Well There's Your Problem | Episode 72: Schools & Childcare in the New River Valley

just give the kids some goddamned enrichment jesus
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[@patrickmattin9609]

I'm glad that the hosts of the podcast hate me personally so we can avoid establishing any sort of parasocial relationship.

[@schnee3able]

That's the best type of parasocial relationship though.

[@Ezekiel_Allium]

@@schnee3able that was, I believe, the joke

[@patrickmattin9609]

@@Ezekiel_Allium You speak as if I was capable of making a non-surface level joke.

[@eminatorstudios]

Enemies to lovers

[@qnybucks]

@@eminatorstudios Enemies to Lovers Pipeline

[@kommo1]

Here is a fun thing about those trailerparks. So, since the landlord still owns the land, he can still force you to move out..... you bought the trailer, not the land beneath it. But those "trailers" are not trailers on wheels, but trailers by law. They cannot be moved. If the landlord doesnt extents your lease you either have to sell it back (at a fraction off what you paid, if he even takes it back), move it somehow (huge costs, huge dmg, rarely doable) or demolish it out off your own pocket...... Did I wrote fun? I meant mad.

[@GigasGMX]

Why on earth isn’t “ability to be moved” part of the legal definition of a trailer?

[@kommo1]

@@GigasGMX Technically they can be moved. Its the IKEA problem. Technically you can assemble and disassemble the furniture as many time as you want. But in practise its falls apart after being moved once.

[@ravenoferin500]

@@kommo1 Or putting hauling it whole with a wide load escort. It costs man.

[@petergaworecki2824]

It depends on the age and condition of the trailer. The cost is about $2000 +mileage. But over a certain age (10 years) they CAN'T be moved, AND as a RENTER, you have rights, that are trampled on, by the "landlords" (companies and LLCs now) that know them, and keep you in the dark. There is a funny story about a renter/lawyer that changed his lease agreement before signing it so the park had to pay for all transport, lot prep and setting of the trailer if he decided to move out of the park, then signed it and the park accepted it (not reading the copy he handed them, and it held up in court!

[@Caffeine_Addict_2020]

Ahhh, so happy to see trailer park landlords emulating modern day communist china

[@NotJustBikes]

Woah, wait. If I'm on the podcast I can mute Liam? Justin, call me.

[@welltheresyourproblempodca1465]

No.

[@atn_holdings]

cross-o-ver! cross-o-ver! cross-o-ver!

[@alfalafelstine1536]

@@welltheresyourproblempodca1465 Do it, but you're all secretly in the same house, and every time he mutes Liam you switch microphones.

[@mahj]

You'll have your Liam and _you'll like it_

[@henrycurtis3652]

LIAM. IS. INEVITABLE.

[@Th3Sk1pp3r]

Looking forward to one day having Liam host his own podcast called, “Liam Fights Everyone”. Where he invites people on to berate them, and then disconnects the Skype call. I think this has potential.

[@tompain9735]

Still waiting for episode 1 of “I will fight your dad”.

[@lasschesteven]

His invitations are, of course, actionable threats of violence

[@deppy2165]

yea

[@QuestionableObject]

Resurrecting Skype just for that

[@memomorph5375]

I would pay to watch this podcast! Yay Liam

[@sakomeow]

It's called New River because they forgot to change the default name when they created it

[@monsoonmast]

Lmao 😆

[@adamwhite2364]

Then there's overlapping New River (1), New River (2), New River pr0n, etc

[@tompain9735]

untitled fluvial zone

[@Skiamakhos]

It's like with the Pont Neuf (New bridge) in Paris, which is the oldest bridge across the Seine still standing.

[@PhilfreezeCH]

Now I can‘t stop but thinking an Englishman saw this river and said „Oh look, a new river“ and the scribe just wrote down New River as its name.

[@TheRealColBosch]

It always gets me just how OLD Appalachia is. There are caves in the mountains older than the concept of bones.

[@discoj7112]

Yep, used to be the size of the Himalayas, too, and that all just very slowly eroded away.

[@seanvalentine4198]

@@discoj7112 the rivers that cut through them are also even older than the mountains

[@TwoTreesStudio]

The caves are great but holy shit the vandalism and garbage is a problem. At this point most of the cave locations are secret, the Speliological Society has them all documented but the landowners are super cagey about it (for understandable reasons tbh).

[@ukaszgolon5617]

Apparently it's so old, that Netherlands is part of the International Appalachian Trail.

[@halfpintrr]

A really good podcast that gets to this eldritch feeling is Old Gods of Appalachia. It’s about a slightly alternate Appalachia, and it’s amazing.

[@QuestionableObject]

"we hate you, the person listening" Oh hey me too, very relatable

[@squelchedotter]

I think you're very cool

[@ThePadawan3]

Speaking of landlords, I recently saw that someone on Steam publicly tagged the sim game "The Tenants" where you play a landlord (building and maintaining apartments) as "Villain Protagonist". Truly based.

[@Pheonixco]

There's a "Police Simulator" on there marked similarly.

[@monsoonmast]

Lmao definitely based!

[@Huntracony]

When I saw that title on steam I got quite excited thinking it was gonna be about the actual tenants, but no, it's about being a landlord.

[@CommieGIR]

"Its not a Pyramid Scheme, its a Reverse Funnel System!" - Radford Triangle.

[@JZG13]

Fun fact: I once accidentally dropped a rocket into the Radford ammunition plant (launching from VT’s farm across the river to the north) because the parachute came out too early. Not as immune to air raids as they thought!

[@Crazyfrog41]

But was the rocket launched by a ZEPLIN!?!

[@DiamondKingStudios]

@@Crazyfrog41I would guess not, making the assertion in the episode still “unimpeachable”.

[@brunof1996]

30:20 Here in Argentina there are children's unions in the schools. Between the ages of 12 and 18 you can form unions to fight the education system. This is usually supported by the teachers and administrative staff. If the demands are not met, strikes are popular, usually in the form of squatting, which usually works. There are also very strong student unions at universities.

[@isaactrockman4417]

God I wish students in the US had solidarity like that

[@DiamondKingStudios]

That never could fly in the Catholic high school I went to. Even if I were to flip to a particular page in the Catholic Social Teaching textbook we used justifying my formation of such a union, they would’ve suspend me quicker than I’d’ve be able to organize a chorus singing a song to the tune of the school’s anthem with rude, satirical lyrics, which is a shame; I’d’ve liked to see that.

[@TalkingSoup]

sad that alice's "wait, it's all industrialization?" call and response meme didn't get noticed

[@DiamondKingStudios]

Never has been

[@savanacampbell2986]

Liam's rant upon discovering Alice had muted him truly spoke to my soul.

[@Rolan7196]

I wish I could unmute Liam

[@OpreRoma]

Episode 100: The "Well, There's Your Problem" Podcast

[@ayle1312]

3 hours of silence with red lines being drawn on a black background

[@OpreRoma]

@@ayle1312 occasionally interrupted by Woz going "Erm...", Alice opening another can of beer, and Liam screaming "THIS IS AVANT GARDE, YOU PUSSIES"

[@OpreRoma]

@@ayle1312 eventually, the red lines on the black background create an anarchist flag, and Liam goes "I win" and Philadelphia explodes

[@eleo513]

“On June 23rd, 2021…”

[@soccch]

@@OpreRoma And a lot of people stating what occurred, then saying "right?" just to make sure they're being listened to.

[@DahVoozel]

Back in 1955, nothing more American than some service members' kids playing soccer with some factory workers' kids in front of an arsenal, on a field covered in chemical waste.

[@nikg5190]

... and the home of the brave.

[@stephencody6088]

1955?! Try the 70s and 80s. We were playing on those fields when I was a kid.

[@dubspool]

Replace soccer with baseball and you’d have peak America.

[@LaneCorbett]

@@dubspool and football when it's to cold for Baseball

[@slytown]

I'm a TA at a major land grant university, and the lack of critical thinking in university students suggests that since childhood my students have been taught to be cogs in the STEM machine. It was worse when I taught English in Korea.

[@tomhsia4354]

Try China, it's also a nightmare there.

[@svenofthejungle]

I taught math and English to Indian kids in Qatar. Holy crap, the lack of critical thinking was painful.

[@davidwright7193]

@@tomhsia4354 yep. Ask questions that would get “a why the fuck do you think I wouldn’t know that” look from students in the UK that Chinese students just don’t understand. I even had students asking me why I was revising core definitions because “they wouldn’t be on the exam”. Then I marked a question where none of the students understood the terms they were using.

[@tomhsia4354]

@@davidwright7193 Exactly, I remember having an experimental exam at an elementary school in China that tested common sense and critical thinking. I got full marks while the rest of the class did really poorly. The teachers weren't surprised. We are trained for answering test questions and little else. If things aren't expected to be on an official exam (Maths, English, or Chinese), don't expect average Chinese students to know them. My roommate can't even figure out how to use a bike pump. It's not the part where you attach the pump to the valve that stumped him, I did that for him, it's the part where you pump air that he can't figure out... The fact that he's doing relatively well in engineering in a good Canadian university baffles me.

[@HarryS77]

It's dark ages style education where you're taught to memorize enough disposable facts to skate by and maybe have enough STEM gunk stick that you'll be hirable; but the real purpose of the banking model of education is to break your spirit, bend you to authority, and deter your curious, self-motivated nature.

[@HamburgerTime209]

I really appreciate the jokes in this episode, they’re really needed because my god I got bummed discussing how these poor kids have been left to the wolves by our country 🇺🇸

[@tompain9735]

It’s even worse hearing this stuff and being a teacher and knowing how little power an individual has to change this shit.

[@BiggestCorvid]

@@tompain9735 yeah. I'm not sure how your covid election year double whammy was but I had so many students on zoom who were so very, very lonely. I would have quit for my mental health but I decided they needed me more and just went to a therapist.

[@tompain9735]

@@BiggestCorvid very much the same experience

[@Noirehtrj]

@@BiggestCorvid very same I do not know how I got to this summer with my sanity intact; maybe I didn't

[@tompain9735]

No, Alice. I am going to yell at LIAM for not knowing more about Native American food cause I know what’s on the Pennsylvania 4th grade social studies curriculum.

[@novaiscool1]

Why of all things is Native American foods a 4th grade social studies topic?

[@pelicans456]

Reading the comments for this podcast before listening to the episode is always a very confusing experience.

[@tompain9735]

@@novaiscool1 because that’s when you learn about Pennsylvania at an age where you can gloss over the bad things about settler colonialism and just do fun stuff like visit a Lenape longhouse, learn about native foods, and make popcorn.

[@davidl6558]

We already know Roz has forgotten the high school driving curriculum.

[@davidl6558]

@@tompain9735 Bingo. I don't know if that's the deliberate intention in the curriculum writing, but it's certainly the outcome.

[@DahVoozel]

Before today, I thought I was insignificant. Today I learned that WTYP podcast knows of me and I am significant enough to their world to hate me.

[@amtm94]

I went to Tech, and there was one time a speaker came in to talk about how 460 ripped through poor communities and led directly to several food deserts. The white girl next to me later said "isn't that fascinating?" in response to learning infrastructure built for (among other things) her education literally harmed people. I don't think I'll ever stop thinking of how out of touch that was and wondering how many other students thought the same way

[@steemlenn8797]

Maybe she (as I do) does not equal "faszinating" with "good"? Faszinating is when are are in awe about something. I certainly would use faszinating about Pompeji, even though thousands died there.

[@stephencody6088]

What we have in the US called the Prussian system of education: it's not meant to make decent thinking citizens,but educate people just enough so they don't hurt themselves in factories and the military,but not enough to ask questions.

[@GigasGMX]

Prussia is truly the root of all evil.

[@Gustav_Kuriga]

@@GigasGMX No, it's just outdated.

[@annafdd]

Same in the UK. They are even already in uniform, so that they get used to the concept of no autonomy or individuality.

[@danielludwig647]

@@annafdd “Another Brick in the Wall” was written about the UK primary school system for a reason.

[@kwarra-an]

@@annafdd I think that's a reach on uniforms there. For sure they do enforce, well, uniformity, but they're also pretty good (in my experience) at reducing classism etc

[@distaffpope2603]

Oof, this is a depressing episode. Thought it would be one of those "learn about a niche topic" episodes, but its "learn about a niche topic and feel sad for our failed education system."

[@screwaccountnames]

It feels very Last Week Tonight in a certain way.

[@OpreRoma]

A friend of mine teaches special needs kids in a school in North Yorkshire's formerly industrial wastes and it seems Appalachian schools and Northern English schools have a worrying amount in common

[@__-jt4tv]

@@screwaccountnames "Well There's Your Problem Tonight" is a crossover I'd watch the hell out of.

[@tomhsia4354]

@@__-jt4tv WTYP, but with John Oliver, LWT's editing team, and HBO's budget. Alice the Muslim, Liam the Jew, Roz the Catholic, and John the depressed parrot. Only these four can turn comedy into a soup like homogenate in under 40 hours. I'd love to see them rip into televangelists, Robert Murphy, and fish. It'll be utter fucking chaos.

[@InterFelix]

@@tomhsia4354 oh that would be hella' bingeable. I can vividly imagine it right now, and it would be such a great thing. And I very much appreciate the soup like homogenate. Thanks for making me laugh out loud a little.

[@Mergatroid]

That part about recess being only 20 minutes: I went to a public elementary school in Chicago and we only had like 15 minutes for lunch and 15 minutes for recess, usually less time because of the line to get food and the line to go outside. Chicago obviously has cold winters and they didn't put salt out when it was icy so people were always slipping and falling on their faces and breaking their noses. It was hell. EDIT: This was one of the better schools

[@DiamondKingStudios]

Fifteen minutes for lunch? My Catholic high school (probably about on the level of more well-funded public schools in my city, but nowhere near as well-off as our main private school rival to the north) had thirty before you subtract the time it took for ninth graders (dismissed last) to collect their own lunch in the long line extending along the auditorium. Me, I always packed lunch at home before school so I wouldn’t have to wait in line, but senior year they revamped the school meal plan (adding it as a mandatory tuition surcharge) and I couldn’t really do that anymore. Fifteen minutes for lunch (in a Chicago public school, which I imagine would have more students than my high school of three hundred) sounds like no time at all for some kids.

[@phildyson4100]

I'm struck by what Justin said around 'building infrastructure to move people and goods from place to place, rather than to one place to take it all away'. The latter is *exactly* the way the railways were built in South Wales. Built to extract the wealth, take it away and not bring anything back.

[@OpreRoma]

> Arsenal soccer matches causing cancer As someone who used to squat next to the Emirates Stadium in Islington, Radford isn't the only place where this happens... 😛

[@kyle-silver]

As someone who did learn how to code: most of my job is mind-numbingly boring, but hey, at least I didn’t accidentally start a genocide halfway across the world without even noticing

[@OhShitSeriously]

Probably not, anyway. Unless you've worked for Facebook, in which case you definitely did.

[@Amadeus_Phoenix]

Pronouncing BAE Systems as "bae systems" is very funny to me. Bae caught me enabling war crimes

[@spacebees86]

I Love how every episode just starts in the middle of a conversation. I feel like I just showed up to a friend's place

[@JochiKahn]

I was a student at Virginia tech physics department, one of our electives was to do science outreach at schools in the New River valley. I can tell you the level of physics education was quite low

[@DahVoozel]

Good old fashioned American educational system, funded by taxes no one pays, controlled by people with no educational experience but who have the free time to run for the school board.

[@BiggestCorvid]

Yeah. I was tapped to teach an honors physics class and found out literally none of the students had any precalc. In an honors class.

[@felgraf9811]

Did my doctorate in Physics in the same department! I fucking hated that Mastering Physics online homework was used for the non-major's homeworks (Like, the engineering sections), because--like. With physics homework done 'properly' (written out), if someone gets alllll the way through the problem and fucks up at the end? Or fucks up at the very beginning but does the rest correct? You can give partial credit! You can even write a little note saying what they did wrong. but the online homework stuff just spits out a "NOPE WRONG" at the student. Sometime it's because they have the answer wrong. Sometimes it's because the program doesn't like that they rounded at step 2 rather than at step three. But at the same time, the physics courses for engineers were so fucking enormous there was no fuck *way* they were going to able to grade physics homework done the 'correct' way...

[@RoryF100]

You made my soup go down the wrong way when I laughed, and I put too much chilli oil in it when I made it, so I'm crying now. I hate you too.

[@Ingestedbanjo]

I inhaled and choked on some acidic passion fruit juice when I heard Liam's reaction to being muted, so I'm gonna get in on the hate too. My throat *still* hurts.

[@SivakAurak]

I was in the middle of drinking and shot beer up into my nose.

[@warmachine5835]

Thanks LIAM.

[@TheRealE.B.]

Alice, most Americans don't even remember what the Three Sisters are because they didn't pay attention during the token Native American chapter in U.S. History. The fact that you knew as a European is actually quite impressive.

[@stephencody6088]

Right?! The only reason I know it is because my family's Mohawk and I got a History degree.

[@TheoEvian]

Btw, my father works at a nitrocelluose chem plant. He used to bring some of the stuff home when I and my siblings were children - it was a very fun childhood filled with horribly toxic stuff left in the cupboard "because I have a project I want to do later" and minor explosions.

[@VulpesHilarianus]

"Kids getting into fights on the bus because there's no bus aides." Yeah, no, that's normal. Both parts of that. As for the no sidewalks and crappy playgrounds thing, a lot of these towns showed up after people just kind of sort of built houses there. They're satellites to the small cities that had production centers like the armoury. Momentum picked up in the '40s and died in the '70s, and by the '90s everyone was just kind of hanging on and hoping nothing wiped them out. The communities were in no way planned, the districts are a mess, and things were built as they needed to be. It's like that across all of western Virginia and in West Virginia. Many of these places only have a post office because the government used to hand them out like candy.

[@monsoonmast]

Are bus aides a private school thing?

[@alexsulek6942]

24:00 “They thought if they built it really far inland it’d be immune to zeppelin attack.” “Has it been attacked by a zeppelin?” “No.” “Unimpeachable.” I almost choked to death on my food laughing at this. It was way funnier then it had any right to be.

[@nekolalia3389]

That audio pop before the relocated 'have a nice time' was 💋👌

[@lolwutinternet]

WTYP: "Just do some weird shit." Also WTYP: "Don't give the 6-year-olds alcohol." Look, I'm getting some mixed messages here, folks.

[@joshporter5205]

This is what happens when schools are a grist mill for industry. The poor are ignored because they'll produce profit through labor or through being part of the industrial prison system.

[@svenofthejungle]

Don't forget the military. We need the poor to be meat for the machine.

[@ViolentOrchid]

The random Pinkerton logo floating in the bulleted list over the name, and then the explanation. 🤣🤣🤣

[@ThatGuyExplains]

6:50 The Daíl (The ROI's parliament) does actually have a bar in it, and unsurprisingly it is extremely well funded by the ministers

[@AlRoderick]

British Parliament does too, but they may have closed it due to either publicity, austerity or Covid.

[@TrinityShoji]

Idea for a future episode: Naperville Disaster, 1946. Long term effects are why passenger trains are limited to 79 mph. It makes no sense when you read WHY that's the speed limit. Idea comes up because of the Safety Third segment in this episode

[@Anonarchist]

The next episode's The God Damn News is gonna need it's own episode.

[@aturchomicz821]

Huh why?

[@ehsn]

23:04 Alice, I noticed what you tried to do here and laughted even if Justin didn't follow up. On the bright side, you didn't get shot on the back.

[@doctorworm420]

This meme but the astronauts are also wearing hard hats and hi-vis

[@CerdurTV]

my internal body clock sensed two weeks and i checked subscriptions and here i am

[@Leeqzombie]

same lmao

[@jsone42]

I get push notifications like a basic bitch

[@kaycashew]

I became a stay-at-home parent because daycare cost so much more than my 8.50 an hour job. I’ve been out of the workforce for 13 years and now I have no career at all…oh well.

[@darwinism8181]

To-go cocktails still boggle my mind. "You pinky swear you're not gonna drink this as soon as you leave? No? You're just driving off laughing? Well I'm sure it'll be good."

[@OddoFelacio]

its based as fuck thats what it is

[@DeleteriousEffect]

I'm sure glad liquor stores magically protect us from this menacing activity.

[@SadisticSenpai61]

Probably why they're not legal in my state and haven't been since Prohibition ended. The cops here enforce open container laws a lot too. They get college kids on it all the time. You'd think the kids would learn eventually. 🙄 Then again, my first job was at a gas station that got it's liquor license back AFTER I was hired. I worked the first shift where beer was sold. My manager was paranoid - said she didn't want to lose the license again. So I followed her directions and carded absolutely everyone that night - including the guy that was 80 yrs old and looked like he was 100. The manager was so paranoid about losing it again that she had the company pay to send us to a class to learn all about the laws regarding liability and selling alcohol. Basically, if you have reason to think the person is going to drive while drinking, you might be liable. Same thing if you think they're going to give it to a minor. She's the only manager I ever had that took it that seriously and 100% backed me up on every denied sale.

[@jakx2ob]

What's the controversy around to-go cocktails?

[@chancekahle2214]

@@jakx2ob Puritanism. That's it. If anything, to-go cocktails are safer than dine-in cocktails.

[@thecatwithatophat4069]

"Its strange to see an American town with hills" Alice, I cordially invite you to see the town of Frostburg, the entire town is slopes

[@Hypocrite-ical]

Yes - we have them almost everywhere.

[@manputty933]

Or Seattle

[@NorthEast-Keegan]

I miss my three hour long episodes of WTYP

[@monsoonmast]

Same

[@distaffpope2603]

This is more humane for the hosts. Podcaster don't naturally go over two hours unless in extreme distress

[@MrxstGrssmnstMttckstPhlNelThot]

It's cuz they hate you personally, a listener.

[@oohhboy-funhouse]

@@distaffpope2603 I prefer my podcasters with slides be of the caged variety. Treating them as human doesn't make the next quarter balance sheet big enough.

[@notesscrotes4360]

The saddest thing about Breezewood was that Twitter thread where a bunch of people thought it was hated because of SIGNS and BRANDS; apparently that shitty sprawl was so normal to them that they think it looks normal.

[@maglorian]

‘We all hate you, personally, who is listening to this’ awww, that’s so sweet. 😁

[@GigasGMX]

I was going to say something about how this isn’t really an ENGINEERING disaster, but then you brought the highways into it. Well played.

[@zachpauley85]

My first job was in the former Baldwin Felts office there in Bluefield WV, across from the Federal Courthouse. Thanks for visiting the NRV, and thanks for bringing awareness to this! e:(not a pinkerton)

[@anthonyhendrickson4428]

This has honestly been my favorite episode so far, mainly because it echoes so much of what living in Branson, MO was/is like growing up. You see a lot of the same issues crop up from education being incredibly fucked to infrastructure being given to parasites.

[@chunk2689]

Non-native north west Arkansas (WALTON BUBBLE) here and i can TOTALLY see that.

[@1121494]

Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse coming up next episode? Quelle suprise! Very much looking forward to that!

[@DevilishDropout]

I love that academia zoning policy is to create bantustans for poor peoples

[@alexmckay1760]

38:25 it's not exactly what you envisioned but my hs actually did have a very brief stint with students unionising and striking. Thanks to an issue with timetabling, every second week we had nearly a weeks worth of chemistry classes packed into one day and it sucked. One day a bunch of us didn't go back into the classroom and just sat outside chanting. We didn't manage to get a change to the timetable, but we were able to avoid 30 min of chem without getting in any sort of trouble (we weren't even marked absent) so it wasn't a total loss. My one regret is that none of us knew the word scab at the time, so we could only yell at other students crossing the picket line, not call them scabs Also yay Liam! (She/him)

[@Gustav_Kuriga]

If there's one thing I hate the most about unions, it's the demonization of "scabs", who are often people who need the money the most who are exploited by the company and thrown under the bus as soon as the union quiets down again.

[@GretchenDawntreader]

totally agree, let kids be kids. I work in admissions at a university and I see kids applying who have basically completed an associates degree while in high school. When I was in high school...was a bloody long time ago, no one was taking college courses, and honors math meant playing around writing programs in basic. When I went to the college here I now work I was the hot shit at my high school and had scholarships...now 40 years later, I don't think I'd be admitted. High schools are having kids do advanced math back when we were still figuring out geometry. It's nuts now.

[@stevieinselby]

What offends me most about The Breadman Bakery is that some of the lettering is different and the THE is not centred.

[@riroo8275]

Peep Roz with the Strong Towns thinking. When a communist and a libertarian agree on something, you know it's right!

[@aidancollins1591]

My guess is he is getting the info from Not Just Bikes, fellow leftist who is adapting the Strong Towns work.

[@BicyclesMayUseFullLane]

... which just shows how batshit insane the current (North) American infrastructure resource allocations are.

[@monsoonmast]

Literally the first (and so far only) time I ever agreed with a "fiscal conservative" was reading Strong Towns.

[@caraxadent]

I miss it when it was just Liam talking over a heavily modded Cities: Skylines

[@PobortzaPl]

I miss it even more since it was Roz talking. (bloody stupid auto correct)

[@LaneCorbett]

Gentrification and Eminent Domain explained using a 2015 City building game made by a map strategy game company

[@ericwilliams9117]

Big Nerds hurts, but is a fair assessment of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and its students

[@danielcelisgarza]

I went to a Montesori primary school (not in the USA). Worked great for me, ended up with a STEM PhD from Oxford, and I'm gonna be starting a cushy job with quite high pay. But it made me pathologically individualistic. I hated being made to work in groups where one kid does all the work (usually me) and carries the rest. It was also kinda shit, there was so much course and homework. Everything after primary school was a fucking breeze. I'm not from a wealthy background, but we had enough to get my brother and I to that primary school, at the cost of pretty much everything else.

[@lunalangton5776]

A cliffhanger in Shake Hands With Danger? Well, the hatred's now mutual.

[@helloofthebeach]

Spoiler: The dude dies.

[@lunalangton5776]

@@helloofthebeach THEN WHO WAS PHONE?!

[@stephencody6088]

My mom went to Radford University. She was from Hopewell VA; at the time it was the chemical capitol of the us w/an average life expectancy of 54 years.

[@alloymetal7861]

Yes, Roz, America is the only democracy in the Middle East, because Israel is not a democracy and America is all over the Middle East. Although Rojava is also democratic, I guess.

[@_ZombieDoll_]

School was legitimately traumatic for me and I'm still trying to work through all the ways it fucked up my brain. The whole system needs a total overhaul.

[@halfpintrr]

A really good podcast that gets to this eldritch feeling of Appalachia is Old Gods of Appalachia. It’s about a slightly alternate Appalachia, and it’s amazing. People forget how old Appalachia is.

[@UnknownFlyingPancake]

I kind of assumed that's just how schools in general are. The district I went to was in a middle class suburb and elementary school wasn't much different from what was described. Having to take a bus to/from school despite being close because of heavy traffic roads, 20 min. recess, school consisted mostly of just sitting and doing worksheets, or "dittos" as they called them back then. I remember being really upset one time because I couldn't fit all my homework in my bag in Kindergarten. Didn't do much playing. Was surprised to hear the person working at the school actually played with the children. When I was a kid they just stood around and glared at us. I remember getting a huge splinter on the old wooden playground and bawling while the nurse viciously tried to dig it out from my skin and shouting at me to shut up and stop crying. I don't understand why people idealize childhood, it's as if they truly don't remember what it was like. School is hell that traumatizes children and leaves them a broken shell.

[@syddlinden8966]

I fucking love Alice's giggle.

[@boldandbrash9447]

Finally, after 72 episodes they deliver on the promise of slides in this podcasts

[@jacobedward2401]

I went to Tech, I'm special, pay attention to me! I'm only on the first slide, but you are gonna talk about the Radford Army base doing open burns that pollute the New River, right? 28:00 yeah there are lots of environmentalists which is how I heard of this... But yeah not a lot of anti-war people, lots of drone testing.

[@OpreRoma]

Normally i get high as balls listening to this podcast, but I don't have any of my high THC bud left, but instead have some CBD Critical Mass which is equal amounts THC and CBD So I'm going to get progressively more relaxed and happy as this podcast progresses

[@klsinger124]

Always glad to know I’m not alone

[@philiproszak1678]

How is cbd?

[@OpreRoma]

@@philiproszak1678 decent, it feels more like the initial buzz you get with thc rather than the full stoning effect you get with thc stuff. Although my stuff has as much thc as it has cbd so it's probably different to pure cbd stuff

[@philiproszak1678]

@@OpreRoma interesting. Thc is HIGHLY ILLEGAL where I live. But cbd is legal and supposedly high quality.

[@OpreRoma]

That Safety Third brought back some stuff One of my Uncle's drinking buddies used to work on the railways doing maintenance. He'd been doing this for decades. Years of working on the railways had made him go a bit deaf 1 day, he's working on the rails and a train approaches. He didn't hear his colleagues shout at him to move. He didn't notice the train until it was too late He got decapitated

[@JulianSildenLanglo]

38:25 You were just jokin, but we do actually have a school pupils union here in Norway.

[@Bob.martens]

The 'well these are problems' podcast with one engineer.

[@Jessie-vm6kq]

Ya know living in VA, and especially posh part even more so than Blacksburg, It pains me to think in a state that has so much wealth we can't even manage basic playground design for schools. I can't imagine that the over all educational experience is all that much better and then it reflects badly on the schools when kids get lower SOL scores (SOL's are the big sorta test for VA 3rd-11th) I doubt there is really anything at the state level to remedy this even though you totally could. We have extremely wealthy and well funded schools in NOVA, and then we have strong urban area's along the Urban Crescent like Richmond & Hampton Roads, I bet they could easily have some of their school funding redistributed into the entirety of the rural part of the state. hopefully though the tide will turn a ways for development as VA is working to extend a NER from Roanoke to the New River valley area, though that's way up in the air, and it sounds like the station won't be in Christiansburg and will be closer to between it and Blacksburg so *shrug*.

[@niallfoody97]

Ireland government funding public housing next you'll saying our buses run on time.

[@ciarancassidy7566]

MDMA being legalised is also not an accurate claim. Although in some places on the island it might as well be.

[@tompain9735]

I did have a guy ask me if I was from philadelphia on the ballycullen bus

[@ClaudiaNW]

@@ciarancassidy7566 Alice got it a bit wrong about the Irish "drug legalisation" incident - what actually happened (as I understand it) is as follows. The Irish Court of Appeal decided that section 2(2) of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977 - which allowed the Government to add new drugs to the list of banned drugs by secondary legislation - was an unconstitutional usurpation of the legislative authority of the Oireachtas (Bederev v ireland [2015] IECA 38). This meant that, for a brief time in 2015, all the drugs that had been banned through secondary legislation were no longer banned. The decision was overturned on appeal by the Supreme Court (Bederev v Ireland [2016] IESC 34). Disclaimer: I'm a lawyer in England and Wales, not in the Republic of ireland.

[@scarylion1roar]

There's also a pedestrian bridge in Christiansburg, iirc over 114

[@engineer_cat]

How ironic it would be if someone hired a blimp and dropped presents on the Radford ammunition plant for international friends day.

[@user-lk2vo8fo2q]

if the blimp were outfitted for remote control, one could fit even more presents inside of it, and avoid any awkwardness if the friends in charge of defending the Radford ammunition plant don't like their gift.

[@EvocativeKitsune]

I'm also going to Have A Nice Time!

[@outrageous-alex]

This woman is a saint, as a single low income parent, I felt this episode the worst.

[@hagbardceline7118]

"That rare property manager that wants to help you" I believe that would be Ricky when he ran Sunnyvale

[@JrgPt96]

although I agree 4 year olds should have time to play, they could also do this in a setting where they can safely learn to play with others. Coming from a school system that seems shockingly functional compared to the American models, I can say that familiarizing kids with a small amount of learning, and being in a social setting, isn't that bad of an idea either. It does require a decently funded school though.

[@nanothrill7171]

Thank you for surfacing Reggio Emilia approach, this is really interesting! Highly applicable.

[@mathewperring]

As someone who did graduate school in chemistry, if you stay in school long enough you get to play again. Then you back to industry and ability to play it limited again.

[@memomorph5375]

31:00 Spicy take! Thanks for keeping me company on a double shift at Bezos’ dream crushing warehouse

[@huntermorgan4201]

I've been working as a substitute and temporary teacher in public schools for a while, and I might be about to start working full-time as a TA for a while. I really needed to hear people like y'all talk about how current practices are so dehumanizing to students (and teachers! it's bad for the soul to be the one turning little people into docile workers, too). I agree that anything that breaks from the established authoritarian system of "education" currently in place is a good thing to try. I've been deeply inspired by Augusto Boal and Paolo Freire so far; very pleased to add Loris Malaguzzi and the Reggio Emilia method to that list!

[@travissalyer9519]

My grandpa was a Virginia Tech grad who worked at Radford during the Vietnam war. He told me that the plant was designed by air to look like a normal American town, each “house” was a small production plant and they all had front porches and stuff. Also the Colonel who was over the plant operated in a secret bunker in a nearby hill or something like that.

[@PopsicleDoodles]

ngl that off hand bit about a "Child's Right to Log Off" bill is actually a kind of genius idea, especially for adults too since on top of kids being forced to "Learn To Code" (seriously if they aren't even literate yet WHAT skills are they learning?? This sounds shady as hell???) when they should be having a childhood we're also seeing, like, apartments you have to use an app to get into your home or jobs that expect you to maintain a social media presence on top of your existing duties. Society should totally establish the Right to Log Off!!

[@2sudonim]

Alice has a shockingly high and feminine laugh. She giggles like a school girl.

[@DiamondKingStudios]

The irony of the Montessori school being very expensive in the United States is because I’m pretty sure they were invented for the average, less-than-wealthy, student, which is why it makes so much sense when the guest talks about how much disadvantaged students could benefit from it. But then again, the Catholic school I went to, despite being separate from state-run public schools, is still part of the broader American educational system, so I could be very wrong.

[@joearnold6881]

I don’t even know how to google this but: How the hell does a little river just, like, sit there for a quarter billion years , with a cyclopean mountain chain, likely Earth’s largest and highest, getting smashed up into existence by literal Pangea colliding into formation around it and then eroding away again over forgotten aeons? Like, I almost get the one in Australia. Australia is both ancient and dead geologically as well as so arid that that little stream exists barely a few days a year and spends itself into a desert without even reaching the Death Valley-esque salt lake that is its supposed terminus. I thought rivers carved their way through rock, not rock politely ooze out of the way of rivers.

[@mackalack1019]

If you want to see a failed school system in PA read about Central High, they never closed fully during the pandemic & forced their teachers to work in person

[@No-uw3ry]

Learning to code is good. If we had real coding literacy for several decades, bill gates never would have gained the wealth and legitimacy to fuck with healthcare.

[@RoySmeding]

i don't think bill gates got rich because people didn't understand computers or whatever. but even if he did, if it weren't him it'd have been someone else, because that's how capitalism works

[@OddoFelacio]

on the other hand if no one ever learned to code then no microsoft either.

[@HarryS77]

@@RoySmeding Yeah, he got rich by being a patent troll and a monopolist. Also, friends with Epstein.

[@hdubbs9174]

Alice you’re thinking of Waldorf pedagogy, Montessori is slightly different. Here in Germany the Waldorf school is slightly associated with the right wing. (It’s a bit complicated to go into here).

[@steemlenn8797]

Hu? Waldorf is more left/green with a heavy dose of nature romanticism. The founder was a bit racist, in the sense that he was mainstream in that regard for his time.

[@fourcatsandagarden]

I went to an elementary school where they just took us out to a fenced in field with balls and jump ropes and like one tree and no blacktop for recess. We were expected to just figure out what to do with ourselves but we also weren't allowed to do a lot of things (like get dirty). Teachers setting up games for us to play were always greatly appreciated.

[@vinyfiny2019]

I spent 10 years living in this area (yes I'm a Hokie, Liam forgive me!), and this video explains SO many things...

[@daisyrushton1574]

I wish this pod had been around when I was doing geography at school, I would have done soooo much better i bet

[@kriststoff]

Lmao recognizing all the busted playground equipment from my own elementary school before they took it down is really making this real for me

[@PobortzaPl]

I like how when Roz said "That's what we here for, right" it was only their guest who said yes. And regarding hosts hating personally me: These are for you, Roz. These are for you. [waving middle fingers at eye level]

[@spofet]

I want to celebrate international friendship day with a landlord

[@duralate]

I wanna go grocery shopping for mine.