladys

26:05

is like, this is hypocrisy. I hate

26:07

it. And people

26:10

are making s'mores

26:12

with like packaged graham crackers

26:14

and chocolates. And Gladys is like, that

26:16

is so much plastic. She is not happy.

26:19

So Gladys, it's I mean, it seems like

26:22

Gladys, what she really is

26:24

looking for is like a much more intense,

26:26

like much more intentional

26:28

hardcore community than this. It

26:31

is having like, it's almost like reverse

26:33

culture shock where she went out here expecting it

26:35

to be one way, but it's like more normal than she thought,

26:37

which I guess sounds very disappointing from her perspective.

26:40

What do you think she should do? I

26:43

mean, I'm so

26:45

the opposite way in new social situations. Like

26:48

I would just kind of sit there silently, try

26:50

to figure out the group dynamics and then find

26:53

my entry point and work my way in very slowly

26:55

and

26:56

very harmoniously. But it sounds like what

26:58

she's doing is she's going to find if

27:00

I were her with her sort of stats

27:03

and loadout, I would find Duncan and say, this

27:05

is bad. Douse this bonfire.

27:07

We're going to create our own artisanal marshmallows from,

27:10

you know, from rabbit brush and the things of that nature.

27:13

And then we can have our s'mores.

27:14

Gladys goes to find Duncan. She's

27:16

searching, searching, searching. She finally finds him like

27:18

over by the s'mores and she's like, Duncan, can I talk to you?

27:20

I have some concerns. Duncan is like, hold

27:22

on one sec because Duncan is as

27:25

many people do when they're making s'mores. He's holding

27:27

like in one hand the two graham crackers

27:29

with the chocolate on it. And in the other hand,

27:31

he's holding on marshmallow that is on fire

27:34

like a

27:34

torch. And he's like trying to rotate

27:36

it in a perfect circle with only the

27:38

one hand. And ultimately, it's just the

27:40

tops going to catch on fire. I'm sorry.

27:42

Exactly. And oh, wait. So are you a like

27:44

rotisserie marshmallow person? I

27:46

am. I am. It's annoying. You got to find

27:49

the right spot and you got to just use your two hands

27:51

and just like imagine it's like a tiny

27:53

little cylindrical

27:55

rotisserie chicken. Yeah. And you're just lovingly

27:58

singeing

27:58

it. That's exactly what I do. Everyone hates

28:00

it. They're like, do it faster.

28:04

They can cry through their substandard s'mores. That's

28:06

not your problem. Duncan, his

28:08

marshmallow is on fire. It's black

28:10

on the outside and he's like, this is fine. But

28:13

he's like, I can't talk to you right now because

28:15

I'm trying to navigate my flaming marshmallow

28:18

into this s'more sandwich. In

28:20

his struggle, the plastic wrapper

28:23

from the chocolate falls onto the ground

28:25

and Gladys is like, this man cannot

28:28

help me.

28:29

She has found, I just

28:32

like, this, I feel so bad for her. Like

28:34

this type of scenario where you build something up in your mind

28:38

and for

28:38

her, it's probably the result of this like

28:41

psychedelic enlightenment that like, this

28:43

feels like the endpoint and they're just burning

28:45

plastic in the desert. Like that, that the

28:47

weight of that disappointment really makes me feel bad.

28:50

Yeah. So she goes and she like, she feels

28:52

really disappointed and she's like, I'm going to go sit on a

28:54

log by this stupid fire. I guess it's so

28:56

hot. She's like, this isn't what I thought

28:58

it would be.

28:59

I hope she finds a friend. Well great

29:01

news. Here comes her friend. She's sitting

29:03

there. She's like not feeling good. She's

29:06

feeling really down and a mom

29:08

is like coming by with her son and

29:10

the son is like begging his mom for a

29:12

s'more. He's like, please, I want a s'more please.

29:14

And the mom looks at her son and it's like, sweetie,

29:17

we can't have s'mores because we don't want to contribute

29:19

to waste, but I have these carob

29:22

brownies. Do you know what

29:24

carob is?

29:24

I

29:27

know that I don't like it, but I don't know what

29:29

it is. No, it's like fake chocolate,

29:31

right?

29:32

Yes, it is real.

29:34

It's like a tree that grows carob in the

29:36

same way that like coca beans are real. I

29:39

will now quote a Jonathan Kaufman

29:41

essay in the New Yorker in 2019. He said,

29:43

in the 1970s, carob

29:46

infiltrated food co-ops and baking books

29:48

as if it had been sent on a coin Intel Pro

29:50

mission to alienate the left's next generation.

29:53

So it is not beloved.

29:55

Wow, that's so I

29:58

love imagining like the

30:00

CIA pitch meeting in 1973 where they're like, okay,

30:03

guys, we got it, we got it. We're

30:06

gonna make this chocolate that just

30:08

kind of tastes like you're biting a desk. And

30:11

this will sow so much dissension

30:14

in the ranks, no one will ever be able to find

30:16

out what we're up to.

30:17

Yeah, it's perfect. Everyone will become a Republican

30:19

because their mom fed them these brownies. So.

30:24

Gladys though is like, she

30:26

fed her kids carrot brownies, right? She's

30:28

like,

30:29

carrot trees thrive in the Southwest. So

30:32

this is like

30:33

local product. Gladys' ears perk

30:36

up. She's

30:36

like, here's a woman for

30:38

me. This is a friend. She's

30:41

like, maybe this boy will also grow up to show his

30:43

mom the wonder of mushrooms, right? She's like,

30:45

hello, I'm Gladys.

30:48

Yeah, she's like, hello, I found this nice

30:50

root on my way

30:52

here. I pulled it out of the ground. Would you like to chew on this

30:55

as a little bit of dessert? Yeah, exactly.

30:57

This woman's name is Tammy. She's

30:59

in her early 40s and they are

31:02

like fast friends.

31:04

Over the first few weeks, they're like bonding all the

31:06

time. Tammy's telling Gladys about how she's

31:08

making eco bricks. Do you know what eco

31:11

bricks are? Is it

31:12

like natural building material? It's

31:14

like, what if you shoved a bunch of plastic

31:16

wrappers into a plastic water bottle

31:19

and then you can use that like a brick?

31:21

Oh, so eco is sort of like

31:23

a kind of recycling in like the recycling sense.

31:26

It is like reuse. I've never heard

31:28

of this, no. Yeah, okay. So Tammy

31:30

is making those. She's very excited

31:32

about them. Tammy's like showing Gladys

31:34

the chicken coops. Like they're bonding

31:36

it up. Okay, and Gladys is feeling

31:39

more welcomed because of this. She's feeling way

31:41

more welcomed. And what she also learns from Tammy

31:43

is that part of the reason she was feeling this way is that

31:45

basically there is a divide in the

31:47

commune. There always is. There

31:49

are people in the commune because they are so

31:52

serious about the environment and like want to

31:54

live in this intentional community. because

31:58

they like the vibes and think it's cool.

31:59

Tammy

32:02

is like, what you have to do is figure out which

32:04

group someone is in and then you know how

32:06

to interact with them. Wow.

32:08

Okay. That's good advice, but

32:11

that's a hard way to live. It really is. Tammy

32:14

though is like her confidant. They gossip all

32:16

the time. They're having a great time. They're going on little

32:18

nature walks. It's with Tammy

32:20

that she's able to like digest the first

32:23

of the two

32:24

issues that she experiences in

32:26

the group. Would you like to guess what kind of issues

32:29

these might be? Okay. I'm

32:31

going to guess that there was a big

32:34

group dinner and this

32:36

community eats exclusively vegan

32:40

or there's like some, some very specific dietary

32:42

thing. And someone uses butter

32:45

as a special treat to make a dessert and

32:49

everyone likes it. Once they find out it's butter, the

32:51

two camps, the schism cracks

32:54

open a little bit.

32:54

This is a great guess. The

32:56

first problem is dishes. Oh

32:59

yeah. Dishes are always a problem.

33:02

Even if you have one roommate, dishes can be a problem,

33:05

right? Like who's trying to do them? Who

33:07

did a bad job? Who put this in the wrong place?

33:09

Who used the wrong detergent? So this is like the first

33:11

saga

33:12

that Gladys experiences.

33:14

The second is about a big family meal.

33:16

So you were right

33:17

on that. Dishes and then the thing

33:19

that creates the dishes. Yes, exactly.

33:21

So they have this big family Sunday meal

33:24

every week. Everybody has a role, right?

33:26

And like some people are on cooking,

33:29

some people are on acquiring the food, some

33:31

people are on the dishes, they're having a problem.

33:34

Duncan is on obtaining food.

33:37

That's his committee. The most important role. Yes.

33:40

But every single week, Duncan brings

33:43

mushrooms that he foraged. And

33:47

the amount varies from

33:49

week to week. So some weeks he brings one

33:51

mushroom and some weeks he brings 60

33:54

mushrooms. This

33:56

would not be a problem if it

33:59

was just

33:59

Just to sort of when the land provides,

34:02

we shall eat. Not like I was only

34:04

able to find one oyster and then a bunch of

34:06

these just cruddy little ones and so we're

34:08

having a mushroom souffle no matter what.

34:10

Yeah. The other problem is that the

34:12

people in the commune have learned kind

34:15

of the hard way not to

34:16

trust Duncan's judgment. Oh

34:19

no. No. What?

34:23

I mean,

34:24

I'm a mushroom guy.

34:27

You are. And you

34:29

ideally do not have to learn these lessons the hard

34:31

way but like a lot of prized

34:33

delectable edible mushrooms have poisonous

34:36

lookalikes. Some that can kill you, some

34:38

that can just like ruin your week.

34:40

And you basically like

34:43

as a rule you basically never want to eat anything

34:45

that you are less than 100% certain about IDing. And

34:49

I would apply that even further where you don't eat anything with

34:51

a poisonous lookalike. It sounds like Duncan

34:54

has not learned this despite

34:57

poisoning his roommates.

34:59

Yes, exactly. So no

35:01

matter how many mushrooms Duncan

35:03

finds, people do not

35:05

eat them. They just sit

35:07

on the table like unloved. And

35:10

this seems like the kind of situation where

35:12

food waste is frowned upon. Yes. It's

35:15

also the kind of situation where some people, Tammy,

35:18

don't feel like Duncan is helping.

35:21

They're like, he's gone all day. He

35:24

comes back with

35:25

the questionable mushrooms. She's

35:30

like, this isn't helping with dinner. It's

35:33

like, okay, you have 30 mouths to feed

35:35

and he just goes on, he's just galavants around

35:37

with his little sack with his little mushroom

35:39

knife and he like very slowly,

35:41

he's like making little TikToks of him like adding

35:44

the tops of the skulls and then he comes back and he's

35:46

like, I have eight things that may be

35:48

porcinis or maybe will make you lose the feeling in your

35:50

toes for

35:51

a week. And

35:53

Tammy's like, you were supposed to go to the grocery

35:56

store, right? And like get

35:58

tomatoes, right? Or whatever.

35:59

How do you think they should handle this? I

36:03

mean, this is sort of the problem.

36:05

The problem in the opportunity

36:08

of decentralized decision-making

36:10

structures is that the flaw

36:12

that a lot of people point to

36:14

is that when there's something like this where if you

36:17

had a leader that could just go like say, Duncan, stop

36:19

doing this. But because the decisions seem

36:21

to flow through communal measures, I

36:23

guess it can be slower. But what they need to do is find

36:26

whatever group has that decision hammer

36:28

and swing it and bop Duncan on the head.

36:30

I like that idea that is not

36:32

what they do. What they do is everyone

36:34

is just annoyed about this. But

36:38

peace is delicate, right? And so

36:40

the people in this community are like,

36:42

this is not a big enough deal for us to

36:44

fight him on it. The only person who's like truly

36:47

mad about it is Tammy and

36:49

she refuses

36:49

to confront him. So

36:52

it's just like a bad, bad situation.

36:55

If you're living in this communal type situation, like

36:57

much like defector, it only works if you communicate

37:00

like about these things before little

37:02

resentments go into

37:04

larger structural things. And

37:06

so someone's got to grab that. He needs to be bopped. Agree.

37:09

The problem is no one bops him. And so there's

37:11

like kind of a base level

37:14

of annoyance at Duncan that

37:16

exists across like almost

37:19

everyone.

37:20

Is it just Duncan specifically? Yes.

37:22

Or is it like his wing of the party? It's

37:25

Duncan. Wow. So maybe this is why

37:27

Gladys had such a bad time on the first day because this

37:29

little ne'er do well poncho haver

37:31

with this beautiful, beautiful hair. Yes.

37:35

Just kind of soured the vibe

37:36

first. And he's in charge of vibes. Yes.

37:39

He's in charge of vibes. Not great. All

37:42

right. We're plotting a coup, Duncan. I'm sorry.

37:45

So this community has like a weekly meeting in addition

37:47

to their weekly dinner, right? About

37:50

six months after Gladys joins,

37:52

Duncan stands up at the meeting and is like, I

37:55

have a proposal

37:55

to bring to the group. It's

37:58

winter solstice by now. The

38:22

proposal he has is that he wants

38:24

to grow mealworms so

38:28

that they can feed the mealworms

38:30

to the chickens.

38:32

And he's like, there's also a lot of stuff coming

38:35

out about how you can use mealworms as like an alternative

38:37

protein source. And like, this

38:39

would be a sustainable way for us to do that. And

38:42

he's like, I would like to do this. This

38:44

is his proposal to the people of the community.

38:46

What do you

38:47

think? I think if

38:50

I would say, Duncan, you got yourself a deal with one compromise.

38:52

You are now off food sourcing because

38:56

people should be able to opt in to eating

38:58

mealworms. And I worry that you will

39:00

just put all this dedication into your worm project,

39:03

neglect your vibes project, which you're doing

39:05

a bad job of anyway, and just

39:08

kind of keep making weird food without

39:10

anyone to tell you I'm not going to eat worms

39:12

and poisonous mushrooms for dinner.

39:14

People of the co-op are like, what

39:17

does it cost? How expensive

39:19

is it? What are the downsides? And

39:22

Duncan's like, well,

39:24

the real downside is that I would need

39:26

fish tanks with lights

39:29

to store the mealworms in.

39:31

And because the worms need like consistent

39:33

warmth and low light, the only place

39:35

that is big enough to store them would be the dining

39:38

room.

39:38

So I would need to audio

39:41

medium. You can't just shake your head. There's

39:45

a red flag right there. Why? Just

39:48

imagine you're having some nice, like

39:50

a nice, you know, like a carob

39:53

cake. It's the density of like a brick you would build

39:55

a house out of. An eco brick,

39:57

maybe. And you're sitting around and you're...

40:00

You're hanging out with your cross-generational

40:02

family and someone's like, hey, can you

40:04

pass me the salt? And it's over your left shoulder,

40:06

but instead you reach over your right shoulder and

40:08

you tap on the tank and then like 50 worms

40:11

just kind of start re-gripping and reacting to your

40:13

touch. And then all of a sudden that

40:16

carob cake looks a little less appealing.

40:18

Gladys doesn't like immediately see a

40:20

problem with this, but the people of the

40:22

co-op immediately freak out. And

40:25

Gladys is like, why? You

40:27

know when like everyone clearly knows something that

40:29

you don't know? She's like, why is

40:31

everyone freaking out? She's

40:34

like, it seems fine if Duncan's going to

40:36

do it himself. This will at least get him distracted

40:38

from the mushrooms and this would be actually useful.

40:41

And Tammy tells Gladys about some past

40:44

trauma that the group has had.

40:46

I cannot wait to hear what this is.

40:48

The past trauma is that in the past

40:50

someone lived in the community, brought

40:53

a proposal and said they wanted to get frogs

40:55

and everyone was like, great idea. And

40:58

so they got frogs, but they

41:00

had to feed the frogs like grubs. And

41:03

if the frogs didn't eat all the grubs, then

41:05

they'd grow up into beetles.

41:08

And so then there were just like a

41:10

ton of beetles everywhere

41:13

and like, you know, the body keeps the score.

41:15

So the people are like, panicking.

41:16

The

41:19

commune keeps the score. They're like panicking.

41:21

They're like, we cannot. There's still beetles

41:24

everywhere. Like we cannot have this. The

41:27

thing about the desert

41:28

is there's not water. And the thing about

41:30

bugs is they love water. The thing

41:32

about a commune is you have a you've established

41:34

a spatial monopoly on the water. And

41:36

so the result of this is beetles all

41:39

up in your business. Yeah. Also,

41:41

why did they want frogs?

41:41

I don't know. That's not.

41:44

I don't know. Everyone's freaking out. This

41:46

is a great detail. And

41:49

so Gladys is kind of like, well, do I defend

41:52

Duncan, who is technically my buddy

41:55

and who also I think doesn't really have

41:57

that bad of an idea. People are just projecting

41:59

their

41:59

past beetle trauma onto his

42:02

mealworms. Mm-hmm. I

42:04

think it's worth, that's a trauma worth projecting

42:06

in this specific way. I think the

42:08

knives are coming out for Duncan. I'm sorry, buddy.

42:10

Gladys is like,

42:13

I don't think it's a bad idea. And

42:15

she kind of stands up for Duncan. And she's like,

42:17

Duncan needs a hobby, basically.

42:20

And she's like, let Duncan have his stupid mealworms.

42:23

This is the first thing I'm taking a stand on, please.

42:27

Eating bugs worked for the citizens on

42:29

the snow piercer train. It can work for

42:31

us. Exactly. And Gladys

42:34

is like, okay, I'm

42:36

going to defend him. She defends him. And everyone's

42:39

like, okay, fine. They do their vote.

42:41

And nobody completely disagrees to the

42:43

point. Everyone can live with it. So it's fine.

42:46

He may have his mealworms.

42:48

They're like, how much money do you need for the mealworms?

42:50

And Duncan's like, oh, great news. I don't

42:53

need any money for the mealworms because

42:55

I picked up six fish tanks

42:57

filled with mealworms off of Facebook Marketplace

43:00

this morning. I had to take all

43:01

six. This

43:05

is great. We've been talking about group communication.

43:09

And I feel like one of the important things there

43:11

is to ask permission,

43:14

not forgiveness. It's not like one of those types of scenarios.

43:17

And not, I don't know,

43:19

I just feel like I'm already wary of the plan. And

43:21

I'd be more wary if he was like, good, because it's already

43:24

happening. I would not like that.

43:25

It is true that if you have a boss,

43:27

you should just do whatever you want without asking.

43:30

But when you are in a community where everyone operates

43:32

on the same level, that's

43:33

disrespectful and rude. I

43:36

do respect his ingenuity. My

43:38

partner's a big time Facebook Marketplace person.

43:41

She finds incredible deals.

43:42

We love Facebook Marketplace. This is

43:45

a feather in Duncan's cap. I mean, the specifics,

43:47

no, but the general's, yes. And nobody

43:50

is thrilled about the fact that he was basically

43:52

asking for forgiveness, but everyone is thrilled

43:54

about the fact that he got them for free. So they're

43:57

like, that's kind of fine.

43:57

Also good timing, I will say. because

44:00

chickens produce way fewer eggs in the winter

44:02

and more reliable food,

44:05

more reliable food for everyone.

44:06

Exactly.

44:07

So, everyone's kind of in on it except

44:10

that your prediction is correct and they are kind

44:12

of gross. And like when everyone

44:14

eats family meal now, they're just like a bunch

44:16

of glass containers with like worms

44:19

in them.

44:19

Family meal worms. Family meal

44:21

worm. Every

44:24

week there are so many more

44:26

worms. There's like rapid worm

44:28

growth. And Duncan to his

44:30

credit is doing a really good job. Like he's keeping

44:32

a careful log of like when they're

44:35

fed. He's taking them all

44:37

out and cleaning their bedding and putting them all

44:39

back in.

44:40

For a second, I thought you were gonna say he was taking them

44:43

on walks. Tie

44:47

them all up to floss. Which

44:49

is a really, really cute image until I

44:51

googled mealworm just now. What

44:54

did you see? I saw a YouTube

44:56

thumbnail that appeared to be someone holding a

44:58

fish towards a tank full of mealworms

45:01

and I command W

45:03

instantly. Okay, that's gone.

45:04

We won't think about it anymore. Okay, they're

45:06

just like infinite mealworms and

45:08

Duncan is feeding them to the chickens every day, right?

45:11

He's taking them out there. It's winter, as you said. So

45:13

this is like very good timing. The hints

45:15

are like

45:16

over the course of a couple of weeks of eating the

45:18

mealworms getting like very glossy

45:20

and like a little chubby. Skincare. Yeah.

45:24

Their yolks are like orange.

45:26

Everyone

45:28

is happy. Everyone is like, wow,

45:30

Duncan has made the chickens happy. Duncan

45:33

has not created chaos. We love

45:35

it.

45:35

Yeah, you doubted the man who gave

45:37

you all gastrointestinal distress because

45:40

he couldn't tell a Russell

45:42

from whatever the thing you can eat that looks

45:44

like a Russell is. Giddy, don't get mad at me.

45:47

Exactly.

45:49

They did doubt him

45:51

and they were wrong. He's doing a really good

45:53

job. And after like

45:54

two months,

45:56

Duncan stands up at the group meeting and he's

45:58

like, I just want to thank everyone.

45:59

especially Gladys for believing in me and

46:02

allowing me to have these mealworms. They're

46:04

going really well. And he's like, I'm

46:07

more than happy to keep doing them myself, but

46:09

there

46:09

are so many of them.

46:12

Okay. Does he, have they expanded?

46:15

Like are they all, I'm just imagining

46:17

the communal area now is like, you know,

46:19

you have to have your legs up really high because

46:21

under every chair is like a mealworm aquarium.

46:24

And like, if the conversation stops for a second,

46:26

you can hear this low just like, yes,

46:28

that's exactly right. Kind of smells crazy in there.

46:31

And you're like, this is the best egg I've ever had, but

46:33

at what cost?

46:35

Yes. So Duncan

46:37

is basically like, I would like for

46:39

the eco team to

46:42

help me clean the mealworm

46:44

tanks and feed them

46:46

to the chickens and like their

46:48

chores. Okay. This

46:51

is a sensible proposal. You think so? In

46:54

theory. Okay. There are

46:56

a lot of ways this could go wrong because

46:59

why I mean, as this, I mean, this community

47:01

already knows like you, you don't want a repeat

47:03

of beetle gate.

47:04

You know, you don't. Everyone

47:08

is like, this seems fine.

47:10

Like it doesn't seem that hard. We'll

47:12

figure it out.

47:14

The only person who's like even hesitant

47:16

is Tammy. And that's only because Tammy

47:18

thinks the worms are like in

47:20

practice. She's like, they're disgusting.

47:23

In theory. I like them.

47:25

Fair enough. Honestly, like that's

47:27

the, that's,

47:28

you know, that's one of the great parts of communal living is

47:30

like, you can get in where you fit in, you know,

47:32

you don't have to handle those worms if you don't want to.

47:34

And Tammy's like, I can't do it. I

47:36

won't do it. And everyone's like, that's fine. Like

47:39

you can just swap your shift with someone else, right?

47:41

Like she's like, okay, fine. I vote. Yes.

47:45

We will help him with the mealworms.

47:46

Perfect. Great. The worms are fine

47:49

for

47:49

like three more months. The chickens have

47:51

never looked better. There are so

47:54

many worms that Duncan is like making mealworm

47:56

cookies,

47:57

which apparently tastes fine enough that

47:59

the kids. like them, so like, sure. I

48:02

mean, they think carob is a treat, so you know, this

48:04

is. That's a great point. Their palates

48:06

are primed for mealworms. And

48:09

Gladys has been here for like a year at this point? Not

48:12

quite, like 10 months. But she's like,

48:14

she's settling in, you know? Very much, yeah. She's

48:16

feeling it. She loves her community

48:19

now.

48:19

I was very stressed for her making

48:21

this change and having this bad first impression, so

48:24

it warms my heart to hear things are going better.

48:26

Yeah, it's nice. But then

48:28

one day at dinner, Tambi is

48:30

like, don't the worms

48:33

look weird? Uh-oh, uh-oh.

48:36

And Duncan's like, they don't look weird. You just hate

48:39

the worms. Like, you never look at them. You

48:42

need to consider your biases against worms.

48:44

Like, the worms are fine.

48:45

Wow, OK. Strong

48:48

words from Duncan. The worms are not

48:50

fine. Ooh, OK. The

48:52

next week, the worms are like turning

48:56

black. Some of them are turning black. They're

48:58

looking very weird. Are

49:00

they haunted? Is this a ghost

49:03

story? No. Are they evil? Maybe.

49:06

It's unclear. They are beginning

49:09

to smell worse. They

49:11

are smelling like moldy fish. Like,

49:13

they're smelling like

49:15

death. OK. Are

49:18

these the type of worms that turn into animals

49:20

with wings? I

49:22

don't think so. OK. So they're just going to turn

49:25

into like sludge, basically, is what's

49:27

happening here. They're liquefying. Gross.

49:31

And at this point, is Duncan still

49:33

just like, it's fine. They do

49:35

this. Duncan is now concerned. Duncan

49:37

is like, my worms are sick. I

49:39

hate when that happens. A

49:41

classic problem. But now there's, so

49:44

now at our group meeting that week,

49:46

we have a question, which is like, what

49:48

do you do with the smelly

49:51

dying worms?

49:53

A smell that I'm assuming everyone is actively

49:55

being presented with and assaulted by as they're

49:57

having this meeting, like.

49:59

I mean, here's the

50:02

circle of life. My friend, it's time to

50:04

get yourself some frogs. You're

50:08

creating chaos. You're like, bring the frogs

50:10

back. We'll have a beetle apocalypse.

50:13

It'll rule.

50:13

But see, here's the thing. Life's

50:15

all about cycles. Occasionally,

50:18

you'll find these moments of equilibrium between the

50:20

bugs and the frogs where things will be

50:22

perfect. You'll be eating beautiful

50:25

yolks. Your frogs will be performing

50:27

little circus acts, which I assume is the reason you bought

50:29

them in the first place. You're training

50:31

them up well because they're on a good diet. And then

50:33

eventually, you know, equilibrium will

50:35

get out of whack. The bad times will return. And

50:38

then, you know, Duncan will find someone to solve the problem.

50:41

It's fine.

50:42

I think this is like when they're having those debates about whether

50:44

wolves should be brought into national parks

50:47

to kill moose. And it's like, well, how many

50:49

wolves? Like four? Is that enough?

50:53

I

50:53

was recently in

50:55

New Zealand where they have like a huge invasive

50:57

species problem. It's basically just

50:59

because these dipshit colonizers brought

51:02

like a couple of stoats and little

51:04

mammals with them. And then

51:06

like it's like a shiny little like tube

51:09

shaped mammal that just eats birds and bird eggs.

51:11

And all the birds there, they're like no

51:14

native mammals. And so

51:16

the birds are all just kind of stupid little goofy

51:18

guys who walk around. And so if you

51:20

go on hikes, like every 10 feet,

51:22

there's these little boxes with like traps for

51:25

stoats.

51:26

And they're trying to get them because they're trying to

51:28

get them. So I'm very

51:30

familiar with this. This drama

51:32

of bringing frogs into your

51:34

dying. The invasive species out

51:37

of your control kind of situation. So

51:39

I don't know why I'm recommending it, I guess is my point. Yeah,

51:42

it doesn't seem like a good recommendation

51:44

based on all the anecdotes that have been shared.

51:46

The thing you need to know about the community is

51:49

that they make decisions based on what's

51:51

called sociocracy. Oh,

51:53

yeah, I'm familiar. Please go ahead. Well,

51:57

I only know that it's like an alternative decision making

51:59

framework. I'm mostly familiar because one of the goats

52:01

who lived on the farm was named Sociocracy. Nobody

52:04

knows what goat you're talking about.

52:07

On the commune slash farm

52:10

area that I lived in, I was also briefly responsible

52:12

for herding the goats and their names

52:14

followed an alphabetical system. Okay.

52:17

And the S one was Sociocracy and one of the people

52:19

there was really into it

52:21

and I wish I understood more of how it worked, but

52:23

it's like kind of social, like

52:26

you vote on stuff, I'm guessing, with theocracy part. Yeah,

52:28

the part you need to understand for

52:31

this conversation is that everybody

52:34

doesn't have to agree, but

52:36

nobody can firmly disagree.

52:40

So it doesn't have to be your first choice,

52:42

but you must have unanimous approval.

52:44

It has to be a choice that everyone can live with. Okay.

52:48

So at the meeting this week, there are two camps.

52:50

As always. As always. One

52:53

of them is like, I like the worms.

52:56

They feed the chicken. They're a cheap source

52:58

of protein with minimal eco impact. And

53:00

if everyone simply ate these worms, the whole

53:02

world

53:02

would have enough protein. The

53:05

second camp is like the

53:07

worms are becoming

53:09

like a weird fermented mealworm

53:12

juice and it smells really bad.

53:15

And I think that that's gross. And

53:17

so I think we need to get rid of them.

53:20

My sympathies certainly lie with the

53:23

ladder camp because I think

53:26

if you're just trying to poke holes in either's arguments,

53:29

it smells crazy in here and our communal

53:31

space is unlivable. It's a way stronger

53:33

thing than like when I cut into my

53:36

side using the side of my fork and my egg yolk this

53:38

morning, this beautiful golden hue made

53:40

me feel things like yes, you got

53:43

to make some compromises.

53:44

Yes. So this fight takes

53:46

hours,

53:48

hours and hours. And finally, they

53:50

get to the point where everyone is like,

53:53

I can live with no more mealworms.

53:57

That's the decision I can live with. And that includes

53:59

Duncan.

53:59

Duncan is crying. He's like, it's fine.

54:02

I'm sad that my mealworms

54:04

are all dying, but I can

54:06

live with this decision. I just have one question,

54:08

which is, how are you going to get rid of them?

54:12

Well, it's a good thing we've already solved that one. Call

54:14

up your frog guy, get some frogs in

54:16

there. I guess you just

54:20

open the aquarium tanks and put them in the chicken

54:22

pen and then... Okay, interesting.

54:25

Nobody had thought about this, right? Everyone

54:27

was so focused on like, are we going to get rid

54:29

of the mealworms or not that no one had considered

54:32

now that we've decided to get rid of them? What are we going to do?

54:34

I guess

54:35

you can't feed them to the chickens because they're probably

54:37

gross, right? Yes, because they are

54:39

sick. I will give

54:41

you an option and you tell me why you

54:43

think it will or will not work. Okay. Compost

54:46

the mealworms. They

54:49

might eat all the compost and then you have no more compost,

54:51

but you do have even more ravenous, more

54:54

disgusting worms.

54:55

Correct. That one will not work. Release

54:57

the mealworms into the wild. Remember

55:00

those beetles? They're back and they're worse. Yes,

55:04

exactly. They're squishier. This will not work. Flush

55:07

the mealworms down the toilet. No,

55:09

that's their toilet now. They're looking back up at some

55:12

point, like the worst creatures you've ever

55:14

seen. Feed the mealworms to the chickens.

55:17

No, your chickens are now haunted. Put

55:19

the mealworms into big trash bags and

55:21

throw them away. What? No, come on.

55:24

They have movement abilities still. They're going

55:26

to get out of them. Kill them.

55:29

Yes. Okay. You

55:31

want to kill them. Yeah, I'm sorry. They got

55:33

to go. You think that

55:35

it's time to kill them. They're all dying. Presumably,

55:38

the how of this is not all that difficult because

55:41

if there's 30 plus people and there's these very serious

55:43

camps, surely some of them have such

55:46

a hatred for these mealworms that

55:48

even at Kamunoka,

55:51

what's the name of the community? That's close enough. Even

55:54

this Esperanto community, they're like,

55:56

I can fix this. Just like, give

55:58

me five minutes and like. a boot

56:01

and the problem's going away. Now

56:04

I have to ask you some questions that

56:06

were raised at the meeting and they are, do worms

56:09

have souls?

56:10

Can worms feel

56:13

pain? Will

56:15

this cause them harm? Does this

56:17

make you a murderer if you kill 5,000 mealworms?

56:21

What are the ethics here?

56:23

Well, see, this is when you need

56:25

to just, this is where the committee structure works.

56:28

You need to have

56:30

your insect cosmology and spirituality

56:32

committee meet, decide these answers

56:34

and whatever they say goes because that's how the committee

56:36

structure works. You trust these people to

56:39

make these decisions. You trust them. You

56:41

know, if exorcisms need to be performed before

56:43

or if that's more harmful to perform

56:45

them because if you're killing devil worms, that's less

56:48

ethically dubious. I think what you need

56:50

to do is just, yeah, call up

56:52

your bug people, let them handle this.

56:54

Yeah, you're right. So what happens

56:56

here is because this is a complicated question

56:59

that people are not capable of answering

57:01

immediately, it is deferred to a committee.

57:04

The committee is whichever one is in charge of like

57:06

ethics.

57:06

Yeah, the insect spirituality

57:09

ad hoc subcommittee. Yes.

57:12

And what the committee does is they find some

57:14

material to circulate and

57:17

I am sending you the link now. Can you click

57:19

on this for me? Healing-suffering.org

57:23

slash kill-bugs-humanely.

57:27

I'm so excited. OK. Should

57:29

I read this or?

57:30

Can you just read the top

57:33

section and then the table

57:35

of contents?

57:37

Oh, wow. This

57:39

is good. While I generally avoid

57:42

killing healthy insects, I often find

57:44

injured or I should just say like we're laughing

57:46

about this because, you know, it's silly

57:49

but like

57:50

I do appreciate that people have taken the time

57:52

to think through this thoroughly. Like,

57:54

you know, our human and our relationships

57:57

are very serious and

57:59

I think...

59:41

Not

1:00:00

a good one, which is you simply create a moonshine

1:00:03

still Six months over

1:00:05

long it takes to distill enough moonshine to kill all these

1:00:07

bugs But they're they're just there you

1:00:09

have bug soup at that point anyway, so that's not a really

1:00:11

steady. Yeah

1:00:13

The next option brought

1:00:15

by the committee is to freeze them Which

1:00:20

You're putting them in closer proximity to all your

1:00:22

food And as this blogger

1:00:24

has taught us freezing is less ideal when crushing

1:00:26

is readily available and crushing is almost readily available

1:00:29

Yes, the benefit of freezing

1:00:31

is that it's like a little more hands-off way

1:00:33

of killing so it's not as morally

1:00:36

do dubious in some ways and

1:00:39

to So that's the pro that

1:00:41

you could freeze them and it's clean the con

1:00:43

is that Mealworms

1:00:46

have come back to life

1:00:47

after being frozen You

1:00:49

told me there were no ghosts in this story. They are haunted

1:00:53

did

1:00:54

Imagine feeding the chickens like

1:00:57

a bunch of reanimated mealworms there

1:00:59

their powers I mean you'd

1:01:01

have to deal with them eventually because they would

1:01:03

grow sentient and unionized to try to destroy

1:01:05

you but like For a couple weeks there their abilities

1:01:08

and powers would be pretty incredible. I will say yeah

1:01:10

The third option is smoosh

1:01:12

them with your hands. Yes best option.

1:01:15

You like that one. Yeah, it's efficient,

1:01:18

but it's also Yucky Is

1:01:20

yucky, but you know the this is

1:01:23

this is like not that different

1:01:25

from literally you got to break a few eggs to make An omelet

1:01:27

like you got to break a few Creating

1:01:29

creatures to make the thing that you have to break to

1:01:31

then make an omelet

1:01:32

Wow The last option is

1:01:35

burn them I'm

1:01:40

assuming they can survive that too if they can survive

1:01:42

freezing you're not that we know of The

1:01:45

benefit of the burning is that the people

1:01:47

of the committee have thought that it might be nice It's

1:01:49

like a kind of ceremonial aspect

1:01:52

We already this is already a community

1:01:54

with some real tensions around

1:01:56

fires and surely if you meld

1:01:58

that with like insects ethics

1:02:00

that you're just gonna have to form way

1:02:02

too many subcommittees to deal with all the entangled

1:02:05

problems. Which of these options

1:02:08

do you want? You

1:02:11

know if

1:02:12

the alcohol thing is feasible in an ecologically

1:02:15

responsible way then

1:02:16

doing that and then crushing

1:02:18

them but I'm

1:02:21

sorry like this hammer that we refuse to

1:02:23

bop Duncan with is being used to

1:02:25

smush these worms. You're

1:02:28

smushing them. But the thing is I

1:02:30

haven't read this whole document and maybe if

1:02:32

I read this 5,672 word blog I would like

1:02:37

I would then think that the best solution is

1:02:39

to like fund research towards a humane bug killing

1:02:41

device and then sitting with my bugs

1:02:43

for another seven years till it hits the consumer marketplace

1:02:46

so maybe it's good I haven't read this document.

1:02:48

What happens is at the meeting they vote

1:02:52

this is not work. They anguish.

1:02:54

It's just smelling worse

1:02:56

with every passing hour. The next

1:02:59

week people come up and give little speeches. It's

1:03:02

a whole the next week. Yes

1:03:04

it has all been two weeks and

1:03:06

the bugs

1:03:07

really it smells crazy in

1:03:09

there.

1:03:10

Oh this is nasty.

1:03:13

These are see at some

1:03:16

point you need a maverick you need someone

1:03:18

who in the middle of the night is just going to smush

1:03:20

the bugs in like the 15 minutes it

1:03:22

takes and the next morning when everyone's like where's

1:03:24

the bugs that person could be like

1:03:27

oh no.

1:03:30

Well at least we don't have this problem anymore. Who

1:03:32

wants some carob cake? Would

1:03:35

you do that?

1:03:37

Yeah I think I'm the type

1:03:39

of person who would do that. You would you would smush

1:03:41

all these bugs with your hands? Not

1:03:43

with my hands with my with my feet. Oh

1:03:47

sufficient. Okay. Although I mean

1:03:49

if there's a lot then you need to

1:03:51

change shoes a few times but I

1:03:53

think I could I could get it done.

1:03:54

You think you could do it. Yeah. Okay

1:03:57

so as we've been over the

1:03:58

way that you make decisions is you have to come to a place

1:04:00

that everyone can live with. Sociocracy.

1:04:04

Sociocracy. The decision they come to is

1:04:06

they will freeze the worms for

1:04:09

two weeks.

1:04:10

Okay. Long enough to

1:04:12

weed out the bad ones and select for those with

1:04:15

magical powers? Hopefully.

1:04:18

And then they will burn them. Okay.

1:04:22

This is a logically coherent plan. Tell

1:04:25

me why. You are trying

1:04:27

to reduce their suffering, which I

1:04:29

think, which I honestly, they've read

1:04:31

the paper presumably and I

1:04:33

commend that. I

1:04:38

think everyone will feel better than a decision that

1:04:40

everyone has at least consented

1:04:42

to.

1:04:43

Yes. And for as slow as they

1:04:45

worked, this will minimize

1:04:47

resentments going after because if I went

1:04:50

crunch crunch mode on those bugs, then the

1:04:52

next day Duncan would feel horrible and

1:04:54

I would have to lie to him and then it

1:04:57

would be a long term resentment. That's no good.

1:05:00

Which this community clearly has none of already. So

1:05:02

we don't want to bring any in there.

1:05:03

Exactly. Okay.

1:05:06

So they vote on this. Everyone is like, yes,

1:05:09

freeze all the bugs,

1:05:11

put them in a bonfire, whatever. That's

1:05:13

we agree. But as

1:05:16

soon as they voted on this, someone from

1:05:18

the CCC is like, just

1:05:21

want to give a heads up on this decision that the next

1:05:23

bonfire will be the summer solstice.

1:05:26

No, no. So all the new people,

1:05:28

they'll be like, oh, I love

1:05:30

nature and the Esperanto language and

1:05:33

things that are supposed to taste like chocolate and don't, why

1:05:36

are there all these little screams?

1:05:40

And then these new people who are

1:05:42

like excited and vulnerable to try out this

1:05:45

community, you're like, okay, so the ethics

1:05:47

of bug souls as it relates to freezing. So

1:05:49

yes. So

1:05:51

do you do it? You finally

1:05:54

reached a consensus.

1:05:56

I guess now I'm having to consider

1:05:58

the sort of the a bulk geometry,

1:06:00

like are there enough mealworms that it would be like noticeable

1:06:04

within the three to... Yes. Oh,

1:06:06

okay. Certainly, yes. Can you just

1:06:08

not... can you just like have a fire in like another day? No.

1:06:15

You know what? I

1:06:17

think you got to do it. I think... I

1:06:19

forget... it was a previous guest on Normal Gossip said

1:06:21

that a way to make friends with people

1:06:23

is to just say the weirdest thing that pops in your head when you

1:06:26

meet them. And I think that's a really great way

1:06:28

to like

1:06:29

to sort of just find out like, is this going to work

1:06:31

or not? And if you're the

1:06:33

type of commune that is going to burn bugs

1:06:36

at the stake and be honest about it

1:06:38

and take this decision so thoroughly in the

1:06:41

spirit of radical transparency, you're

1:06:44

just going to have to... these normies are going to have to find out

1:06:47

the hard way. We are at

1:06:49

the very end of the story and

1:06:52

they choose to do it. They

1:06:55

have to put all of the mealworms into those

1:06:57

like silicon ice cube trays

1:07:00

into the chest

1:07:00

freezers. I'm

1:07:04

just imagining like a sad, like

1:07:06

a movie trailer style, like mournful cover

1:07:08

of like a sad pop song, like

1:07:10

a breakup song or something, like the Johnny Cash

1:07:12

version of Hurt or something. Playing as

1:07:14

just like Duncan weeping with his

1:07:16

beautiful hair flowing somehow despite being

1:07:18

in the freezer. Just like scooping

1:07:22

his tiny little friends, black

1:07:24

worms. Stinky.

1:07:27

They decide that since, you

1:07:30

know, they're like, we don't want to hide who we are

1:07:32

from the new people. They decide to have an end

1:07:34

of life ceremony for the worms

1:07:37

at the bonfire

1:07:37

to

1:07:41

thank them for their service. I

1:07:43

think I've really come around on these people. You

1:07:47

know, they're so dedicated to their principles

1:07:50

that I just, I respect it. Yeah.

1:07:53

And you know, I guess the like moral here is that

1:07:55

the method did work. Okay,

1:07:58

I was going to ask. So this worm

1:08:01

problem did not persist. No.

1:08:03

We are at the end. How do you feel? Whose

1:08:06

side are

1:08:06

you on? I feel

1:08:09

like I really like, I

1:08:11

feel emotionally worn out. Yeah.

1:08:14

That was a way more like, more

1:08:18

involved story than I expected. Just the

1:08:20

thinking about the ethics of this like mass

1:08:23

worm killing and massacre

1:08:25

even. I think I just, I'm

1:08:27

so foregrounded in like Gladys's feelings

1:08:30

and I want her to like really

1:08:32

feel like this next step is like this rewarding,

1:08:34

lovely journey. I want this like psychedelic, this

1:08:37

process, this psychedelic step, you

1:08:39

know, off the diving board. I want her

1:08:41

to feel like this was like a good

1:08:43

choice for her life. And I'm

1:08:46

imagining her sitting here one year later

1:08:48

looking at this bonfire and I'm wondering

1:08:50

what she's thinking.

1:08:52

I'm hoping she thinks these are my people and

1:08:54

those were my worms and they're in hell now where they belong.

1:08:59

That's basically what she's thinking. She's like,

1:09:01

she's like, you know, this was very

1:09:03

weird and stressful. She's

1:09:06

like, but the community

1:09:08

worked the way it was supposed to. Right?

1:09:11

Like, yeah, took some time, but everyone is satisfied

1:09:14

with the worms going to their fiery death.

1:09:17

She got

1:09:17

what she wanted. And was

1:09:20

it stinky? Yes. Like

1:09:23

one year later, you know, the sun has gone through

1:09:25

its soul cycle and on

1:09:28

the longest day of the year, she's sitting at this

1:09:30

horrifically destructive bonfire and just

1:09:32

thinking, okay, this

1:09:34

is what I signed up for.

1:09:35

Yeah. And Gladys has now been

1:09:38

there for many years and she is

1:09:40

very happy at her commune and she

1:09:42

has grown very used to all of these like little

1:09:44

dramas playing out. I

1:09:46

love it. Would you like the final

1:09:49

update?

1:09:50

I would though I will pass in a

1:09:52

dent just like a little another thought I

1:09:54

have is like, I really

1:09:57

think life and this is I guess gets back to

1:09:59

like gossip as a. I think life is just way

1:10:02

more

1:10:03

enjoyable and has a much richer texture

1:10:05

if there's just sort

1:10:07

of a baseline of acceptable

1:10:10

low stakes drama in your life that

1:10:12

you can gossip about, that you can experience, that you can

1:10:15

work through your feelings through. And so I think

1:10:18

Gladys is in a good place.

1:10:19

Yeah. The goal of a healthy community isn't

1:10:22

no conflict. It's conflict resolution

1:10:24

in which everyone feels like they were heard.

1:10:27

Right? So don't you just feel sort of spiritually

1:10:29

wrung out in like a good way after you sort of

1:10:32

go through one of these worm killing ethics

1:10:34

dates for eight hours in a rapidly

1:10:36

putrefying room? Yeah.

1:10:39

Yeah. A little dizzy. Lightly

1:10:44

fermented. Yeah. There is

1:10:46

one thing though. And

1:10:48

the thing is that there's

1:10:51

something that happened,

1:10:54

which is that a few weeks after the summer solstice,

1:10:57

Duncan came to Gladys

1:11:00

and was like, Gladys, can I talk to you about something?

1:11:03

Why are you in that face? I have a prediction, but I don't want to say

1:11:05

it. And Gladys is like, what?

1:11:08

And Duncan has all of his little log books, right?

1:11:11

Of like all the cleanings and all

1:11:13

the feedings. And he's

1:11:15

like

1:11:16

pointing right at the week before

1:11:19

everything went awry. And he's like,

1:11:21

it was Tammy's shift. Oh

1:11:24

shit. She poisoned the worms. Do

1:11:26

you think she poisoned the worms? That

1:11:29

seems to be the conclusion that he's drawing. Duncan

1:11:32

thinks she did. Oh, Tammy.

1:11:36

I mean, that's devious. That's

1:11:38

devious because if you're going to do that, like

1:11:40

if you're going to take that step, you have to

1:11:42

be prepared to dig that mass grave and

1:11:44

get on your worm squishing boots. And it

1:11:46

sounds like Tammy, maybe she spoke up

1:11:48

in the meetings, but that's, you can't,

1:11:51

see now I'm fully sociocracy pilled. I'm

1:11:53

like, you should not have done that without going

1:11:55

through nine committee votes. What?

1:11:57

What do you think the. for

1:12:00

and against Tammy doing

1:12:02

mass worm sabotage

1:12:04

are. I don't, I'm

1:12:07

trying to, I'm struggling to make a four, I

1:12:09

guess the four cases like it's weird in there.

1:12:13

And that's,

1:12:15

I sympathize with her to

1:12:17

a certain degree. The against case

1:12:19

is that things are good. Those eggs, like it's like an

1:12:21

egg commercial. The chickens are

1:12:23

great. They're almost as luscious as Duncan's

1:12:25

hair. Like things are good. Duncan's happy.

1:12:28

He has a purpose. He's no longer poisoning you fungaly.

1:12:31

Like the against case is pretty strong. I

1:12:34

gotta say,

1:12:34

did she poison them? We don't know. This

1:12:38

is, this is your final. What would you do

1:12:40

is that you're Gladys.

1:12:42

Duncan has brought you this evidence.

1:12:45

I defend my friend. I see you do. Yeah,

1:12:47

I think what's done is what's done is done.

1:12:51

You know, I, presumably if we're still close throughout

1:12:53

all this, like there haven't been other

1:12:56

signs that she is like doing more active

1:12:58

sabotage. It sounds like the worm thing she

1:13:00

was like pretty strongly against and

1:13:02

it seems isolated enough. I

1:13:05

think I'm riding with my friend. I think

1:13:07

I say, you know, there's no way to know what

1:13:09

happened, but also like we got it. We gotta

1:13:11

move on. Like this, the summer solstice

1:13:13

just happened. That's presumably a time of renewal.

1:13:17

And so in that, in that sort of lunar

1:13:19

solar, I guess, spirit, we have to

1:13:21

cleanse

1:13:23

ourselves and Duncan would be like,

1:13:25

what? You know, that's

1:13:28

calm you living, baby.

1:13:29

Gladys is like Duncan.

1:13:34

If she did it, could

1:13:37

you live with the decision

1:13:39

that was made afterward?

1:13:43

Like,

1:13:44

did this play out in a way that you still

1:13:46

would have been satisfied with if she did do

1:13:48

it?

1:13:51

And Duncan's like, well, yeah, I mean, that's the way

1:13:53

it was always going to play out. And Gladys is like,

1:13:55

okay,

1:13:57

then the only part of that that's missing

1:13:59

is how you.

1:13:59

interact with Tammy. So do you

1:14:02

want to confront Tammy about this?" And Duncan

1:14:04

is like, no. Gladys

1:14:08

is such a good communicator. And so we still

1:14:10

don't know. Which is beautiful. That's

1:14:12

a satisfying... I'm very... I'm

1:14:14

satisfied by this ending. Oh, good. I'm

1:14:16

glad. My prediction

1:14:19

earlier when I gasped was like, when Duncan

1:14:21

comes to Gladys, I had assumed he

1:14:23

would be like, Gladys, I have a confession to make. And

1:14:26

then takes her to his cabin where there's an aquarium

1:14:28

set up with worms. And

1:14:30

he was like,

1:14:32

you know how those eggs are still so good? It's

1:14:34

my colony. I did that. Wow,

1:14:37

I wish. Patrick, thank you so

1:14:39

much for coming on Normal Gossip. It was a treat to have

1:14:41

you. This was so much fun. Thank

1:14:43

you for having me.

1:14:47

Thank you for listening to Normal Gossip. If

1:14:49

you have a gossip story to share with us, email

1:14:52

us at normalgossip at defector.com.