TAGQ (That's A Good Question)
TAGQ (That's A Good Question)
The Old New Cabin
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
From AI joke failures to family cabin memories, we traverse the landscape of modern technology while exploring the deeply human experiences that technology can never fully replicate.
• AI struggles with humor and poetry despite its impressive language capabilities
• The "Waymo sandwich" phenomenon reveals the limitations of self-driving cars in complex social situations
• Driving styles across different regions reflect cultural adaptations and collaborative social behavior
• The family cabin purchased in 1949/1950 represents generational connections and simpler pleasures
• A thermostat malfunction that turned the cabin into a 140-degree sauna created both damage and perfectly toasted marshmallows
• Large language models consume disproportionate amounts of energy compared to the human brain
• Neural networks should potentially be treated as public utilities similar to libraries
• German immigrant ancestors came to Wisconsin after the Civil War, escaping European militarism
AI Jokes and Poetry Shortcomings
Benokay , welcome back to the podcast everybody , where we talk about life's deepest questions , biggest challenges and sometimes , you know , get into get it , get into the nitty gritty of the day to day . We grind and we , you know , got a lot to talk about . So cheers to life , cheers . That was an AI generated intro . I could tell when they first started making AI in 2016 . You know , recently I have to say this . I know I've already broken the rule this is the fastest knockout in terms of talking about AI .
BenBut I was thinking about how you said that AI can't do humor , and so I asked AI . I asked chat GPT , write me a joke that actually makes me laugh , please Like . People say you're really bad at this , so I want to see if you've gotten better . And it wrote me a joke . I won't get into it because it's stupid . So I want to see if you've gotten better . And it wrote me a joke . I won't get into it because it's stupid . It made me laugh , but in this , like super ridiculous , just like this was so dumb , this was like something that like it was just so stupid , but it made me laugh at the end .
BenBut it was just like it's still not very good at it . Maybe if you asked it a hundred times it's come up with something clever . It's just like it can't . It's yeah , it's . It's a robot , you know it's .
ScottIt doesn't have heart still well , it's hard , hard to train on what it takes to construct a joke yeah , exactly , exactly .
BenI feel like a lot of it comes like when a really good comedian talks . It's like they're bringing it back to their own life , they're . Yeah , I mean like I yeah , you can't really analyze what makes a good joke , but it can't do reasoning at all either .
Scottyou can , you know , give it the simplest reasoning puzzles and it it doesn't do the thought process which will lead to an answer . It just keeps on pretending like it's saying what you think these are the most likely words someone's going to say when they're answering this puzzle .
BenThat's exactly what it sounded like . Yeah , that's exactly what it sounded like . And then poems too . That's exactly what it sounded like . And then poems too . We were having a conversation earlier about poems in my forest economic and management class . You know , of course you talk about poetry in that class . No , but we were actually just talking about AI and our professor said there was like a study done where they tried to get like scholars I don't know if it was scholars people . I had one poem by ai and one like actual poem written by a human next to each other and so and you couldn't tell them apart or some people had a hard time discerning between the two but would they ? Would ai really be able to publish a book of poems ? That would actually be commercially successful . I , I'm not sure about that .
ScottCould it ?
Benever write like Walt Whitman ? I don't fucking think so . No Well .
ScottYeah , I mean it would just come across as someone who hadn't put much thought into it , because it , which is what most poetry by humans is , because they're not trained poets well , there's the ability to put other things into it , like feelings yeah , yeah right . Yeah , computers can't feel , so they're kind of missing that whole motivation . Yeah , right , that's where I stand today . Now we have to restart the podcast . Beep , beep , beep , beep , beep , beep .
BenWelcome back to the podcast , everybody , where we talk about hedge funds and you know how to really get out of that .
Scottnine to five yeah
Waymo Sandwich and City Driving
Scott, I saw a waymo sandwich yesterday . A waymo sandwich yeah , you know what that is like three waymos .
Benall like two waymos got rear-ended at the same time and the one in the middle got no , it's when one Waymo can't proceed ahead because the street is blocked For a legitimate reason .
ScottIt was people watching a band and it was a dead-end street , so I don't know where it was going anyways street , so I don't know where it was going anyways . But but while it was trying to figure out what to do with the people peacefully watching music right . Stopping it's honking , stopping its progress . Actually , people would let cars through with humans in them , but they're like nah forget .
BenNo , I don't really give a shit . Was it driving someone or was it empty ?
ScottI , you can't ever see . That's annoying , you can't see . But while it's trying to figure out what to do , another waymo comes up behind it , uh-huh , and it's in the same problem . So now it's like that's so funny , they . They eventually figured out three point turns and got out of there , but it took , they just turned around . Yeah , okay , it was a dead end street to begin with , so I don't know , were they maybe going to pick something ?
Scottthey were just like programming , maybe collecting whatever there was was half a block of houses and everything beyond where the brand was .
BenIf you're a passenger , could you just end the ride right there and have it drop you off ? If you get into that situation , I would hope so . I mean mean they must , just like you could tell an Uber driver like can you just end right now yeah , I'm not sure you can open the doors without the car agreeing with you that's scary .
BenThat is , you always have the child lock on . Yes , robot gets to decide when it opens . Yeah , sandwich , that's so well , it's . It's funny because , yeah it's .
BenYou run into those really organic situations a lot of the time , right when it's like , well , if you just break the law you could get out of like , if you just bend the rules a little bit , you can get out of this totally fine and you can be completely safe . But the if you have a self-driving car , it's a different story . I mean , I was stuck in so much traffic this last , oh god , it was like I think on tuesday . I was trying to get like through town , right , I was , uh , going across town and the amount of traffic was just like like it was insane . And I was doing these maneuver , I was taking like protected left turns from like right lanes and everything , because it was just so it's . Yeah , I I mean it was partly my fault , but but because all the other traffic was a standstill and for whatever reason , I was just like taking different turns than other people . Like there were like three different occasions where ?
ScottYeah , people were sitting in the left lane waiting to get across the intersection . Pretty much are those . People were sitting in the left lane waiting to get across the intersection .
BenPretty much you were in the right lane and you like pulled in front of that person to go , yeah , right the left , like everything , was like almost gridlocked but not quite , and I find my way through it was fun . I kind of felt like I was . I was in mexico driving where everyone just kind of like turns everywhere from all different directions all at once , but like you figure it out , you know , because people aren't so anal about the rules there . So did you reach ? But the only reason I could do it was because people were moving so slow . What did you reach your destination ? I reached my destination probably 20 minutes faster than I would have otherwise . Anyway , this probably all sounds very nefarious , and granted it was , but it was fun .
California Driving vs Seattle Traffic
BenPeople don't like driving with me .
ScottBecause you're a wild card .
BenYeah , yeah . I never really realized how much of a California driver I was until living in the city , in Seattle .
ScottYou mean like LA style , where you know you got to make that left turn , no matter how yellow the light is , or Kind of Kind of .
BenI feel like for me well , maybe I'm just kidding myself , but I feel like for me it's just like less impatience and more just like , uh , trying to be aggressive . Yeah right , I don't know . I feel like I spent the first , first number of years of my life driving just like being extra cautious , and then I got to the point where I was like I don't know Something .
ScottMaybe you should move to Boston , boston , try driving there , which is rather adventurous and I really enjoyed it when I lived there . You have to learn a certain sort of aggression that if you don't have it , you're just going to be stuck Right Exactly when you want to make , you're driving down a two-lane major road between towns , and if you want to make uh , if you want to pull out from a side road and get into the traffic going to the left , like you're pulling across the one lane and making a left , um , you just pull across the first lane and wait , stop traffic .
BenYeah that's what people do .
ScottYeah , you , just that's what you do , yeah and this this led to I led me to a great revelation , or epiphany one day , as I saw this happening again and again . You know , just driving down the road and here's this guy pulls out in front who's waiting for traffic the other way , and you know , my normal reaction was would have been to get really angry . And then , just that day , I said , well , what's the point ? This guy's eventually going to be gone . I'm never going to see him again . There's nothing you can possibly do right now . I'm not going to ram him or get out and get in a fight with him Law of the garbage truck .
BenRemember that book , law of the garbage truck . This is the first self-help book I ever read Law of the garbage truck .
ScottSo I've been avoiding unnecessary anger and take on his garbage .
BenYeah , yeah , it's funny because , like I , I drive with people and people say I have road rage , and maybe I do , but it's not rage , it's more like road mild , like playful frustration , I would say . But when people are like , come on , just like , yes , you're merging , don't wait , I'm behind you , you're going fast enough for you to accelerate and get in , you can do it , come on . And I talk out loud about it . Usually when other people are in the car , when I'm by myself , I don't really talk out loud about it or you'll have to take my word for that I guess .
ScottYeah , I think you could drive on the East coast .
BenYeah Right , it's like I'm not gonna , I'm not angry with you , I'm , I am annoyed . I'm like come on , come on , Like pay , like lock it bro , Like come on .
ScottWe count on everybody moving into where they need to Grab that empty space and if you don't , everyone's kind of oh goodness gracious , Hollywood's a bit like that . But I think Hollywood has a lot of New York culture .
BenIt's honestly just to entertain myself while I drive .
Road Rage vs Collaborative Driving
BenI'm not holding it against anyone . It's honestly just to entertain myself while I drive . I'm not holding it against anyone . I'm not keeping anger in my chest as I do it . I'm not like , oh God , how could they do this to me ? It's really just like come on , you suck . Come on , it's like you play video games and you get a good hit on someone . You're yelling at the end . Come on , you can do better than that . Get a good hit on someone .
ScottYou're yelling at the end .
BenCome on , you can do better than that . You know , it's a video game where everyone wants to . The way you described driving to me when I was growing up and you were teaching me was like it's like a video game where everybody wants to win . I don't know if that's what you said , but that's what I remember , because I don't know if that's what you said , because that's the stupidest thing to say , because it's like , of course , everybody wants to . That's what every video game is , dad . What do you ? We need to define the parameters of what winning means here , like getting to point A to point B as safely as possible without doing any damage in any direction , which is different than most video games .
BenIt's a collaborative , collaborative game yes , yeah , it's a pro social . It's a game that practices pro social behavior , which is a good way of looking at driving . It's like you can practice your pro social behavior , your pro social traits , while you drive , and that's a good thing . It's true . All right , true , it's true .
BenUm , I think seattle has been , uh , really good for me in terms of like learning . I think I've had a really good progression over , you know , the 10 , 12 , whatever years of me learning to drive , uh-huh , learning to drive in california , but like suburbs of california , but still going to the city every once in a while , spending a lot of time in minnesota , wisconsin , just driving long highways . So I got those long hours in . Moving to oregon , driving in like a medium-sized city , um , uh-huh , living on widby for a while , where it's just like , oh , this is just like , this is heaven , never any traffic . And then there was uh , and then I moved to seattle and I felt like I'm so ready for this , I'm so ready to be , to be a real city driver and deal with what all that means .
ScottYeah exactly yeah , that's why I'm . You know , I can't go be an Uber driver anymore in San Francisco because the Waymos have taken away just that market , just that market Really , and the market where I want to drive the most is in the city .
BenAnd to think that Uber was in such such like , so up in arms for so long about like , oh , are our drivers employees or are they contractors ? It's like all this legal fucking mumbo jumbo for so long and now boom , now all your drivers are gone anyway and your business is just that impacted me .
ScottThat law change how they made uber , make them employees instead of independent contractors , because I went and applied for a job or asked if I could have a job and I was told well , it used to be easy , you could just be an independent contractor , but now you'd have to be an employee . So we don't know if we're that serious about having you do this activity uh-huh , yeah .
BenSo we're just like wow , that's so interesting instead of like it's so interesting Instead of like . Well , I can't really think of the equivalent . I don't know enough about
Uber, Employees, and Modern Work
Benbusiness or being a business owner Like you don't have a business . Is it anything like when , say , you work for a retail place and you have staff , you have employees , employees , and they kind of take care of you . They get you a pizza party once a quarter , but they don't withhold you whereas if you're a contractor .
BenThey want to make sure that , like the handshake and that , like everything , stays perfectly I don't know what I'm saying .
Scottthe main difference is is withholding taxes or not , or whether , as an independent contractor , you're responsible for your self-employment tax , which is like Social Security , and you're responsible for your income tax , and the person giving you the money doesn't have to think about it at all .
BenI see , I see , it's really just easier for them . You're a contractor because you deal with all that administrative shit .
ScottYeah , it's easier . They just write a check .
BenYeah , okay . Now that you're an employee , now that you're one of our babies , we don't care as much about you . You can't take care of yourself we got .
ScottI suppose there must be other downsides of having an employee I'm sure there are .
BenThey have to throw you pizza parties , right , you have to go to the headquarters and it's like great . Now we gotta . Now we gotta invite all the drivers over for spring quarter I don't know .
ScottYou gotta pay unemployment , I think that's uh . So it's hard to be incredibly part-time . Yeah , I wanted to be a substitute teacher at the blue bear School of Music Really , because I can do the job of the band workshops . I'd probably be pretty good at it , because the main thing is you just say , okay , let's play that again .
BenLet's hear more . I could become a therapist . I'm just like tell me more about that . Oh , that was good . I like that . That was that was good . Tell me more . Tell me more about that . Do that part again . Do that part again , you know , yeah but we'll see you ever want to be a substitute teacher period ?
Scotta teacher .
BenNo , you never wanted to be a teacher . I could see you as a teacher I , I am more like .
ScottI'm more like a master apprentice maybe sort of relationship . Yeah , I could . I could uh show a journeyman what to do on their way to gaining mastery . Yeah , I always wanted to do that with programming . Never quite happened .
BenDid you ever consider going into academia , getting a master's or a PhD in computer science ?
ScottYeah , I was accepted to get a master's in computer science in uh university in north carolina , chapel hill I must have heard that at some point , but then , after I got , accepted , mom got into med school yeah okay , and so it's like oh okay , yeah , this is an easy call , I mean .
BenI mean , was there ever a conversation about that though ?
Scottbecause it doesn't seem like too easy of a call like yeah , I'm sure we talked about it when the applications went in yeah I mean yeah , right , I mean , it was her , yeah , her dream , whereas you could , yeah , she yeah , no , that makes total sense .
BenIt does you need ? You need a master's in medicine in order to , uh , do you call it a master ? It's a doctorate medicine doctorate right , need a doctorate in medicine in order to actually be a doctor . You don't need a master's in science computer science to be a computer scientist ? Yeah , maybe , to be a computer scientist , but to be a programmer , you don't .
ScottYeah , yeah , but then you decided , then you never went back to school no but , I had a pretty academic outlook , but I wouldn't call it more like a academic outlook . I'm just more like a scientist without without academia .
BenYeah , I just think about you know that's a really good way to get that sort of a , to build a master apprentice sort of relationship is if you're a , if you're the invest principal investigator of a lab , you have all your students . If you're the invest principal investigator of a lab , you have all your students . Yeah , makes me think of Adam and his and his PI , his principal investigator , exactly Like that's what's going on there , just in general , yeah .
ScottYeah , Can you . Can you see Mount Rainier ?
BenNo , no Too foggy too cloudy it's just a nice little urban forest around me , oh I mean when I say urban forest , I just mean regular , like residential streets of seattle .
ScottThere's the weather's such that you could go to a hill nearby and see Mount Rainier .
BenProbably we got a heat wave in Seattle . At the moment , the air should be pretty clear . Yeah , I could .
ScottWe could do that . I remember the summer we were there and like there for a couple of weeks and then went to that parking lot on first hill cherry Hill , first hill I think and it's like , whoa , there it is . There's the surprising the first time you see it how big it is . It's huge yeah .
BenMount Rainier is impressive .
ScottYeah , yeah .
BenThere's a reason why it's a Seattle state .
The Story of Kahler Cabin
BenYeah , what's the story behind the Kaler cabin ? When did that first come into grandma's family ?
ScottWell , that's my mother's maiden name , and in Nine , the summer of 49 , or maybe the summer of 50 okay , so that okay they not my mother but my grandfather and grandmother and two or three of her brothers .
ScottProbably we're looking for a . You know they drove five hours up north from their farm in Hillsborough , wisconsin , down south . You know you drive that far to where you get to the woods and the lakes . Yeah , their intent was to buy a place so their , their father , could go fishing , so my grandfather could go fishing . He needed a little fishing cottage and they got shown uh , these places , um , which ?
Benuh , which grandfather was this ? What was his name ?
Scottcharlie charlie kaler yeah , charles , charles kaler , and they got shown this one . You know there weren't that . It's nothing like it is now , where , like round lake , is surrounded by mansions of twin city . Uh , executives , it was just dense hardwood forest , probably . It was at the end of a road . Someone had made a log cabin as their fishing cabin , maybe 50 years before . Wow , they looked at it , and I think my grandfather's . No , let me get this right . They were looked at and go nah , this is like a rundown old log cabin which you probably have no memory of is it ?
Benthat's what the old kaler cabin was . Yeah , it was a lot . It became kaler cabin . I I was telling a friend yesterday about this , uh , the uh . I just have like memories it's like a poem in my brain that I remember of just like remembering the smell of like I don't even know if they were smoking , but I just have this memory of just like a bunch of old women around a table , playing cards and they're being yellow and they're being like dark wood , like all around and it just and the carpet .
ScottYellow was the paint color of the of the log cabin was painted yellow on the outside .
BenYeah , so maybe you did see it once or so . It's really like a just a sensorial sort of imprint , more than anything but they were about to leave , I think .
ScottAnd then my grandfather walked down to the water and I looked at that beach you know , yeah , that's one of the best sandy beaches on the lake , and said you know you might want to reconsider . So , yeah , he sort of like tipped it and I always thought of this as like my aunts and uncles buying the place . But they were in their 20s , you know like there's no way their parents weren't like supporting indirectly or encouraging this whole thing , because if you guys went and bought a cabin together , it's like we'd be in the mix . You know , yeah , and then , but my mom wasn't there and then she borrowed 200 bucks , my oldest aunt , she got in on it by um . They paid for the water , for the um installation of a water , a well and a pump uh-huh a hot water heater which is still operating up to the last , until they changed it into a Wausau home .
BenWausau prefab homes .
ScottIt's actually a friendly Wisconsin , not Wausau Wisconsin .
BenPut your work order in for us to build you a house .
ScottSo the way you end up with that bit of property is you get there real early Like 1950 .
BenThat's yeah , get yourself a fixer-upper 1950 . Yeah no , did they like work on it ?
Scottthemselves when they fixed it up , or did they just kind of nothing got fixed up , move right in ? Nothing got fixed up .
BenIt was the same log cabin until you just sleep on the floor and just keeps the rain off you until 2000 or something .
ScottYeah , I mean , I I felt like growing up . I I feel now like I had log cabin privilege , like totally going there , felt like such a you know , going to the woods , going back .
BenYeah well , I feel sorry for kids now I mean , I feel , I feel that like in my body , just thinking about like the couple of times I visited when I was super young , you know yeah , I feel sorry for kids who , like you know , live in edina and then they go to the lake and into their wassau home .
ScottNo , no , that's , that's still special .
BenThat's primitive fucking .
ScottBe grateful , okay , for your wassup prefab home right no , and they go to a mansion that's fancier than their place at home and it's like , oh well , that's sort of sucks you , that's not going to the cabin , that's not no , you're not really doing anything , yeah right , and that's why I like the cracks in the walls now at our place , because Stop .
BenQuote that's why I like the cracks in the walls at our place . Okay , continue Sorry .
ScottIt's more of a cabin now . It's more of like oh , this is a second home . That you know is we don't have the amenities of our first home .
BenYeah , and have we told the viewers how those cracks got in the wall ? Another quirk , one might say , of the cabin .
ScottI think we might have Middle of winter . Is that what it was ? Thermostat when my dad was ?
Benin the hospital for the last time . Months on end Melted all the snow around , for , like you , know , months
Thermostat Failure Toasts Marshmallows
Benon end .
ScottThe furnace failed that winter and the alarm was calling and saying the cabin is 140 degrees . And I'm not saying these details right exactly , barb , so don't worry about it . This is just a part .
BenIt's okay , it's okay , you're getting the gist , that's what matters here .
ScottI went up to check and it was the cabin . Was the thermostat ? Had failed to reach . Fahrenheit thermostat had failed while it was , the furnace was on and it just burned away and , yeah , 140 degrees .
BenIt was a sauna inside and that , eventually , all of our marshmallows that all of our four , anywhere between one to four year old marshmallows that were in the cabinet all melted to goo no no , they didn't .
ScottThe chocolate did not , it was the chocolate . The marshmallows were toasted . They were great .
BenI I ate them yes , yes they were perfectly toasted okay , now it's coming back to mind we we had desiccated the marshmallows and they had become lucky charms . Yes , so if you want to make your own lucky charms at your own home , turn your thermostat up to 140 degrees and let it sit for four days the main lesson I took from that was , of all the things my father worried about , he never worried about that .
ScottSo it's like why worry ? Yeah , you're never gonna . You're never gonna worry about the thing that's really gonna happen he never installed that check valve .
BenThere was no contingency for that one . Yeah , we have cracks in the walls now because the cabin was effectively a sauna for yeah , that stretched it out and yeah , yeah , imagine how things warped under that heat yeah , and it still only burned as as much fossil fuels as four chat GPT inquiries . Oh man , asking chat GPT to write four poems is the same amount of energy it would have taken .
ScottI asked chat GPT to explain to me why
AI Energy Consumption and Public Libraries
Scottit was so much an energy hog . And I went into it with my own knowledge of like the chips it's using and it said , like yeah , those nvidia chips , they're designed to be very energy efficient , unless every time you access memory you have to go to far off memory , which in computed terms means you have a cache miss , cache , miss . Yeah , you could save energy if you just everything was like in the local cache , like oh , I needed to read that , but it was nearby . But you have a whole pathway to get to something . And the reason why that happens is that these neural nets are enormously , uh , unnatural , because every neuron is connected to every other neuron . So that means like can you imagine how inefficient email would be if , when you sent out an email , it had to go through every computer on the Internet ? That's insanity .
BenYeah . So all these little nodes and things , all this information between one node to another , the fact that I put in an inquiry and it spits something back out within seconds , does that mean all that information is flying around like at the speed of ?
Scottyeah , the net itself is billions of neurons and it can just crank through with the chips . It can efficiently crank through all of that , but it burns so much energy than , like , a natural brain would do , right , in the same process . Right , so it's . It's a one another way . Why ai is , you know god , nothing . It nothing like people think it is . It's been marketed way beyond what it is . They think it's going to become cognizant . They think it's going to be reasoning .
BenThey think it's going to be efficient no , no , it's not quite possible when you burn that much energy and and and that's where our sponsors should be .
ScottThe the um public library brought to you by the public library , the public library question , because by the and that's what I think should happen to these neural nets is they should become a public resource totally , because they're just a repository of all the information . It's like okay , we know what to do with that . It's called the library , we know . Yeah , it has the thing of , like , they buy the copies , they use that , then they make available , they , they manage all that right , right people .
ScottPeople get all up in arms about like nationalized businesses , but this might be the right sort of model for it yeah , yeah , it's a public utility and it's a very useful utility , but you have to , you know , recognize it comes with the cost that's right now being , um , you know , uh , backed by investors who hope to speculatively get rich off of it . Yeah , once that speculation is gone age-old story then you're gonna have to put a quarter in each time you use chat sheet pt . Yeah , which will be fair . It's like , okay , I , I used to have to put a quarter in to use a copy machine . It's , it's like using stuff , you know , yeah , at the public library where I would go to get my information for researching my write-up on editorial cartoons in my college class on communications yeah , all right you heard it here , public utility
Family History and German Immigration
Benbut , and I still need to know , uh , where charlie cer came from and who his dad was . But before I get into that , our sponsor today is Photosynthesis . Donate to Photosynthesis today . I don't know if you've heard of this , but it's the process they use that actually goes into most foods , but they're struggling now and they're asking for donations . And they're struggling now and they're asking for donations . So the company that does photosynthesis and has patented the process really needs our support . So we're not really asking for anything other than asking you to donate to a particular company . Photosynthesis , up to this point , has really been a public utility , but that might change . So go to wwwdonatetophotosynthesiscom and then quit out of your browser because that's stupid , and then go garden something and eat the sugar that the plants make .
ScottOkay , anyway out of the way . Can you donate in kind , like give it some sunshine or give it some water ?
BenYes , there are a million different ways to donate , and you can find out ways to donate by just going to wikihowcom . Carbon dioxide yeah , just breathe on plants , okay , yeah back back to our regularly regularly scheduled programming . Thank you , uh , where did charlie kaler come from ?
Scottand wait , remind me grandma's name on grandma's side brandao brandao the brandaus um showed up , uh , from germany , like in the late 1800s , and got a farm near Elroy the Kalers were . I think . Yeah , I think the Kalers were like a second generation German immigrants who came and , you know , squatted on a farm near Hillsborough . So there were , yeah , there's another generation of Kalers who grew up on the same farm , which became the farm that my mother grew up on . Okay , so they were , you know , german peasants who became landowners in Wisconsin after they , you know , left the whatever German feudal system where they were , just Is that after World War ?
ScottI before World War ? I no , it was after the Civil War .
BenUnited States Civil War ? Yeah , I States civil war . Yeah , I see .
ScottYeah , they , because in the late 1800s the Germans were already ramping up the militarism and , uh , conscripting young men into . You know , go off and fight wars of opportunity , empire building sort of stuff . And they said people who could get out got out .
BenYeah .
ScottRight yeah .
BenYeah , wow , age old story .
ScottCharlie , if you have a whole continent , you can go crowd out the native people like Australia or North America or South America . Wow .
BenWow .
Podcasts we love
Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.
Judge John Hodgman
John Hodgman and Maximum Fun
Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend
Team Coco & Earwolf
E Pluribus Motto
John Hodgman and Janet Varney
I, Podius
Maximum Fun
Jordan, Jesse, GO!
MaximumFun.org
Secretly Incredibly Fascinating
Alex Schmidt
Monday Morning Podcast
All Things Comedy
WTF with Marc Maron Podcast
Marc Maron