Okay, after 3 weeks of LIVE episodes, Busy and I are back in our respective homes, just doing a regular li’l old podcast without an audience, just the two of us. We know it wasn’t on all of your podcast apps this AM because it was stuck in the tubes, but we just had to jiggle the handle a little bit and now you can listen to it HERE!
We are so grateful to all of you for subscribing to our Substack and listening to the podcast and being more than kind to us and to each other. We never want to spend too much time asking or reminding you to please subscribe to the podcast and set your podcast app to automatically download the episodes if possible, but it is really important because that is what enables us to produce the show. So thanks to all of you who already do it, and thanks to those of you who are opening up your phone to do it right now! And since we’re doing a little light housekeeping, don’t forget you can follow us on Instagram @busyphilipps, @instacais & @bpisdoingherbest. You can also join our Facebook page which, despite the evils of Facebook, manages to be pretty welcoming and fun, we think.
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And, of course, if you HAVE listened to this week’s episode, or whenever you do, it would thrill us to no end if you’d consider this your official podcast discussion thread. I will definitely be hanging out in the comments between important meetings*. The pic, is, as promised, little Lincoln Debenham dressed as The Phantom of the Opera for his brother’s summer beach birthday party. We talked about it recently on the pod and it fits with this week’s episode perfectly.
Doom-scrolling. Busy’s right. It’s not *just* social media. It’s everything. Everything is instant and 24/7.
That wasn’t a thing when we grew up. Information was the tv or radio and not in your hand all the time. We got to disconnect and just live in the moment in effect. Bad stuff took hours to be transmitted across the world, not seconds.
The world now is so “shouty” ALL OF THE TIME.
My stepdaughter is in middle school and they are not allowed their phones to be on at school. And they are not allowed smart phones at all in school. And I’m totally fine with that. She’s 11, she has no idea how to process the crap in the world and when you need to just take a step back.
I think teen girls in particular are affected because they are more engaged with people in general. And society has stopped letting them be naïve children much quicker.
I mean yeah gen x is tough and we were kinda left to it, but the “life” we experienced was still confined to our local area. Not the whole damn planet.
I just finished this episode earlier today and I had to come to the comments to say that I loved Caissie’s analogy about being lost. Wise and profound!
Late to the party here but I just finished this week's episode and I have to say - thank you for this photo it truly delighted me! I'd heard you tell the phantom at the beach birthday story a while ago and I adore seeing this!
Also, on Busy and her "favorite kid"... I remember years ago when Birdie was Cricket's age, and Cricket was really little, you always posted pics of Cricket to Insta and Birdie never wanted to be in pics and people back then complained that Cricket was the favorite. People project things, clearly! 🙄
Caissie, I think this is was the episode that you talked about how parents handle kids when they get upset in public and you've noticed an east coast vs west coast thing. Well, I'm a born and raised Californian and I'm definitely the parent who removes their child from a public setting if their upset. Like if we were in a restaurant, I'll take him outside and he seems to calm down a little easier that way. My mom did the same thing. I was raised in Northern California so maybe you've only seen that in SoCal. 🤷🏻♀️ I'm never annoyed by a screaming child. But I always think no one needs to listen to my child throw a fit about their banana being cut wrong or the juice glass is a different one than everyone else's while you are just trying to enjoy your meal.
A lot of talk these days about algorithms and how they work. And yes I hate them as much as you do. YouTube and Instagram are the worst. Like anything and you'll get more of it. I once wanter to see the trailer for the movie "The Northman" and so I watched it. The next day my feed was jam packed wit "The Northman" stuff. Many videos in many languages. So I took an afternoon and gave a bunch of stuff down thumbs and the next day it was miraculously gone. BTW-being a man, I was pretty interested when the trailer for this movie talked about epic battle scenes. Unfortunately all of them were shown in the trailer so renting the movie was pretty much a waste.
As to Instagram, if your feed starts looking wonky a quick I've used is to check my likes and who I follow. For example, I've been seeing a lot of husky dog and sad pet videos. Checked my likes and found 32 likes of you guessed it huskies and sad pets. I don't remember ever liking any of them so I unliked them all. When I checked my follows I also found 3 accounts that I don't remember following. So I unfollowed them. It seems that if you're not really careful as you scroll through things it's really easy to follow and like things. A tip when you check your follows is to change the sorting method from "default" to "date followed:latest" so you see the most recent stuff first. The default setting is everything just in whatever order which I think is just to confuse and discourage you from unfollowing. Since Elon took over I don't have a good work around for twitter other than to just block stuff you don't want to see.
Finally, just in case I might not be the last person on earth to find things put is if you want to watch a movie at home be sure to check your all your streaming services. When the new Top Gun movie came out you could buy it for $25 or rent it for $20 or I just waited a couple of days and watched it for free on Paramount +. Watched the new George Clooney/Julia Roberts romcom for free on Peacock. Disney+ is also a good place to check for Disney stuff.
Well that's all. Spring is just around the corner here in Pittsburgh. I don't base this on the weather but on the fact that the Page's Ice Cream stand is opening tomorrow.
Thank you for the booster convo!!! Caissie, you're right. No further guidance on a second bivalent and, based on what I've read in meeting notes from the gov committees working on this, I don't think we're getting any guidance until this summer if not later. Trying to decide myself if I want to go lie to CVS and get a second bivalent.
I’ve been to New York twice and I’ve been to one Broadway show. On a high school choir trip we had the choice between Phantom and Rent. I chose Phantom. Every day I wonder how my life would be different if I had made the other choice.
Yup. This winter is one of the oddest I've experienced in a long time. This week while it was snowing in Los Angeles, it was 70 degrees and beautiful here. Today, however, it's raining and so instead of working out in my "sun" room and since I now don't feel like going out and picking up some take out from any of the Lenten Fish Frys in our area, I instead writing this. As an indication of how strange this winter has been in the Pittsburgh area, this February we had the lowest amount of snowfall recorded for a winter and all in all the contractor who does snow removal for my driveway only came by 5 or 6 times total since last November and most of that was just to scatter ice melt on the driveway. Truth be told, it probably didn't really need it but I do need to keep things safe for the letter carrier and the delivery people and I do hate sliding down my very steep driveway.
I did appreciate the discussion on phone use and I really liked Busy's comment having to do with looking at things through a lens instead of experiencing things. Years ago, I used to take a lot of pictures. What this generally led to was lots of unorganized pictures of things. But one day, I was listening to NPR and they had a story on a study where it was noted that people formed better memories if they didn't take pictures and just experienced things. So I quit taking pictures. This wasn't hard for me as I hate having pictures taken of myself and so at first it just meant not carrying a camera around anymore (somewhere in the house there is a Nikon SLR with a half exposed roll of film still. The half that is exposed has pictures from a rafting trip on the Colorado River that I took in the early 1990s). As to my phone cameras I rarely use it and I think in all my life I've actually only taken one selfie. Anyway, while I have very few pictures of things, I do have a lot of really good memories and I seem to enjoy them more.
I do have one comment on loud cars. I will note that the cars you're hearing probably do have mufflers, but the car manufacturers do have settings on sports cars such as the Ford Mustang, the Chevy Camaro and the Dodge Challenger that allows the owners to set up the cars to be louder or as they tend to call it in sports or track mode. It's annoying and when you talk to them it's only supposed to be something that is rarely used, but cmon, most people who buy a car with that kind of option are going to leave it on all the times. I do think that they are starting to phase it out or at least I hope so. My opinions on stuff like this tend to put me at odds with the sports car community. I can remember a couple of years ago, one of European "hypercar" manufacturers came out with a model that could go at more than 300 mph. I commented that this appeared to be useless and that it would impress me more if they used their science to come up with things like better gas mileage or improved safety. This brought a huge response from the sports car community, though all but one just noted that I must be a lot of fun at a party. No rebuttal as to why I might be wrong, however. The one person who did provide a rebuttal noted that these cars could be driven at airfields or on racetracks or at places like the Bonneville Salt Flats. I agreed that this could be possible, but would require a large support crew and huge expense so that very few people could actually do it and the person responded that I must be a lot of fun at parties. And so based on all of this, I continue to have the view that for men, the louder the car, the smaller the penis. I know it's treason, but come on, men, we got to do better.
Well the lights have blinked twice and the transformer across the street has groaned a couple of times and there are lots of sirens outside, so I better sign off before the lights go out. Take care everyone.
Ooof. The isolation convo. I am on maternity leave and although I am so darn lucky that I have a one year mat leave (thank you Canada), I am on month 6 of feeling isolated.
The comment that Cassie made about relying on Matt to come home with conversation really hits. The mix of having a baby, on month 4 of a very cold and snowy winter, having friends that all work weekdays, and balancing family weekend time... it has been tough.
Caissie: as you try to navigate the balance of staying healthy and getting out, you may want to check out the Instagram account of Laurel Bristow (linked at end). She’s truly hilarious but more importantly, a scientist who has studied infectious diseases since before 2020. She helped me view Covid in the context of all the infectious diseases humans have been living among forever-- how is it the same? How is it different? How is it changing towards more like or unlike the other stuff? She is very direct about it all and she shows receipts! I have been so grateful for her sharing her knowledge throughout the whole thing and I while I can’t know for sure, I’d bet at least a little money that you’d like her!
1. Love the whale watching memorial and the lovely letter written to you about your mom.
2. As a parent of a 13 year old girl, I was emphatically shaking my head yes at both of your perspectives regarding the mental health of teenage girls. I think it’s complicated but rooted in the patriarchy and exacerbated by access to unlimited information and not being in the present moment. They see the bullshit clearly and aren’t afraid to speak (my daughter is like this too). I think the device conundrum applies to us all who are attached to our phones. Every place becomes the same, this is so true. I don’t limit my daughters internet access but don’t hesitate to say “phone down” if need be, because I’m saying that to myself as well. She’s just starting to be more aware of her appearance which is normal for her age but it’s hard to tell what is “normal” from our gen x frame of reference and what is “normal” for her generation and if she is truly taking the impossible ideal imagery to heart. I just keep checking in about it. I’m rambling a bit, but thank you for hashing through that stuff. It’s ok to not have definitive answers or solutions, I always have to remind myself of that.
3. Busy is becoming a New Yorker! Caissie your analysis was spot on.
4. Love you both, I enjoyed listening to the live shows but also it was nice to get back to the regular chat sessions 💕
The algorithm is nuts. I try to like every post by Busy, Caissie and the pod and still it doesn’t show at the top of my feed. I have to search the three accounts out. You would think the algorithm would learn you are who I want to see, but no?’
Also! There was a really great segment interviewing Ke Huy Quan in CBS Sunday Morning last weekend. They talk a bit about how had been working as a stunt coordinator in those twenty-ish years. It’s on YouTube if you’re interested! https://youtu.be/nDdHyRMmKRI
I absolutely LOVE your idea of the whale watch boat for your mom's memorial...and I don't doubt that she is beaming down from above at the thought of it, it's so personal, original, and seems perfect for her 💜💫
Phantom is one of those shows where I knew the story, saw the production, and then went back to show my kids, and we had amazing seats and it traumatized my son who was 6 at the time when the chandelier drops. Also, like many favorites I realized oh wow- this isn’t what I thought it was . And then any time my older son wanted to scare his brother he would play a few phantom chords by ear and he would scream. Memories ....
The Phantom photo is better than I ever could have imagined; oh my gosh!!!! It’s actually a stunning photo just artistically without even knowing the funny backstory. It’d be weird if I framed it and put it in my house, right? People would say, Oh, is that Ethan or Alex (my teen boys) when he was younger? No, no, someone else’s child, yes, that is all.
Oh shoot I thought I had the podcast set to auto download but when I thought to check just now I discovered that auto download was OFF! I recommend that everyone who has ADHD like me double check that setting!
Hey Cassie, I loved what you said about changing behaviors at home and how you can PIVOT at any time! Really resonates with me as we are currently in Parent Child Interactive Therapy with one of our kids. It's so weird and awkward at first but we're seeing the fruits of the work. Also echoing what Busy said about no two kids being raised by the same parents. This is our second kid! The first one seemed just fine with our interactions!
Late to this.
Doom-scrolling. Busy’s right. It’s not *just* social media. It’s everything. Everything is instant and 24/7.
That wasn’t a thing when we grew up. Information was the tv or radio and not in your hand all the time. We got to disconnect and just live in the moment in effect. Bad stuff took hours to be transmitted across the world, not seconds.
The world now is so “shouty” ALL OF THE TIME.
My stepdaughter is in middle school and they are not allowed their phones to be on at school. And they are not allowed smart phones at all in school. And I’m totally fine with that. She’s 11, she has no idea how to process the crap in the world and when you need to just take a step back.
I think teen girls in particular are affected because they are more engaged with people in general. And society has stopped letting them be naïve children much quicker.
I mean yeah gen x is tough and we were kinda left to it, but the “life” we experienced was still confined to our local area. Not the whole damn planet.
I just finished this episode earlier today and I had to come to the comments to say that I loved Caissie’s analogy about being lost. Wise and profound!
Late to the party here but I just finished this week's episode and I have to say - thank you for this photo it truly delighted me! I'd heard you tell the phantom at the beach birthday story a while ago and I adore seeing this!
Also, on Busy and her "favorite kid"... I remember years ago when Birdie was Cricket's age, and Cricket was really little, you always posted pics of Cricket to Insta and Birdie never wanted to be in pics and people back then complained that Cricket was the favorite. People project things, clearly! 🙄
Caissie, I think this is was the episode that you talked about how parents handle kids when they get upset in public and you've noticed an east coast vs west coast thing. Well, I'm a born and raised Californian and I'm definitely the parent who removes their child from a public setting if their upset. Like if we were in a restaurant, I'll take him outside and he seems to calm down a little easier that way. My mom did the same thing. I was raised in Northern California so maybe you've only seen that in SoCal. 🤷🏻♀️ I'm never annoyed by a screaming child. But I always think no one needs to listen to my child throw a fit about their banana being cut wrong or the juice glass is a different one than everyone else's while you are just trying to enjoy your meal.
A lot of talk these days about algorithms and how they work. And yes I hate them as much as you do. YouTube and Instagram are the worst. Like anything and you'll get more of it. I once wanter to see the trailer for the movie "The Northman" and so I watched it. The next day my feed was jam packed wit "The Northman" stuff. Many videos in many languages. So I took an afternoon and gave a bunch of stuff down thumbs and the next day it was miraculously gone. BTW-being a man, I was pretty interested when the trailer for this movie talked about epic battle scenes. Unfortunately all of them were shown in the trailer so renting the movie was pretty much a waste.
As to Instagram, if your feed starts looking wonky a quick I've used is to check my likes and who I follow. For example, I've been seeing a lot of husky dog and sad pet videos. Checked my likes and found 32 likes of you guessed it huskies and sad pets. I don't remember ever liking any of them so I unliked them all. When I checked my follows I also found 3 accounts that I don't remember following. So I unfollowed them. It seems that if you're not really careful as you scroll through things it's really easy to follow and like things. A tip when you check your follows is to change the sorting method from "default" to "date followed:latest" so you see the most recent stuff first. The default setting is everything just in whatever order which I think is just to confuse and discourage you from unfollowing. Since Elon took over I don't have a good work around for twitter other than to just block stuff you don't want to see.
Finally, just in case I might not be the last person on earth to find things put is if you want to watch a movie at home be sure to check your all your streaming services. When the new Top Gun movie came out you could buy it for $25 or rent it for $20 or I just waited a couple of days and watched it for free on Paramount +. Watched the new George Clooney/Julia Roberts romcom for free on Peacock. Disney+ is also a good place to check for Disney stuff.
Well that's all. Spring is just around the corner here in Pittsburgh. I don't base this on the weather but on the fact that the Page's Ice Cream stand is opening tomorrow.
This came across my TikTok feed today and immediately brought me back to the pod’s well-deserved Phantom critique. Enjoy!
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRWqHAae/
Thank you for the booster convo!!! Caissie, you're right. No further guidance on a second bivalent and, based on what I've read in meeting notes from the gov committees working on this, I don't think we're getting any guidance until this summer if not later. Trying to decide myself if I want to go lie to CVS and get a second bivalent.
Great episode, thank you both for sharing your lives & hearts & wisdom. It’s appreciated 💜
I’ve been to New York twice and I’ve been to one Broadway show. On a high school choir trip we had the choice between Phantom and Rent. I chose Phantom. Every day I wonder how my life would be different if I had made the other choice.
Yup. This winter is one of the oddest I've experienced in a long time. This week while it was snowing in Los Angeles, it was 70 degrees and beautiful here. Today, however, it's raining and so instead of working out in my "sun" room and since I now don't feel like going out and picking up some take out from any of the Lenten Fish Frys in our area, I instead writing this. As an indication of how strange this winter has been in the Pittsburgh area, this February we had the lowest amount of snowfall recorded for a winter and all in all the contractor who does snow removal for my driveway only came by 5 or 6 times total since last November and most of that was just to scatter ice melt on the driveway. Truth be told, it probably didn't really need it but I do need to keep things safe for the letter carrier and the delivery people and I do hate sliding down my very steep driveway.
I did appreciate the discussion on phone use and I really liked Busy's comment having to do with looking at things through a lens instead of experiencing things. Years ago, I used to take a lot of pictures. What this generally led to was lots of unorganized pictures of things. But one day, I was listening to NPR and they had a story on a study where it was noted that people formed better memories if they didn't take pictures and just experienced things. So I quit taking pictures. This wasn't hard for me as I hate having pictures taken of myself and so at first it just meant not carrying a camera around anymore (somewhere in the house there is a Nikon SLR with a half exposed roll of film still. The half that is exposed has pictures from a rafting trip on the Colorado River that I took in the early 1990s). As to my phone cameras I rarely use it and I think in all my life I've actually only taken one selfie. Anyway, while I have very few pictures of things, I do have a lot of really good memories and I seem to enjoy them more.
I do have one comment on loud cars. I will note that the cars you're hearing probably do have mufflers, but the car manufacturers do have settings on sports cars such as the Ford Mustang, the Chevy Camaro and the Dodge Challenger that allows the owners to set up the cars to be louder or as they tend to call it in sports or track mode. It's annoying and when you talk to them it's only supposed to be something that is rarely used, but cmon, most people who buy a car with that kind of option are going to leave it on all the times. I do think that they are starting to phase it out or at least I hope so. My opinions on stuff like this tend to put me at odds with the sports car community. I can remember a couple of years ago, one of European "hypercar" manufacturers came out with a model that could go at more than 300 mph. I commented that this appeared to be useless and that it would impress me more if they used their science to come up with things like better gas mileage or improved safety. This brought a huge response from the sports car community, though all but one just noted that I must be a lot of fun at a party. No rebuttal as to why I might be wrong, however. The one person who did provide a rebuttal noted that these cars could be driven at airfields or on racetracks or at places like the Bonneville Salt Flats. I agreed that this could be possible, but would require a large support crew and huge expense so that very few people could actually do it and the person responded that I must be a lot of fun at parties. And so based on all of this, I continue to have the view that for men, the louder the car, the smaller the penis. I know it's treason, but come on, men, we got to do better.
Well the lights have blinked twice and the transformer across the street has groaned a couple of times and there are lots of sirens outside, so I better sign off before the lights go out. Take care everyone.
Ooof. The isolation convo. I am on maternity leave and although I am so darn lucky that I have a one year mat leave (thank you Canada), I am on month 6 of feeling isolated.
The comment that Cassie made about relying on Matt to come home with conversation really hits. The mix of having a baby, on month 4 of a very cold and snowy winter, having friends that all work weekdays, and balancing family weekend time... it has been tough.
Caissie: as you try to navigate the balance of staying healthy and getting out, you may want to check out the Instagram account of Laurel Bristow (linked at end). She’s truly hilarious but more importantly, a scientist who has studied infectious diseases since before 2020. She helped me view Covid in the context of all the infectious diseases humans have been living among forever-- how is it the same? How is it different? How is it changing towards more like or unlike the other stuff? She is very direct about it all and she shows receipts! I have been so grateful for her sharing her knowledge throughout the whole thing and I while I can’t know for sure, I’d bet at least a little money that you’d like her!
https://instagram.com/laurel__bristow?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
1. Love the whale watching memorial and the lovely letter written to you about your mom.
2. As a parent of a 13 year old girl, I was emphatically shaking my head yes at both of your perspectives regarding the mental health of teenage girls. I think it’s complicated but rooted in the patriarchy and exacerbated by access to unlimited information and not being in the present moment. They see the bullshit clearly and aren’t afraid to speak (my daughter is like this too). I think the device conundrum applies to us all who are attached to our phones. Every place becomes the same, this is so true. I don’t limit my daughters internet access but don’t hesitate to say “phone down” if need be, because I’m saying that to myself as well. She’s just starting to be more aware of her appearance which is normal for her age but it’s hard to tell what is “normal” from our gen x frame of reference and what is “normal” for her generation and if she is truly taking the impossible ideal imagery to heart. I just keep checking in about it. I’m rambling a bit, but thank you for hashing through that stuff. It’s ok to not have definitive answers or solutions, I always have to remind myself of that.
3. Busy is becoming a New Yorker! Caissie your analysis was spot on.
4. Love you both, I enjoyed listening to the live shows but also it was nice to get back to the regular chat sessions 💕
The algorithm is nuts. I try to like every post by Busy, Caissie and the pod and still it doesn’t show at the top of my feed. I have to search the three accounts out. You would think the algorithm would learn you are who I want to see, but no?’
Also! There was a really great segment interviewing Ke Huy Quan in CBS Sunday Morning last weekend. They talk a bit about how had been working as a stunt coordinator in those twenty-ish years. It’s on YouTube if you’re interested! https://youtu.be/nDdHyRMmKRI
I absolutely LOVE your idea of the whale watch boat for your mom's memorial...and I don't doubt that she is beaming down from above at the thought of it, it's so personal, original, and seems perfect for her 💜💫
Phantom is one of those shows where I knew the story, saw the production, and then went back to show my kids, and we had amazing seats and it traumatized my son who was 6 at the time when the chandelier drops. Also, like many favorites I realized oh wow- this isn’t what I thought it was . And then any time my older son wanted to scare his brother he would play a few phantom chords by ear and he would scream. Memories ....
The Phantom photo is better than I ever could have imagined; oh my gosh!!!! It’s actually a stunning photo just artistically without even knowing the funny backstory. It’d be weird if I framed it and put it in my house, right? People would say, Oh, is that Ethan or Alex (my teen boys) when he was younger? No, no, someone else’s child, yes, that is all.
Oh shoot I thought I had the podcast set to auto download but when I thought to check just now I discovered that auto download was OFF! I recommend that everyone who has ADHD like me double check that setting!
Hey Cassie, I loved what you said about changing behaviors at home and how you can PIVOT at any time! Really resonates with me as we are currently in Parent Child Interactive Therapy with one of our kids. It's so weird and awkward at first but we're seeing the fruits of the work. Also echoing what Busy said about no two kids being raised by the same parents. This is our second kid! The first one seemed just fine with our interactions!
"This is about whales, not pineapples" really tickled me this morning! :)
You did it! So happy to see the pod up and so excited about BUSY BEING CAST IN THE MEAN GIRL The Musical MOVIE!!!! What a good day🤩