December 22, 2021 • 35 mins
The staff of Solvable discuss the problems, big and small, that they'd like to see solved in 2022 and beyond.
Special thanks to Maggie Taylor and Pushkin podcast hosts Sam Fragoso (Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso), Tim Harford (Cautionary Tales), Michael Lewis (Against the Rules), Laurie Santos (The Happiness Lab) and Justin Richmond (Broken Record).
Solvable is produced by Jocelyn Frank, research by David Zha, booking by Lisa Dunn, Editing support from Keishel Williams. The managing producer is Sachar Mathias and executive producer is Mia Lobel.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin, This is solvable. I'm Ronald Young Jr. I'm San Fragoso,
host of Talk Easy with San Fragoso. What if we
called our parents more, our friends, had better, more fullhearted conversations,
the kinds we always say we don't have time for
(00:37):
or just too busy to have listeners. Tis the season
for problem solving. I mean, that's solvable. We're always steeped
in it. But this is the time of year that
the rest of America takes a few extra minutes to
look carefully at their lives, then set goals, carve out resolutions,
make fresh intentions for a better life. Hi. I'm Tim Hoffitt.
(01:00):
I'm the host of Cautionary Tales. The problem I'd like
to see solved is creating more beautiful, lie walkable neighborhoods.
If we could solve this problem, that would be good
from mental health, it'd be good for the economy, good
for jobs, good for the planet. There's so many ways
(01:21):
in which this is a problem worth solving, and it
seems like it shouldn't be such a hard problem. We
think some problems really should not be too hard to solve.
And I usually bring someone with the wealth of knowledge
and a roadmap to tell us how. But we have
a special episode today, a chance to peer behind the
curtain with the team that makes Solvable possible. Each week,
I've invited my colleagues to sit down and talk about
(01:43):
the things we'd like to see solved. We'll also hear
from some other pushkin podcast hosts about problems they'd like
to see solved. And as you're listening, if you think
of something you'd like us to solve, tweet us at
Pushkin Pods using the hashtag solvable. Here we go, Hello, team,
(02:06):
Why don't we go around the table and introduce ourselves
so that everyone knows what voice matches to what role.
I'm Sasha, I am the managing producer of Solvaball, and
I'm coming at you hot from Brooklyn, New York. I'm Joscelyn,
senior producer of Solva Ball, and I'm joining this chat
from Minneapolis. I'm David. I do research for the show,
(02:27):
and I'm at my parents' house in Connecticut for the holiday.
Look at us. I guess I didn't say I'm in Alexandria, Virginia,
but here we all are, and I'm so glad that
you guys get to join me on Mike Today. Welcome,
happy to me here. All right, So I assembled you
all because I wanted to talk a little bit about
(02:48):
problems that we want to see solved next year. I know,
we guys, we work on this show and we talked
to a lot of luminaries, but we don't never really
get to talk to each other about problems. And I
don't know about y'all, but do you guys feel like
you guys think more about problems differently since working on
the show. For sure, I totally do, Yeah, definitely more optimistically.
(03:08):
I feel I hear about a problem and I'm like, oh,
someone's probably going to figure this one out. It's no biggie,
and then we'll have about the show right right exactly.
I think it just makes me, like forces me to
think more specifically, like you have to do something, you know.
So I like that our researchers bringing it back to
the ground for us, where like, yeah, it all gets done,
and he's like, actually have to work hard to find
(03:29):
the people in a practical way. You guys take it
for granted, like this takes some effort. So what we
did was we each of us. I asked you to
come with a problem that you'd like to see solved
in the next year or in any time in the future.
Big or small, doesn't matter. David, Let's start with you.
What problem would you like to see solved? We talk
a lot about like serious issues, so I figured i'd
(03:50):
talk about something with lower stakes. I guess right now,
there's a global graphics card shortage. Oh wow. It's mainly
driven by COVID. But like personal computer PC part components
all around the world are really hard to come by
right now. And as you guys know, I love video
game and I play a lot of PC games, and
(04:11):
I like building computers when I need to know every
few years. But I've been saving up money for a
long time and I was really looking forward to my
next build. But when the pandemic started, it became almost
impossible to buy graphics cards, which is the most important
part of your computer if you like gaming, because I mean,
(04:31):
that's what renders everything, that's what makes everything look beautiful,
that's where a lot of its visual processing power comes from.
And there's just a huge global shortage right now, and
there's a lot of reasons for that. I mean, it's
sort of just like a classic supply chain issue. And
manufacturing issue. But it's also a little more complicated. There
are a lot of bots that people have made because
(04:52):
everyone knows that these things are in demand and hard
to get, so like all these like you know, ingenious
teenage trolls have like set up these automated bots that
will buy up all of Nvidia's cards in like seconds
and nobody can get them. And then there's this whole
push during the pandemic of crypto mining, So a lot
of people have been mining bitcoin during the pandemic, and
(05:14):
that's when that's where graphics cars are super useful. And
so those people, I think are botting as well to
buy everything. And so if you're just like a normal dude,
like what else am I supposed to do during lockdown?
Like I need to play my video games, all right,
So it's hard. It's just hard to buy graphics cars
right now, and I wish someone would fix that. David,
are you optimistic that they'll fix the supply chain issues
(05:37):
or do you think that somebody will come up with
some other method to replace the video card as we
know it now? Like, how do you think what direction
do you think they'll take it to solve it? I
think in twenty twenty two. I think they've had a
whole year twenty twenty one to kind of wrap their
heads around with the logistical problems are. I think in
twenty twenty two they will fix like the supply chain
(05:58):
problem that they're having, like they've been. I think a
lot of companies that make graphics cards are like investing
in I don't in their plants and ways that make
it more that they can meet demand. I wish they
would solve more like the boding problem, and some of
them haven't tried. Some of them have, you know, in
video released a new graphics card or whatever, they'll only
sell it at best Buy in like the brick and
(06:19):
mortar retail store, and people will like camp out or whatever.
But that doesn't really work because you can only provide
like X number of graphics cards. And I don't have
a tent, so and I'm not going to sleep out
for a freaking you know, computer card whatever. I'm not
like one of these crazy bitcoin people, So so I
don't know, there's there are challenges, like I I'm not
(06:40):
entirely sure like what their supply chain fixed would look like,
and I don't even know what the demand is going
to look like this year, because I wonder if it's
gonna it's gonna remain that high, if things will change,
if people are coming out of lockdown and stuff like that.
I love how much you've thought about that, talking about
it a little too much. Resale market. Oh yeah, there
(07:02):
is what I mean, I think they're teenagers. But what
these like scalpers do, they're scalpers. What they do is
they they buy up these cards with their bots, you know,
for six hundred dollars, five hundred dollars a piece, real fast,
and you know, a couple months later they'll selve for
like twelve hundred or like twenty four hundred, you know,
like multiple thousand dollars, and they just make, you know,
make easy money that way. So it's a it's prime
(07:24):
for scalping. It's like somebody's going to college off of
video cards video card fund, Yeah, for school, David, that's
a great problem. I think it's I like that it's
like it personally affects you, but it actually is something
that's probably affecting lots of people. And I think the
bot problem being solved is probably something that would fix
(07:46):
a lot more than just video cards shortages. I know personally,
I like Jordan's sneakers and Nike's generally, and there's a
boding problem with people buying the shoes as soon as
they come out, like almost like they're they're gone immediately.
So I would love to see the boding problem solved
as well. You know. That's things because I was thinking
maybe we just need some version of like three D
(08:07):
glasses where if the you know, video card is really weak,
they just send everyone, you know, a special pair of
like high Death Beautiful, real cheap and easy just quick
quick fix for twenty twenty two. But those would get
botted too, yeah, real low Fi Consolation Prize. We also
(08:36):
reached out to hosts of our fellow push gim shows
for their ideas on problems they'd like to see solved
in whatever frame of time they chose. Here's our first one.
I'm Michael Lewis, host of Against the Rules, and the
major problem in the world that I would like to
see solved is baseball. How do you make it less boring?
(08:56):
It's got an aging fan base, declining ratings, and the
games keep getting longer and longer. I have thoughts about
how to solve it. I mean, you could do it
in a stroke by say, like putting a lion on
the field, like not one of those lazy zoo lions,
but a line from the savannah. It would get interesting instantly.
(09:19):
Everybody would watch that, and it's very Roman. It would
be a very Roman solution to the problem. You could
turn the stadium into a casino where the fans it's
ideally suited as a game to bet on everything that
happens because there's so little action and there's so much
time between the action, So that'd be another way to
solve it. I don't think that the little things that
(09:41):
baseball is thinking about doing around the edge is making
the bases a little bigger so they're easier to steal,
and moving the picture back and all that stuff. I
don't think that's going to address the fundamental problem. I
think that the game is out of step with the
age we live in, and so figuring out how to
change it in a way that preserves it but interest
people is going to be very hard. And if you
(10:03):
can figure that out, climate change is a breeze. That
was Michael Lewis, host of Against the Rules Are Sister
podcast here at Pushkin. What do you guys think is
baseball too boring. I mean, baseball is definitely boring. I
don't think it's too boring. The how boring they slid?
This is what I love about it. It is such
an intensely psychological sport because there's just so much standing
(10:27):
around and so much that happens when you know you're
standing at the base and your opponent is standing right
next to you and they like joke around but also
or adversarial. I don't know. I think baseball is just
boring enough. There's a lot of passive, aggressive chumminess, Oh yeah,
(10:48):
I feel like in baseball. And then and then there's
also outright like brawls I guess when like they cleared
the dugouts or whatever, But that's rare. Being there live
makes it a lot less boring, But watching it on
television there's little entertainment value. And then most of the
fights happen all when there's unwritten rules that are broken,
and I am not a fan of rule, and baseball
(11:09):
leans heavily into unwritten rules, which there's a big debate
about that as well. John, what do you think. I mean,
I'm with you in terms of like watching it versus
watching it in person. Versus watching it on TV. I
don't think I've ever watched a whole baseball game on TV.
The psychological challenge is not just for the players on
(11:30):
the field, as for the audience too. We have, like,
you know, how how much consumerism will we fall prey to,
how much unnecessary snacking? How many times will we get
up and stretch? Will we accidentally clap just because something happened,
not because it's a team we're looking for to win.
But I actually think I love organized sports. I think
(11:53):
they're really fun. I love team sports especially. It makes
me and it makes me think about like how much
fun I had playing them when I was a kid
and still when I play them now. And but I
do think it's boring, and I do think that they
could probably pick it up, Like doesn't need to be
that many innings. I think that's the easy fix, Like
just make it fewer innings like little. I think it
(12:14):
should just it should just make it one inning, one inning,
That's it. I think the only pushback I have to you, Jocelyn,
is that unnecessary snacking is an oxymoron all snacking. So
I don't like the way you put that at all.
It feels very just that's fair. That's fair. It's funny
to hear. Michael Lewis, the author of one of my
(12:35):
favorite books of all time, Moneyball, called Baseball Boring. Yeah,
Moneyball totally blew my mind. It's incredible. Yeah, Like chess
is theoretically satisfying, but the action of chess moments moment
can be very slow. That's why speed chess is awesome,
and that's why people see that, because it forces you
to fight. Michael suggests putting a lion in the field.
(12:58):
So I think I think changing the rules of baseball
to make it a little more fast paced, maybe a
little more like score heavy, like basketball or hockey or
something or such. It on double speed. Yeah, maybe that's
the that's the answer. I don't know. You need to
You might need to change the rules. I feel like
you guys stumbled onto something that about baseball, though, which
(13:19):
is that like, the more you know about baseball, the
more interesting it is. It's fun if I know what's happening,
But when I don't, I'm like, I don't care. So
I hear the crack of the bat, So I think
if they can find a way to solve that the
line on the field, I think would solve that. So Joslyn,
(13:42):
tell me what problem did you bring to us today.
I feel like Michael Lewis kind of threw it down
when he said, like, if we can solve baseball, then
climate change is easy. Climate change is so huge, And
we talked about this several different ways on the show,
like there's ways we can break it down into smaller parts.
So one of the small parts that I feel like
I would love to see solved is emissions from planes.
(14:05):
Why can't planes be electric if we're putting all this
energy into electric cars, but we know that planes gobble
up way more fuel than cars, although there are more
cars on the road and cumulatively cars are more responsible
for overall co two. I'd still really love to see planes.
Maybe it's just personal interests because I love flying and
(14:25):
visiting people and exploring the world and I don't want
to feel terrible about that all the time. So I
admit that it's self interest, but it's also global interest.
I feel like electric planes, I'd love to see that happen.
I feel hesitant about electric planes because I feel like
the potential for them to drop out of the sky.
It's just I don't know why I just in my head,
(14:45):
I'm like, well, what if it runs out. I can't
even keep my phone charged, so the idea of it
falling out of the sky bombs me. But I will
say while you were talking, I was like, well, maybe
a hybrid plane then that would definitely cut down some emissions,
like using both electrical elements and fuel elements. Yeah. Yeah,
or like if things get bad, you could all everyone
could just plug their own phone into their individual charger
(15:05):
and give a plane like a little extra boots on
an electric plane in no uncertain term. I am never
boarding an electric plane, oh man, or maybe when I'm
like one hundred years old. But I do see the
seriousness that you see in the issue. Yeah. I think
the safety issue is definitely legit, and it's going to
(15:28):
take some time before that's a norm and people feel
comfortable doing that. But I think, like Joscelyn, I think
you touch on something that's like really true and resident
in that, like people are more willing to like sacrifice
their car on day to day because it's like, oh,
that's that's like whatever. I can find ways around that.
But when it comes to like visiting family or going
to see something far away or see a wonder you've
(15:50):
always wanted to see, Like paying for that fuel is
like almost always worth it psychologically, and it's like people
are more willing to get on that gas guzzling plane,
you know, versus like maybe cutting out a couple commute
trips in their car every week. So I think there
should be more touch and paid to that. And I
think you have a good point. Thanks. I mean planes.
I think it's estimated they're responsible for about three percent
(16:14):
of the CO two, so you know, we're not fixing
climate change with this one. But they're more efficient per
person I think than cars because you can put a
lot of people on one plane, so we could all
work from home and then save up our carbon carbon
credits for seven wonders of the world and our family,
(16:38):
not in that order. I think carbon credits is I
think somebody heard that their ears perked up in terms
of a solution good they're for us building up. So
let that Let's hear from another one of our pushkin
hosts about one of the problems they'd like to see solved. Hi.
I'm doctor Laurie Santos. I'm the host of the Happiness
Lab podcast, and what I would like to see solved.
(16:59):
Is behavior change. So many of the big problems that
face us right now, things like climate change and the
addiction crisis, and even political polarization, their problem of human behavior.
This is true for lots of the tiny problems we
face too, like the fact that it's tricky for me
to get up and exercise in the morning, or the
fact that I don't get enough sleep. What we know
from the social science is that behavior change is hard.
(17:22):
We need great solutions to figure out how it works.
And so that's a big problem I'd love to see solved. Sasha,
do you struggle with changing your behavior? Um? Calling out
the question, I do and I don't. I'm like very
(17:43):
structured and formulaic. Once I have a behavior in place,
pretty sure of habit, but I am open to new habits. Um,
you got any anything I need to course correct on.
This is the same space. What if that was a
leaded for me? Actually it's more I think the challenge
is more building positive habits, like when I get like
(18:06):
when it's been a few months since I seriously exercised
or whatever, and like trying to just just jog a
little bit every day. That's hard, and I can read
all like the self help and watch all the motivational
videos I want, but I feel like, at the end
of the day, it's just like this, you have to
flip the switch inside yourself and like go and do it,
And I think that's really hard. Lauri's talking about like
(18:30):
fixing human behavior. There's a lot of bad behavior out
there that I wonder if as external regulators we can
really fix, and if there are if those people even
want to fix their own bad behavior. I just wonder
to what extent we can actually modify how people act
(18:50):
at all. It makes me think of that episode we
did with pre Compost. Actually I think about that episode
a lot. She was talking about health at every size
and the ways that we decide what's good and bad,
and thinking about how scarcity plays into it. She was
talking about, you know, foods that we say we can
only have a little bit, or we can have a
(19:11):
lot of this, but only a little of that. But
I think the same thing could go for all sorts
of behaviors that we qualify as good and bad. Of course,
there are some that are like clearly bad, you know,
like murder a little bit, it's not okay, but you
know how desperately we have to buy a present, and
then we put all this pressure on ourselves to like
have a certain job and work a certain lifestyle and
(19:33):
da da da da, and it becomes this negative cycle.
Whereas like, if we could frame it as like I'll
give her a hug and that will be really meaningful,
then we remove all those other layers of pressure that
lead us to do something stupid and bad. Quote unquote
thank you for absolving me of finishing my Christmas shopping, Jocelyn.
I am going to take your lead on this and
(19:54):
just give everyone a hug. Sasha, while I have you,
why don't you tell me what your problem is. My
problem is everyone's problem. And I think that we are
behaving badly in America as a democratic nation, and specifically
the one that touts itself as the most democratic nation.
(20:16):
I think we're really failing to uphold that promise. So
what I would like to see is a really concerted
effort to save voting rights in this country, to really
re establish us as an actual functional democracy in the
truest sense of the word. So, I know, like voting
(20:39):
doesn't solve everything, but it is, you know, one of
the best tools that we have to at least try
and solve things. So I would like to see the
Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights
Advancement Act past by Congress, who we voted for and
who in some ways seem to have forgotten that. Yeah,
(21:00):
I think you're right. I think voting is the basic
building block of democracy, and it seems like people in
power are really taking steps in order to retain power,
which erodes the basic building blocks of democracy. And I
think if we don't fix that, I don't know what
shape we're going to be in in the years to come,
because we already see changes that are happening now as
(21:21):
a result of that erosion of the basic building blocks.
I mean, I think we can all imagine what sort
of shape we're going to be in. We were very
close to being in this shape earlier this year, even,
And I just hope that everyone takes as seriously as
they need to the threat that we saw this year
(21:43):
around the conversation of stolen elections. And you know, yeah,
I'm not super confident that this is going to solve
itself without a concerted effort on behalf of the people
who believe that we need to fix this. By the
next election. Now, our next post has something that's I
(22:05):
would say that is rites adjacent or if not right,
aligned with rights. So let's hear from him about the
problem he'd like to see solved. I'm justin Richmond, host
of Broken Record from Pushing in Industries. I would love
to see the policing problems solved. And I know this
is a hard, multifaceted problem with what would probably need
(22:25):
to be a multi pronged approach to completely fix the
system as it stands. But I think one of the
things that really needs to change is police culture. How
do you change the culture by enriching the hiring pool.
It should not be an anomaly for say a twenty two,
twenty four, twenty five year old recent college graduate with
(22:47):
the liberal arts degree to go into policing, But how
do you encourage that a federal program where you subsidize
up to fifty percent of this person's salary so that
they make fifty percent more than someone starting that position
would without a college degree. I think an influx of
this type of person could go a long way towards
changing police culture. Maybe I love that he has this
(23:09):
type of proposed solution, Like I love this idea because
it means that he spent some time thinking about it,
and I think people's knee jerk reaction is to look
at something like this and immediately poke the holes in it.
But the truth is, policing in the state that it's
in right now in the United States it needs serious reform,
and these are the types of ideas that we need
(23:29):
in order to actually make the improvements that we need
to see. David, what do you think. I think he
is a really good point about changing the hiring pool
for American policing. You know, in other countries, particularly in Europe,
people have to go through a rigorous academic collegiate process
and get advanced degrees. Yeah, and joining the police force,
(23:50):
maybe it's thought of as something a little more prestigious
than it is the way it's thought of in this country.
But I think the sort of militarization of the way
we treat our cops and the way we militarily police
certain people in this country incentivize this sort of lowest
commons denominator recruiting method that brings in people who are
(24:11):
willing to tow the military industrial policing line. And that
is a cultural problem, and that's not going to change unless, ironically,
unless we start thinking of and treating our cops in
a different way, maybe less as I don't know dogs
of the state and more like more like legal workers
or attorneys or something like that. So I think he
(24:33):
has a point there. I agree. I have mixed feelings
about higher education and whether everyone needs to go to
college to have like a successful career or be seen
as a success in our culture. So I hesitate a
little bit to feel, like, you know, policing or any
job has to require a college degree, which is then
more expensive. But I do like the idea of varying
(24:56):
the training and thinking about different ways to think about
and teach civic engagement civic enforcement, like connection to community,
what we owe each other, how to manage when people
are struggling in those systems and acting out because of
those challenges. So I hesitate on the academic side, but
(25:18):
I like the reframing side. I got to back David's
last justin on this would because I feel like we
would never make that type of argument about doctors or
lawyers or like dentists or people that like really need
extensive training in order to enact the duties that they
actually do and when you walk into a dent and
there are bad dentists, bad doctors, and bad lawyers, we
know that, but we like protect the quality and the
(25:40):
integrity of those roles by requiring more from them. Academically,
I think there needs to be an academic requirement and
an intelligence requirement, and I think there has to be
a standard and a bar to actually be a cop.
I think the idea of just wanting to do it,
or you know, just having the aptitude to be a
cop is should not be enough to Actually I don't
think I said you just want to be the cop. Yeah,
(26:04):
that sounded like I was just like just yeah, yeah,
I'm going to back to Jocelyn here. Not that I
wasn't even sure we were taking sides, but if we
are and taking Joscel inside, you're you're not wrong, Ronald.
Like if you want to be a doctor, you have
to go to med school. Like if you want to
be a cop, you have to go to cops school.
(26:25):
That's not what they call it, police academy. Like the
movies like this does exist, and I think for good reason,
like you said, but I really like what David hit
on at the end, which is that like reevaluating and
repositioning the role that cops play in communities will attract
a different type of applicant. You know, you're you're just
(26:45):
going to attract a different type of person with different messaging.
So I think, yeah, I'm with Jocelyn that it's less
about you know, what college you go to or what
degree you have, and just more about what how cops
exist in America right now. I think I agree with that,
but I will say, like police academy is like a
(27:06):
max two to three months, and yeah, you go to
med school for four years, you go to law school
for two to three years. That's where I feel like
it's lacking because in cases of when we're talking about
collegiate education, because I feel like you could be conflicted
on education, but I feel like the trade off is
then to say who do you want to be a
(27:26):
police officer? And I feel like, for me, at the
bare minimum, if it is going to be police academy
that's in a non collegiate setting, I mean I need
them to have like six months of emotional intelligence training,
six months of implicit buiance training, like and then before
they even touch a gun, you got to get this
certificate and then it's like, now you can touch a gun. Yeah,
(27:46):
that kind of plays into what I was thinking in
terms of the education piece, too, is that you don't
go see a doctor for everything that's bothering you. Sometimes
you see a PA or a nurse or some other specialists.
And I think the same should go for police, Like, yeah,
maybe certain branches of police should have more understanding of
like the human mind. And maybe they're all called cops,
(28:09):
but they have different styles of training in different areas
of expertise, so they're more on the lines of social
workers and community intervention specialists and non violent communication experts
and neighborhood watch teams, and that they're all part of
a public safety team. Like I don't think every cop
(28:30):
needs to be a surgeon. We need more pas and
nurses in police care. But I mean PA school is
two to three years, nursing school is too. Like if
we're talking about education, there's going to be an educational
and a multi year educational component to any of any
of the roles that you just listed. All right, I'll
get on board with upping everyone's baseline human relational quotient
(28:54):
or what's that called when people can like emotional intelligence yeah,
if they come up with some agreement on what the
baseline is, but they'd certainly need that same two years
of like you said, HRQ before you could even hold
a gun step foot out there. Yes, that's right, you
coined that that acronute. All right, let's let's let's end
on a lighthearted note. I have a problem that, okay, obviously, yeah,
(29:16):
have fun with that everyone. I have many problems. The
problem that I brought to you today is pretty light
and it's kind of half solved. But I don't think
it's solved. The death and it really bothers me. We've
been in pandemic for nearly two years now. You know,
we've baked remotely, We've done things on zoom. You know,
we've stood across the room. We've touched the glass on
(29:37):
either side of the windows to see our loved ones
drive by birthday parties. We've done all of that with
all this technology. And maybe this is due to the
graphic video card shortage. David, I don't understand how we
have not come up with an effective and stable way,
universal way for all of us to watch the same
thing together at the same time. And when I say that,
(29:59):
I want to sit down on my couch and I
want to watch a movie with David and my home
television at the same time he's watching it, with no
latency speeds, none of that in between. I would be
able to watch every act at the same time like
he's in the room with me. Now, I know people
are gonna tell me a bunch of apps like there's
watch Party as you could do it on Discord, that
type of thing. What I'm saying is there's no way
(30:20):
for me to just turn my TV on and do
it as simply as I could stream stuff by myself,
and the options a lot of times are not embedded
in the actual streaming apps themselves, Like, for instance, if
you look at something like Disney Plus, they have some
options for you to watch together, but then you might
be only able to do it on an iPad, not
on your television, not on your laptop. I've thought this
a lot. They have a lot of different varying degrees
(30:42):
of this, but there's not one universal way for all
of us to do it unless we just turn on
cable television. Then we can yell on each other on
the phone. So clearly there is a way for this
to exist, but it seems like in the streaming age,
we have not truly solved a way for us to
be watching things together. And I thought that by now
month ump team of the Global Pandemic, that we would
(31:02):
have figured it out, that I'd be sitting down and
being like, hey, y'all want to watch this movie. Hey,
let's watch it at this time or whatever, you know,
And That's what I'd like to see solved. I think
this is the perfect time to shout out a solvable
episode that we did called remote Music Collaboration online in
real time is solvable. All the musicians and ensembles, we're
(31:23):
feeling that so intensely, and probably most of them continue
to And like you said, there's these small niche fixes
that people have figured out. And we actually talked about
one of those awesome solutions on our show, um before
you were hosts. But so you know, we don't shout
out shows that. No, I'm just kidding, I don't know.
(31:47):
It was a really inspiring episode because it made it
feel like those latency issues could be solved. I will
say in my friend group, I am the most annoying
person about this. I like, I have such rules about
like if you miss the queue to start the movie,
You're like out of the group text like I like that,
(32:09):
and everyone a link. I'm not even kidding. I send
everyone a link to the world clock website and I'm
like when this, like, you better be cued up to
zero zero zero zero. Sasha has solved it. Oh yeah,
and I've lost all my friends along the way. Website.
(32:31):
It's amazing, I know. And it like it always like
always goes awry immediately. But I will say I think
about the sort of corollary to this a lot ronald Um,
which I don't know. Maybe this is another conversation we
can have another time. But like what you said about
cable TV is so true, and I think that humanity
(32:57):
um has certainly lost. Like we've gained a lot with
streaming and this like individualized cultural consumption that we can make,
but I think that humanity it has lost something by
devaluing appointment TV. And like you see it like during
the Oscars or like basically like the oscars presidential debates,
(33:20):
like maybe the super Bowl if that's your thing, but
there are so few things now where like the entire
world is watching together. If you're on Twitter during the Oscars,
everyone is in conversation and yeah, I just wish that
like Appointment TV came back, Seinfeld lost, like any of those, Yeah,
exactly lost. So we're recording this on a Monday, and
(33:41):
yesterday was Sunday was the Succession season finale, and spoilers,
I haven't watched it, please especially. My point, that's exactly
where I was going with this, is that I can't
even like I want to talk about it with people.
And I have several friends who are like, I haven't
watched yet. And now I'm like, well, you're on the
clock because I want to tell you about and I
can't have this moment because you're out here being like
I can't sit down at nine o'clock. Well, Sunday nights
(34:02):
they watched this show. We all need to be watching.
So yeah, no, I agree. I would love the return
of Appointment to V. We've seen some of it with
shows like Insecure, shows like Succession. People are still watching
those in bulk. But I now, because of people's schedules,
were separating them and I think there needs to be
maybe another way for us to just be able to
(34:22):
be like, all right, we're not going to watch it
on Sunday, but we've created some sort of link together
where we can all watch it on our televisions like
in the in our most comfortable settings in our own homes.
So yeah, yeah, I will invest in whatever app you're
building for TV CO. It's called ron Has Problems dot Com.
(34:44):
I really appreciate you guys joining me today. This has
been a great and fun conversation. Yeah. Thanks for getting
us together in real time to do the same thing. Yes,
this is solvable. Listeners, what are the problems you'd like
us to solve in twenty twenty two? Tweet us at
Pushkin Pods and use the hashtag solvable. We'll be away
(35:07):
for a couple of weeks, but back at in twenty
twenty two with fresh episodes of Solvable. Solvable is produced
by Josin Frank, researched by David John, booking by Lisa Dunn,
editing help from Keyshelle Williams. Very special thanks to Maggie
Taylor and our fellow Pushkin hosts. Our managing producer is
Sasha Matthias, and our executive producer is mio Lebelle. I'm
(35:30):
Ronald Young Jr. Thanks for listening.
Pushkin, This is solvable. I'm Ronald Young Jr. I'm San Fragoso,
host of Talk Easy with San Fragoso. What if we
called our parents more, our friends, had better, more fullhearted conversations,
the kinds we always say we don't have time for
(00:37):
or just too busy to have listeners. Tis the season
for problem solving. I mean, that's solvable. We're always steeped
in it. But this is the time of year that
the rest of America takes a few extra minutes to
look carefully at their lives, then set goals, carve out resolutions,
make fresh intentions for a better life. Hi. I'm Tim Hoffitt.
(01:00):
I'm the host of Cautionary Tales. The problem I'd like
to see solved is creating more beautiful, lie walkable neighborhoods.
If we could solve this problem, that would be good
from mental health, it'd be good for the economy, good
for jobs, good for the planet. There's so many ways
(01:21):
in which this is a problem worth solving, and it
seems like it shouldn't be such a hard problem. We
think some problems really should not be too hard to solve.
And I usually bring someone with the wealth of knowledge
and a roadmap to tell us how. But we have
a special episode today, a chance to peer behind the
curtain with the team that makes Solvable possible. Each week,
I've invited my colleagues to sit down and talk about
(01:43):
the things we'd like to see solved. We'll also hear
from some other pushkin podcast hosts about problems they'd like
to see solved. And as you're listening, if you think
of something you'd like us to solve, tweet us at
Pushkin Pods using the hashtag solvable. Here we go, Hello, team,
(02:06):
Why don't we go around the table and introduce ourselves
so that everyone knows what voice matches to what role.
I'm Sasha, I am the managing producer of Solvaball, and
I'm coming at you hot from Brooklyn, New York. I'm Joscelyn,
senior producer of Solva Ball, and I'm joining this chat
from Minneapolis. I'm David. I do research for the show,
(02:27):
and I'm at my parents' house in Connecticut for the holiday.
Look at us. I guess I didn't say I'm in Alexandria, Virginia,
but here we all are, and I'm so glad that
you guys get to join me on Mike Today. Welcome,
happy to me here. All right, So I assembled you
all because I wanted to talk a little bit about
(02:48):
problems that we want to see solved next year. I know,
we guys, we work on this show and we talked
to a lot of luminaries, but we don't never really
get to talk to each other about problems. And I
don't know about y'all, but do you guys feel like
you guys think more about problems differently since working on
the show. For sure, I totally do, Yeah, definitely more optimistically.
(03:08):
I feel I hear about a problem and I'm like, oh,
someone's probably going to figure this one out. It's no biggie,
and then we'll have about the show right right exactly.
I think it just makes me, like forces me to
think more specifically, like you have to do something, you know.
So I like that our researchers bringing it back to
the ground for us, where like, yeah, it all gets done,
and he's like, actually have to work hard to find
(03:29):
the people in a practical way. You guys take it
for granted, like this takes some effort. So what we
did was we each of us. I asked you to
come with a problem that you'd like to see solved
in the next year or in any time in the future.
Big or small, doesn't matter. David, Let's start with you.
What problem would you like to see solved? We talk
a lot about like serious issues, so I figured i'd
(03:50):
talk about something with lower stakes. I guess right now,
there's a global graphics card shortage. Oh wow. It's mainly
driven by COVID. But like personal computer PC part components
all around the world are really hard to come by
right now. And as you guys know, I love video
game and I play a lot of PC games, and
(04:11):
I like building computers when I need to know every
few years. But I've been saving up money for a
long time and I was really looking forward to my
next build. But when the pandemic started, it became almost
impossible to buy graphics cards, which is the most important
part of your computer if you like gaming, because I mean,
(04:31):
that's what renders everything, that's what makes everything look beautiful,
that's where a lot of its visual processing power comes from.
And there's just a huge global shortage right now, and
there's a lot of reasons for that. I mean, it's
sort of just like a classic supply chain issue. And
manufacturing issue. But it's also a little more complicated. There
are a lot of bots that people have made because
(04:52):
everyone knows that these things are in demand and hard
to get, so like all these like you know, ingenious
teenage trolls have like set up these automated bots that
will buy up all of Nvidia's cards in like seconds
and nobody can get them. And then there's this whole
push during the pandemic of crypto mining, So a lot
of people have been mining bitcoin during the pandemic, and
(05:14):
that's when that's where graphics cars are super useful. And
so those people, I think are botting as well to
buy everything. And so if you're just like a normal dude,
like what else am I supposed to do during lockdown?
Like I need to play my video games, all right,
So it's hard. It's just hard to buy graphics cars
right now, and I wish someone would fix that. David,
are you optimistic that they'll fix the supply chain issues
(05:37):
or do you think that somebody will come up with
some other method to replace the video card as we
know it now? Like, how do you think what direction
do you think they'll take it to solve it? I
think in twenty twenty two. I think they've had a
whole year twenty twenty one to kind of wrap their
heads around with the logistical problems are. I think in
twenty twenty two they will fix like the supply chain
(05:58):
problem that they're having, like they've been. I think a
lot of companies that make graphics cards are like investing
in I don't in their plants and ways that make
it more that they can meet demand. I wish they
would solve more like the boding problem, and some of
them haven't tried. Some of them have, you know, in
video released a new graphics card or whatever, they'll only
sell it at best Buy in like the brick and
(06:19):
mortar retail store, and people will like camp out or whatever.
But that doesn't really work because you can only provide
like X number of graphics cards. And I don't have
a tent, so and I'm not going to sleep out
for a freaking you know, computer card whatever. I'm not
like one of these crazy bitcoin people, So so I
don't know, there's there are challenges, like I I'm not
(06:40):
entirely sure like what their supply chain fixed would look like,
and I don't even know what the demand is going
to look like this year, because I wonder if it's
gonna it's gonna remain that high, if things will change,
if people are coming out of lockdown and stuff like that.
I love how much you've thought about that, talking about
it a little too much. Resale market. Oh yeah, there
(07:02):
is what I mean, I think they're teenagers. But what
these like scalpers do, they're scalpers. What they do is
they they buy up these cards with their bots, you know,
for six hundred dollars, five hundred dollars a piece, real fast,
and you know, a couple months later they'll selve for
like twelve hundred or like twenty four hundred, you know,
like multiple thousand dollars, and they just make, you know,
make easy money that way. So it's a it's prime
(07:24):
for scalping. It's like somebody's going to college off of
video cards video card fund, Yeah, for school, David, that's
a great problem. I think it's I like that it's
like it personally affects you, but it actually is something
that's probably affecting lots of people. And I think the
bot problem being solved is probably something that would fix
(07:46):
a lot more than just video cards shortages. I know personally,
I like Jordan's sneakers and Nike's generally, and there's a
boding problem with people buying the shoes as soon as
they come out, like almost like they're they're gone immediately.
So I would love to see the boding problem solved
as well. You know. That's things because I was thinking
maybe we just need some version of like three D
(08:07):
glasses where if the you know, video card is really weak,
they just send everyone, you know, a special pair of
like high Death Beautiful, real cheap and easy just quick
quick fix for twenty twenty two. But those would get
botted too, yeah, real low Fi Consolation Prize. We also
(08:36):
reached out to hosts of our fellow push gim shows
for their ideas on problems they'd like to see solved
in whatever frame of time they chose. Here's our first one.
I'm Michael Lewis, host of Against the Rules, and the
major problem in the world that I would like to
see solved is baseball. How do you make it less boring?
(08:56):
It's got an aging fan base, declining ratings, and the
games keep getting longer and longer. I have thoughts about
how to solve it. I mean, you could do it
in a stroke by say, like putting a lion on
the field, like not one of those lazy zoo lions,
but a line from the savannah. It would get interesting instantly.
(09:19):
Everybody would watch that, and it's very Roman. It would
be a very Roman solution to the problem. You could
turn the stadium into a casino where the fans it's
ideally suited as a game to bet on everything that
happens because there's so little action and there's so much
time between the action, So that'd be another way to
solve it. I don't think that the little things that
(09:41):
baseball is thinking about doing around the edge is making
the bases a little bigger so they're easier to steal,
and moving the picture back and all that stuff. I
don't think that's going to address the fundamental problem. I
think that the game is out of step with the
age we live in, and so figuring out how to
change it in a way that preserves it but interest
people is going to be very hard. And if you
(10:03):
can figure that out, climate change is a breeze. That
was Michael Lewis, host of Against the Rules Are Sister
podcast here at Pushkin. What do you guys think is
baseball too boring. I mean, baseball is definitely boring. I
don't think it's too boring. The how boring they slid?
This is what I love about it. It is such
an intensely psychological sport because there's just so much standing
(10:27):
around and so much that happens when you know you're
standing at the base and your opponent is standing right
next to you and they like joke around but also
or adversarial. I don't know. I think baseball is just
boring enough. There's a lot of passive, aggressive chumminess, Oh yeah,
(10:48):
I feel like in baseball. And then and then there's
also outright like brawls I guess when like they cleared
the dugouts or whatever, But that's rare. Being there live
makes it a lot less boring, But watching it on
television there's little entertainment value. And then most of the
fights happen all when there's unwritten rules that are broken,
and I am not a fan of rule, and baseball
(11:09):
leans heavily into unwritten rules, which there's a big debate
about that as well. John, what do you think. I mean,
I'm with you in terms of like watching it versus
watching it in person. Versus watching it on TV. I
don't think I've ever watched a whole baseball game on TV.
The psychological challenge is not just for the players on
(11:30):
the field, as for the audience too. We have, like,
you know, how how much consumerism will we fall prey to,
how much unnecessary snacking? How many times will we get
up and stretch? Will we accidentally clap just because something happened,
not because it's a team we're looking for to win.
But I actually think I love organized sports. I think
(11:53):
they're really fun. I love team sports especially. It makes
me and it makes me think about like how much
fun I had playing them when I was a kid
and still when I play them now. And but I
do think it's boring, and I do think that they
could probably pick it up, Like doesn't need to be
that many innings. I think that's the easy fix, Like
just make it fewer innings like little. I think it
(12:14):
should just it should just make it one inning, one inning,
That's it. I think the only pushback I have to you, Jocelyn,
is that unnecessary snacking is an oxymoron all snacking. So
I don't like the way you put that at all.
It feels very just that's fair. That's fair. It's funny
to hear. Michael Lewis, the author of one of my
(12:35):
favorite books of all time, Moneyball, called Baseball Boring. Yeah,
Moneyball totally blew my mind. It's incredible. Yeah, Like chess
is theoretically satisfying, but the action of chess moments moment
can be very slow. That's why speed chess is awesome,
and that's why people see that, because it forces you
to fight. Michael suggests putting a lion in the field.
(12:58):
So I think I think changing the rules of baseball
to make it a little more fast paced, maybe a
little more like score heavy, like basketball or hockey or
something or such. It on double speed. Yeah, maybe that's
the that's the answer. I don't know. You need to
You might need to change the rules. I feel like
you guys stumbled onto something that about baseball, though, which
(13:19):
is that like, the more you know about baseball, the
more interesting it is. It's fun if I know what's happening,
But when I don't, I'm like, I don't care. So
I hear the crack of the bat, So I think
if they can find a way to solve that the
line on the field, I think would solve that. So Joslyn,
(13:42):
tell me what problem did you bring to us today.
I feel like Michael Lewis kind of threw it down
when he said, like, if we can solve baseball, then
climate change is easy. Climate change is so huge, And
we talked about this several different ways on the show,
like there's ways we can break it down into smaller parts.
So one of the small parts that I feel like
I would love to see solved is emissions from planes.
(14:05):
Why can't planes be electric if we're putting all this
energy into electric cars, but we know that planes gobble
up way more fuel than cars, although there are more
cars on the road and cumulatively cars are more responsible
for overall co two. I'd still really love to see planes.
Maybe it's just personal interests because I love flying and
(14:25):
visiting people and exploring the world and I don't want
to feel terrible about that all the time. So I
admit that it's self interest, but it's also global interest.
I feel like electric planes, I'd love to see that happen.
I feel hesitant about electric planes because I feel like
the potential for them to drop out of the sky.
It's just I don't know why I just in my head,
(14:45):
I'm like, well, what if it runs out. I can't
even keep my phone charged, so the idea of it
falling out of the sky bombs me. But I will
say while you were talking, I was like, well, maybe
a hybrid plane then that would definitely cut down some emissions,
like using both electrical elements and fuel elements. Yeah. Yeah,
or like if things get bad, you could all everyone
could just plug their own phone into their individual charger
(15:05):
and give a plane like a little extra boots on
an electric plane in no uncertain term. I am never
boarding an electric plane, oh man, or maybe when I'm
like one hundred years old. But I do see the
seriousness that you see in the issue. Yeah. I think
the safety issue is definitely legit, and it's going to
(15:28):
take some time before that's a norm and people feel
comfortable doing that. But I think, like Joscelyn, I think
you touch on something that's like really true and resident
in that, like people are more willing to like sacrifice
their car on day to day because it's like, oh,
that's that's like whatever. I can find ways around that.
But when it comes to like visiting family or going
to see something far away or see a wonder you've
(15:50):
always wanted to see, Like paying for that fuel is
like almost always worth it psychologically, and it's like people
are more willing to get on that gas guzzling plane,
you know, versus like maybe cutting out a couple commute
trips in their car every week. So I think there
should be more touch and paid to that. And I
think you have a good point. Thanks. I mean planes.
I think it's estimated they're responsible for about three percent
(16:14):
of the CO two, so you know, we're not fixing
climate change with this one. But they're more efficient per
person I think than cars because you can put a
lot of people on one plane, so we could all
work from home and then save up our carbon carbon
credits for seven wonders of the world and our family,
(16:38):
not in that order. I think carbon credits is I
think somebody heard that their ears perked up in terms
of a solution good they're for us building up. So
let that Let's hear from another one of our pushkin
hosts about one of the problems they'd like to see solved. Hi.
I'm doctor Laurie Santos. I'm the host of the Happiness
Lab podcast, and what I would like to see solved.
(16:59):
Is behavior change. So many of the big problems that
face us right now, things like climate change and the
addiction crisis, and even political polarization, their problem of human behavior.
This is true for lots of the tiny problems we
face too, like the fact that it's tricky for me
to get up and exercise in the morning, or the
fact that I don't get enough sleep. What we know
from the social science is that behavior change is hard.
(17:22):
We need great solutions to figure out how it works.
And so that's a big problem I'd love to see solved. Sasha,
do you struggle with changing your behavior? Um? Calling out
the question, I do and I don't. I'm like very
(17:43):
structured and formulaic. Once I have a behavior in place,
pretty sure of habit, but I am open to new habits. Um,
you got any anything I need to course correct on.
This is the same space. What if that was a
leaded for me? Actually it's more I think the challenge
is more building positive habits, like when I get like
(18:06):
when it's been a few months since I seriously exercised
or whatever, and like trying to just just jog a
little bit every day. That's hard, and I can read
all like the self help and watch all the motivational
videos I want, but I feel like, at the end
of the day, it's just like this, you have to
flip the switch inside yourself and like go and do it,
And I think that's really hard. Lauri's talking about like
(18:30):
fixing human behavior. There's a lot of bad behavior out
there that I wonder if as external regulators we can
really fix, and if there are if those people even
want to fix their own bad behavior. I just wonder
to what extent we can actually modify how people act
(18:50):
at all. It makes me think of that episode we
did with pre Compost. Actually I think about that episode
a lot. She was talking about health at every size
and the ways that we decide what's good and bad,
and thinking about how scarcity plays into it. She was
talking about, you know, foods that we say we can
only have a little bit, or we can have a
(19:11):
lot of this, but only a little of that. But
I think the same thing could go for all sorts
of behaviors that we qualify as good and bad. Of course,
there are some that are like clearly bad, you know,
like murder a little bit, it's not okay, but you
know how desperately we have to buy a present, and
then we put all this pressure on ourselves to like
have a certain job and work a certain lifestyle and
(19:33):
da da da da, and it becomes this negative cycle.
Whereas like, if we could frame it as like I'll
give her a hug and that will be really meaningful,
then we remove all those other layers of pressure that
lead us to do something stupid and bad. Quote unquote
thank you for absolving me of finishing my Christmas shopping, Jocelyn.
I am going to take your lead on this and
(19:54):
just give everyone a hug. Sasha, while I have you,
why don't you tell me what your problem is. My
problem is everyone's problem. And I think that we are
behaving badly in America as a democratic nation, and specifically
the one that touts itself as the most democratic nation.
(20:16):
I think we're really failing to uphold that promise. So
what I would like to see is a really concerted
effort to save voting rights in this country, to really
re establish us as an actual functional democracy in the
truest sense of the word. So, I know, like voting
(20:39):
doesn't solve everything, but it is, you know, one of
the best tools that we have to at least try
and solve things. So I would like to see the
Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights
Advancement Act past by Congress, who we voted for and
who in some ways seem to have forgotten that. Yeah,
(21:00):
I think you're right. I think voting is the basic
building block of democracy, and it seems like people in
power are really taking steps in order to retain power,
which erodes the basic building blocks of democracy. And I
think if we don't fix that, I don't know what
shape we're going to be in in the years to come,
because we already see changes that are happening now as
(21:21):
a result of that erosion of the basic building blocks.
I mean, I think we can all imagine what sort
of shape we're going to be in. We were very
close to being in this shape earlier this year, even,
And I just hope that everyone takes as seriously as
they need to the threat that we saw this year
(21:43):
around the conversation of stolen elections. And you know, yeah,
I'm not super confident that this is going to solve
itself without a concerted effort on behalf of the people
who believe that we need to fix this. By the
next election. Now, our next post has something that's I
(22:05):
would say that is rites adjacent or if not right,
aligned with rights. So let's hear from him about the
problem he'd like to see solved. I'm justin Richmond, host
of Broken Record from Pushing in Industries. I would love
to see the policing problems solved. And I know this
is a hard, multifaceted problem with what would probably need
(22:25):
to be a multi pronged approach to completely fix the
system as it stands. But I think one of the
things that really needs to change is police culture. How
do you change the culture by enriching the hiring pool.
It should not be an anomaly for say a twenty two,
twenty four, twenty five year old recent college graduate with
(22:47):
the liberal arts degree to go into policing, But how
do you encourage that a federal program where you subsidize
up to fifty percent of this person's salary so that
they make fifty percent more than someone starting that position
would without a college degree. I think an influx of
this type of person could go a long way towards
changing police culture. Maybe I love that he has this
(23:09):
type of proposed solution, Like I love this idea because
it means that he spent some time thinking about it,
and I think people's knee jerk reaction is to look
at something like this and immediately poke the holes in it.
But the truth is, policing in the state that it's
in right now in the United States it needs serious reform,
and these are the types of ideas that we need
(23:29):
in order to actually make the improvements that we need
to see. David, what do you think. I think he
is a really good point about changing the hiring pool
for American policing. You know, in other countries, particularly in Europe,
people have to go through a rigorous academic collegiate process
and get advanced degrees. Yeah, and joining the police force,
(23:50):
maybe it's thought of as something a little more prestigious
than it is the way it's thought of in this country.
But I think the sort of militarization of the way
we treat our cops and the way we militarily police
certain people in this country incentivize this sort of lowest
commons denominator recruiting method that brings in people who are
(24:11):
willing to tow the military industrial policing line. And that
is a cultural problem, and that's not going to change unless, ironically,
unless we start thinking of and treating our cops in
a different way, maybe less as I don't know dogs
of the state and more like more like legal workers
or attorneys or something like that. So I think he
(24:33):
has a point there. I agree. I have mixed feelings
about higher education and whether everyone needs to go to
college to have like a successful career or be seen
as a success in our culture. So I hesitate a
little bit to feel, like, you know, policing or any
job has to require a college degree, which is then
more expensive. But I do like the idea of varying
(24:56):
the training and thinking about different ways to think about
and teach civic engagement civic enforcement, like connection to community,
what we owe each other, how to manage when people
are struggling in those systems and acting out because of
those challenges. So I hesitate on the academic side, but
(25:18):
I like the reframing side. I got to back David's
last justin on this would because I feel like we
would never make that type of argument about doctors or
lawyers or like dentists or people that like really need
extensive training in order to enact the duties that they
actually do and when you walk into a dent and
there are bad dentists, bad doctors, and bad lawyers, we
know that, but we like protect the quality and the
(25:40):
integrity of those roles by requiring more from them. Academically,
I think there needs to be an academic requirement and
an intelligence requirement, and I think there has to be
a standard and a bar to actually be a cop.
I think the idea of just wanting to do it,
or you know, just having the aptitude to be a
cop is should not be enough to Actually I don't
think I said you just want to be the cop. Yeah,
(26:04):
that sounded like I was just like just yeah, yeah,
I'm going to back to Jocelyn here. Not that I
wasn't even sure we were taking sides, but if we
are and taking Joscel inside, you're you're not wrong, Ronald.
Like if you want to be a doctor, you have
to go to med school. Like if you want to
be a cop, you have to go to cops school.
(26:25):
That's not what they call it, police academy. Like the
movies like this does exist, and I think for good reason,
like you said, but I really like what David hit
on at the end, which is that like reevaluating and
repositioning the role that cops play in communities will attract
a different type of applicant. You know, you're you're just
(26:45):
going to attract a different type of person with different messaging.
So I think, yeah, I'm with Jocelyn that it's less
about you know, what college you go to or what
degree you have, and just more about what how cops
exist in America right now. I think I agree with that,
but I will say, like police academy is like a
(27:06):
max two to three months, and yeah, you go to
med school for four years, you go to law school
for two to three years. That's where I feel like
it's lacking because in cases of when we're talking about
collegiate education, because I feel like you could be conflicted
on education, but I feel like the trade off is
then to say who do you want to be a
(27:26):
police officer? And I feel like, for me, at the
bare minimum, if it is going to be police academy
that's in a non collegiate setting, I mean I need
them to have like six months of emotional intelligence training,
six months of implicit buiance training, like and then before
they even touch a gun, you got to get this
certificate and then it's like, now you can touch a gun. Yeah,
(27:46):
that kind of plays into what I was thinking in
terms of the education piece, too, is that you don't
go see a doctor for everything that's bothering you. Sometimes
you see a PA or a nurse or some other specialists.
And I think the same should go for police, Like, yeah,
maybe certain branches of police should have more understanding of
like the human mind. And maybe they're all called cops,
(28:09):
but they have different styles of training in different areas
of expertise, so they're more on the lines of social
workers and community intervention specialists and non violent communication experts
and neighborhood watch teams, and that they're all part of
a public safety team. Like I don't think every cop
(28:30):
needs to be a surgeon. We need more pas and
nurses in police care. But I mean PA school is
two to three years, nursing school is too. Like if
we're talking about education, there's going to be an educational
and a multi year educational component to any of any
of the roles that you just listed. All right, I'll
get on board with upping everyone's baseline human relational quotient
(28:54):
or what's that called when people can like emotional intelligence yeah,
if they come up with some agreement on what the
baseline is, but they'd certainly need that same two years
of like you said, HRQ before you could even hold
a gun step foot out there. Yes, that's right, you
coined that that acronute. All right, let's let's let's end
on a lighthearted note. I have a problem that, okay, obviously, yeah,
(29:16):
have fun with that everyone. I have many problems. The
problem that I brought to you today is pretty light
and it's kind of half solved. But I don't think
it's solved. The death and it really bothers me. We've
been in pandemic for nearly two years now. You know,
we've baked remotely, We've done things on zoom. You know,
we've stood across the room. We've touched the glass on
(29:37):
either side of the windows to see our loved ones
drive by birthday parties. We've done all of that with
all this technology. And maybe this is due to the
graphic video card shortage. David, I don't understand how we
have not come up with an effective and stable way,
universal way for all of us to watch the same
thing together at the same time. And when I say that,
(29:59):
I want to sit down on my couch and I
want to watch a movie with David and my home
television at the same time he's watching it, with no
latency speeds, none of that in between. I would be
able to watch every act at the same time like
he's in the room with me. Now, I know people
are gonna tell me a bunch of apps like there's
watch Party as you could do it on Discord, that
type of thing. What I'm saying is there's no way
(30:20):
for me to just turn my TV on and do
it as simply as I could stream stuff by myself,
and the options a lot of times are not embedded
in the actual streaming apps themselves, Like, for instance, if
you look at something like Disney Plus, they have some
options for you to watch together, but then you might
be only able to do it on an iPad, not
on your television, not on your laptop. I've thought this
a lot. They have a lot of different varying degrees
(30:42):
of this, but there's not one universal way for all
of us to do it unless we just turn on
cable television. Then we can yell on each other on
the phone. So clearly there is a way for this
to exist, but it seems like in the streaming age,
we have not truly solved a way for us to
be watching things together. And I thought that by now
month ump team of the Global Pandemic, that we would
(31:02):
have figured it out, that I'd be sitting down and
being like, hey, y'all want to watch this movie. Hey,
let's watch it at this time or whatever, you know,
And That's what I'd like to see solved. I think
this is the perfect time to shout out a solvable
episode that we did called remote Music Collaboration online in
real time is solvable. All the musicians and ensembles, we're
(31:23):
feeling that so intensely, and probably most of them continue
to And like you said, there's these small niche fixes
that people have figured out. And we actually talked about
one of those awesome solutions on our show, um before
you were hosts. But so you know, we don't shout
out shows that. No, I'm just kidding, I don't know.
(31:47):
It was a really inspiring episode because it made it
feel like those latency issues could be solved. I will
say in my friend group, I am the most annoying
person about this. I like, I have such rules about
like if you miss the queue to start the movie,
You're like out of the group text like I like that,
(32:09):
and everyone a link. I'm not even kidding. I send
everyone a link to the world clock website and I'm
like when this, like, you better be cued up to
zero zero zero zero. Sasha has solved it. Oh yeah,
and I've lost all my friends along the way. Website.
(32:31):
It's amazing, I know. And it like it always like
always goes awry immediately. But I will say I think
about the sort of corollary to this a lot ronald Um,
which I don't know. Maybe this is another conversation we
can have another time. But like what you said about
cable TV is so true, and I think that humanity
(32:57):
um has certainly lost. Like we've gained a lot with
streaming and this like individualized cultural consumption that we can make,
but I think that humanity it has lost something by
devaluing appointment TV. And like you see it like during
the Oscars or like basically like the oscars presidential debates,
(33:20):
like maybe the super Bowl if that's your thing, but
there are so few things now where like the entire
world is watching together. If you're on Twitter during the Oscars,
everyone is in conversation and yeah, I just wish that
like Appointment TV came back, Seinfeld lost, like any of those, Yeah,
exactly lost. So we're recording this on a Monday, and
(33:41):
yesterday was Sunday was the Succession season finale, and spoilers,
I haven't watched it, please especially. My point, that's exactly
where I was going with this, is that I can't
even like I want to talk about it with people.
And I have several friends who are like, I haven't
watched yet. And now I'm like, well, you're on the
clock because I want to tell you about and I
can't have this moment because you're out here being like
I can't sit down at nine o'clock. Well, Sunday nights
(34:02):
they watched this show. We all need to be watching.
So yeah, no, I agree. I would love the return
of Appointment to V. We've seen some of it with
shows like Insecure, shows like Succession. People are still watching
those in bulk. But I now, because of people's schedules,
were separating them and I think there needs to be
maybe another way for us to just be able to
(34:22):
be like, all right, we're not going to watch it
on Sunday, but we've created some sort of link together
where we can all watch it on our televisions like
in the in our most comfortable settings in our own homes.
So yeah, yeah, I will invest in whatever app you're
building for TV CO. It's called ron Has Problems dot Com.
(34:44):
I really appreciate you guys joining me today. This has
been a great and fun conversation. Yeah. Thanks for getting
us together in real time to do the same thing. Yes,
this is solvable. Listeners, what are the problems you'd like
us to solve in twenty twenty two? Tweet us at
Pushkin Pods and use the hashtag solvable. We'll be away
(35:07):
for a couple of weeks, but back at in twenty
twenty two with fresh episodes of Solvable. Solvable is produced
by Josin Frank, researched by David John, booking by Lisa Dunn,
editing help from Keyshelle Williams. Very special thanks to Maggie
Taylor and our fellow Pushkin hosts. Our managing producer is
Sasha Matthias, and our executive producer is mio Lebelle. I'm
(35:30):
Ronald Young Jr. Thanks for listening.
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