Episode 70: The Gardening Outlaws

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Episode Transcript

 

Amos: Welcome to Elixir Outlaws the hallway track of the Elixir community.

Chris: How's it going?

Anna: Its goin'.

Chris: How are things in SF?

Anna: Crazy. Fine.

Chris: I mean, I just, I mean more like, I know it's, it's going to be way crazier than it is here.

Anna: Yeah, I mean, we're all working from, I'm basically staying inside my house.

Chris: Yeah, for sure.

Anna: Yeah. Getting groceries delivered. So how are you all doing?

Amos: I think I'm alive and doing fine. I had to get everything set up cause I don't have my right microphone.

Chris: Yeah.

Anna: I haven't been to the office to pick it up yet either.

Chris: It's, it's very interesting for us. There's two things that, uh, that are, there's two interesting things right now in Tennessee, which is one is that Tennessee's response to, uh, coronavirus has been terrible. And so obviously, like we're not as deeply impacted by it in that regard, but we also live out in the sticks where like, you know, we have a giant, giant backyard where the kids can go play outside and go hiking and stuff like that. So I, I wonder, you know, just making sure I understand it's going to be a lot more difficult to transition into that when you're in a more urban area, it's more sort of in your face. Like I can literally walk around my neighborhood and I don't have any problem. I don't have any fear of being close to people.

Anna: Yeah. Yeah. It's, there's a lot of people out these days, which is, in my neighborhood, which is weird because usually there are no people. Um, yeah, because I live not far from the beach. Like I went for a run yesterday and I'm basically running in the street.

Chris: To avoid people?

Anna: To avoid people.

Chris: To keep your 6 feet, or

Amos: At least there probably aren't a lot of cars driving around, are there?

Anna: There's still cars driving around. Not like a lot.

Amos: My neighborhood's really quiet.

Anna: It's pretty empty. I mean, California is pretty good. I mean the California shut down pretty early in comparison to like New York.

Amos: Yeah. I've been sending emails and tweets and phone calls to the governor saying that he should (inaudible).

Anna: Governor of?

Amos: Tell everybody to stay in place. I think Kansas city has done -Missouri.

Amos: Missouri. Kansas City that they've done a pretty good job. So, well, Tuesday finally they did a stay in place order. Although it's really weird because like the parks are still open so.

Anna: Yeah, they should close those here too.

Amos: Whaaaa?

Anna: I mean, they really should. They haven't closed the beaches or the parks because they're trying to give people someplace to go. Cause it's such an urban environment. They should really just shut that down. I mean, we're actually pretty, I was talking to my friend, Anna, who's a surgeon. She's the one that she does cancer surgery at one of the Harvard hospitals. She's in Boston. I was talking to her last night. Um, cause they look at the numbers of stuff like every day what's happening. Cause they've had to like basically reshuffle their hospital to like not take in any critical, anything other than critical cancer patients, they are not doing any other surgeries, but she was saying that the rest of the country with, with, for now, at least it looks like, and I was like, well, what about the fact that we're not testing people on? And Anna's like, I don't really care about that, as much as I care about like that's important for epidemiologists. I don't really care about that. I care about the number of patients coming in, how that's increasing the number of suppliers, you know, like are the hospitals ready. They basically cleared out their hospital to be used as a COVID hospital with the exception of critical care. So like, and she's only doing surgeries like one day a week. Um, so that, that the rest of the time that the OR's open. Um, but basically she was saying like, except with the exception of New York, the rest of the country seems pretty well-prepared to handle from what the, from the numbers they're seeing now. Like they seem pretty well prepared to handle this ramp up that's happening. Um, so that's good.

Chris: That's good. It's been weird.

Amos: I'm just ready to stay home.

Chris: Oh yeah, I mean.

Amos: Do I have bad internet?

Chris: Oh, you have terrible internet. Yeah. You're, you're a robot. The robot got him. Uh, no, we, um, we are, uh, it's been interesting because my sister's a nurse. Um, but she works at a children's hospital, mostly doing like outpatient surgery type stuff. Um, so a lot of like appendicitis and those sorts of things. And she was saying it's actually really hard for her to even get hours right now, because all that stuff is, you know, that they're sort of

Anna: Probably shut down. Yeah.

Chris: So I w I just found that really interesting, or I found it surprising. Cause I was like, of course, all medical people right now are going to like, at least they're like, at least they have jobs, but.

Anna: But not necessarily,

Chris: Not even. Turns out.

Anna: Not even. Yeah. I think like, unless you can help, like Anna volunteered to help she's, she's, she's a surgeon, but she volunteered to help in the ICU because she can, if it's needed it, hasn't been called in to do that yet, but-

Chris: Yeah, my sister has been working like the hotline for the most part. And just sort of saying like, "Nope, you really don't need to come" in over and over. Yeah.

Amos: Yeah. They get, they got rid of it here in Kansas city. There's nobody's allowed in the hospital that's not sick. I think, I think if somebody is like on their, like this is the last day they're going to live, that they'll allow that family to come in and then they have to quarantine . And no elective surgeries.

Chris: Oh yeah. That, that got canceled a while ago.

Amos: Which I mean, I mean, not when I first heard elective surgeries, I was like, oh, they canceled rhinoplasty. But then I realized there's a lot of other elective surgeries, like setting your bone back in place. If it's not bad enough that you actually have to go to the hospital and get put to sleep, they're gonna send you to a doctor to set it.

Chris: No, exactly. That's the thing. Uh, and that's, that's closer to like what my sister does is it's all like considered elective surgeries, but it's actually not things that you would think of as elective, most of the time. It's stuff that you would under normal circumstances sort of do. Anyway. It's just been interesting. I I'm obviously, you know, it's affecting everybody.

Amos: I just, I, my whole plan is just to not leave my house for 30 days, I got a quarter of a hog that I ordered, and 25 pounds of ground beef. And like, we filled our house with stuff, this last weekend, I actually moved literally a ton of dirt, more, a little more than a ton. We made two trips to get cubic two cubic square feet of garden soil. And if you buy it in bulk, you don't have to like really get out of your car, talk to anybody. You just pull up with a trailer and they dump it in and you drive away. So that's what we did and-

Chris: We, I've got dirt coming, but that's just because it's, you know, that time of year, it's actually late for me. Like I should have already started on my garden already. I normally do a garden. I normally do a pretty big garden every year. So that's just normal. That's par for the course.

Amos: Nice. I built two elevated gardens the other day.

Chris: Nice. Yeah, those are great. You basically don't have to work at that point. You just keep them, you know, keep them watered and you're good to go. I love gardening. Gardening is the best. If you, if you, if you have the means, I highly recommend it. You have some space, skill, a rooftop, just grow some, grow some herbs, even. I mean, anything really, uh, it's so much fun and, and you know, you get carrots or tomatoes out of it.

Amos: You can throw carrots are pretty easy to grow and, and radishes and tomatoes.

Chris: Radishes are done in like two weeks. You can lay in those suckers.

Amos: Then you get to replant them.

Chris: It's easy. Yeah. Radishes are great, uh, I actually, I think my favorite thing ever to grow in the garden is broccoli .

Amos: Really?

Chris: Because fresh broccoli is another worldly experience. Like if you, if you, you have never had broccoli, like you've had a fresh, like literally you can, you can cut ahead of broccoli and eat it before you get inside. And it's just delicious. It's so sweet. It's amazing.

Amos: It takes up so much room.

Chris: But that's the thing. It takes up a whole dang garden bed just to grow one it's the space reward is not there for broccoli.

Amos: Yeah. We were planning out our garden and you know, since we just have the small thing, we're doing square foot gardening and broccoli is one square foot for one broccoli, but you can plant 32 radishes and so-

Chris: And that's and that's a lie. I I'm here to tell you that is a lie because it's they'll grow, so that broccoli will grow so big that it'll crowd out everything else. It'll block sun from everything else. So you need to plant around the broccoli things that can get low amounts of sun and like live in the shade a hundred percent.

Amos: Right. So what can live in the shade?

Chris: Uh, radishes are okay in the shade, you know, so if you, if you plant around the broccoli square, but you can put the broccoli in the middle and do radishes around it or put other low, you know, you put carrots around it, though carrots actually need a pretty deep bed in order to go to full size. You know, you could do.

Amos: I got a they're called half carrots. They're like four, four inches long. And I have an eight inch or 12 inch deep bed.

Chris: Yeah. Um, often what I'll do, I don't really grow a lot of broccoli anymore just because I like getting stuff a little higher yield these days and also like stuff that I don't really have to, like, I like having stuff that does well. I mean, so it's really hot here, you know, just traditionally, especially in the summers. And so you don't, you have a window of time where you can really grow broccoli here without having to do a lot of care for it, to keep it alive during the, the, like and the same with snap peas, like you can grow snap peas from like basically now till middle of May. End of May. And then they're dead. Like you just can't keep them alive. Cause it's just too hot. But you could grow snap peas there. And snap peas are amazing. So I do a lot of stuff. Like I do a lot of cucumbers. I do a ton of okra every year, I grow, and then I grow a lot of like Southern staples that are, that I can like let take over the beds. So I grow like watermelon. They actually, I trellis watermelons, I grow them elevated.

Amos: I've never done that with watermelon. I always just leave them on the ground.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Well, they don't rot if they're on, if they're up in the air and you can just put, you just hang them and then they don't take up much room.

Amos: Do you like put a sack around them after they start to grow?

Chris: Yeah, like once the, once the melons start to grow, you, you, you stocking them or something like that. You can use the old, like t-shirt, if you don't have stockings laying around.

Amos: And a welcome to gardening on NPR.

Anna: Love it!

Amos: With Chris and Amos.

Chris: Welcome to the podcast. This is uh, garden, Gardening Outlaws.

Anna: My roommate actually has a huge hydroponic setup in our house.

Chris: Uh-huh.

Amos: Nice. (laughing) For veggies?

Anna: Yeah, lots of veggies.

Chris: Okay. So I'm actually gonna believe you. Um, despite the

Anna: I'll show you.

Chris: No, no, no, no. I, I, I believe I, I totally grew hydroponic lettuce and basil and stuff like that in our house for a long time. And definitely our neighbors thought we were growing pot, but it was not.

Anna: I'm recording my podcast that I do weekly, and um, they don't believe me that you have a huge hydroponics setup.

Chris: I totally believe you. I completely believe you. I feel so maligned right now. Yes. I love it.

Amos: Oh that’s beautiful.

Anna: So there's like tomatoes.

Roommate: Peppers

Anna: Peppers.

Chris: Yes! What kind of peppers?

Anna: What kind of peppers? There's four different kinds.

Chris: That's a cucumber. Is that, is that a, is that a fill-in drain set up or-? Is that a deep water set up or a fill in drain set up?

Anna: Is it a fill in drain set up? There's some strawberries. There's a pump. But it’s a fill in drain set up.

Chris: Yeah. See, I know what I'm talking about.

Amos: Nice!

Chris: If you're growing- Oh, an aquaponics set up, I love it. You can grow tilapia that way too. And then you get fish out of the deal. Oh, that's awesome. I love, actually, if you're able to grow strawberries in there, that's, that's pro-level because strawberries are non-trivial.

Anna: Yeah, she's pretty pro. She's growing strawberries.

Amos: Strawberries are tight.

Roommate: Hello everybody!

Amos: Hello!

Chris: Strawberries are one of the hardest things to grow in hydro, uh, when I was looking into it.

Anna: I didn't know you were so into hydro Chris.

Amos: I think they're hard to grow in general.

Chris: So we're going to learn a little bit about Chris. I, um, I what's the, how do I say this without it becoming like a thing? Feeding, feeding the world is a really important thing to me, but also like providing vegetables, um, and like healthy food options that are affordable to people is like a really important thing to me. It's like a thing I really care about a lot. And the fact is you can't do traditional farming and feed the world right now. And the only thing that gets you close to that are these sorts of like aquaponics, hydroponics. Specifically cause you run out of water. Like you can't, you can't do traditional farming and have enough water for everyone in the world. Um, so you can start to like increase your yields and increase the ability to do, to feed everyone if you, if you care about it. So I was doing a lot of research on, cause I was just like fascinated by that. And then I set up, yeah, I started growing and I wanted like fresh vegetables and uh, and that kind of stuff. And we didn't have, oh, I lived in an apartment at the time, so I didn't have room for that kind of thing. So I just, you know, learned how to do deep water culture, aquaponics and hydroponics and all that. I will- and everyone thought I was growing marijuana. A hundred percent. Every one of my neighbors thought I was growing marijuana. And I was like, first of all, the lights for growing marijuana in here are completely wrong. You can't do it with blue light. Uh, although you, you, but I, but I will say at the time, this was sort of in the pre, like DIY internet movement. I feel like, like where that became like a widespread like maker culture became like a widespread thing. And we're sort of in like the nascent era of that. Um, and so there wasn't like good videos or tutorials on how to like aquaponics hydroponics, setups, like, except for the people who wanted to grow marijuana. Those dudes had that on lock. Like they knew everything about it. And so I did learn most of what I know about using, about aquaponics from watching YouTube videos on of people who are like, here's how you grow marijuana in your house. Like, there's this like one series where the dude was like, here's how you do it. And I, that's where I basically learned everything about like the lights that you need and like how to build a set up and how to build boxes for all this stuff and everything.

Anna: That's awesome.

Chris: But I never actually, I have, I had zero intention of ever and still have zero intention of ever-

Anna: Growing marijuana-

Chris: Growing green marijuana. So that's today's episode of MarijuanaOutlaws.

Anna: And gardening.

Chris: Hydroponic Outlaws.

Amos: You can grow potatoes in like a little pot, pretty, pretty well. You plant like a quarter of a potato, let it dry a little bit and plant it and you'll get like five to ten potatoes out of it.

Chris: Potatoes are great. Yeah.

Anna: The nutritional content is really high.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and around here, so around here I grow a lot of like purple whole peas and like, you know, stuff that does really well and uh, okra, like stuff that does really well and like really hot climate. Its hardy.

Anna: I miss the heat.

Chris: Today is the first-

Anna: Is it getting warm?

Chris: Today is the first really, truly warm day. It's also been raining for the past three weeks. So, uh, today is bright and sunny and pretty warm. So it's pretty nice.

Anna: It's sunny. It's actually, the air has been so clear here because no planes and no, like you can see the Farallon Islands, which you can't really, normally you can't see them from the coast. You've been able to see them every day.

Chris: I mean, we're doing wonders for climate change right now, too, so-

Anna: Yeah, right! Climate scientists are probably like "Cool!"

Chris: How do we keep this goin'?

Amos: Mother Nature is setting things right.

Anna: I really think tis is Mother Nature just being like F you humans go inside for a while.

Chris: Y'all, y'all have screwed this up long enough.

Amos: Stay home.

Anna: Yeah, stop effing up the planet.

Chris: Have a, make a garden, everybody.

Amos: Yes.

Chris: If you have, if you have the means, like if you have room, you know, even inside you can do it, we'll do a little, an aquaponics thing or whatever with some fish. It's great. It's super fun.

Anna: It'll feed you.

Chris: Yeah. At least a little bit, especially if you do aquaponics, man, like the yields are so good relative to like growing stuff in dirt. It's so good.

Anna: Yeah I bet.

Chris: You have to, you need to leech the vegetables out. Like you need to put, you need to run clear water through them that doesn't have nutrients in it, or else they taste funky towards the end. But otherwise, like, you know, it’s great, you get tons of yields. You can make a salad probably every other day with a decent size aquaponics lettuce set up.

Amos: All right. I know what I'm doing this afternoon. Research.

Chris: The yields are good. It's really, it's really fun. And it's really fun. And for me, I just like going outside.

Anna: That's true. It is nice to be outside

Chris: And it’s really important right now. Go outside. Get some, get some sunshine if you can.

Anna: Our schools shut down probably through the end of the year.

Chris: Ours are not actually officially shut down through the end of the year, but like writings on the wall they're going to be done. Alice is not going back to school. I'll tell you that right now.

Amos: The colleges here are all remote until the end of the year. But the other schools-

Chris: Some of them-

Amos: are not.

Anna: Oh really?

Amos: Not yet. I'm sure that they will be. It's just that, like, nobody wants to tell the kids. You're not going back to school.

Anna: SFUSD is shut down at least through May 1st for now. Probably till the end of the year.

Amos: Yeah. Our, our 30 day stay in place order just started Tuesday. So

Anna: I'm pretty sure this is going to be like a three month stay in place order.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's going to be a minute, y'all

Anna: My roommate, no not my roommate, my friend, Anna, thinks we'll be free by July.

Chris: We'll see, we'll see, uh, you know, I, I'm doing my part. I'm staying home. We're staying home. We're not going around anybody. We've gone out to get groceries. We're not trying to stockpile. We have more groceries than we would normally get, but it's also basically just because.

Anna: You don't want to go to the store as often.

Chris: We just don't want to go to the store as often. And we're cooking a lot more because I mean, honestly, like we just miss cooking, you know, we used to do a lot of like takeout and I get that, you know, food is pretty much still safe and you know, if you want to support local restaurants and stuff, it's like a really good thing to do take out from them still and stuff like that. But, uh, for us, we just have missed cooking and like sitting around the table with the kids all at the same time and not trying to like rush around. So in some ways, like it's been nice to cultivate that habit again.

Anna: Yeah totally.

Amos: I wonder how many people are going to come out of this with a better work life balance than they've had .

Anna: Mine's gotten worse.

Chris: I think most people, this is the thing we were talking about last week is like, it's really easy to forget that, like, this is a conscious choice that I made at one point, like working from home, it was like a decision that I made under the best possible circumstances, like for my life. And it still took a year to get used to it. Um, and like, yeah, I think maybe a year from now, if people, like continue onto it, it might be better. But I think it's, I don't know that it's having this imposed on people is probably not going to be, it's not net good for most people, probably.

Amos: Ok fair. Some people though are gonna, they're gonna have natural, like, Hey, dinner's ready. You know, instead I'm sitting at my office and when you call me and tell me dinner's ready it’s like, I'm not coming home. Cause it's going to be a 40 minutes’ drive or whatever. So I think there's a lot of that, like sitting in the office until it's dark, that will hopefully, hopefully for some people that this will turn out to be a good thing.

Anna: I mean, I think I'm more productive cause I have more time. I'm not commuting.

Amos: Oh, that's nice.

Chris: I think, I think overall, this is such a, who boy, I'm gonna get in trouble.

Anna: What else is new?

Amos: Do it! Get in trouble, Chris, get in trouble.

Chris: Well, I don't want to, I don't want to, I hope what this doesn't come out sounding like is, (sighs) man. This is a super serious thing. And it's affecting tons and tons and tons of people. And I'm not trying to pretend it's not or anything like that. But I think it's, it's interesting to look at it, if you can, if you have the means to do it, from the perspective of like, how do I view these, this crappy situation? What's the right way to say it? How w what if I, what if, what if I found some like, positive outcomes from this, you know, and that's like super hard to do. And I don't think everyone's gonna be able to do that, like physically, like, just because of their circumstances, but, you know, for a lot of people, like for us, not me, not us on this call, but like, for us, my family, you know, it is one of those things where like, because we have the means, like we can, like, adopt cooking more. And like, that's like a, that's kind of like a positive outcome for like our family, like in our family togetherness, or like, there are certain things that are, I feel almost guilty about kind of being like, I'm kind of like, glad that, like, we get to do this now. Like we get to, like, I get to play more, like, way more games with my kids, you know, because they're here and I'm here. Like they're not at school. And like, so over lunch, like Alice and I have been playing cards, you know, which just like never something we would get to do.

Amos: Nice!

Anna: That's cool. Owww.

Chris: So in some ways I find that to be, I find, I find, um, I feel guilty about that and also very kind of somewhat selfish about it, where I'm like, this would never have happened in other circumstances. And, um, know, and it's like, I kind of am like treasuring this moment where like, or like, it's really, it's nice, it's like warm, but not too warm and hot and gross outside right now. And so we'll go out on our deck and like me and Alice we'll just hang out on the deck at night when all the other kids have gone to sleep. You know, stuff like that. Like we don't get to do that really ever. Cause she's got to go to bed to go to school. Then now she gets to sleep in and she still does school here. But you know-

Anna: Doesn't have to get up as early.

Chris: We don't have a 45 minute drive to take her to school one way. You know.

Amos: I think it's really important in, in this time though, for us to look for what good is coming out of this and try to dwell on that a little more than, than everything else. Um, just for our sanity. And we are where we are. We can't necessarily change what's, we don't have the power to change what's going on right now. So let's look for the good things in it.

Chris: And I'll, I'll also be honest and say like, I have to do it for my own mental sake because I have not handled, you know, I'm, I'm not normally a super anxious person. I have anxious tendencies. Um, but I've had nights where like, I can't, I literally can't sleep because I'm, my anxiety is so high.

Anna: I had to like, not, I couldn't sleep last night. Cause I had to, I have to like, not let myself look at Twitter at night.

Chris: Oh yeah, yeah.

Anna: Because I feel like we're all going to die. And last night, like my tummy was bothering me a little bit yesterday and I was like, nothing serious, but I was like, oh my God, one of the symptoms could be GI stuff. And Covina was just like,

Chris: No, I, I, I, I legitimately woke up last night and ha and w like, I was, I was nauseous I was so anxious.

Anna: Yeah, I was nauseous last night.

Chris: And I could not go back to sleep. I had to get up and like do some meditation. And like, just basically like dog myself into being like, you're being ridiculous. You have to, you have to stop ruminating. You are spiraling. And it was like, yeah. And I've had a couple of nights like that. Like my mental state is not good. At all.

Anna: And Twitter is the worst for it.

Chris: Oh yeah, no, I, yeah. I've gone on full blackout.

Anna: That's smart. I need to do that.

Chris: Like I have, I have a couple, I disabled it at the, at my pie hole level. So it's like very hard to undisable (clapping) like, I disabled it at the, like, I disabled everything at like the router level. So it's like not easy for me to go in and change it and that's helped break the habit, but yeah. I have to, or else I just can't do it. I basically it's like I have an hour of the day where I consume news. That's where I keep up with it. And then I'm done.

Anna: I'm trying to just take a little bit of a break period. Cause I just can't right now. I'm just consuming way too much of it.

Chris: And in reality, like what's going to change tomorrow. You know what I mean?

Anna: Like, well, like you can't like worrying about the things, like if I get it, I get, like, you know, worrying about the things that you can't control, right? Like I'm doing all the things I can. If I get sick. I'll deal with it when I get, you know what I mean? Like, it's scary when you're like, oh my God,

Chris: I think it's made me realize how little control I even had or the things I thought I had control over. Right. You know, it calls into stark relief how little control you have over anything.

Anna: In your life ever.

Chris: Yeah.

Anna: It's funny, cause like when I was in Patagonia, it's interesting, my perspective, because what I'm doing, I was in Patagonia with my dad and I was traveling, we were doing some pretty remote stuff. And I, I also have anxious tendencies. My anxiety is pretty high in general, but like when I'm in those situations, I'm like, well, I'll deal with it as it comes. Cause I'm super far away from anything , worrying about this thing right now is not going to help me. I'll just figure it out. And I'm trying to adopt that now. Um, I wish a little bit though that like the media was reporting, not just like, cause I feel like when I go on Twitter, like all of the cases where people were, people tweeting, it's like all of the extreme cases and I wish there was more reporting on like there are a lot more people that have it and the cases are a lot more mild, and the percentages, right? Like we're still, I wish there was more reporting around that just to like normalize it a little bit, not to like, not make sure that people take it seriously, but just to be like, you know, not every single occurrence that you hear about is somebody dying, right?

Amos: Well I mean, a lot of the cases where people are being tested are people that are having major symptoms, not the people who are like, oh, I think I might have a cold. So there's a lot of cases out there that we just don't know about it. And we'll never know about it.

Anna: I mean, I have a couple of friends that are pretty sure that's what they have. They can't get tested, but they've been sick, they're starting to feel better, but they've been sick.

Amos: I feel really bad for everybody at Lonestar who was around me and then came home to this news. Cause I was sick at Lonestar.

Amos: Yeah. I wonder, I mean, it could have been that, right. Like you don't know. I was honestly like, two weeks leading up to Lonestar or two weeks around that time, even at Lonestar, like I didn't, it wasn't, I didn't feel sick, but it was like having all of these joint aches and I could feel my lymph nodes working really hard for like two weeks. And I was just like, man, my body's really fighting something. Who knows?

Chris: I was, I was not feeling well at all. Like kind of prior to this all happening. And I'm like, yeah. I mean, I haven't, I literally haven't left the house. I have not driven other than to like go to Publix once. And I, I took my full NIOSH, like respirator, you know? And that's all I have. Like I don't have masks or anything like that. You know, I actually, I had one mask that we used and we've just been reusing and like sanitizing and then you can actually bake them in the oven and like get more reuse. And they don't lose like a ton of effectiveness. And then I had, I have a full, like, you know, face mask, respirator thing for doing, for painting and for doing like work like that around the house. And uh, that's what I've been wearing to go out. The one time I went out and I was telling someone, I was like-

Amos: People think you work for the CDC?

Chris: Well, and in my customary black jeans and black hoodie that my standard, you know, uniform of the day, plus that it looked like I'm about to go throw up some real nice, like sick nineties, wild style on Publix's wall. I'm just going to roll up with my tag book,

Anna: That's funny Chris.

Chris: Just start tossing my piece up. But not, I mean, but that's, you know, it's like, um, but I haven't, otherwise I haven't left. I've just, I've been around the neighborhood, but it's like, you know, I'm doing my part. Staying here. Not going near anyone else.

Anna: It's just so crazy. I know.

Amos: The hospitals here are accepting homemade masks. Um, so, so you can make a mask with a couple of layers of cotton, if you have a sewing machine and some, some, uh, just like take a couple layers of fabric because all it's doing is you just need to stop the moisture that comes out when you cough or sneeze for the most part. So yeah, they're, they're asking people to make them at home. If they have kits. And Joanne's is a fabric store and they have, you can call ahead of time and drive up and they'll give you a bag full of kits to make them and then take them to the hospital and drop them off, and somebody'll come out and pick 'em up later.

Anna: I think it's pretty interesting how, like, we're also like as a country transitioning some of our infrastructure, it feels a little eerie, like WW2esque, with GM and Ford, like shifting production to like, which is good, ventilators and masks and stuff.

Amos: Whiskey companies making hand sanitizers.

Anna: I saw that, I saw that.

Chris: There's a distillery where my parents live and they started making hand sanitizer.

Anna: It's gonna be really profitable for them right now.

Chris: Yeah, no joke.

Amos: They're making it here too.

Anna: They relaxed, I mean I think that's good, right? They've relaxed regulations. Cause it's really hard to get the consistency right, if you do it yourself. It needs to be above a certain percentage of isopropyl alcohol in order for it to even be effective. Rubbing alcohol will also work.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. I have some rubbing alcohol here.

Anna: Same here. And I think hydrogen peroxide will also work.

Amos: 60% alcohol.

Chris: We have soap.

Anna: Soap works really well.

Chris: So soap is a highly effective. Water and soap, turns out, is highly effective.

Anna: Well, luckily the thing has a lipid bi-layer right? Otherwise we'd all be screwed

Amos: Better than better than rubbing alcohol, they said.

Anna: No, everything, soap is the best. Soap is the best.

Amos: I've also learned how to actually wash my hands. I found out I've been doing it wrong

Anna: Oh yeah, we had an anesthesiologist, before we all went on lock down, to show us how to wash our hands.

Amos: Yeah. The whole thumb rotation thing, I was like, wait, what is that? And then the tips of the fingers.

Anna: Yup, my fingernails have never been so clean.

Amos: I know! Like I had no idea.

Anna: Oh my God. It is a little bit hard-

Amos: To see the bright sides.

Anna: It's a little bit hard to like focus on pushing pixels around when you're like, oh my god when is this ending?

Chris: Oh yeah. I mean, I help put sports news on the internet, and it calls into very stark contrast what's happening in the world with what I do.

Anna: Right. I mean, at least right now I'm working on my clients, like an educational platform. Um, so that feels a little bit better, but yeah, it's hard to be like, all right, let's focus on showing heightens and dibs

Chris: Got to get those. And it's, it makes you really a wonder about how effective all those arguments were about any given React library, like React best practice. And you're like, Hmm. Okay.

Anna: But Zoom's killing it. Zoom stock.

Chris: Yeah, they're doing great. Doing awesome.

Amos: And WebEx is not .

Anna: Yeah. WebEx is terrible. Wait, Chris, did you see the C5 community channel?

Chris: I don't have a login to the C5 anymore. I don't know. Not that I don't know if it got revoked, but I couldn't find.

Anna: Let me share this with you guys. The guy who created, posted in C5 community, the guy who created Screenhero came out because they didn't like what happened to Screenhero.

Chris: Oh right, when it got bought by Slack and then destroyed.

Anna: They just created a new one. They released it early. It's called Screen and it's actually even better.

Chris: That's awesome.

Amos: Yeah. There's two, there's two of them. So, so there's that Screen.io and then there's.

Anna: No, screen.so.

Amos: Oh, .so? And then Tuple. And Tuple's also

Anna: Tuple's pretty good. But this is supposed to be actually better.

Amos: And, and I've, I've used both Tuple, it has one of the engineers from Screenhero is also on it, but uh, so the feedback from my team who's used both is that video quality was better on Tuple.

Anna: Well this is new. This is not Screen.io. This is like, they just launched this yesterday.

Amos: Yeah I installed it, at least that's what I thought.

Anna: Oh, you installed it already. Okay.

Amos: Yeah. Screen.so.

Chris: This is cool. We'll put the links to this in the notes. Speaking of Slack, what the hell? Did anybody else get this update?

Anna: Haven't updated yet.

Amos: I hate it. I hate it.

Chris: What in the world is this garbage?

Anna: Now I have to update it, because I feel like

Chris: Dude, my entire computer life is falling apart. Okay. Um, so I, I opened, it’s so jarring to like, if you click between workspaces or organizations or whatever the hell that don't have that are different, it, it like all the sizes change.

Anna: Oh, what is going on?

Chris: Yes! Exactly!

Amos: It's terrible. It's terrible.

Chris: And also if you, you can't click up, like the up arrow, to edit anymore.

Amos: I didn't realize that. I never noticed that one.

Chris: If you, if you-

Anna: Oh you can't? That's gonna ruin my Slack life.

Chris: It's it does something weird. What in the world? They like, it's like a selector. It's like a cursor now. Yo, this is jenk.

Amos: It'll still let you edit. You just have to move up far like to yours, I think.

Anna: No, the up arrow will now move to your latest. That's actually better. It used to, like they fixed it, it'll move to your latest thing. That's pretty better.

Chris: I did something earlier then. I hit a button-

Anna: You just broke it-

Chris: And somehow I had a cursor. Like it was like, it was like, it was cursoring through all of my things that I've ever said. It wasn't like just going directly to the edit.

Anna: Did I tell you all that I had a Zoom first date last week?

Chris: Wow.

Amos: Interesting.

Chris: It really and truly is the future. That's, yeah.

Anna: Well I met this guy, we've been trying to, and I don't know, it should be putting this publicly on a podcast, but whatever we're in a weird time-

Amos: Just don't say anything. That's fine.

Chris: This week, this week on, uh, coronavirus dating Outlaws.

Anna: Right? Exactly. Anyway, we have been having trouble, he has a crazy schedule and we had been having trouble getting together and we actually hadn't met yet. We've just been chatting a little bit. And then he finally got back from some of his traveling for work and he was like, well, this is probably a bad time. And I was like, yeah, but why not? You know, let's just, I'm doing so many Zoom happy hours. Like let's just do another one.

Chris: Right? Yeah.

Amos: If you stay in your house for 14 days and I stay in mine for 14, then maybe we can meet.

Anna: But even then, like, it's just not worth. It just feels irresponsible, right?

Amos: Oh yeah, I think so.

Anna: Like, cause he has roommates. I have roommates. Um, just like the vector of like infection just expands exponentially. Like I haven't seen my folks. I probably won't see them until all this is over.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah.

Amos: Oh man.

Anna: It was fun. I was like, oh this is hilarious. Online dating in a pandemic is interesting.

Chris: I mean that's, it's it is sort of the weird thing, right? It's like, oh, it's so weird to think about. I mean, I was having this conversation with Alice, this so jives with my, with my view of, of like how this is going to, we're going to look back on this, right. Because she doesn't quite get it. I mean, she gets, it it's a world event, but I was like, you don't understand, like this is gonna be in history books forever. Like this is going to be a thing that people talk about. And you're going to tell you, you know, if you ever want to have kids, like someday you'll tell like your, your grandkids about what it was like, in the same way that you could talk to like a great grandparent and be like, " What was it like living in the depression?"

Anna: Oh yeah. My grandma has some crazy, I mean like being in Russia, just, period, in the last half century.

Chris: Right?

Amos: So there are people still alive today, maybe your grandparents, I don't know how old your grandparents are, but if they're still alive, they were probably alive during polio pandemic. And remember like not being able to go see their friends over the summer.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah.

Anna: I remember, I don't know, for Russia, I don't know. I do know that everybody in Russia, I didn't, I was too young, but my parents and my grandma I'll have a polio vaccine and I don't. So like, they'll be fine.

Amos: Yeah.

Chris: But yeah, it's, it's just wild, right. And that, and that to me, so jives with like, people are still people, humans are still humans and they still, you know, it's like, they're gonna find a way like that's so like, I love that.

Anna: Well, and I think about like our generations and like we've had it, I know people have struggles and I don't want to like any way minimize people's individual struggles, but like, like our generations have had it mostly pretty good on our soil, right. Like I think about my grandma who was like, you know, she was evacuated during, when the Nazis were seizing St. Petersburg and World War II, right. And she was like, you know, they had to like live in the forest and live off of sap, right. For a while, right. Like, like that they were bombing the trains as they were leaving the station with like the kids on them, right. So it's just like, I think about the stories or like living under Stalin, you know, like, and so I'm just like, man, our generation has had it pretty good as far as, like, living on our soil.

Chris: Yeah. Well, it is one of those things it's not a popular opinion to talk about, but there is a sort of a truism of, you know, no one living today would be better off living at any other previous time period, right. You know what I mean? Like in terms of overall, like if you look at the giant aggregate, like you're not going to be better off, you know, going back in time, basically anyone is not better off going back in time that much. And so yeah, it is. I think you're totally right. But I, I'm more just, I, I love, I love that that's a thing I truly do. Like I think that that's awesome that that's like, because I think that that's, it, that to me is, is like, that's the that's uh, what's the word way I say it, like that, that's the kind of thing that like fills me with hope, you know, where it's like, yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna make, we're gonna make it through this gang. Like we're going to do our part to make it through this .

Anna: Humanity will for sure.

Chris: Yeah. As a, as, and again, in the aggregate,

Anna: In the aggregate, we will make it through. In the immediate, it's like a really scary,

Chris: Of course, but I mean that's part of it too, that that's all, I don't know. I guess, I guess I have a,

Anna: And I think like, I don't know, humans probably have a really interesting relationship with the concept of mortality, right? Like, um, because in the grand scheme of things, and this is like really easy to say, right? Like last night I was freaking out, cause I was like, oh, maybe I have covid. But like in the grand scheme of things, we're all on this planet for a very small period of time. But in the immediate, right. I think a lot of humans have a hard time with really like wrestling with the concept of our own mortality.

Chris: I woke up last night, not thinking that I had covid, but definitely thinking that all my teeth were falling out. That was, that was the, that was the, I had a nightmare about all my teeth falling out and that's how I woke up.

Anna: No Twitter for you.

Chris: And it's like, "This is irrational!" but no part of my rational self understood that.

Anna: I mean, I wonder what would help, what would help ease people's anxieties in a time like this? Like, I really don't know what the answer is, right. Like short of like getting everybody tested like every day.

Chris: Yeah. I don't know. I don't know

Anna: I feel like that would ease people's anxieties, but

Chris: Yeah, well and just sort of, you know, progress being made, I dunno. Or visible progress. I think it's hard to see what's going on.

Anna: And I think there is visible progress being made, right. Like I think it's hard. It's really hard to see what's going on, but I think,

Chris: But it's really hard to see the sort of the forest for the trees too, you know.

Anna: Well the way the media is reporting on things, right. They're not reporting on the positive, right. The people that are recovering or the people that are, you know, or the progress being made around like treatment, right. Or the progress being made around like a vaccine. Like we're not there yet, but like eventually we will be.

Chris: Yeah. I think I, yeah, I don't know.

Amos: We just gotta sit tight for a while.

Anna: Yeah everyone just to sit tight for a little while .

Chris: And take it seriously, stay inside

Anna: Yeah all of you people that are like being ridiculous. And there are more and more reports about like half the people that are being hospitalized or whatever, like young. So like you're not immune if you're young.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. You Nimrods .Stay inside.

Anna: Are there really people that are still not worried about it? That's what I don't understand. I mean I would love to live in a hermetic, like

Amos: Well, so they're like, "Well I'm not gonna die"

Chris: Apparently, uh, apparently,

Anna: Really? You can't die?

Chris: Uh, apparently Falwell Jr is totally fine with opening up colleges again. Yeah. I mean, apparently he's not worried about it.

Anna: Trump wants to be done by Easter, right?

Chris: Well I mean of course he does. I mean who wouldn't? So do I actually, as long as we're being honest, yeah. But we can make that happen.

Anna: I was talking to somebody about how like it'll be, it's likely that it's going to get better and we'll all come back outside and then we're going to have to go back inside, like

Amos: Yup.

Chris: Oh yeah, no this is, this is the thing, people, you know, this is, we're not, we haven't seen the worst of it yet.

Anna: Well, we haven't,

Chris: It's going to get worse. Just buckle up. But, and stay inside.

Anna: Stay inside.

Chris: Don't stay actually inside stay, stay isolated. Go outside.

Anna: Get some air, but just don't be a dick about it.

Chris: Yeah, exactly. Don't be selfish.

Anna: Well, like, my date. So like the guy, the guy that I was talking to, it was, it was, it went really well. And then he was like, do you want to go on a hike? And I was like, yes, but that feels really socially irresponsible. So how about another virtual hangout?

Chris: You can both go on a hike in different areas and FaceTime.

Anna: Right, we could do that.

Amos: That's right.

Anna: Um, it feels like it's like olden times where we'll just like, stay across the, stay on the other side.

Chris: Oh, and just send each other long missives.

Anna: Exactly, Just write long letters.

Amos: Have you asked my mom if we can go on a hike?

Anna: Um, yeah. It's a weird time.

Chris: It is a highly unorthodox weird time,

Anna: But what are you going to do?

Amos: Well, I feel like we should say, um, Elixir. Okay. Now we can move on.

Anna: Yeah. I mean it is an Elixir- it just doesn't feel, I don't know. I love Elixir, but it doesn't feel as pertinent as like,

Amos: There are a lot of user groups who are going online. So that's my only Elixir thing is out and find them online. KC Elixir's going online. We have a talk next week about TLA plus, but, it will be over by the time this is out. So

Chris: Yeah. I don't know. I, it is it for me-

Anna: It's hard for me to like talk about, maybe it's good to talk about that stuff as like a focus and a little bit of a distraction, but it's hard for me to like.

Amos: Yeah.

Chris: But I think, I think to some degree, I still try to, you know, talk about tech stuff and uh, talk about silly, I don't know, talk about things that are, that are not the current, you know, the topics of today, just because partially it's an escape for myself. You know, I really need that personally. And then I think, I suspect other people want that to other people want sort of that sense of normalcy, you know, that, that sort of comforting feel of, of, yeah. Like I can focus. I'm allowed to focus on this today. I don't have to be preoccupied, always thinking about, you know, be being consumed with thoughts about a virus.

Anna: That's true.

Chris: You know, I think that's comforting to me in a way that I really value and having that time to, I dunno, sit and, and I do this with podcasts. Like I listen to podcasts now that are just goofy jokey podcasts.

Anna: Do you have any that you would recommend? Oh my God. Have you all seen Lucifer?

Chris: No.

Anna: It's a funny show on Netflix. It's not definitely don't watch it with your kids,

Chris: Oh, ok.

Anna: But like, um, just cause some of just, yeah, it's not inappropriate for kids, but like, but it's about this guy who like, I don't watch TV, so my friend introduced me to it. Cause I was like, can we watch something light and funny? Cause I just can't right now. It's about this guy who like, doesn't want to be the devil anymore. Um, takes a vacation and goes to Los Angeles and like essentially helps this detective solve cases or whatever. But it's just like really funny and witty and light. Um, at least the first few episodes are pretty light. And so I was like, oh, I needed a laugh.

Chris: My favorite podcast ever, and I'm loath to even say this because if people listen to this and start listening to it, they're going to realize like I'm ripping off their jokes a lot of times.

Anna: That's where you get your material.

Chris: It really is. Uh, some of it, yeah. Uh, is The Flop House.

Anna: What's that about?

Chris: It's three dudes watch a bad movie and then they talk about it.

Anna: Oh nice.

Chris: And that's the entire, that's the entire synopsis.

Anna: That's kinda great, I love it.

Amos: Nice.

Chris: Uh, they typically watch like relevant, like for their time, like commercial or, or critical flops. They're all writer or two of them are writers or were writers for The Daily Show. Um, and have been in like New York comedy for a long time. So they're, there are, they're very funny, they're just like very, very funny people. Um, and one of the other guys is, uh, I mean they're all three of them are super funny. Uh, I will put some choice episodes. They are not safe for work, highly not safe for work. I mean, obviously everyone's going to have different opinions on it. I would not allow my children to listen to a moment of it. It has a highly, beyond language, which it has a lot of, it also has a lot of adult content. Um, so I, I would not let, let your small children listen to it, but it's super funny. And they have, it's been going on for a long, a lot of years now and they have tons and tons of recurring bits and just ways of talking to each other. And it's, I find it deeply comforting because it is about a specific thing it's typically not too topical or like, you know, they all are political in, in as much as they're all progressives, but they're, you know, but they're also like they don't, it's not a thing. It's not like a thing that like runs, it's not a, you know, it, it it's, it's, it's deeply comforting. It's nice to put your headphones on and just sort of feel like you can relax with like your friends, with those voices that you know so well and listen to them talk about whatever they think is funny. I think that's the, that's the, that's my, uh, that's my, that's my, um, overly romantic sort of pet theory on why people like podcasts.

Anna: Nice. All right y'all I have to run. I'm already over. I moved something around just to keep chatting cause it was so lovely.

Amos: Awww, we missed you Anna.

Anna: Missed you guys.

Amos: Glad you're back.

Anna: I am. I'm gonna try, maybe I don't even need, I'm curious how the quality is to know, I would be curious to know if I need to go back to the office and grab my mic or not.

Chris: Well, you know.

Amos: I don't know, it sounds pretty good.

Anna: I wonder how the boom mic is on my headset, but I can go get it if I need to.

Amos: It seems to sound good for now.

Chris: it seems fine.

Amos: Like, I don't have mine either. I think stay home, stay safe, is a whole lot better.

Chris: We've cultivated the right sort of atmosphere around our show in terms of, in terms of audio quality that I don't think anybody at this point, here's the thing. If you're still listening to this show and you are expecting a high quality audio experience, you're banned from listening to the show. How about that?

Anna: Or you're just setting yourself up to be disappointed, right? Cause it's just not going to happen .

Chris: Really at this point, it's on you dog. Like if you still like, or if you're sitting there, like I just can't listen, it just feels like they're just ruining my headphones every time, they're piercing my ears, like, you know what, you're not allowed to listen to the show anymore. You're banned. You're banned from the show.

Amos: And that's fine. You can make fun of them right now because we've probably have the worst microphones that we had so far. And we've made it this far into this episode. They've already stopped listening.

Anna: It's true, it's true.

Chris: Also, if you can't take a joke if you legitimately think that I, whenever I make fun of Phoenix and Ecto, I truly am making fun of Phoenix and Ecto, cause you can't take a joke, you're banned from the show. Okay.

Anna: Oh man, Chris is on fire. Alright, time to stop.

Chris: Thanks for listening.

Amos: Great show. Great show everybody.

Anna: All right y'all, I'll talk to you next week. Hang in there. Stay healthy.

Amos: You too.

Chris: See you all later.

Anna: Bye y'all.

Amos: Bye.