Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to the Call It Like I See it podcast. I'm James Keys, and in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to take a look at the recent move by the Taliban in Afghanistan to ban women from attending college. And consider also whether the US Bears any blame for this due to its long occupation and then sudden withdrawal last year.
We'll also discuss a recent piece which details how time is not absolute and may just be an illusion, despite our steady reliance on it to organize our societies.
And as an end of the year bonus, we're going to do a third topic and consider the merits of doing a dry January, which is a trend that we've seen pick up in our society over recent years.
Joining me today is a man who thus far has been able to keep time on his side, Tunde Ogonlana Tunde. Are you ready to share with the folks today how they, too, can keep Father Time in line?
[00:01:19] Speaker B: Let's see if I can do it, man.
All right. Sometimes time management's an issue for myself, so I'm not sure if people want to take my advice.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: All an illusion.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: So we're recording this on December 22, 2022, and I want to start with what we're seeing in Afghanistan. We all know that after President Biden pulled the US out of Afghanistan in 2021 with the final withdrawal, the Taliban, which was in power prior to the US invasion in 2001 following the 911 attacks, seized power again and have essentially been running the country since. One of the first things they did when they took over actually was ban women from attending high schools, but it wasn't made explicit that that was anything past primary school. So women still had been attending college, the ones that could qualify for it. But just in the past few weeks, they have taken this step further and now enacted a ban on women from obtaining college education as well. So, Tunde, what stands out to you with the Taliban's recent move here to ban college education for women?
[00:02:28] Speaker B: I mean, this was pretty predictable, right, that the Taliban had a very oppressive system towards women prior to our invasion. And I think, you know, used the religion that they practice as an excuse for this.
I've yet to have someone show me in the Quran where it says that women need to be excluded from, you know, regular activities of life. So, you know, like getting educated and all that.
So that, to me is the unfortunate thing is that it's not a surprise. I, I, I, you know, this is again, it's just like, okay, this, this is how these Guys operate, and this is the culture they're in. And it's unfortunate, I guess, for women there. I mean, not. I guess it's unfortunate for women there. Let's just get it that way. So.
[00:03:13] Speaker A: Well, no, to me, I mean, I think this is. It's an interesting reminder. We did something, you know, another fundamentalist government a couple of weeks back, you know, with the ban on premarital sex in Indonesia.
This is. I think this is a little different, though. It's coming from the same place, from a religious fundamentalism place.
But this, to me, is about enforcing a hierarchical society.
And what the Taliban wants to do and what they've been endeavoring to do is instill and enforce a strict hierarchical society. They don't want it to be egalitarian. They don't want everyone to be. They don't think everyone is created equal in their minds.
This is how you make women, or this is how you perpetuate women being subservient to men in the society. And they draw on their religion to find that. But as we know, people can find justification for almost anything in a religion. So, you know, I look at it in that sense, and what it reminds me of, actually attacking the ability to get educated actually reminds me of, you know, what I thought of was how in the United States during slavery times, how it was very important and something that was part of the legal framework to prevent slaves from getting an education. Because what societies understand is that getting an education can be empowering for a group of people or for individuals and for a group of people. And so that's like, to me, that's what this is. You know, that's what you see here. And it's just another reminder, again, a lot of things we take for granted here and a lot of things that, you know, liberalism becomes a bad word to people in many respects, but it deals with, you know, this idea of whether or not we're going to have the whims of someone's interpretation of their religion, dictate how society is going to run, and then also whether we're going to go for just a strict hierarchical type of setup and say, hey, we're going to try to undermine anybody who's not at the top to make sure they don't even have a claim or the ability to try to climb to the top.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: Yeah, let me. Let me pick a few things out of what you just said.
One is, you know, like you said, about the way that the religion is interpreted. And I think that's a very specific point. And like, you said with the First Amendment in the United States and Congress not allowed to legislate a religion into law into this country. Again, there's a reason. There's the interpretation of Islam which has led this country to this, because there's other countries like Iran or Saudi Arabia or Jordan or Indonesia, as we just discussed that. We discussed that a few weeks ago, they allow women to go to university.
So, you know, it's the Taliban's even more strict interpretation of their religion than some of the other countries we just named, which they themselves have what we would consider a strict interpretation of their religion.
That is why we've stated in other discussions we've had on this podcast that having a secular legal system has been, I guess, what has allowed our Western societies to grow in the way they've grown and the way you said it was the form of liberalism within these societies, Western liberal democracies. And again, that's not the type of use of the word liberal or liberalism that has become a pejorative in the United States political kind of culture discourse. It's the idea of true the. The root of the word liberty.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: You know, and in America, right. There's a political party called the Libertarian Party, same kind of root in terms of the ability for an individual to be free as much as possible from overreach from their government. And now I'll just finish the point and hand it back. About the specific view of the religion is, you know, there's, there's, there's a theme in Islam that women and young girls should be attending to their households.
And remember, there's a, again, there's a way to interpret that. And certain religious groups would interpret that, that, okay, maybe women should, you know, once they became mothers and all that, begin to really focus on the home, but they can still have a life doing other things. The Taliban seem to interpret that in the most extreme way, which is women are prevented from doing really anything outside their home from, you know, girlhood on up. So it's not even that you're allowed to learn up until a certain point. And then once you have a family, you know, we expect you to behave a certain way. It's saying from the time you're born, you're going to be cast in this way in our society. And I think that's where it becomes to your point about the comparison with American slavery, it's about control and it's a fear of the authoritarian, that if these women get some sort of entry into information that we don't control, they may then Be enlightened to think other ways.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Or if the men are around women and, you know, like, they see the women aren't just tools of the society to do certain things, then men might start thinking, hey, you know, why do we need to, you know, why do we need to treat the women like this, so to speak. It is, you know, that's the point of the segregation, so to speak. So to prevent the growth of empathy, you know. And you raise a good point with that, you know, in terms of how the specifics of how the religious interpretation. Because where this becomes fundamentalism, religious fundamentalism is the religion can say what it wants to say and at certain adherents can decide to follow that in any religion, say, hey, you know, I want to. You have nuns, you know, for example, in Catholicism, and they say, hey, I want to follow a very strict port doctrine of my chosen religion. The issue that you see here, though, is that this is being for and the rye, this is fundamentalist religious fundamentalism is they're saying, okay, you don't have a choice here. You're not going to say, oh, you're an adherent to the religion. And you're going to say, hey, this is what I want to do. It's like, we're going to enforce this from the law, you know, with criminal penalties, so to speak. You know, and so that's where you really. That's where you really see a distinction, you know, in terms of when religion, it becomes intertwined with government. The religious doctrine is no longer about choice, no longer about how you want to practice your religion. It's about how the criminal penalties force you to do things in that. But the other thing I just wanted to touch on with this, you know, comes with the. We complain in our culture a lot about cancel culture. And I would admit, you know, a lot of times cancel culture is misused, so to speak. The ability to exert public pressure on a person in a position of power to try to force some change or try to create a deterrent to behaving a certain way. That stuff is important, though, in general in a society is to be able to, if this is what a society, what the Taliban is, is what a society looks like. If anyone who has the means can just seize power. If Elon Musk could just, in the United States, because he has all this money, just be like, look, I'm taking over. You know, I'm going to buy this, buy that, and I'm taking over, and then I'm going to run things on my whim, so to speak. And so this is what it looks like with that. But also this is. This is also. So we have a legal framework that prevents that from happening. But also the operation of public pressure. When people overstep, people in positions of power overstep what they want to do, that's a separate operation that can happen in a situation like this. Something that's not that the Taliban hasn't been influenced by, at least as it respects, as it relates to the women with certain other things, with foreign policy, they have, but with the women, they have it. And so this is, again, it's one of those things where we can recognize that the idea of cancel culture can be and has been in many cases misused, but the ability to. We can't completely throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak, when you're saying the public, members of the public and members of a society should be able to have a means to exert pressure on people in positions of power to do things voluntarily that they may not be crazy about doing or to not do things that they want to do because it may be something that the general public don't want. And that kind of system just doesn't operate here, you know, like this. In a very oppressive system, there's no public pressure that can be asserted because people can be summarily executed or locked up and so forth. So the other piece I wanted to get to with this, because then, you know, I want to keep us moving, is, you know, considering, you know, Joe Biden made this a thing he wanted to pull out of Afghanistan. We had been there for 20 years. So, you know, I'm not going to say that, oh, it was reckless or, you know, wasn't thought out, but do you think the US Bears any responsibility, you know, for. For this? You know, not necessarily all the responsibility, but any responsibility for how things have gone in Afghanistan since the US Left?
[00:12:10] Speaker B: No.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: Well, explain why.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: Okay, you just asked me. I'll give you an answer.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: Ask a yes or no question.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: No, I mean, I think, look, we identified already through this first few minutes of the conversation that, you know, this is the Taliban's interpretation of Islam, period.
And I think it goes back to, like we're saying, right.
And it's a good reflection for us here in the United States because we do have people in this country that would like to see our nation run in a more theocratic way, using religious doctrine as the law and not things.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: Like the Constitution and their religious doctrine, specifically. Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:46] Speaker B: And I think that's why I say specifically, the Taliban's interpretation of Islam as compared to Iran or Saudi Arabia or others. And I think we in the US Would consider the Iranian and Saudi Arabian interpretation of Islam, especially as it relates to women and even things like drinking alcohol and things like that, things that we would not welcome those systems in the US And I think that. So to see that the Taliban is even to us more extreme than these other nations is a good reminder to us that, yeah, once you allow the religion to be the rule of the law of the land, then you're to the whims of the interpretation of whoever is in power at that time. So that's one thing. So that's why I don't blame the US because the Taliban had been in power since the 90s at the latest. It might have been since the 80s.
After 9 11, we invaded Afghanistan. We clearly had the dominant military presence. So we were able to help usher in changes like a more westernized type of government, which slowly over the 20 years, like you're saying, began to roll back some of the more what we consider extreme versions of the culture of the law in terms of the religious law, and began to institute things that we are more used to in the west, like allowing girls to go to school, and I'm talking about high school, like you said, they banned as soon as we left. So can someone look at the United States and be upset that after we left things changed very rapidly? Of course they can. But my point is, is that people were upset that we were there.
People were upset now that we're not there. So what I'm saying is people are going to be upset either way.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: Yeah. And people are going to throw blame around no matter what.
[00:14:39] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's what I'm saying. But the ones I think that are responsible are the ones in charge.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:44] Speaker B: So, you know, when we were there and we were in charge, or at least controlling the people in charge, things were changing and now we left and it's back into the hands of the true Afghans. And they want it this way, meaning the Taliban guys want it this way, not. I'm sure the women that went to school didn't want it this way.
[00:15:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:00] Speaker B: And so that's why I say the answer is no. I mean, I don't blame the United States. I know the United States can be blamed for a lot of things that have happened in that country in the last, let's say 40 years, because you had the mujahideen in the 80s and, and then you had the Russians there before the Americans. So I mean, unfortunately for Afghanistan has been a place that has not been stable for probably 50, 55 years. And that's just the unfortunate nature of their country in this recent time.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: Yeah. With a question like this, I think to just the idea, the concept that it's hard to change culture. And so, yes, the UN US went out, went in after 9, 11, and dislodged the Taliban from power, because the Taliban was providing haven to the people that the US Identified were, you know, had attacked the United States and wanted to continue to attack the United States. But they didn't go and wipe out the Taliban. They were just like, all right, well, you guys can't run things anymore. Because the way you're running this country, you got these people that they're trying to blow things up in our country, you know, are chilling here, training and stuff. So they put, you know, as you noted, they put in a government. But I. It's really hard to change the culture of a country. And as you pointed out, this is how the country was before we got there. And so there was a certain amount of inertia that was already in place for this. There was an attempt to install a more egalitarian system, a more democratic system there. And we saw that slowly and slowly but surely fail over time. Some of that due to the way it was being. It was. It was being tried. You know, there was a lot of corruption involved. And it's always. These type of things always tend to fall apart when there's a lot of corruption involved. But there's a lot of corruption in the world again. So whether or not us can be blamed, I side with you and say more or less, no. You go in, you break something, you're kind of responsible for putting it back together. But it's kind of back together the way it was before we got there.
And the comparison I have. And you bring this up. I'm surprised you didn't bring this up this time, because you bring this up commonly is you're talking about changing the culture is more so like, what the US did with Germany and Japan after World War II, when you're there for decades, and it's like, look, we're just gonna be here. We got bases here. You guys are gonna, like, you know, the way you're gonna run things has to be cool with the way we're doing, you know, the way we think it's cool. And over 30 years, 40 years, couple generations of people, you can make changes to the culture, you know, in that kind of sense. But if you're not Willing to make that kind of commitment, then there's an argument to be made, you shouldn't go in. But again, that wasn't, we weren't in a situation like that. You know, there was imminent threat potential. People who were saying that, hey, we wanna, we had to go get those people. So ultimately, I would say little to no responsibility on the U.S.
but I do think that the U.S. could have done things better in terms of trying to change the culture, in terms of the type of people that it, the type of behavior that they put up with from the leadership when they were there, when looking the other way, when there's this kind of corruption happening, is undermining you. Trying to sell a change in culture to people because they're like, hey, well, you know, the way you're doing things, I'm, I still have nothing. And the people at the top are still taking everything off the top anyway. So that'd be the only place where I'd say, hey, you know, like it could have been a better job, could have been done. But ultimately, just to your exact point, you blame the people that are doing it. You know, like, that's really what it comes down to.
[00:18:13] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's just, look, Afghanistan's a mess. I hate to say it that way. I mean, I've got friends that were there and all that. It's just a, culturally, it's, it's probably one of the most distant cultures from our culture that we, a country we could have invaded. Like you said about Japan, Germany, they had society similar to ours before they went off the rails and caused, you know, what they caused from World War II and World War I and Germany's case. But, but, but Afghanistan really never had the type of society we had before we went in there. And we just, I think it's just two very different cultures. The one thing I find interesting before we jump was, you know, there were some leaks and rumors that this was coming in recent months.
[00:19:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:02] Speaker B: And there's a lot of speculation that, you know, like any group of humans, there's different people within the Taliban and there are some, There are more progressive minded people within the Taliban leadership and not progressive as in the way we use it in America to think of like a liberal. What I mean progressive is they recognize that they're not going to get far as a nation.
[00:19:26] Speaker A: You mean they're not pushing for universal health care?
[00:19:28] Speaker B: Yeah, like, I don't think they're that progressive. Yeah, not American progressive, but I mean, progressive is in. They just want to get out of the kind of station they're in right.
[00:19:35] Speaker A: Now relative, relative to the political spectrum there.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: Yeah. And they might be better traveled. They might have been already, you know, other countries in the world where they see, okay, if we want to not be this pariah and we want to get access to international banking system and certain things that they don't have access to, we need to start having a more moderate face to the world. And they, there's speculation that some of the higher ups that are on the more moderate side leaked this out, hoping that it would trigger kind of international pressure enough that they would rethink Duke going all the way.
[00:20:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:11] Speaker B: And so I just found that interesting that even with group that we would consider as extreme as a Taliban, like kind of right wing extremists, there's still kind of factions that, that, that are more, I'd say, pragmatic.
[00:20:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:25] Speaker B: Say, okay, you know, if we want to have, you know, play ball and start doing trade with the world and kind of bring our economy and get people to come visit here and things like that and maybe get more support for rebuilding this country, you know, this isn't going to look good. And the western countries that can help us and even China might not be so willing to play ball with us if we start showing we're going backwards like this. So I just, I find that interesting.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: Especially because Afghanistan, I mean, they're in a more precarious situation than many nations around the world that try to pull off like the religious fundamentalism but still get acceptance from around the world. Most notably, they're not sitting on a bunch of oil.
If you're sitting on a bunch of oil, then you can kind of do. Well, you can do a lot of stuff and people will make a lot of excuses for you, but they're not. And so, you know. Yeah. So if you, if they want to try to, to, to incorporate themselves into the world discussion, the Taliban government, if they want to be recognized, that's one of the things that the world community has said. You know, it's like the way they treat. They're not recognized by many governments around the world. And that's one of the reasons is the way that they, they treat women. So, you know, it's one of those things. Like I said, this is the kind of. The world was like this most places throughout history, like the strongest or the most capable or the person who had the biggest stick took over and just ran things the way they wanted to run things until somebody took them out. And so that's what we're seeing here. And it's unfortunate because we have different sensibilities in the United States right now and in many parts around the world. We're just. That. That's just not. That's not the only consideration on how society is going to be run. So it's unfortunate to see, hopefully, those more moderate people or more relatively progressive people ultimately are able to move the country in a direction as time goes on. So the second piece that we wanted to discuss today was a really fascinating piece going into how time. We experience time in the instance that we're in, as linear, as absolute, and it goes from the past to the present to the future and so forth. But from a physics standpoint, there's a lot out there going about. Time is actually relative, you know, and is. Is not absolute in that sense. And so what you find most interesting in this piece that really went into that and, and how, you know, time, you could consider time almost from a. Like a scientific standpoint, an illusion, you know, and that, yeah, time can actually move faster or slower depending on where you are, you know, like in. In. In the universe or the ordinary, you know, in our solar system, so to speak.
[00:22:51] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I've seen stuff like this for years. Very interesting. Time, actually, in. In kind of the microseconds moves. You can measure the difference from being standing on the surface of the Earth versus in the space station.
[00:23:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:06] Speaker B: You know, just a short distance like that, you can already, you know, they can measure differences in how we perceive time. A great movie, by the way, for the audience that dealt with this was interstellar. You know, the, the. The fact. Matthew McConaughey, when he kind of went for this whole expedition around the space and stars, and it looked to us like maybe it took him a couple weeks.
[00:23:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:25] Speaker B: And he comes back, and his daughter, it looks like she's 30 years older than he is. Yeah. Because on Earth, that was like 70 years worth of time.
[00:23:32] Speaker A: Yeah. And so gravity, it's well known gravity stretches time.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:38] Speaker A: You know, like you point out the International Space Station, the gravity is different there. It's observable, though. It's measurable. And this gets into. In the piece, we'll have it in the show, notes that in Boulder, Colorado, you can measure the difference because there's a weaker gravitational field there versus other places on Earth. You know, like. So it's. It's fascinating in that sense because, you.
[00:23:56] Speaker B: Know, it's interesting, too. Like, this is stuff I think about when I'm sitting by myself up at night. So, sorry, audience, but when I started Learning this stuff I realized, you know, because think about it, I mean, it's actually very interesting because we are, we evolved, life on this planet, evolved to deal with the, the way that this planet, you know, sits in, you know, our position in the solar system.
[00:24:20] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:24:21] Speaker B: And our distance from the sun, the.
[00:24:24] Speaker A: Amount of gravity that we face.
[00:24:26] Speaker B: Correct. And how we spin with the moon and all that. So I was just watching something recently on Nerdy documentary, talked about the amount of hours in a day on each planet in our solar system. And it was interesting. Like, like, I mean, I'm going to botch this, but. Because I don't remember the specific planets, but the ones that were closer to the sun. And it was interesting. It was because they all have differences. Not because of their proximity to the sun, but things like their, their, their rotation, how fast they spin.
[00:24:55] Speaker A: Correct.
[00:24:56] Speaker B: And then also how fast it takes for them to go around the sun. So they're saying like it was either Venus or, or Mercury. One of them has a longer day than they do their year because they spin slower.
[00:25:11] Speaker A: So slow, fast.
[00:25:12] Speaker B: They go around, go around the sun. Correct. So I was like, wow, imagine going like a whole year and the sun didn't set yet, you know, and, and then they were talking about like the big ones like Saturn and Jupiter, like they might have a one day for them. Like, I think the ones close to the sun, Mercury and Venus, like one day lasted 1700 hours. It was crazy how slow their rotation is. And then the other ones.
[00:25:36] Speaker A: Look how big the planet is also, though.
[00:25:38] Speaker B: No, no, that was Mercury and.
[00:25:40] Speaker A: Oh, no.
[00:25:40] Speaker B: Okay, son. But the bigger one, that's what's interesting to me. The bigger ones had shorter. You know, they might have had a day. Like one day was like 100 hours or something. But, but to, to the point I'm making is that we're conditioned. Life here evolved with a 24 hour sunrise and sunset. And then we've had other shows about different human functions. Things like dopamine, when the sun goes down, that makes us sleepy.
[00:26:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Our circadian rhythm and stuff like that.
[00:26:05] Speaker B: Yeah. So if we went to a planet that, let's say rotated, it took for us one week, what we're used to for a week to do one rotation of night and day. That might mess us up biologically after a while if we're there for too long, you know. I mean, that's what I'm saying.
[00:26:19] Speaker A: Unless we corrected it as far as light and dark and stuff like that.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:22] Speaker A: I mean, and the, we think of the ultimate measure of time in Terms of how we keep track of it on the. And this gets into the point that you're making. Yeah, like, in terms of. We look at it. Yeah, but all of that stuff. We look at it. Okay, well, that's based on. We're talking about day. A day. We're talking about a one rotation, one Earth rotation on its axis, you know, because you got a sunrise and a sunset and then the sun coming back up again, so to speak, you know, as the Earth is spinning. And then we think of a year as the. The one revolution around the sun. But what. This kind of. What this physics view of time goes more abstract than that because that's saying that there is a actual time that our bodies, you know, our bodies recognize. Like you said with the interstellar point, the Earth, the people on Earth age at a certain, you know, at a certain rate relative to. And that rate would be different if you're on the International Space Station or if you're in. If you're somewhere out in the middle of space where there's less gravity, because that. That gravity affects the passage of time locally to wherever you are. So that, to me, is what's fascinating about it because we're talking about time as an absolute. Not even our perception of time, because our perception of time can widely vary as well. But this is actually time.
[00:27:38] Speaker B: The.
[00:27:39] Speaker A: How we're experiencing, again, not even experiencing is not even out as we, you know, as we perceive it, but just actually from how it's actually lapsing. And so, yes, you can age at a different rate depending on where you are in the solar system. You know, and that, to me, is just fascinating. And I know it's all of this physics stuff. Well, let me say this. All of this physics stuff kind of, you know, once you get in. And they acknowledge this, once you. Once you take a broad enough view, like, our view is. We consider it a fairly broad view, and it is relative to where human beings have been over the past 2,000 years. But a lot of the physics stuff, as they continue to broaden and broaden the views, it's like, man, a lot of the stuff we know now actually only appears to be a piece of, like, we're still only looking at a small fragment of the big picture. And our understanding of these things makes sense in that big picture. But once you go out even further, like the conversations about how black holes. Once you hit a certain point in a black hole, then it's actually space that's linear and time is, you know, dimensional. Like, we feel like we experience space it reverses. And so that, to me, all of that stuff is just fascinating from the standpoint of our, how we, how we understand things. We kind of, we look at those as being just the way it is. In the same way people in 1000 A.D. just understood the world to be flat. And it's just, we keep unraveling more and more and it's like, man, I guess we don't understand this stuff as much as we thought we did.
[00:29:07] Speaker B: Yeah, it's, it's, that's one of the things, like I was joking about the stuff I think about when I'm alone.
[00:29:12] Speaker A: At night, alone in my room, sometimes I stare at the wall.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: The I, I, I'll reserve jokes going forward after that one. But, but no, the, the, or was I going to go, oh, that's what I was thinking, like, on a serious note, because think about it. Like we said, if the Earth is spinning, it takes 365 days to do one, you know, year rotation around the sun takes 24 hours for a full rotation. Kind of the Earth itself spinning for, to give us a day. So if there's something, let's say in space that was in between different galaxies and let's say just, it just kind of got stuck in this area of space where there's kind of no gravity because there's just not any interstellar space. Yeah, there's not enough mass to pull it in any direction. I was thinking like, like let's say you were in a capsule that was just there. That'd probably be the, the closest that a human being could come to not experiencing any time. And that's, that sounds crazy for me to say because if we're observing that capsule from here on Earth, we would still perceive time because we'd say, yeah, that thing's been sitting there for a week now. It's been five weeks. But if you're in that capsule because you're not spinning, there's nothing rotating. There's actually nothing for you to measure. And I think that's the, that's the part that I think for me, I don't project on anyone else. It's very hard to comprehend.
[00:30:43] Speaker A: Well, because we're so used to. Remember you just said both and it is both. You wouldn't be, you wouldn't necessarily be able to have any frame of reference to measure against. But, but because there's no gravity, the time actually would go slower.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: No, I know.
[00:30:56] Speaker A: So it's like, you know, like, so forget measurements.
[00:30:58] Speaker B: But it's hard for us to actually even contemplate and fathom that, because we've never experienced that human being. We've only been on Earth.
[00:31:06] Speaker A: So we've seen the same way, though that's in the same way. It's hard for us to contemplate that there are billions of stars out there. You know, like, is it like, all.
[00:31:13] Speaker B: That's what I'm saying. Like, the idea that time may not exist the way we understand it is almost impossible because we. None of us have really escaped this type of entrapment that forces us to perceive time. Because part of the issue of time, you know, there's a concept they call the arrow of time.
[00:31:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:32] Speaker B: Meaning like an arrow, it only shoots forward.
[00:31:34] Speaker A: Yeah. It's linear.
[00:31:34] Speaker B: Correct. But it also only goes forward because it. And you know, the term entropy also is. Is. Is related to time. Because entropy is the idea that things go from order to disorder and back to order again. And things. I'm talking at the quantum level, you know, molecular and all that. And so it's this breakdown of things that I've seen in some scientific circles, also equals time. The ability that this actually goes from this to this can only happen if there is a measurement of time in between them. And then I find that interesting. So that's what I'm saying, like, to the point you made about aging. Right. Like, let's say I'm in this capsule that is caught in between, like you're saying, the interstellar space. There's not enough mass anywhere near me for a couple of light years to pull me in any direction. So there's kind of no gravity. I mean, these are the unanswered questions for us right now, right? What I age.
[00:32:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:29] Speaker B: Like. Or what I age in the way that we're used to it. Or if I get.
[00:32:32] Speaker A: Yeah, it's fascinating.
[00:32:33] Speaker B: If I get hungry, does that represent time? Because I wasn't hungry an hour ago. So that.
[00:32:38] Speaker A: Would you get hungry? Would you get. And what we understand to be an hour, or would it be five days?
[00:32:43] Speaker B: Would be five. Exactly.
[00:32:44] Speaker A: And you can stretch that even further because it's like, okay, if you're in interstellar space, but still in a galaxy, there's some gravity. There's a. There's a gravity, you know, at the center of the galaxy and stuff. But if you're an intergalactic space where there's, like, really nothing, then it's like, even, like. So all of this stuff, I mean. And we could go forever on this.
[00:33:01] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:01] Speaker A: We just need to stop.
[00:33:03] Speaker B: I'm about to step out on. Leave you alone. For topic, I'm about to go smoke a joint.
[00:33:11] Speaker A: We've already, we've broken the barrier. It's like, all right, that's too much.
But just the idea though, again, to be. You got to separate out. And it's difficult to do the, the. The perception of time versus the, the actual passage, the absoluteness of the time. But again, it's not really absolute. It's relative to other aspects of space around you, you know, like in gravity and so forth. So that, that is changes, you know, again, for all, for all intents and purposes, for our purposes, it's, it's one way because like you said, we aren't going anywhere where there's no gravity anytime soon. We haven't, and we're not going anywhere anytime soon. But that all this exists, especially when you consider, oh, you know, the universe is 13 billion years old. I mean, it's like, well, you know, what does that may mean something different to us versus something somewhere else. So the last topic we wanted to discuss today is the dry January trend. And just, you know, for what that is basically, is many people, you know, will take a periodic break. You know, first off, I'll say, you know, in the United States, in many cultures around the world, alcohol is a very prevalent part of social interaction, of individual routine. You know, alcohol is a lot of places. And so, but alcohol, you know, is known to not necessarily be best for your body, you know, best for your longevity, best for the operation, you know, of all the things that you rely on and so, you know, from your brain to, you know, muscles, everything. And so many people will take a periodic break. One, one ritual. We've seen kind of gain. Increased prevalence recently is the dry January, where January 1st through January 31st, you don't drink any alcohol. And, you know, so I wanted to get your thoughts on this tonight. I know you've, you've played around with, with dry months in the past, and I think you've, you've felt good about those. So, you know, I figured it'd be a good thing to talk about as we, we come up on another new year here pretty soon. So thoughts on. On the dry January. Is it something that you think it's overhyped? You think it's, you know, the merits of it are well deserved. And you plan to do one this year?
[00:35:11] Speaker B: Yeah. Next year? Yeah, in two weeks I plan on doing it again. And now, I mean, look, it's, it's, it's something we've done for, or at least I've done since. Since I Think you did it the first year with me? I'm not sure, but, but I know it's been.
[00:35:29] Speaker A: I've never done a full month of. I've never tried. I've never tried to do a full month.
[00:35:34] Speaker B: So. Yeah, it's, it's.
Look, I think it's worth it for someone like me who does enjoy a little bit of whiskey and bourbon here and there like every weekend.
[00:35:49] Speaker A: So only on the weekends and the weekdays.
[00:35:53] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Only. Only on those days.
[00:35:56] Speaker A: Yeah, only on those days.
[00:35:57] Speaker B: The other days besides those.
[00:35:58] Speaker A: Yeah. If it's not a weekend or a weekday, then I'm not drinking.
[00:36:01] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So that you figured out audience. But, but, but no, and that's what I think. Like, it's funny after the first time I did it was when I really appreciated that alcohol is poison.
And really that it is definitely, you know, if consumed, probably even just on the weekends is still over time, not good for your body. And I'm just talking about, you know, brain fog and talking about the long term damage it can do to your liver and your, your kidneys and you know, just your internal organs. I mean, in the end, alcohol is a corrosive substance. Yeah, I mean, you know, there's a reason why, you know, rubbing alcohol being like 100 pure, pure alcohol, you know, something you don't drink, you don't put in your eyes, you know, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's a can can rub the pain off your car if left there for long enough. Right. So these are things that if you're putting in your body periodically, you're probably okay. If you're doing it probably more than once a month, you probably, you know, taking a break for 30 days actually is good, good for your body. Your body will probably reward you and it's not a bad thing. You know, something I thought of before I finished is one of the things I've thought of. If I never drank alcohol, would my life be worse? Like had I never drank in my life?
[00:37:16] Speaker A: And what's your, what's your verdict?
[00:37:18] Speaker B: I can't say it'll be worse. That's what I mean.
[00:37:20] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I mean, but I mean you never know. Like, in terms of like, it's interesting, I'll say this, the, the alcohol piece, I mean, it's, it's. Yes, we, we can say confidently it's a toxin. We call it intoxicated when you drink too much. You know, and so, and your body, now, your body is very good at healing itself. So you know, the The. The concept of a dry January is that benefits stack up from a week and then two weeks and three weeks in terms of your body kind of putting itself back together in ways that it can't do if it's constantly having the detox from consistent alcohol use. Like, for me, personally, I've adopted over the past few years kind of the thing where I just. I will only drink once or twice in a week. Like, it's just, you know, that's kind of my rule is, you know. But I've never tried to go multiple, you know, weeks, three, four weeks without it. I've done that before without trying to. But, you know, it's just one of those things. But I can see the merits. Even with my approach. What I. What that allows me to see, actually, is how I function when I'm five days off of alcohol versus one or two days off of alcohol. And I can definitely tell the difference. So I can imagine, you know, in terms of the things that are listed here. And it's a men's journal article. We'll put them in the show notes. But in terms of sleep quality, in terms of your hormonal balance, you know, less anxiety, you know, stuff like that, you know, those types of things are, you know, like, it's. I've observed that, you know, personally, just again, with the different. With me taking having days and days and days I'll string together without having anything. And so I can imagine. And I think it's a good thing to do. I think it's good to push yourself. I'll say that to somebody who hadn't done it. I may try it this year. But it's good to push yourself and to do things that go out of your routine every now and again. And alcohol is just an interesting one because it's such a part of our culture in terms of getting together with friends or after work or different things like that. To me, it's just very interesting how there aren't, like, oh, we go to happy hour every week after work. Not me, myself, but people who live like, oh, yeah, I go to happy hour every week after work. Like, it's almost like if you're not drinking, not drinking involves also social planning, changing, you know, like. Which is, to me, one of the things about it that probably makes it more difficult for a lot of people, but also just says a lot about our society, you know, in terms of, like, wait, we're just. We talked about. We did a show talking about coffee not too long ago. Well, it probably was a long time Ago.
[00:39:44] Speaker B: But.
[00:39:44] Speaker A: And how just most of the world, we don't know what the world looks like without most of the people having caffeine in them all the times. Well, and many cultures that like we have, you know, like we don't know what the world looks like without people having, you know, some level of alcohol either in them or recently they're detoxing from it. You know. And so I find that to be interesting in general from a societal level.
[00:40:05] Speaker B: Yeah. And the other thing, it's interesting even talking about, you know, just reaching back into the last topic we just mentioned about time. It's interesting how our. Because our bodies change over time. At least here on earth. Right.
[00:40:20] Speaker A: Less so if you're up in the mountains though, apparently.
[00:40:22] Speaker B: I just find it interesting how our relationship to alcohol can change over time. Like when we talked about it, right. As, as, you know, I'll, I'll be 45 in a couple months. You're, you're, you're cracking 43, you know, you're, you're, you're approaching the mid-40s at this point. And it's been about, you know, I just remember this change in my early 40, like 40, 41, where I just no longer could drink any bottom shelf liquor without really having a bad headache for the next day or two. And I'm, you know, I was joking earlier. I like my whiskeys and bourbon. I, you know, I'm a Jack Daniels guy and. Right. You know, it used to be I could buy the regular Jack Daniels 750 milliliter bottle and be fine. You know, have half the bottle. You know, when I'm 35 one night and wake up the next day, fine. Go to work. Fine.
[00:41:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Working at 7:30 in the morning. Yeah, yeah.
[00:41:10] Speaker B: And be good. And by 40, 41, man, I had half that bottle. It was three days. And it's funny and then, you know, you gotta, you gotta start getting bougie and start spending more money because now I gotta get the jack single barrel, the 70 bottle, which is half as big. You know, it's like 400 milliliters, but I could drink that whole bottle in one night and be fine the next day. And I just, I find it interesting how.
Just as interesting like it's the same alcohol I was drinking from, you know, college or whatever. But just as I got into middle age, just my body doesn't handle it the same way.
[00:41:44] Speaker A: Well, but there's probably two factors there. I've considered this as well because, yeah, like the ability to bounce back. Everyone for the most part knows that that wanes as you age. But there's probably also, if you start, if you keep feeling the effects, if you do a dry January, there's the literature's out there and then just people out observing, you're continually feeling better for, like, the first three weeks. Like, you're still. Your body's still kind of getting like, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, I'm feeling better, feeling better. And so if it takes that long, you know, to really. For your body to really get a handle on it, then if you're drinking, you know, a couple times a week or drinking every day, then there's a cumulative effect as well, you know. And that's one of the things that I've noticed also, is that if it's been longer since I've had a drink, then I bounce back quicker. Even as I'm older, I still don't bounce back as quick as I did when I was younger. Versus if I'm. If I say I'm only going to do twice this week, but it's Friday and Saturday or Friday and Sunday, then that Sunday one will be a slower.
I'll be feeling slower after that one. And so the cumulative effect of constantly trying to detox yourself, rid yourself from the damage you've done recently is something that affects. And then also just getting older. I mean, nothing works as well when you get older, you know. And so that's just. That's kind of what we deal with. Like I said, maybe you need to go out to that space capsule that you're talking about, man, and in interstellar space and slow all this down a little bit.
[00:43:09] Speaker B: Yeah, but no, I got to actually get there. That's the issue.
[00:43:12] Speaker A: You don't want to be there by yourself either.
[00:43:14] Speaker B: No, I mean, I'd be fine going there just to try it out by myself. The problem is with our technology, it would take me about 3,000 years. The closest dead spot, remember, I think, what was it? The Voyager?
[00:43:26] Speaker A: Propulsion is not going to combustion. Away it goes.
[00:43:30] Speaker B: Because they sent the Voyager out. One of the. I don't know, it was Voyager 1 or 2, but they sent it out in 1977, so a year before I was born.
[00:43:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:37] Speaker B: And I remember, I think last year they said, oh, it just got out the solar system. Yeah.
Like, okay, so if I'm gonna do this, this is gonna be a while. I gotta. They gotta. They gotta freeze me or something.
[00:43:48] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Well, they're getting better. They're getting better. I know they're sending some stuff to Jupiter here soon, and they're gonna slingshot it around Venus. So.
[00:43:54] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:43:55] Speaker A: You know, maybe by the time you're 80, they'll have something for you to slow everything down.
[00:43:59] Speaker B: But yeah, I mean, then I'll be ready to die. I don't want to slow down.
[00:44:02] Speaker A: You don't want to stretch it out.
[00:44:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll be upset that I'm old. I just want to be out of here.
[00:44:07] Speaker A: Yeah. One other thing I'll mention and with this, and this is also again, something I've observed in that, you know, you, you see as again, these benefits, I think how they stack up over the days, over more and more days of avoiding it is where you really get the benefit. If you're doing a full 30 days or 31 days is one thing I've learned, and I observe this to this day, is like, if you're, if you drink, the closer you drink to when you go to sleep, the worse you sleep as well. And so when you're stacking that on top of it as well, that beyond the alcohol, lack of sleep causes a whole bunch of problems. Lack of sleep is as bad as eating cakes and stuff like that all the time. And so the alcohol, it has so many cascading effects that just, just refraining from it for, again, for a stretched out period of time. Because your body's so good at repairing itself. There's, there's more than what you, what you would even go in thinking and saying, okay, well, this is, this will help me with A and B. And then ultimately it'll help you with A, B, C and D. Because it's like, oh, wow. Because there was so much time in between the last one. My body's, you know, my body's, it's like a cleaning lady, you know, or a cleaning person, you know, it's just like, oh, it's just, oh, let me go clean this up too. And since I'm not busy, you know, cleaning this part up, I'll, I'll go clean something else up. So you end up, you know, you put yourself in a good spot. You know, I guess to, if you do the dry January, put yourself in a good, good spot to get busy in February.
[00:45:27] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's interesting, man. I think, but like you said, I think part of our issue, at least in our culture in our country is, is it's a part of our culture. And I think, you know, we've seen the stats that since the pandemic, drinking has gone up even more because people are home. And like you said about just socializing and you know, I know that there's. There's a distinction between an alcoholic, and I think medical science has found that it's actually a disease.
[00:45:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:53] Speaker B: So it's not a moral failure.
[00:45:54] Speaker A: It changes your body, basically.
[00:45:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, and also some people, I think, just have a chemical makeup in their brain. They get addicted to it just like someone else might get addicted, you know, to something else.
[00:46:03] Speaker A: The gambling or to.
[00:46:04] Speaker B: Yeah, gambling or cocaine or whatever. Some. A lot of people can try things one time and be okay, and some people try those things one time and get hooked forever. And.
[00:46:14] Speaker A: Yeah, a lot of that is that brain chemistry stuff.
[00:46:16] Speaker B: Yeah. So alcoholism, I think we can separate out as something that is a disease and that. That should be treated medically or, you know, in a separate way. But I think just from a cultural standpoint, especially when we're young, and I think you and I probably can both share some of this. I mean, I'll speak for me, though, because I didn't know you, and we were in that college age, kind of twenties and all that is. It's a point you made at the beginning of this section of the conversation, which is such a social thing, that a lot of people feel they have to kind of go all in and participate. And I think what happens is, by a certain point, people are conditioned that if they don't have a drink, then they're not going to have their confidence.
[00:46:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:57] Speaker B: And it's interesting, I saw a headline, Courage. Yeah. The. The. The artist. Recording artist, John Mayer. He's. He said he's been single since he went sober. And, you know, they asked him why, and he goes, because I don't have my confidence, you know, thing anymore.
[00:47:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:13] Speaker B: He was saying how really he used to just drink. And the problem is he became an alcoholic, so he obviously had to stop, but it was affecting other parts of his life. But that's what he's saying is that would be the way he was getting chicks, he would be able to drink, go out and have all this confidence.
And now. And it's not just about women, but I think a lot of people, because of the confidence one can feel in socializing, a lot of people can feel awkward. A lot of people. That's what I mean. It's not just about getting. Having sex or doing it for those reasons, but some people just like to socialize and feel more social when they're drinking. And that leads to. Then, like you're saying, could lead to things like the lack of sleep and all that. That has other cascading effects.
[00:47:51] Speaker A: No, no. It makes Sense, you know, like socializing and stuff like that. Like, the alcohol is kind of the. It does grease the skids in many respects, and people become accustomed to that. So you can definitely see how, you know, like this. I wouldn't. Again, not dependency from an alcoholic standpoint, a dependency in terms of just accustomed. You know, we're accustomed to that being a part of our social interactions. And so if you then remove it, it's not easy. You know, in that situation, you sit at home all the time. It's probably. Well, it may or may not be easier, but the same. And then the other piece I wanted to mention on this is also the triggers. You know, like when you go to a restaurant, a lot of times that's a trigger, you know, for. For, oh, I got to have a drink. Or, you know, you do different things. Oh, that's a trigger. Or you got to have a drink. And so this is the type of thing that certainly would not be easy, you know, at least if. For somebody who hasn't done it and for somebody who's socially. Alcohol is a part of their life, which is most of the, you know, adults in the United States. And so. But it is something. I mean, the big takeaway here, I think, is that there are benefits to it beyond what you would kind of recognize after a couple days and not having a drink or after a week and not having a drink. There are the benefits that your body can. Can have from it. You know, go beyond that, and they're worth exploring. And it may be worth something checking out, seeing if it's something that's right for you.
[00:49:06] Speaker B: Yeah, but you'll be cranky for 30 days. So that's the only.
[00:49:08] Speaker A: Well, at least the first two weeks or so.
[00:49:11] Speaker B: Yeah, getting through that first hurdle is tough.
[00:49:14] Speaker A: But, you know, it's not much different, though, than people when they try to do, like they abstain from sugar, from processed sugar for, you know, like, they'll try to do that for.
[00:49:21] Speaker B: No, you're right. It's.
[00:49:22] Speaker A: It's kind of cranky and stuff.
[00:49:23] Speaker B: Like you starve your body of something it got used to, usually it's going to send you signals that it's not happy. And. And that's the last thing I realize as you're talking, too, is when. When I. When I drink heavily, you know, it's when I make my worst decisions on what I'm eating. So it's like another thing that if people are drinking a lot, then they kind of, you know, like you said about the grease and the skids.
[00:49:45] Speaker A: Yeah. It's related to the courage thing. It releases you kind of inhibitions. Inhibitions are out the window.
[00:49:51] Speaker B: And so, and so, yeah, your guardrails are off, so you start eating worse. You behave where you're probably going to be, you know, maybe ruder to family members and friends. So there's a lot of negatives that just come out of if someone is drinking at a, at a regular level or regular intervals versus taking breaks and allowing their body to kind of recover.
[00:50:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And you know, but also, you know, it can be fun. So I mean, it's something that has, you know, it's not, it's not here for no reason, but, you know, it's good though. And one of the final things I'll say, the final thing I'll say is that one of the things cited also is that, you know, doing something like this is something that allows you to feel more in control and be more in control of your own actions, you know, and so that's, that's it as well. Like, it can be fun and it can, it can be something, but being more in control of the circumstances you'll put yourself in when you want to do that or have that fun or whatever can't be a bad thing. So.
[00:50:43] Speaker B: And you know what helps me just for the audience, on a serious note, I started drinking two years ago, non alcoholic beer during January.
[00:50:49] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:50:50] Speaker B: And it did help because you know why? Like you said about the habit and the triggers.
[00:50:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:50:55] Speaker B: And that's what, like one of the restaurants now they start serving like the Double O Heineken's, you know, and the, the, the, there's all these come with Sam Adams, Budweiser, they all make non alcoholic beer now. And I would go to a sports bar and all my friends are ordering drinks and I would get the non alcoholic beer. And I felt good. Like, I just felt, I felt like I was drinking.
[00:51:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:11] Speaker B: And it was. So it's just something that actually helps a lot. Yeah.
[00:51:14] Speaker A: Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. Spoken from a, from a professional. So that's good. That's good.
So you, you. That, that's how you keep.
[00:51:21] Speaker B: I'm not sure if I'm proud of.
[00:51:23] Speaker A: That title, but I mean a professional in terms of the. Somebody done it on several occasions. So you know that, that, that's the advice on how Tunde keeps time. Time on its side. So we can close it up from there. We appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Fall. Like, I see it. Subscribe to the podcast, Rate it, review it, tell us what you think, share it with a friend. And until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:51:45] Speaker B: Boom Day, Romana.
[00:51:46] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time. We'll talk to you next year, yeah?
