Beer and Conversation Podcast

The boys drink and review Delicious IPA from Stone, then discuss skills they wish they had learned.

Everybody has to make choices about how they spend their time, and some skills require a lot of work to acquire. Pigweed and Crowhill talk about things they wish they could do, but have never applied themselves to.

Things like …

• Being handy, or a gearhead,
• Whistling well,
• Getting comfortable with the Celsius scale,
• Learning the metric system,
• Budgeting,
• Tying lots of cool knots,
• Learning other languages,
• Dancing,
• Playing the guitar, or the piano,
• Charming fabulous women,
• Swordfighting,
• and other fun stuff.

The real question is, if they really wanted to learn these skills, why didn’t they?

The boys drink and review Kostritzer Schwarzbier, then discuss homelessness.

When we talk about “the homeless,” we have to make some distinctions. Some people with no home have a job, a car, and are making do … they just don’t have a place to live. They live in their car and shower at the gym.

Others are drug addicts or have mental illnesses. It’s a mistake to lump them all into the “homeless” category.

Homelessness is closely associated with drug abuse, mental health issues, street camping, open drug use, and property crime.

There are different philosophies on how to address this. One is called “housing first.” Another is “treatment first.” Many policies are based on permissiveness and perpetuation of the drug-addled life on the street.

Good policies require people to have skin in the game and demonstrate responsibility. Accommodating drug addiction and facilitating a vagrant lifestyle is sold as compassion, but it’s not the solution.

The boys drink and review Erdinger’s Weissbier Dunkel, then discuss developments in artificial intelligence.

Our first experiences with artificial intelligence were things like “playing the computer” on the Atari, or spellchecker. Checking grammar involved an extra layer of computation that had to take context into account.

Another level of computer-assisted information is what you see on Amazon — “customers who bought this also bought…” — or on Spotify — “people who likes this song also liked ….”

How will AI affect sports? Do we want computers calling balls and strikes? Do we want first downs and fumbles determined by artificial intelligence?

Just recently the tech geniuses have developed AI engines that can write books and provide the illustrations.

How long before AI is writing screenplays and creating computer-generated characters to act out the script? When will we have AI judges in the courts?

The boys drink and review Pigweed’s latest robust porter, then welcome John Wayne Jew to the show to help review “this month in woke.”

The plague of wokeness is out of control.

We’re seeing university struggle sessions where if any of the students disagree with a teacher’s liberal agenda, the student has to issue a written apology and submit himself to lectures from the teacher and other students.

Teachers can be jailed for failing to use a student’s preferred pronouns.

In Virginia, the schools slow-walked informing students they were national merit scholars because it wouldn’t be “equitable” to give the smart kids a leg up.

With control of the government, the schools, scientific establishments, the media, Madison Avenue, and Hollywood, the left is often pushing the boundaries of crazy, and mostly getting away with it — with ridiculous results.

Every day there’s another story about lunacies on the left. If you’re not getting enough sleep, you may be a victim of racism.

The woke Biden administration is going to drop millions of dollars on AI to find “microaggressions,” but they won’t pay any attention to the straightforwardly racist aggression from Joy Behar.

The word “field” has been designated too racist and triggering.

The boys end the show with a simple summary of what “woke” means.

With special guest Longinus (a vegetarian), the boys drink and review a small beer, following a recipe from George Washington, then discuss vegetarianism.

Sometimes vegetarianism is inspired by religious beliefs, and sometimes by secular ethics and questions of health. There are also issues about environmental issues and sustainability.

There are different types or levels of vegetarianism, including veganism, lacto and ovo vegetarianism, pescetarianism, raw vegans, etc.

Some claim that vegetarianism is more healthy and better for the planet.

Pigweed asks how vegetarianism squares with the history of our species. Cooking and eating meat was a huge step in our evolution and facilitated the development of our large brains.

And what about eating bugs? The geniuses at Davos seem to want us to do that.

Crowhill believes the future of meat eating is lab-grown meat, and that once we perfect that, vegetarianism will be irrelevant.

Along with special guest Longinus, the boys drink and review Beam Me up, Stouty (a coconut stout) from Saugatuck Brewing, then discuss “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.”

The story is not about an escape, or an unusual day, or how something dramatic happened on this day. It’s just a typical day in a Soviet labor camp.

Solzhenitsyn’s account of this one day so captured the experience of the Soviet prisoner camps that he received letters from former prisoners expressing how perfectly he had captured the experience.

The characters themselves are not particularly wicked. You don’t come away hating the characters in the story, but the system. It’s all about ordinary, decent people caught up in a wicked system.

It’s a cold story. You might want to bundle up as you read it.

The boys drink and review Chimay Grand Reserve, then discuss the big stories of 2022.

Top stories included:

• Republicans take the House
• Musk buys Twitter
• The World Cup
• Pro-democracy protests in Iran
• Hurricanes Sophia and Ian
• Queen Elizabeth passes
• Boris Johnson resigns
• Liz Trust’s short term
• Mar-a-lago
• Jan. 6 hearings
• Roe v. Wade
• The media lies about abortion
• Uvalde Texas shooting
• Monkeypox
• Jonny Depp / Amber Heard
• High Inflation
• Russia invades Ukraine
• 2022 Winter Olympics
• First successful heart transplant from a pig to a human
• James Webb space telescope enters orbit
• Will Smith slap
• Pandemic is over
• Cryptocurrency problems
• Bad stock market
• President Chi increases grip on power
• ESG backlash
• Fusion energy breakthroughs
• Brazil goes left
• China conducted first military exercises around Taiwan
• Protests in Iran against morality police
• World population reaches 8 billion

They also review celebrity deaths, top baby names, the top 10 movies, worst movies of 2022, woke movies that lost money, and the top 10 albums.

The boys drink and review Glacial Drift, a spiced winter ale from Heavy Seas, then discuss housing, and why the prices are so high.

What factors have caused home prices to go so high? And how do regular families afford these McMansions? It seems the ratio of income to house prices has changed radically since the 1970s.

Part of it is the assumption of two incomes in each family.

Also, we have bigger houses with fewer people in them. Houses get bigger while families get smaller.

If you track the change in wages vs. the price of homes, inflation-adjusted wages have stayed about the same since the 1960, but houses are twice as expensive.

Are government regulations causing the increase in home prices? Or is it some other factor?

The boys drink and review a holiday ale from New Belgium, then discuss the erosion of public standards of conduct.

Is society allowed to expect basic standards of behavior?

What about business dress codes? Can McDonald’s insist on a uniform, even though people could flip burgers in sweats and a t-shirt?

Was it right for Zelenski to speak to the Congress of the United States in a sweatshirt?

Aren’t there any standards?

Hardly. And the few that exist all fly out the window if you mention gender identity. If you say your gender identity requires you to wear enormous pretend boobs, nobody is willing to tell you differently.

A recent example of this conflict of standards is the weird example of Sam Brinton. The man is a disgrace and a flaming weirdo, but because he’s “gender fluid” he gets a pass.

On the other hand, elementary school teachers can be fired for doing relatively normal things.

There’s no logic or sense to any of this.

In this end-of-the-year show, the boys review their home-brewed Christmas ales, then discuss New Year’s resolutions.

Lots of people use the new year as an opportunity to re-evaluate their lives and their goals and make adjustments. But some people think it’s a waste of time because nobody ever keeps them.

The boys discuss popular topics for resolutions and ways science has shown that can make it more likely to keep your resolutions.

• Frame the resolution positively.
• Piggyback habits. That is, attach the new habit to an existing one, like “after I shower I will read for ten minutes.”
• Link the new activity with something you want to do. E.g., I can only listen to audiobooks while I’m on the treadmill.
• Pick something small and manageable, esp. for the first week.
• Make it specific rather than vague — e.g., go to the gym three times a week, rather than “exercise more”. Use a number.
• Create a new habit to replace an old habit.
• Be accountable to someone else.
• Make resolutions measurable so you can monitor progress.
• Make them fun.

The boys drink and review Honey Kolsch by Rogue Brewing, then talk about how the media treats mass shootings. As with so many issues in the news today, you have to peel back the agenda from the news coverage. Often the media can’t even wait for the facts to come out before they start with their interpretations and explanations.

You can almost feel the hunger by the news organizations for a story that confirms their view of the world.

Mass shootings are almost always used as an excuse to promote new laws, even if the new law wouldn’t have done a thing to stop the latest outrage, and even if there were already laws on the books that should have.

In story after story, if a shooting fits with the liberal media’s agenda, we hear about it for weeks. If the story doesn’t confirm their agenda, it quietly goes away.

It’s all about identity politics. But only when that’s convenient and fits the preferred template.

The boys drink and review a peppermint Imperial stout, then discuss Christmas music.

What do scary ghost stories have to do with Christmas? It might be more complicated than you think!

Pigweed and Crowhill discuss their favorite songs, the duds, themes in Christmas music, and why the Christmas season is so special.

This is a light-hearted episode, sure to put you in the holiday spirit.

The boys drink and review Unicorn Farts After Dark by DuClaw, then discuss what they love and what they hate in commercials.

We’ve become accustomed to the idea that we pay for free television by suffering through the commercials. Consumers want humor in commercials. Like in the Super Bowl. But what we get is posturing and lecturing by the woke.

There are several trends and themes in commercials that the boys review. For example, if there’s a man and a woman in a commercial, the man almost always plays the part of the idiot, or loses the argument. It’s also acceptable to make fun of a man’s sexuality.

In some ways, the social agenda has become more important than the sale of the product. Many commercials have a completely fake-feeling, forced emphasis on diversity, for example.

Commercials are an interesting indicator of the culture. What do today’s commercials say about our culture?

The boys drink and review a homemade batch of Krupnikas, a Christmas cordial, then discuss how states often sponsor morally questionable behaviors, like gambling and drug use.

Maryland voters recently approved a referendum legalizing the recreational use of marijuana. Is this a good idea?

Some people try to put a positive spin on this by taxing the drugs and using the revenue for some good purpose.

Does decriminalization cut out the criminal element? Does that justify decriminalization?

And what about gambling? Is legalized gambling a good thing for society? Does winning the lottery actually help anyone? Does the lottery disproportionately affect the poor?

What happened to all the traditional arguments against gambling? Have we countered them, or just ignored them?

Along with special guest Longinus, the boys drink and review Space Dust IPA by Elysium brewing, then discuss a few short stories from The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury.

The premise of the collection is that you can see the stories in the collection played out by looking at the tattoos of a carny.

This podcast includes reviews of the following stories.

The Veldt – problems arise when spoiled children get addicted to their “smart room.”

Kaleidoscope – a tale of how people react when facing certain death on their own in space.

The Other Foot — all the Earth’s black population has moved to Mars. The remaining population on Earth destroy the planet and come to Mars begging for help.

The Man – Space farers, moving from planet to planet, just miss “the man.” The captain becomes obsessed with catching up with him.

The Rocket Man – Working in space is addictive. When you’re in space you want to be on Earth, and vice versa. The story inspired Elton John’s song.