Thanksgiving, Gratitude & the Political Implications of Musical Chairs

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One F Jef, we're golden now.

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I would like to tell the class I am grateful for that ass.

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This time come but once a year, all year long there's ass around here.

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Pilgrim or First Nationer, grateful for that butt on her.

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Man, everybody talking about Trump, Trump, Trump, I'm just grateful for rump.

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This is episode 26 of onefjef.

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The number 26 carries a surprising amount of meaning.

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In Judaism, it's the numerical value of the divine name Yihwa, which gives it a quiet

spiritual gravity.

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It's also tied to language and identity because it represents the 26 letters of the

English alphabet, the raw material of names, stories, and ideas.

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In numerology, it's seen as a number of grounded ambition, the point where stability turns

into forward motion.

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All of it together makes 26 feel like a threshold number, a step into something larger.

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Hello my friends.

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Happy Thanksgiving.

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This episode's gonna come out sometime during Thanksgiving week.

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I think probably Black Friday.

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I asked ChatGPT if I should release this on Thanksgiving and it is, yeah, it's kind of a

stupid question if you really think about it.

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Who's listening to podcasts on Thanksgiving?

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I mean, I generally am not.

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Black Friday I guess is a good one.

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People are going shopping.

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Maybe you're in the car on the way to get some Christmas gifts for your friends and

family.

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Perhaps a Billy Bass for the wall.

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Lie that up the place.

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Anyway, coming out during Thanksgiving week.

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And Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays.

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Maybe my favorite because it's only about being grateful, which...

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As listeners to this podcast will know I'm a big fan of gratitude as I think we all should

be.

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Gratitude isn't just a warm feeling.

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It's a kind of recalibration.

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It pulls your attention out of whatever loop you're stuck in and reminds you that your

life is bigger than whatever's screaming for your focus.

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When you actually pause and acknowledge the people, moments and tiny flashes of luck that

shape your days, you start seeing your life with more accuracy, not less.

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could all be a little bit more grateful and have a little more perspective.

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I think we'd all be a lot happier.

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But ah it's hard.

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We're hardwired to be ah dissatisfied in a way.

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At least some of us are.

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Turkey's okay too.

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Actually, now I take that back.

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Turkey's really not that good.

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People complain about it a lot.

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Is it like not being a good meat?

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Because we don't eat it any other time of the year, really, unless you're eating maybe

like cold cuts, like a turkey sandwich.

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And when you do eat turkey, have to slather it with all those, slather it, slather it,

cover it with all sorts of, you know, salt and cranberry sauce and all that, just to mask

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the complete lack of flavor.

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Cranberry sauce, honestly, the one that creeps me out, and I think the reason that I was

resistant to cranberry sauce for many years was because the memory I have of it as a child

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is the can, you you open it with a can opener and then you turn it over and just like red

can shaped blob just kind of slowly slides out of the can.

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And then when it like gets to the end of that and plops down on the plate, do that sound

one more time for you.

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And then this giant can shaped red object just kind of falls over on the side of this

plate.

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And then you cut it into slices and the slices retain the shape of the can.

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Thanksgiving, baby.

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Go America.

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So I don't like that, but like a homemade cranberry sauce, that's that's solid.

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Anyway, yeah, gratitude.

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Gratitude.

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Speaking of which, I am in California.

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I spent the last couple nights at a really cool house slash cabin up near Lake Tahoe with

my sister and my nephew and a family that she's friends with and I've known for years.

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And anyway, it was wonderful.

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It was really fun.

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And last night we had a musical chairs competition and just for, you know, funsies as we

were like the night before we were

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discussing the logistics of the musical chair competition.

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I looked up on Chachipiti, all I wrote was musical chairs.

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And Chachipiti's response was, Musical chairs is basically the most polite way humans have

found to recreate the feeling of societal collapse.

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You've got a bunch of people circling around limited resources to the rhythm of an

external force they can't control, pretending they're chill until suddenly music stops.

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Everyone panics, shoves.

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and someone ends up sitting on the floor wondering how it all went wrong.

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It's capitalism with fewer lawsuits.

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And again, the prompt was just musical chairs.

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We really just wanted the rules of musical chairs.

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Not that there's rules, it's pretty clear.

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It's an easy game.

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But I wanted to see what I would say about what the rules of the...

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Instead, I got to treat as on the nature of capitalism and societal collapse, which again,

I appreciated it.

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I think it's great.

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It's poetry and it's true.

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And also I was the first person to lose at the actual game we had of musical chairs, which

I mean that that probably says something as well.

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So while I was out there, I was like trying to figure out what I'm going to do with a

podcast this week.

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And I thought, all right, well, why can't just like interview every everybody about

something they're grateful about.

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I also um texted some friends, a bunch of people, friends and so forth to ask them to send

me voice memos of about a thing they're grateful for this year.

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and lot of them did.

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So I made a little montage here and I hope it makes you feel grateful.

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I'm grateful for coffee and sweet cream.

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Long bike rides.

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Fresh crisp sheets.

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I am grateful for Radiohead for writing really good music and also making really good art.

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I'm grateful to get to play sports.

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I'm grateful for my running shoes and the fact that my legs work and I can use them.

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The beginning of my cross-country season and all the people that helped me get there.

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Backpacking.

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national parks and just nature in general.

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forest, birdsong, group Waymo, audiobooks.

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I'm grateful for travel because it allows me to experience new things and to be with

people that I love.

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I'm grateful for the ability to vacuum seal food.

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My dad recently started vacuum sealing food with his new vacuum sealer and that's been

pretty life changing.

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I'm so grateful to be able to fall asleep.

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It is

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Such a wonderful skill.

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I'm grateful for snow.

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Yeah, because snow's super fun.

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And it's in the mountains, and I like the mountains.

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It's just, it connects a lot to Be grateful for your voice, because I've lost mine during

the week when I'm getting to spend time with my family and do a lot of fun things.

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And I can't talk, and it really sucks.

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I'm extremely grateful for my family, especially my mom, dad, and my little brother.

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I'm grateful for my sister, parents, friends.

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I'm grateful for my parents for putting up with me and being hilarious and also always

knowing what to say when I'm grumpy or sad.

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I am grateful for my family and my friends.

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I'm grateful for my husband.

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I am grateful for my brother, my dog Biscuit, and my cat Lion, because there have been a

lot of tears this year and they have been there for me and that's what matters.

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It's easy for me to reflect on what I'm most thankful for and it's the people in my life.

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the deepening relationships.

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Everybody that I love so much.

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I'm grateful for my silly friends, very silly friends, who always make me laugh and are

just very strange.

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My mom's health has continued to hold up and I've gotten to spend a lot of time with her

this year and that's been really nice.

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I'm grateful that I still have two healthy parents who are both loving and have raised me

well.

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To have old friends like you and many others is really a very rare and beautiful thing.

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And also I'm always grateful for our little neighborhood group.

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And I don't see those people as much as I would like in general, but I'm really grateful

that it exists and that those people are here.

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I'm not a guy that will necessarily stay in touch with people, but I have people around me

that

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for me and I'm very grateful for that.

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I'm also grateful that I am a full-grown adult who continues to learn and I learn from the

people around me every day in ways I don't expect to.

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I am grateful for community and connection and people who anchor us to places and time

where we feel whole.

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Just another year to build relationships with great people.

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and most thankful for that.

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am grateful for my health and the comforts that I take for granted.

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Grateful to be alive.

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I'm grateful for the chance to start again.

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I'm grateful that you can make a mistake and it can be better.

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I'm grateful for the chance to grow.

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I'm grateful for the chance to love.

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I am grateful that I think

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My hopes and dreams are still bigger than my fears.

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And I hope to make my hopes and dreams bigger than my fears even more in the next coming

year.

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As every year, I'm thankful for my family and for my friends who keep me grounded and who

keep me looking to the future.

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And also this year, I continue to be thankful that the quantum vacuum energy, if it is

indeed in a metastable state, hasn't yet quantum tunneled into the true vacuum state and

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caused the collapse of all the laws of physics as we know them.

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I am thankful for my...

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ever-increasing ability to be comfortable in the midst of change because change is good

and it's easy to forget that.

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Generally speaking, I just feel really fortunate all the time for the life that I have.

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And I'm grateful to have the chance to do better next year.

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Thank you to everyone who contributed to this episode.

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I'm grateful for all of you.

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And I think that's about enough gratitude for this week.

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Happy Thanksgiving my friends.

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I'll see you next week.

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Very good, Jeffrey.