Eat Your…Prunes?
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Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Jan Arden Podcast. I'm coming to you from Palm Springs, California. Yes, I am. I'm really excited. I'm here with Caitlin Green in Toronto, Adam Karsh, also in Toronto. Hi, guys. How are you doing? What's happening? I'm actually in Prince Edward County. Ooh, that's nice. Yeah, right on the lake in a little town called Wellington. And what brings you there? Is it just a little weekend getaway?

Yeah, a little. I have like some vacation days to burn before they expire. So we got out of town. We're here with some pals. We're going to go to some restaurants and some wineries and just enjoy being out of the city, especially with all the crazy like

Every now and then you just see all these alerts like, oh, a bunch of roads are closed because we heard on these social channels that there's going to be another protest happening somewhere. Right, right out of the gate here, Caitlin, can you fill us in on kind of a funny little story of some counter protesting humor? Sure.

The Ram Ranch gay porno metal anthem that has been part of the trucker counter protest. Do tell. Yeah. So there's, I forget the name of this app. There's an app that a lot of the protests. Zello. Zello. There you go. It's like a walkie talkie style app and it allows for them to communicate and

about whatever. And so I guess other counter protesters have been joining these channels and playing this gay metal porno anthem called Ram Ranch.

and it disrupts obviously the channels. Now they wind up getting booted off the channels and whatever, but it's pretty darn funny. And I always feel like humor wins in these situations because it's just such a hilarious thing to have dug up and found. And now Ram Ranch, Cowboy Convoy, it's all this stuff that has started trending. And you'll see like Ram Ranch, people will show up with like

signs at the protests now because you knew there was going to be a counter protest movement that eventually popped up. So for sure.

I would tell you some of the lyrics, but I dare not utter them on the radio or podcast. But if you want to know, it's pretty visceral. And you can Google Ram Ranch and you'll be able to figure it out. Yeah, just Google it. Anyway, the gentleman that wrote the song has written 501 versions of it for different reasons, known only to him. But it was his...

sort of a battle cry to homophobia that he felt he was being very harshly subjected to. In Nashville, I would imagine as a country singer, not the easiest genre probably to sing about same-sex things on that kind of form.

format is that would that be a stretch for me to say anyway it was just sort of part of part of his way of having some humor to to say play my songs anyhow it is kind of funny it's

And just on a personal note, I went through one of the occupation things at the border at Coutts, which is just maybe an hour south of Lethbridge. And we really had no problem. I want to give a shout out to the RCMP who were very orderly. They had the trucks sort of parked off to the side. They were in the ditch. Leah, who traveled with me, is on this little vacay with me down to Palm Springs and

we were kind of chuckling to ourselves because they had a row of pink porta potties in the ditch and, you know, just were hunkered down to, I'm not sure what, like when we, if we were driving by without knowing what it was, we wouldn't have had a clue that there was nothing about mandates or anything. There was, I hate a handwritten sign. Can I just say, I just don't like a badly written,

I don't like a bad font. No. And the kerning, meaning the spacing of the letters is always off. So it starts off with like big, huge letters and then they run out of space on the sign. So then at the end, they trail off into these little teeny tiny letters that you can't read. And you're like, just look at, you've come this far. You've gone to this much effort. Pay a sign making company to make you a sign. It's ridiculous. Yeah. Well, we will move on to other things, but

Just, I think, and I'm not speaking on behalf of anybody, on behalf of anyone, but we've all had a long go. We've all been adversely affected by this. We've all suffered losses. All of us, each of us, the people that have been vaccinated, the 80 to 90% of Canadians that have chosen to be vaccinated, that is one of the highest numbers on the planet.

We are responsible. We are the ones that have made it possible for the truckers even to do what they're doing right now. But in all fairness, the things that are happening, and I'm not going to say it's all of them because those kind of blanket statements hurt everybody. But, you know, when a city announces that they're under a state of emergency and that they're frightened, then you're not getting your message across the way you think you are.

When you're scaring people, when you're intimidating people and harassing people, it really is the polar opposite of what you really want to do. And anyone that has said repeatedly this last two weeks that they are doing this for me, please don't bother. You don't represent me in any way, shape, or form. You never will, ever, never, ever. I will...

gladly take on your fat comments and the vitriol that you have hurled at me this past two weeks. And I haven't said one disparaging word, really. I've blocked people, which makes them, it infuriates them. But if the best you have is fat, you fat pig, you disgusting, ugly hog, if that's the best you can do, you really need to listen to what

you're saying anyway moving yeah i feel like it's i mean i do also want to shout out the toronto police services because they have been incredible at keeping things orderly in toronto um they've been right on top of blocking off you know queen's park areas and trying to keep hospital row open um still know someone who had an issue they needed to go to women's college hospital which isn't far from there and it was really difficult for them to get there just because of the approach

towards Hospital Alley in Toronto kind of being disrupted. So there were still, I don't want to say like nothing went wrong, I'm sure there were irritations for people across the city, but I think that by and large the police stayed on top of it and you know they did have the benefit of hindsight being that we saw how quickly this disrupted everyday life for citizens in Ottawa and so I think they just looked at that and said okay well we absolutely can't have

have that happen here. I feel for my friends who live in Ottawa, you know, business owners who were really looking forward to reopening for something more than takeout. We have close friends that own two restaurants downtown, one's right on Bank Street, and they couldn't reopen. I have other friends who work in hospitality and at gyms in Ottawa, and it's just been disruptive to people. Like you said, Jan, you know, they're like, oh, we don't want all this division. And this is like the most divisive thing you can do. There was a

coordinated effort to jam 911 lines in Ottawa. Just really like the bar is subterranean at this point. And so it just feels like this isn't the kind of, this isn't the way you get your message across. And if the whole idea is like, oh, we want to overthrow the government, well then organize yourselves.

organize yourselves politically and do it during an election cycle. You know, the provincial elections coming up in June here in Ontario, if you don't like how this is being handled, then, you know, reach out to local organizations and heads of unions and healthcare and teaching and say, what can we do to stay open? Like if your goal is to stay open and you don't want to have any more of these lockdowns, which man, that isn't that everyone's goal. Like that's a common ground. Everyone wants that. Everyone wants to not wear masks. Everyone's.

Yeah, I know. And to to to to to somehow separate out this this and the word fringe is used over and over again. And I know that they're very upset about that. You know, we're not the fringe. We're all the Canadians. Well, no, you're not. It's just like I was saying, I did put a tweet out last week and and.

I'm not even going to say who it was. My friend walking his dog downtown was accosted. And I will use that word because it was, he was accosted by a very large man and he told him to take his effing mask off. You whatever derogative, you know, hurtful name calling followed by be a man. And my friend turned around because he was frightened. And my friend is six foot three and he went back in his building and

and this is downtown Calgary, and I'm just thinking, you guys really need to, and I hate saying you guys, the individuals doing this kind of behavior need to take a step back and think about what they're doing. But Evan Solomon, I don't know, I think Caitlin, you saw this on a couple of social media posts that he made. He actually went out into

into the people, the individuals at the occupation. And he just sincerely and in all earnestness put a microphone in front of them and asked them what they wanted. And it was the most jarbled, idiotic, ridiculous spewing of words that shouldn't even be together you've ever heard in your life.

Yeah, I have friends who I have, I do, I have some friends who are, there's predominantly small business owners and what's happened to them hasn't been fair. And they've been shoved into this role of having to play by a different set of rules that big box stores, then, you know, chain restaurants and stuff. And so, and, you know, people who own fitness stores,

centers and stuff like that. And so they're very like anti lockdown. I'll say that it's not that they're anti vaccine or mask. It's just that they don't understand why we keep using this giant sledgehammer to crush small businesses as a way of supporting public health, because it doesn't really even make that much sense. So, but I had talked to them about it because they were leaning towards, you know, supporting the protests. And I said, like, I get it. I get you guys are frustrated and I care about you and your businesses as a friend. I just,

I just want to say, though, like, why don't you take some of your fellow small business owners and speak to some heads at the nurses unions? You know, because the primary thing we have to realize is that when they start to, when the government starts to see our numbers go up and our health care system get throttled, they just go, oh, quick, shut it all down. And everything gets shut down. But if you protected our health care system and made it so that, yeah, look at when numbers go up

we're going to have the capacity and the staffing and the ICU nurses to deal with this. So then if you go and approach some of these unions and say, what would it take for you guys to stay open? You know, we want to know as small business owners, then we can come up with a list of demands. We can, we can approach local MPs and say, guys, look at it's an election cycle coming up in June. What is your party doing to ensure that when we, once again, in the winter might see a new variant, might see these numbers go up, have given enough of a war chest to cover our healthcare spending so that we can stay open because we're

I don't want to see us shut down ever again, either. I think it's, I think it's just no way to live. But I do respect the reality of nurses and doctors when they say, well, sorry, but we're, we're intubating too many people. We're seeing too many healthcare situations happen. So I think when you respect the fact that the government is going to prioritize keeping hospital levels low and schools open. Yeah.

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Welcome back. Jan Arden podcast, Caitlin green in Toronto, Adam Karsh in Toronto. Adam has had the same outfit on for two years. Really have same blue shirt and gray sweatpants.

You know what? Adam, don't even worry about it until the skin starts to adhere to the fabric. Because if you start getting little patches where you're pulling the cotton up and you're seeing that the skin has grown in there, I'd get yourself to the ER, except there's probably no space for you at the ER because it's filled with

I, as a, as a woman would be legitimately scared to walk downtown and I'm grateful every day that I live out in the sticks and I don't see it. And I'm not going to lie when we did drive through the occupation down at the coots border, Leah and I, you know, to, well, she's not middle-aged. Well, no, she's middle-aged. She's 42. But I was like, I'm kind of nervous. I said to Leah, I got to tell you, I'm nervous. I don't know what they'll do. We didn't, we were one of the only cars that,

driving without like flags flapping and banners out the windows. And we just were this little car and we drove up to the checkpoint with the RCMP who were all masked by the way, and very calm and very respectful. They just asked, we rolled the window down and he said, where are you guys headed? And we told him Palm Springs and he goes, Oh, that's, that's a fair drive. Isn't it? And he smiled and you know, the eye smile that we're all getting so used to.

And he asked for our passports at that point, long before the border, just to kind of probably make sure we were legit and not trying to go through the checkpoint. And then off we went. And when we got to the border, the guy couldn't have been nicer. The customs guard there, he's like, what do you think all that? He says, you're countrymen or kind of. And he was smiling and he rolled his eyeballs.

And he's like, have a really safe trip. You'll enjoy, you know, kind of getting out of the nuttiness for a while. And everyone was just very calm and very aware of the vibe of

going on that has been created. Anyway, I will say that. And I, and I hate feeling nervous. I hate feeling scared. I don't like it. We've had enough of it to last us several lifetimes at this point. It's so different too. Like you'll, I mean, you'll, you'll notice this Jan now that you're in Palm Springs, like it really is different everywhere you go. We were, we were in the Bahamas over Christmas, totally different there. No one talks about COVID or any of this. Like it doesn't really come up that much.

And then I had a friend just go to New York for a week for work. And she said, you know, didn't really come up there that much. Like it was, you know, it's talked about, but it's not with the intensity that I feel like it has recently been in Canada. And that's one of the things that I'm like, can we just,

Can everyone just take it down a notch? That's why I think some of the vibes around the protests, I'm like, look, I get it. I get being frustrated. And you're like, we have no other choice left. We have to go and, you know, disrupt things. And, you know, the point of a protest is to be annoying in a way. It's just it can't also disrupt the economy by blocking off the peace bridge. And so and it can't scare people. Like, what are you doing scaring downtown residents? It's not helpful. It's just one of those things where I'm like, let's all just protest.

respect the fact that energy is a finite resource. You only have so much of it in a day and very few of us want to expend a ton of our energy on, on all this stuff. So yeah, like I've been avoiding, I mean, I don't live right downtown. The part of the city that I live in is pretty quiet. So I haven't been trying to head down there. I did go to dinner last weekend, right near Bloor and university. Yeah. Yeah. And it's towards the end of the day. And you know, there were people around, there was like

one truck there kind of like blocking things off but the police had mostly contained things and it wasn't very intense like it's strange to see I saw a bunch of the the convoy coming down the bbp when I was headed across the city and it's strange to see I felt bad for people who got stuck in traffic when traffic in Toronto is already such a pain in the butt sure

Oh, it's so nothing is more annoying than traffic. Like really, like, you just want to agitate so many people at once make them sit in traffic in Toronto on the Don Valley parking lot longer than they already have to. But yeah, it was, you know, it was mostly okay. Again, though, I really do. I credit it with the foresight of seeing what happened in Ottawa and saying, Oh, we can't do that.

Oh, what just happened with Poppy? He just climbed on the back of a chair and fell off. He's fine. He's just... Poppy's so small that with little teeny tiny dogs, it's like if they do take a small tumble, sometimes they can really hurt themselves. He's okay. He's just little. Look at him. For our listeners, we're looking at Jan petting Poppy. You know, what's interesting, Caitlin, I mean...

is that people are being very driven by their emotions. And there's a lot of raw nerves right now. And what happens when the step that you take forward is really steeped in anger and frustration. And I'll give you an example.

you know, let's go back a few years to the women's march. I'm just going to use that as an example of literally, literally millions of women and men, grandmothers, sisters, daughters, young kids, you know, in their pink knitted caps, you know, marching on capitals in very large groups. There was nothing about those that were the least bit violent. Yes, people chanted things, they had signs, but they made a point.

They made a crystal clear point about what their concerns were, you know, whether it's, you know, equality and job equity and, you know, BIPOC women and men, you know, wanting to be recognized that trans people, LGBT community, so many things converged. And it was done in a way where we really understood the message. I took my mom who had Alzheimer's downtown Calgary,

My friend, one of the caregivers had knitted her a little pink cap. I told her what we were doing. She goes, well, sure. And I thought, this is a place that I feel safe enough to bring my 80-year-old mom to go and just show up, show up for women all over the world. So what we're seeing happening is such steeped in such fear and anger that

That that's when it gets out of hand, when people push and shove. And so all the people that do want to convey some kind of a message, it will not be heard. You cannot scream a message and expect it to be taken seriously. I mean, they had, they had appointed a leader in the last four or five days that sat at the table and excuse me, I don't know his name because a, I don't care.

um saying i'll meet with the governor general i'll meet with you know all these names he's being up well the most hilarious thing happened at twitter people are going i'll meet with beyonce i will meet with ryan reynolds i will meet with you know because just talking about this is how it works you don't get to show up destroying property and demand a meeting with the prime minister of canada

It doesn't work that way. We're not leaving until our demands are met. What are you talking about?

Well, I mean, also too, like you can run in elections. This is the other thing that I think is, is, you know, people forget if you're really passionate about an issue and you have a platform that you want to run on, like really do then get involved in local politics. I feel like they just go right to the tippy top. And instead there's a lot of work that can be done in your local communities. And people forget about that because local politics is boring, but yeah,

It's the truth. Well, they don't want to do the work, Caitlin. They don't want to do the work though. They just want to show up and yell. They have no inclination to

of going through the electoral process of, you know, actually running in a writing and doing up pamphlets and making a difference in their communities, making their voices be heard. They just want to direct stuff. It's like watching a video game of wreck at Ralph. Well, I think we need more regular people in politics on all fronts. Like I think,

You know, we need more nurses who run, more small business owners who run, more teachers who run, because a lot of these people have experiences working in branches of government. If you really view, obviously, education and health care as having lots of experience with the government because they're publicly funded.

So I would like to see more of that. And I think if this is one of those moments where you're like, if you could spin interest in government and in policy out of this so that people actually became more engaged in their communities to accomplish things, then that would be helpful. Because I would love to hear anyone's solutions to how we can prevent

just, you know, closing everything down again. We're going to delay surgeries. I don't ever want to see that happen again. We're going to shut down all the schools. I don't ever want to see that happen again. I don't want to see small businesses closed for months on end. I don't want to see people lose their jobs. Like that stuff does, there has to be a better way. So that's the conversation I think we should all start trying to have is there is a common ground here and it's that we don't want what has happened for the past two years to continue in perpetuity. And I think what some people were upset about was that they were, they felt like they were promised something.

the light at the end of the tunnel being once we have the vaccines, it's all going to, it's all going to change. It's all going to get better. And that's not necessarily how it's going to work. And so I feel like there's a bit of a reality check happening. That's like kind of bumming people out. And it's like, this isn't what we thought we were promised, but we just don't know how to handle this because we haven't ever had to handle this before. So stop reading my mind, Caitlin. I was just going to say, we don't know how this works. We don't know. And

First time for everything. We will do better next time. And like I've said before, there will be a next time you're listening to the Jan Arden podcast. We will be right back. Don't go away. Welcome back to the Jan Arden podcast and therapy session for Canadians from coast to coast to coast to coast. Interesting story. Wordle is not only addictive to millions of people everywhere.

but it's also saving lives. Caitlin brought this great story to the table today. And I'm just going to let her tell you exactly what happened with this lovely elderly woman who was saved by Wordle. Yeah. So she's an 80 year old retired teacher who lives alone and she's a huge Wordle fan like myself and many others. And so what she does is every day she sends her Wordle, her Wordle score, so to speak and,

to her daughters. And so her eldest daughter is used to receiving it from her every morning. And when her mom didn't send her, her wordle, she's like, that's not like her. So diligent daughter gives her mom a call and the landline at her house says it's disconnected. Like doesn't go to voicemail or anything like that. Like it's just

It's like that busy signal. Yeah. The busy signal you just don't hear in the year 2022. So she says she's worried because her mom obviously lives alone. She's 80 years old. So she has a neighbor go by the house and there's still a car in the driveway. So her mom wasn't out, but nobody's answering the door. And then the neighbor finally hears her mom screaming from the basement, help. I'm down here. And what had happened was a man in who was experiencing a severe mental health crisis had broken into the house.

He got into bed with her. He was naked and cold and he was asking her for help. You know, nothing happened to her. She was not harmed or touched in any way, but he did wind up walking her in the basement of her house without her medication. And then he proceeds to get into her bed upstairs and then stay there and

And so the neighbor's like, what is happening? Calls the police. And the woman is fine. The man is in custody and receiving whatever treatment he needs to receive. But this all happens because she didn't send her daily wordle.

Because that was like the little routine that they had going. And I just thought I send, my husband and I send our daily wordles to his parents and to one of our other friends and some group chats. And I was like, yeah, you know what? It would be weird if we didn't send it out now. And if you have someone in your life who lives alone and they are, this is a great, and you guys play wordle. This is a great little morning check-in. It's like, okay, if you don't send me the wordle today. It's like the new medical alert.

I was just going to say that. Have you heard the wordle? I mean, they should have wordle medical alerts that you just, anyway, I I'm really so glad that this woman in her eighties folks had the wherewithal to cheer herself on in the basement to tell herself, I don't want to go out of the world this way. I don't want my kids to be freaked out that this is how mom came to an end. I'm going to keep my wits about me.

And she said she did exercises, right? Yeah. She was down there exercising. Good for her. That is some mental fortitude. It really is. It's like grab your, in the worst possible moments, try and find that, that modicum of, of, I don't know, light and just light.

be there for yourself. Anyway, I'm glad everything turned out. And this young guy in his thirties was definitely having a very terrible mental breakdown. And as much as he scared the living crap out of her, he didn't hurt her. But I don't know how I would have done with a man coming into my home and wanting me to warm him in my bed.

Like, I don't know. I don't know if I would have coped as well as she did. I think I would have fallen apart. I think I would want to move. I'd be the kind of person who I think would hold it together really well in the moment. And then afterwards, I think

think to myself, you know what, I don't know that I want to live here necessarily anymore. Just switch it up a bit. I had a family member whose home was broken into and she moved shortly thereafter because it was just like, okay, I like broken in while she was at home. So she had like a, she saw the person and there was not really, I wouldn't say confrontation, but

But it's just one of those like after school specials. You live in fear of your whole life if you live alone. So, and then she moved in and kind of helped her out. But I was like, yeah, this poor 80 year old woman. I just, I love, I love that Wordle had any role to play in like a real life story like this. Do you guys play? I really like this game. I wonder if she, I wonder if she ended up getting caught up on the Wordle after, you know, you know. Well, the joke everyone said was that the word that day could have been saved. Yeah. Because it has to be a five letter word. Yeah.

No, it's I did it once and I didn't do great. I had a lot of help. I was just like, I can't do this. And my friend was just like, OK, the S goes at the end. I'll just give you that. OK, and what goes at the beginning? And what's the second letter? I'll get that. I'll get the last two. But what what is the first? Anyway, the word was something really just so simple, but it's right in front of your face. You can't see it.

I get that. I do that all the time. It's the simplest word and I'll guess all the difficult ones first. And then at the end, the word is like great or something. And I've been guessing like ulcer and every other word in the book. Ulcer. You know, your day is starting off bad when you're like ulcer. That's my first guess. Speaking of five letter words, prune.

P-R-U-N-E. I want to give people some helpful health advice today. And I'm not a doctor, but I just want you to know that there's been tests done on prunes. People are like, what is this podcast about? What is happening here today? To be fair, we don't even know. Prunes, I know, are not at the top of your grocery list normally. And you see them, but you walk on by. And I remember being a kid.

You know, my grandma drank prune juice. It was in the fridge, this dark molasses-y looking thing. And she drank prunes all the time. She lived to be almost 90.

Maybe the prunes had something to do with it. And this is back in the seventies, early seventies. Anyway, even then they knew that it was prunes. If you want to improve your bone density, this is what they're saying is that you can eat a fistful, especially older women, and you can prevent or delay bone loss. In post-menopausal women, lower levels of estrogen can trigger a rise in

of stress and inflammation and, you know, that increase your bone loss. So I have been just, I just want to put shout out to myself for whatever reason, there's so many prunes in health recipes or sweet dessert recipes in, in vegan cooking. Like prunes is always the go-to for like, if you're making vegan food,

Twix bars or vegan score bars. The caramel always starts with chucking a handful of prunes into a food processor, which you're like going, oh, and you blitz them up and you use them. It makes like you're the caramel. I mean, you can add maple syrup and you add a few other little things, but basically that's what you pour on. So fast forward, I've been doing veganism for like six years, pretty much. I'm

Anyway, so I did bone density tests like five years ago. And this past month, I've been like, I don't know what you're doing with your bone stuff, but you are like so improved. And I was thinking to myself, what the hell is going on with me? And I just was like, it can't be the prunes. Like it can't possibly be me eating because I eat them. I probably eat 15 prunes every week.

I just, I just take them. Like I do make sweet recipes with them. I'm not going to lie. I do make vegan Twix bars and they are so effing good. They are the best. But my bone density has not only stopped going down, it's improved. Just saying I'm not a doctor.

But it's not going to hurt you to start popping prunes into your mouth. We are not in any way sponsored by prunes, although California, not yet going to get it on. And plus it makes you poo. I'm just going to say that. And yeah,

That's all I have to say about that. You know, I'll eat pretty much anything. Prunes for me are on the do not fly list. I can't, I can't do prunes. Tell me why. What happens to you? There's raisins also do not fly. I don't like dates. I don't like, I don't like shriveled fruit and prunes. Isn't that a plum? Is prune from a plum? Cause I'll eat plums. Yeah. Yep.

I just, there's something so off-putting to me about a prune. It's like a plum gone bad. I just can't do it. Even when you say the word prune, I'm getting nauseous. Sorry. Is it a childhood thing? Because I know we had this, like I hated Brussels sprouts. I know we have one minute left in this thing, but I, I was a kid sitting at the table and for whatever reason, my dad made us sit there. We've talked about this on the show before too. I had to sit at the table in front of that fricking glass of milk and

um, Brussels sprouts. And I had a gag reflex and I couldn't leave until they were done. You have to lose two of those. And now fast forward 90 years later, I love Brussels sprouts. I love Brussels sprouts, but you're probably cooking them differently now. Roasted olive oil. So I guess, I guess they were just boiled and that's what happened back in the day. Nothing was prepared to for flavor. It was just all boiled and then thrown on a plate and it was like, eat it. But now I think we know how to cook

So let's just thanks. Absolutely. You're listening to the Jan Arden podcast. What a culinary delightful show we have going on. What a potpourri. We'll be right back. Don't go away. Welcome back. Jan Arden podcast. Caitlin Green is with me as always. Adam Karsh, both in Toronto. I'm here in Palm Springs. I just want to rub that in. It's supposed to be 33 degrees Celsius today. Lucky. Very exciting. It's snowing here now.

Well, I just, if you want to have, if you have the fortitude to hop in a car and drive for two and a half days, you too can be here. It's really like we were eating at a Chipotle in Vegas yesterday and we had the biggest smiles on our faces. And I'm traveling with my little dog that you guys know, Poppy, who's 15 weeks. No, he's four. He's 13 weeks, 13 and a half weeks old.

He was the best human in the, the best little guy in the world traveling. Like I couldn't believe he had a little kind of a, a crate that lots of headroom, lots of screens on all the sides. Not he was the best. I just want to put that out to him. Can I ask you guys, as we go out in this last segment here, what is an NFT? I have been inundated. My socials have been inundated with NFTs like,

Like I just got a headline that came into my phone that said, as Sotheby's prepares to auction 104 CryptoPunks for 30 million, it's time to ask whether NFTs are morally bankrupt. What is an NFT? It's a non-fungible token. That's what the acronym stands for. Basically, it's...

It's hard to explain, but I would say it's like data. It's digital content. And an NFT can be anything. It could be...

a song, it could be a piece of sports memorabilia, like a video of a unique video of a historical moment in sports. But it could also just be an image like these stupid apes I see going around selling for $10 bajillion. And in order for you to have one, they have to be authenticated

on crypto currency blockchains. But what gives them their worth? Like, is it, does it just live on the computer? This is, it just lives there. It's digital content. Yes, exactly. So, and, and it's like anything in life, what gives anything it's worth, right? You know, the market gets what it gets for things. It's like art or, or whatever. But as you can imagine, it's new and there's a lot of, I call them celebrity grifters, but yeah,

You can call them whatever you want that have started to hop on board. And the reason they've done that is because they've partnered with the companies that make these. So now when a celebrity does something, when Gwyneth Paltrow is like, Hey guys, here's my goop ape. And when, when Justin Bieber has an ape, and then I saw this,

this segment on Jimmy Kimmel show where him and Paris Hilton were comparing their NFT apes. And I thought that, you know, I was going to start bleeding from my ears because it was the dumbest exchange, the most boring exchange I've ever seen on television.

But because celebrities are interested in it, they're increasing in value, certain types of these. I have friends who bought some NFTs and have, you know, quote unquote, made money on them. I feel like an old woman living in the woods or something because I'm like, what is this? Like, I understand it, but like you, I don't really get the value system, but I don't claim to understand why art's worth as much as it is either. So maybe this just isn't for me. Yeah, I'm just at a loss with...

the digital currencies, the Bitcoin stuff. I still kind of laugh at the guy that has Bitcoin passwords and whatever, and they got thrown in the garbage. He was petitioning like the city of whatever, wherever he was to go and dig through the garbage, like a giant, I don't know, where you take your garbage where there's...

a billion tons of it to go through and find this. He literally wanted to look for the little

First of all, if you're writing your passwords on a piece of paper, you have no business in crypto. Why wouldn't he have used a software program for that? But anyways, yeah, no, I have some cryptocurrency. I have some Bitcoin and I think a few other types of coins. I view it like gambling in a sense because it's like we're going to put some money here and it's just going to be part of an investment portfolio.

So I get the crypto thing just because it is like a decentralized currency. So I understand why it appeals to people. And when you think about things like, I think this week there was a feature that was added to Apple Pay where you can pay from one iPhone to another. Like right now you can tap. Yeah, right now you can tap. Okay, you can tap somebody's phone and give them 10 bucks? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So it's a good...

So you're basically using your phone as a digital wallet. And previously, you would have had to have had that linked to your credit card, which is run by a financial institution. And you would have used it at a cash register or using like, say, a square type of payment system. But now when you just tap iPhone to iPhone and you can pay for things, I do believe that Apple developed this with cryptocurrency in mind, knowing fully that digital wallets are going to be a thing for certain parts of the economy moving forward. Oh, my word.

I sometimes feel like I'm leaving myself behind. It's just like what you just said, Caitlin, that it's sort of this gray area where, for one thing, I don't have a lot of interest in it.

And I think when you don't have a lot of interest and I have friends that are obsessed, like you said, your friend has made some money doing the Bitcoin thing. I too have friends that have done really well with Bitcoin. Adam is nodding. I have a buddy who's all over this and he, we talk about his portfolio. But they're obsessed. It's like up at two in the morning, checking three in the morning, checking, buying, selling, whatever. I guess it's a throwback to stocks and bonds, I guess, but,

Well, yeah, it's just part of the economy now. That's really what it is. Yeah. I mean, I was at a loss with baseball cards, to be honest. When people were buying and selling baseball cards. I don't know if you saw this in the last week or so. These people were re-wallpapering a bedroom in a house that they bought. And they're taking the wallpapering off. They got their little steamer out. How many times have I done that job in my life? I can't even count. Yeah.

because wallpaper is coming back now. It's coming back with a vengeance and it is expensive. Anyhow, so they're taking, they're peeling this wallpaper back and the entire wall of this bedroom was old baseball cards. And this kid had done it. They actually tracked down the former owners of the house. This kid in the sixties was like, yeah, I bought all the baseball cards and those are the ones I had doubles of. And my parents actually let me glue them

to my bedroom wall. So they can't get them off. Like they can't, like some of them are worth a lot of money.

But because the back is glued, there's no way they can get them off without destroying them. So these people are just going to kind of lack her over and leave it as a look. But apparently they're starting something because people are wanting to... Well, Julie Van Rosendahl, for instance, she used cookbook pages. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because she's in the know. They're probably worth a lot, Julie. So hang on to those. Yeah.

I've seen that in guest washrooms and in restaurant washrooms as well, where they'll use different types of like books or magazines or whatever as wallpaper. And it's kind of cool. I think in a big space, it would be visually overwhelming. But in a small space like a powder room, it's actually it can be quite cute.

thinking of wallpapering my bedroom. One wall behind my headboard. It's not a huge wall because there's doors on either side of the bed. One goes into the bathroom, one goes down out back into the house. I'm thinking of maybe a velvet, like some 3D wall. My parents had 3D wallpaper. I had wallpaper of Bambi in my childhood room.

And we drew, yes, we did. We got markers and we drew our own little scenes in and around Bambi. Cause you know, you always have repeats in, in, in wallpaper, right? Yeah. 8 million Bambi's.

I did get in trouble for that. I do recall getting into a lot of trouble for drawing Bambi pooing, like just piles of poo behind Bambi's bum. You do that when you're a kid. What a way to end this particular show. But I did. I drew Bambi poos. You've been listening to the Jan Arden Podcast. We are going to be here week after week. Don't forget to hit subscribe. Send us a review if you want to. Write us at thejanardenpod on Twitter.

on Twitter. And if you have anything you want us to talk about, we're always happy to listen. And we're so grateful for you because you keep us way up there in the ratings week after week, and we appreciate it. Look after yourselves. Don't take crap for anybody. Don't be mad. We're going to get there. Be patient. Wisdom is patience, my grandmother always said. We'll see you next time.

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