**A Life of Adventure and Exploration**

As a child, I was always fascinated by stories of adventure and exploration. Every year, my family would take a trip to Tennessee to build a treehouse every time we visited the sea serpent. It was a tradition that became a highlight of our vacations. The excitement and anticipation of building a new treehouse were palpable, and it was a great way for my siblings and I to spend quality time together.

As I grew older, I began to realize that these trips were not just about building a treehouse, but also about learning about history and culture. My father's family business would often take him on sales trips across the country, visiting places like museums and historical landmarks. He would drive all day while my mother and sister waited at the museum or other attraction. I remember feeling excited to explore these new places and learn about their significance.

One of the most memorable experiences for me was when my family took a road trip from San Francisco to Whistler, British Columbia, over 12 days. We rented a large SUV and brought our dogs along for the adventure. The trip was an incredible experience that I will always treasure. It was a great opportunity for us to spend quality time together as a family and create lasting memories.

More recently, my two sons and I took another road trip across the country, again spending 12 days driving and exploring new places before flying back home. It was a fantastic experience that I felt would be a significant moment in our lives. We were able to take in the sights and sounds of America without any distractions, just the four of us enjoying each other's company.

**The Power of Generative Memories**

As I reflected on these experiences, I realized that creating memories is an important part of life. These artificial chapter headings like birthdays and holidays can be significant milestones, but moments like road trips and family vacations are what truly shape our lives. It's the ability to generate memories that will turn us into good people.

My cousin once told me that one of our jobs as parents is to create memories that will shape our children into good people. I believe this is true. By creating experiences that are meaningful and memorable, we can help our children develop into well-rounded individuals with a sense of adventure and curiosity about the world.

**Lego Saturn 5: A Piece of History**

While driving across America, I stumbled upon a fascinating project on my podcast site - the Lego Saturn 5 build. It was an incredible feat of engineering and creativity that showcased the ingenuity of the Lego group. I was amazed by how they managed to build the entire spacecraft, complete with the Command Module and Lunar Module nest, using over 1,600 pieces.

I also noticed that the project was a part of the Ideas program, which allows fans to create and share their own Lego ideas. It's an incredible way for people to showcase their creativity and passion for Lego bricks. I was impressed by how quickly we were able to build the Saturn 5, using the divide-and-conquer method.

**Next Week: Podcasting from Europe**

After this exciting episode, I'm looking forward to our next adventure - podcasting live from Europe! We'll be exploring new places and meeting new people, all while sharing our passion for history and exploration with our listeners. It's going to be a fantastic experience that I won't want to miss.

Until then, thank you for tuning in to this episode of 99pi. If you're interested in learning more about the show or checking out our archives, please visit our website at 99pi.org. Don't forget to follow us on social media and subscribe to your favorite podcast platform to stay up-to-date with all our latest episodes.

**Special Thanks to Rackspace**

This episode of 99pi was made possible by our sponsor, Rackspace. Their expertise in cloud computing and infrastructure support has allowed us to focus on what matters most - sharing our passion for history and exploration with the world. If you're looking for reliable cloud services that can help take your business to the next level, look no further than Rackspace.

Rackspace offers a range of tools and solutions that cater to all sorts of businesses, from small startups to large enterprises. Their support team is always available 247, ready to help with any questions or concerns you may have. Whether you're looking for cost-effective cloud storage or expert advice on how to manage your infrastructure, Rackspace has got you covered.

Visit rackspace.com today and learn more about their services. As a special thank you to our listeners, use the code 99PI at checkout to receive a discount on your next project.

We'll see you next week, when we embark on our European adventure!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis week's episode is brought to you by Rackspace did you know that Rackspace can help guide your migration to Amazon web services Rackspace support for AWS offers tooling and automation for account management security and best practices learn more at rackspace.com your Cloud uh welcome to still Untitled the Adam Savage project I'm will I'm Adam and I'm Roman Roman Mars wow um if you don't know Roman then you are not listening to the right podcast you should turn off our podcast right now go to 99% invisible uh. org.com 99pi 99pi.org and download the latest it doesn't matter which episode you download they're awesome and and let's just be clear you know while we record about 50 of these podcasts per year Roman produces about 50 some odd of his podcast per year but it is a fully produced magazine style radio show like ours is just we show up and shoot the breeze once a week and it's pretty like it's pretty simple and straightforward you take what you you told me eight weeks to produce a story I would say 6 to8 weeks wow and that's with the staff and everything takes a long time and so you guys have like a like a it's a bunch of people there now when you started it was just you and a couple people right no it was just me it was just me at night and it was like my fifth job in radio and I started it and I I was was like a little drop in that we put on KW and Morning Edition about like local architecture or something like that and then um and then it found a life online when you know it just found a a group of people who found like podcasted loved it um and then and then as we fundraised for it and added a little bit more we we added one person and now we have nine so the first time I heard about 99 Pi was talking to people who were at like the podcast officient AO section at the first XOXO Festival in Portland and Glenn fman was like Hey I know what kind of stuff you like you should listen to this podcast it's going to really blow your mind yeah and I and as I as I was on the plane home I downloaded a couple episodes and I ran out of the second episode before the plane got back to San Francisco I was like I I just have to go and I went all the way like had a driveway moment with a podcast I totally but I was on an airplane with no with go go so there was no internet you know there was no no continuing that it was it was it was a dark time for me but um do you know every time on a plane when I'm using that really really terrible internet I write Greenberg style Letters To Go Go Wireless in my head dear go go I would like a refund for my recent Delta flight from New York to San Francisco every time I think about bitching about that the the the crappy internet Wi-Fi on the airplane L I think of Lis I am a self-entitled I'm not enough of a self-entitled to do what Louis said not to do so I'm going to yeah anyway anyway go ahead sorry so so like 10 people you guys have done 400 episodes is 300 and something no it be it'll be 236 2 just 236 oh I'm yeah it's it's still incredible and they're all good is the thing that's the thing that blows my mind consistently every week is better than the one before well that's that's nice to hear it doesn't feel that way when we're making it but I think when you when I look over the total like body of work I'm like super proud of the show like I really like the show have you seen a PR obviously you must have seen a progression in producing style and the kind of narratives and the construction of those narratives over time what have been some of the most significant changes I mean the main thing is with the addition of other people and their perspectives like there's still me hosting the show but the voice of all the reporters who are characters on the show and the way that they write and edit the pieces in these ways that um I just wouldn't come up with there just it's great to hire people who are better than you at things and and and um and they're all really fantastic radio makers and so the stories have gotten more complex they've gotten more interesting I used to really I used to be content to cover a topic in a kind of cursorial kind of way and just like here's desire pass and we just talk about desire past and it doesn't really have a story and now everything is really grounded in a concrete story and um it resonates in a in a bigger way and um and then we've done experiments like we a couple weeks ago we released a a piece that was written by John mum and scored by members of the deest and we did it live on stage and it's like and it's like it's kind of this epic thing that we I was not capable of doing until we had funds to do it and until we had like the enough of an audience to make it worth those people's time to like you know work on my podcast you know and um for exposure man and so um show Cafe dord and so um so that type of stuff it's just like it's just it's bigger in in every way and it's um it's still really fun to work on but how long is the list of shows you still are like dying to sink your teeth into like ideas how far ahead are you with solid show ideas I mean solid show ideas I'd say you know we know because the the cycle being 68 weeks we kind of know 68 weeks you know ahead obviously um when it comes to me and my interests um now I have to convince them of things that I'm interested in it used to be just like I want to do Zeppelins let's just do something on Zeppelins you know like and now they'll go well what's the story you know like and so like so my things there's lots of little things so I I kind of keep an ongoing tally of um you know like topics or ideas and I read a lot of books and I you know keep tabs on it all and maybe in a year or two enough different pieces will come together where obviously then it forms enough of a thesis and a story for it to be a thing to group under a single rubric exactly it's really it's it like no idea gets completely killed or lost they always kind of stay you know one of my ones that lasted forever is is about Flags I'm really interested in flags and flag design your flag talk is just one of my favorite you did it in the world you did it at our tested show the first year I did I did I did like a short version of the tested show and then I did a a big version for Ted for uh Ted and then um but that was one that came to me when I was you know I was I was just in Chicago thinking about it trying to figure out how I was going to do this as a story and then you know I guess maybe six years later it became a thing um wow and then it became like lots of different iterations on that thing so it's pretty common for me to have these types of ideas for forever and not you know and just kind of not know where to put them I I have to imagine your like your poper file is one of the more interesting like like what you know what where what's in the grab bag and and I mean how much of it is you trying to wedge that stuff into into like be beat the ideas into shape and get them into the thing and how much of it is it it just kind of when the time is right you realize oh right this is back in the file I can pull this out and we'll we'll go back in and add this into this episode it'll give a little more resonance I it's tends to be more of the latter mainly because because a lot of my job now is supporting the nine people who work for me and my job is a more of a business person than it ever has been before what always happens right and so like if we if we want to get a story done if I want to get a story done we assign it to a producer and if it's my story to get done it'll get done like in eight months yeah it's just the that's just the nature of it so so now if I have something that I'm really dying to talk about or do it'll be um you know like it'll be nice to get a little thing in there and figure out how it fits into somebody else's thing I mean right now we've been tring these new um this new format of the show where we um I I'm producing it right now that's going to release on Tuesday is uh you should do a story which is when people like tweet at me about a thing or what or whatever and um and we do little two or three minute things where I just like interview an expert or something and we we Nest them together and it's a way to sort of get some of those out of my system that I really really enjoy but maybe they don't warrant a full story because there's not a character to follow it's not really 20 minutes worth of a story it's just kind of an idea or a concept and so I've got a story for you okay I already tried this when nor I went there I pitched the little guys on the back of the the families the sticker families yeah oh that's that's actually a good little short story I should figured that out baby on board versus all lives matter that kind of thing I'm thinking specifically of the ones that are like the the the caricatures the parents and the kid and dog and the Jedi and the and the Jesus or whatever people put on their backs of their cars a friend of mine once had a date go sour oh no have I told this on the podcast he had a date go sour because his it was he had been wanting to date this girl for a while she was really lovely and she gets into his he picks her up at her house and she get he gets into she gets into his car and they pull up into traffic and they're behind a car which has an iches on the back the the Christian fish um but this one has little legs because it's the fish walking out of the ocean and it says Darwin in it and she goes oh look that's really cute it's a turtle that says Darwin and my friend goes do I do I correct my date I don't want to neg her this is not what I do but I I feel the need to correct and I said and so he said I this is not a Freud and slip this was not this did not happen to me he says uh it's not a turtle it's a fish with legs it's walking on it no she says it's a turtle and he hits a wall she absolutely will not listen to his explanation and not agree with him whatsoever I I don't know which side of of this conversation I'm on but I think we should just move on okay so that's not my pitch my pitch is um I cleared this pool table off that's on the other side of us here uh recently and my sons and I have been playing lots and lots of pool and it's reminded me of uh as I've been instructing them about pool and they've both of course picked it up on a much deeper level than I had at their age and it's really lovely to hear them talk about pool with the correct language and um one of my sons plays a really deep and Hearty defense which I appreciate because a lot of people don't think of Defense as a as a me as a a playing mode of playing pool in Billiards right um but it's critical if you are going to play seriously you've got to if you don't have a shot you can choose to make a shot that will make your opponent's life a living hell it requires fine ball control and real strategy and one of my sons is really good at it but one of the things I had to tell him was don't ever try that in a bar you never play defense in a bar and it cascaded this whole set there's a whole different set of rules for playing pool in bars um because if you are good and you're going to go in and you're going to hold the table eventually someone will offer you a bar fight it'll sound it won't be as polite as I phrased it but I mean I remember being 23 at the albon on 16th Street and holding the table all night long and getting offered a couple of different bar fights and at one point during a critical game on the second to last shot I wasn't on the eight ball but I was on my last ball and I didn't have a shot and I played a safety and the entire bar turned against me so that if I had gotten my ass kicked no one would have jumped to my defense um and then there is then I was out drinking with a friend of mine who's Irish recently and I was saying oh I came across this redit threat about quote buying rounds in Ireland do you know about this no so if if you're in Ireland and you're like hanging out with friends one of them goes I'll get around and he goes up and he brings back beers for everybody now you are now on the hook to procure a round for everybody and as these rounds progress everyone in Ireland has the like part of their brain allocated so that they can keep track of who's good and who's not and woe beti the person who somehow stiffs the room on one of the rounds so this great social pressure on you to maintain the position in the rounds and sometimes you can be lined up like three drinks ahead because people keep buying rounds as they finish even if everyone else isn't finished it's an incredible amount of drinking pressure right and so this led to me thinking about the secret the secret rules inside of bars you guys did an episode so I don't think I said this at the beginning but 99% invisible is a podcast about design yeah in kind of all aspects of of the world in a very broad sense um and you did an episode about the design of basketball rules of the the the game of basketball right did a couple fascinating and and made me understand the game as it's played now I haven't heard this one oh it's really it makes when you're watching the NBA finals and you're watching The Warriors just shoot three-point after three-point after three-point after threep point you realize we're in another one of the the the the kind of Turning Point situations where there's got to be some sort of change in the game and you talked about it in relation to the dunk to to the to the invention of the dunk is the one I'm thinking about exactly so I don't mean to dredge up something from like two years ago no it is it is um it is shocking how much I forget about the shows that I work on um but that one I some that one we did uh with ESPN um worked help worked on it um but um it had to do with the fact that you know once people began to learn to dunk they had to build into the design of the game an outside pressure to not go in and dunk all the time and that was the invention of the three-point shot and now that there are teams like the Warriors who really excel at the three-point shot there might be this pressure to change it back or that might be just a lot of people think that it's just an anomaly and you know Curry's just yeah an outlier the entire and so there therefore it's not worthy of a of a game you know of a change of the of the game we also did one on the um the shot clock which is like there was a a period of time where like speaking of defensive play where a big part of your game was that you just didn't go in and shoot the ball and you ran out the clock as you were leading and Final would end like 17 to 18 there would be like final games like of the of like the early professional leagues until finally they just they did some math and they were like like to to core to score 80 points uh on each team they multiply that times the number of minutes and you have 20 and it comes down to getting 24 seconds to get a shot to get the right number of turn that you would need and so it just they just put it in the game and made it part of the thing and um and so I love those little game design tweaks to make something better Billards has undergone the same thing multiple times in its history in uh around the turn of the 19th to 20th century Billiards was undergoing the same kind of boom that it underwent after Color of Money came out in the 80s okay um and one of the and the big game back then was carum Billiards it was a pocketless table there were three balls on the table two uh two red and one white and your goal was to hit a cushion a cushion and both ball both other balls right uh in each shot huh and the problem with it was I believe Willie hoppy was I believe Willie hoppy was the first giant World beating star he became so good um he could just make the first shot and in a game to 150 points he could just run out 150 double cars in a row and there were like I have I have a book from 1880 that describes one of his method of literally of just have you get two balls near the bank and you just keep on doing this sort of like almost braiding of the balls and that led to the elimination of single caram Billiards to what's called three cushion billiards in which you have to with one of the three balls on the table hit three cushions and both other balls in any order you want as long as a ball hit is the last thing that happens so it can be three cushions and then you hit both balls or two cushions and then one ball and then a third cushion and the second ball it's so difficult the greatest player in the world has a per turn point average of less than two wow like the greatest run ever is something like nine points in a row or 11 points in a row and that's the best anyone has ever done wow um I love but it was the same thing cuz people were like they were exhausted they'd show up and they were exhausted to watch this and it's why nineball eventually overtook straight pool straight pool you just keep shooting racks until someone has 150 points it's it's amazing that this never happened for Cricket I still don't understand Cricket at all I know there's a ball and a bat and a whole bunch of people but in the rest of the G I learned from Hit Checkers you have to you have to hit knock the wickets down if you're on one team and then you run back and forth and sometimes it goes for like three days but they take time off at night it's not like baseball where they just keep playing until somebody Falls over dead um I can't believe that Norm left for a week and we're talking about sports when Roman's here so um this is this is an unexpected Sports not a norm no Norm's actually the the sports of the three of us oh he is okay yeah he's a baset and baseball I had the slightest idea yeah and anyway we're going to get they're going to let us know um we were going to talk about about uh parenting stuff a little bit let's talk about parenting cuz Roman has um twin boys I do famous famous from the the tail end of the show yeah they're in the tail into the show well they they used to be part of the ants and they are 10 years old they're 10 years old now I also have twin boys they are 18 years old that's I'm I'm I cannot imagine what is going to happen between 10 and 18 right now as you have probably already found every age is better than its predecessor the as the kids grow it just gets more and more invigorating and exciting and we were talking a couple of weeks ago about how like before you have kids you I had this fantasy of standing on a corner with a little kid of mine holding my hand with little fingers and I'm here to tell you that the reality of that was every bit as good as I was hoping it would be right it's like and at 18 I find they're amazing to deal with they are lovely humans um and it's the easiest from a temporal level but the decision trees are are gordian well like like so my my daughter's four and a half now and she's just getting to the point that her risk management is is commensurate with her skill level like she she will if there is a balance beam it doesn't matter if it's 10t off the ground or 6 in off the ground she is going to go for it right W no fear at all you're raising a parkour master I mean it's it's the anyway that goes that's that's a whole different problem but yeah so she she but she's now looking at that and she says Dad that one might be a little bit high will you stand underneath me pushing you with my bulk when you fall I mean you get good at catching it turns out you're like okay it's it's a weird calculus problem where you have to okay get in under the armpits and you're good um but I have to imagine that that like there's another Peak for that somewhere between where you are Roman and where you are where like the risk management and the ability to get into trouble like that curve gets real out of whack you know at this yeah it's all about preparing your kid to survive right it's all about giving them the skills to be a functional human um I having raised my kids in relative comfort in a in an expensive city am terrified that I will leave them unprepared for the realities of like paying rent and being a reasonable person to live with M my son one of my sons is on his way to Los Angeles this summer to spend a year working um at a job as a gap year before going to college and he was like I think I'd like to get a studio apartment and I'm like nope you're going to live with people because you should you should learn how awful you are to live with with strangers before you subject it on someone who you actually like yeah roommates are important roommates are vital for for working that stuff out before you move in with some girl you think is awesome and finding out that she cannot deal or even before you go to college and like have to have somebody that you're stuck with for a year and you can't get out like like yeah and and now it feels at this very moment in time I am um well first of all at around 156 the whole edle thing is totally real they just start killing you every single day and it's in the way that they start telling you like dad's uncool or they're like no we've heard this story idiot my Dad wears a fedora they like to tell me dad you like the you have the musical Taste of a 14-year-old girl that's actually a compliment I I think that's pretty good I'm like hey sometimes you have to give it up Justin Bieber can sing a great song occasionally there there is nothing wrong with Taylor Swift's 1989 album that is one of the greatest pop albums of the last 10 years totally totally agree with that um and and my wife had to take me aside at one point this about three years ago the boys were 15 and she said sweetie I know you think you're taking your boys growing older and usurping you well but I'm here to tell you you're not taking it as well as you think you're taking it it's time to scale back the discipline and and the response you have to them when they talk back to you oh I see yeah right now they're my boys are in this really great area where they're they're into things I'm into and we're into things for the same reasons it's not me like liking the references in the Pixar movie and there just liking the Story movie we all like the same things for the same reasons and they when they get jokes I get really excited when they get kind of more adult jokes yeah um but they're also still cuddly and they like to like you know like we have a ritual where I touch all their bones before they go to bed like I you know like we do back tickling and that's that's what we call it and and um and and I love this area and I really hope that at least part of it because so much of my well-being is is um is tied up in my affection with them yeah and I'm really worried about that going away I know it's going to go away um but my my boys are still quite affectionate they're Huggers good um but I I think I told this recently on the podcast um I I when my one of my sons thing one was 11 he came upstairs from a nightmare and asked to sleep in our bed and I was like at 11 they're they're sweaty and you know they actually are starting to stink and I was like H and I almost said no and I realized you know what this is the last time this is so come on in and it was it was the last time either of them ever slept in my bed and I'm you know it is I was glad because the last diaper would should come with with a party that Rivals my 50th birthday party right the last diaper should have Fan Fair and a parade but it doesn't cuz there's always some literal storm l on after you think you've turn changed the last oh man we we we celebrated the last one we got we got Girls Are Easy on toilet training I think but really yeah we we we made a big deal she was like I don't want to wear diapers anymore and then that was it wow decision see one of my sons kept on having these really like to call them skid marks would really not do them Justice they were more like off-roading off-roading gross and and my we were like what's going on and he recently revealed to me he's like yeah when I was 11 and 12 I thought the wiping your butt was a scam he thought Weir part of some conspiracy and he wasn't buying into it so so I get we kept having to throw out Underpants I'm I'm in the situation now where you like you you like she she will Fain full understanding of everything that you say at this point like oh yeah Dad I understand that you told me that before and then I'm like then I I think about all the things that I didn't understand but I thought I did all you know from birth until age 42 where I am now which is I mean that's multiple volumes that are really substantial and I I wonder like I'm trying to my favorite game now is trying to sus out what she thinks she understands and has just completely wrong and and fundamental you know fundamental misunderstandings of of the core being a thing and of course as I'm doing this I can't think of one off the top of my head great place for an example well I so last night I had a my my wife and I had difficult interaction with one of my sons um we got we were upset with him and he was upset with us and um to cool down I actually left the house and came over here to the shop to just kind of like glue something together and kind of get my head space and he ended up doing exactly the same thing his mom um his mom my ex-wife lives just a few blocks from our house um and he just went over there to do a little bit of work and kind of get into his head space and I called him I I heard that he had done that and I called him and said you all right he yeah I'm all right and I said um all right you don't you don't you know you don't want to come over here and talk it through or said no no I kind of feel okay about this and then about 20 minutes later he texted me and said do you want to have dinner and so I took him out said dinner and it was that was to me it felt like a harbinger of the future right of like meeting up with my sons in other cities where they live and have productive lives and taking them like nothing makes me more excited than than that moment of like meeting them as adults and meeting them on that level and there was a bit of that last night it was absolutely delightful yeah that's that's nice I'm I'm that's one of the things that keeps me the things that gets me the saddest like just existentially saddest is um is thinking about them as adults and wanting to know them and wanting to meet them and the fear of not being able to know them or meet them is like a really big like deep-seated fear in me um but it has to do with that like I want to know what men they become because right now I really dig them like they're very they're they're good boys you know but they they have the exact same issue right now that I'm trying to squash out of them which is the they're becoming well actually kids and in a way that I'm nervous about for them where they you know like where they are experts of of things that they have no idea what they're talking about and and I and I'm telling them that you learn more by listening then by talking and you need you know like this sort of thing and it's been a thing with that we really struggle over because they work things out my kids chat talk talk talk like constantly talk the reason they were on the show is because um the the the people who wanted the advertise on the on the end of the podcast their tagline was was you know email for people with something to say and um and I was like well my kids always have something to say this is back when they were this is back when they were four years old you know and and they just constantly just like chatter chatter chatter and so we just Prett use Snippets of them on the end of the show and they're still that way they just like they just they work stuff out by constantly talking and I and my big worry for them is is that they're not listening to people and uh not taking stuff in and not recognizing that they don't know everything well that's it's a hard skill it is especially for people with jobs in which they know they learn a lot quickly and talk very dly about the things they know I I am a I am a recovering mansplainer I I I have been guilty of being a blow hard I um I my friends now go oh he's going into the actually voice um and my kids my kid one of my sons thing to has exhibited this with such alacrity that there have been evenings when he's holding court and my wife gets mad at me my my not like intergenerational blame exactly you taught this to your Vault saage you I am looking at you at this table in sixth grade the note at the end my year-end report card my mom saved it and put it in a frame on the wall so I would never forget but it was it was mystically who was my favorite teacher that year basically said will is an incredible student I have to be careful that he won't teach the other students things that are not true and I was like oh I didn't really understand that one for a good 15 years after that probably but yeah I had my fifth grade fifth grade yeah fifth grade teacher Miss LaVine gave me a comic from The New Yorker at the time of a little boy going like this and the teacher is saying Harold just because you can do the work doesn't mean you don't have to it took me several years to understand what she meant by that well it's it's um it's interesting like it's interesting being in that situation right cuz I like I was definitely that kid and like I figured that out the really hard way by by just getting beaten down over and over and over again by people smarter than me and and and um I don't I don't know what like I don't know how to how to how look my kid's four I have time to figure it out I mean that's the good news I guess is when you're talking to somebody who has kids older than you there's always like the difficulty ramps up with the time that you have before you get to that that that abortion I was I I was texting back and forth with Drew Curtis from far as a friend and he's got a bunch of kids and I was we were talking about one of my kids and I was like he'll be fine I just have to kick his ass a bunch until he's an adult and Drew said that is the greatest single phrase for parenting I've heard it's a very 50s approach it it just it feels like that sometimes like you just have to just keep on putting the right amount of loving pressure on them I don't know at this point like I said I feel like I'm just imparting the last bits of nuggets of goodness here take this and try it out yeah but it's also really clear at there was this turn like so my son is officially graduating on Wednesday from high school one of them is graduating and uh they they're in different grade levels and have been in different schools since forever um but it's the the the in the the coming graduation for the past few months has made me feel like there's a this big switch that's about to happen but the fact that it's right here makes me realize there's no switch I'm still going to be parenting I'm going to be a dad forever like there's always going to be advice there's always going to be stuff to work out there's always going to be difficulties I think that's a good thing I I would be really sad when it if it was ever cut off that would I mean it's so much of my identity is like tied up in who they are and and so much of my you know relationship with my wife is you know so much about us parenting these kids together and stuff like that that problem solving it's um but it's I I think it's glorious like I really like I'm into it in a way that I feel like I feel like our generation and we're roughly the same age Our Generation really took to it in a way that my father's generation did not now so my dad my dad was the first my parents were did the first Lamas were the first L class in their small town in Northeast Tennessee because that was the only way my dad could be in the delivery room when I was born that's amazing my mom was a pariah on the birth Ward at Columbia Presbyterian in New York in ' 67 when I was born because she was the only person breastfeeding oh right God yeah there was no breastfeeding us do that yeah yeah you got a shot so it wasn't a problem no my mom was fair my grandfather was fairly radical my you know they excuse me I didn't mean to hit the microphone but yeah good that you're bringing out the Amateur hour stuff with Roman here I know my mom's watch my mom watches the podcast her actually her complaint and I know this mom is that my face is hidden by the microphone so I actually raised my head up here so my mom can see me there you go um but but yeah so like there there's a level of involvement like the thing that annoys me more than anything else especially when when my daughter was really little was when I was walking around and I was out with her by myself which happened at least once or twice a week I mean my work schedule was was much wor back then than it is now because of you know tested stuff sorry Adam um but you monster I mean giving me giving me trading my money for time I mean what a what a horrible uh disaster that was um but no we would tromp around people like oh it's so nice that you're taking your daughter out that that um that silliness I mean yeah it's anyway so so that stuff is it's it's the it's the most fun thing I've ever done probably AG we taught we went we learned to she wanted to work on riding her two wheer she's been riding a training wheel bike for like 2 and a half years 2 years and and so she practiced in the backyard on the on the patio for 2 weeks and got to the point that she could Glide and take off and all that we went to a parking lot around the corner from the house and like three times later she's she rides 50 or 60 feet and she's the whole time she's screaming I can ride my bike all by myself wow that's awes and ring the bell at the same time so yeah it was it was like that like you there's nothing better than that no yeah and on that note I think that's a reasonable place to stop I yeah child rearing is a it's a both a mystifying ordeal uh and a most delightful and deeply pleasurable thing I have one more question yeah do you do road trips Roman do you do you go on road trips with like family no we we I mean one of the side effects of um the job 50 weeks a year it's just like it doesn't I travel for work you know a bit we took them to I I one of the great things that happened um that happens more recently is I'm invited to do things and if I'm invited to do something in in Europe um there's a little bit more of a culture there of like maybe they don't really pay you but they'll bring the whole family and so um so I was uh asked to speak in Sweden and um I brought the kids and we were on you know gotland uh on the island and that's awesome it was really amazing super cool and um and so like we've done those types of trips before um or we done that one we went to gotland in Scotland and um um but I I I was never a road trip person like as a kid I mean I didn't enjoy them and so I'm not really I'm not super into them now see we were we were totally a road trip family and like we would we would swiy Robinson with that every yeah every twice a year we bu a Tre house every stop I mean when the sea serpent came out it was that was always the turning point of every vacation get a match it's a slea stack um but no we would we would go and we would do like multi-city trips and we would drive from like Northeast Tennessee to Detroit or to um to you know Missouri or St Louis or Florida or Georgia or Louisiana just to see it or just or was it people to see so Dad my my family business you know Dad would those would be his sales trips for the year his big sales trips and we would he would go and he would go take the car during the day and drop my mom and my sister and I off at a museum or at at one of a place that would be featured on your podcast or Atlas obscuro or one of the you know Henry Clay's house it's the most haunted insane asylum in Kentucky or these were the hot springs in Arkansas where FDR came to recover from whatever malady he had on one particular year syphilis I think he had Polio um but but yeah so it was like that that stuff was really formative for me and it was the place where I both learned to love like weird like everybody loves the American Natural History Museum in New York cuz it's incredible but going to like the the Oxnard County Museum mystery Shacks of the world exactly yeah and and like finding a way to enjoy and love and take kind of squeeze the the meat out of those places well when the boys important when the boys were 12 my wife was like we got to get on on go to g a big road trip before their let's get them in the car and we rented a big dumb SUV and drove from San Francisco to Whistler and back over 12 days and that was fantastic we had we took the dogs um it was really really fun and then last summer um my two boys and I drove cross country we spent uh again 12 days driving cross country and then flew back uh and that was also really really like deeply it's deeply awesome moment and you know I said I realized like life is full of these artificial chapter headings like birthdays and stuff right um but taking a moment at the end of a summer before a new school to drive cross country is a real chapter heading that is like you don't forget that yeah I felt it feels you never know what they're going to take so it's nice to be generative generative of a memory you know will be significant one of my cousins says that like a lot of our job is to generate memories that are going to turn them into good people right and that's and that I think that stuff helps yeah going to Sweden definitely okay Sweden um I think that'll do it I think I think that's that's it now after one fall stop Roman where can people find you uh you can find the show at 99pi.org or you can just look for it on a podcast player of your choice near the top it's regular near the top of most lists and it's an honor to have you here it's honor to be here I'm very happy you asked thank you so much we'll have to have you back sometime this has been a lot of fun and's going to be really bummed that he wasn't here when you came by so in your face Chan well uh right now on the site the Saturn 5 Lego builds up you can check that that was a lot of fun we did it in a record time I can't believe that we missed that it was 1969 pieces oh so they I don't know if you've seen it but Lego uh the ideas program they did a kit of the Saturn 5 and it's it's we show you next door it's giant yeah it's it's huge it has the LM and the Command Module nest in they like they go in the right places all the stages come apart it's it's astounding we built it in couple hours yeah wow we did really fast divide and conquer nice it was really fun and I'm sure there's other great stuff on the site there is other great stuff on the site and um we will see you guys next week I think next will be podcasting from Europe what I'm not I'm going to Europe you're not going to Europe what what so cool you monster one lousy Europe trip that's all I wanted we'll see you guys next week bye guys bye-bye once again we'd like to thank the sponsor of this week's episode of still entitled and that is Rackspace Rackspace support for Amazon web services offers tooling and automation for account management security and best practices control your cost and relax knowing Rackspace will monitor your AWS 247 learn more at rackspace.com your Cloud see you next weekthis week's episode is brought to you by Rackspace did you know that Rackspace can help guide your migration to Amazon web services Rackspace support for AWS offers tooling and automation for account management security and best practices learn more at rackspace.com your Cloud uh welcome to still Untitled the Adam Savage project I'm will I'm Adam and I'm Roman Roman Mars wow um if you don't know Roman then you are not listening to the right podcast you should turn off our podcast right now go to 99% invisible uh. org.com 99pi 99pi.org and download the latest it doesn't matter which episode you download they're awesome and and let's just be clear you know while we record about 50 of these podcasts per year Roman produces about 50 some odd of his podcast per year but it is a fully produced magazine style radio show like ours is just we show up and shoot the breeze once a week and it's pretty like it's pretty simple and straightforward you take what you you told me eight weeks to produce a story I would say 6 to8 weeks wow and that's with the staff and everything takes a long time and so you guys have like a like a it's a bunch of people there now when you started it was just you and a couple people right no it was just me it was just me at night and it was like my fifth job in radio and I started it and I I was was like a little drop in that we put on KW and Morning Edition about like local architecture or something like that and then um and then it found a life online when you know it just found a a group of people who found like podcasted loved it um and then and then as we fundraised for it and added a little bit more we we added one person and now we have nine so the first time I heard about 99 Pi was talking to people who were at like the podcast officient AO section at the first XOXO Festival in Portland and Glenn fman was like Hey I know what kind of stuff you like you should listen to this podcast it's going to really blow your mind yeah and I and as I as I was on the plane home I downloaded a couple episodes and I ran out of the second episode before the plane got back to San Francisco I was like I I just have to go and I went all the way like had a driveway moment with a podcast I totally but I was on an airplane with no with go go so there was no internet you know there was no no continuing that it was it was it was a dark time for me but um do you know every time on a plane when I'm using that really really terrible internet I write Greenberg style Letters To Go Go Wireless in my head dear go go I would like a refund for my recent Delta flight from New York to San Francisco every time I think about bitching about that the the the crappy internet Wi-Fi on the airplane L I think of Lis I am a self-entitled I'm not enough of a self-entitled to do what Louis said not to do so I'm going to yeah anyway anyway go ahead sorry so so like 10 people you guys have done 400 episodes is 300 and something no it be it'll be 236 2 just 236 oh I'm yeah it's it's still incredible and they're all good is the thing that's the thing that blows my mind consistently every week is better than the one before well that's that's nice to hear it doesn't feel that way when we're making it but I think when you when I look over the total like body of work I'm like super proud of the show like I really like the show have you seen a PR obviously you must have seen a progression in producing style and the kind of narratives and the construction of those narratives over time what have been some of the most significant changes I mean the main thing is with the addition of other people and their perspectives like there's still me hosting the show but the voice of all the reporters who are characters on the show and the way that they write and edit the pieces in these ways that um I just wouldn't come up with there just it's great to hire people who are better than you at things and and and um and they're all really fantastic radio makers and so the stories have gotten more complex they've gotten more interesting I used to really I used to be content to cover a topic in a kind of cursorial kind of way and just like here's desire pass and we just talk about desire past and it doesn't really have a story and now everything is really grounded in a concrete story and um it resonates in a in a bigger way and um and then we've done experiments like we a couple weeks ago we released a a piece that was written by John mum and scored by members of the deest and we did it live on stage and it's like and it's like it's kind of this epic thing that we I was not capable of doing until we had funds to do it and until we had like the enough of an audience to make it worth those people's time to like you know work on my podcast you know and um for exposure man and so um show Cafe dord and so um so that type of stuff it's just like it's just it's bigger in in every way and it's um it's still really fun to work on but how long is the list of shows you still are like dying to sink your teeth into like ideas how far ahead are you with solid show ideas I mean solid show ideas I'd say you know we know because the the cycle being 68 weeks we kind of know 68 weeks you know ahead obviously um when it comes to me and my interests um now I have to convince them of things that I'm interested in it used to be just like I want to do Zeppelins let's just do something on Zeppelins you know like and now they'll go well what's the story you know like and so like so my things there's lots of little things so I I kind of keep an ongoing tally of um you know like topics or ideas and I read a lot of books and I you know keep tabs on it all and maybe in a year or two enough different pieces will come together where obviously then it forms enough of a thesis and a story for it to be a thing to group under a single rubric exactly it's really it's it like no idea gets completely killed or lost they always kind of stay you know one of my ones that lasted forever is is about Flags I'm really interested in flags and flag design your flag talk is just one of my favorite you did it in the world you did it at our tested show the first year I did I did I did like a short version of the tested show and then I did a a big version for Ted for uh Ted and then um but that was one that came to me when I was you know I was I was just in Chicago thinking about it trying to figure out how I was going to do this as a story and then you know I guess maybe six years later it became a thing um wow and then it became like lots of different iterations on that thing so it's pretty common for me to have these types of ideas for forever and not you know and just kind of not know where to put them I I have to imagine your like your poper file is one of the more interesting like like what you know what where what's in the grab bag and and I mean how much of it is you trying to wedge that stuff into into like be beat the ideas into shape and get them into the thing and how much of it is it it just kind of when the time is right you realize oh right this is back in the file I can pull this out and we'll we'll go back in and add this into this episode it'll give a little more resonance I it's tends to be more of the latter mainly because because a lot of my job now is supporting the nine people who work for me and my job is a more of a business person than it ever has been before what always happens right and so like if we if we want to get a story done if I want to get a story done we assign it to a producer and if it's my story to get done it'll get done like in eight months yeah it's just the that's just the nature of it so so now if I have something that I'm really dying to talk about or do it'll be um you know like it'll be nice to get a little thing in there and figure out how it fits into somebody else's thing I mean right now we've been tring these new um this new format of the show where we um I I'm producing it right now that's going to release on Tuesday is uh you should do a story which is when people like tweet at me about a thing or what or whatever and um and we do little two or three minute things where I just like interview an expert or something and we we Nest them together and it's a way to sort of get some of those out of my system that I really really enjoy but maybe they don't warrant a full story because there's not a character to follow it's not really 20 minutes worth of a story it's just kind of an idea or a concept and so I've got a story for you okay I already tried this when nor I went there I pitched the little guys on the back of the the families the sticker families yeah oh that's that's actually a good little short story I should figured that out baby on board versus all lives matter that kind of thing I'm thinking specifically of the ones that are like the the the caricatures the parents and the kid and dog and the Jedi and the and the Jesus or whatever people put on their backs of their cars a friend of mine once had a date go sour oh no have I told this on the podcast he had a date go sour because his it was he had been wanting to date this girl for a while she was really lovely and she gets into his he picks her up at her house and she get he gets into she gets into his car and they pull up into traffic and they're behind a car which has an iches on the back the the Christian fish um but this one has little legs because it's the fish walking out of the ocean and it says Darwin in it and she goes oh look that's really cute it's a turtle that says Darwin and my friend goes do I do I correct my date I don't want to neg her this is not what I do but I I feel the need to correct and I said and so he said I this is not a Freud and slip this was not this did not happen to me he says uh it's not a turtle it's a fish with legs it's walking on it no she says it's a turtle and he hits a wall she absolutely will not listen to his explanation and not agree with him whatsoever I I don't know which side of of this conversation I'm on but I think we should just move on okay so that's not my pitch my pitch is um I cleared this pool table off that's on the other side of us here uh recently and my sons and I have been playing lots and lots of pool and it's reminded me of uh as I've been instructing them about pool and they've both of course picked it up on a much deeper level than I had at their age and it's really lovely to hear them talk about pool with the correct language and um one of my sons plays a really deep and Hearty defense which I appreciate because a lot of people don't think of Defense as a as a me as a a playing mode of playing pool in Billiards right um but it's critical if you are going to play seriously you've got to if you don't have a shot you can choose to make a shot that will make your opponent's life a living hell it requires fine ball control and real strategy and one of my sons is really good at it but one of the things I had to tell him was don't ever try that in a bar you never play defense in a bar and it cascaded this whole set there's a whole different set of rules for playing pool in bars um because if you are good and you're going to go in and you're going to hold the table eventually someone will offer you a bar fight it'll sound it won't be as polite as I phrased it but I mean I remember being 23 at the albon on 16th Street and holding the table all night long and getting offered a couple of different bar fights and at one point during a critical game on the second to last shot I wasn't on the eight ball but I was on my last ball and I didn't have a shot and I played a safety and the entire bar turned against me so that if I had gotten my ass kicked no one would have jumped to my defense um and then there is then I was out drinking with a friend of mine who's Irish recently and I was saying oh I came across this redit threat about quote buying rounds in Ireland do you know about this no so if if you're in Ireland and you're like hanging out with friends one of them goes I'll get around and he goes up and he brings back beers for everybody now you are now on the hook to procure a round for everybody and as these rounds progress everyone in Ireland has the like part of their brain allocated so that they can keep track of who's good and who's not and woe beti the person who somehow stiffs the room on one of the rounds so this great social pressure on you to maintain the position in the rounds and sometimes you can be lined up like three drinks ahead because people keep buying rounds as they finish even if everyone else isn't finished it's an incredible amount of drinking pressure right and so this led to me thinking about the secret the secret rules inside of bars you guys did an episode so I don't think I said this at the beginning but 99% invisible is a podcast about design yeah in kind of all aspects of of the world in a very broad sense um and you did an episode about the design of basketball rules of the the the game of basketball right did a couple fascinating and and made me understand the game as it's played now I haven't heard this one oh it's really it makes when you're watching the NBA finals and you're watching The Warriors just shoot three-point after three-point after three-point after threep point you realize we're in another one of the the the the kind of Turning Point situations where there's got to be some sort of change in the game and you talked about it in relation to the dunk to to the to the invention of the dunk is the one I'm thinking about exactly so I don't mean to dredge up something from like two years ago no it is it is um it is shocking how much I forget about the shows that I work on um but that one I some that one we did uh with ESPN um worked help worked on it um but um it had to do with the fact that you know once people began to learn to dunk they had to build into the design of the game an outside pressure to not go in and dunk all the time and that was the invention of the three-point shot and now that there are teams like the Warriors who really excel at the three-point shot there might be this pressure to change it back or that might be just a lot of people think that it's just an anomaly and you know Curry's just yeah an outlier the entire and so there therefore it's not worthy of a of a game you know of a change of the of the game we also did one on the um the shot clock which is like there was a a period of time where like speaking of defensive play where a big part of your game was that you just didn't go in and shoot the ball and you ran out the clock as you were leading and Final would end like 17 to 18 there would be like final games like of the of like the early professional leagues until finally they just they did some math and they were like like to to core to score 80 points uh on each team they multiply that times the number of minutes and you have 20 and it comes down to getting 24 seconds to get a shot to get the right number of turn that you would need and so it just they just put it in the game and made it part of the thing and um and so I love those little game design tweaks to make something better Billards has undergone the same thing multiple times in its history in uh around the turn of the 19th to 20th century Billiards was undergoing the same kind of boom that it underwent after Color of Money came out in the 80s okay um and one of the and the big game back then was carum Billiards it was a pocketless table there were three balls on the table two uh two red and one white and your goal was to hit a cushion a cushion and both ball both other balls right uh in each shot huh and the problem with it was I believe Willie hoppy was I believe Willie hoppy was the first giant World beating star he became so good um he could just make the first shot and in a game to 150 points he could just run out 150 double cars in a row and there were like I have I have a book from 1880 that describes one of his method of literally of just have you get two balls near the bank and you just keep on doing this sort of like almost braiding of the balls and that led to the elimination of single caram Billiards to what's called three cushion billiards in which you have to with one of the three balls on the table hit three cushions and both other balls in any order you want as long as a ball hit is the last thing that happens so it can be three cushions and then you hit both balls or two cushions and then one ball and then a third cushion and the second ball it's so difficult the greatest player in the world has a per turn point average of less than two wow like the greatest run ever is something like nine points in a row or 11 points in a row and that's the best anyone has ever done wow um I love but it was the same thing cuz people were like they were exhausted they'd show up and they were exhausted to watch this and it's why nineball eventually overtook straight pool straight pool you just keep shooting racks until someone has 150 points it's it's amazing that this never happened for Cricket I still don't understand Cricket at all I know there's a ball and a bat and a whole bunch of people but in the rest of the G I learned from Hit Checkers you have to you have to hit knock the wickets down if you're on one team and then you run back and forth and sometimes it goes for like three days but they take time off at night it's not like baseball where they just keep playing until somebody Falls over dead um I can't believe that Norm left for a week and we're talking about sports when Roman's here so um this is this is an unexpected Sports not a norm no Norm's actually the the sports of the three of us oh he is okay yeah he's a baset and baseball I had the slightest idea yeah and anyway we're going to get they're going to let us know um we were going to talk about about uh parenting stuff a little bit let's talk about parenting cuz Roman has um twin boys I do famous famous from the the tail end of the show yeah they're in the tail into the show well they they used to be part of the ants and they are 10 years old they're 10 years old now I also have twin boys they are 18 years old that's I'm I'm I cannot imagine what is going to happen between 10 and 18 right now as you have probably already found every age is better than its predecessor the as the kids grow it just gets more and more invigorating and exciting and we were talking a couple of weeks ago about how like before you have kids you I had this fantasy of standing on a corner with a little kid of mine holding my hand with little fingers and I'm here to tell you that the reality of that was every bit as good as I was hoping it would be right it's like and at 18 I find they're amazing to deal with they are lovely humans um and it's the easiest from a temporal level but the decision trees are are gordian well like like so my my daughter's four and a half now and she's just getting to the point that her risk management is is commensurate with her skill level like she she will if there is a balance beam it doesn't matter if it's 10t off the ground or 6 in off the ground she is going to go for it right W no fear at all you're raising a parkour master I mean it's it's the anyway that goes that's that's a whole different problem but yeah so she she but she's now looking at that and she says Dad that one might be a little bit high will you stand underneath me pushing you with my bulk when you fall I mean you get good at catching it turns out you're like okay it's it's a weird calculus problem where you have to okay get in under the armpits and you're good um but I have to imagine that that like there's another Peak for that somewhere between where you are Roman and where you are where like the risk management and the ability to get into trouble like that curve gets real out of whack you know at this yeah it's all about preparing your kid to survive right it's all about giving them the skills to be a functional human um I having raised my kids in relative comfort in a in an expensive city am terrified that I will leave them unprepared for the realities of like paying rent and being a reasonable person to live with M my son one of my sons is on his way to Los Angeles this summer to spend a year working um at a job as a gap year before going to college and he was like I think I'd like to get a studio apartment and I'm like nope you're going to live with people because you should you should learn how awful you are to live with with strangers before you subject it on someone who you actually like yeah roommates are important roommates are vital for for working that stuff out before you move in with some girl you think is awesome and finding out that she cannot deal or even before you go to college and like have to have somebody that you're stuck with for a year and you can't get out like like yeah and and now it feels at this very moment in time I am um well first of all at around 156 the whole edle thing is totally real they just start killing you every single day and it's in the way that they start telling you like dad's uncool or they're like no we've heard this story idiot my Dad wears a fedora they like to tell me dad you like the you have the musical Taste of a 14-year-old girl that's actually a compliment I I think that's pretty good I'm like hey sometimes you have to give it up Justin Bieber can sing a great song occasionally there there is nothing wrong with Taylor Swift's 1989 album that is one of the greatest pop albums of the last 10 years totally totally agree with that um and and my wife had to take me aside at one point this about three years ago the boys were 15 and she said sweetie I know you think you're taking your boys growing older and usurping you well but I'm here to tell you you're not taking it as well as you think you're taking it it's time to scale back the discipline and and the response you have to them when they talk back to you oh I see yeah right now they're my boys are in this really great area where they're they're into things I'm into and we're into things for the same reasons it's not me like liking the references in the Pixar movie and there just liking the Story movie we all like the same things for the same reasons and they when they get jokes I get really excited when they get kind of more adult jokes yeah um but they're also still cuddly and they like to like you know like we have a ritual where I touch all their bones before they go to bed like I you know like we do back tickling and that's that's what we call it and and um and and I love this area and I really hope that at least part of it because so much of my well-being is is um is tied up in my affection with them yeah and I'm really worried about that going away I know it's going to go away um but my my boys are still quite affectionate they're Huggers good um but I I think I told this recently on the podcast um I I when my one of my sons thing one was 11 he came upstairs from a nightmare and asked to sleep in our bed and I was like at 11 they're they're sweaty and you know they actually are starting to stink and I was like H and I almost said no and I realized you know what this is the last time this is so come on in and it was it was the last time either of them ever slept in my bed and I'm you know it is I was glad because the last diaper would should come with with a party that Rivals my 50th birthday party right the last diaper should have Fan Fair and a parade but it doesn't cuz there's always some literal storm l on after you think you've turn changed the last oh man we we we celebrated the last one we got we got Girls Are Easy on toilet training I think but really yeah we we we made a big deal she was like I don't want to wear diapers anymore and then that was it wow decision see one of my sons kept on having these really like to call them skid marks would really not do them Justice they were more like off-roading off-roading gross and and my we were like what's going on and he recently revealed to me he's like yeah when I was 11 and 12 I thought the wiping your butt was a scam he thought Weir part of some conspiracy and he wasn't buying into it so so I get we kept having to throw out Underpants I'm I'm in the situation now where you like you you like she she will Fain full understanding of everything that you say at this point like oh yeah Dad I understand that you told me that before and then I'm like then I I think about all the things that I didn't understand but I thought I did all you know from birth until age 42 where I am now which is I mean that's multiple volumes that are really substantial and I I wonder like I'm trying to my favorite game now is trying to sus out what she thinks she understands and has just completely wrong and and fundamental you know fundamental misunderstandings of of the core being a thing and of course as I'm doing this I can't think of one off the top of my head great place for an example well I so last night I had a my my wife and I had difficult interaction with one of my sons um we got we were upset with him and he was upset with us and um to cool down I actually left the house and came over here to the shop to just kind of like glue something together and kind of get my head space and he ended up doing exactly the same thing his mom um his mom my ex-wife lives just a few blocks from our house um and he just went over there to do a little bit of work and kind of get into his head space and I called him I I heard that he had done that and I called him and said you all right he yeah I'm all right and I said um all right you don't you don't you know you don't want to come over here and talk it through or said no no I kind of feel okay about this and then about 20 minutes later he texted me and said do you want to have dinner and so I took him out said dinner and it was that was to me it felt like a harbinger of the future right of like meeting up with my sons in other cities where they live and have productive lives and taking them like nothing makes me more excited than than that moment of like meeting them as adults and meeting them on that level and there was a bit of that last night it was absolutely delightful yeah that's that's nice I'm I'm that's one of the things that keeps me the things that gets me the saddest like just existentially saddest is um is thinking about them as adults and wanting to know them and wanting to meet them and the fear of not being able to know them or meet them is like a really big like deep-seated fear in me um but it has to do with that like I want to know what men they become because right now I really dig them like they're very they're they're good boys you know but they they have the exact same issue right now that I'm trying to squash out of them which is the they're becoming well actually kids and in a way that I'm nervous about for them where they you know like where they are experts of of things that they have no idea what they're talking about and and I and I'm telling them that you learn more by listening then by talking and you need you know like this sort of thing and it's been a thing with that we really struggle over because they work things out my kids chat talk talk talk like constantly talk the reason they were on the show is because um the the the people who wanted the advertise on the on the end of the podcast their tagline was was you know email for people with something to say and um and I was like well my kids always have something to say this is back when they were this is back when they were four years old you know and and they just constantly just like chatter chatter chatter and so we just Prett use Snippets of them on the end of the show and they're still that way they just like they just they work stuff out by constantly talking and I and my big worry for them is is that they're not listening to people and uh not taking stuff in and not recognizing that they don't know everything well that's it's a hard skill it is especially for people with jobs in which they know they learn a lot quickly and talk very dly about the things they know I I am a I am a recovering mansplainer I I I have been guilty of being a blow hard I um I my friends now go oh he's going into the actually voice um and my kids my kid one of my sons thing to has exhibited this with such alacrity that there have been evenings when he's holding court and my wife gets mad at me my my not like intergenerational blame exactly you taught this to your Vault saage you I am looking at you at this table in sixth grade the note at the end my year-end report card my mom saved it and put it in a frame on the wall so I would never forget but it was it was mystically who was my favorite teacher that year basically said will is an incredible student I have to be careful that he won't teach the other students things that are not true and I was like oh I didn't really understand that one for a good 15 years after that probably but yeah I had my fifth grade fifth grade yeah fifth grade teacher Miss LaVine gave me a comic from The New Yorker at the time of a little boy going like this and the teacher is saying Harold just because you can do the work doesn't mean you don't have to it took me several years to understand what she meant by that well it's it's um it's interesting like it's interesting being in that situation right cuz I like I was definitely that kid and like I figured that out the really hard way by by just getting beaten down over and over and over again by people smarter than me and and and um I don't I don't know what like I don't know how to how to how look my kid's four I have time to figure it out I mean that's the good news I guess is when you're talking to somebody who has kids older than you there's always like the difficulty ramps up with the time that you have before you get to that that that abortion I was I I was texting back and forth with Drew Curtis from far as a friend and he's got a bunch of kids and I was we were talking about one of my kids and I was like he'll be fine I just have to kick his ass a bunch until he's an adult and Drew said that is the greatest single phrase for parenting I've heard it's a very 50s approach it it just it feels like that sometimes like you just have to just keep on putting the right amount of loving pressure on them I don't know at this point like I said I feel like I'm just imparting the last bits of nuggets of goodness here take this and try it out yeah but it's also really clear at there was this turn like so my son is officially graduating on Wednesday from high school one of them is graduating and uh they they're in different grade levels and have been in different schools since forever um but it's the the the in the the coming graduation for the past few months has made me feel like there's a this big switch that's about to happen but the fact that it's right here makes me realize there's no switch I'm still going to be parenting I'm going to be a dad forever like there's always going to be advice there's always going to be stuff to work out there's always going to be difficulties I think that's a good thing I I would be really sad when it if it was ever cut off that would I mean it's so much of my identity is like tied up in who they are and and so much of my you know relationship with my wife is you know so much about us parenting these kids together and stuff like that that problem solving it's um but it's I I think it's glorious like I really like I'm into it in a way that I feel like I feel like our generation and we're roughly the same age Our Generation really took to it in a way that my father's generation did not now so my dad my dad was the first my parents were did the first Lamas were the first L class in their small town in Northeast Tennessee because that was the only way my dad could be in the delivery room when I was born that's amazing my mom was a pariah on the birth Ward at Columbia Presbyterian in New York in ' 67 when I was born because she was the only person breastfeeding oh right God yeah there was no breastfeeding us do that yeah yeah you got a shot so it wasn't a problem no my mom was fair my grandfather was fairly radical my you know they excuse me I didn't mean to hit the microphone but yeah good that you're bringing out the Amateur hour stuff with Roman here I know my mom's watch my mom watches the podcast her actually her complaint and I know this mom is that my face is hidden by the microphone so I actually raised my head up here so my mom can see me there you go um but but yeah so like there there's a level of involvement like the thing that annoys me more than anything else especially when when my daughter was really little was when I was walking around and I was out with her by myself which happened at least once or twice a week I mean my work schedule was was much wor back then than it is now because of you know tested stuff sorry Adam um but you monster I mean giving me giving me trading my money for time I mean what a what a horrible uh disaster that was um but no we would tromp around people like oh it's so nice that you're taking your daughter out that that um that silliness I mean yeah it's anyway so so that stuff is it's it's the it's the most fun thing I've ever done probably AG we taught we went we learned to she wanted to work on riding her two wheer she's been riding a training wheel bike for like 2 and a half years 2 years and and so she practiced in the backyard on the on the patio for 2 weeks and got to the point that she could Glide and take off and all that we went to a parking lot around the corner from the house and like three times later she's she rides 50 or 60 feet and she's the whole time she's screaming I can ride my bike all by myself wow that's awes and ring the bell at the same time so yeah it was it was like that like you there's nothing better than that no yeah and on that note I think that's a reasonable place to stop I yeah child rearing is a it's a both a mystifying ordeal uh and a most delightful and deeply pleasurable thing I have one more question yeah do you do road trips Roman do you do you go on road trips with like family no we we I mean one of the side effects of um the job 50 weeks a year it's just like it doesn't I travel for work you know a bit we took them to I I one of the great things that happened um that happens more recently is I'm invited to do things and if I'm invited to do something in in Europe um there's a little bit more of a culture there of like maybe they don't really pay you but they'll bring the whole family and so um so I was uh asked to speak in Sweden and um I brought the kids and we were on you know gotland uh on the island and that's awesome it was really amazing super cool and um and so like we've done those types of trips before um or we done that one we went to gotland in Scotland and um um but I I I was never a road trip person like as a kid I mean I didn't enjoy them and so I'm not really I'm not super into them now see we were we were totally a road trip family and like we would we would swiy Robinson with that every yeah every twice a year we bu a Tre house every stop I mean when the sea serpent came out it was that was always the turning point of every vacation get a match it's a slea stack um but no we would we would go and we would do like multi-city trips and we would drive from like Northeast Tennessee to Detroit or to um to you know Missouri or St Louis or Florida or Georgia or Louisiana just to see it or just or was it people to see so Dad my my family business you know Dad would those would be his sales trips for the year his big sales trips and we would he would go and he would go take the car during the day and drop my mom and my sister and I off at a museum or at at one of a place that would be featured on your podcast or Atlas obscuro or one of the you know Henry Clay's house it's the most haunted insane asylum in Kentucky or these were the hot springs in Arkansas where FDR came to recover from whatever malady he had on one particular year syphilis I think he had Polio um but but yeah so it was like that that stuff was really formative for me and it was the place where I both learned to love like weird like everybody loves the American Natural History Museum in New York cuz it's incredible but going to like the the Oxnard County Museum mystery Shacks of the world exactly yeah and and like finding a way to enjoy and love and take kind of squeeze the the meat out of those places well when the boys important when the boys were 12 my wife was like we got to get on on go to g a big road trip before their let's get them in the car and we rented a big dumb SUV and drove from San Francisco to Whistler and back over 12 days and that was fantastic we had we took the dogs um it was really really fun and then last summer um my two boys and I drove cross country we spent uh again 12 days driving cross country and then flew back uh and that was also really really like deeply it's deeply awesome moment and you know I said I realized like life is full of these artificial chapter headings like birthdays and stuff right um but taking a moment at the end of a summer before a new school to drive cross country is a real chapter heading that is like you don't forget that yeah I felt it feels you never know what they're going to take so it's nice to be generative generative of a memory you know will be significant one of my cousins says that like a lot of our job is to generate memories that are going to turn them into good people right and that's and that I think that stuff helps yeah going to Sweden definitely okay Sweden um I think that'll do it I think I think that's that's it now after one fall stop Roman where can people find you uh you can find the show at 99pi.org or you can just look for it on a podcast player of your choice near the top it's regular near the top of most lists and it's an honor to have you here it's honor to be here I'm very happy you asked thank you so much we'll have to have you back sometime this has been a lot of fun and's going to be really bummed that he wasn't here when you came by so in your face Chan well uh right now on the site the Saturn 5 Lego builds up you can check that that was a lot of fun we did it in a record time I can't believe that we missed that it was 1969 pieces oh so they I don't know if you've seen it but Lego uh the ideas program they did a kit of the Saturn 5 and it's it's we show you next door it's giant yeah it's it's huge it has the LM and the Command Module nest in they like they go in the right places all the stages come apart it's it's astounding we built it in couple hours yeah wow we did really fast divide and conquer nice it was really fun and I'm sure there's other great stuff on the site there is other great stuff on the site and um we will see you guys next week I think next will be podcasting from Europe what I'm not I'm going to Europe you're not going to Europe what what so cool you monster one lousy Europe trip that's all I wanted we'll see you guys next week bye guys bye-bye once again we'd like to thank the sponsor of this week's episode of still entitled and that is Rackspace Rackspace support for Amazon web services offers tooling and automation for account management security and best practices control your cost and relax knowing Rackspace will monitor your AWS 247 learn more at rackspace.com your Cloud see you next week\n"