Transcript of AE 1297 - The Goss: How 'Dropping In' Culture Has Changed in Australia

G'day, you mob! Pete here. And this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So today I have a Goss episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news weather locally Down Under here in Australia or non-locally overseas in other parts of the world, okay. And we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right? If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in The Goss.

So these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English, and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English. So it is particularly good to improve your listening skills. In order to complement that, though, I really recommend that you join the podcast membership or the Academy membership at Aussie English.com.au where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes, the PDFs, the downloads, and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time. Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time. Keep practising and that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit. I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it.

Oh, yeah. Don't know what you've been doing. All right.

I'm going to get the audio going. Dropping in, Dad. Did you want to drop in later?

No!

No one ever does.

It's inappropriate.

So you want to introduce this story while I grab a beer? Have you finished yours or are you still going?

No, I'm still going.

Weak.

Um, yeah. This is a story again from the ABC. We seem to be referring to them a bit.

Well, they- I must be following them on Facebook because that's where they all pop up and I share them to you..

You don't have to follow them. You just, you click on one and then the Facebook and..

Yeah, the algorithm?

Google algorithm. Just..

Our digital overlords.

Yeah. Pops them in more and more.

Mhm.

Yeah. What's the etiquette of dropping into someone's house?

Don't.

Yeah. Don't. Well, that used to be. It was. And I don't know when it changed, and whether even if it has changed. And that's the, the, the premise of the article is, "Is it no longer cool or acceptable to just turn up at somebody's place and knock on the door and go, 'Hey, just passing. Thought I'd drop in.'" Which is the old cliched comedy..

Why are you here?

Saw the lights on.

Turn the lights off.

Yeah, exactly.

Shut the curtains.

Yeah.

Draw the blinds. Yeah. All right. I'll, um..

Cos and I mean, we. I mean, when you're kids, you do it all the time.

Yeah.

Going 'Hey, yeah.."

Is Pete home?

Yeah.

It's- No, he's not! Piss off!

Can it be interesting to see how that changes with Noah? Because I imagine that since I was a kid, changes have occurred. And there's probably certain etiquette that I'm yet to experience because my kids aren't at that stage now of being able to freely roam around the street and go to the neighbour's house or whatever to hang out with the kids. Um..

They'll be able to do that by the time they're about 20.

Yeah, well that's it. It changed, didn't it? Like, we've talked about this quite a bit. And it's not just Australia, but when you were growing up, you could just go out in the streets from what, age? Like seven..

7 or 8.

Yeah. Whereas when I was a kid, that wasn't, I wasn't allowed to just roam around..

.. As a teenager. Really?

Well it would have been primary school. And it would have been our main street. And hanging out.

Yeah, but you wouldn't have just been.

But it wouldn't be just. I wouldn't go to the shop..

Hey, I'm going out.

No. It would be, I'm going to Luke's..

I'm going to Luke's house. Okay. Make sure you're..

200m away.

Yeah, it wouldn't be just. I'm going out to hang out.

Yeah.

So whereas for us, it was. Yeah. Yeah. We'd, you know, Where are you going? But, I'm just going out in the street with my friends!

Yeah, and mum's just like, Fucking go, mate!

Yeah. As long as you're back by dinner time.

Leave me alone!

Leave me alone! Go and run around the block. That used to be my, that was the usual thing.

Yeah.

Um.

So. Yeah, but that changed when I was a kid. I didn't get to do that at a young age.

No. Well, I remember when I was. I think I was eight when I first went to the local, um, council library was, um, about a 20 minute bus trip away. We didn't have one in our suburb. There was two suburbs away, and we didn't have a car. My father had a car for work. Um, but only he was allowed to drive it. And obviously he was at work during the day. My mother didn't get a car until I was probably about 7 or 8. And so we used to go by bus everywhere.

Yeah.

And we used to go to the library, you know, and mum and the three kids would get on the bus and go. And it was a big sort of half day outing to go to the library. But then when I was about eight, I was, Can I go to the library. Oh yeah. Off you go.

Mhm.

All right. Go and get on the bus. I had to walk, you know, 400m down the road to get to the bus stop, get on the bus, sit on the bus for 20 minutes. Get off, go to the library, come back. And I cannot imagine letting you do that when you were eight, you know.

Well, they were. Wasn't there a series of murders? Like there was some in Adelaide, right, where three kids went to the beach and just disappeared.

.. again.

Yeah. And they pretty much worked out that it was a guy that was living down the road from them that, um, gave them money to get something to eat and then just took them home and probably did what he wanted to do with them. But I think it was after that point, right, that you guys started. And this was sort of a global thing during the, probably what, late 70s 80s that parents started to monitor their kids a little more.

Yeah..

And you had that series of serial killers in the US, right.

Yeah.

Was it late 70s and 80s? When Ted Bundy and all those types were going around? John Wayne Gacy, or whatever his name was?

It was, but I think it was also, um, I don't know. I'm sure it's different if you're living in a small country town.

Yeah.

Um, and everybody knows each other, and it's quiet.

There's no traffic.

And it's traffic. It's now, you know, we were literally our playground was the street, out in front of our house.

Yeah.

Um..

And there would have been so fewer cars..

It was a reasonably busy street in the, in the local context. Our strip of it, when I was a little kid, was the only bit that was actually bitumenised. Every other street around us was dirt roads.

Really?

Um, but for whatever reason, about 250, 300m of our bit of the street was bitumenised until I was about 7 or 8, and then the whole lot got you know, was a big program of making all the roads in the suburb. But we'd just go and play and you go, Oh, car coming!

Yeah.

You get off the road, let it go. It was a straight road. Get off the road. You go out and play for five minutes. Car coming! Whereas I can't imagine you letting your kids go and play out in the street out here. They've been about as busy as our street was.

Yeah. There'd be no point though, because..

They'd be off the road every 15 seconds.

Depending on the time of day.

Yeah.

The time of day they're going to be here though, like in the mornings and the afternoons.

Yeah. Pfft.

There's going to be, there's no point in even being out there. But it would be the danger of just running out onto the road and getting hit by a car.

Yeah.

That would be the main thing. But then there is that whole strangers just walking around.

Stranger danger thing.

Yeah, that's. That's probably way overblown compared to what you actually, proportionately, should be afraid of.

Oh! Absolutely!

Yeah. But at the same time.

But it is controllable.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Exactly.

So.

So anyway, this, this article, let's do a little bit at the start here. "Dropping in used to be a common way of staying in touch. But is it still okay to do in Australia? Etiquette expert Anna Musson says unexpected visitors can be a horrifying thought for many. If you're dropping past.."

Excuse me?

"And they just get a knock on the door, most people look at that with a little bit of terror." So it is one of those things. I get it with parcel drop offs, because two, the only people that I have knocking on the door during the day are people dropping off parcels, which I don't mind, or people asking for money.

Yeah.

And it's about 50-50. So it's almost once a week there'll be someone knocking at the door and they do- you know what they do? Hello! Like, Hey, it's me! You know, they use that kind of language that makes you think..

Think, Oh, I know this person!

Yeah. They'll be like, Hey, anyone there? Like, G'day!

No.

And you'll be like. You'll open the door and then be like, Fuck! I'm like..

So, not today.

And it's so funny because you just see in their face they're like, So how's it going? How's your day going? And you're like, Fuck. You both look at each other and he's he's thinking..

.. I've been trained..

How do I get this guy..

.. to do this routine.

Have a conversation about bullshit? And you're thinking, this guy's just going to try and get me to have a conversation about bullshit before selling me something or asking for money.

Yeah.

And you both look at each other like, agh.

Are they really selling you something? It's, the only thing they're selling are services. Like, Switch your electricity! Yeah. Piss off. I'm perfectly happy with my electricity.

Yeah.

But I can get you a better deal! Did I ask for an argument? You know, it's. Or they're charities.

You here to argue as well?

Yeah. Or they're charities looking for donations.

Yes.

And fortunately or unfortunately, the charities are the easier ones to deal with.

Well, I just shut the door.

Yeah.

I try not to be rude, and I..

Just say I'm not interested. Go on.

Yeah.

Um, and it is not wasting their time either!

Well, they're paid probably by the hour or by sign up.

Yeah.

Whereas I think the, the drop in thing. And I've got a theory about this. I when I read this story, when you sent it to me, I went I, and I didn't even look at why and any discussion about it, but I reckon it's to do with the fact that when I, and I look back when I was a kid. When I was a kid, I only ever knew my friends mothers.

Mhm.

Because their mothers were always at home. There was one friend I knew, his father because his father was an artist, and he worked in a little studio right by the front door. And he'd walk in and he'd go, Oh, good day, and come and have a come and have a chat. Everybody else I knew the mothers. And so the mothers were always at home. And being a housekeeper at home meant that the houses were always tidy. There was always a cup of coffee available. There was something. There was- people baked, they had things to eat and those sort of things. Now somebody knocks and you go, Oh shit! The place is is chaos! I wasn't expecting visitors! I haven't got anything to feed them! I haven't got any- whereas..

The only people that I allow to come over at the drop of a hat are those that I am not ashamed to show my mess to.

Exactly! And so I'm sure that's part of this thing of, you know, it's that fear of- not the fear that people are going to, you're going to have some random dropping in, but it's that, Oh geez! The neighbours have just dropped in to say hello! I don't want them in where I've got dishes in the sink and I've got..

But it's ironic..

Crap all over the floor.

We set up these expectations as a result of having that kind of attitude.

Yeah!

Because if you're not going to have people over when your house is complete chaos, they're going to always assume, well, everyone else's house is amazing. Like, as I remember, I used to laugh when mum, mum would tend to lose her shit prior to Nana and Grandpa coming over, or family, and be like, We've got to clean the house! Pete, vacuum! Dad, clean the toilet! Take the cats outside! And it's just like, Mum! But this isn't how the house normally is. It's. It's like, yeah, but we have to pretend it looks like this all the time!

Billy Connolly used to tell this joke about the Queen, the late Queen Elizabeth. He said, The Queen thinks the world smells like fresh paint. Because wherever she goes, 400m in front of her, there's somebody painting the bridge or the buildings or..

Well, yeah, it feels like that at times because, yeah, it's just like. But yeah, the irony is that if you just showed, if everyone just loosened up and showed their houses being..

This is how we live.

With less than perfect, everyone else else would relax, right?

Yeah, exactly.

And it would become this, this self-imposed prison..

Or they'd go, We're never going to drop in there again because their house is a pile of crap! Yeah. So you go, All right. Good. We don't need them here anymore! We'll only invite them when we've cleaned up.

It's so funny, though, because you do go to people's houses and you'll, you'll forget that they've probably spent the last half day cleaning the house, preparing for you to show up. And you show up and you have, you know, you go in and you have your tea or coffee..

Make a mess and leave!

But you look around and you're like, you feel like shit because you know, your house looks like crap and you're like, Their house is pristine! But you don't see them running around like mad.

No, I know. Yeah. So it is one of those weird things.

But yeah. So.

.. the etiquette of dropping in.

Do you have many friends that you would just drop in at their houses at the drop of a hat or..

I don't have many friends!

True that.

No.

But..

And it's- No, not. No. In a sense that I've got lots of acquaintance friends.

Mhm.

Um, and, you know, some that I've known for over 60 years, but but I wouldn't. And the acquaintance friends are the ones that I think you don't just drop in on.

Well, but it's, you're not going to just drive to Melbourne and then show up at someone's house without telling them first.

There's only, like the neighbours. If I don't drop in at the neighbours, many of the neighbours. Hey, I'm here, let's- and have this expectation that they're going to pull a beer or make a cup of tea or a coffee or, you know, pull food out or whatever to..

.. going to get some biscuits?

Which used to be the thing! When I, the neighbours are always dropping in at our place.

Yeah.

Um, when I was a kid. And my mum would do the same thing. I'm just going to go round and see Joan, or I'm going to go down the road to see Irma or whatever. Um, and as soon as you did, it was, I'll put the kettle on, have a cup, here's a biscuit or a cake or whatever. Um.

Do you think we've lost something, though, as a result?

I think we have. And we've lost that sense of community, I think. And again, it was partly because people were home, you know, mothers were home. Uh..

And if you walked around the suburb here..

You could walk around knocking up 27 doors and there'd be nobody home!

Because everyone's at work.

Everybody's at work!

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's the same-.

Or you would knock on the door, I'm the cleaner! Do you want to come in for a cup?

Yeah. That's it. This is my house. But you can come in.

Yeah.

It is one of those things.

You want for the television.

I think I've only more recently become aware of just how lonely I am. But people are, in general.

Lonely in a crowd. Yeah.

Well, yeah. And that's the thing. Like, it was funny. I was reading an article, I think, or watching a video recently where they were saying, how many close friends do you have? And by definition, that is someone you see more than, so it was twice a month or more.

Yeah.

And in the 60s, what do you think the number was?

It'd be 100.

No it was, it was 12.

Oh.

Close friends that they would hang out with.

Adults. Yeah.

That they would hang out with on a regular basis. What do you think it is today?

Two?

It's one.

Yeah.

And isn't that sad?

See, I don't, I don't know that anybody, I don't think I see anybody more than twice a month.

Yeah, but then that's..

Other than family.

Yeah.

And we're all fortunate.

And none of us have friends!

No, exactly. But we're fortunate that, you know, that Jo and I have both our children and therefore our four grandchildren, all living within one Ks, walking distance. The other one 15 minutes drive.

Well, we weren't allowed to move away.

Yeah, exactly.

You guys..

Shame on us!

We shamed you. Said, You move away, we're never coming to visit!

That's it.

If it's more than half an hour's drive.

We die. Pretend we're dead.

No, no. But it's so. Yeah, I think we've lost that sense of community. But. But part of that was inevitable because we we now live. Funnily enough, we now live much more socially than we did when we were younger.

Which is why it goes deep.

Yeah, it's wide and it's electronic.

Yeah.

It's social media and and handsets. I hesitate to call them phones because the last thing people use them for now is to actually speak with a phone call.

Well, yeah. You get a call from a number you don't know or even a number, you know, and you're like, Fuck, I don't want to talk. I'm busy.

Yeah, yeah, leave me a message and I might get back to you.

Yeah. That's it. Just text me. I'll deal with it when I'm ready! It is funny, though, right? Because calling someone without letting them know, or showing up to their house without letting them know first. It's that kind of 'I demand your time'.

Yes.

And you, or I expect you to give me your time without any, any preparation, no matter what you're doing, effectively, right?

Yeah.

And back in the day, it would be like, of course, because I don't have the ability to get back to you later. There's no internet. I can write you a letter.

Yeah.

I can give you a phone call, maybe, later on. But there would be the whole, Well, we'll just smash it out. Or also that it isn't done that often and it's not that easy. Because again, you didn't have the technology to be able to just send someone a text message no matter where you are in the world..

Yeah and I, you know..

Saying, g'day, how's it going?

But I mentioned that my, you know, my mum, I'm just going around the corner to see Joan, one of our family friends.

Yeah.

And, you know, I grew up with their oldest son, um, who was a close friend of mine. Went to school together for 13 years. Well, 12 years, unfortunately, he died when he was 17. But, um, but Joan would be at our doorstep three times a week. Mum would go round there. And it was just, I'm just going to. There wasn't anything. I don't have to go and get anything or do anything. It was just I'm just going to go and say hello.

Yeah.

You know, and Joan would do the same thing. Sometimes she'd she'd knock on the door and go, Oh, I just need to talk to your mum about it. Come in. No, I won't come in. I haven't got time.

Shut up, Joan!

And then half an hour later, she's at the door. Still..

Just come in!

Still talking to me before I moved up to mum, you know?

Just come in.

Come in. Put that kettle on.

God damn it.

Um, but, yeah, I think now you'd just send them a text, say, Hey, Joan, how are you going?

Yeah.

You know.

But, but that's sad, right? Because I have, I think, thinking about it, I have loads of friends Loads of friends that I talk to, but none that I see.

Yeah.

And that's. It's funny how that still matters and makes you feel lonely, even if you have that superficial direct connection via Facebook. Even if I call them, there's something different about physically seeing someone in front of you and hugging them or, you know, greeting them and hearing them and reading their body language and everything that must have some deeper effect on you, you know, psychologically that..

Yeah. And I've got friends that I've known for. Well, how old was I when I met him? 11? So, you know,

73.

Yeah, 55 years. Um, and we, you know, correspond via social media and text messages every now and then, but we still organise a couple of times a year just to get together. Three of us just sit down and have lunch, have a chat. Because there's something about- we're social animals. And social is not just superficial communication. It's it's I hesitate to use this word because it has a religious overtone and it's not intended this way. It's that 'fellowship' of we are going to do something together.

With the ring.

Yeah, exactly.

Take it to Mordor.

Yeah, right. So we're going to do something together, you know. It's a shared experience. Rather than just chatting to each other via text messaging. So. But then there are other times where, you know, I've got, you know, two close friends who you know very well. Who, one of whom I see quite regularly, the other one I probably see once a year maybe, but every week we are texting each other during football games. So we have this. We have that shared experience that we separate the geography and, and we will be sitting watching the same game on television.

It's so funny.

That wasn't a free kick, you know.

So there's a, there's a service on, on on your computer, a free service called Plex. And effectively someone who- you have to download it. The other person has it. One of you has a server at home where you put all of your movies and TV shows and whatever you want to watch, right? And you can both simultaneously stream it together.

Oh okay.

So you can get an invite and go and watch the stuff that they have.

So can I pause it and it pauses for you, too? So we can have a chat about.

It was, I was doing that for a while with a friend, Sean, where we were watching um, uh, Better Call Saul.

Oh, yeah.

And we were watching an episode by episode. Um, and it was so fun because we would get the phones on too, so we could talk to one another.

Yeah.

Whilst we were watching it, and, um, that was such. It was one of those times, like, it's so funny how you have those moments in, in time that you don't necessarily appreciate that are really profound. Like when Game of Thrones came out, um, every year or two years or whatever it was for a short period of time, whatever it was, two, three months, there would be just almost on a weekly basis. You would be talking about the last episode with everyone.

Yeah.

With everyone! Right?

It was the workplace conversation. I can imagine, because it was around the time I retired, but.

And it was so fun. It was so interesting. And whereas there's so few of those types of events or TV shows that that are ongoing, there may be specific events that take place, like the Aurora thing, right? Where everyone raged up about that online being like, God, it's all that's there online at the moment.

Yeah.

But it was kind of cool for a moment in time, a few days, you're pretty much sharing this with what, like 50% of the world's population has the ability to go outside and see it, but it lasts for a day or two.

Yeah.

And so it is fun when those things happen, but they're kind of fleeting. Pokemon Go was another one.

Yeah.

You wouldn't, you wouldn't have gotten into that.

No, I didn't. But I was fully aware of it because it was just, it infiltrated everything.

But it was so interesting playing it. Like, I remember there would be every day the girls in the office and I would just go out and walk around, um, Carlton Gardens playing Pokemon Go and just hanging out, having a coffee and just playing this game. But then I was talking about this with Kel the other night, where I remember it was just so weird how a game on a phone could change the way people behave in the real world in terms of where they are at any given time. And in a way that makes the world safer. It was so bizarre walking through the CBD of Melbourne, and there were certain areas in the CBD when Pokemon Go was huge, where there were loads of gyms that you could fight with your Pokemon and you would get points and catch new Pokemon or whatever. And I remember going to the front of the is it, um, Queen Victoria Library or whatever it is, the library there. The library.

State Library.

State Library, yeah, on um, Swanston Street, across from Central Melbourne.

Central Station. Yeah.

And there would have been like six gyms all at the front of this one place, because the game had set it up so that it was using a GPS, um, map of the world, and it would set up gyms to be around things like libraries or hospitals or whatever. And I remember there being a..

Common corners and..

Thousands of people. At about midnight.

Just standing around on their phones.

Standing. And it was they were chatting to each other. Strangers, just wandering around being like, Oh, what are you doing? Have you got this one yet? And and you could suddenly have conversations with complete, you know, strangers and you all have this shared interest. But also that it was safer because there were so many people out doing something that was so wholesome that you felt like- it was just funny. Because I remember my housemate was playing the game at the time, almost hate playing it. He was addicted to it and he would just at midnight, he's like, I'm going to the fucking zoo. And then he would walk outside.

Which is walking distance from where you were living.

Yeah, from North Melbourne, and go through Royal Park and then go to the zoo because there were gyms all around the zoo.

Yeah.

And he was just like, I'm just going to walk around the zoo for an hour or so and see what I can catch. And I'd be like, It's fucking midnight, man. And he's like, Yeah? There's just going to be other people playing the game! Going out there too, because no one else is there! So they'll be thinking, I can get these Pokemon. No one else is going to be around. And he's like, It's fine! But it was such a weird moment because that only lasted a few months.

Yeah. But again, that thing will run its race because, and not the social aspect of it I think is what, what made it hang on. Yeah. Because I hadn't, when it first came out, I went, uh, this won't last a week.

As an individual, you kind of like..

As a task, it'll last a week.

Yes.

Because you'll get bored of it.

Yeah.

But the social part of it, I think, is what..

Yes.

Yeah, and that random social shared experience..

I get bored with games pretty quickly. But the fact that everyone was doing this and it had that social side to it tied in, it was very powerful. And I don't even know if the Nintendo, the game developers had even worked that out initially, and that was the plan to try and get people to be social in order to get them to stay on the game, but it ended up being a very interesting kind of thing that happened.

Social experience.

Yeah. And you kind of, I miss those kinds of events that brought people together, that you have a shared experience or a shared interest or shared hobby or whatever it is, and you can, you know, hang out together and just talk shit about that thing. Right? Because I think for the most part, people are so busy with their own lives and our interests are so different.

Well, I think social media seems to have not replaced but paralleled some of that where conversations, even if they're only conversations in your head. Because you're, you'll see a random post by somebody on, you know, somebody's, one of your friends has commented on somebody else that you've never had any contact with and probably never will again. And you go, Oh, somebody made a statement on Facebook and they posted something.

To pause you there, there was a meme on Reddit the other day that was like, um, a skeleton, dead on the ground and a knight standing there being sad because he'd obviously tried to come to rescue a princess or whatever. And they died years before. And the title was like, um, it was effectively like the person has gone online to search for a problem they currently have, and then find someone that had the same problem nine years ago and no one's answered it.

Yeah!

And I was like, Oh, that's so true. You'll get on there and be like, you'll get on these forums and you'll see someone's had the same problem and there's no comment.

I do that, I do that all the time, you know, all the time. Reasonably frequently, when I have an issue, you go and type in how do I, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And the instantly the top 2 or 3 things that come up will be either read it or random forums of something and you go..

2007..

And you go, Oh, here's the answer! And you go, No, it's just the fucking question.

Yeah.

And it's there from, yeah exactly, ten years ago.

And the software is outdated..

It's done and, and nobody has even answered it.

The screenshots are of DOS..

Really, Google? Be smarter!

Well, if that's the only option. But it is interesting how online. Yeah. Because as you were saying, getting online and there are loads of guitar groups that I'm in now, I'm getting back into guitar- well, I'm getting back in for the last year and a bit. And, but it's not the same. And that's why I like going to A and B, the local music store and just talking to the guys and hanging out and touching things and, you know, talking to people and socialising that way on a regular basis. There's just something about- jiu jitsu was the same. There was almost a spiritual aspect to jiu jitsu, and it's probably the same with any kind of physical sport. I imagine it's the same with AFL, where even if you're fighting the person, there's something about touching another human being..

You're doing it together.

But also touching them and trusting them.

Yes.

You know, and there being that physical interaction with someone else that I remember, even if you don't know the people like you very well, you see them on a regular basis, but you just fight and then that's it for the lesson. There was I remember just having a better kind of like mental health as a result of going somewhere and physically interacting with other people.

Yeah, and sometimes it's not even physical. It can be emotional. Um, and I remember writing the, you know, writing my chapter of the family history book that I did, and I spoke about my version of spirituality being a, you know, completely irreligious atheist. So my version of spirituality is what makes you feel good.

Yeah.

And the things that you do, because you get this sense of internal joy in doing it. And one of those is live music. I'm not a musician, I can't sing, I can't play an instrument.

Mhm.

Um, but going and listening to a live band play, particularly a really good one. And if you sat there by yourself doing it, you'd go, Yeah, that was good. But when you're with 10,000, 20,000, in the case of some recent concerts, 100,000 people.

Yeah, it's a spiritual event.

It's a spiritual..

It's a mega-church at that point..

It is, it is it's a spiritual experience because you're all engaged in this thing, and I know..

It's a shared experience.

Yeah. And it's that. And Bruce Springsteen, who is one of my favourite musicians, probably my favourite musician. Um, he says that every night when he goes out to play, he performs a magic trick.

Yeah.

And he says, I can't teach you how to do it.

Yeah.

I don't know how I'd do it.

Do you..

But I do it.

Do you think you would have that same experience if you didn't like the music you were seeing?

No.

So you'd just be there, like.

Because I'd just be going 99,999 people are idiots. But it's the same thing going to a football game. You know, I go, no, most of the time I go to a football game. I go to watch my own team play. So you have this sense of joy or devastation, but it is shared with a whole bunch of other people who are also supporting the same team.

Yeah.

And if something excellent happens, you end up high fiving people who are next to you that you've never seen before in your life and you're never going to see again.

Well, that's sort of like that jiu jitsu thing. Yeah.

But you have this shared experience. And that's getting back to the thing about the dropping in stuff. Um, it's just that I want to go and see my neighbour. I'm going to drop in, but we don't do that anymore for a whole bunch of other reasons. So we have lost that little bit of community that that allowed us and mental health is a good example of something that it created a capacity for people to engage with other people, which is so important for us as a social species that we've just lost. And we replace it with a bunch of other things, but they just don't do it as well.

It's not the same.

Yeah.

I wonder how much indigenous groups like I really wish that I could have been, you know, on that, um, 1770 voyage with Captain Cook coming to Australia and seeing indigenous people living indigenously. Like, like living as hunter gatherers in these groups and getting to just experience that from the first person, right. And, but but it would be so interesting also to obviously be in that indigenous group as someone in there and understand what it was like from their point of view.

Yeah.

Because from the outside, you think it must have been amazing..

Interpreting, basing it on your own experience.

Well, yeah. You imagine all these things that you didn't have as a result of being like that, where they have friends and family around them at all times, effectively. But then you wonder from their point of view, what was it like? Fuck, I just can't.

I can't get rid of Pete.

If I try and get away from these people, I'd die.

Yeah.

Like, you know, we have to stay together..

Or..

.. to survive.

They treat me as a leader and they just follow me!

Yeah, exactly. You wonder what it- because it's always really interesting learning about Australian Indigenous people from the point of view of Europeans, because they always saw them as lazy, right? To some degree. There was always that kind of comment on they weren't, they weren't hard workers. They would do the bare minimum type thing and you realise it's like, Yeah, look at the country they fucking live in.

Yeah.

The continent they live on where there's effectively no food. The, the extremes are so harsh that you pretty much die if you, you know, you don't get enough water. So they do the bare minimum to be able to survive and then they just conserve their energy.

Yep.

Yeah. So that they can make it through to the next period, right. Like, no shit! Like, but it's, it's always mind blowing, you know, watching those differences across those boundaries. But yeah, I always wonder how much their mental health would have differed from, say, modern people's mental health as a result of being in a small group that see each other every single day. You know, like you watch something like Big Brother or any of these sort of, you know, survival TV shows where they're all together at once and you wonder, is that a positive thing mental health wise? Is it a negative thing? What are the differences? Like, Survivor is a TV show.

Survivor? Survivor is probably the only authentic one that I, of those shows.

Well, you guys seem to be obsessed with it.

Yeah. You guys. Yeah, I watch it. Jo watches it. Your sister watches it.

Mhm.

Um.

Jo as in my mom.

Yeah. My daughter..

Yeah, not your daughter. Yeah. Jo. Yeah. We sit down with a three year old and go Watch this!

.. obsessed.

Yeah. I reckon Bob's going to win this. Yeah. Um. Digressed. Further sense of levity. Um, I, I think it's authentic in a sense that it's obviously completely contrived, but the reactions and the behaviour of the people is not contrived. Where something like Big Brother is, is it's being adjusted..

Yes.

By the producers every minute.

It's the um..

In order to create..

It's the junk food end of the scale.

It is. So, but survivor really is this we're going to put 24 people out there, put them in two teams, make the teams compete with the knowledge that they're eventually going to join up together, and that the whoever's been kicked off is going to determine the winner. So it is it's contrived, but it's got this sense of rules that everybody understands.

I guess, do they have to all work together?

You've got, well, you've got to work together in order to beat the other team so that you don't get kicked off.

Yeah.

But..

You'd also survive, right? Yeah.

You've got to work together to create your shelter, to- you are given food, but you can go out and collect food as well. But you're given rice and beans. But if you're not in the winning team in the first couple of days, you don't get the ability to build fire unless you can manufacture it themselves.

Yeah.

In fact, there's only one one season that I can ever remember where the team that didn't get The Flint.

Yeah, still managed to do it.

Managed to do it. And they came back going, Legends!

Yeah. Yeah. I wonder, I wonder what it's like. Because like, in my head, I have it as it must be, or I assume it to be, a much better experience socially than, than modern day, the modern day world.

Yeah. Well, and it would be. And there have been studies. And I'm not an anthropologist or a sociologist. You talk to your sister?

Mhm.

Um. About what- yeah, and if you look at- Yeah, you're talking about indigenous populations, what a lot of those um, groups of um, old cultures were related, possibly in the case of many places in Australia, about how many people can you have living in the one place that you can actually support by the physical environment? You know, how much food and water can you gather? Um Rather than what's the ideal size for a social grouping? Whereas if you go back to, say, Europe, where post-agricultural, um, village sizes were all the same.

Yeah.

Across Europe, village sizes are the same across North America. The indigenous people in North America, Native Americans or First Nations people. Um, village sizes were about the same as they were in England. Right. And it had nothing to do with the resources that were available. It was just what's a an acceptable, sensible, ideal group size?

Yeah.

And it turned out it was between 30 and 100 people.

Yeah. Okay.

And that's probably, even if I imagine, you know, when I was growing up, Melbourne had just over 2 million people in it, but I didn't interact with 2 million people. I probably interacted with between 30 and 100 people who lived in my part of my suburb. And other than artificially now, we send kids off to- I went to a primary school that had 1000 kids in it. And a high school that had 1000 kids in it.

But I think if you were to still study it, you'd probably find they still interact with. Because again, you only have a certain amount of time per day and energy, you can't maintain a certain number of relationships. I remember getting on Myspace and then Facebook and being like, Fuck yeah, I've got a thousand friends. And you're like, but how many..

.. got 1000 clicks?

Yeah, exactly. If you go through the people that I talk to on a regular basis, I bet you it's..

Mine too. Mine's about ten.

Yeah, but it'll be one of those, um, what's it called? Not an exponential curve, but the one that diminishes.

Yeah, well, it is exponential, but it's diminishing..

Right? Yeah. It'll be that where the majority of the people that I talk to are my wife, my family and a few close friends. And then it rapidly drops off.

Yeah.

But they'll probably be about 20 or 30 people that you'll if you were to look through the chat histories that I talked to on a frequent basis, it'll be between..

But you're talking to individually rather than liking what they've commented on on somebody else's post.

Yeah.

Yeah yeah. Interesting one.

Yeah. So anyway..

So don't drop in.

Yeah. Well it's one of those things. It depends, right. I think that was the basic thing with the article. It's like it depends who the people are. It depends how you know them. It depends on the context. And we have that, I should have mentioned earlier on when we were yakking about it. But there are certain people, certain friends that can effectively show up at any time. And it's not a problem. Because, you know, like other people who are my age, who are my friends, who have children show up to my house and see the place as a mess. It's kind of like..

My place looks the same!

Exactly. I don't care. Whereas if Nana and Grandpa showed up unannounced tomorrow, I would be mortified for them to see. I would be..

You would only be mortified because your mother would be here as well going, Pete, you should have tidied up!

I would be like, Can we do this somewhere else? Can we just do it in the front yard? Like, can we do it in the street?

Ca we sit in the driveway?

Exactly. I'll get some camping chairs and we'll just hang out and do- and open my garage..

With sloping driveway, we'll slide into the garage door.

It is so funny when you have, once you have kids too, it completely changes where, especially when they're babies and young kids. Because of the, the whole eating and sleeping pattern and everything getting effed up. And you know, if they want to hang out at a certain time, it's..

You just do it.

You can't, or you can't.

Yeah.

But then when they have small children, you kind of you're almost like, Oh thank God. They'll bring their kids over and you're like, go play outside and leave me alone. Anyway. Yes. Well, cool. Good episode.

Yeah! Done!

See you later, guys!

See ya.