Do you ever feel like there's just too much craziness happening inside your brain? Like so much so that you want to just lay it out on the table and pick it all apart with group brilliant people? Like we're talking everything from saving tigers and all to tabletop game therapy to Canadian candy officer? Literally, that's what we're talking about today. Let's do it. It's my lucky day. Hi, I'm BEX and I am so excited to be here with you all today. I think we can all agree things are absolutely, absolutely nuts right now. And somehow, whether we like it or not, we are the adults in the room, and we have to figure it out. Figure what out? Well, that's a good question. I actually celebrated my 28th birthday last week. I never thought I'd make it this far. There's this weird dichotomy for me of like, the anxiety of that, but also the excitement of I never thought I'd have a future. And here I am. Living out my future. It's really exciting, in a terrifying sort of way. And I feel like that's, that's what the ageing process is excitement and terror all rolled up into a very frustrating package that we have to deal with every year. So we might as well enjoy the years that we've got, why should we be sad that we're growing older? There's this question that my family likes to ask each other and everyone we come across what age do you think you've been your entire life? And it's a fun question. My grandfather's answer was 17. He was 17 until the day he died. My mother's answer is 4444. I was gonna say 42. But that's the answer to life, the universe and everything. But not the answer to my mother's age. Oops. 44. My point is, the concept of this is once you hit that age, you feel like you've come into your own. And I never felt like I'd hit that. Which is weird, because, I mean, you hear how I talk on this podcast, I sound like I could be anywhere from 14 to 32. Not in terms of the calibre of my voice. But in just in terms of the excitement and the range of my excitement. It feels very childlike. How do I balance the fact that like, I act in a way that the world perceives as youthful, but I personally am feeling more myself as I get older. I think the most important part is remembering that society's views on Ageing, doesn't have to be our views on Ageing, we get a chance at a certain part of our adulthood, we get the chance to sort of reexamine ageing, I have a really close group of cousins. We were all born within the same two months. And it's really interesting. Two of us are very into this whole getting older thing. Two of us are like, Oh, I feel I feel good at 28. I'm excited for 29 I'm ready to see what comes next. Two of the other ones are like, Oh, don't remind me where 28 Oh, no, please don't tell me that. And I'm like, No, buddy, get excited. It doesn't mean you're dying. It just means you're still living. And as a kid, I never thought I'd feel that way. So now as an adult that I'm feeling that way. I'm just so proud of myself, you know, it feels like a really big accomplishment. Now that you know a little more of what it's like inside my brain. I think I'm going to open this up and bring in a few friends. Please welcome in amoeba and Lauren. Thank you all for
being here. Hi.
I'm very excited to be here.
I'm so excited. You've all joined me for this deep dive into everything or at least five things on my mind today. To begin with, can we go around the room and give brief introductions.
Hi, I'm Ian Alexander. I use them and he him pronouns. And I'm a 21 year old actor living in LA and I'm very gay and trans.
My name is Ian Vika and I am a 26 year old and interactive and digital creative and activist I try to do as much as I can. And all the work that I do in different creative roles to also put forward just my initiatives for Disabled Rights intersectional feminism and environmental conservation. So I'm really excited to be here
and I incidentally love the Instagram disabled and outside. I think that that whole thing you're doing is just so cool. And I want to give it a shout out. Thank you.
Yeah disabled outdoorsman and Instagram. And if you guys are interested in learning about how we make the outdoors more accessible, we're happy to share more on there.
That super awesome I follow this Instagram page called unlikely hikers. So I am definitely going to check you out after this. I'm Lauren. I'm a 25 year old math teacher in Santa Barbara. I'm just really excited to be
here. Yeah, I feel like we've assembled a great team here. This is This is excellent. Let's dive into this. I'm going to start with this first one because it's very, very near and dear to my heart. And it's very good news. Nepal's tiger population has tripled in the last 13 years. And not coincidentally, 14 years ago, I have my B'nai Mitzvah, for those who don't know, the Jewish community, when you hit a certain age, you have a bar but or B'nai Mitzvah, it's your coming of age coming into adulthood in the Jewish faith and the Jewish culture and everything. And so when I did mine, we all do a mitzvah project Mitzvah is charity. And so my charity project for my B'nai Mitzvah was actually increasing the endangered tiger population. And this was 14 years ago, and within the last 13 years, having nothing to do with me, of course, the tiger population is going up. And I'm personally very excited. I want to go back and find all my tiger shirts from my childhood and start wearing them in earnest again, because in 2010, there were only 121 tigers left in the wild in Nepal. And now thanks to conservation efforts, this number has tripled in 13 years,
but is such great news, especially because I feel like we hear about how we're destroying the earth and how humans are literally the worst thing to ever happen to this planet. So it's nice to hear some positive news that like we
are doing some good things.
There's a lot of climate Doom when it comes to like talking about climate activism. So hearing this is just something super hopeful and something to look forward to. Because it's like, if we could do this with the tiger population, what about all the other endangered species?
Exactly. And it helps open up the conversation to the usefulness of biodiversity. And how like, on the one hand, we as a society, we would rather save the cute things like the pandas and the Tigers, there are bugs that are going extinct, that could help our ecosystem. They're just not as flashy and it's fun to save. But it's really nice to see like you're saving tigers, we have the capacity to save environments that are beneficial to other ecosystems, other other habitats, we can save those just like we save creatures. Yep. And I was reading about the importance of like tigers on their entire ecosystem, it's like when they rub up against the tree bugs that are on their back affect the tree like the bark on the tree, and the bark on the tree affects the animals that are eating the plants from it. And just like it's a domino effect. So by saving the Tigers, it's just it we're creating like a positive domino effect versus like if they work on all of these little things that we don't think about would be gotten to. Yeah, and it's it's very ADHD, I'm going to keep alerting everybody throughout this conversation because I will have very massive jumps in my brain like this one. total opposite of what's going on with the Tigers were their symbiotic to their environment. Camels in Australia, their kill on site animals, because they were an invasive species, their feet are not designed to work with the Australian turf. And so they ended up pulling up the natural flora and destroying the desert ecosystem.
That's really interesting. I'm also doing the ADHD thing of jumping to a topic that's somewhat similar. I on tick tock been following a lot of like foragers and people who are foraging invasive plant species, because not only are you getting like free food, but you're also helping the environment by pulling up the roots on these invasive plant species. And then there's also people that like go and they skate around and they'll seed bomb. So they basically like throw seeds of like native plants that help the area or like endangered plant species. It's the most punk rock thing you could do
really is yeah, I'm so into that skate
around and seed bomb. I want to do that. I really want to do that.
Yeah, I see tech talks about all the time and I'm just like, Yeah, I'll do it like the restaurant shakers with the plant seeds. Yes.
Oh, that's so good. We should organise like a skate and shake,
skate and Shea. I love that so much.
There's like a term for it. Guerilla flower planting. You're just like flower bobbing. Everyone loves that.
It's so radical.
It's the same sort of thing. It's like conserving our environment will conserve the creatures that we want to continue to exist including ourselves as humans. Honest Sleat speaking of tigers and saving the world simultaneously, it's making me think of Dungeons and Dragons. Maybe it's because I've been playing a druid and there's that whole shape shifting thing, you could shape shift into a tiger and try to save the planet as a tiger. It's pretty fun. Okay, so for those of you who do not know, Dungeons and Dragons, or d&d is a tabletop role playing game that is arguably the most popular one on the market right now. Which essentially means that you and a bunch of friends sit down at a tabletop and you play a role playing game together, telling a story as a collaborative friend group. It's very fun. And I would like to talk about maybe a little bit of the therapeutic nature of tabletop role playing games and the value and the community that it creates in our lives. Lauren, specifically, I would love to hear a little bit about your tabletop role playing game experience so far.
Yeah, absolutely. Really, really funny coincidence that the tie in to d&d was tigers and saving the world because my very first character was a druid who shaped shifted into a tiger. So d&d, for me was a really interesting transition, because I didn't start playing until I was an adult. My good friend Alec, one of his favourite things to say, is solving real world problems in d&d. And so I feel like just because we have this tendency to let our own beliefs and ideals bleed into the characters that we create, it's a really cool and safe setting to like, try new things and be more outgoing and take risks that you wouldn't normally do in the real world. It's just a really cool thing to see.
I love that so much. There are so many aspects to tabletop role playing game that are so therapeutic, and it just it can be used as treatment, if done correctly, and it's just delightful. Because storytelling can be so. So healing.
So we'll have some workshop. It's a organisation that started in Seattle, it was these two licenced therapists that made this organisation that actually uses d&d to like help people who have particular mental health struggles. And so yeah, it's recognised within therapeutic community that it is a thing that actually is beneficial to mental health.
I'm so glad you brought that up, Lauren, I that reminds me of an organisation that I can't remember the name of. Yeah, my managers friend diems, a group of kids who are like their youth dealing with homelessness. And it gives them something to look forward to when you know, life might be really hard, really challenging for them. And they have you know, that community that once a week, they get to come together, and just kind of escape from everything and have fun for a couple hours. And the escapism part of d&d is really nice. But I also love when you like are working through some of your own like, personal baggage or just anxieties through d&d. It's so cathartic. Oh, yeah,
I feel like it's been really helpful for me, particularly because I'm a teacher now. And standing in front of a group of people talking about something that I'm really passionate about would have been at one time horrifying. But I think that like playing d&d, and like having this practice putting on a persona has made me way better at public speaking.
And sometimes it happens completely unintentionally. You just like, have this really cool character that is like loosely based off of your personality, but maybe highlights some aspects of your personality that you haven't explored yet. And then you end up on unlocking all these new realisations about yourself. Like it's just, it's so good.
I have a few friends whose characters in tabletop role playing games started using different pronouns before they did and it allowed them that opportunity to test it and find out they liked it.
So cool. Yes, I love the like, gender euphoria realisation that happens in d&d, I love it so much. My first character used they them pronouns and was a Wood Elf Bard, who is just super friendly and super sweet and love to sing their little songs on their little vocal, les les. My first character is very much just me like just en. And then my second character I started to explore this like side of myself that I hadn't really explored because he's this sort of super flirtatious rogue that like throws daggers, just flirts with pretty much anyone and everyone. And I did not really know how to flirt prior to playing this character. But after playing d&d, as this character who just like flirts with love rarely anyone I've gotten to practice in like a safe simulated environment.
I can confirm Ian's flirting has gotten better since the beginning of that series. Oh my gosh, congratulations. It's so good.
I feel like that stigma that we have about DND in that it's like I'm thinking specifically, I don't know if this is like, too obscure reference and trek to they're going on this little like exploration. And they're these two kids talking to each other. And they're both like dorky looking boys. They have acne braces, one of them randomly gets a nosebleed. I feel like that's the perception that we have of people who play d&d. And it's just really been cool recently to see it come into like popular media. It's the main theme and source material for Stranger Things. They're making a movie about it with Chris Pine and rich age on page. I don't know if I pronounced that right from Fredericton.
They paid no manga manga manga make Joe mangling. They made him the sexiest man alive. We played d&d. I can't say his name. I'm so sorry. Yes, yes, yes, yes. I'm like,
I know exactly who you're talking about.
Yeah, I'm so glad. Yeah, you got it. All right, go grab a sip of water, take a deep breath, we got a lot more coming for you after this break. I love the structure
of d&d, like I love how when I started playing during 2020, we were knee deep in the pandemic, I had absolutely no structure in my life at that point. So having like a regular weekly thing, where I got to see my friends on Zoom, once a week really, really helped my mental health when I was very, very depressed.
And distance learning, where the only interaction that my students were getting was with their classmates or knee over zoom, having that outlet and having that structured time where they can actually like, engage in an activity with their friends. Just
game changing. Oh, yeah. it big time. And it? I'm like watching the thought drift away like a post it note in the wind. Oh, well,
that's how it works. I'll have it. I don't be like, oh, a beautiful
analogy.
He could see it fly, say it's just gone now. But I still want to do that. Exactly. It's like, wait, no, I wait, no, no, it's gone. I should have written it down.
I think there's something. There's something so healing about d&d, like for your inner child, as well, because you just you get to play. And I feel like when you become adult, there's sort of this like, stigma against playing like, it's like, no, you have to be serious all the time. And it's like, no, we're all like, we all have our inner child with us at all times. Like we still deserve to frolic and just have fun.
It can just be camaraderie, and community. And that's my favourite part of it. Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of camaraderie, and community, the NBA is doing a really cool thing. And they are not having any games on November 8, in a move to encourage people to vote, and now the NBA has honestly been really good about this. So far. This is that sense of like camaraderie and community where they've opened up their locations to be voting sites. But they've gone a step further now, in an effort to, you know, preserve democracy and all that good stuff. They're actually stopping all games on November 8, so that not only their players, and not only the cast crew have everything to do with the NBA, but also the people who sit and watch everybody know game on November 8, it's voting day, baby. I love that
you don't hear very much about big corporations doing things that are actually beneficial for people. So yeah, very cool.
I love that. I definitely think it's a step in the right direction. But I also hope that they start voter registration spaces in the same centres. So it'd be great to like see that and then have a lead up to November 8. Oh,
yeah. Like if they had like a whole registration set up the entire week leading up to it.
And during games and stuff, that would be so good. I remember who was it? I think Ariana Grande had her concert series. There were voter registration polls like at each concert and I thought that was amazing and like a great way to get people involved so appealing to your audience and getting people engaged in like your community and civic duties but like in a way that is relatable to the actual game and the sport. That's so
good. Yeah, I mean, there's obviously more to be done. But it's so cool to see these people in positions of power, doing anything,
I think it's a great step in the direction of people starting to use their platform for good. Instead of just like self promotion or things like that. If the NBA is doing can we get the NFL to do something? It'd be nice to see like other large companies contribute in this way and using their platforms
for good. Yeah. I've been hearing a lot about this inflation Reduction Act. I feel dumb. Admitting I don't understand a lot of it and what's going on? I know it's important. I know it's important. I'm just confused. But I feel like you're not alone there. Yeah. Yeah. Big. Do you think you can help us out?
Definitely, of course. No. And I think we're not alone. And feeling like this is a confusing thing. Because the act itself is so all encompassing that it's it's kind of confusing in general. So for like us is like normal people to be like, what's even going on here? I feel like that's just a general conversation everyone's been having. So it's kind of cool. Like I was researching. What exactly is this? How many different things are included in this. It's all from like, different perspectives. So we've got climate change things going on. On one side of it, we've got medical like, like health care and insurance things happening on another side of it. And then we've got tax law, like it's all packaged up in one deal, and it has nothing really to do with inflation itself. But we're just calling it the inflation Reduction Act. I feel like all in all, like it affects inflation. So that's why that's the name of it. But it does involve climate investment, lowering the price of medications, reducing the deficit and adjusting tax law. So that's, that's pretty cool. They're all very different. But each thing is important to the overall like picture of reducing inflation, in terms of like, how I got signed and how I got to the President's desk. It's kind of interesting story, but not surprising at all. Not a single Republican voted for it shocking. Because of that. We had to get all 50 Senate Democrats to vote yes. So that the like the vice president could break the tie with the 51. But to get all 50, Senate Democrats to vote yes was even like hard in itself, because we were fighting with different senators who are sitting in a democratic seat, but the way they vote tells us something different. So we were fighting Joe Manchin, for example, from West Virginia, or Kristen cinema from Arizona. And we're just like, Okay, you guys look at the bigger picture, unfortunately have to vote along party lines for this one.
One thing that's typically really hard is to pass through legislation that is so all encompassing like this. Like it, it says inflation reduction, but it covers like 12 different things.
It's a little misleading. Yeah. And because it's like, it covers so many different things. There's so many different things to fight about. And so that's what's been going on. That's why it's taken so long to get this signed. But we had to do this because we promised like on a global scale, like we promised that we would be doing things to help combat climate change. And so this is a step in the right direction of doing that. There's a couple different things going on. But basically, we just we dedicated ourselves to raising over $700 billion in government revenue over 10 years, and spending over 430 billion of that to reduce carbon emissions. And that is huge. That's huge, because we've never done anything like that
before. That's the biggest climate change move in the United States of America so far.
Yeah. And I think that also applies to like we talked about, like how they're all touching, like different areas of climate change. In the reducing carbon emissions, it's also included with like tax reductions and things like that. So when people are getting solar panels for their house, or they're picking energy safe cars, like you get a tax reduction on that, that also affects the environment in long term. So it all kind of plays in together, even though they're so different on paper, if that makes sense. Yeah, so there's that. And there's also just extended subsidies for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, which is monumental as well, because the average American is paying about $1,200 a year just on prescription drugs. And this is with health insurance. I like to spend money from like your out of pocket expenses. Like even with health insurance, I'm spending about two $300 a month just on medicines that I need to get on my on a day to day basis. And same thing for like so many other people. Yeah.
And my wife's on an immunosuppressant. And it's, it's so hard to get it because there's just too many channels to go through and then you run out of time and you're out of your meds. Exactly. And
it's like, on average, an individual is not making enough COVID has affected us in such a harmful way that like we need to start approaching disability in healthcare, like in a more unified way than we have ever like had to do before.
So 100% in the in the disabled community, there's the concept of the rest of society. It's just pre disabled. And I think that that's so correct.
This is a step in the right direction, and it makes me really excited for the future. I mean, like endgame, I really hope we get universal health care, but like, we'll take this this is baby steps. Yeah,
absolutely.
My friend just made a short film to raise awareness about like people having to ration insulin and so he cried He did a script about sort of post apocalyptic scenario where diabetic man has to ration his insulin and has to like try to find like a warehouse that has insulin and it's a very dark very sad reality that a lot of people have to face who are diabetic and living in the United States and if even if they do have health care, it's like ridiculously expensive so I really hope that this changes hope this gets better
I do too. I'm happy that people are finally starting to listen there's a dialogue about it and then now we're seeing like tangible change so overall like inflation reduction act like it's it's tackling a couple of things that are super important to me so like environmental conservation and disabled justice, but it's it's a baby step in the right direction. So I'm very helpful. The game
is one and bass hits. So I'll take a base hit any day. Yes. So in some really funky and good news at is making me smile like an absolute just like a Cheshire cat just smiling so big right now, Canada in the latest compelling reason to move to Canada, or at least a New Jersey apparently, Canadian based Candy Company candy funhouse has just posted a job listing for Chief candy officer,
I love this.
If you are interested, beware. Hey, friends, we'll be right back after the short break.
If you are interested, beware, so many people have applied for this job, which includes palate training, by the way via LinkedIn that the company is having trouble responding to all of the LinkedIn applications. I'm like,
look no further I'm here.
Say less, you'd get the equivalent of 80,000 US dollars a year to try candy for a living. You taste about 3500 pieces of candy per month, which is roughly 113 per day as the head taste tester. You can work remote or in either the Canada or New Jersey office. Interesting. And this is another part of the job posting that I really like applicants can be as young as five years old and must reside in North America. All you need is a passion for candy pop culture and a sweet tooth
is that the literal ad that was on the posting
sounds like a great job to have and it's a probably
80k a year I mean arguably the
best part of this job is that it comes with top of the line dental plan for all that sugar consumption.
Thank God I was
just gonna ask I was like is there healthcare included? Especially if
it's gonna say you're gonna need to pay for a lot of medical
Oh, to live in Canada.
So I'm you know, I feel like I didn't know I was preparing for this job my entire life but I feel like
I feel like we should all apply for Chief candy officer to skills very Willy Wonka.
Maybe they should make friends with the people who are professional hotdog eaters, because I have always wondered how they eat so many hot dogs.
They have to like train their stomach. I know they do warm up. So yeah, it's like working out but like with with their stomach as Yeah. And then I don't know where I read this. But I like one time was having Korean barbecue with my family. And there was a hot dog eating competition in the background, which kind of honestly was like not, I don't know, I felt like that was a little bit of a misstep on scene to see, just to witness. Like, I was like, I don't know if this is really what I want to watch while I'm eating like it's almost kind of making me lose my appetite. But because I was so curious about it. I had that same question, Laura. And I was like, how do they do this? Like, how is this physically possible? Apparently, they do have to spend time recovering afterwards, where like, all they are able to eat is just like really soft foods like yoghurt and like applesauce and like they they have to take a recovery period because your body can't handle that much sugar that much hotdogs, it's just not natural. It's like a marathon
you really have to prep.
Well, this was
this was really fun. I feel like this was pretty amazing. I feel like at least some of my thoughts got aired out, you know, and it it's hard to be a person in the world right now. And so talking it out feels really good, especially with friends especially with a group of friends like these. So I hope that everyone out there listening to our little chaos found something in here that resonated with Few something in here that made you smile. But when it all comes down to it, I'm less interested in thoughts. And I'm way more interested in what actions they lead to. Because like I said, whether we're ageing Millennials or hip, let cool Gen Zers. We are the adults in the room, for better or for worse, and we got to step up and do something. So based off of our conversation today, what are some of the action items that you're going to take with you,
I really, really want to do the seed bomb thing for sure. Same and making sure that I am voting on November 8. So those are my takeaways from a conversation, please,
I am also motivated as the volunteer, you think I'm gonna start volunteering for some more habitat restorations and things like that. I want to like learn more about animal conservation as well. And then I definitely want to get three of my friends to get registered to vote and actually get out there on November 8. So hopefully, that'll work
out. Yeah. I feel like when you were saying originally about the inflation Reduction Act that's being passed, I didn't know very much about it. So I definitely am gonna go do a little more research on that after this. And then my goal for myself for this teaching year is I really want to start a d&d club. So I'm going to get my students into it to get some get some roleplay going with my little ones.
Yay. Oh, I love that so much. Man, that would have been so nice as a kid to have a d&d club. I'm so glad your kids get that. All right. Well, I guess my takeaway is, I want to look further into those specifically therapeutic TTRPG programmes that we talked about, and see if there's, you know, anything anyway, I can get involved with that. Because that's, that's so near and dear to my heart, and also, of course, seat bombing. So maybe both at the same time, maybe we can go on like a d&d, walk in the park and drop seeds, like little druids tell me it'd be fun. Let's do this. On that note, I feel like we should get off the podcast so we can set a time for us to meet up in seed bomb and be Druids. Absolutely. It's a plan. All right. Yeah. Before everyone goes where can we find you?
my twitch channel my Instagram, Twitter and Tiktok it is in Alexander except the Ellen Alexander is an i
I'm on Instagram in Tiktok at Ganges gal GNGS. GL like the river.
Nice.
I'm on Instagram. That's just Lauren Bedard. Ve D ard 16
And then you can find me I'm I'm also I like to make it difficult for everyone and have my name be something different. So you can find me on Twitter at ibex. We BEX on Instagram at Beck's underscore TK and if you want to find me on Tik Tok, you're gonna have to search genuinely from the bottom my heart. Thank you so much in Ambika and Lauren for joining us. Thanks for having fun, and for everyone tuning in today. Thank you all so much for listening. You can follow along by following at gloves struck daily on Instagram and Twitter or email lovestruck daily at frolic dot media. If you have any questions, or if you know of anyone who'd like to come on the show, I'm always looking for new friends. A researcher is Jesse Epstein and our editor is Jen Jacobs. We're produced by Abigail steckler With little Scorpion studios. We are executive produced by frolic media. This is an iHeart Radio Podcast. Thank you all so much for joining us today. See you next time.
