Ep 36: "Appetite For Destruction"

In this episode we examine how excess and consumerism have fueled a culture of waste. We break down the environmental toll of convenience, fast consumption, and throwaway habits, and challenging listeners to rethink what we truly need before it costs us everything. Have you ever found yourself making an impulsive purchase that you later regretted? Have you ever discussed making a purchase and then started getting ads on your phone about the product you discussed?  Have you thought about what it really means to throw something "away"?  Where is "away"?  We're discussing that and more. 

Intro and Outro music by Erin Garris and Khari Garris

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:14

Yo, yo, yo, what it is, what it was, what's it gonna be? Welcome. Welcome to the latest episode of the Gen Expertise Podcast, episode thirty-six entitled Appetite for Destruction. We are your hosts, Main and Rance, aka Podcasters Against the Machine.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Okay, I'll take that.

SPEAKER_04 0:42

What's up, my brand? What's up? What's up?

SPEAKER_00 0:44

I'm good, man. What's up?

SPEAKER_04 0:47

I'm good, man. You know, I'm I'm feeling good, but after this episode, I don't know, man, because we So recently, um, I was donating some clothes. We've been donating some clothes, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

Coincidentally, so have we. We there's a goodwill not too far from us.

SPEAKER_04 1:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:11

Um, not to cut you, but yeah, like that's a coincidence because we just recently, I mean, we we do it all the time, but just recently we we've been dropping off like a lot of bags because we've been cleaning up and getting rid of stuff that we just, you know, this clothes that we're never gonna wear, like no matter what we say. So we just started getting rid of stuff. So we've been donating clothes like crazy in the past few weeks.

SPEAKER_04 1:32

Yeah. But side note though, speaking of clothes, that's a dope little sweat, little t-shirt, sweatshirt you got there, brother.

SPEAKER_02 1:37

Why this old thing?

SPEAKER_04 1:39

That old thing. Old New Yorker.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Yeah, this is an old New Yorker, long sleeve tee by our good friends at Grown Fresh NYC. Yes, so go check them out. Um, they're also on Instagram at Grown Fresh NYC is their tag on on um on Instagram. So make a lot of a lot of cool garments, and this is one that I picked up from them. So shout out to the Grown Fresh NYC.

SPEAKER_04 2:06

Shout out to Grown Fresh. Our people's over there at Grown Fresh. There's your commercial.

SPEAKER_02 2:14

It's funny because that that goes with it's so it's so in line with the topic for today. It is bad. It's like it's like, you know, kids.

SPEAKER_04 2:23

Yeah. So we as we were told, we'll get back right back into it. True. I was donating clothes. We donate to a place called St. Mary's. Stuff that we don't wear anymore, stuff that we we just really don't need. Yeah. And um while I'm while we're bagging the stuff up, I'm looking on my sneaker rack. And I'm not a collector like Maine anymore. I don't have the the sneaker collection that some people I know have. But I I was looking and I was saying to myself, I have all these sneakers and shoes on this rack here, and I only wear about the same four to five pair of sneakers every week. You know, I have a pair of sneakers for tennis, which I usually wear until my feet pop out of the top of the toe, and there's no grip. I have my work sneakers and my gym sneakers. Some of a couple of them are the same, so it's about three pairs of those. Um and then I'll have like my my universal, I'm going out sneakers, my casual, my casual denim sneakers that I wear when I'm going out to a casual dinner or just going out to hang with friends or something. I call them my tuxedo sneakers. Do you know what I mean? What I want because trainers don't have a lot of dress clothes. Right. I'm basically in a hoodie and sweats every day, man. You know, so and then and then I came across this um this documentary on Netflix that I told me that yo, this is we we gotta talk about this. And it's called Sell More. It's a documentary on Netflix about basically about it's about consumption.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

Actually, it's called Buy Now.

SPEAKER_04 4:02

Buy Now, yes. There you go. It's called Buy Now. Thank you. And my My Brother's Keeper.

SPEAKER_02 4:08

Yeah, I got you. I got you, man. It's funny because you're the one that told me about this, but okay. But yeah, buy buy now.

SPEAKER_04 4:17

Yes, buy now or Netflix.

SPEAKER_02 4:19

Yeah. But sell more, like the reason I think the reason you said sell more, not to cut you, but I think throughout the documentary, if if you guys watch this, and we highly recommend you do. But through this documentary in Buy Now, there's certain um instructions that they give, and sell more is actually one of the one of the um the key instructions that they give for if you want to be successful in in um in business.

SPEAKER_04 4:41

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, it got it got it got the wheels got got the turning. And of course, when the wheels start the turning, episodes start churning out.

SPEAKER_02 4:54

Right. Turning and churning.

SPEAKER_04 4:56

Turning and churning, bro. Um and it and then when you think, and what I'm trying to think is if if I have this much, that means probably pretty much I consider myself having a not a lot of things, but it's still too much because I barely wear any of the things I have. I have drawers full of um graphic tees and extra jeans and things that I don't I don't even really wear. Like I said, shoes I don't wear. I haven't put my feet in them in years. So imagine how like just me, one person having this much, and I'm in a house, a family of five, and you're in a family of four, and our friends are in families of four and five. Right. How much are we are we consuming? And which is which is starting to be um it's starting to be consistent in a lot of our episodes, how we're slowly becoming the lab rats. Because we've talked about um the Universal 25, the rat universe that we talked about that. We talk about consuming and being users for the internet and social media. Um we're talking about all of these things that are happening in the world. And then some now I really sat back and I was like, yeah, we're talking about this stuff, but we're pretty much like always the beta testers for everything. That's true. That's true. You know, you know, everything gets rolled out on the people.

SPEAKER_02 6:19

Right. Yeah, and we none of us are immune to it. So that's it. And I think that's what that's what qualifies us to talk about this, right? Like we talk about things like from our perspective, and a lot of times it's because we're kind of knee deep into it, right? Like, so as far as like being marketed to and being kind of um the a customer and a consumer and and a user, we we're all dealing with that, right? Like, so that's what I think that's what makes this resonate, what makes it relatable is that you know, each topic we touch on, at least lately, um we're you know, like what what was that old that um hair club for men commercial where the guy used to be like, I'm I'm not only I'm no longer the president, but I'm a client.

SPEAKER_04 7:02

I'm also a client.

SPEAKER_02 7:04

Yeah. It's like you know, we're not only the the podcast hosts that are talking about these things, but we tend to be we're just like everybody else, we're we're we're trying to combat some of these things too, right? Like the consumerism and and the fact that things are being marketed to us on a regular basis. Yeah. Um, you know, the addiction. The addiction, the usage of the internet on social media, the issues that it might pose, not only for us, but for our families, for our children. So like I said, yeah, exactly. Like uh, you know, we're not only the podcasters, but we're we're also the victims. We're also the victims.

SPEAKER_04 7:41

And also the craziest thing is that, you know, some of the biggest the biggest abuses come from technology, which is technically your your area of expertise. And also everyone knows that I'm a fit, I'm in the fitness world, but my background before fitness was retail. So we pretty much have both bases covered on this one. You know? So um what we're gonna do today, we're gonna discuss the documentary. Uh buy more.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

Buy more. There you go. Buy now, actually.

SPEAKER_04 8:20

By now. There you go. There you go. And my whole brothers keep it. Go back and watch it again after this episode.

SPEAKER_02 8:26

You'll you'll get it. Buy now is the episode.

SPEAKER_04 8:30

But I mean, so basically it was just about what we buy and how it ends up and how they attract it, how they uh market it to us. Um, and as Maine says, they break it down. So they break it down into five parts. It's like five parts broken down into this one documentary. And the five parts, which we'll talk about and we'll discuss um section by section, is sell more, waste more, lie more, hide more, and then control more. So that's how they broke it down. You know what? I'm not gonna lie, Netflix is is starting to do pretty well with these documentaries, the way they're like breaking it down and they're having these little segues and stuff. I'm just I'm I'm rather enjoying them.

SPEAKER_02 9:16

I honestly think that that though that's been a hidden gem of Netflix, by the way. Like not that this is a commercial for Netflix, but yeah, um I think that's a hidden gem of theirs for l for some time now. Because there's been times where people recommended um documentaries to me that I I didn't know were there, because I guess when they when you when you turn on your Netflix, I don't know if it's if it's an algorithm that's really like seeking you out depending on what you have a history of watching. I'm sure that's part of it. But I think the other part of it is that they're promoting to you things that are popular as well. Like so if something's on like the top 10 list of of you know movies or TV shows that are being watched, that's what you're gonna get um kind of beamed to you um when you turn on Netflix, right? Not necessarily the documentaries or the things that are gonna um teach you something, right? So I think that Netflix has always had those those hidden gems. That's why I call them hidden gems, because they're there, it's just that you have to kind of search for them, right? You have to be intentional.

SPEAKER_04 10:16

Yeah, and this documentary, I think it's two years old now. I just happened to stumble across it. So, like we said, they have five parts, and the first part is sell more. And they talked to the brand president of Adidas. He was one of the people they spoke to, and he was talking about how how do they create objects of desire. As uh someone with a retail background, I've been out of the field for about probably sixteen, seventeen years now in total. But what what many people may not realize is that or they may wonder is why do you see summer clothes on the shelves of the winter and winter clothes on the shelves in the summer? When you do it when you go into some stores, how it's not even it's not even winter's not over, and they're already selling like bikinis and and and hats and things of that nature, shorts. So so I know back in my day every new line was bought six months in advance. So yeah, so what you have is on the shelves and you have to pretty much move through it through the season because the next batch and the new items are already planned to come on a certain day. So that's why you start having sales and you start having to get these 50 and 60 and 70 and 80% off sales, because usually retailers are desperate to move through the stuff before they have to count it. And that's what inventory is. When they you have to literally lock yourself in the store and hand count each unit. So they're trying to get these units out of there as fast as humanly possible before we have to we have to count it all up. So now what they're saying is now what happened was you started to introduce the fast fashion into the into the the retail world, so to speak, which are like Sheen. And I think you can even put what's the other Timu can probably be considered fash fashion, so to speak, even though they still have to think do they still sell Fashion Over?

SPEAKER_02 12:17

Like I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_04 12:18

I'm not sure if they still felt sell fashion over.

SPEAKER_02 12:20

Yeah, I haven't seen it. It feels like Sheen took took that that spot um that Fashion Over used to have, at least kind of in the internet world, you know. It feels like I see more Sheen than um than Fashion Over. Sheen is like it's like how long has that been around? Because it feels like these things pop up and then next thing you know, it's a sensation. And I and I'm they come out of nowhere. Yeah, if if I feel out of the loop sometimes because I'm like, wow, how did this become this popular where everybody is wearing this and I just have no idea. I don't know where how to find it or or why why it's so popular or you know Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:02

But it you know what that with social media now really helps because something only has to go viral once, as they say. You know? And then if you get the right influencer, um, the right influencer, the right celebrity, the right person to wear something or market it, it's just gonna explode. I I didn't know what Sheen was until like my my oldest. She's she loves like the stuff from Sheen, some of the stuff as I was noticing Sheen bags all over the house. You know, so that's like really within the past maybe two years, two, maybe three years, when all of a sudden they just popped on the scene. You know, in order to keep up now the gaps and the HMs and the Zahra's, they're starting to increase production too. And one of the one of the some of the numbers that I have here that I wrote down was that and these are new items produced per year. The gap 12,000 new units per year produced. H and 25,000 new units produced per year. Zara, six 36,000 new units per year, and guess how much sheen, bro?

SPEAKER_02 14:13

Um I'm sure it's in the hundreds of thousands, if not the millions.

SPEAKER_04 14:17

1.3 million new items produced per year. That's insane. It's nuts, right? So this fast fashion has taken over, and and in order to compete, these other I guess you would call blue blood brands are forced to also start making more. I also saw I think it's 2.3 million shoes produced per hour, uh, 68,000 phones produced an hour, 190,000 garments produced per um, I want to say per minute on that, which then Intel produces all of this 12 tons of of plastic produced per second, which also is what we'll get to the plastics a little later down the line.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Right.

SPEAKER_04 15:05

But there's only so many people in the world.

SPEAKER_00 15:10

Right.

SPEAKER_04 15:11

You know, so there's a there's an there's an excess that's that seems to be insurmountable. And they constantly want to have you, especially with the dawn of social media and attraction marketing. When I was in college, I actually studied marketing and that's where I learned about attraction marketing. Um and basically they have us like a moth to the blue flame with all of these, with this fashion, that you have to have the newest this, you have to have the newest that. And they found a way to make objects desirable to us.

SPEAKER_02 15:44

Right.

SPEAKER_04 15:44

And that's crazy, and that's enabling them to sell more, sell more, sell more.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

Yeah, I mean, it it and and the thing is, I I feel like it's been going on for a long time, and and now it just kind of accelerated, like you said, because of um the advent of certain technologies, right? Like when you mix technology and then human psychology, you get kind of a uh the ability for corporations to kind of weaponize that against people in a way that it's hard to fight, right? Like if if you have the technology, on one hand, these algorithms know before we do what pretty much what we're gonna click on and what we're interested in. It knows how long that we looked at something, or if you know, on Amazon, just to use that Amazon for an example, like they know if you put something in your cart but you didn't buy it, or if you looked at something, you clicked on something, but you didn't buy it, then you're gonna start to get notifications and emails, and they're gonna keep bombarding you and keep trying to figure out what's the best way to get you to buy something, right? Um, so it it's it's not, I mean, it's it's it's the more I learn about it, the more kind of kind of uh kind of scary it is in a sense. Yeah. Um that that they're bombarding you uh using this, using these methods. But the more I think about it, I feel like this has been going on since there's been the ability to market to people, since there's been the be the ability to to um to have ads. There's been someone trying to figure out the best way to get you to stick to them, to keep watching whatever it is you're watching, um, and to sell to you, right? It seems to be the purpose of any media is literally to sell you a product, right? Even in maybe like the 40s and 50s, um, you know, they're trying to get you to watch a TV show just so they can sell ad space and they could sell you a product, right? So yeah, it's um it's it's a little scary. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:38

And we talked about it in early, early one of our early like reminisce episodes about how um the toy companies were making cartoons to sell toys.

SPEAKER_02 17:48

Yeah, we talked about that. How Ronald Reagan actually, he was the one that kind of cleared the way for them to use direct marketing strategy of using the cartoons and and um long-form commercials to sell toys, where there was kind of a limit on the amount of advertising you could do if you knew that kids were gonna be watching. And and I think um Ronald Reagan was the one that that actually got rid of the regulation for that. So that's when you really saw um, particularly in the 80s, you started s to see like this this um this real kind of full court press on cartoons that were just meant to advertise toys, and then really long form commercials that were meant to to market directly to children. So, you know, those children would then subsequently run to their parents and ask for these these. So yeah, it's crazy. But like I said, it's it's almost it's almost something you you you you can't fight against it. Yes because of the or it's very difficult to fight against it. Like you'd have to really be aware of this and be super intentional about not buying things. Like you'd almost have to put it uh into your your mind like you you and and have like a a a goal of not buying the buying these things.

unknown 19:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:02

Yeah. You need a you need some type of willpower. And then if you did, they also showed in this documentary how they divert your attention by they'll like do, I guess you can call it, um, guerrilla marketing, so to speak, where they'll have an item with like type of cute animal or baby or something, and you're you're looking at it, you're looking at it like, oh, this is cool, but it's like lying on a phone or lying across a pair of sneakers or something. So they're pulling out all the stops. Like, it's not for those of you, like we talked about addiction too in the past. We just talked about addiction, as a matter of fact, in our prior episode, but it gets to a point where these companies need to start taking responsibilities for the way that they're trying to market and sell something. I can compare it to the gambling thing now. Like, everywhere you go, you see all this gambling, these gambling ads, gambling ads, gambling apps. And then they tell you a little disclaimer, like, if you have a problem with gambling, go please seek help, and they provide you with a phone number. Yeah, meanwhile, they're bombarding you with gambling.

SPEAKER_02 20:04

Yeah, to me, it's it's it's the same as like the cigarette ads or or the ads for, you know, back in the days, remember there used to be big billboards up in our neighborhoods, like for for malt liquor. Yes. Um, and there will be ads all over the place for cigarettes. But then in the fine print, it'll be like, you know, the Surgeon General recommends not smoking or or or warns that smoking can cause XYZ disease and all of these side effects, right? Like these problems if you smoke. But at the same time, the ad is the size of, like I said, this it's the size of a billboard, and it's showing how how sexy you are when you got the cigarette, right? Yeah, it's showing you know, they show Billy D. Williams. Billy D. Williams with that call 45, and and and yeah, he's getting the party started, right? You got the beautiful ladies around him, and he's smooth as could be. But what what puts it over the top is that he he has that cult 45 ready.

SPEAKER_04 21:01

And it works for Vitana.

SPEAKER_02 21:05

Yeah, so so that's what I mean. Like, that's what I mean by like I it feels like this has always been the case. It's just that um technology has allowed it to be put on on kind of steroids, right? Like it's been just accelerated by by the technology we have, right? By the fact that they know that people are really drawn to looking at their screens. People need that dopamine hit. So while you have them there looking at their screens, staring and scrolling, it's the perfect kind of mechanism to feed them advertising, right? Yeah. Um so yeah, it makes it even harder to kind of fight against it if we're always looking at these screens for some other reason. And you have us as kind of almost a captive audience at this point, right? Because everybody's kind of addicted to their phones at this point.

SPEAKER_04 21:50

Yeah. So that's how they get you to buy more. Basically.

SPEAKER_02 21:56

Yeah, it talks about like in the in the documentary, it actually talks about some sort. Specifics about um Amazon, right? And yeah, there's a there's a former executive from Amazon. Um she was in charge of the user design for the um for the website. So in working on that, she's saying that every aspect of the Amazon website is meant to draw your eye, it's meant to keep you on the site, it's meant to to kind of predict your behavior, it's meant to make you buy stuff. She actually said that um that Amazon kind of coined the phrase and and I think patented or copyrote uh copyright righted. Is that how do you say that? Copyrighted.

SPEAKER_04 22:34

Copy copyright.

SPEAKER_02 22:35

Because it's not really copyright. Yeah, we'll figure that out. Facts over funny. We'll get back to that.

SPEAKER_04 22:44

Facts over funny cover next week.

SPEAKER_02 22:45

Whatever they they either patented, copy copyrighted, or copy wrote. Bottom line, like they kind of coined the phrase um one-click purchase or one-click buy because they wanted it, they wanted to make it easy as possible for you to buy something from their website, right? And when you think about it, Amazon when Amazon came around, um, it was at a time where people were buying books from Amazon, right? Like that's kind of kind of how they started with Jeff Bezos. He wanted to sell books online, but then he figured out where the real money was if he could sell everything online, right? Yeah. And subsequently, here we are, right? Like we're like Amazon has become so much a part of my life that I don't know how I would buy stuff otherwise. Like, like I'm like, there's no it's it's almost like it's almost magic. And I think it's on purpose because the the executive one on the documentary, she's saying that she wanted they wanted to know what it would be like if this were magic. Right? Like they said, what what would we expect if this was magic? And and they they describe like a like a global conveyor belt that just travels from from the source of whatever product to your home. And that's they've gotten very close to pretty much that. Like where you can get you could just one-click a purchase. I can get items I want the same day now. Not even, it doesn't even take overnight anymore. Some stuff I can get that same day if I if I if I um order it early enough. But she said that the whole point is that if they want to make the the experience as frictionless as possible and get people coming back and get people to keep purchasing from them and become the one-stop shop for everything, literally. Um So that's another thing that's kind of hard to fight, right? When you make it so convenient and easy, you get a lot of um impulse purchases. And that leads to what I think you're describing um in the beginning of the conversation, we're talking about the waste and the amount of stuff that we wind up giving away to goodwill. Um, I think the impulse purchases lead us to having a room full of stuff full of stuff that we that we don't need. I know for me, like for me personally, I've made a lot of impulse purchases just because I saw something that looked pretty cool. And and it's not even that um I have the money or I can afford it. It's just that it's it's so easy to just click on it and have it come right away. And that's it to me, it's it's it's dangerous. The more I think about it, it becomes almost a danger because now you're just clicking on stuff and you're not really thinking about whether or not one, you need it, two, if you can afford it. And three, like what are you gonna do with it when it when it gets to you?

SPEAKER_04 25:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:32

Like, like what's the like we don't we don't have like end-of-life conversations for the products that we're buying, right? Like in in corporate, you have a life cycle for things, right? Like you have life cycles for software, you have life life cycles for hardware purchases, but I don't think people think enough about the life cycle of all the things that they're buying. Like, what am I gonna do with this when I when I get it here?

SPEAKER_04 25:52

What are you gonna do with seven fruit, fruit and vegetable choppers? Right, right. And you know what else is crazy? They could they suck you back in through convenience too. I cut off my Amazon account because I realized why does every single person in my household need an Amazon account? Right? So we basically use my wife's Amazon account. We use her prime account. But every time I go and I look on something and I'll say, Hey, can you get this for me? Get this for me. Do your prime. And it can be delivered today if you have your prime membership, or it could be delivered two weeks from now if you if you don't. And even if it's like three to four days, or five days, or eight days, or it's it takes a week, that's really not a long time, but it is when you know you can get it within two hours, you know, and then they kind of reveal it. But that's part of the addiction.

SPEAKER_02 26:49

I struggle with like up. Yeah, that's definitely part of the addiction, right? Like it's not only the product, it's the convenience, like you said, it's the convenience of being able to get that thing as soon as you think about it almost.

SPEAKER_04 27:01

Like I want my socks tomorrow.

SPEAKER_02 27:03

Yeah, I think about it.

SPEAKER_04 27:04

If you order it at 11:59 p.m., I want them by like on my doorstep when I wake up at 4 or 5 a.m., son.

SPEAKER_02 27:12

And some things you could get that way, and it'd be that becomes addictive too. The convenience becomes part of the addiction. Like where I can, whatever I think of, Amazon has it for me ready, and they can get it to me soon almost as soon as I can blink. Yes. You know, as soon as I go to sleep, it's like Christmas every day. Like I wake up and I got a gift out there, you know, it's waiting, right? So, but but but but that's the thing. Like, I mean, we're joking about it, but but it's important to kind of put these things in in a in a broader context as something that is is a problem, right? Um if you're not careful about this, you are contributing to a large amount of like wasteful, not only just wasteful spending, right? Like, because it we I can't really tell people what to do with their money. And for me, like if if I want something and I'm, you know, I feel like I work and I should be able to buy the things that I want, that's that's kind of a philosophical debate, whether or not you should or not, right? And I and I'm not really wanting to get into that too much, but really like just the wastefulness of it all, like where you're buying this thing, and what are you really gonna do with it half the time? Does it just become garbage? Does it go into a landfill somewhere? Do we give it away? Do you give it to the goodwill? Then there's controversy about what these, you know, some of these charities actually do with some of the stuff that that you give them. Are they actually able to use half of it? Or are they getting rid of it some other way? Are they tossing in the garbage after a while? Um, so I think the point is that the amount of things that we're consuming is really, really outpacing what we have use for, if that makes sense, right? Like it's just it's just not possible that that we can use everything that we consume, right?

SPEAKER_04 28:52

Yeah. And that leads, that's right, that's a smooth transition into our next segue. Well, I wasn't even trying. I wasn't even that's because we podcasted now.

SPEAKER_02 29:02

It's like a within the flow. Because I yeah, that was that was just the flow.

SPEAKER_04 29:09

There's a there's a couple of places where I saw where they they they like found kind of traced the origins to, and one of them was January 15th, 1925. And that was the light bulb manufacturers banded together to find a way to cut the light bulb lifespan from 2,500 to 1,000. Right?

SPEAKER_02 29:35

So 2500 and 2500 um hours, right? Hours.

SPEAKER_04 29:40

I'm sorry, hours, yes, 2500 hours to 1,000 hours. Right. They and they I think they showed like some of the light bulbs on Broadway that have been burning for like a hundred years or something that they said in the in the video.

SPEAKER_02 29:52

So not to cut you, but like like you you reminded me of this thing, right? Like there's a um a centennial light bulb, right? So the centennial light bulb is a light bulb that's been burning since 1901, right? And it it actually is still burning to the to this day. I shouldn't say burning, but the light bulb is still still on. Still works, still works to this day. And it it's been working since 1901 continuously. And the light bulb is in um Livermore Pleasanton Fire Department in California. Um, it was manufactured by the Shelby Electric Company. Um, it's a four-watt hand-blown carbon filament bulb. Um, and it survived for, like I said, like 120 plus years now, about 121 years. Um so no, 1901, like it's 125 years, excuse me.

SPEAKER_03 30:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:43

So um it survived multiple moves, it's it survived power failures, um, and it's largely due to its low power operation, right? Like, so one of the reasons why this thing has lasted so long is because of minimal power surges, because it's been because it's been on continuously, it's not um, it's not going on and off. And part of what kind of wears out your light bulb nowadays is the the idea of turning it on and off. Those surges actually wear out, you know, they cause they shorten the life of the ball, right? Um, the carbon filament that that's in it is one of the other reasons, and then the low voltage, because it's a um only a four-watt bulb.

SPEAKER_04 31:22

But the reason for coils, right?

SPEAKER_02 31:24

You said I think it's I don't know if it's four coils, but it's um it's a carbon filament inside. Yeah. But I don't know, I don't know how many coils it that consists of. But yeah, but when you mention that, it leads me to another conversation that we can have in in a minute, but um about the planned obsolescence, right? Because when we talk about these light bulbs, that's a perfect example of something that could be made to last, that winds up becoming part of our kind of cycle of of creating more waste. You could make this thing to last, like you said, like they they've made a conscious decision to make a light bulb that would that could possibly last for 25 2500 hours and cut it down to a thousand-hour life life cycle, right? So, and and I'm led to believe by by this centennial light bulb that they could do even better than that, right? We're talking about a like one light bulb that's been burning since since 1901, right? That kind of gives you an idea of what is actually possible. If a light bulb that was created in 1901 could last this long, that means that with the current technology and the current knowledge, they could certainly make a light bulb that could last a hundred years if they wanted to, right? So, but we we you know we we could get into that, but but the the but keep that in mind. Like this idea of planned obsolescence is um is another big problem in terms of like our wasting things and the idea that the corporation just wants to keep us buying things over and over and over.

SPEAKER_04 32:48

Yeah, I'm glad you said that planned obsolescence first, because I was practicing that word all day, bro. So I was like, obsolescence. I said, no, no, no, no, no, you don't need more to hear all the types of things I was trying to have to say. I was saying that in the mirror today, yo. Like, I gotta I was like, I hope Main took Main talks about the planned obsolescence first, bro. Because then because there's gonna be one heck of an edited job with it.

SPEAKER_02 33:17

Total twister.

SPEAKER_04 33:18

Yes, uh, yes, sir. So the planned obsolescence, and basically it's a business model built on replacement cycles. Yeah, so that that's basically what it is, you know.

SPEAKER_02 33:28

So you're making things you're making things to basically break. You're you're making things with the with the knowledge that it's gonna break after a certain amount of time, that it's gonna wear out after a certain amount of time, and also you're making things in in such a way that they cannot be repaired, right? Like so that's another part of it where Oh, that's right.

SPEAKER_04 33:43

The Apple guy.

SPEAKER_02 33:44

Yeah, the i fix it guy. The I fix it guy. So so, but yeah, like so, so but that's part of the planned obsolescence as well. Like you're making things not only functionally obsolete, but you're making it so they can't even be repaired. Um, and so that so basically you're making it so it requires replacement, and you're making you're making it so it basically has kind of like a ticking time bomb in it where it's gonna break eventually, no matter what you do. Or you're making it like in terms of technology, you're making things purposely so an upgrade will will kind of malfunction the item, right?

SPEAKER_04 34:15

Yeah, there are times where you update.

SPEAKER_02 34:18

Yeah, but there's times where you update, like let's say your phone, right? People have uh complained about this, and you know, I don't want Apple to come after us, but but um people have complained in the past that they've done an update, and then after that update, the battery life is you know a fraction of what it was, right?

SPEAKER_04 34:34

We'll call them Granny Smith.

SPEAKER_02 34:36

Or that's what we'll use with the city. Yeah, when you buy when you buy one of these Granny Smith phones and and you try to keep it for a long time and you you don't and you don't feel like there's anything wrong with it, and you don't feel like you want to just go out and upgrade just because they got Granny Smith version 17 or something, uh-huh, you know, they might hit you with an update that kills your battery life, or an update that really causes your phone not to function the way it the way the way it should, right? So that's another part of the planned obsolescence, right? If if they're not gonna let make it break or or let it break after a certain amount of time, if it doesn't just wear out, um, they'll send you an update that will actually make it, you know, so it's not functional, right?

SPEAKER_04 35:15

So it's almost like they you know what I like to go back to the um piggyback on the light bulb, it's kind of the same thing that they're using with the light bulb because the new updates are basically a surge through a system that's not ready to handle that type of a surge, so to speak.

SPEAKER_02 35:31

I see what you did there.

SPEAKER_04 35:34

See what I did there, son?

SPEAKER_02 35:36

Yeah, I see what you did there. But um but yeah, I mean, yeah, and in in a in a sense, yes, like like you you're sending you're basically sending a poison pill in some cases, right? Like you're sending a poison pill to these devices.

SPEAKER_04 35:48

Like them booting cable boxes back in the day.

SPEAKER_02 35:51

Yeah, and and you're sending upgrades, yeah. You're sending upgrades that you know you know will not work with with these older versions of the phone, and you know it's gonna cause it to malfunction, it's gonna kill the battery life, whatever it's gonna do, right? It's gonna cause the user to have a bad experience. And then when you have a bad experience, all you could do is go and replace the device, right? And yeah, and with in the case of the Granny Smith phone phone, people people have grown to because part of what the corporations depend on is that you've grown to kind of trust this device and depend on it so much that you don't really care if it has a life cycle of uh, you know, maybe like two or three years, and and then you have to replace it um after that two or three year period, no matter if if it works well or not, you know, something's gonna happen to it where you have to replace it. So I think people have become so dependent on it and they and they they they become so trusting of the device that they don't they kind of build that into their to their own budgets and their own minds. Like you kind of think to yourself, okay, I got this Granny Smith phone, and and and I love my Granny Smith phone. I do everything on my Granny Smith phone. So once once it dies, I'll just go get another Granny Smith phone. Like they don't really question why the Granny Smith phone battery is not working anymore. I didn't do anything different, you know, why all of a sudden is the same amount of pictures taking up all the space and now I don't have any more space left. Well, I did an upgrade now now. I have no more no more storage left, right? So stuff like that is all part of planned obsolescence. Like the corporation is aware, and they could do something about that. Like, and especially the fact that you you you can't even go into some of these devices and fix them if if something would have something like a battery. Yeah, something something like a battery dies, and you instead of using like you know, standard screws, they're using glue or some custom screw.

SPEAKER_04 37:47

Some weird, like um asterisk looking screw.

SPEAKER_02 37:51

Screw the typical in there. And that's and that's all by design, right? Like they're like you look at you look at something and it looks beautiful because it's all in one piece, but part of that is so you can't you can't do anything if if or if something would have malfunction inside the device. Like so they're counting on they're counting on a lot of those those things that people don't really question any of this, and and and the fact that people have grown to trust the device so much that they're willing to get a new one, and then they advertise to you that the new one is so much better than than what you have.

SPEAKER_04 38:22

And the last one, which is the same, but just a different chip, a different processing chip.

SPEAKER_02 38:26

This this processing chip is gonna be so much faster because you need you need the fastest chip, right? Like to surf to surf the web and to go to TikTok, you're gonna need this super fast new chip, right? So all of that is is by design, and and and one of the big examples of that is is the light bulb, this centennial light bulb that's been around burning for for 125 years, that tourists can now go see, um, is an example of of the fact that there's there's intelligence and engineering and competence enough to make devices last for as long as they would like.

SPEAKER_04 39:04

Yeah. And one of the things that that I thought was crazy was that the guy from I Fix It Um He was like, he could basically fix almost everything. They they're making it tougher and tougher and tougher. He's talking about how they're gluing it now so that you can't even open up. They're putting these custom screws that no that you're not just gonna have lying around your home. But he said the one thing that he said is unfixable are those ear pods.

SPEAKER_00 39:34

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_04 39:34

He was like the ear pods, forget about it, son. There's no no repair nodes. He said they they've done it in such a way that you have to destroy it.

SPEAKER_02 39:44

You seem upset about it. And just for everybody that doesn't know, like like this folks that for folks that haven't seen this documentary or don't know what we're talking about exactly, but the I Fix It guy is a guy that has a company where he basically has thousands of parts um and instruction manuals for people that want to repair devices, right? So the name of the company, his company is called I Fix It, right? Yeah, I fix it. And the problem is that he's been encountering is that he's actually been facing lawsuits and cease and desist letters from companies that don't want him to teach people how to fix their devices, right? Because there's quite a few corporations that don't want people to be able to repair their devices, would really prefer for you to just come in and get a new one and replace it outright. So the I Fix It guy, he's gone, um, he's gone to court a few times. It looks like, um, and and like I said, he's even gotten cease and desist letters about like manufacture issues um that he's causing by exposing disinformation of how to fix things or giving repair manuals or providing people with parts that they can purchase to repair certain devices, right? Especially technology. So so one of the things that that he gets really pissed off in the documentary, like Rant said said, is the he's saying that the AirPods are just not fixable. Like there's nothing you could do. Like if your battery dies and your airpods, you there's nothing you could do. You gotta wrap.

SPEAKER_04 41:02

Yeah and they're expensive.

SPEAKER_02 41:04

Yeah, and they're super expensive, and you gotta replace them outright. Like there's nothing, you can't open those up or you're gonna just like his life's work trying to.

SPEAKER_04 41:12

This is what he lives for. He's trying to figure it out. Yo, forget about these, man. He was like, yo, if you have these, just get a new pair, man. You know, we can't fix this. So that's that's the waste war. That's the that's the planned obsolescence. That's why you don't see like the Maytag man anymore. Or, you know, we batteries don't last as long. And this goes along with everything, man. Nothing lasts the way it used to. Everybody everything seemed seems to be made to break.

SPEAKER_00 41:42

Right.

SPEAKER_04 41:43

Um, and they have it in a way so that you feel like it can't be replaced at all when a lot of times it's just a little chip here, or it's a little piece here, or they just they'll just stop making the piece. Oh, we don't make a piece for that washer, dryer, or we don't make a piece for that anymore. That's an old model of something. That's the other thing.

SPEAKER_02 42:03

That's that's the other thing. They'll upgrade something to the point where it's not backward compatible either. Like where like you can't even use parts anymore because they don't they just don't make this version of the device anymore. So the sort of even the old parts don't fit anything that that's useful, right? Like, I guess the worst part about it for me is that this is a a business strategy, right? Like that's what bothers me about it. It's not it's not an oversight, and it's not a it's not something that that is a mistake. This is a strategy that it costs consumers a lot of money, it's cost me money over over the years, and it leads to just more waste, right? Like, because one of the things in the documentary that that um, you know, I forget the gentleman's name, but it's it's an engineer on on the documentary that talks about, you know, working for for a technology company, and he said that one of the things that does not come up is the end of the life cycle for a device that they're trying to sell, right? So if and I'm just using it as an example, but let's say the Granny Smith phone. Granny Smith. The Granny Smith phone. Um, you know, if you're they're selling you that phone, they don't really do a lot of a lot of um thinking about what happens to the phone once people are are done with it. Like what once once it's not able to be upgraded, once it's not able to to to be resold, what happens when this thing is just waste? When what happens when it's garbage? Yeah. Um and there's not a lot of thought put into that. And they, you know, and that's that's another sad part about it, where you know, I think customers that are kind of um, you know, kind of the the I I want to say that the customers that that are thinking about these things in a in like a, you know, kind of a a way of of being concerned with the world, they will they would probably assume that these things get recycled in earnest, right? But I think a lot of people don't know that some things just can't be recycled, right? Yeah. There's pl there's certain plastics that can't be recycled. There's certain parts that the c are just gonna be useless and they they can't be recycled, right? And that's it. So where does that stuff go?

SPEAKER_04 44:09

Excellent. Excellent segue again, my brother. Oh, I did it again.

SPEAKER_02 44:16

In the flow. I'm not even trying.

SPEAKER_04 44:18

In the flow, Seth.

SPEAKER_00 44:24

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_04 44:25

Uh-huh. Lie more. So what Maine is referring to is greenwashing, what they call the greenwashing effect, where these companies make you think that they they think they make you think that they're taking the responsibility off of your shoulders, out of your hands, so to speak, by um putting recyc recycle labels. Um telling you to bring your your trash to us. We'll take your trash off your hands. Come to find out, what is it? 90% of plastic can't be recycled.

SPEAKER_02 45:00

Yeah, something like that. Yeah. Do you know that was a shock to me? I I I didn't know that that I I knew that there were certain plastics that that don't get recycled, but I didn't know that the percentage was so high. And I didn't know that companies are actually being kind of dishonest about that when when they're when they're putting these labels on on um certain brands, or you know, they're putting like the little recycle symbol on some of these things. And knowing in some cases that it can't be recycled, right? And like you said, it's all about making the customer feel like this warm and fuzzy feeling that okay, I might be buying these these items, but at least I'm trying to save the earth by by recycling, right? Like it gives you this feeling like you're doing something good when really you're you're doing something that has like a net you know, no net effect, right? Like and and and it's really dishonest on the part of some of these companies because it happens from everything from like we you know, we talked about electronics, but it happens with food, happens with um, you know, the beverage industry, you name it, right? Like there's there's these these materials that are that are being used, and they're claiming even the retail clothing industry, right? Like they're claiming that these things can be recycled or reused or donated, and they're really useless and they really wind up going into landfills eventually, right? Like all these things are going to be in waste that can only go one of three places. Um, it's gonna go in in the earth, in the air, or in the water. So so when you think about that, that means that it's it's dangerous to to people. Like if if if something goes into the earth that's toxic, if something's going into the water that's toxic, if something's going into the air that's toxic, that all winds up going back to us. You're recycling it, but you're cycling it back to back to us, yeah. Back into our bodies, into you know, into our our planet, right?

SPEAKER_04 46:50

Yeah, it's bad for us, especially with the microplastics. And what they do with the greenwashing is that they count on the public, i.e. you and I, actually trusting these corporations. Like, don't worry, we have your best interests in heart. We're reducing our green print, uh, what is it, our footprint, a carbon footprint. Meanwhile, they're doing probably irreparable damage to the to the to the planet. Um, the commercials what they use children, they'll use anything to to to make you think that they're actually doing the right thing. Uh remember and they use in the documentary that old Coca-Cola commercial with the people, I want to buy the world a cult. We like to use the world to sing. Everybody, yes, everybody said it like hand in hand, swaying, very cult-like. You and me trying to buy the world.

SPEAKER_02 47:44

That song sticks in your head as it when I was when I was a kid. I used to love that song, man.

SPEAKER_04 47:48

You know how many people just sung that song along with us right now, listening to this?

SPEAKER_02 47:53

I used to love that song, man. And and and when I saw that in the documentary, it made me kind of sad because it it feels like this has been going on for so long that you almost you almost can't really trace it back far enough because it feels like this was always the case, right? Like as long as it's been television and as long as there's been any type of product for sale, um, you know, corporations have been finding ways to kind of fool us into thinking that that these products are are good for us or they're doing something good. Um, even if we know the product's not really good for us, um, they're doing something good, so it kind of balances itself out. But the more you learn, the more you realize there is no balance, you know? Yeah, it's just all of a facade. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 48:39

And I've personally had to cut up merchandise.

SPEAKER_02 48:43

Right.

SPEAKER_04 48:44

You know, I've personally had to that's a whole nother aspect.

SPEAKER_02 48:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 48:47

Yes, and I've had cut up merchandise so that so from your perspective, like what is the mentality behind that, right?

SPEAKER_02 48:56

Like, so so I saw something about that, like, where like certain luxury brands would have their employees instead of instead of um giving it away, or instead of um donating it, they'll have the employee actually destroy a garment or a bag or and these are luxuries. Yeah, these are luxury. These are luxury items, quote unquote, right? And instead of risking, you know, giving it away um or donating it, they're literally destroying it.

SPEAKER_04 49:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:26

What is the mentality there?

SPEAKER_04 49:27

So the mentality they say is they they don't want uh the brand to be degraded. So I used to work for a retailer that they were famous for their cashmere, right? So um you would have to destroy it because they would not want someone walking around or sleeping on the street in their cashmere.

SPEAKER_02 49:47

In their cashmere.

SPEAKER_04 49:48

So it's like if we can't make any money off of it, we don't want you, we don't want you like bootlegging ourselves and selling it on the corners of even though we don't have any, we don't want we we're not gonna sell anymore. It's we've wasted inventory, whatever. They just don't want to be associated. It degrades the brands, which is absurd. Which is absurd. So I re at one place I remember they we used to donate clothes um to I don't even know if it's around anymore. I think it's the thing was Sean Kish and it was kids, K-I-D-S, and we would send whatever wasn't damaged to the point that it uh couldn't be sold. Even if it was like just a small tear in the seam, anything that would be fixed, we would donate this in a big box, we would take it out the system and donate it to um uh this this kids. I wonder if they're still around. I gotta look up to see if they're still around. And of course, you know, companies get tax writers, but it's not the tax writers apparently aren't even aren't even big enough for them to care anymore. But when I worked for these other companies, they did not want to see someone sleeping on the street in their clothes, or they did not want their clothes to be seen on a little kid in the Bronx or somewhere of that nature. And this was, you know, this was a thing. And when I heard it on a documentary, I was like, oh my gosh. We used to say stuff like that, but it was like confirmed. It was going on, it was going on because the lady, I forget, the girl who dumps the dives, she was telling people to tell them their story, and they were showing about how the food they throw out the food.

SPEAKER_00 51:22

The same thing happens with the food, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:24

And the and even the the um the soap. It was was it the soap or the shampoo where they would like empty it out?

SPEAKER_02 51:32

Yeah, it was it wasn't just shampoo, but it was all types of beauty products, like lotions and yeah, and like all, you know, that type of thing, like like the scented lotions and stuff. I forget the name of the that company that was doing that, but they actually instructed they instructed their employees to not just throw it out, but to actually squeeze the stuff out of the tubes because they didn't want homeless people smelling like Sephora or whatever. Like, you know what?

SPEAKER_04 51:55

They didn't want them homeless persons smelling like their brand.

SPEAKER_02 51:57

They didn't want to be a and and honestly, like let me take that. I don't know if it was Sephora, because I I don't want to take that back. But but I'm just using them as as an example, right? I'm just using that as an example. But um, I can't remember the the exact company that was doing that. Yeah, um but the point is that this happens every from everything from clothing to food to to beauty products, right? Instead of taking their excess or whatever they can't sell and giving it away or donating it, they're actually choosing to destroy it, right? Like there was one instance where they said, like, I forget what company it was, but um it was food, and instead instead of giving it away or donating it, they would take all of the food and mix it together so it became inedible, right? Like so they would take things that don't go together basically and just mix everything together at the end of the night and throw it away that way. It's just because they didn't want homeless people dumpster diving behind the behind their their restaurants or whatever the case may be, right?

SPEAKER_04 52:56

And it's not even the homeless anymore.

SPEAKER_02 52:58

Like there's there's like co-eds and some but that's the point that that people have gotten hip to this, and now like you know, there's certain places where you can get, you know, it's like a treat, right? Like, because you know if you know what time of night they're throwing away all this stuff, there's people that, like you said, there's college students doing it, there's just regular people doing it, like not a hip to it. They'll just they'll just cruise by one of these restaurants that they know dumpster stuff, and and then they don't donate it, they just they just throw it away. They'll go and they'll dumpster dive and the stuff is perfectly good. It'll be in plastic bags or whatever the case may be, and they'll just go and grab a treat for you know one girl.

SPEAKER_04 53:38

She yo, she had like 50 bagels lined up on the ground. Like she had like 50 perfectly preserved bagels just laying on the crab there.

SPEAKER_02 53:46

One girl showed um a bunch of candy, like like perfectly fine, like and brands that we all know and love, really big brands that were throwing away like what seemed like thousands of dollars worth of candy, right? Like chocolate, like good chocolate was getting thrown away because of the holiday season had passed, and these things were specifically for a particular holiday season, so they would just toss all of it, or or the stuff didn't sell in a certain amount of time, so they would just throw it away, right?

SPEAKER_04 54:15

Yeah, you know that was crazy. I think one of the best things to do is to probably instead of going to these big corporations and bringing your clothes back, because some of them do try to tempt you with like giving you percentage off for your next purchase and things. But donate to your local your local shelter, donate to your local uh church who have drives and the goodwill or things of that nature, which even the goodwill isn't even as safe anymore because now antiquin is bad so is is is in style and people are actually buying these older clothes and they're pricing them up, but still at least someone is using.

SPEAKER_02 54:54

Yeah, like the whole the whole thrifting trend. Thrifting, yes, thrifting, the thrifting trend.

SPEAKER_04 54:58

But at least still someone is you it's being recycled and used. I mean, at least it's being used. Like we've like you can't. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:06

Right, right. Did you did you see the part where this one this one kind of like blew my mind, right? Like they showed at one point they they um they went to Ghana. Bang! And and they showed that in Ghana, about 15 million pieces of clothing get sent to Ghana per week. Yes. And Ghana is a country of about 30 million or so people, and they can't possibly make use of all of this, right? Like, even if they gave it away, even if they tried to donate it to people, Ghana can't make use of that much clothing that that's been that that they claim is being given away by these companies, right? And some of the companies like were really well-known brands. Like they showed some people, and I guess they were journalists, they were going through and they were showing that the clothing gets thrown away, and it winds up washing up on some of their beaches.

SPEAKER_00 55:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 55:53

So they so their shores become like these dumps for like shredded denim and all types of this ridiculous amounts of clothes, right?

SPEAKER_04 56:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:04

Um, and like I said, 15 million pieces per week for a country of about 30 million people or so, that's not really usable, right? Like that's not useful, right? So you have these people that that are these companies rather, they're basically using other countries as their dumping ground for for um for just clothes that that they can't sell or out of season or or they know that they're not going to be able to do anything with, and this becomes a whole new source of waste in that country. So it's just crazy. We're just transferring our waste products.

SPEAKER_04 56:35

They're transferring it on, and they're hiding it, which also again, my brother, my man, my ace.

SPEAKER_02 56:40

It's another is that was that was another segue?

SPEAKER_04 56:43

Straight transition, you know what I'm saying? You got your podcasting hat on, too. Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_02 56:47

It gotta gotta give me record assists.

SPEAKER_04 56:50

That's right. You started it up like God stocked it, baby. Old time assist leader. So that comes to the fourth segue, which is hide more. So it's like, where does all of the stuff go? All of this, the greenwashing, it has to go somewhere, and this is where it goes. It washes up on the shores of Ghana, the clothing, the technology that they go. They they have uh um they interviewed a waste investigator. And what he did was he put trackers in the motherboards in the in the electronics that they had. And they end up tracking the electronics to other countries, which is illegal to transport waste to other countries. And a lot of it was like Thailand, um, where they were breaking down a lot of these electronics, the phones, the laptops, the whatever, all the electronics, and they were saying how bad it is that these people are here not wearing any type of protective suits or protective masks or anything like breathing in, all of these harsh chemicals. Toxic chemicals and stuff that are coming from breaking down all of these electronics. So it's it's crazy. I think it was Ghana, uh Thailand, Dominican Republic, uh the Philippines, all of these places where you just see dumping grounds of clothing and electronics just contaminating, like Maine said earlier, the air, the water, and the ground. There's only three places this can all go. And the plastics with the microplastics, um, which are now they're basically everywhere. They're in our blood system, they're in our small children. One thing that I read was a high concentration of microplastics are starting to pop up in breast milk. So you think that you're giving your baby the healthiest start to their life, and they're they're getting some of these microplastics and these chemicals, these toxic chemicals in their breast milk. They're coming in the world like this. You know what I mean? Um, and they're all they're hiding, they're hiding these things. But you it's so much you can't hide it for long because it's just washing up on shore. You dump it in the water, it has to wash up someplace. You know, you put it in the air, you have to pollute the atmosphere somehow. You you know, so these things eventually. One thing that a guy said, he said waste never disappears. When uh in the documentary, he said waste never never actually disappears. They try to make you think that it disappears, thus make you feeling good about yourself. It's kind of like this little this little garbage pan, this bin here at the bottom right hand of my computer where I delete and I put it there and it's like it's gone.

SPEAKER_00 59:31

Yeah, it goes to the magical away.

SPEAKER_04 59:33

It's time for us to get canceled, somebody can go dig in and they'll pull up something.

SPEAKER_02 59:38

It goes into the magical away, right? Like we we think that we're throwing stuff away, but where is but we don't, you know, we don't really question where is a way.

SPEAKER_04 59:47

Yeah, we don't question where is a way. We just know it's gone. We think it's going off our computer, we think it's going out there a little trash bin. Like I threw it in the trash. You know what I'm saying? How did they get how did they get this tweet or the or this this message that I said 20 20 years ago? So no waste is ever really waste. It's always here. There's nowhere for it to go.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:06

Yeah, it has to go somewhere, right? Even we think we're throwing it away. And I think they count on the fact that that like a lot of people just want it away from them. You know, like when I throw it away, I want it away from me. Just get it away from me. I don't care what happens to it, right? Yeah, but I I guess they count on that. Like I think the the point of this is to to to be cognizant that you're contributing to this in some way, right? Like, because some people might listen to this and be like, hey, so what? What can you do about this, right? But what you can do is be intentional. Like I this word comes up a lot. Like I comes up a lot.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:44

But um You might have to put it on a shirt, but now I'm scared to sell a shirt.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:49

Yeah, we don't want to, yeah, exactly. We don't want to just put out more merch now.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:53

This ain't the time. We gotta read the room.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:56

They're just can't just be putting out merch that you don't need. Um no, seriously, like I I think part of the point of this is for people to become like a little more aware and more cognizant of the fact that you're contributing to this, right? We all are. I am.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:10

Yes, everyone.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:11

I do a lot of impulse buying, to be honest with you. You know, we talked about this, we were joking about this, man. Like, I love Amazon, like the the convenience of it, right? Maybe not as a as a corporation, but the convenience of it is highly addictive, right? Like I I like the fact that if I think of something I need or something I think I need, um I can click on it and it'll be here within a day or two, a day or two at the most, right? Um even down to books, right? I'm I'm sure there's there's there's other you know, companies or or or places I could be supporting, like small businesses that are selling books, or even just going to my local library more. Like if I really need that book, if I really feel like I want to read this now, the library most likely has it, right? Or the library has some mechanism for me to download the e-version of it or some some audio version of it, right? There's ways that I could go around this, but it feels like the convenience of this, the um, the marketing, the the machine that's behind this is putting it is able to put itself in front of me so much that it just becomes the e the path of the least of resistance is for me to use this this machine um to just basically get anything that I can think of, right? Yeah. Um but the but the idea is that by doing that um and doing that on a regular basis, we're contributing to all the waste. You know, we're contributing to the landfills. Um, we're contributing to like kind of a a a business strategy that that works because we're being kind of intellectually lazy about some of these things. Some of the waste could be cut down if we didn't upgrade our our phone every time we see a commercial for the new, you know, Granny Smith Pro. Right. You don't really do you you gotta think to yourself, do I actually need this? What am I gonna do with the old one? What happens to the old one when I when I get rid of this? Like when they say recycle, or when they say turn in my old Granny Smith phone for a new one, what are they gonna do with the old one? What are they really gonna do with the old one? Right? So so when when we say be intentional, like part of this is to kind of just take a pause. Like you don't have to take direct action, you don't have to go out and protest about it. But what you can do is kind of control yourself and your own habits, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:03:19

Control the controllable, control the controllable.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:22

You do have some some say in this, you do have a vote, and the way you can vote is with your behavior, with your dollars, even. You don't have to buy things just because they advertise to you. Because honestly, I'm I've been a part of that problem, right? Like just buying things just because I see an advertisement, just because I can. You joked about like the sneakers, like I had a big sneaker collection that I I wound up getting rid of. I just wound up selling a few years ago. I sold maybe like 20 pairs of sneakers. You know why? Because they were sitting in the closet in the boxes. Yeah, and I have one pair of feet, and I was wearing the same pair. I would have my favorite pair, my most comfortable pair, my go-to pair that I will wear, a few pairs of shoes and sneakers that I was wearing on a regular basis. But all these other things were just collectibles after a while. Just things that sit there as some sort of either status symbol or some sort of collectible or satisfying some um some childhood need. I couldn't afford these Jordans when I was 15, but now I gotta get 20 Jordans. Get all of them. I get two pairs, I get them in all the colors, and you know, but stuff like that becomes like something where you gotta check yourself and um think about what is what is my motivation for buying this stuff, right? Because the um the documentary talks about that too. Like the the uh the psychology behind the desire for stuff, um it it becomes easier because of the mentality of a society that that thinks that having the most stuff is how you win this game called life. We start to compare ourselves to to our neighbors, we start to compare ourselves to our friends and family, and we feel like buying stuff is the way we kind of bolster ourselves in the eyes of the stuff. Yeah, like we we're kind of buying our self-esteem in some some cases by just having enough the stuff. Like whether, you know, after a while it gets more, the stakes get higher, right? Like as you get older, you get a little more money, you get a decent job, you still have a family, the stakes get much higher. Like you start, you go from like those sneakers to to the car now. Like go from the car to the home. It could be anything, man. It could be just like your your graphic tea collection gets out of hand because now you don't have to wait. You don't have to ask anybody.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:34

Yeah. Oh, I need the newest one of it. And that's what's called perceived obsolescence.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:39

Yes, perceived obsolescence is basically peer pressure. Yeah, it's basically peer pressure that you're putting on yourself, right? Um, because there's a big difference between the people that don't really care what anybody thinks, and they're willing to to drive a 15 year old car or wear an old t shirt to the store. Then there's people that feel like this. Self-esteem is really built around how much how much stuff they have.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:03

Oh, you have you have the Granny Smith 11 and now they're on like the Granny Smith 27. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:10

Exactly, exactly. And there's some people that just don't care about that. And if if that planned obsolescence doesn't kick in and break your Granny Smith 11, um, you know, you you just have to take a pause and check yourself and ask yourself, do I really need the 27 version of this when the 11 is still working just fine? Like who really cares? We're throwing so many things away that we are contributing in a in a large part to to um to pollution, right? Like we're polluting the earth uh with our consumption, I guess is the one of the takeaways from this.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:42

Five more stuff. We're just we're destroying the earth. One of the things that the the woman who used to work for Amazon, she said, she was like, put it in your cart and wait a month.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:52

Right. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 1:06:53

If you and I looked at yo, I looked in my cart, I got 77 items in my cart, son. Going back four, seven, four to five years. 77 items in my cart. I have all types of stuff that you know what I mean, anywhere, anywhere from socks to to like wrestler themed silverware. You know what I mean? Just ridiculous.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:22

Wow, okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:24

Just all types of ridiculousness that's there. And I just went through just deleting, deleting, deleting, but just you know, if you if you if you um put it in your cart, wait a month, if you really needed it, you would buy it within probably that day or but if it's a month and you look at it and you don't feel a certain way about it, then don't I think someone wrote a book about that. That's a good um put your hand on something if it doesn't make you feel anything, a piece of clothing or a book or anything that you get rid of it.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:54

There's a couple of things like that. Like there was actually a show on TV, and I forget the woman's name, but there was there was a person that's that she she was helping people kind of clean out their life and clean out their crowds. No, it wasn't it wasn't hoarders. This show was particularly for for people that just needed to clean out their closet and and kind of organize their lives a little bit, right? So it's crazy, son.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:17

They were finding people with five cat, a mummified cat, a fan of some.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:22

Yeah, that was crazy. That that show was extreme, but but in this show, it was it was just a consultant that would help you clean out your life. And one of the things that she suggested was that you look in your closet and look at every piece of clothing in your closet. And if it doesn't make you happy, get rid of it. There's similar suggestions around what you were saying about um putting it in your cart and waiting a month. You know, I've heard suggestions like that before. Like if before you make a purchase, or before you make any decision, really, you should sleep on it. Just take a pause, right? That pause could be a month, or that pause could be just a few days, the pause could be a week, or the you know, even overnight. Like before you click, you know, the one-click buy, just give it a moment. If I really need this thing, it'll be there tomorrow, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:09:04

Do I really need it or do I just want it?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:07

Yeah, like you gotta kind of think about your wants versus your needs quite a bit, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:09:11

And and yeah, so and then they go to which is the uh the number five, the last section of the documentary where they talked about control more. And that was basically how these major corporations, they kind of just circle the proverbial wagons. They dictate the narrative, they dictate the narrative to their workers, they expect their workers to dictate the narrative, and um they make sure that everybody is on the same page. So they may make you when you come in and you sign an HR and you go and you sign those uh whatever documents they give you where they're taking your intellectual property and all sorts of things, including non-compliance and all types of things that you may sign, you know, and they basically they they they bully like no whistleblowers, the woman she got fired, she got carried out.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:59

Yeah, the woman from Amazon.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:03

And that's what they do, they try to control the narrative so much, um, also by using going back, and depending on the trust of the public that even if somebody came out and said something, you may not you may not um believe them. Like this documentary has been out for a couple of years, and and Main and I are just really seeing it now. You know, two years, two years isn't really a long time, but it is at the same at the same time, so to speak.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:30

Just do your part, just whatever you can. We use a lot of water bottles in the house, and one of the things that I was thinking is like if we're buying water bottles, first of all, it's sitting in plastic, so that water probably might not even be as healthy as we think it is. True. You know? And then what you have is we used to buy, I used to buy a lot of the um the glass bottled spring water, like the mountain spring waters and stuff. But eventually, all of these these companies start getting bought up by the bigger companies, and then the bigger companies consume them, and then they start doing what they want, and now these these places that had the best intentions now, they're failing inspections and they're doing all types of wrong things.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:13

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:13

So maybe I should just get some type of uh like a water filter, spend money on some type of advanced water filter, and just just use my steel container all the time in the or in the house. That's the one way.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:26

That's something that yeah, that's something that we do. Um yeah, man, like so. It's funny that you mentioned that, man, because um it it kind of goes along with it's a it's kind of a callback, I I I would say to like our prepper, um our prepper episode, right? Because I was telling you I was buying water and I I started buying um Liquid Death and a couple of other brands that come in cans rather than uh plastic bottles. And I'm holding on to those just in case of emergency. But what we also do is we filter our water um rather than buying like and I can't say that we never buy you know water in plastic bottles because sometimes, just like you said, for convenience, um, you just wind up doing that sometimes. But we try to be conscious about that, and for the most part, we drink water out of our, you know, from our filter, right? Yeah. Um, and we're probably saving saving money, first of all, but but we we're kind of reducing our you know, quote unquote carbon footprint um because we're not buying as many plastic bottles and throwing them away, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:12:29

Nothing is too small. Think of think of the one small thing you can do. And then if everybody's doing one small thing, because this is a this is accumulation, and I talked about the law of accumulation. It's every person, it started off with every person doing a small thing to uh to pollute, you know, everybody buying one can of coke, everybody buying one extra pair of sneakers, everybody and now it's turning into people having five, six, or ten extra pair of sneakers, you know, buying all these different types of sodas and all these different types of soft drinks and all this different type of clothing that you have to have in your closet. So if it started small and got out of control, we can start small and try to get it back under control. Right as the best we can. So just play your part. You don't have to do anything big and huge, but just everybody doing something small, you know. Start with the man in the mirror or the woman in the mirror, controller controllable, all the cliches, and that's it. But one more thing before we go, brother. I have a book. I have a book. I have a book. So this book is called, and I don't have the physical book, but I read it. It it was about it was written uh 16 years ago, and it's called The Story of Stuff. The story of stuff, and it's written by Annie Leonard, and it's the impact of overconsumption on the planet, our communities, and our health, and how we can make it better. Though the one quick thing that I'll say, or two quick things I'll talk about, it says that stuff moves through a system, extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal. And these are what's what's called a materials economy. And one of the biggest problems, it highlights that the problem is that it moves in a linear system on a finite planet. So we're using all these resources and we're burning through resources that we really can't afford to burn through. So the book is called Once Again The Story of Stuff. And if you don't want to read the book, she also has a YouTube page, because you know your boy Rance watches a lot of YouTube where she basically gives a 20-minute synopsis of the book. If you don't want to buy the book and read, and she has a YouTube page called The Story of Stuff. It's a good book, it's a good read. Um, it's very informative. And also, you know, the great George Carlin did a comedy special about this in the probably the 80s, and it's called like a place to put my stuff. Where he talked about that you did this whole skit about consumption. Like you buy, you buy all this stuff, you have a small apartment, now you buy stuff to fill the apartment. Now you have two more no more places to put your stuff, so you buy a bigger house. You get a bigger space, you buy more stuff to fill that space, and then you buy a bigger space.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:15

So vicious cycle.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:18

Yeah, this stuff has been going on for a long time.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:22

Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:23

So that's what we have for today. You got anything else to add, my brother?

SPEAKER_02 1:15:26

Only thing um I would say is just to, you know, my takeaway from this is to also understand that you gotta give yourself some grace and understand that that you you're up against um multi-billion dollar corporations that are that are using technology, they're using human psychology, they're using years and years of experience um to kind of get you to buy stuff. Yeah. So with that in mind, you just gotta, like I said, be intentional and just be aware that that's what's that's what you're up against, right? So when you go into it with that awareness, at least that gives you kind of a fighting chance. Like, because a lot of people are probably not aware that um the technology is actually actively pursuing you. It's not it's not that you're weak, it's not that you're just wasteful, it's not that you're always you're not just an impulse buyer. It's that anytime your eyeballs are on the screen, anytime your eyeballs are even outside outside, like even the billboards, even if you walk into a store, every everywhere you go, um, you know, is pretty much engineered to get you to make purchases, right? So if you go into it with that awareness, um, that gives you sort of a fighting chance against it, like where you you won't be as as quick to to give give folks your dollars for things that you you may not need, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:16:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:47

And I have a little homework for everybody on this one. Oh yeah. And I would like actually maybe we can hear from a few people on this. You can let us know. You could DM us, DM us, you could send us an email, whatever. Everybody who's listening, go through your Amazon card today. I want to know how many items you clear it out, yo. Clear it out. Clear it out.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:09

So what what I do, I don't put it in my cart necessarily, but uh now they have you could put a little heart next to it. You could save it.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:16

Save it as like a favorite.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:18

Yeah, I save it as a favorite. I put a little heart and I save it now, and I have a whole list of stuff that I save. So if I don't buy it right away, if I do pause and like, you know what? I don't need this right now. I put a little heart, like I'll be back for you, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:33

Yeah, I forget you. And then you forget it because your boy got 77 items in his cart going all the way back to like 2021.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:43

I'm surprised they let you forget. As soon as I look at something now, they send me an email like, hey, you left this behind.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:49

Yeah, it's probably because of me. That's probably the rants, the rant function. They probably might have named that after me, bro.

unknown 1:17:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:56

Let's like, as soon as you look at something and and as soon as I look at something, they they're like, hey, hey. I saw you was on our site. Did you like what you see? You forgot that thing in your cart. That thing in your cart. You like you're gonna and now some places they they're like, you have one day. After a certain day, they'll just they'll just especially if they need to sell it to someone else, they'll take it out your cart. And some some places they done got hit to the game, but some places they have not. So you know. So this concludes our latest episode of the Gen Expertise Podcast, episode 36. Shout out to our now day 36 listeners, our day ones, of course, and everyone in between, and as usual, and as always, shout out to our day one, day one. And you know what, main, because we are prolific. That's right, just as prolific as the rainforests and granny smith corporations. We will be back in your face, in your eardrums next Wednesday, same generic time, same gen next place. We'll see you then. Power to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:07

Power to the podcast. Peace. Peace.