This is a full Spoilercast delving into details, themes, music, and many other things about Stranger Things Season 4.

Special guest Stranger Things expert: Amy Comberiate

My friends like talking about politics.  My family likes talking about pop culture.  I like talking about both, so I'm doing two podcasts in one.

Episode 1 here is a politics episode-- this is from June 30th, just after the Supreme Court finished up its 2021-2022 term.  So, Woody and I had quite a bit to say about their rulings.  And then we segued into a bunch of other stuff from there.

We're both moderate on the slightly liberal side-- so, if that's your political jam, you'll probably agree with us a lot.  If it isn't, then hopefully we can help give you some things to think about without bugging the heck out of you.  Either way, we're keeping it insightful and you'll probably learn something new.

In this, the final episode of Get 2 the Point, we start out by recapping the series.  Then, we talk about the U.S. Senate, including the history of the filibuster and the problem of aging Senators who don't have term limits.  After that, we speculate on where the U.S. political landscape is going from here.  Then we smoothly segue from discussing the Senate to discussing how various people have more versus less amounts of power to change things in their lives.

And the rest of the episode is impossible to sum up succinctly in any way that could do it justice.  But we do end with getting to the point.


Quick note: What do I mean by fungibility?  In earthly situations, I mean the degree to which you can change your circumstances in life.  And, in dreamlike or heavenly situations, I mean the degree to which you can change the physical environment around you with thought.  Officially, the word's meaning is more about being able to perfectly replace something with something else... but words like convertible and swappable are still considered synonyms for it.  It's hard to find a word that means exactly what I was going for, so I went with that one.


Acknowledgments: For this episode, I give thanks to all the people who have given me (or have helped lead me to) little bits of profound wisdom here and there over the years.  I was listening, I put it all together as cohesively as I could, and a ton of it even made its way into this episode.

In this episode, I start out by delving into how humans evolved tribalism, how our news media has become less objective and more biased over time, and how social media makes that even worse.

Then I go into the psychology of Donald Trump, how the Republican Party progressed to the point of nominating someone like him, and how he gets people to believe whatever he wants them to believe.

After that I look at confidence versus proof, the specific example of the 2020 Presidential election, and where things are heading from here.


I dedicate this episode to Howard Boyer, my last surviving grandparent, who lived to a ripe old age of 98 1/2 and passed away the day before this episode went up.  Rest in peace, Pop Pop.

In this episode, I delve into the topic of High School education in the U.S., including more tape from my interview with Gary and Woody which I followed up on with further research.  Areas discussed include: ramifications (or the lack thereof) for bad behavior, racial disparities in suspension rates, diploma versus certificate tracks, bullying, and parents moving to better areas (with better schools)  than they may be able to reasonably afford.

I also share some thoughts about how our society looks at college versus trade school and what types of practical things we should be teaching more of.

And then I present my own theoretical solution to help incentivize kids to attend school and put enough effort in to avoid failing.  It might be a great solution or it might be a terrible one...  But the important thing is that I'm getting it out there so you can try to come up with a better one yourself.

All this in about 29.5 minutes total, so we get to all the points and don't waste your time!

In this episode, I address the terrible plan to switch the U.S. to permanent Daylight Saving Time.  I start out our journey by covering how humanity laid out the whole system of time that we use today, piece by piece over the span of several centuries.  Then I get into why the heck anyone wanted to get a law passed to change the clocks in the first place.  I take you through all the crazy shenanigans of clock-changing throughout the 20th century.  And then I give you all the latest dirt about how the heck the U.S. Senate "unanimously" passed permanent DST when you'd think someone there would've had enough sense to object.

Then I get into a whole bunch of different reasons why permanent DST is so bad, and why having DST at all really isn't that great.  (I'm sure you'll find at least one in there that really hits home for you.)  And I wrap up with  some steps we should definitely push our lawmakers to take... and some that should, at least, be considered.

Lest this sound like it must be longer than your standard book on tape, worry not-- you're in and out in just over 21 minutes.  And it gets more and more fun and entertaining as you go.

https://savestandardtime.com/ 

In this episode, I explain how representation of citizens works in the U.S. Government, how redistricting follows the census, what gerrymandering is, where it came from, why it's so bad in general, where things stand currently, and how things are only likely to get worse from here.  And I discuss what we can do from here to hopefully make things better instead.  All that in under 25 minutes... so we're not wasting any time here!

Here's a link to a picture of the original gerrymandered district:
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/A-Two-Hundred-Year-Statistical-History-of-the-Ansolabehere-Palmer/55136e3e5db308cca4a5611001d65cb89510227f/figure/1

I sit down with politics enthusiasts and amateur experts Gary and Woody to ask them about the problems at the core of U.S. politics right now.  This helps me make sure we stay right on track, only addressing the most central, most important issues and not wasting anyone's time.  (On that note, this is only about 44% of our whole recording, coming in under 34 minutes-- you didn't need all those stutters and tangents!)  Plus you get to hear some nice, friendly conversation this time, rather than just me!