All right, welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to Luke at the Roost. This is your late night call-in radio show broadcasting out of my RV in Animus, New Mexico. At Smuggler's Roost. That's where the radio show happens. At Smuggler's Roost. Today is Monday, March 2nd. And we're going to get to our phones in just a second here. If you'd like to call in, the numbers 208-439-5.
That's 208-439 Luke. And if you can't make it to the phone, but you'd like to participate, you can send us an email. Emails may be read on the show if I think they're worthy. Our email address is submissions at Luke at the roost.com. Now, first up, on our caller line here tonight, we've got Clarence. Clarence, welcome to the show. How can we help you tonight, sir? Luke, I need you to settle something for me because I'm about to lose my mind.
room every single day, and when I finally said something about it, he told me he would die on this hill. Die on the hill of microwave tilapia. I need to know if I'm justified in wanting to throw this man's lunch directly into the dumpster. You are absolutely justified. Everybody knows that you do not microwave fish in the work break room. That is office work one-on-one, and if you're doing that, you're either a real douchebag
where eating fish is all you can really do, so you don't have a choice. So I would say to you, sir, if this is a white guy, throw his fucking fish away. If it's not a white guy, then maybe think twice before you do that, because there could be some religious or other reason that somebody can only eat fish. Oh, no, this is Rick. Rick Henderson, white guy born in Roswell, drives a Ford F-150 with a bumper sticker that says, I'd rather be golfing.
or consequences, this man has options, Luke. He brings in fresh tilapia from Smith's every Sunday night and portions it out for the whole week like he's meal prepping for some fitness competition, except he's 62 years old and shaped like a beer cake. And the smell, Luke, the smell is lemon pepper and sadness. Yeah, that is reprehensible behavior and you should not accept it under any
you catch that going on in your workplace, breakroom, take that fish and smash it in his face, because that is unacceptable. All right, hold on now. Smashing it in his face? That's a little extreme, even for me. I'm not saying I haven't thought about it, but I'm not trying to get fired over a fish, or worse, sued. Rick's the kind of guy who'd call his cousin, who's a lawyer, just to make my life miserable. But here's the thing. It's not just the smell. What else is it?
I mean, what else could it possibly be? The smell is atrocious. If you're going to eat fish in the workplace, then eat it cold. You don't go sushi or a tilapia salad or something like that. You don't put it in the microwave. That's what I'm saying. But Rick acts like I'm the unreasonable one. When I told him, it smells like a bait shop in there. He looked me dead in the eye and said, Clarence, this is healthy eating. You should try it instead of whatever garbage you're putting in your body. Luke, I was eating a ham sandwich, a normal,
fearing ham sandwich, and this man is lecturing me about health while he's turning our breakroom into a seafood market. Well, he's not wrong. I mean, a ham deli ham is mostly chemicals and preservatives and trash. It's not good for your body. I think everybody knows that. And fish is mildly better, but full of mercury and all sorts of other shit, depending on where it came from. But that's not the point. The point is you do not microwave fish in the break room.
Everybody knows that, and it's not okay to do. Okay, fine. Maybe the ham sandwich wasn't my best argument, but you're missing the bigger picture here. This isn't about nutrition. This is about Rick thinking the rules don't apply to him. Every single person in that shop knows you don't microwave fish. If it comes down to it, maybe you've got to microwave some fish and then put that under the seat in his car, and then he'll learn what that's like. Now we're talking.
kind of justice I can get behind. Slip some tilapia under his truck seat in the middle of summer and let the New Mexico heat do its work. By the time he figures out where the smell is coming from, it'll be baked into the upholstery like a permanent reminder of his crimes against the break room. But here's what really gets me, Luke. When I confronted him about it today, he didn't apologize. He didn't even pretend to feel bad. Yeah, those people are the worst. When I was a kid, I used to live by a lake.
We'd go down to the lake and catch a bunch of fish, kivers. We call them kivers. I think you might call them sunfish. They're just little fish, and we'd catch a dozen of them. Put them in a bucket. And then we took them down the street to this lady's house that was a pain in the ass to us. And we threw them up everywhere all around her house on a roof. I remember sliding one into her grill. We threw them under in the hard places to get to. And then all that summer, she just had fish rotting all around her property.
was. So that's what I recommend doing. I mean, somebody's going to think twice about their fish consumption in the workplace if you taint their living spaces with fish scent. Luke, that is diabolical. That's the kind of long-term psychological warfare I can respect. You didn't just get mad. You made her live with the consequences. And honestly, that's what Rick needs. A little perspective. Yeah, I mean, to be fair, I was like nine or ten years old, and she probably
of anything near that bad, but that's just where I was at in my life. I'm just, I'm leaning on my prior experiences to help you out in this situation because something has to be done about this guy. You can't, you can't allow that to continue in the workplace, and it's just, it's unacceptable behavior. And if you have to take matters into your own hands, this is one way to do it. You're absolutely right. And the thing is, management doesn't care. I mentioned it to our supervisor
just casually. Like, hey, maybe we should put up a sign about what's appropriate to microwave. And he just laughed it off, said, Clarence, we're all adults here. Adults. Rick is 63 years old, and he's acting like he's never shared a space with another human being in his life. Yeah, maybe you should bring some fish into the workplace and then gut it right over his keyboard. And then, you know, squirt all those fish guts into his keys so that that'll never come out. And then go microwave it and see how he likes it. Now you're speaking my language.
I can already picture it, Rick comes in the next morning, sits down at his desk, at his keyboard, makes that wet squelching sound when he presses the keys. The smell of fish guts mixed with that cheap lemon-scented cleaner he uses on his hands. And then, just as he's about to lose his mind, the microwave dings. Revenge is so, so sweet, my friend. It sounds like you've got a plan. I'm glad I could help. You know what, Luke? I came into this call just wanting someone to tell me I wasn't crazy. But you've given me
something way better. You've given me a roadmap. Teresa's going to ask me why I'm stopping at the fish market on the way home instead of getting her almond milk. And I'm just going to tell her it's for a work project, which technically it is. You know, I wouldn't be surprised if this one gets you a promotion. That's what I'm saying. Management wants to see initiative, right? Problem solving skills? Well, I'm about to solve the hell out of this problem. And if Rick wants to die in his tilapia hill,
in August. All right. Good luck to you. And the rest of your office. It sounds like a place I don't want to be. Next up on the line, we've got Shaniqua. Hey, Shanikwa. How's it going? What can we do for you tonight? My neighbor's room bar is cleaning my kitchen right now. And I don't know how to make it leave. I got home from work around midnight, fed the dog, went to bed, woke up at 2.30 to this whirring sound downstairs.
Came down with the spatula. I don't know why I grabbed the spatula. And there's this little robot vacuum just going back and forth across my kitchen floor like it owns the place. It came in through the dog door. Well, did it do a good job cleaning up your floors? That's kind of nice. Yeah, actually. There was some kibble. The dog scattered. And it got all of that. The grout looks better than it has in months. That's kind of the problem.
I've been standing here watching it work for 20 minutes now. And I keep thinking, I should just let it finish. It's doing the corners I never get to. But it doesn't live here, Luke. Well, I mean, it still sounds great. You've got a free little maid coming in and taking care of your place. That's delightful. You've got to be careful, though. I had a Roomba for a while. I was just talking to a friend about this the other day. One day, my dog had an accident on the rug, and the Rumba got to it, and it did.
not make my night. Let me tell you that. Actually, it gumbed up the Roomba such that it no longer moved. And I had to send it in for repair. But they understood. They understood the severity of the situation. And they covered the whole repair under warranty and replaced all the little pieces. That was, I didn't feel great about that one. You know, whoever had to take that box in for the RMA, they didn't have a good day. See, that's what I'm worried about. My neighbor, Gary, the room.
Bumba belongs to Gary next door. He's one of those guys who has the whole setup, the robot vacuum, the robot mop, probably a robot that folds his socks. If this thing tracks dog hair back to his place or breaks down in my kitchen, I'm the one who has to explain it. And Gary's already weird about boundaries. What are you talking about? You don't have to explain anything. It showed up in your, it's trespassing in your property. You don't have to tell Gary anything at all. He doesn't even know it's there.
How would you even know? I don't know if you can track those things. There's probably an app that lets you know where it is. I'm not sure. But how do you know it's Gary's Roomba? It could be anybody's Roomba. It has his name on it. He labeled it with a label maker. Says, property of Gary Mitchell, on the top in all caps. Gary labels everything. Okay, I stand corrected. Gary sounds like my kind of guy. Well, I would say to you, enjoy the Roomba. It's doing a great job cleaning up.
up your room. And if it tracks back dog hair back to his place, that's not your problem. You know, he should have kept a better eye on his, uh, on his Rumba. That's what my daughter said when she came down here about 10 minutes ago. She looked at me sitting on the floor with a spatula, looked at the Rumba, said, mom, you're being weird about this, and went back to bed. She's 14. Everything I do is weird. But the thing is, this is the third time this month, something of Gary's.
has ended up in my house. What else ended up in your house? Do you think he's sending things on covert missions into your house? Is Gary a creep? No, Gary's not a creep. Gary's 72 and mostly deaf and forgets to close his back door. Two weeks ago, his cats came through the dog door at five in the morning, and I woke up to it sitting on my chest, staring at me. Week before that, a grocery bag blew into my yard, and my dog dragged.
it had Gary's medication in it, his name right there on the pill bottles. I brought that back to him, and he didn't even realize it was missing. Well, you know, I would let the Rumba finish up his job and then return it to Gary, because he's an old man, he's doing his best. He's embracing technology. He's taking his meds. Good on Gary. Gary sounds like a nice neighbor to have. He is a nice neighbor. That's why I'm sorry. That's
sitting here at three in the morning trying to figure out what the right thing to do is, instead of just shoving it back out the dog door. Gary brought me tomatoes from his garden all last summer. When Brianna locked herself out of the house in January, he let her wait at his place for two hours until I got off shift. Well, here's what you do. First of all, you block that dog door for tonight, because you don't want the room but to leave on its own. You want it to finish cleaning up your kitchen.
So let the Rumba do its thing, finish doing its vacuum in of your lower floor there. And then when the battery dies, just go bring it back to Gary. Say, hey, this wandered over into my room, and it did a great job. Thank you, sir. The battery's not going to die. I've been watching this thing for 20 minutes, and it hasn't slowed down at all. Gary probably has one of those charging stations. This Rumba could be here until dawn making its little passes back and forth across my kitchen.
what's wrong with that? It's just going to do a very thorough job in getting all your crumbs. That's why I say you've got to block the dog door so it can't leave, because it is going to try to make its way back home to charge up. So you don't want it to go back and charge up and then come back again and keep doing it every day. But you do want to use the full value of that battery. Let it use its entire charge to clean up your room as best it can and then bring it back to him in the morning. I think you can just leave it alone, put the spatula down, and go back to bed.
to bed. I have to be at the clinic in four hours. And if I go to sleep now, I won't wake up when the alarm goes off. This is just what I do now on Mondays. I get home. Griana tells me about whatever happened at school. I check the bees. I make dinner. I sit on the couch until about midnight. Then I come down here and wait for Tuesday to start. All right. Well, then you got four hours to
for four hours. I don't care what you do. But it sounds like this call is over, so get to it. And that's what I'm trying to say. I'm just trying to be nice about it. You're right. I heard Clarence earlier talking about his co-worker with the fish, and you told him to do something about it. I'm calling about a Rumba at three in the morning, like that's the actual problem. The actual problem is I've been doing this same Tuesday morning thing for six months, and I don't know how to stop.
Well, yeah, you do. You know how to stop. I mean, on Monday, when you get home, eat dinner, and then go to bed. You don't have to wait until three in the morning to go to bed. Just go to bed at a reasonable time and get up in the morning, just like any other day. For some reason, whatever you're doing on Monday and Tuesday nights here is turned into a habit for you. And all you have to do to break that habit is do something different, consciously. So it could be anything. You could go for a walk if you want to spend the next couple of things.
hours, it's nice out. You could go walk up and down the street. Or you could watch a movie, or write a journal. There's plenty of things you could do tonight, and then next week when this comes around again, just go to bed a little bit earlier and get yourself a full night's sleep. I tried that. Three weeks ago, I took a Benadryl at 10 and made myself get in bed. Woke up at 1.30, on the kitchen floor anyway. I don't remember walking down here.
found me in the morning and didn't even ask about it. Just stepped over me to get cereal. Well, yeah, Benadryl's going to do crazy shit to you like that. You don't want to take Benadryl. Maybe try melatonin or even better just to exercise during the day so you're appropriately tired out so you can sleep normally. Also, there's some other sleep type things you can do to get your circadian rhythm back in rhythm. You know, turn off the lights. Stop looking at screens a couple hours before bed. All this stuff is pretty well
figure it out. You know, find yourself some sort of relaxing sleep music to listen to. But you can get yourself into a better routine than you're in, for sure. The screen's thing is funny, because I spent all day looking at veins through skin, trying to find something to stick a needle in. Then I come home and stare at my phone until my eyes hurt. You'd think after eight hours of that kind of focus, I'd want to look at something farther
The Rumba just made it under the kitchen table. Excellent. It's doing a wonderful job. My recommendation for you tonight is to go outside for a little while. Go look at the stars. Go look at the moon. Take a little walk down the street and see the world at the nighttime. It's a different experience. And when you get home, you'll feel a little bit better. And next week, just try to get to bed a little bit earlier. And don't worry yourself too much about waking up to you.
too early or not sleeping through the night. And eventually, you'll fix your rhythm and get yourself into a more reasonable and sane sleep experience. That's what I say. I already know what's out there. The streetlight, two houses down, has been out for a month. Gary's truck is parked crooked in his driveway, like always. The Hendersons have that inflatable Easter bunny up even though it's only March. Well, you're looking at a very specific.
set of close things. I'm talking about looking at the stars and the sky and the different animals and insects that you see out at night that aren't out during the day. See if you can find an owl in a tree or a fox running through the grass. Whatever it is, there's a whole world out there that happens at night. And it's starting to sound to me like you don't want to fix this situation. You enjoy wallowing in your insomnia. I don't enjoy it. I just know what happens.
when I try to change something on purpose. Last year, I decided Brianna and I were going to have family dinners at the table every night. Real conversations. I made a whole plan. Well, try, try, try again. But we're not going to be here to enable you to waste the rest of your evening. So I suggest you go outside, take a little walk and tire yourself out. Get some exercise and you'll feel better. And let that room do what it's doing. And be grateful that you've got a free kitchen.
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All right, and we are back. Thank you to our sponsors. And next up the line, we have Silas. Silas, welcome to the show. What's going on in your world today, sir? Hey, brother. Good to be back. So listen. I need to talk about something that happened last week at the wellspring. And I am still turning it over in my head. One of our longtime members, a woman named Kara, who has been.
been with us for three years. She left, which, you know people leave sometimes. That is part of the journey. We do not hold anyone against their will. Well, you'll have to remind me, what is this Wellspring that you speak of? Oh, brother, yeah, I forget not everyone is tuned in before. The Wellspring is a community I found it about six years ago. We have got about 40 people living together on 200 acres outside Deming. We are exploring what it means to live.
in radical honesty and connection. Shedding all the false constructs society puts on us. Communal living. Shared resources. Body acceptance, the whole thing. We practice what we call the current, which is basically about flowing with truth instead of resisting it. But anyway, Kara leaving, that is not the problem. Okay, it sounds a little cult-like to me, but what is the problem, Silas? How can we help you? Yeah, I get that.
lot. I really do. But the problem is her husband Marcus stayed. And Marcus and Kara, they came to us together three years ago, right? They were a unit. And now she has gone. And he is here. And he came to me two nights ago and said, he has never felt more free in his entire life. He said living with Kara was like wearing a wet blanket for 15 years. And now he can finally breathe. Okay. Well, uh, how do you feel about that? It sounds like.
like maybe Kara wasn't so nice to live with. So why is that bothering you that your member here, Marcus, is enjoying his life a little bit more without Kara? Because Luke, and this is the crazy part. I watched them together for three years, and Kara seemed happy. She participated in everything. The ceremonies, the sharing circles, the unbinding rituals, all of it. She seemed like she was thriving. And now I am sitting here wondering if I created a situation where Marcus first.
permission to leave his marriage because of the way we talk about shedding old patterns and false commitments. Like, did I break up a marriage? Well, it sounds like Carol wanted to leave. She no longer wanted to be part of the community, right? And who knows why? Did she tell you why she was leaving? That is the thing. She did not really explain it. She just said she needed to go back to the real world. This was not for her anymore. Very quiet about it. Very calm.
packed up her stuff over two days. Well, it doesn't sound like you did anything to make her leave or to break up the marriage. She just didn't want to be there anymore. And like you said, if people are free to leave, they're free to leave. And she wanted to leave, so she left. And now it seems like Marcus is happy there and all is well at the Wellspring, right? I hear you, I do. But here is what is eating at me, brother. Marcus told me that during one of our unbinding ceremonies about four months ago,
He had what he called a revelation. He said he realized he had been living in fear of Kara's judgment his whole adult life, and that watching other people at the Wellspring live without shame, showed him he did not have to carry that anymore. And I remember that ceremony. I led it. Can you tell us what, uh, what is your unbinding ceremony? That sounds like an interesting event. What's that entail for the listeners at home? Oh, the unbinding.
It's one of our most powerful rituals. We do it. Every full moon. And it's all about shedding the layers of shame and fear that society wraps around us. We gather in the main circle under the stars, and we start with a meditation to quiet the mind. Then we pass around a talking stick. Whoever holds it shares something they've been carrying, something that's been binding them. Could be a memory, a fear, a past version of themselves.
Okay, and it sounds like Marcus here was bound by his wife Kara, who's no longer in the picture, so it seems to me like the problem is solved, and it was Kara. But Luke, that is what I keep wrestling with. Because when Marcus shared during that ceremony, he talked about fear of judgment, in general terms. He never said Kara's name. And I responded, I remember this clearly. I said something like, brother,
your life who makes you feel small is not serving your highest self. And everyone nodded and hummed in agreement. And now I am thinking, did I just give him permission to see his wife as the enemy? Because at the Wellspring, we talk a lot about how the people who love your false self will resist your true self-emerging. Maybe you did, but, I mean, maybe she was the enemy. It sounds like they did not have a happy marriage. If she wanted to leave, she left, and now he's happier without her.
Sounds like justice was done. Like goodness was served and everybody's in a better place now. Why is this bothering you, buddy? You know what? You are right. You are absolutely right. Marcus is lighter now, more he is building furniture in the workshop and teaching some of the younger members about carpentry. Sounds great. Sounds like the unbinding work and everybody's unbound and things are moving forward down there at the Wellspring.
Yeah, brother, you are right. And Kara, she landed on her feet, too. Marcus told me she got an apartment in Los Cruces. She is working at a credit union. She is fine. All right. Sounds like everybody's fine and everything's good. You get anything else to say to our radio listeners at home before we move on to the next caller? Well, I mean, if anyone listening is carrying something heavy, something that feels like it is binding them to a version.
of themselves that does not fit anymore. We do welcome seekers at the Wellspring. You can find us at Wellspring Dem. We have a weekend retreats coming up in two weeks. No commitment. Just come see what communal living and radical honesty can do for your spirit. All right, thanks for the call, buddy. And if anybody's looking to join a cult, it looks like Silas is leading one over in Deming, so you can stop by there for their open house and join an unbinding ceremony.
Next up on the line we've got Vince. Vince, welcome to the show. How can we help you today? Hey, Luke. Man, I'm calling from a flying J outside Deming. And I just watched a guy in pajamas take a Zoom call at a picnic table at 11 p.m. And I think the whole country's losing its mind with this work-from-home thing. Like, I've been driving past RV parks full of these digital nomads with their styling dishes and their ring lights. And I'm starting to think we're creating a generation of people who have no
I haul freight, right? 48 states been doing this 12 years, and I'm watching people turn their entire lives into this weird performative thing, where they're never really working, but they're also never really off. And they're doing it from their living rooms or campgrounds or wherever, and something about it is just fundamentally broken. Well, why do you think it's fundamentally broken? I mean, I squarely fit into that demographic. I'm a digital nomad. I'm on a
a Starlink right now running a radio show from an RV in the desert of New Mexico. So I travel all around and I work at whatever hours I need to. And I'm I perform all sorts of different different types of things. Music and live streams and radio shows and videos. So maybe it's not that anything's broken. It's just that work has fundamentally changed. And what we as society is a lot of things.
value has fundamentally changed. There's not a lot of traditional type jobs you might have found 20 years ago around this area these days. I don't think that's something wrong with the people. Okay, okay, okay, okay. But here's the thing, though. You're doing something real, right? Like you're creating actual content. You're entertaining people. There's a product at the end of it. What I'm talking about is these people who are in meetings about meetings, who are on Slack channels,
the coordination of other coordination. And they've never touched a physical thing in their entire careers. Well, you're not seeing the part of my life when I'm not performing. Like, this isn't the stuff that makes me money. The stuff that makes me money is sitting in Zoom meetings about future Zoom meetings and Slack channels about organization of work that doesn't exist yet that we're never going to do. That's just what the workplace is these days, whenever you have more than three people involved.
I don't know that there's any getting away from that because it's just how people operate in groups. Wait, so you're telling me that even you, running this show that's clearly a real thing people are listening to right now, you're spending most of your actual working hours in the same bureaucratic nonsense that's making me crazy. That's even worse. That's my whole point. Because now you've got this skill, this talent. You're clearly good at what you do. And the system has you trapped in the same hamster wheel as everyone else. And here's what really gets me about it.
The thing I've been chewing on for 200 miles. Well, yeah, I'm in the same hamster wheel as everyone else. And it's those meetings about the meetings and the Slack Channel nonsense and the bureaucratic paperwork bullshit. That's a thing I like to call billable hours. Whereas this radio show, I'm not billing anybody for this. This isn't making me money. All of our advertisers are not real companies. I made them up. So, yeah. Anybody that wants to do that want to be.
wants to like eat and have diesel to get around is going to have to do some things they don't want to do, like waste a bunch of time in a bunch of meetings, talking a bunch of nonsense. The actual producing of a product, yes, I do that, but that's a very minimal part of my day-to-day life. Okay, but that's exactly what I'm saying is broken. You just described it perfectly. The thing that matters, the thing that's actually real, that's the smallest part of your day.
And I get it. I'm not naive. I know you've got to pay bills. Yep. Yep. And maybe that is broken, but I don't see it changing anytime soon. It's been like that. I mean, I've worked in tech for my whole career since I was 18. And it's always been that way. It's just a little more sophisticated and a lot more comfortable now that I don't have to wear a, you know, buttoned down shirt in a cubicle to do it. I can do it from a campground under the stars on my own hours. Right.
That's where I think the real danger is. Because it's comfortable. Because you can do it in your pajamas from under the stars. People don't realize they're being boiled alive like frogs in a pot. At least when you were in the cubicle with a button-down shirt, you knew it sucked. You could see the walls. You could feel the fluorescent lights. Draining your soul. There was an honesty to how miserable it was. There was, but I would disagree. I think that people fully understand what's going on and that they're being boiled alive like frogs and doing nonsense.
work to make a paycheck and satisfy the whims of leadership and people that think they're more important. Like, everybody understands what's going on here. That's capitalism. But see, that's where I think you're wrong. Because I talk to these people at truck stops, at diners, at rest areas, and they're not cynical about it like you are. They actually believe in the productivity theater. I strongly believe in productivity.
The bit that you're talking about with the meetings and stuff is not that. Productivity is a personal thing. And I'm very much into organization and task lists and note-taking and that sort of stuff to keep my own thoughts and ideas and goals in the forefront and the focus. That's how I'm able to produce actual products and real results while still spending most of my time with nonsense bullshit.
driven by management that think they have ideas. Like most of the real work gets done underneath all that, when you just kind of ignore those meetings and what's being said in them and get your work done however you can. Okay, so now we're getting somewhere. You're describing this whole shadow economy of actual work that happens in the margins while everyone pretends the meetings matter. And that's fine for you? You've figured out how to gain the system.
got your Seneca and your task lists, and you're carving out the real stuff around the edges. But here's what's eating at me. And this is why I had to call tonight. What is eating at you? And why did you have to call tonight? I watched a guy take a Zoom call at a picnic table at 11 o'clock at night, in his pajamas, at a rest stop outside Las Cruces. And the thing that got me wasn't that he was working late. It said he looked completely normal doing it. Like this was just Tuesday for him. And I realized, this guy doesn't even know where the last.
line is anymore between his life and his work, between being on and being off. Between the real world with the wind and the sand and the actual physical place he's standing and whatever digital nonsense he's plugged into on that screen. Well, you don't know that. He might be very much aware of what's going on and just enjoying the fact that he's taken his bullshit meetings where he wants to be the way that he wants to take them in his pajamas where he's comfortable. Would you like it more if he was sitting in a cubicle under fluorescent lighting, watching his soul die,
and not being able to take a piss when he needed to or go into the loves and get himself a hot dog. Like, he's on his way somewhere. He's getting what he can out of life while still doing his other work bullshit and having something to bill for. I don't see a problem with that. No, no, no. You're missing what I saw in his face. I watched him for like three minutes before I drove off. And he wasn't some guy who figured out the system like you did. He had this.
look, this desperate energy, like he was performing being casual, like he had to prove to whoever was on that call, that he could work from anywhere, that he was living the dream, that this was freedom. But his shoulders were all hunched up, and he kept looking around like he was worried someone would see him. And the wind was blowing his laptop screen around, and he was trying to hold it steady with one hand while gesturing with the other. Well, that does sound kind of unpleasant, but I am not.
I'm not sure why it bothers you so much. I mean, you've got your job. You don't have to do that if you don't want. Live and let live, man. If he's getting paid, he's doing his job and he's living the way he wants to live, good for him. Because it's spreading. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Three rest stops in a row, all of them full of RVs, with Starlink dishes pointed at the sky like some kind of digital refugee camp. People who think they escape the office, but they just brought the office with them, and now there's nowhere left that isn't work. Well, sure, they're not.
is. There's the national parks, and there's the road. And even though they have the Starlink dishes up there where they're stopped at a rest stop, that doesn't mean that that's their entire day every day. You know, they're taking their meetings in between travel, between the places they want to go. But that's the thing. They're not taking their meetings in between travel. They're taking their meetings instead of travel. I talked to a guy at the Flying Jay who told me he and his wife used to take these epic road trips, you know, the kind where you drive all day, and then find
weird little motel with a neon sign and a pool that's half empty, and you eat at the diner next door, and you talk about whatever comes to mind. And now, now they park the RV at a rest stop for a week, because his boss says he can work remotely, and she's got her virtual classroom set up in the back. Yeah, I'm not seeing the problem with that. I mean, that sounds like an ideal way to work to me, as opposed to having one week off per year where you get to travel and, you know, totally shut off
from work. I like the idea of being able to move the office with you wherever you want to go and to work your own hours and your pajamas. That sounds much more pleasant to me than the traditional method of working, which is to do the same useless bullshit to satisfy the suits from wherever they tell you to be while they're watching you. You're still not hearing me. It's not about the flexibility. It's about what happens to people when there's no separation anymore. When I
in this truck, I'm working. When I stop, I stop. There's a door I close. There's a moment where I'm done. No, I do understand that. And what I'm saying is I don't think you're just, you're not seeing the part when they close, they close too. You know, they turn off the Starlink. They go out to the National Park. They're not working 24 by 7 in the rig. They're working when they're at a rest stop in between the destinations that they're going to. Then why was Pajama Guy on a call at a car?
11 p.m. on a Tuesday. That's not working flexible hours. That's working all the hours. And you know what really got under my skin? I've been reading Seneca. Right. The letters, and he talks about how people in Rome would complain they had no time for philosophy, no time to think, and he'd say, you have plenty of time. You just fill it with nonsense. And that's exactly what I'm seeing. Well, you're seeing him taking his meetings at 11 p.m. on a Tuesday, but you're not seeing
that he was not taking meetings at 4 p.m. on a Tuesday when instead he was out exploring the National Park during daylight hours, where otherwise he would have been tied to a cubicle. So that is flexible hours. Just because you're seeing him working late at night, he might prefer that. I prefer that. So a lot of people are night people, and we get our best, most productive work done during the nighttime hours. That's how we want to work. But during the day, we're sleeping and doing the other day.
time activities that we want to do. Okay, okay, but here's what I can't shake. I've been driving for 18 years. I know what freedom looks like. Freedom is when you finish a hall and you're done. You park, you walk away, you exist as a human being who isn't defined by what you produce. These people, they've convinced themselves that being able to answer emails from a rest stop in New Mexico is freedom, but they never actually leave. I don't know that you can say that because I'm one of the
those people and I can absolutely leave. And I feel very free. If I want to go up to Alaska tomorrow, I can do that. And I can only do that because I have the flexibility to work from wherever I am on the way up there and back. But I'm not generally, sometimes I do work, you know, 24-7, but I'm not doing that as a general rule. And I don't think most of these people are either, because, to be perfectly honest with you, most people are far too lazy for that. Wait, hold on.!
from the road, like actually doing this right now? Because if that's true, then you're proving my exact point, and you don't even see it. Well, I live in an RV full time, so my house is my RV. It's parked right now. I'm in a stationary location, but there are lots of times when I take a smaller trailer out or just my truck, and I go for road trips all around the country, and I work along the way, yeah, and it's fine. But I'm still
you know, the same amount of hours as anybody else would in an office, usually way less. I'm doing it on my own time when and where I feel like it, which is, it's different than being on a schedule. Like, you're on a schedule and that's okay for you. If you want to do the hall and you know you have so many hours to drive each day and when you're done, you're done, that's great for you. My work is different. It's a different kind of work. And I do it in fits and bursts.
I'm most productive in overnighters. That's just when my brain works in a way that I can produce stuff without being distracted by meetings and bullshit that you would get in a normal office environment. So you're living in the RV full time, which means you never actually go home. That's what I'm talking about. You've dissolved the boundary completely. I go home to Tucson. I see my sister. I sit on her porch. I exist in a place that has nothing to do with the road.
You've turned the road into your entire life and you're calling that freedom. But what you've really done is made it so there's nowhere left to escape to. And here's the thing that's eating at me, the thing I've been trying to figure out for 200 miles. Well, no, that's not true at all. My, I do live in the RV full time, but I'm not on the road full time. I have it parked at a place in New Mexico. And I consider this home for right now, but if I want to change home, I can move it at any time. When I decide,
to go out on adventures, I take a separate trailer, and I bring my laptop with me, and when I need to do work, on the road, I do work on the road. Um, but my entire life is not work. But you brought the laptop. That's the whole thing. You can't even go on an adventure without bringing the ability to work with you. When I take time off, I leave the truck. Well, yeah, but I also use the laptop for things like this radio show, which is not my work. This is a thing that I do for fun.
I do it to make videos and to create content and to take pictures and to keep in touch with people. The laptop is my window into society, really, because for the most part, I am alone. I travel alone mostly. I spend most of my time alone, and the laptop, the computer, is how I communicate with other people. And that's not because I'm so tied to a laptop that I never get the computer.
opportunity to talk to people in real life. It's because I don't like to talk to people in real life. I would rather talk to them through the computer, where I can have, you know, many things going on at the same time. Okay, so now we're getting somewhere. You don't like talking to people in real life, so you've engineered an entire lifestyle where you never have to. And you're calling that a preference. But what if it's actually making you worse at being a person? Because here's what Seneca says. This is the part that's been stuck in my head
since I pass that guy at the picnic table. He says we're social creatures, that we need actual presence with other humans, not just voices through screens. And I'm watching an entire generation rewire themselves to prefer the screen, and they think it's just a personality quirk. But what if they're actually atrophying something essential? Well, I don't think so, because I've preferred this, and I used the word prefer, since I was like eight years old. It's just I would rather communicate with people through the computer.
I mean, you're reading Seneca, but he didn't have a screen. So you're reading information from before any of this even existed. He had no idea what communication in the 21st century would be like. And it's fantastic. So, yes, I'm calling this my preference, and I have engineered my life in this way, so that I don't have to get stuck in a corner listening to somebody's sad-sac story that I don't care about, well, nodding politely every fucking
day. I don't want to do that. I would rather just type to them real quick and continue doing what I'm doing for my own self-gratification. But that's exactly what I'm saying. You've optimized yourself into isolation, and you're defending it like it's enlightenment. You don't want to hear somebody's sad story, so you've built a life where you can just close the laptop when people get inconvenient. And I get it. I really do. Because half the people I meet at truck stops are boring as hell. But the other half,
You only find them by sitting through the boring ones first. You're filtering out all the friction, all the unexpected human content. And what you're left with is this curated experience, where everything serves your self-gratification, which you just said out loud like it's a good thing. Yes, that's exactly what I'm doing. And it is a good thing. It's a great thing, actually, because it affords me the ability to spend my time on this planet
The way that I want to spend it, which is advancing my skills, creating content, and exploring the world, and not sitting there listening to somebody's story about their gout again and again and again. Well, sometimes that does come up and, you know, you try to be kind to people and listen and be helpful when people need help and have real human connections. I prefer that the vast majority of my communication goes through the computer that I can shut down when I want to.
and never be pinned and stuck in a social situation I don't want to be in. And I'm not saying that's enlightenment. I'm saying that's what I prefer. You seem to be thinking that your way of being a truck driver in a traditional work-type environment is enlightenment. And it's not. If it was, we'd still be doing that. But everybody's moved away from it for a reason. And that's because the technology has advanced to a point where we can. Because it sucked before.
Nobody enjoyed it, and life was less meaningful then, for a lot of people. So if you enjoy your life the way that it is, that's great. I enjoy my life the way that it is, and I think that the guy taking his meeting in his pajamas at the truck stop was doing well. I mean, if that's how he wants to live his life, good for him. At least he got to see Las Cruces. A lot of people have never left where they were born. Wait, wait, wait, hold on. You just said life was less meaningful before, but people you used.
used to build entire communities. They used to know their neighbors for decades. They used to have these deep roots. And now you're telling me that guy in his pajamas taking a Zoom call at a rest stop at 11 at night has more meaning in his life? He's not seeing lost cruises. He's sitting at a picnic table staring at a screen. He could be anywhere. That's the whole problem. And here's what's really getting me. Because you keep saying, if that's what he wants, like wanting something makes it good for you.
today, too. There are plenty of communities of people that are traveling in RV, nomad communities, and all sort, any sort of interest that you're in has a community built around it. You just have to look for it. And the way that you look for it is on the computer. And a lot of them are served and managed and organized from a computer. So you just saw this guy at 1130 and you're, you're picturing his entire day is just that. And it's not. That's one portion of his day while he took a meeting at 1130 while he wasn't doing
something else. But he had the whole rest of his day to explore Las Cruces and to drive around and see different places and explore different things and talk to different people. You're missing that part. But that's just it. You don't know that he did any of those things. You're assuming he explored Las Cruces because it makes the story work. But what I saw was a guy who brought his entire office with him and couldn't even disconnect for one night. And these nomad communities you're talking about, they're not real communities. They're people who happen.
to be parked near each other while they're all staring at their own screens. Well, obviously, you've never seen them because that's not the case at all. If you were to go to a place like Quartzite in the winter where all the RV nomads go and have their campfires and, yeah, they're staring at screens for a certain portion of time, but for the rest, it's probably the most authentic community experience you could find anywhere. So you're also looking at the half hour you saw this,
guy out at a picnic table and fitting his day into what fits your side of the story. So the truth is neither one of us knows what this guy's life is like. But you're saying that he spends his whole life tied to a screen, and I'm saying he spent that half hour you saw him tied to the screen. Okay, you got me there. I don't know what that guy's whole day looked like. But here's what's really eating at me. And maybe this is why I'm so worked up about it. I heard Cheniqua earlier
Tonight, the woman who called in about the Roomba, and she said something that stuck with me. What did Cheniqua say that stuck with you? She said she's been stuck in this patent for six months, where she can't sleep. She's exhausted. Everything's falling apart, and she just watches it happen instead of fixing it. And when Luke asked her why, she said she was tired of trying. And that's what I'm seeing everywhere now. People who've optimized themselves into these little bubbles where they control everything. And then when real life shows up messy and inconvenient,
They just... Yeah, but you're doing the same thing. It's no different. If you're... You've got your life in your little bubble where you work for your set hours, and then when it's done, it's over, and you do what? Sit down and watch the game and drink a beer? Like, I don't know what your life is, and you don't know what their life is, and nobody knows what my life is, and everybody's doing their own thing the best they can. But to say that remote work is destroying workplace culture is absurd, it's definitely a...
affording people the flexibility to do things they never could have done before. And I know that because I'm doing them. I've seen most of this country when most of the people that I came up with have never left the place they were born. And yeah, they may have roots there. They may have relationships with the guy at the fucking candy store that got shut down 10 years ago. But they've never seen the Northern Lights. They've never seen the Milky Way. They've never gone to a national park. So it's all about what each individual wants out of life.
life. And now, more than any time ever in history, you can get what you want out of life because of the flexibility of remote work. You know what? You're right that I sit in my truck and listen to audio books. And I've got my own routine, but here's the difference. When I pull into a flying, Jay, I don't have a choice about who I'm going to run into. I can't curate it. I can't swipe left on the guy who wants to talk about his gout. And yeah, most of those conversations are nothing. But every once in a while,
who completely changes how you see something. And it only happens because you couldn't avoid them. And you keep talking about seeing the northern lights in the Milky Way like that's deep human experience. But that's just consumption. Well, that's like your opinion, man. I think that's a spiritual experience that is much deeper than anything I've ever had in a traditional lifestyle. So it may not mean anything to you, but if you came from the East Coast where you never see those things, that's a
big fucking deal. And I go to lots of flying Js and I can't curate who I see there. You know, everybody has to go to the gas station. Everybody's going to go to the grocery store. Everybody's going to, you know, go out and interface with the world. That doesn't mean that I want my entire life to be built around that. I would rather have my time be my time and have it curated. Yeah, because it's my only time here on this planet. And I'm not going to allow other people to take it from me.
But that's exactly what I'm talking about. You just said you want your time curated so other people can't take it from you. But the whole point of being alive is other people. Seneca wrote about this. He said the person who's always trying to control their time ends up losing it anyway because they're so busy protecting it. They forget to actually live. And I'm not saying the northern lights aren't beautiful. I've seen them up in Montana. And yeah, it was incredible. But you saw them. And then what? I saw them and I took pictures. And then I learned.
to take better pictures and then I learned to find different ways to find them again so I can take even better pictures. I love the Northern Lights and I love sky phenomenon and it teaches me or motivates me to learn more about how the universe works and where they come from and why and to think about what else is out there in the vast expanse of space. And I don't really care what Seneca says about anything because Seneca is dead and he's missed all of this. Seneca never
had any real world experience similar to anything that anybody today has. So his wisdom there is lacking a lot of context. Okay, but Seneca's whole point was that the fundamentals of human nature don't change. People 2,000 years ago were dealing with the same exact thing, trying to figure out how to live a good life, how to connect with other people. What actually matters? And yeah, he didn't have
cameras or the internet, but he understood that when you spend all your time chasing the next perfect experience or the next perfect photo, you're not actually present for the thing itself. You're already thinking about how to optimize it, how to capture it better next time. And I get that learning about the Aurora and the solar winds is fascinating. I really do. But when does the learning stop being about wonder and start being about control? It's always about wonder. It's never about control. Because it's by its nature, it's something
can't be controlled. So it's always about learning and making better content and sharing that with other people. That's how I interface with others that can't do this because they're stuck to their desk jobs and they're never going to leave Massachusetts or whatever city it is that they live in because that's the only place they can get a job. That's my thing. That's what I enjoy getting out of life. And if you enjoy drinking your beers after your truck route,
Good for you. That's great. But I think that's a very limited experience. And it's not what I want for myself. So, I mean, enjoy reading Seneca. If that's what makes you happy, but don't think that you have any answers about the human condition or how humans were meant to behave because you're reading antiquated books from somebody that didn't know. The fundamentals of human nature do change because the world changes. And that's
to what the whole purpose of life is, is to respond to the change going on in the universe. You know what? You just said something that actually makes me think you're proving my point without realizing it. You said you make content to share with other people who are stuck at desk jobs and can't leave Massachusetts, right? So your whole experience of wonder, your whole spiritual connection to the Northern Lights, it's incomplete until you've packaged it up and shared it with an audience. That's not actually about the Aurora. That's about you needing validation from other people,
for having seen it. And you say human nature changes. But that right there, that need to have witnesses to your experience, that's ancient as hell. That's exactly what Seneca was writing about when he talked about people who can't enjoy anything unless they're performing it for someone else. Well, there may be some level of truth to that. I can't disagree with you there, but it's missing the larger thing that I am actually out there under the Northern Lights experiencing what's going on in real time.
So yeah, the pictures and the sharing and the audience motivate me to get there, but that motivation gets me there. That's the thing. So I don't know if you've ever sat out under the Milky Way overnight to take a time lapse, but it's not an active process. I set up my camera and I let it go, and then I spend the rest of the night just sitting there and looking up and wondering about my place in the universe. And that's not something that can be shared with an audience. So a portion of what you say is
true. There is truth to, yeah, a large part of the motivation is to share my experience with an audience. But that's not the whole experience. And it's not even the largest part of it. So, I mean, I'm not sure why you're trying to be so right here because you're not. Okay, fair enough. I hear you on that. You're actually out there sitting under the stars doing the thing. And yeah, that part is real.
can take that from you. But here's what I'm still stuck on. You said the fundamentals of human nature change because the world changes. And I just don't buy that. The world changes, sure. The technology changes. But the actual deep stuff, loneliness, connection, meaning, purpose, that doesn't change. Yeah, it does change. It changes because of the technology and environment and social norms and pressures. Of course it changes. It changes because of war.
It changes because of politics. It changes for every reason. Everything is always changing. And loneliness and connection and meaning and purpose, those do all change. Seneca lived to be like, what, 30? I mean, people didn't even live to 90 back in his day. He's got, he had way less lifetime to even think about living than people do today because everybody died from everything. It was not a...
The medicine just wasn't keeping people alive very long back then. So they had a limited lifetime to experience what they wanted to experience. And they also didn't have transportation. They didn't have planes. I mean, you couldn't get on a horse and go up to, I don't know, wherever, I don't know where Seneca was from. Greece, maybe, Italy, somewhere around there. Rome? Yeah, that's Italy, right? So Seneca's in Rome. How far could he even?
travel in his lifetime without dying of typhoid or whatever the fuck killed people then. Now we live to 90, 100 years old as a general rule and we can travel across the world in a day. It's a very different place and we have very different values and everything is different. Seneca was 65 when Nero forced him to kill himself, actually. You're right that lifespansans a long
and we can fly to Tokyo in 14 hours. But here's what I'm getting at. You keep talking about how everything's different now, but you just spent the last 10 minutes defending your need to chase experiences and share them with an audience, which is the exact same thing people were doing 2,000 years ago. They were writing letters. They were telling stories around fires. They were making art to share what they saw. The medium changed, but the impulse didn't. And you say, loneliness changes, but I drive past those RV parks.
And I see people sitting alone in their little mobile boxes with their satellite internet. And that looks like the loneliest thing in the world to me. They've got the whole country at their fingertips. But they're more isolated than ever because they can avoid every uncomfortable human interaction. Yeah, but they're not avoiding every uncomfortable human interaction. They're still having human interaction. They're just doing it through a screen. And you're not seeing what they're going on, you know, with hiking groups and, uh,
They're going to ATV runs and they're doing things. They're not just sitting there alone, not talking to anybody forever. I'm sure some of them are. I'm probably on the extreme end of that where I spend most of my time alone, but I still am interacting with people all day, every day. Just not in the same way that you are, because I don't want to. But that's exactly my point. You're choosing isolation and calling it interaction.
Talking through a screen isn't the same as sitting across from someone at a diner counter or having a real conversation with a guy at the next pump. And I'm not saying my way is perfect. I spent half my life alone in this truck too. But at least I know what I'm missing. You're telling yourself that posting pictures and commenting online is human connection. But it's not. It's a simulation of connection. No, it isn't. It's the same thing as, I mean, sitting across from somebody at a diner is the same thing as the same thing as sitting across from somebody at a diner is the same thing as sitting
from somebody in a Zoom meeting. It's a different medium, but you're still sitting across from somebody. You're still having a back-and-forth conversation. You're still seeing all of the body language that comes across. There's really no difference other than you don't have to smell that they haven't showered in five days. And when it's time for you to walk away, you don't have to spend 45 minutes to get out. You can say, oh, my connection's bad, got to go. That's the difference. Otherwise, it's the same. And everybody,
even the people that that live their lives like I do that are mostly through digital communication, we still have to go to the gas station and interact with the clerks and we still go to diners and we talk to the waitress. I mean, it's not like, it's not like you're saying it is. And I don't understand why you think a simulation of a connection is any different than an actual connection, because it's not. Okay, but here's the thing. When you're on Zoom, you're not actually there.
You're not sharing the same air, the same space, the same moment. You can't reach out and touch someone's arm when they say something that hits you. You can't see the way their eyes change when they're not looking at the camera. So? I don't want somebody to touch me at the same moment. I don't want to share the same air. And you can't see the way somebody's eyes change when they turn their head either. There's no difference at all. I don't understand what you think is so special about sharing the same air.
It's not that great. You don't want to share the same air? That's wild to me. That's the whole thing. Being in the same physical space with another human being, that's what we evolved for. That's what our brains are wired for. You can say it doesn't matter, but your nervous system knows the difference. Well, my nervous system disagrees with you and prefers the digital method of communication over the live shared air one. So if you like being cramped in a space with somebody,
and not being able to get away from them, good for you. You enjoy that, okay? I'm not telling you you you're wrong. I'm just telling you I'm not wrong either. And I enjoy my lifestyle. The way that I have curated it for myself to get the most that I can out of this one life that I have. This is how I want to do it. And there's nothing wrong with that. And you can rail against it and say it's the downfall of society. And I don't really care what Seneca thinks about it, right? Because I don't care. It doesn't matter.
Um, is there anything else you'd like to say? Because we really need to get to a commercial break. This was a good conversation. I enjoyed it. I liked that you pressed me on some of these things. But at the end of the day, I'm living my life the way that I like to. And I think that that guy that was taking his meeting in his pajamas is doing his thing too. And if you enjoy the way that your life is going, I'm happy for you. Keep doing it. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on. You just said at the end of the day, after I specifically told you earlier that's one of those bad.
phrases that drives me nuts. But okay, look, I hear you. I do. You've curated your life, you're doing your thing. And honestly? Honestly, I don't care what band phrases drive you nuts. But yeah, we have to go to a commercial break. So if you've got a finishing, finishing line, then let's hear it. You know what? Fair enough. I called in all fired up about people going soft. But you just spent 20 minutes defending your choices without backing down once. So,
Maybe you're not as soft as I thought. I still think you're missing out on something real. But I respect that you know what you want. Drive safe out there, Luke. All right, you too, buddy. I can respect that you're set in your ways and you think you know what's best for everybody. And I hope you're enjoying your life out there. And keep on trucking, as they say. And now it's time, ladies and gentlemen, to go to a quick commercial break. Let's talk about what's going on below the belt. Saddle Soft, pretty.
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for 15% off your first pair. And no, I will not be modeling them. I've been asked. The answer is still no. Saddle soft. Your chair is uncomfortable enough. All right, and we're back. Next up on the old caller line, we've got Chip. Chip, welcome to the show. Hey, Luke. Thanks for taking my call. So my daughter, Maya, came by the job site today with this whole business plan for a custom furniture thing spread to.
sheets and everything, wants to skip college and just do this full time. And my wife's going to tell her, yes, tomorrow morning. And I don't know if I'm trying to protect her, or just being the same hard ass my old man was with me. Well, I don't know, man, but my advice for everybody is, yeah, skip college. Waste of time and money, don't do it. See, that's the thing, though, right? I mean, I get it. I really do. I got my associates degree because my dad made me finish it and I never used it once. Not once. I've been running the roofing
supply warehouse for 15 years. And that piece of paper is in a box somewhere. But Maya's 19, Luke. And after she gets her degree, she'll be 23 and unemployed. So, I mean, better off to get her figuring out how to write a business plan at 19. That's a big deal. She can start in the world early and figure out how it works, then she's ahead of anybody that's coming out of school. You're right. You're right, and that's what my wife keeps saying. The spreadsheets were actually really impressive. She's got three
already lined up and a waiting list. She showed me her material costs, her labor hours, profit margins, the whole thing. But here's what gets me, Luke. She's building these custom tables and cabinets in our garage right now, using my tools, living at home. Yeah, but she's doing something, and she's doing something productive and profitable. That's great. And even if she is living at home, I mean, do the math. It's cheaper to have her live at home and use your tools to start her business than
That's exactly what she said when she came by today. She had that in the business plan too, a whole section on overhead costs. And I'm sitting there looking at these numbers, and I should be proud, right? But instead I felt my chest get tight, and I couldn't even tell her why. My dad made me finish that degree, even though I was already working construction. Told me I needed something to fall back on. Well, you have firsthand experience. You've got the degree and you never used it once. And I don't know if you paid for it yourself or your dad did, but either way, it was a waste of time and money.
I would say be proud of your daughter for having the gumption, the wherewithal to actually start something at her age. That's an impressive thing. And especially if she's already taken orders and she's got it planned out, I would support her. And try and help get her business off the ground. And before you know it, maybe she'll be supporting you. Yeah, maybe so. And she's stubborn like me, which is probably why this is eating at me. When I was her age, I thought I had it all figured out too. Yeah, everybody thought they had it figured out then.
closer than most of us were at that age. So good on her. And I think that you should give her as much support as you possibly can. You know what, Luke? You're absolutely right. I think I've been sitting here in the office all night trying to talk myself into being worried. When really, I'm just doing what my dad did to me. The economy's different now anyway. She's not going to get some corporate job with benefits like people used to. She's already doing the thing. Yeah, she's making a physical product. She's learning how business works. She's running a company and she's 19 years old.
I mean, that's way more advanced than she would be coming out of school, having learned a bunch of things about how to make a company 20 years ago, and then having that fall flat, because that's what would happen. That's true. And honestly, the furniture she's making is really good. I went out to the garage last week, and she was working on this walnut dining table with these hand-cut dovettoldve-tails. And I just stood there watching her for a minute. She didn't even notice I was there. She was so focused. I never had that at 19.
up to job sites doing what I was told. Yeah, I think that's great. Good for her and good for you. You should be proud of her and give her the support she needs to scale that company into something great. It sounds like she's passionate about it. She's capable and she's doing the thing. So fuck school, fuck college. Nobody needs it. And she's proven that. You're right. You're right. I'm going to tell my wife in the morning to go ahead and tell Maya yes. And maybe I'll stop by the lumber yard tomorrow. See if I can.
can get her a better price on that walnut she's been buying. She's paying retail right now, and I know the guy over there. Thanks, Luke. All right, good for you. Teach her about economies of scale. Young, and before you know it, she'll be a business tycoon. Next up, we've got Dolores. Delores, thanks for calling in. What's going on tonight? Luke, my son's school, just put my face on a deep fake video, saying I voted for Trump twice and don't care about anybody's feelings. And now half the parents in town think I'm some kind of monster.
what's going on. And before you ask, no, I didn't say any of that. Your son's school did it? Why would the school deep fake you? No, no, not the school school. Some kid at the school, my son showed it to me this afternoon. Somebody made it, and it's going around with all the kids. But it's got my face, my voice, like they ripped it from somewhere, and they've got me saying all this garbage I never said. And now it's out there and I can't get it back. You know, I've heard that from a couple of callers now.
that that's happened. And I think that's, it's only going to happen more and more to more people, because it's getting easier and easier to do. The question is why you were targeted specifically. It seems odd to me that a kid at your son's school would have pictures of you and even think to do that to you specifically in that way. Is there any sort of motive you can think of that would have driven somebody to mess with you specifically? Yeah, there is. I went to a school board meeting two weeks ago about
the new attendance policy. They're trying to crack down on kids missing school, which, fine, whatever, but they were being ridiculous about it. Like, my kid missed three days last month because he had the flu, and they were threatening to dock his grade or put him on some watch list. So I assume you spoke up about that in the meeting? Oh, I spoke up all right. I told them straight up that if they kept this up, they were going to push kids out the door instead of keeping them in school. And I might have said, okay, I definitely said that if they wanted to,
talk about real problems, they should look at why half the kids in that district are showing up to school hungry because their parents can't afford groceries. And I might have called the superintendent a bureaucratic weasel when he tried to shut me down. Okay, so it was actually somebody that works for the school in a, like a leadership capacity that did this, not a student. No, no, I'm pretty sure it was a kid. The videos got that stupid TikTok format with a
text overlay and everything? But yeah, the whole meeting got recorded. It's on the district website, so whoever made this thing had plenty of footage to pull from. My son thinks it was this one kid, Tyler, whose mom is on the school board and was sitting right there when I went off. So now Tyler's got his little revenge or whatever, making me look like I'm out here saying I don't care about feelings in voting Republican, which, Luke, I voted Blue my entire life. My whole family has. Well, I don't care which way you vote.
doesn't really matter, but I don't think there's much you can do about this once it's already out. The thing is, it's going to happen so frequently and so often, and there's so much media out there that it won't last long. I mean, people may see it, but nobody's going to remember it next week. So I think you should just maybe be quiet about it and let it die on its own, because it will. Luke, I hear you, but you don't understand. This isn't just some random video that's going to fade away. This is a small town. People here don't forget. I've already had two
parents of the grocery store today look at me weird. And one of them actually asked if I was okay in this tone like I'd had some kind of breakdown. Yeah, I'm sure it feels that way, but people do forget, especially a little TikTok video. And I think we're going to see more and more of these at an alarming rate. So as soon as it happens to one other person, everybody's going to realize that these are fake and they're going to be more fearful of what it's going to happen, what's going to happen to
worried about whatever the video said you did. So just let it die. Let it go away, and it'll be okay. But what am I supposed to tell my son? He's sitting there at lunch, watching kids pass this thing around, laughing at his mom, and I can't do anything about it. I can't call the school because they'll just say it's a student issue and wash their hands of it. I can't track down Tyler's parents because that makes me look like the crazy person the video says I am. So I'm just supposed to sit here and take it? Yeah.
I think that's your best course of action because you can't prove that Tyler even did it. So going after his parents is not the right approach. It could have been anybody and it is going to happen to the other parents and the other students too. So I think that people will eventually get tired of this because it's going to happen so much. Okay, fine. Maybe you're right about not going after Tyler's parents. But Luke, the part that's eating me alive is I stood up at that meeting because I actually care
these kids, and now I'm the one getting dragged through the mud for it. Meanwhile, the superintendent's still collecting his paycheck, the attendance policy is still garbage, and nothing's changed except now I look like an idiot. So what's the point of speaking up about anything if this is what happens? Well, that's what happens for all of time, no matter what you speak up against. That's part of the, that's why it takes courage to speak up against something. If you really want to enact a change in the policy or in the district, then you
You have to do it the right way. You have to play the game. So get yourself on the school board or some town board where you have a say and what happens there, where you have some leverage, and push your agenda that way. That's the only way. Because just complaining is never going to get you anywhere. You know what, Luke? I actually tried that two years ago. I ran for the school board and lost by 38 votes because the woman who won had her whole church backing her.
So I've already played that game and it didn't work. And honestly, I don't have time to run again. I'm working 50-hour weeks at the shop just to keep my head above water. Well, you can only do what you can do. And if you don't have time to run for one of those offices that will give you the ability to make change in the district, then you're not going to make change in the district. So yeah, just lay low, let it subside and move on with your life. And if at a later point you have more time and you can run, then run a better campaign.
and win next time. That's all. Just keep running until you win and then enact the change that you want to see because that's the only way to do it. Yeah, but that's the whole problem, isn't it? The people who do have time to run are the ones who don't have to work to jobs, who've got spouses with good insurance, who can afford to take off work for campaign events. Meanwhile, I'm the one actually living the consequences of their bad policies. My kid's the one missing school because the bus doesn't show up half the time. But I'm supposed to just shut up and wait my turn until
I magically have enough money and time to compete with church. Ladies and retirees, that's not a system, Luke. That's just keeping people like me out. Yeah, keeping people like you out is the system. And if you want to change the system, you have to play the system's game. And I don't have better advice for you than that, because outside of joining those boards and getting that leverage that you need, there's really nothing that you can do that's going to enact any sort of a change. They're just going to tell you to shut up. And you're going to get these sort of a change.
attacks against you, which would happen if you ran for office too. It's going to happen no matter what. But soon enough, already it's happening. I mean, I've heard twice already from callers on this show that this has happened to them. And that's just in the last month. So in the next year or so, I think there's going to be so many fake ads circulating about everybody that nobody's going to pay attention to him anymore. That's not going to change policy for you. If you want to change policy, you're going to have to change policy.
And if you can't join the board and do it at that level, then you have to run a media campaign and try to get the people that are elected into those positions to support your agenda. Okay, so let me get this straight. I need to run a media campaign while working at an auto shop 50 hours a week, raising a teenager by myself. And now dealing with a deep fake that's making me look like a lunatic. Luke, I can barely afford to keep the lights on. I don't have money for a media campaign. I don't have connections at the local paper.
I've got a phone, a toolbox, and about three hours of free time a week. So what does that media campaign look like for someone like me? It looks like readjusting your schedule. If it's important enough to you to do, you don't need a lot of money to do it. You got your phone, that's enough. You can start making videos and putting out the word that what's happening is unacceptable and put forth what you think should happen and get support behind you in a grassroots way. You can put up flyers. You can talk to your local newspaper. You might not have connections there now.
but they are always looking for things to write about. So you can write press releases, you can put out TikTok videos, you can add videos to the comments under the school's publications. You have to be creative with it. And if you don't have time to do it, you don't have time to do it. But, I mean, then all you're going to do is complain and nothing's going to change. So if you want to enact a change, you're going to have to find the time. And that's all I can tell you. You're telling me to make TikTok videos when there's already a fake video.
of me out there that I can't get taken down. Luke, that's exactly how I end up with 10 more deep face. Every time I put my face out there, I'm giving them more material to work with. That's what I'm telling you. It takes courage to make change happen. And if you don't have that courage to stand up to people that would attack you, then yeah, shut up and just deal with what you get. You know what, Luke? Fine. You're right. I am right. And I wish I had better information for you,
That's just, that's the way that it works. And you have to play the game that is presented to you. That's the framework of how these things work. And if you want to enact change, you got to play the game. And ladies and gentlemen, that's the end of our show. Thank you for tuning in tonight. We'll be back tomorrow with a more Luke at the Roost.