This week, as Chris fights through some voice troubles, we tackle several subjects including snakes, people who have died while taking selfies, and bad drivers. And finally, what does spanking have to do with Donald Trump?
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5. Credits
This week, as Chris fights through some voice troubles, we tackle several subjects including snakes, people who have died while taking selfies, and bad drivers. And finally, what does spanking have to do with Donald Trump?
1. Topics
2. Additional Resources
3. Merchandise/Support the Show
4. Contact Us/Follow Us/Rate/Subscribe
New episodes every week!
Listen, rate, follow, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts!
Follow us:
5. Credits
This week, snakes dying for selfies, spanking, and use your turn signal. Welcome to Subpar Talks. Hey everybody. Welcome to Subpar Talks where we have conversations about everything. I'm Jeff.
Chris:And I'm Chris.
Jeff:Thank you so much for joining us yet again. And as always, you know what's coming, our standard disclaimer, listener discretion is advised. We like to curse from time to time, and depending on the episode, we will touch on some hot button issues, mature subject matter. So if that doesn't set well with you, then maybe this is not your type of podcast. But for everybody else, settle in because here we go with this week's topics. So your voice is kind of jacked.
Chris:So I went to the dentist on Friday and I was having to get like, I'm gonna call it maintenance stuff. This was not a cleaning. This was like redo fillings, fix crowns, stuff like that. And that stuff just takes a while. And so I'm laying there for the better part of three hours with my mouth open, and numbed. And, man, they gave me so much Novocaine, I had numbness up into my nose. I was loaded. So I come out of there and I'm feeling fine, but then, like, I don't know, a couple hours later, I start feeling this funny feeling in my throat, got like a cough. I'm having to clear my throat and it's a kind of thing where you feel like you're gonna get sick, but I'm not getting sick. But now, because of coughing and everything over the last two days, my voice is starting to go, so...
Jeff:Yeah, that's no good.
Chris:It's just hazards of the dentist, I guess.
Jeff:I guess so. I hate the dentist. God, I hate going there.
Chris:Well, I feel like I about grew up in the dentist chair, so... I mean, when I was seven, I had a bad bicycle wreck and I had temporary stuff done for that. That's eventually why I had to get crowns. I had all kinds of orthodontia stuff and...
Jeff:Yep.
Chris:I've just, I've spent years in one chair or another plus tooth extractions. I mean, I had my wisdom teeth taken out. I had baby teeth taken out. I had permanent teeth taken out.
Jeff:Yep. They had, so before I got braces on, they had to do a bunch of shit to my teeth just to get prepared to put the braces on in the first place.
Chris:That's the way I was too. I had to wear an apparatus thing that would expand my my jaw. It had to like expand the bone while it was growing for like two years, yeah, before they could even do that. And even then they said you don't have enough room for your teeth. So that's why they had to take out four permanent teeth.
Jeff:You said apparatus.
Chris:Yeah, I wasn't the apparatus.
Jeff:That's good to know.
Chris:They said that, well, like so an adult, if they had all their teeth, including their wisdom teeth, should have 32. Yeah, I've got 24.
Jeff:Oh my god.
Chris:My four wisdom teeth are gone and my other four permanent teeth are gone. You know, I think as we age, we just get to a fraction of what we once were. It's like...
Jeff:Oh, well, yeah.
Chris:You start out, you start out with all this stuff, right? And then you spend your life having it taken out. You get your teeth taken out, you lose your hair.
Jeff:Yeah.
Chris:You have organs taken out, appendix, gallbladder, stuff like that.
Jeff:Yep.
Chris:We're just a fraction of.
Jeff:You're right. Just wasting away. So you said you were looking at news stories. Is there anything in particular?
Chris:Bad Bath and Beyond filed for bankruptcy today.
Jeff:Oh, I saw that.
Chris:Yeah. So they say they're hoping not to, well, they may have to close some stores. They're hoping not to close completely, but they said it's gonna require a buyer. Like they've got four point something billion in assets, but five point something billion in debts. My God. Yeah. They just can't sustain it. They said they've been around for 52 years. I had no idea. Yeah, since, since 1971. I had no idea either. Oh man. I know. 1971, right? 52 years. Sounds like it ought to be since about the fifties. Right. That's what I was thinking in my head. Holy shit. See, I don't care for that. Well, no, I don't either. And their main competitor is, uh, bath and Body Works. They're more recent, right? Bath and Body Works is their main competitor. I thought so. Isn't it the same kind of shit shows you how much I know about these stories? No, no, no. Cause Bath and Body Works has like soaps and lotions and candles and all the scented stuff.
Jeff:Isn't that Bed Bath and Beyond?
Chris:No. They've got towels and kitchen stuff, you know, pots, pans, dishes. Well, they have Bed, bath and then the Beyond and more and more.
Jeff:Wow. So,
Chris:yeah, I don't think I, I'm not sure if I knew about Bed, bath and Beyond before the early nineties. If I did, it would've been a very late eighties, but,
Jeff:well, I know I didn't before the nineties. No way. But even
Chris:in that time, I wasn't having to buy any stuff like that. So, yeah, I didn't know anything about it otherwise. But yeah, I was, I, I don't know, I never go there. I, I used to, you know, back in the day, I would go for, But that was occasionally too. It seems like a lot of people used to register there for
Jeff:weddings. Oh yeah. Things
Chris:like that. And then people started registering at Target. It's like Target, target is one of their main competitors. Now.
Jeff:What store am I thinking of? Where they're always in the mall. And they've always got chairs, like comfortable chairs. You can go in and sit and massage. They've all got little gadget gifts like that. Brookstone Brookstone. There you go. Thank you. Yeah, so I would always walk in there and just fuck around with stuff that I was never get, but I always wondered who buys this stuff? I
Chris:don't know people, people do. People do. I don't. Right. I love Go. Yeah. I love going in there. Of course. There again, I don't know when's the last time I've been in one, because it's been that long since
Jeff:I've been in a mall. Yeah, they're in the mall. Why would anybody go to a mall? Right. Yeah. But
Chris:yeah, I would love, I like going in there. It's, it's fun to, to look around and see all their gadgets, but you know, number one, they're high priced, obviously. Mm-hmm. And two. So much To me, it seems like a lot of things that they have, even if it's neat, it's a novelty. I can look at things and go, oh wow, that's really cool. But then also say, I don't want it. I would never get it. I don't have a use for it. Whatever.
Jeff:So, right.
Chris:Just blow it off.
Jeff:Did you hear about the guy? I heard about this a couple of weeks ago. He was a pilot on a plane and he had a Cobra crawling around him. Did you see that?
Chris:No.
Jeff:Where's this? This would scare the shit outta me. So while he's flying? Yeah, so South African pilot, Rudolph Rasmus, he felt it under his seat and like crawling by his side. So I guess it was like up on the seat, but then it was down underneath. He said, I felt this little cold sensation underneath my shirt where my hip is situated. Oh no. And when he looked down, he saw a Cape Cobra, highly venomous under his seat. So he just turned the plane around. I don't know how many people he had on the plane. It was a private plane. He turned around and landed, made an emergency landing at another airport. But can you imagine?
Chris:No, not even close, I just. I mean, it'd be bad enough if you're just sitting at home minding your own business, and that happens. Yeah. But how are you supposed to, well, and okay, if it's highly venomous, you better maintain some composure, because if you freak out, it's gonna freak out. Yeah. But then how do you do that when you're flying a
Jeff:plane? I have no idea. And here's, I don't like this at all. So this is from N P R. Erasmus has been praised by the South African Civil aviation Commissioner, whoever, who called him a hero and said he saved all lives on board since landing, however, the snake has not been found. It seems to have boarded and disembarked Everyone hopes on its own. How the fuck did you not like? How is that possible?
Chris:No. Yeah. He feels it on his hip and then it disappears. Right? They need to burn that plane.
Jeff:They do. Yeah. Yeah. It might be stuck somewhere on the plane. Just get rid of it. Yeah.
Chris:And how are you ever gonna find it until it crawls on somebody else? Seriously. That sounds, I know, drastic, but what else are you supposed to do?
Jeff:I don't know. Maybe you can smoke'em out or something. Yeah.
Chris:Wow. That's crazy. I would freak out. I'm th I have a fascination with snakes, and I mean that in a. If I were to come in contact with a snake and I have like once or twice, well maybe two or three times in my whole life have I ever come across a snake in the wild, and fortunately it was at a distance. Yeah. So I wasn't really, I wasn't ever in any danger, but it's
Jeff:scary. Okay. Let's talk about those. When, what did you see or do you know what you saw?
Chris:One time at a lake, I walked out onto a pier and over to my left there was a snake. Um, and I, I just, I saw it and I just felt from my feet going up to my head,
Jeff:this burning sensation. Yes, I know. I've been there. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Is this,
Chris:Panic and I had, uh, I actually had a gas can in my hand and I
Jeff:dropped it.
Chris:Well, it scared the snake and like I said, it was enough distance. But I was still afraid when I saw it and it jumped and then scurried off the other way into the water. It was a blackish looking snake. But that could be anything. I mean,
Jeff:oh God, it could have been. It could also be a water moccasin, could be a
Chris:water moccasin. But then there are other blackish looking snakes that are, Quote, harmless. So I have no idea what it
was.
Jeff:Oh my God. Well, honestly, it doesn't matter at that point. Just don't get close to it. No, but still, and people swim in lakes. What the hell? Like that. That's reason enough for me to not go into a lake right there.
Chris:Exactly. That's, that's enough to me that I don't want any part of it. There's, there are snakes. The the fish, you can get catfish that are, Nearly as big as you are,
Jeff:and I don't need that. I know it. Something nibbling
Chris:on my foot and then it just decides to take the whole thing.
Jeff:Right. And then you have brain eating amebas. There's that. See, I don't need that either. Mm-hmm. No, that's scary too. And it's probably irrational because it's really rare, but it happens in warm weather climates. So here we are. Mm-hmm. And. It goes in through your ear, right? Or your nose? I think. Through your ear, yeah. And then you don't know anything's wrong, but you have a headache. Oh, no big deal. I'll just take some aspirin or whatever. But it doesn't go away. Keeps getting worse. And then pretty soon you're dead. I get
Chris:headaches all the time. I can't. I can't be worried about every headache I get. Like
Jeff:Can you imagine though if you had been in a lake? And then you had a headache like the next day I'd be terrified. Well,
Chris:yeah, this is it. This is the big one.
Jeff:Yeah. Right. So speaking of where we are, warm weather and all that. So there are, to my knowledge, and we better not get any mark types that have snake expertise knowledge here, but I think we have four venomous snakes in the us. And every kind is here in Texas. Really? So we have, there are rattlesnakes. Mm-hmm. And there are two types. So the, the western one, uh, is that the diamond back? The western. The western diamond back. Okay. Yeah. And then there's, there's timber, rattler, uh, rattlesnakes that are, I've read they're more venomous than the other ones. And those are like in the eastern part of the state? Yeah. And where
Chris:we are, like here in Northeast Texas, it's possible to get both. You don't have to go very far in either direction and encounter either one.
Jeff:See, that's no good. No. And then we have Copperheads. Mm-hmm. And I've seen two of those in the wild before. Really? Yeah. So once was, we used to live in an apartment in Dallas. And you would think Dallas, okay, you're in the city, you're not gonna see this kind of stuff. But we backed up right to a golf course and there was all kinds of shit there. Like we'd see coyotes and raccoons. Mm-hmm. And one day I'm walking out behind the apartment and I looked, there was like different levels. Levels, Chris levels. There were different levels, like on cross ties, you know, And on one of the cross ties was just this curled up snake and it was huge. And I got a little bit closer to it. So ju it's one of those things where you see it and you're like, do I think I'm seeing what I'm actually seeing? Right. So I got a little closer and confirmed it and then I called the apartment people and they came and killed it. And it was a copperhead and it was, it was big.
Chris:Wow. Those are bad news. I've seen people who have been bitten by those and bitten in the face. Oh God. Because they'll be in trees. They'll be in trees and something like that. Somebody's walking underneath and they get'em that way. But man, you can swell up massively from those.
Jeff:Yeah. And I saw a, uh, on a trail once. Um, Just walking and thankfully the, some people coming the other way, they told me there's a baby copperhead, like just off the trail. And uh, yeah. So I just stayed away from that. I mean, after I took pictures of it. Of course, of course. And then we have coral snakes. Yeah. I don't know how those made it to Texas, but we've got'em. And then water moccasins. So there's some snake. So you know a coral snake has red, black, and yellow. Mm-hmm. And there's another snake that also has that pattern, but there's this saying red. I remember hearing this when I was little red on red on black, friend of jack red on yellow. Kill a fellow. Right. Well, I don't give a shit. If I ever saw one of those in the wild, I'm going the other way. I'm not gonna bother to look. Wait, is the red touching the yellow or is it black? Yeah. Where is it?
Chris:Well, and then I also heard there's another kind where the red and black together is still
Jeff:venomous, so Oh my God. There again? No, that's no good. Just go the other way. How often do you take selfies? I'll tell you why I'm asking you this in a second. Um, just
Chris:next to
Jeff:zero. Same here. Yeah. I don't think I take selfies unless I, I mean with other people, maybe like, you know, my kids or whatever, I'll do that. But just me in the picture, no. Like I have no reason to do that. I'm not gonna post it anywhere. So the only reason I ever do it is like if I have to have some kind of profile picture for something, whatever. That's the only reason I would do it. Yep. Anyway, I was reminded of this recently. Have you heard about people? Have you heard about people dying, taking selfies? Oh,
Chris:like falling off of
Jeff:stuff. Yeah.
Chris:Yeah. I know. I've heard that around the Grand Canyon Fools. Go and stand up at, stand Up at the Ridge and that picture is the last ever seen of them.
Jeff:So thankfully Wikipedia has a page on this from 2008 and I don't think selfies were really a thing bef long before that. So 2008. 2021, July, 2021. It's estimated that there were 379 people who died in self, uh, in selfie related accidents. 133 of these people were Indian, so it happened in India. I don't know what's going on there, but holy shit. And, but you can guess which other country is highly represented on this list. Oh, yeah. I'm surprised we're not number one. I know, but I'm gonna read you some of these because, well, if you can get past the, the fact that people lost their lives here. It's funny. Okay,
Chris:I'll get past it.
Jeff:Okay. Now these are just the, some ones in the United States. 20 11, 3 teenagers were killed by a Union Pacific train while posing for a selfie that was found on their phone near Salt Lake City. Shortly before they posted the message quote, standing right by a train. Ha, ha ha. This is awesome.
Chris:Well, they posted for a minute. Yeah, right. So, you know, when a train comes by, it's got suction. It's the, the speed of it can suck stuff
Jeff:underneath it. Yeah. So if there
Chris:were, there were too close, they could
Jeff:have just gotten sucked in possibly. Um, okay. Well, we talked about a guy flying with a cobra earlier. 2014. A 29 year old amateur pilot allegedly took selfies using a GoPro camera before his plane crashed at a plane grassy field in Colorado, killing himself and the passenger on board. Wow. What an idiot. Yep. Uh, 2015, a man in Kama Washington stepped onto a railroad track to take a selfie with himself and a woman with a passing Amtrak train in the background. The man misjudged, which track
Chris:the man misjudged,
Jeff:which track the oncoming train was on, and he was struck and killed at the scene.
Chris:Wow. Did she make it?
Jeff:I don't know. Uh, yeah, according to this, I don't know if she was hurt, but she didn't die. Wow. God, that is rough. Oh, speaking of snakes, Here's another one. So this guy didn't die, but this is hilarious. A man from San Diego was hospitalized for five days following an attempt to take a selfie with a rattlesnake, which then bit
Chris:him.
Jeff:That's awesome. What a dumb ass. Oh man. Uh, a woman in Yellowstone was gored by an American bison while taking a selfie. She was treated for injuries so she didn't die. That
kind
Chris:of stuff happens all the time in Yellowstone. Yeah. People get too close to bison, moose, things like that.
Jeff:Ridiculous. Oh my God. A 19 year old from Houston died after trying to take an Instagram selfie while holding a loaded gun to his head. He accidentally fired the gun and shot himself in the throat
Chris:probably. Probably when he was going to take the picture, he pulled the wrong thing. That has to be
Jeff:what happened, but he was aiming at his head and he hit
Chris:himself in the throat. How can you miss? I don't know. Oh my god. That's amazing. Okay. That I was thinking all along the train one about top them all. That one may have topped the train one.
Jeff:Yeah, I think so. Here's another one. A 43 year old man, 43 year old man in concrete Washington. What a name for a town accidentally shot himself in the face with a gun and died while taking a selfie. He was unaware that the gun was loaded. What the fuck are people doing?
Chris:No idea. My look at me. Isn't this cool?
Jeff:Yeah, yeah. So it's not just people falling, it's people doing stupid shit like this. Wow.
Chris:I've not ever heard of that. I don't guess, but maybe it shouldn't be too surprising.
Jeff:There was a piece in, uh, I think it's just called the conversation.com, and they said that India and Russia had created no selfie zones. So all around the country they have signs up where it's illegal to, to go there and take a selfie. Really just to prevent people from falling. So yeah. The point of this whole article was should we treat selfies and people doing dangerous stuff like this? Should we treat it as a public health issue? And they compared it to wearing seat belts, bicycle helmets, or should we just. Let the morons weed themselves out and I'm conflicted on it.
Chris:Well, it's kinda like putting warnings on, on bottles of stuff, you know? Do you have to tell people not to eat Tide pods? Don't drink bleach, stuff like that. Yeah. But I feel like, okay. Uh, just personally, I wear my seatbelt. All right. A motorcycle. I wear a helmet. Mm-hmm. I do things that are in my best interest to protect myself. On the other hand, I could probably argue against whether or not those need to be laws as in, you know, Jerry Seinfeld did, did this bit one time talking about people wearing, you know, people wearing helmets. And it's like we're doing all these activities that are endangering. Ourselves. And so we have to wear a helmet to protect the very brain that's inventing those things to do. Mm-hmm.
Jeff:So it's like, what, at what point
Chris:do you just say, Hey, you know, if you're willing to take the chance, then do it. Yeah. You protect yourself if you wanna protect yourself. I don't know. I, I get, you know, there's arguments on both sides and I can argue for both sides. Yeah, but it's,
Jeff:it's crazy. Yeah, it is. Yeah. I'm like that. On the one hand, like people make choices. They have the freedom to make choices, and those choices are gonna be stupid from time to time. And when as a society should we step in and try to prevent them from those stupid inclinations. On the other hand, one of government's main jobs is to protect people. And so there are reasons. We have laws that protect people when they get in cars, seatbelt laws, whatever it might be. I don't know. Uh, with this stuff, it reminds me of the Golden Gate Bridge, so that's a notorious suicide spot. Mm-hmm. People just climb up to the top and then do a nose dive off, and the vast majority of people don't survive. But now, for the past, I don't know, 10 or 15 years, They've had nets up, so Oh yeah. It just, yeah, like nip that in the bud like so people aren't doing it anymore, so I don't know.
Chris:Well, and so I totally get, I. Having laws to protect society. Society as a whole. And you could argue then speed limits serve that purpose. Not only does, does driving within the speed limit help protect the driver, but obviously you're protecting everyone else on the road at the same time. Right? But do does the government have the same obligation to protect individuals as it does to protect society? Because
Jeff:when? When what they're protecting against is not going to affect anybody else. Right. Or anybody else's safety. Yeah.
Chris:Right. If I don't wear my seatbelt, I am only endangering myself. I'm not endangering someone in another car. Mm-hmm. Theoretically. Mm-hmm. Assuming I don't get jettison from my car into theirs. Now if you're talking about kids or something like that, It's kinda like, um, car seats, you know? Yeah. Kids are required to ride in car seats up to a certain age. Well, the kids can't make that decision for themselves. They can't protect themselves. Of course, we should have laws like that because now you're talking about protecting other people.
Jeff:That's just absolutely crazy though. Really is dying while taking a selfie. So today's public service announcement, stop doing stupid shit like that. Please. My God. I mean, how many likes? That's cuz that's what they're doing. They're trying to get a bunch of likes on Instagram or whatever, like mm-hmm. It's not worth dying over.
Chris:So I was in Ireland a few years ago and went to, there was an excursion thing where he went to the Cliffs of Moyer. Mm-hmm. Which in, and I haven't seen all of this movie, I've been reprimanded for it multiple times. Is. Shit. What is it? Um, princess Bride. Oh. So I have not seen all of the Princess Bride, but it is the, the place in the princess bride that is the cliffs of insanity.
Jeff:Yes. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So
Chris:you can, you can walk up onto the cliffs and, and there's a, there's a whole walkway where you can be, where you are away from the edge. Over and over. They're telling you before you go up there, do not get off the walkway, do not cross over the barricade, et cetera, et cetera. And there were two reasons for that. One is they said there are very strong gusts of wind. Come up over there and you, yeah, it can happen without warning and you don't know, gust of wind could come blow you over and that's it. And then they said the closer you are to the edge, the more unstable the ground is, that it's just soft, it's soft ground. And over and over, while I was up there, people were crossing over the barricade, getting right up to the edge and taking selfies. It is. I'm like, man, what am I about to see here? What am I about to see? Yeah, somebody, the ground's gonna collapse under'em. They're gonna get blown over, and obviously fortunately that didn't happen, but it does. That's why they were
Jeff:telling people that maybe that's where they got the name in the movie. Close of insanity. Yeah. All the idiots.
Chris:That would be
Jeff:about right. Yeah, well, it is kind of comforting that it's not just Americans that are idiots. I mean, it's kind of a worldwide thing, I guess. Well, those may
Chris:have been Americans at the close. I dunno. True.
Jeff:Were you spanked as a kid? I was.
Chris:I wouldn't say it was a, I was an amazingly good kid. No. I wouldn't say it was a frequent thing, but it was, um, it happened, you know, it, it was not, uh, not rare, but not frequent. I don't know what you'd say to that.
Jeff:Okay. And generally speaking, how do you feel about spanking now? Cuz you've got two kids, but even if you spanked them when they were young, they're beyond that age now, where that would happen. Right.
Chris:So we didn't spank our kids a lot. They were spanked, but the first one, probably more than the second, but even that wasn't very much. Yeah. And okay. And it was absolutely less than me, and I'm not really sure where that came from. It was just a, a change, I guess, in. Is that, is that what you want to do? And I, yeah, I was always, I was always raised. Not literally like this. Like I, I didn't have this quoted to me, you know, spare the ro, spare the rod, spoil the child. Mm-hmm. But I think that mentality was there is that hey, spanking is an effective and needed form of discipline. Yeah. And that without that, and, and there is some argument here, you know, kids only have a certain ability literally. Psychological intellectually only have a certain ability to reason. So at what point can you just talk to the kids and teach them versus, oh, here's a negative
Jeff:consequence. Yeah, yeah.
Chris:Negative physical consequence.
Jeff:Yeah. The reason I'm asking is the other day in class, uh, I was talking about. Something and, and we got on this subject and it was this, it's what I call a very simplistic mindset that, and I had some students saying this, and I do have somebody of a boomer age in my class right now in one of my classes. And they were of the mindset that the reason people grow up and become criminals is because they're not punished harsh enough when they're kids. And so this discussion evolved or devolved as might be the case into we need to spank kids more. But I had this one student say, oh yeah, my dad hit me so hard one time. I couldn't sit down at school the next day. Wow. And I said, and you don't think that's child abuse? And he said, no, that's not abuse.
Chris:And this is a younger person or
Jeff:the boomer? Yeah, he's uh, uh, like maybe 20 early twenties. Okay. Yeah. So I started thinking about that and, and then, then the boomer, she said, Well, things got so bad and we took God outta schools and then the whole conversation just took a left turn. But I started wondering like, what is people's general attitude or, or general attitudes, I guess, on, on spanking, and is it more common or less common now than it used to be? And my inclination is to say yes, that it is. But I was, I don't know that horrified is the right word, but I couldn't believe some of the stuff that I was hearing. From ki from the students about how their parents spanked them. And my wife is a, she's a therapist, so she, you know, knows all about this stuff and she started explaining the signs behind it and all that. But anyway, I decided to look up some numbers here. Mm-hmm. And some of the stuff crosses with politics, which I found fascinating. And I'd like to get your. Thoughts on it? All right, let's go. Yeah, so first of all, there was a study done by, oh, actually this article, brookings.edu. It cite several studies. Children spanked frequently and or severely are at a higher risk for mental health problems ranging from anxiety and depression to alcohol and drug abuse
Chris:children. Well, there it is for me.
Jeff:Children whose parents hit them regularly may also develop more distant parent-child relationships later on. There is also robust evidence of an increased incidence of aggression among children who are regularly spanked. In a 2002 meta analysis of 27 studies across time periods, countries, and ages found a persistent association. Children who are spanked regularly are more likely to be aggressive, both as a child and as an adult. Many parents spank their children to put an immediate stop to bad behavior being on the receiving end. Children may learn to associate violence with power or getting one's way. Indeed, much of the aggressive behavior attributed to children who were spanked differential. Trends to correspond to interactions where violence is used to exert power over another person. For example, bullying, partner abuse, and so on. So I found that really interesting and that's, that's what my wife was talking about and she said, when that happens as a child, your prefrontal cortex, I don't remember the phrase that she used, but it's not, it hasn't developed like it should. Mm-hmm. And I told her, well, I knew that after their first test, like there's not much happening there and they're prefrontal cortex. But yeah, she was explaining all the signs behind it. So anyway, here's where the politics comes in, because I remember hearing about this study done in, well, the latest one that I knew of was in, uh, 2016. And oh, by the way, According to a 2017 study, 35% of parents say that they spank their kids, which is lower than I thought it would be. 35. Yeah.
Chris:Yeah. I'm sure that's considerably lower than a generation
Jeff:ago though. Yeah, I have no doubt. Um, so anyway, I found this, uh, I remember hearing about this study done in 2016, and it turns out they've been conducting these similar. Uh, questions for, or the same questions, but in similar studies for decades. Uh, I'll just read some of this. Um, did you grow up with a parent who spanked you or with one who gave you a timeout? Did you grow up with one who encouraged you to be considerate, curious, self-reliant and independent, or one who demanded that you be obedient, well behaved, well mannered and respectful toward your elders? How do you feel about kids? If your answers were in the spanking spanking slash obedience slash well-behaved column, your parent or you might have had an authoritarian worldview, at least in part according to a surprisingly reliable polling technique used since 1992. And that characteristic as measured by social scientists in the American National Election study correlates more strongly than any other variable with whether that person supports Donald Trump. Wow. That's pretty cool, right? I mean, not cool. It is, it's really interesting. It's interesting. Interesting. Yeah. It's that you're drawn to that authoritarian mindset because it's what you know, and so here you have somebody coming along who exhibits that same type of behavior and you're drawn to it. Right. It's fascinating. So that study is done. It's um, it's kind of a new field. It's political psychology. So it's a cross between just, you know, normal psychology, but it also draws in political science as well. And we're learning more now about how people are hardwired toward believing certain things, having certain views on, you know, what they think government should and should not be doing and all that stuff. And anyway, I found that really interesting.
Chris:Hardwired as in genetic,
Jeff:uh, as in genetic, yes. Or. In your upbringing like this? Like if you're raised in a certain type of environment? Experience? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Which, I mean, we already knew that with how people are socialized and we've talked about that before. But in terms of nothing that even has anything to do with politics here. Mm-hmm. Just in your general attitudes on raising kids. That can have an effect on your politics later on. That's really, really interesting. Yeah.
Chris:I love stuff like that. I love that understanding of, of whys and hows and, and where's, you know, where does stuff come from? Yeah. Well something else, you know, talking about how kids are affected by those kinds of things, is anything perceived as traumatic? To the kids can also alter their brain development. Yep. And it's the higher levels of cortisone and things like that, that are released, that kind of flight. Mm-hmm. Fight or flight. Yep. Is if they, if they, well, whichever it is, whether they feel like they are. Challenged and in a, a fighting type situation or that they're in danger and, and needing to flee that. But in any case, it's higher levels of adrenaline, cortisone and all of that, and too much of that over too long of a period of time can actually affect that development and make you a different person.
Jeff:Wow. So in this, uh, this survey that they do, this study. It says the child rearing questions are deceptively simple. Just those four pairs of words in the first paragraph of the story. Is it more important for a child to have independence or respect for elders? More important for them to have obedience or self-reliance, curiosity, or good manners being considerate or well-behaved. Hmm. So, man, I can, when they lay it out like that, I can totally see how you got a completely different worldview. Yeah. Absolutely. Yesterday I was at a stop sign about to turn right and there's a guy to my left, and so I'm waiting till he passes before I turn, and he slows down and turns on the street that I'm coming from without turning on his blinker. Hmm. And I looked at him. I just stared at him and he just stared at me back and, holy shit. I wanted to go full on Grand Theft Auto on that guy. Yeah. Chase him down and pull him out of the car because what the fuck? I don't get it. Why do you not use your turn signal? You're either I, I don't, I don't. You're incompetent or, okay. You forgot. But how? Like you see a person waiting to turn mm-hmm. And you know they're looking at you for what they're gonna do. Right. How does it not occur to you to turn on your turn signal? Yeah. So it's either that you're incompetent or you're just inconsiderate. Either one are
Chris:highly likely.
Jeff:Yeah.
Chris:Way too many incompetent people and clearly, Way too many inconsiderate. Yeah. It's, it's unbelievable to me how people drive in their own world and have absolutely no clue or care in what's going on around them or what other people around them would think, you know? Yeah. In like that, like, how am I supposed to know what you're doing when you're not signaling anything?
Jeff:I know. And then it's happened the other way where people have their blinker on but they're not turning. Yeah. And then you pull out in front of'em and whose fault is it gonna be? It's gonna be your fault. Unless you could somehow prove that they had their blinker on. Which, good luck. That's right.
Chris:When I was a, when I was a teenager, I'd probably only been driving, I'm gonna say less than a year. It was very new driver. I was waiting to turn out of a parking lot. And someone was coming up to my left with their right blinker on. Yeah, like they were gonna turn in where I was coming out and they slowed down to turn and as they slowed down to turn, I pulled out and they started to accelerate to go forward, just completely ignoring that they had their blinker on or that they were slowing down. And yeah, that would've been my fault. And I make a mistake here and there and we'll still pull out when someone is doing that. Mm-hmm. But nine times outta 10 now I will just wait on the person. Yeah. Because I have, I have no idea what they're gonna do. I've been honked by people, honked out by people behind me because I'm not going. It's like, well, you know what, I'm still in one piece.
Jeff:Exactly. Yeah. And I don't trust the people. I don't trust anybody else on the road. But no, somebody's got their blinker on. I wanna see you actually turning in before I'm gonna pull out.
Chris:Yep. I had somebody just two days ago, or I was waiting to turn. I was, it was at a four-way stop. I was waiting to turn left and they were over to my right. So we would've crossed paths no matter what. They flash their lights at me to go. So I go, I get halfway on into the intersection and there they are, nearly ran into me. It's like, you're the one that told me to go. I was sitting there waiting on them and they told me to go, so I went.
Jeff:So I wondered how big of a common problem or how big of a problem this is? How common is it? In one of the only known comprehensive studies done on turn signal usage, the Society of Automotive Engineers determined a decade ago that Americans don't U use signals when turning about 25% of the time and nearly 50% of the time when changing lanes don't 50% of the time. Yeah. When changing lanes, they don't use them. I would think it could be
Chris:higher than that in both cases.
Jeff:So then I wondered which states have the worst drivers and sure enough, there's a study that's been done. Yeah. How high is
Chris:Texas on that one? And it doesn't help now at least like the Dallas area for sure, that we've got people coming from all over the country. Yeah. So
Jeff:they all drive differently. Right. Okay. This is, um, let's see. Smart Assets 2020 Analysis evaluated three metrics to determine the states with the worst drivers. The first metric was the percentage of insured drivers within the state. The next metric was the number of D U IRS per every thousand drivers. The third metric was the number of fatalities per 100,000 miles driven based on the information smart asset found. That five out of the top 10 states with the worst drivers were located in the south. That doesn't surprise me. No. And number one probably won't surprise you at all. Number one is Mississippi. Okay? Yep. That's their third year in a row as having the worst drivers. Wow. Uh, they have the second lowest rate of insured drivers. Additionally, it has the second highest number of fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. So worst is Mississippi number two, Nevada number three, Tennessee. Florida is four. California's five, Arizona's six, South Carolina seven and oh, we're tied with South Carolina, so Texas is number seven. Seventh worst. Doesn't surprise me, does it? You?
Chris:I might be surprised that we're not higher, but no, not that we're not lower for sure.
Jeff:Right. States with the best drivers. I'll give it the top five here. Utah, Nebraska, Vermont, Maine. And New York. Hmm. New York. I'll tell you something else, and you probably know this cuz you've traveled a lot more than I have, but other parts of the country, at least now I don't know about out west. But on the East coast and I guess farther north, so mainly in the northeast, but I know the upper Midwest is like this too. Speed limits tend to be slower. Mm-hmm. So there's gotta be a correlation there because we know, I mean, you're gonna have worse accidents if you're speed limits are higher because people are gonna go at least the speed limit. Yeah, that's true. I think there's something to that. I
Chris:wonder if they are more. Obeyed as well, cuz they're sure not
Jeff:here. No. Mm-hmm. They are
Chris:speed suggestions,
Jeff:right? Recommended. Recommended speed.
Chris:It's more like a minimum speed. If you're not at least going the speed limit, then something's wrong with you. This is the way it's
Jeff:viewed. Unfortunately, we were in Oklahoma a few weeks ago. And they have speed minimums up there. Yeah. So like maximum speed 70 or 75 or whatever. And the minimum's like 45 or 50. It's like, get your ass going. Right. Don't go below this.
Chris:We used to here on some highways we did, I know Central Expressway in Dallas used to have a minimum posted. Okay. Um, but I haven't seen one of those in a long time.
Jeff:And then how are you gonna do that? Because it seems like every time now you're on that freeway, you're, you're not be able to go the speed limit cause it's just parking lot. True. All right, there you go. That is what did we start out with? The dentist I think. Uh, yeah. Talked about snakes and selfies and we covered a lot. Yeah, we did. All right. If you like that kind of stuff, this is your kind of podcast. You are our kind of people and you should follow us. Subscribe on whatever platform you listen to podcasts on. That way you will get new episodes delivered every single week on Tuesday when they drop. And while you are there, go ahead and rate us. We would be ever so grateful if you'd give us five stars. And while you're there, go ahead and write something because the way these apps work, if you write something, it makes it easier for people to discover the show. Uh, so please go ahead and do that. We have a website that is Subpar Talks dot com. There you can find out more about me, Chris stuff about the show. You can email us, you can leave us a voicemail. If you wanna make suggestions for topics we should cover in future episodes, you can go ahead and do that as well. We are on social media. If you wanna follow us on Twitter on there, we are at subpartalks.com on Facebook. We are@subpartalks. You can follow our personal Twitter accounts on there. I am at@independentjeff and
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