Episode 14 Decline in alcohol consumption

Health awareness, changing habits, digital distraction, and the loss of shared spaces all shape how people connect now.

Alcohol consumption appears to be declining, especially among younger people, but the change points to broader cultural shifts beyond health. Social life has become more mediated by phones, routines are more isolated, and the places that once made casual connection easier are less central than they used to be.

The conversation considers what alcohol once represented as a social lubricant, why that role may be fading, and whether newer substitutes are healthier or simply different. Along the way, it touches on public health messaging, addiction, third spaces, libraries, betting, and the ways communities form or fail to form in modern life.

Episode Show Notes

Kevin Carney and Emanuel Petrescu examine the apparent decline in alcohol consumption and use it as a way into a broader conversation about health, culture, addiction, and the social structures that shape modern life.

They begin with the idea that drinking appears to be falling in many places, especially among younger people, and consider some of the reasons often given for that shift: greater health awareness, long-running public service messaging, and changing recreational habits. From there, the discussion turns to whether lower alcohol use is entirely positive or whether something social may also be disappearing with it.

A central theme is alcohol as a social lubricant. The hosts explore the argument that drinking has historically played a role in helping people relax, bond, take social risks, and form connections, particularly in youth. They reflect on whether the decline in alcohol use might be tied to a wider decline in in-person interaction, especially among younger generations navigating more of life through screens and more structured environments.

The conversation also looks at what may be replacing alcohol rather than simply eliminating risk. Emanuel raises vaping, social media, and other substances as possible substitutes, while Kevin points to stimulant use such as Adderall in university settings. Later, the discussion broadens to opioids, fentanyl, sugar, pornography, and gambling, not as equivalent issues, but as examples of how addictive behaviors take different forms across modern society.

Personal and cultural experience plays a major role in the episode. Emanuel reflects on growing up in Romania, where alcoholism was visible and publicly recognized rather than hidden, and contrasts that with North American language and attitudes. Kevin shares memories from earlier decades when going to bars was a routine part of social life, along with personal stories from his time in the Canadian military, including fatal alcohol-related incidents that underscore the real dangers of excessive drinking.

The hosts also compare drinking cultures across regions. Texas comes up in a discussion about gas stations selling cold single cans of beer and the unusual legal and cultural space that creates around drinking and driving. Ontario and Quebec are discussed in relation to alcohol sales, regulation, and the expansion of beer and wine into convenience-oriented retail settings. Eastern Europe is referenced as another point of contrast, particularly around how lightly regulated access once was.

From there, the episode shifts into a deeper discussion about “third spaces” or “third places,” meaning places that are neither home nor work where people can casually spend time with others. Bars are one example, but not the only one. Kevin argues that the larger problem may not be reduced drinking itself, but the broader erosion of shared public spaces where people can gather without heavy cost or high barriers to entry.

Public libraries emerge as one possible answer. Emanuel describes the strengths of Toronto’s libraries, including workshops, free resources, study areas, and access to digital platforms, while also noting concerns about safety and disruption in some public settings. Kevin expands the idea by pointing to libraries as underused community infrastructure that could host more forms of social life, from trivia nights to hobby groups to tool lending.

The episode also considers how communities form around shared activities. Bowling leagues, puzzle competitions, fitness groups, workplace offsites, Frisbee golf, sports fandom, wrestling audiences, and local football culture all appear as examples of social belonging that can give structure, identity, and regular contact. In this context, alcohol is treated less as the core issue and more as one piece of an older social environment that has weakened.

Other topics woven into the discussion include:

• Public health campaigns and how children learn to interpret habitual drinking
• Scott Galloway’s argument that young men may not be socializing enough
• The relationship between risk, trouble, and learning in adolescence
• Cell phone dependence and the possibility of phone-free events
• Sugar’s role in shaping global trade, plantation systems, and commodity history
• The scaling of vice through technology, including pornography and online access
• Prediction markets as a modern form of gambling
• Alcohol companies responding through consolidation and overseas marketing
• The role of local taste, branding, and cross-border beer marketing

The episode closes on the idea that the real question may not be whether people should drink more or less, but how societies create opportunities for direct human connection. The decline in alcohol consumption is treated not simply as a health trend, but as a signal of wider changes in how people gather, socialize, and find community.

Episode Timestamps

00:00 Intro
00:18 Episode opening
00:25 The decline in alcohol consumption
02:32 Is alcohol use really declining?
04:16 Scott Galloway, young men, and social connection
04:53 Replacing alcohol with vaping, drugs, and social media
08:40 Adderall use and shifting habits among students
10:10 Cultural change and why drinking less may be a byproduct
12:05 Texas gas stations and the oddities of alcohol access
13:21 Canada vs. U.S. alcohol sales and regulation
14:43 Does alcohol help people socialize and mature?
17:14 Fentanyl, opioids, and more dangerous substitutes
18:14 Personal stories of alcohol-related deaths
19:59 Sugar as another major addiction
21:03 The history of sugar and the modern commodity system
24:23 Bars, third spaces, and where people gather now
28:36 Libraries, phones, and the loss of direct human connection
32:43 Puzzle groups, team-building, and social life today
34:07 Cell phones, schools, and digital dependence
36:00 Sports fandom, identity, and shared culture
40:24 Porn, gambling, and scalable modern addictions
42:56 What alcohol companies are doing in response
45:55 Final takeaway: connect more, not necessarily drink more
48:38 Outro

People mentioned

• Scott Galloway
• Brad Pitt
• Javier Barden
• Doug Ford
• Jean Baptiste Colbert
• Trump

Places mentioned

• Africa
• Canada
• United States
• North America
• Europe
• Romania
• Muslim countries
• Christianity
• Doha
• Texas
• Ontario
• Quebec
• East Europe
• United Kingdom
• Toronto
• Persia
• Iran
• France
• Caribbean
• Brazil
• America
• Southwest Arkansas
• Halifax
• Nova Scotia
• California
• Mexico
• Russia
• Ukraine
• Spain
• Italy
• Germany

Organizations / Brands / Platforms mentioned

• ChatGPT
• Formula One
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• Adderall
• LCBO
• Canadian military
• TMU
• White House
• Meetup
• Apple
• Spotify
• Coca-Cola
• McDonald’s
• Corona
• Moosehead
• Blue Star
• OnlyFans 

Episode Links

• People React To DUI Laws(1980s News Report) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xcQIoh3FQQ
• A Texas gas station beer trough: ttps://www.reddit.com/r/sanantonio/comments/1kx077u/is_this_just_a_texas_thing/
• The Brookes Slave Ship diagram: ttps://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-254938

About the Podcast

Hosted by Kevin Carney and Emanuel Petrescu, two curious minds exploring ideas, culture, and everything in between. Curious Pundits is a conversational podcast where each episode starts with a topic that caught our attention and unfolds into thoughtful, unscripted discussion. We follow curiosity wherever it leads, across disciplines, opinions, and perspectives, without pretending to have all the answers. Their main ventures are https://1307.digital/ (Emanuel) and https://organicgrowth.biz/ (Kevin)

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Speaker: This is the Curious Pundits Podcast hosted by Kevin and Emanuel. They explore bits of everything through thoughtful conversations, prioritizing curiosity over conclusions, and they thank you for joining them now onto the podcast.

[00:00:18] Kevin: Welcome to another episode of The Curious Pundits podcasts.

I’m Kevin.

[00:00:23] Emanuel: And I’m Emanuel.

[00:00:25] Kevin: And today’s topic is the decline in alcohol consumption.

[00:00:29] Emanuel: Unexpected topic, one might think. Is it a problem?

[00:00:34] Kevin: I don’t think so. If you make and sell alcohol, yeah, it’s a problem.

But for everybody else, I don’t see why it would be.

[00:00:41] Emanuel: According to some, there might be a problem. Because, as far as I know, the health benefits of not consuming alcohol are tremendous, a lot of alcohol.

There’s actually some recommendation of drinking, we all heard about having a glass of wine a day can help with your heart, can help live a long and prosperous life.

And every now and then something like a drink… like hard liquor can help you.

For example, if you are in a extreme cold situation we all heard the stories that… good thing he was drunk, otherwise you would have frozen to death, but because of all the alcohol in his blood, he kept him warm and all those things.

Obviously I’m giving extreme examples, but there’s also the social interaction aspect of drinking .

According to some, that might actually be a problem, because we touch on this in the previous episodes about the youth today not interacting so much with one another.

Many young men don’t know how to approach correctly and nicely a young woman and so forth. And some suggest that part of the problem is also the decline in alcohol consumption. Alcohol is a… what’s the opposite of inhibitor?

[00:02:00] Kevin: A social lubricant.

[00:02:02] Emanuel: That’s a nice word, but also it’s a something that holy in some religions, in Christianity for example.

There’s many topics that we can cover within this this subject.

So let me ask you this. Why the title, why the topic? Is there any data that supports this claim or is it just made up?

[00:02:32] Kevin: There seems to be data. In advance of us talking, I went to ChatGPT and said, tell me what leading thinkers on this topic are thinking about.

[00:02:41] Emanuel: Dr. ChatGPT.

[00:02:41] Kevin: I don’t have hard numbers, but in my other monitor I have a ChatGPT summary, country by country, of what it believes people are saying.

So in general, it believes that there is a decline in alcohol consumption in many places in the world. Interestingly, this summary does not include Africa. I don’t know why.

The decline seems to be for the same set of reasons around the world. People are more health conscious. Younger people have been bombarded through their lives with public service messages about the dangers of drinking, and they’re seeking out more healthy forms of recreation. On the other hand, the contra view being promoted is maybe we don’t really have enough data.

But the comment, the complaint, whatever the right phrase is about the decline in alcohol consumption is so pervasive that it’s probably true. And in terms of my own life, I can speak on behalf of myself and my children.

We’ve all had a decline in the amount of alcohol that we consume. Now for what it’s worth I’m older. 40 years ago, going to bars was just a thing that people did, and I know that there were times when I drank significantly more than I probably should have. Not to the point where I could never show my face again. But there were some embarrassing situations.

[00:04:15] Emanuel: No judgment there.

[00:04:16] Kevin: Avoiding that kind of stuff, I think is a net positive.

I know that I saw a short video of Scott Galloway in which he was promoting, that young men are not hanging out together enough, and there’s probably some truth to that.

And as a result, they should be willing to sacrifice some liver cells in terms of alcohol consumption for getting to know each other and making friends and all that kind of stuff. Maybe there’s ways to make friends that don’t involve the sacrifice of liver cells, just a thought.

[00:04:53] Emanuel: There’s plenty, there’s billion people across the world from different cultures that don’t have alcohol consumption, right? The Muslim countries, for example. Yeah. That don’t promote the alcohol at all.

I was watching the movie F1 – Formula One with Brad Pitt and Javier Barden. I’m not the biggest fan of Formula One. Nevertheless, they were showing a video from the Doha Grand Prix, and the winners were celebrating with champagne.

And I was thinking, okay, … real champagne or kids champagne or just for the sake of it.

But nevertheless, I tend to agree a little bit with sacrificing a couple of liver cells and brain cells as well. I suspect it’s more dangerous to the brain than to the liver.

As far as I remember the liver is the one that regenerates itself. Obviously we’re not talking about the extremes. But you’ll do more damage in the long run to the brain than to the liver itself if you consume a little bit more than moderate. And of course, we can speak from personal experience because many people have their own relationship with alcohol based on what they have seen.

You said that many young people have been bombarded with ads. I can tell you that maybe I’m not necessarily in that age group, but we have seen what alcohol can do to people.

I’m not sure how it is these days, but I’m pretty sure that it’s still happening, having someone in your family, maybe a parent, maybe a cousin, maybe an uncle… that’s essentially alcoholic and ruined his life from consuming this. And it’s funny enough because we have a saying, I’m from Romania, as I said, and we have a saying that “he’s a well-known drunk”. Whereas in America, you have alcoholic anonymous.

So in North America you are anonymous, whereas in Europe, or at least in Romania, everybody knows. But that’s also a reality and I’ve seen it firsthand. And I’m pretty sure that at least in our age group, everybody has a bad experience and bad example that came from alcohol.

One thing I do want to mention before I pass the virtual mic to you and get to know your thoughts, Kevin, is that unfortunately this consumption declines, but it’s not that kids don’t do stuff anymore.

What do they consume then? For example, I gave up smoking. That was a thing. I gave up drinking as well with smoking because I couldn’t have a beer without thinking about a cigarette.

Now I can have a glass of wine or a beer or some bourbon or not so much bourbon anymore since Canada / US. But I can have a drink without me feeling the need to smoke. First of all, vape. They vape a lot. They vape like crazy.

They do other substances. That’s the main issue that are far more dangerous than alcohol.

And probably the biggest thing that they consume and it’s very dangerous.

And that’s the topic of our next episode perhaps… social media.

I consider it as…

[00:08:22] Kevin: Oh man. Yeah.

[00:08:23] Emanuel: As a brain rot… probably faster than if you would start drinking.

LinkedIn is for professionals as toxics as Instagram is for teenagers and young people. Those are my, thoughts.

Where do you want to start, Kevin?

[00:08:40] Kevin: I think your idea that alcohol consumption is being replaced with other substances is valid. I don’t know how big of a problem this is in Canada, but in the United States there’s a bit of a rampant problem with Adderall use in universities.

And I get it. They have a high course load, they need to be able to focus, they find a way to obtain Adderall, and they take it as needed. And there’s been a number of pretty well documented incidences of people leaving university, getting a job, and having to wean themselves down from their Adderall… I guess the right word is addiction.

If you feel the need to take it on a regular basis to help you function, I guess the word addiction applies. And that it took some time to do so.

Now… is the decline of alcohol consumption somehow directly tied to increased use of Adderall in universities? I’m gonna say probably not, and the, probably not is, I think maybe the causality might be backwards.

You’ve got a course load, you’ve got five papers that are due, you feel a need for focus. Alcohol is not going to help you there. Adderall might, but if you’re in the habit of taking Adderall for purposes of getting all your papers done on time maybe a decline in alcohol consumption is a byproduct of that.

I know it’s just speculation on my part, but…

[00:10:10] Emanuel: I think you’re just looking at a small sample, which indeed is right, for sure. But I think culturally, at least in North America and in Europe, the western society has changed. Because consuming alcohol also implies inevitably you’ll do stupid stuff.

[00:10:29] Kevin: Yeah.

[00:10:29] Emanuel: So you end up in trouble. You either get into a fight or go and drive, that’s dangerous. Actually, I never drove. That’s one thing that I’m proud about, never had like a sip of alcohol and drove in my life. Not even you can have a beer here in Canada. I never had it. I never did that while driving.

I’ll try to stick to it through my entire life. But culturally things have changed and alcohol was part of this. There’s a short video that I’m going to drop the link in the show notes. This reporter interviews people in the US, I think Texas.

Both that law that forbid them to have a drink while driving. And they were like pretty pissed off that they couldn’t have a couple of from their way from work on their way home.

It’s kind of like the same one with the seatbelt when it was imposed.

I think culture has changed and part of this separation… this estrangement between individuals… I think… I’m not sure yet… if less alcohol consumption is a byproduct. It’s unlikely to drink by yourself.

Even in my high school we were repeating after class and whatever, let’s go and have fun, have a beer, drink something and stuff like that. Smoke a cigarette. That was the thing that everybody was doing back then. Again, not necessarily a good thing, but what you have today, I think it’s far, more dangerous, right?

[00:12:05] Kevin: I’m going to bring up a Texas thing. I lived in Texas for six years. Now I live literally just outside Texas, not even two miles. Texas has this weird thing that still to this day blows my mind. So you’re driving along a rural route, there’s not much going on. There’s a gas station, you stop to get gas, you walk inside the convenience store.

And they have what I’m gonna describe as a large trough. It’s maybe 10 feet long, it’s maybe two feet wide, and it’s full of ice and cans of beer. And people will stop, buy a single can of beer and then proceed with their drive. And I’m like, you’re not allowed to drink and drive. So in theory… I’ll find a picture of one, I probably got one on my phone somewhere because this blew my mind so much that I took pictures of it.

Just the fact that these troughs exist in these gas stations where it’s completely legal for the passengers in the car to grab a beer and drink on the road, just not the driver.

But that whole phenomenon just blows me away. You’re not able to drink and drive, and yet in the gas stations, you can buy single cans of beer that are all ready to go. They’re ice cold, ready to go. Like I’ve always thought that was this weird, I don’t know what the right word is. It sits in this weird legal gray space or something.

[00:13:21] Emanuel: And it’s hard to control unless you remove it completely.

Speaking of gas stations and alcohol consumption, only one or two years ago, Doug Ford, Ontario’s premier, allowed alcohol, especially beer and wine to be served in other places rather than the dedicated liquid stores that we had, or restaurants and bars. Case in point, gas stations or convenience stores.

So we actually couldn’t do that in Ontario; in Quebec you could. And people were fascinated by the fact that you could buy beer from the gas station. Don’t need to go to LCBO, how it’s called here, or the beer store to get it.

[00:14:00] Kevin: Actually, can I comment? Because Americans do not know about that. So I lived in Ontario for one year when I was I guess 14 to 15. And you bought beer, and to a large extent do today, in a government owned liquor store.

[00:14:17] Emanuel: Yeah.

[00:14:18] Kevin: Like you don’t buy beer in the supermarket. And then when I came back to the states in the fall of 82 and you would walk into a grocery store and they were selling beer, like that seemed foreign to me again, even though when I was a kid before I left California, it was a thing that was just taken for granted.

So yeah, alcohol sales in Canada are much more regulated than alcohol sales in the United States are. Much more.

[00:14:43] Emanuel: Even for me, coming from East Europe, you could have bought everything, cigarettes, even if you’re seven or eight or nine years old. So there was no restriction.

Not necessarily the best thing.

But coming back to today’s topic. I’ve proposed this topic because I suspect that is important. Again, I haven’t yet figured out if I’m more intend to think that it’s a consequence of the estrangement that happens between the younger generation nowadays and that everyone is complaining about.

But definitely drinking alcohol, it might think is not the solution, but it can actually help to pick up some of the stuff to go into a bar and talk to a stranger and to an extent, I’m not proposing this; and God knows, if you look at some countries that have this in their tradition, for example, the United Kingdom, where having a couple of drinks and having a brawl on the street is not something uncommon. It happens every night.

I’m not saying that, but getting in trouble and getting your ass whooped every now and then, it might not necessarily be a bad thing overall. Obviously I’m talking about keeping it between limits. It teaches you stuff, it humbles you in many ways.

I’m not, again, I sound like I do propaganda for let’s let kids have…

[00:16:09] Kevin: Let’s all drink more.

[00:16:11] Emanuel: No, not for sure. But sometimes, and to Scott Galloway’s point, because that’s what he was trained to do, you need to get in trouble a little bit, especially as a youngster. Obviously don’t steal and don’t burn down the house or have serious consequences, but you need to get into trouble, otherwise you won’t learn, otherwise you won’t be put into some situations that where life would put you regardless.

It’s better to deal with them at 16, 17 than at 26, 27, 28 or something like that. And we’ve seen the example, tends to frustrations, tends to not know how to respond in certain situations.

I’m being very vague because I don’t have a specific example to tell people.

Now you are talking about the epidemic. You are just referring to Adderall. I think that’s the least of the worries. Obviously it’s a worry, but the least on the scale. I would say Fentanyl, which is quite unfortunately very popular in North America, is the biggest problem.

[00:17:14] Kevin: And then we can segue into an entire episode on the use of opioids, which are being pushed by pharmaceutical companies. We probably don’t want to go there right now though, but you’re right. That’s a big deal.

[00:17:25] Emanuel: And unfortunately this happens. It’s not unlikely for a young person, let’s say 20, 21, 22, to try something recreational rather than having a bottle of wine, some beer or some hard liquor.

And from recreational, it’s easy to go into the extremes. It’s also easy if you’ve suffered an injury, for example when you are prescribed hard opioids, not to get addicted and you don’t have that anchor, like your family or your friends to pull you back.

So that’s how I suspect people end up on the street, unfortunately. And we have plenty of unfortunate people like that in Toronto here, especially downtown. If you go, there’s plenty of them.

[00:18:14] Kevin: So I mentioned previously that I served in the military, the Canadian military, from when I was 17 to when I was 20.

And I can recall two specific incidences when two guys that I knew died in alcohol related accidents. One guy had too much to drink one night, was smoking a cigarette at home on the couch, fell asleep, the burning ember of the cigarette, caught the couch on fire, and he died in a house fire.

The other guy had too much to drink, got behind the wheel, and died in a traffic accident.

So the idea that alcohol does on occasion kill young people who have drunk too much… yeah, that happened in the past, continues to happen in the present and it’s a problem. So the public awareness campaigns I don’t think are necessarily a bad thing.

Now, I would like to relate a personal story because it’s humorous to the extent of which these public service campaigns are drilled into the children of America.

So when our first child was about eight years old in elementary school, he would be exposed to and listen to these public service campaigns.

And his mother had a glass of wine with a dinner every night, and he used to lecture her about the dangers of alcoholism because repeated habitual drinking was the definition that he was taught of alcoholism. And his mother had a glass of wine every night, repeated and habitual.

[00:19:48] Emanuel: Therefore alcoholic.

[00:19:52] Kevin: So maybe a bit much, but to a certain extent it was actually cute because he was eight.

[00:19:59] Emanuel: No for sure. And unfortunately this radicalism is not uncommon. Unfortunately, people die still this day because they had a beer or they want to have a beer or simply talking as we do here.

And one country that happens in that, I think it’s Persia… Iran. So we, at the end of the day should be the ones that we can have a beer. Although we may choose not to have it, but we can have, it should be grateful to an extent.

We didn’t mention one of the biggest addictions and that addiction is sugar.

I’m fighting that addiction myself and have a very hard time dealing with it and I’m not winning most of the time because it’s everywhere. Regardless of if you actually go in and buy something sweet or if you just get some bread or some thing that theoretically even associate having so much sugar.

Nevertheless it has all the sugar in the world and that’s as dangerous.

[00:21:03] Kevin: Do you mind if I segue into a little bit of the history of sugar?

[00:21:08] Emanuel: By all means.

[00:21:09] Kevin: I’m really into what is money and how does it work… macroeconomic concepts and how the trading of commodity works.

Our entire modern system of commodity production and trading comes from when Europe got a sweet tooth. Like it literally all started with sugar. So there was a guy in France in the early 16 hundreds. His name was Jean Baptiste Colbert, and he laid out a bunch of rules for commerce.

Now it’s important to realize that before he showed up, there were no concepts of standardized weights and measures and the way things moved long distances.

You could be in one town where they weighed bread in one way using one system, and the next town over might use a different system. So this guy standardized all the rules, but part of the rules he standardized was what we now call the plantation system, the colonialization… the plantation system and the ramping up of the African slave trade.

So the kidnapping of Africans to use as enslaved labor had already started, but it hadn’t taken off yet. And this was all done because there were islands in the Caribbean and in the mainland in Brazil, which had been transformed into sugar cultivation plantations.

So in a very real sense, there are many aspects of the modern world that trace their origin directly back to when Europe got a sweet tooth.

And we live within these institutions and practices even to this day. We’ve moved beyond the use of slave labor, but the basic structures of… we do monoculture agriculture… we grow stuff in one part of the world and transport it and consume it in another, futures contracts in order to stabilize prices for middlemen and all that kind of stuff.

All of that stuff was actually laid down because Europe got a sweet tooth and wanted to figure out how to satisfy it.

Have you seen that very famous picture of… it’s a black and white drawing of enslaved Africans being packed into the hold of a ship.

[00:23:29] Emanuel: I suspect I see it. I’ve seen it. Drop a link.

[00:23:33] Kevin: I read somewhere that the original use of that diagram was… it was imprinted on the bottom of sugar bowls. And this was the anti-slavery crowd trying to get the message out to other people in Europe what their sugar habit actually cost.

[00:23:55] Emanuel: Like the vegetarians who show violent videos of animals being slaughtered during protests.

[00:24:04] Kevin: Yeah. Psychologically it’s the same thing. The big difference is these were not animals. These were human beings.

[00:24:12] Emanuel: Yes. Unfortunate.

You mentioned something earlier that you, in your youth was going into a bar because that was a thing.

[00:24:23] Kevin: Yeah.

[00:24:24] Emanuel: A bar, unfortunately or fortunately, again we haven’t figured that one out, or at least I haven’t… but I tend to say mostly unfortunately… because a bar has its role, again the younger generation doesn’t go into a bar and they go to other places where they pay a premium for a gym membership that has all kinds of events.

Or they serve fancy coffee or they offer something extra with no real actual intrinsic value for them to become necessarily different or to learn something that a bar might teach you. And I think you mentioned this and you want to touch points a little bit about the concept of a third place.

For those who don’t know… what is a third place?

[00:25:13] Kevin: It’s a place that’s not work and not home. We generically call them third spaces.

[00:25:19] Emanuel: Third spaces. How would you describe that to somebody who’s been working from home for their entire life? I’m talking about somebody that graduated in 2021.

Since 2021, around five years have passed. So it’s been not long but not little either. So let’s say somebody has, let’s say 22, 23. They graduated, maybe they did an online course or they were like already learning online. So all their life was online. How would you explain something like that to somebody… a place that’s not work and it’s not home.

[00:25:54] Kevin: It’s where we just hung out and did various things. You sent me a video a few days ago on this very topic and the metaphor they used is bowling alone. So they were talking about a time in America when bowling leagues were very popular and everybody would show up at the bowling alley, like Tuesday at seven or whatever the schedule was.

And there were teams and teams would compete against each other and all that stuff. And that’s declined. That’s considered to be rampant in our society and I know that I see evidence of that in my personal life.

I currently live in the Bible Belt and I’m not a religious person.

So if I wanted to meet a large number of very warm and welcoming people, I would have to join a church, but then I would have to lie about my beliefs in order to do right? So I’m like, yeah, that doesn’t really work for me. But where I currently live in southwest Arkansas, that’s where people meet, to socialize.

There are bars, people meet in bars, but I’m one of those people whose alcohol consumption has decreased pretty radically. So yeah, the decline of third spaces is, a real thing. And I personally believe that from a bigger picture perspective, that’s the problem. The problem is not that people drink less, the problem is that people have fewer and fewer places just to hang out without being expected to fork over significant amounts of money.

Now, having said that, in my youth, we didn’t look at bars as being cheap. Like we would go into a bar and our wallets were significantly lighter when we left. So if you did a comparison of what people spent in bars in the eighties versus what people spend for gym membership now, I don’t know which one would be a higher percentage of disposable income. Like I’d have to collect some data and take a look.

But people need places just to hang out. I personally think, and this is just a personal opinion of mine, that people are not making enough use of public libraries. There’s no reason that a public library can’t become some kind of a generic third space where people meet for game night or trivia night or puzzle night or whatever weird hobby, someone… those aren’t necessarily weird, but you get the point.

[00:28:15] Emanuel: Yeah.

[00:28:16] Kevin: Every hobby is considered weird to someone who thinks it’s weird. But I don’t understand why public libraries don’t have a more dominant place in North American life.

They’re there, they’re available. They just need to be open more and do more things.

[00:28:36] Emanuel: Because you already have everything that you need here, theoretically. Access to all the information on your cell phone. But obviously you don’t go and read a book, although you can read or listen to the audio version of that book on your cell phone.

But people choose to go on Instagram or do something else. I think they do, at least in Toronto, they do a decent job with the public libraries. They try to host events, even games. There’s every other night there’s either a workshop or something that you can learn from or a seminar given by somebody on a specific topic and whatnot.

And some book clubs meet there as well. So they do a pretty good job. I can tell you why I stopped going so much.

I love working from public libraries. There’s a certain feeling when you go in there. There’s quiet most of the time. There’s access to knowledge and it’s imprinted in the space where the library sits.

So obviously I feel that, so I enjoy. But I’ve seen, at least for the past couple of months, a lot of disturbances. Being a public space it cannot restrict certain people that may or may not be under the influence of the other substances that we discussed earlier in this episode. And they can cause ruckus, interrupt what’s supposedly a quiet place specifically, and it is becoming dangerous.

I don’t know if I’m okay with going with my kid in there. I’m not sure how safe it is, although they have security and they interfere pretty fast. It is not uncommon if you sit in a public library in Toronto to see at least one or two incidents a day, which is highly unfortunate.

So that’s what’s keeping me off. But I’m happy to see that many students are going… I’ve seen students from university because I go to a public library that’s close to downtown Toronto, close to TMU, and that’s a positive signal.

Now, I don’t think they borrow the books. I’m not sure how many people from the younger generation are borrowing books. I prefer to own the books and I wouldn’t read a book that I wouldn’t keep. But you have at least access to that information. There’s also free computers, and Internet for people to use.

In Canada, it’s fair to say that they try to do a decent job and you actually got a lot of perks with the public library card. Many free courses, access to movies, access to platforms that you otherwise paid a lot of money. Definitely worth exploring. I’m not sure how is in the US but again, the library has been one of these third spaces historically, and I think it’s across cultures.

We see in movies, in American movies as well. We know from lawyers that are going to the library to study and prepare for their cases, to kids hanging out and stuff like that.

[00:31:49] Kevin: I know that there are some locations that make much more effective use of libraries than others.

For example… in some cities you can check out tools. They share leaf blowers, and I don’t know the full extent of it, but you can actually go to the library, check out a physical thing, take it home, use it, and bring it back when you’re done. And I think this is a great use, but it doesn’t address the third space issue.

You spoke about how we’ve got everything we need in our phones. We have a wealth of information available to us through our phones. What we don’t have is direct human connection. The phone makes that connection indirect. Now, on the plus side, we can have connections with people around the world. And I belong to a couple of communities where…

[00:32:41] Emanuel: You and I. Right now.

[00:32:43] Kevin: But I belong to a couple of communities where I get great value out of this. But there’s also value in direct local connection with other people over the most trivial of things. And I saw an article just the other day saying that this concept of puzzle groups or puzzle competitions are becoming more popular.

I don’t know how popular they were in the past. I don’t know how much is more, but the basic idea is it’s almost like a bowling league. You show up, you belong to a team.

And my understanding is the way the competition works is every team, every table gets a bag of puzzle parts.

And when they say go, you dump ’em on the table. And the goal is to assemble that puzzle as quickly as you can. And apparently people are making good connections, meeting people who become good friends through these puzzle competitions.

[00:33:40] Emanuel: It’s a good team building exercise as well that some big corporations have implemented already within their teams.

[00:33:46] Kevin: That’s another interesting topic because I’m old enough where a corporation would actually spend money for a three day offsite and you would do trust falls and all that kind of stuff. And it was actually…

[00:33:58] Emanuel: That’s still happening.

[00:33:58] Kevin: A good use of time and money and those seem to have diminished over time.

We just don’t do that as much as we used to.

[00:34:07] Emanuel: Those are still happening every now and then. I can tell you for sure. Last job I had we were going out and do social stuff as well. Having a drink, having a dinner, participating in an event and whatnot as a team, as a group. So that’s still happening. I’m not sure if you look at the average number compared to how it was in the past.

But I think the main topic of the conversation, the reduction in the consumption of alcohol is derived from the solitude that the younger generation navigates towards, unfortunately. And they try to put, take action on this.

Some high schools don’t allow cell phones anymore, which is a good thing. I proposed this probably 15 years ago. And even in the workspace, you shouldn’t have your cell phone, although I’m as dependent as anyone else from my phone I can’t actually go anywhere without having it.

I understand and I realize that it’s a dangerous addiction that I need to keep some distance. So I suspect within the next years you’ll see more and more of these events where you leave your phone at the door and you’ll simply go in and have fun and forget about… oh, I just want to take photos, I just want to, just in case something happens. The world seemed to have done pretty okay for six, seven thousand years before the arrival of the cell phone.

There’s often the comparison that the first astronauts that went to the moon, because it’s happening again. We saw that just yesterday. The new space…

[00:35:41] Kevin: Artemis.

[00:35:43] Emanuel: Artemis II… left for the moon. The technology used in the first rocket was less than what your single cell phone is capable of.

So probably they’re all tied together. The lack of a third space, the usage of its third space is not the space itself, but the purpose of it. It’s more than just the technical terms as they call them.

It’s also the culture or the ethos that you belong to.

We discussed briefly about wrestling in one of the episode in episode five, and I was thinking about it the other day. I think I mentioned in the episode, the passion that the wrestling fans have is somehow similar to the passion some people have for their football teams.

Some the extreme, some don’t care. If they’re trying to push in Europe again, the Americanization of the sport and they did it. I don’t like it that much that it’s full of interruptions, they take longer breaks, the game is still 90 minutes, but it’s not uncommon to see 12 minutes extra time and all this stuff that weren’t happening before.

You have the VAR system, you have many other things and plus the commercial aspect. They push you to buy all kinds of gear. It’s less affordable to attend the game and all those things. In many places of the world, football is the only thing that some people have. And they’re passionate about it.

It’s highly localized and it’s your team because it’s from your neighborhood and it’s against the other team that’s from the rival neighborhood. They’re either richer or poorer or smarter or whatever, and you are the underdog and you develop this attachment, that you identify, and it structures your life.

And we see this in Spain, Italy, France, Germany, UK. How many people…

[00:37:39] Kevin: Brazil

[00:37:39] Emanuel: have went to… not to mention Brazil, but I was referring to how many people actually had their life influenced by their local football team. When I say football, it’s what traditionally Americans call soccer.

But I told you that there’s, soccer is a different game than football and we’re gonna have a special episode on it. And I’m going to explain my rationale.

In Europe right now, the stadiums don’t have any fences, don’t have any guardrails. But the reason is some very harsh punishments were happened especially during the eighties in the UK, during the Thatcher era, where hooligans, that’s how the fans were called, spent some, I think maybe even now in jail for simply being a  hooligan. Obviously they went into fights, they hit someone, that person hit their head, they died. But even just being part of a brawl, you got either life sentence or 15 or 20 years just because you are in a fight.

So that kind of put things down. But imagine that willing to risk your life just to fight a rival team just because they’re from the other side of the street and they support a different team. That concept is not embedded in today’s society.

The same concept also will push you to socialize around people similar to you, and obviously having a beer or two and unfortunately something else. So I think that’s missing a little bit and I suspect, I’m not sure if this is a term to use for culture as well. Gentrification of the culture as well, making it more PG 13, more kids friendly as well, to be able to sell more, to address a different audience.

Even wrestling. It’s not like it was in the 1990s or even early 2000s. You don’t see blood anymore, you don’t see people hitting the other so violently you don’t see any more… I would say indecent footage on there… on one side, and whereas on the other side the society seem to have never been more indecent than it is today with OnlyFans and kids having access.

And that’s another addiction that we didn’t discuss is as dangerous as all the others. And Scott Gallway again, talks about it… porn addiction, which is a real thing. It’s not just in younger generation, but older as well. And we’ve naturally, if you’ve seen the news that apparently North Korea send some troops to Russia to help them in the war within the Ukraine.

And the first thing they got addicted to was actually porn because they got access to some, they were free on the internet or whatever free might mean, I’m assuming you have some restrictions, but not porn. They got hooked really bad on it.

[00:40:24] Kevin: That’s also not a new phenomenon, it’s just that the technology enables it to scale.

Shortly after the printing press was first invented, a horse drawn carriage would pull into a village, and behind it is a printing press, and it would print materials that people would buy. The two most popular sellers in the early days were smutty pictures and indulgences. So our, appetite for smut hasn’t diminished or increased. It’s just we have a technology that makes it easier to share.

[00:40:57] Emanuel: Since we talking about addictions… we touched this briefly in other episodes, but we should have and perhaps have a guest that will talk about the prediction market, which is a fancy word for betting.

[00:41:10] Kevin: Yeah, it’s just gambling. I know that there are prediction market companies who are trying to convince people that they’re dealing in securities, and I’m not sure why they want to, because… securities are probably regulated in a way that is more favorable than the way casinos are regulated, but it’s just straight up gambling.

[00:41:28] Emanuel: Yeah, for sure. And it’s not just when you think about gambling, you think you bet on sports or something like that, but actually the reality is you can bet essentially on everything.

[00:41:37] Kevin: Are you aware of the bets that were recently placed about the war on Iran?

[00:41:45] Emanuel: I don’t think so. I don’t follow, or…

[00:41:47] Kevin: I’d have to look up the detail to refresh my memory.

But on February 27th or February 28th, or maybe a few days earlier, there were like five or six brand new accounts that were created and they placed rather sizable bets on there being a war against the United States and Iran. I think I read in total, the aggregate bets among these accounts was like $70,000.

And then the aggregate winnings what was like $500,000.

And the timing of this is just too suspicious. Like they honestly believed that people in the White House created those accounts and place those bets.

[00:42:29] Emanuel: They’re such small amounts though, considering, 70,000 is…

[00:42:35] Kevin: If you’re a staffer… they’re not saying that someone in Trump’s direct inner circle is the one who placed those bets.

There’s people in the White House who are not…

[00:42:46] Emanuel: They just heard the rumor and said, oh I can bet about it. I know for sure.

[00:42:51] Kevin: They just heard it in the hallway. We’re gonna bomb Iran on the 28th. I better go place a bet on this.

[00:42:56] Emanuel: It’s a topic for another conversation, so perhaps we’ll have one with a guest that will be able to elaborate more. We’re close to the hour if we haven’t passed it yet. So it’s been interesting episode. We don’t indulge people in consuming alcohol. That’s for sure. But not consuming means also a decline in human interaction. And as you said earlier, alcohol is a social lubricant.

What are the alcohol companies doing about that? I haven’t seen much push.

There’s regulation in place, right? So you can’t really advertise as you would advertise chewing gum or Coca-Cola or McDonald’s, although they should be as restricted as anyone else, essentially as any other as alcohol because again, sugar and…

[00:43:53] Kevin: Yeah. I don’t disagree with that.

I think the alcohol companies are caught up in this whole public service announcement pushbacks that have occurred over the last 30, 40 years. Convincing people that drinking alcohol is unhealthy, which in fact it is. So they’re stuck, and I think part of what they’re doing is they’re merging with each other to be bigger and have more market share, and they’re trying to sell more stuff overseas.

One of the most interesting things, I don’t know if it’s the most interesting thing, but something I find really interesting about alcohol in general is a concept of local tastes. Like here in the United States, two popular beers are Corona and Moosehead.

From the spring of 77 to the spring of 81, I lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia…

[00:44:49] Emanuel: None of them, neither Corona nor Moosehead are from the US.

[00:44:53] Kevin: It gets even better, if that’s the right word. So I would like regularly drive by the brewery as I was driving around town. And in Nova Scotia at that time, Moosehead was considered to be an inferior beer. Like local people didn’t buy it much and didn’t drink it.

Maybe if you were really stuck, you would have one if they were out of Blue Star or whatever.

So, Moosehead as a business started marketing Moosehead as a premium beer in the United States. And apparently the same thing is true of Corona. The part of Mexico where it’s brewed, it’s not considered to be a good beer.

So they started marketing it as a higher class beer in the United States.

So here we have two beer companies who are specifically promoting their product in countries other than where it’s produced. So that’s part of what alcohol companies are doing to stay relevant. They’re trying to sell their products in other countries.

[00:45:55] Emanuel: A message for the younger generation is not necessarily start drinking more, but it’s maybe there’s something to learn from getting yourself into trouble.

Again, assuming you’re not…

[00:46:09] Kevin: To a certain extent, but from a bigger picture perspective, like getting together and just meeting with other people around common interests. It’s not so much where I live now because again, life here is very much focused on churches, but places where I lived previously, Meetup was a great resource for finding things.

Before I left California, I was part of a fitness bootcamp group that met every Saturday morning and they would run us through our paces. Basically it was these two men and this one woman who were just fitness fanatics who organized this group. And we generally had about 20 people show up.

And I did become friends with some of these people outside of the fitness group and I was fitter as a result, they would really run us ragged. Now I’m not saying…

[00:46:59] Emanuel: And you had beer at the end.

[00:47:00] Kevin: Oh no, I was too tired. I’m not saying it needs to be a fitness group. Interestingly, where I live now has a really great Frisbee golf course in a large park.

To the best of my knowledge, there’s not many Frisbee golf leagues that people join. I don’t know why.

I actually looked up and I was interested in joining and the only one I found was like way too competitive for me. They’ll reject me because I suck, which is probably true. I’m probably not being unrealistic in that assessment.

But there’s no group who just shows up for a recreational Frisbee golf just have fun and see how it goes. I don’t know why. The course is there and for the most part it’s not being used.

[00:47:47] Emanuel: Optimization we discussed in the previous episode. Yeah. MBAs optimization, making sure everything…

[00:47:53] Kevin: Yeah.

[00:47:53] Emanuel: Is the right.

And as I said before, you know from nature that it’s good to live up to 20% randomness to explore new stuff to…

[00:48:04] Kevin: Yep.

[00:48:05] Emanuel: Pivot to things, blindly go in and do something. As an immigrant, this is how I learned a lot of stuff. I join organizations, join groups, join masterminds, join volunteer works, and connected with people.

Interesting episode.

If people want to find more or send us a message, tell us how much they dislike the topics that we’re covering. Curiouspundits.com is the website of our podcast. You’ll find links to Apple, to Spotify, to your favorite platform. We’re on all of them. And until next time, my name is Emanuel.

[00:48:38] Kevin: My name is Kevin. And thank you for listening.

[00:48:41] Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to this episode. If you like the podcast, please like, subscribe, and tell others. Visit curious pundits.com to learn more and stay tuned for the next episode.