The Trials and Triumphs of Technology with Special Guest Mike Jones (Part 1)

That Old Pod

Mike Jones joins That Old Pod to discuss technology as it relates to quality of life. Starting our discussion off as it relates to the book The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture by Wendell Berry, we discuss how farming and industrialization have impacted our quality of life. You’ll notice that the pod ends abruptly on a cliff hanger. In a charming encapsulation of the failings of technology, about an hour of our conversation got cut off through a technical error on Lucio’s part. Fortunately, we have noted the course of the missing conversation, and we were getting tired and really had much more to say anyway, so we will be recording part II of this topic in the near future.

Show notes

The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture

The decline of the small American family farm in one chart

2007 Census of Agriculture: Small Farms

10 Things the 2012 Census of Agriculture tells us about family farmers and our food system

Nielsen report on Global Consumption of Fresh Foods March 2013

Dining Out Just Overtook Grocery Sales for the First Time Ever in 2015

Effect of family meals on drug and alcohol use in teens

Community created through agriculture

American divorce rate declining but still high

Proportion of married adults decreasing

Younger American’s divorce much less frequently

Couples time together through decades

American Leisure Time Increased From 1965-2003

Early History of Recreation and Leisure

Pre-industrial workers had shorter workweek than today’s

Labor, Leisure and Time in the Industrial Revolution

Benefits of Industrialization in 6 charts

If 100 people lived on earth

Impacts of a sedentary life style

Sorry Mike, minerals come from our diet (both food and liquid):

1. Here’s closest thing I could find to Mike’s 80% of mineral ingested through skin
2. From the source: “we have provided various references to many of the studies completed that have found that our bodies absorb directly into the bloodstream close to 60% of the topical products with which the skin - our largest organ - comes into contact.”
3. They use this link for that citation, not very helpful
4. Most mineral absorption occurs in the small intestine
5. A further analysis of mineral absorption
6. Another article in a similar vein
7. We do absorb minerals through water, proportion compared to percentage absorbed through food difficult to quantify
8. The links I’ve provided above highlight that so much research of diet and minerals comes from studies of questionable veracity and speaks to an extreme lack of quality repeatable studies on the subject

Nanobots in blood stream as delivery method

Nanobots and medicine

Bubble Bobble

Get Off Your Smartphone

If I Had A Hammer - Ellen Degeneres (Starts at 3:55 mark)