Empty Calories & Male Curiosity, #35 🥃

Matthew McConaughey Is Living Rent Free Inside My Head

QUICK HITTERS:

1. Instead of a book recommendation this week, I am giving out the inaugural BIBO Award. BIBO stands for “Book I Bailed On.” I’ve talked with some of you before about this: I have very little patience for books (and TV shows or movies for that matter) that take forever to get going.

   .

   OUTLIVE: The Science & Art of Longevity, by Peter Attia, MD, is a colossal waste of time. I read the first 70 pages of this book and learned nothing. Attia keeps talking about what he’s going to tell you, but never gets to it. So, I scanned forward a bit and can tell you what I would’ve learned had I continued to slog through the remaining 300+ pages: eat real food, exercise daily, sleep well, use your brain, and stay socially engaged.

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   Feel free to Venmo me $12, the going rate for this book on Amazon, for saving you the trouble.

   

   I’m only including a picture so you know what it looks like in order to avoid it.

2. Did you know the SilentPunt Podcast is on Apple and Spotify? Just type in SilentPunt in the search function, and it’ll pop right up. Earlier this week Travis and I talked about cheating, the best advice we’ve ever received, soccer, and parenting fails. Plus some other fun stuff….find it here on Substack.

   Do you have something you'd like us to discuss next? Reply to this email and let us know!!

This is from doggy day care a few days ago. Ignore the snot on Maverick's snout.

GOING DEEP:

Matthew McConaughey Is Living Rent Free Inside My Head

I’ve been a part of many groups in my life:

• Growing up, I was raised Catholic.

• I’ve been a part of both large and small families. Very early in my life, I had a large extended family. Then, around the age of 12, roughly three-quarters of that family disappeared. (No, not in like, a supernatural way. The typical way families fracture: estrangement.)

• I’ve been a part of a family where your ethnic background very much plays into who you are (Irish & Italian), and one where it doesn’t (through marriage). 

• And then there were my football families. I was a part of many different ones, both as a player and a coach. We had all of the same characters a large family would:

 

The angry uncle. (I’m looking in your direction, Sully.)

The sage elder. (Thanks for everything Norm, especially helping secure the Chapel for our wedding).

The Black Sheep that Dad just can’t stop loving. (Billy, does your breath still reek of alcohol at work?).

We even had some female characters. Mostly, they were played by semi-elderly ladies who were about as effective at their jobs as this one here on the left. How did that cigarette ash never fall?

If you are a Baby Boomer, Millennial, or Gen Z and have never watched Sixteen Candles, you should stream it. Immediately. Movies like this just don’t get made anymore. #thedonger

If you’ve read anything about group dynamics, you know that 150 is the magic number. That number, often referred to as “Dunbar’s Number,” ¹is the sweet spot for social interaction. In groups at or below that number, one-on-one social connections will flourish. Start to drift above that number, and it becomes hard for the group to be cohesive.

(Raise your hand if you currently work for a company that has over 150 employees. Group dynamics are a challenge, right?)

Research further, and you’ll learn the reason behind that number. As with many things, it is a matter of natural selection. In order for the human species to survive and advance (#theoriginalmarchmadness), we needed to make sure one cataclysmic event couldn’t knock us out in one fell swoop (remember this).

So, the fracturing of these relationships was Mother Nature’s way of encouraging us to break off into smaller groups, thereby diversifying our species. 

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Today, these ‘groups’ are often looked at through a pejorative lens. The Irish/Italian Catholics I grew up with are racist. Football people are misogynistic. Married white men are part of the patriarchy.

But as with so much in our society right now I see those accusations as projections. 

Bear with me: Do you remember these nerds from Dazed and Confused?

Cynthia, riding with Tony (the blonde) and Mike (the d-bag in the back).

Throughout the beginning part of the film, they go back and forth discussing the ills of their situation. The ‘70s are lame, the jocks are dumb, and who wants to just go and get drunk anyway?

But then, as the movie progresses:

Tony finds a connection with a girl….

Mike gets his ass kicked at the Moon Tower party….

“I only came here to do two things: kick some ass and drink some beers. We’re almost out of beer.”

And Cynthia connects with Wooderson, the cool, older guy.

Did you know: Cynthia was played by Marissa Ribisi (Giovanni’s sister)? She is currently married to the singer Beck.

Well fu*k. Why does everything have to come back to that frickin guy? To newcomers in the SilentPunt universe, Matthew McConaughey (who played Wooderson in the film) is our Lex Luther. Our Newman. The Bane of our existence.

See what I did there? “Speak of the devil and he shall appear.”

We can’t seem to shake him.

Anywho, why did I bring up three nerds from a 32-year-old movie in the first place? Because, prior to being part of the group, they thought the group was lame. But once they became a part of it, they kind of enjoyed the experience. 

Once you’re a member of a group, there is a sense of freedom that you don’t experience around others outside of that group. You can be yourself. Everyone knows your picadillos, and whether they like them or not, they accept you. 

Even in a football locker room, where guys could receive some of the most vicious verbal assaults imaginable, there was an underlying understanding that the dude on the receiving end was one of us. 

So, the next time you find yourself being judgmental of another group, pause and ask yourself:

What Would Wooderson Do?

#WWWD #AlrightAlrightAlright

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Did you remember one fell swoop? Kudos to those of you who did, here’s your reward:

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1. After Robin Dunbar, a British anthropologist, whose research led to this theory.