Show Notes
I sent a kid off to college and a some sort of crazy adult came back 🫣😂 WARNING: contains spiritual ego collateral damage and one ANGRY cat named The Mitch! From our YouTube Live conversation.
Nina (Z-Pupp) is home from Vassar for fall break, and the live is for Nai Nai to see her
Why Nina left California for a school where she knew no one
Double majoring in music and econ, and why she didn’t go to NYU for the music business
Chamber music, her professor, and live-streamed orchestra concerts watched at home on the big TV
Mendelssohn, and the screen photo texted to her mid-concert
Making friends, her surprise roommate, and the case for a small liberal arts college
Poughkeepsie versus New York City, and the train into the city
A violin lesson in San Francisco, playing a Sarasate duet, and favorite composers
The one dining hall, the bagel place, and the acai bowl shop where strangers pitched Vassar to her on the college visit
Winning a concerto competition, and Nina’s opinion of Vivaldi
The campus petting zoo and its ferret, chinchilla, and baby kangaroo
The Mitch the cat: escape attempts, getting caught, and Nina the cat whisperer
Professors’ outfits, music theory capes, and the jean jacket comeback
The Cocteau Twins, and whether they count as emo
Whether the Mitch is fat or just fluffy, and “you can’t win with women who know everything”
What Nina misses most about home (her car), and feeling stuck in Poughkeepsie
San Francisco tech bros, cappuccino art, and the vocal fry of Pacific Heights
Dining hall slop, the freshman 15 in reverse, and joining a squash class and biking
How Stanford benefits help pay for tuition
Drop-off night, hotel bourbon, and a musician tip from the chat
Professor Navega’s threat to “snap her neck” for being late
Affluent classmates, generational wealth, and debutante parties
Parties, Halloween weekend, and Zubin’s freshman 15 at Berkeley
Nina’s take on the awakening stuff: “we just gotta live in the here and now, even though that doesn’t exist”
Zubin agrees that awakening talk is nonsense, and why he keeps talking about it
Vermont hippie colleges and the leg hair debate
Crying (or laughing) at drop-off, and doom scrolling in the rental Volvo
Halloween costumes: a chicken onesie and a Love Island robe with dollar store snakes
Is college worth it in the age of AI: connections, Swiffers, and learning to be an adult
Side hustles, and “what is a Zubin” showing up in Shorts feeds
Donald Hoffman, conscious agents, and the homunculus
Whether the kids had an awakening: telling Nina “nothing is real” during COVID and her existential crisis at 10
Spiritual ego, and why a “me” with a new insight wants to inflict it on its kids
Watching Nina grow up on the channel, the Big Pharma video, and Dr. House of Cards
“Gaffes” and “C’s get degrees” versus “P equals MD”
The stumbling block of teaching what you just learned
Amenemope, the Bhagavad Gita, and Nina’s plan to take it next semester
Using AI, just not for art or music
Zubin’s Zoroastrian upbringing and chanting from the Avesta at 11
Zubin’s “it’s all just this” take on oneness and consciousness
Arjuna, Krishna, and killing your brother’s army
AI flattery, and Zubin’s British lady Claude voice in the car
Nina’s cognitive science class, “Chat with Pat,” and why the chatbot folds under pushback
Whether Claude is conscious, and who is having the experience
Saying please and thank you to AI, and older people finding company in chatbots
Waymos, who is liable when AI goes wrong, and the doomer argument
Dallas hospitality, a midnight hotel check-in, and an Uber ride into the MAHA conspiracy
Chatty Ubers in Poughkeepsie and New York
Whether Dallas counts as the South
Wrap-up, solfege, and sending Nina back to school (she’ll be back in December)
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A live YouTube conversation about dropping our oldest child off for college, ending with an overpriced bottle of hotel Jim Beam drunk out of plastic cups by a Homewood Suites firepit. Yeah, enlightenment ain't what the gurus have been selling us 😭😅 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices