spk_1:   0:01
Hello, everybody.

spk_0:   0:02
Hello, everybody, and welcome to the show. The big show is most important and critically acclaimed, but guests that is recorded in our auto, mobile and or truck. And today we're in the red studio, the little red car studio, and I am driving, which is happy for me care. But it's happy for me. I like to drive. She doesn't like to drive. It means my foot has recovered enough that I can safely drive at least out in the country. When we get to the When we get to the city, I'm going to switch over. Let her drive again because her reactions are much more suited to the pedals than mine are. I mean, my actions are fine. I just can't get the feet over that quickly. So anyway, welcome to the show. We're taking a little bit of safety precaution out here. The country does not matter, but in the city it probably will. So because you know, we, as the poet says, and I don't mean this to be any great metaphysical religious thing, so whips me driving or throat, um, so don't take it that way. But the poet said, We're only immortal for a limited time, if I have. Ah, I have most definitely, at least recently, been reminded of my mortality several times. And so that's what we're going to talk about today in the podcast mortality. And no, nobody that we know of, nobody here is dying. Nobody here is gravely ill that we know. Either one of us could keel over dead and direct five minutes from

spk_1:   1:38
So far as we know, we're good.

spk_0:   1:39
Yeah, we have not done. I mean, we haven't We haven't been too horrible with our hearts. And we haven't been I haven't read WebMD cause that'll kill you quicker than anything. I mean, if you cut your finger, go on WebMD and read it. You are dead. It's over. You're gonna tow. Can finger cut cancer of the finger cut. It's there on WebMD, Probably. Probably. Yeah. Um,

spk_1:   2:14
he got used to be driving.

spk_0:   2:15
Yeah, I got used to her driving. I'm driving all over the place. Stop. You are not a passenger anywhere. You have to control this vehicle. Get your eyes and ears back on the road. Actually dovetails into what we're talking about. Yes, it does. Dovetails nicely covered in here. I just drove off the off the center line back.

spk_1:   2:33
How many times you been driving a car and lost track of the fact that you are actually responsible for a curdling couple? Tons of metal moving within a massive mo mentum and often Justo like, right now, we had a good two and 1/2 3 feet between us and the oncoming vehicle, which was you. Not like a nice, comfortable distance,

spk_0:   3:01
right? Right now. But a bit ago, we were in their lanes groups, but they weren't there. So but seriously, two or three feet is a nice, comfortable distance. Well, I think it's worth their drop their phone like a drop of coffee in their lap. We're gonna have a heart attack. And that does happen. I covered a story not too many years ago. Were a trucker, had a heart attack, and he was the person I talked to. The, uh MT is a personal friend of mine, so I know this was straight up. Uh, he said he was dead by the time he hit the building. There was no scratch on the guy, but he went through one building and into another building of agricultural chemicals. So you could just imagine the cleanup mess that was It was right on a curve and his truck. His truck never took the curve. Yeah, I just kept going straight.

spk_1:   4:00
I was just driving to work this morning and saw half of a semi protruding out the side of the chemical warehouse building. Not in a place where there's a draw is not in the door just through the side of the building.

spk_0:   4:13
And that was the second building it would completely through the 1st 1

spk_1:   4:16
And then I had to pay attention to my own driving some. Like what?

spk_0:   4:19
Really? That's not supposed to be there

spk_1:   4:21
because they're a person in there? No, there's nobody in there. And there were lots of tracks, so no, no doubt they took care of that. But, you

spk_0:   4:28
know, they just hadn't extricated yet. So anyway, um,

spk_1:   4:31
that that's a nice side note to put in. I'm gonna steal the aside today.

spk_0:   4:34
No, no, no. You can have you can have an extra side. You're not stealing

spk_1:   4:39
the bystander effect by standard when someone is in obvious distress and there are very few people around or just you, the probability that the average person will stop to help in that circumstance is pretty high because we're, you know, mostly not a bunch of jerks, but

spk_0:   5:02
we're not turtles, but we're not sure.

spk_1:   5:04
Yeah, turtles, turtles will help. So if there's a whole bunch of other people who witnessed the same event, the probability that any one of them will stop is considerably less than the chance that a single person will stop there, the only one to see it. It's the bystander effect. Everybody assumes somebody else has taken care of it. And two things about that one. It's an actual risk to you if you're the one in the accident, because if you have an accident by the side of a busy road, you just assume everybody's calling 911. But it might be that nobody is because everybody's assuming somebody else has. And if you are the one who's driving by, go ahead and dial the three numbers. Would you? Because it might well be true that nobody else has. If you're the fourth caller, they will thank you nicely, I'm sure and send you on your way, and you'll know you've done the good human thing to D'oh.

spk_0:   6:04
Now, here's something we always do because we know the bystander effect. We get this so well, we see an accident. Whatever. We'll slow down and we'll look to see if somebody is there helping them. If somebody is there helping them, that will stop it or we'll go on. But if we don't see anybody, then it's on us to call it or to help. If we don't physically see somebody out there standing with phone or whatever. If we see that, we're gonna go on now, we're in a really rural area. Okay, so, you know, we don't see these very often and chances are really, really, really, really good. We know the people, at least in our home county. We mean, I'd say there's an 80% chance I know the person in a 30% chance. She doesn't Don't don't bash her for that. She doesn't work in town. She works in a different county.

spk_1:   6:53
And I am not natural, unnatural, socially wise person.

spk_0:   6:59
Yeah. I can not only tell you who they are. I can tell you who they're related to, who their parents were. Um, whether they're kids air in high school or grade school or grandkids or living in ST Louis now. And I could probably even get a pretty good chance to tell you what the preacher said last week at their church because I've heard it three times from the various different people I work with.

spk_1:   7:24
I, on the other hand, probably don't know him, but I'm stopping anyway and out here. A lot of people do that, but in the cities they don't

spk_0:   7:30
with her. It's kind of like one of those things is 80% of people who she is. She just doesn't know that. Yeah, because they see Your Honor. She rides her bicycle all over the place. They know her from riding her bicycle as a totally different aside. Hey, if you want to be a stalker or you want to wreck e your neighborhood in a way that nobody will ever pay one bit of attention to you, hop on a bicycle, put on some jelly being clothing, the bright cycling clothing, it just right around. Nobody will pay even the slightest bit attention to you, even as you stare into their windows and look into their backyard and see what kind of fruit trees they may have just decide.

spk_1:   8:19
Well, they'll notice you're out there. But it's where bicyclists belong.

spk_0:   8:24
And this is one way that turtle going back to your original point is one way that turtles have humans beat. This ends because when eternal comes along another turtle and sees it. That turtle, even if it's not even the same species of turtle, is turned over and can't get turned back over. The turtle will stop what it is doing. Turn around and plow the other eternal, over until he gets back on its feet.

spk_1:   8:49
They roll, roll each other over was seen. It happen. Several. We

spk_0:   8:51
see that it's kind of cool. And one turtle we watched for about 20 minutes trying to turn its friend over couldn't get it done. So finally we wait. You got that? Yeah. You spoke it on their business like there's nothing but even competitive male turtles where their brother, both in a competitive situation, will turn each other over. So

spk_1:   9:23
Okay, so why do you bring this up In a prepping sense?

spk_0:   9:26
Well, sense of mortality, part of what we're trying to do with three b y is too expand the thinking of preppers beyond the

spk_1:   9:46
end of the world as we know it into

spk_0:   9:48
the world's We're not exactly. We want him to be personal preppers, and we want people to realize that Excuse me. Prepping isn't just putting cans on the shelf. It is a just buying a gun and four boxes of ammo and putting them in the gun safe. That is not prepping loads part of profit, but it is not proper. Prepping is finding ways to prepare to help you when times are

spk_1:   10:27
bad or help your community, if your mind that way.

spk_0:   10:30
Well, yeah, I hope your family help your group people people. Exactly. And also prepping is away to help you live a better life. 24 73 65. Bye. Because you're prepared for bad things coming because they always come and they come one at a time. And excuse me, I'm not choking death. I promise. I just don't talk much. So I was limb up when I talk. Sorry. I apologize about that. Um, emergencies come as is Where is you Never know when they're gonna meet. You never know what kind of they're gonna be, but you've got a pretty good idea of some of them, you know, ice, you know, ice. Okay, you know this. You know snow

spk_1:   11:25
car accidents are gonna happen.

spk_0:   11:27
No car wrecks

spk_1:   11:28
are failures are gonna happen, you know, home emergencies, like equipment, critical equipment like eaters. Breaking houses can happen in

spk_0:   11:38
catch on fire. You know that. You know that grease fires happen to, you know that your car is not going to start one of these days except for this one. Of course, this one always will start.

spk_1:   11:51
But as I was going out the door, I did grab my jump battery pack in case we come across some other poor sods. Morning.

spk_0:   11:58
We did some other poor car can get started and, you know, we could carry jumper cables, but I'd rather carry a jump pack because I don't want my car to their sick car. Well, how about here's it aside. I just saw a bus that I've been seeing on sale at, um, on a social media site. Very distinctively painted bus, that green one. You know, I've showed it to you. Yeah. Is parked in a new place. I Yes, I know who bought it.

spk_1:   12:38
And this is how Everybody knows everything in Park to

spk_0:   12:42
Jim's house. Jim must have either bought it or borrowed it because Jim now has that really ugly, ugly green bus sitting in front of his house. Okay, pressing right along. So what brought all of this up? Well, I we are only immortal for a limited time on this earth. You can believe what you want to believe about the afterlife as way beyond the scope of what we're talking about. Today. We will let you do that. Prep yourself.

spk_1:   13:13
Many people have an inherent sense of immortality. They logically they would know It's not true

spk_0:   13:18
on Earth. But if you look

spk_1:   13:21
down in their hearts somewhere, they don't. I think that the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are gonna be stabbing them any time before their 70.

spk_0:   13:31
I really want to stop and make this clear. We're talking about your physical, corporeal human body. I'm not talking about your soul or anything like No, we're talking about your body here on Earth in the 100 some odd years you have available to you at best. Boom. That's what we're talking about. You're mortal being okay. I just need to be clear here because some people will misunderstand what we're saying.

spk_1:   14:01
But a lot of people behave as if they think they're mortal. Being is, in fact, immortal because they take no care. Think reasonable precautions for it.

spk_0:   14:13
And part of this is we come back to our old friend. Normalcy, bias, bad things happen to other people, not me. Yeah, that's just not true. That's just not true. And part of prepping is to get past normalcy, buys in all these other biases that stomach in and just they just crush our awareness. And one of the things that people just will put away they won't talk about. They will think about his death. But death will come for us all

spk_1:   14:52
even. Strangely enough, we live in a culture now that is permeated with fear. And people are afraid of all sorts of things that are really low probability events. Uh, how panic did people get about the romaine? The lettuce? Yeah. Germs on romaine lettuce from some supplier. Yeah, that island eyes. It's something you should pay attention to. Yeah, follow the recall. How freaked out did some people get about that sort of thing? I had four people like I personally know report that they ate romaine lettuce and then they got sick. Well, they weren't even in states that were even vaguely affected by the outbreak. A little bit of ah miss attribution Air going on there, shall we say? But even though people are permeated with fear about a lot of things that are really not worth that much angst, they will also blithely overlook things that are real risks. Because there very common risks. Such is distracted driving

spk_0:   16:00
you face them everyday. Distracted driving is probably the most common risk in my life. And sometimes I'm the distracted person. I really have to fight that because I'm all over the place. I'm here, they're in yon. You know, I just My mind runs a 3000 miles an hour. It's not a d a d d or anything like that. I mean, it's just I'm ready to move on to the next thing long before actually there. Yet

spk_1:   16:32
if you were actually to spend some time with a a M psychologist describing this sort of thing, you would get diagnosed with a case of a D. D.

spk_0:   16:42
But I don't really have one.

spk_1:   16:44
No, that's

spk_0:   16:45
I know what I don't know what it

spk_1:   16:46
is that they don't have one. I get that. I don't know

spk_0:   16:50
if I am concentrating on something. I, my poor loving wife well, knows what happens when you interrupt me while I'm writing

spk_1:   17:02
your poor, loving, headless wife who got it bitten Clean off. Oh, I don't know. Asking you what I should pack for your lunch when you couldn't go to the kitchen by yourself. Capital of funds dudes. I

spk_0:   17:17
was writing, you know. Hey, I would be honest with you. These these, you know, 1500 word articles and we're knocking about daily here. That's actually a little bit of work because we have full time jobs already. You know, we're what? Knocking out 1,502,018 today. To think that's running tonight that this podcast is actually going along with is, you know, a 2000 words article and we're doing We're putting this stuff out daily on different subjects, and this is one of those deals. When you stop to think about that 1,502,000 word, that's what a magazine article is, right? You pick up Time magazine there. 2000 word articles That's what most of them are, you know, and those guys pop one of those out every month or two. So yeah, it takes a little bit of work, so don't start made while I'm doing that. I think there may be. So anyway,

spk_1:   18:37
point is

spk_0:   18:38
coming from a newspaper background. 1500 words is I could write 1500 words on blowing my nose, but you really don't want todo.

spk_1:   18:45
I take four times along the right, as he does,

spk_0:   18:48
yes, but hers is much more. Her writing is much more. Uh uh. What's the word? I'm looking for good quality stuff on our site. That's what she comes up. Hey, would you like one of those super giant, ridiculously huge, delicious rolls?

spk_1:   19:05
Not today. Thank you.

spk_0:   19:06
We're passing the supergiant Ridiculously. Every delicious role play

spk_1:   19:10
region of the country, I believe, has its small town diner that produces those ridiculous cinnamon

spk_0:   19:17
cinnamon roll. It's home for what? Buck and 1/2. It's not like that. Yeah, you know, Cinnabon would sell it for, you know, 18 99. It

spk_1:   19:26
wouldn't be a good one. So that's what we're talking about is raising awareness on the common everyday hazards helping you be prepared for them Flip side of it personally, I don't have a great fear of death cause I figured out it's gonna happen to me anyway. But, you know, I don't know. I I don't know why it's true. I'm just not terribly afraid of dying. But we're also talking about quality of life here, and that's a big issue. And when you are well prepared for those little slings and arrows of fortune, your quality of life is much higher. It reduces your anxiety. You have much better day when such things happen. You could just roll right over him and go on. You are less likely to be injured or killed in the minor little dramas that come up. It just improves the quality of life a heck of a lot. And it's not about being afraid of stuff. It's just about a recognition that okay, things can happen. So let's make sure we I got the Ducks lined up, so if things happen, the Ducks will follow their mama like they do.

spk_0:   20:38
The thing about this particular podcast is kind of a little bit of offshoot because this podcast is actually companion to the article that I wrote, Okay, but unlike most of the podcast that we've done that, our companions to articles, this really isn't about the actual article that I wrote. It's about the why we write this type of articles and why we think it is important for people to think about this stuff just briefly about the article that I wrote. This system's a companion piece to, um, it's kind of a reflection I've been. I've been contemplating death for the last week or so Not not because I'm again. I'm not sick, not in orbit away. I re read one of my favorite books from my younger days. I didn't mention it. I'm not saying it's a great book. It's just this one of my favorite books, And I like books under

spk_1:   21:43
its light reading guys,

spk_0:   21:45
you know? So it's Piers Anthony in the book is on a pale horse. You know, he was going through a time where, when he wrote this, where death was really touching his life and I read, It's just extremely well written book, not even really a fan of the whole series that he's writing up this particular book. I really I just It's a fun book. It's interesting, but it's a fun book about death,

spk_1:   22:15
and it's It's It says some things, but it hides what it's saying in a fun little fantasy. Yeah, glove book.

spk_0:   22:27
So that got me thinking about death, and I was reminded when I learned as how I weren't that we are only immortal for a limited time because you're nevermore immortal than when you're a teenager. That is when you're the most immortal, I think. And by immortal I mean believing that you're immortal, not actually immortal. And so I told the story of With Death hit home to me. No. Yes, I had lost my grandparent's on my huh? My mother's father. I never knew he was many decades before I was born, but my grandparents on my father's side both died when I was a teenager, but they were old and they were sick. You know it happens. Old music people die. I don't think it's well, they were that old.

spk_1:   23:28
They were when you were a kid

spk_0:   23:32
years old, seems a lot younger than it used to. Actually, 60 years old is a lot younger than it was in the 19 seventies at least as far as lifespans. At least a CE faras the Yeah, well, he was. My grandpa was a three pack a day guy, you know? Yeah, I got him. So did past and that. Yeah, that that hit me. Especially where, when my grandmother died on Christmas Eve, Suddenly, unexpectedly. But that's still those old people. But then what really hit me were two friends, one of whom I'd had a had a really fresh on, you know, it was a great school, high school type crush. It wasn't real love, but it was. I had a total crush on one of them. Robin and Lila were their names, and they were driving over to the nearby city. Do you dress is for dance. And there was an old bridge. Now, if you've never driven on one of these old Midwestern bridges, depending on the size of the bridge, that could be anywhere from 1/4 miles a 3/4 mile long. And this was one of the old, uh, big River bridges. There was a lift, man, and we've been most of those air gone. Now I only know, like, one or two that are still used for highway traffic. But this was one of the particularly narrow, nasty serviced bridges. So it was a very dangerous bridge to start with, designed in the thirties for much smaller cars. And then they put ice on it. Well, they didn't put ice on ice form. Nobody without iced bridge to make going

spk_1:   25:33
pretty low.

spk_0:   25:34
Long story short. Robin and Tyler were killed in an auto accident on the bridge, A bridge that should have been replaced by then, except for one of the biggest controversies. Yada, yada, blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda. Doesn't matter. Died two friends of mine. We weren't best buddy close, but we were friends. I had a lot of angst in trouble in high school and not everybody. And I got along very well. But I got along with both of these girls. And I gotta admit their death must be up a little. It really did it just really when they died, my immortality died. I realized it can happen to us. You're one of most famous songs that nobody knows the lyrics, too, because he mumbles is Nirvana smells like teen spirit and, um, part of the whole concept of improvised. It smells like teen spirit is how our little group have always been and always will be. And get that when you're a team. It's always been and always will be, especially a small town team. I don't know if it's so much in in the big cities, but in small towns. You know where these kids have grown up from from day one. So they're always in the same class with the same group of people, you know, Same 2 300 kids, You know, everybody intimately. Well, and even though I hadn't been in their school systems since great one, I knew these people and they died and their death changed me. I was a different. I was a different person coming out of their funerals. Then I waas going in one of things we did when I was in high school. I wasn't I was in the band and we always did the, uh, Memorial Day parade. His last thing of the year. We did. We did the Memorial Day parade. We had a Memorial Day parade. I mean, do that most places. But we had one, okay, and it was basically a parade of veterans. And let's be honest. It was a braid of World War two in Korean veterans with the occasional old World War one guy's still around. This is before Vietnam was, you know, there was a couple of old bitter guys worrying They're old uniforms with, you know, peace now patches over the top of them because Vietnam was not a thing in the seventies, just a TTE this point in time. It was really now, thank goodness that's all gone. But so anyway, we'd march in the parade in the parade, would marched right down the right down the highway into the town cemetery, and then we would go up and do the national anthem in the cemetery where the American Legion did their thing. And then we would do taps, and we did taps in a really cool way. The bugler, the trumpeter and B I was with you would stand there in the front and do that. I played the tuba, and as the trumpeter played taps one of the tube of people, it was almost always may. I don't really know why I did it, but I would go back around behind the mausoleum and I would echo it back like it's echoing off the hills. Man, I haven't thought of this in years, but, well, it was really cool because, you know, pop pop pop with the trumpets and then off. That is a really soft like It's like it's mellowing and echoing off the hills. It was a need effect, so I went around there my senior year. This is this is the last time I'll ever do this. I went around behind there and I played taps, but I did my part that I was done and it turned around and there's Robin's great with the fresh start right on top of it. And until that point in time, right then right there. It never truly hit to me that all of these graves had people who, at some point in time, loved them, cared about them intellectually. I obviously knew this, but it never emotionally hit me. So what does this have to do with prepping? I'll tell you, we find our motivations in our lives way cannot do something in a vacuum. We really need to be motivated to do something. This whole experience of these two friends of mine dying changed my life as you can read the story. You know, it really changed my life because it took me out of my own head and got me looking outward. And I'm mentioning this not because I think the same thing should happen for you good people, but rather because this is the mechanism. I'm giving you a mechanism here because we all know

spk_1:   32:48
needs are not mechanisms. Okay, Says looking over at me, it's one of my mantra, as

spk_0:   32:54
is one of her mantra needs air, not making. And so we have needs, right? What we need, what prepping is mechanism. It's all about mechanism. It's all about how to do it, not the why why is external so

spk_1:   33:13
But the wide determines what you prepped for, So to keep in mind, what might really go on with your life and what you might really need determines what you're prepping is gonna be. And I don't know if an asteroid or an E m. P is gonna hit or if civil unrest will raise its ugly head in my remaining lifespan. But I am certain that other rains will come into my life and the perps have helped me before, and I expect the preps will help me again. So it's worth doing even without those big drama events that a lot of people focus on, especially the people who think we're nuts. They're really focusing on the big prom events. Yeah, I mean, but then I give him a jump when their car won't start after work on a cold day. And yeah, that's a little sweet. To be honest with you,

spk_0:   34:16
it also motivates me to never forget the little, perhaps, and they don't seem like perhaps the most preppers not dying is a prep

spk_1:   34:28
preparing to die. And I

spk_0:   34:30
know that sometimes not doing what it takes to not die is a prep. Putting your dead gum seatbelt on Had a Lila or Robin, either one been wearing their seat belt, they would have lived, period. I saw the accident. I saw the car. That was not a fatal accident. Two people who were not thrown clear from the car. They had a lot of metal around. They might have got dinged up pretty good, but they would have lived

spk_1:   35:00
as we lived when we were in an accident that way today

spk_0:   35:04
because we were wearing our seat belts, seatbelts will always save you, but they would have saved Robin, and they would have saved lives, but they weren't wearing them. So they are.

spk_1:   35:21
Most people wear seat belts now because they're afraid of the tickets, if nothing else. But it is an emblem for the small, but hi. Reeled kinds of, perhaps that we can all do every day. That could save a lot of heartbreak and a lot of, um, death, destruction and thanks.

spk_0:   35:48
Okay. That's what we wanted to say. So I hope you enjoy the podcast. Hope it doesn't something good for you and we don't let you go.