Talking Simpsons - Separate Vocations With Nina Matsumoto

I was just picking up my phone to comment that the Pokemon Go death tracker has one honorary negative death (an overdose one of my friends ame across while playing and reversed with narcan) when I got caught way off guard by my sister kathleen being referenced and then me being greeted! hi!

crystalhearts

In Ottawa, Ontario, we didn't have these career aptitude tests like I would always see on TV (Buffy has an episode about them where, if memory serves, she is ALSO told she could be a cop), but we DID have a "take your kid to work day" in 9th grade. I had already been to work with my parents a bunch as a kid - with two working parents, it was an easy way for them to still look after me (the youngest) on a day where school was out but they may not yet have been their annual vacation time and my older siblings were busy. So going in with my dad on that day in grade 9 was basically just an excuse for me to not have to ride the bus or sit through boring classes for one day, while mostly just reading comics and entertaining myself at an extra seat in my dad's work area.

Dylan (batmanboy11) Freitag

The talk about job shadowing reminded me of the one time I shadowed someone for a “take your kid to work day” thing. I wound up going with a family friend (who as an adult, I realize meant “guy my parents sold weed to”) who worked at the local FOX station. It was neat to see all of the electronics in the control room, but ultimately was a pretty boring and uneventful day. The thing I remember most is watching a Simpsons episode from the syndication rack on a little monitor in the corner, on what I assume was a Beta tape. The episode was “The Joy of Sects”. The FOX guy pointed out how the blob monster was a reference to The Prisoner, which I did not know about at the time. Keep up the good work -Alex “Thundarr” McG

Alex "spyda_k" McG

Have taken the Briggs Meyers test. It's just corporate astrology

Aaron Alcott

What a great episode! I’d love to give a non gifted child’s perspective on this episode! No offense to you gifted folks(or gifties as I call you). As a kid who had learning disorders, I shudder when ever J. Loren Pryor speaks. He is the perfect encapsulation of the incredibly passive aggressive, calm voiced councilors and analysts I would have to work with all the way from kindergarten to high school. When Pryor says he saw Bart being a drifter, it honestly wasn’t far off from what those sorts of people made us feel was our destiny. Episodes like this, Bart the genius, and Bart gets an F ring so true to me. When you treat kids as if they are stupid and have no future, what else do you expect them to do but stop caring? I know Lisa’s situation in this episode is different than mine, but I really do love seeing her be bad as a reaction to being put in a particular box. Watching the Simpsons as a child taught me to challenge the intellectual power structure in schools. Great episode, and it’s always a pleasure to hear the brilliant and talented Nina on the pod.

You know what I’ve always been curious about. How in the USA they call that thing where you twist the arm an “Indian burn” but here in the Uk we call it a “Chinese Burn”. Like is it purely coincidence they both have vaguely racist names, or did one come before the other. & then one day, one country decided to change the race of the burn.? Like how does that happening. Maybe originally they called it an Irish burn, but then Indian and chinese immigrants became more common? Who knows

YancySr

Funny thing about homework now, our district doesn’t grade it any longer. And particularly since the pandemic, for elementary grades at least, they don’t assign homework at all except month book reports maybe. I’m definitely anti-homework, but my reasoning has evolved. Basically, there’s no way to solve for the disparities that exist outside the school: is there support at each home, is the support meaningful at each home, is the support consistent at home, is the place of home itself consistent? Closer to home, the disparity is capabilities - one of our kiddos is autistic and needs support for organizational tasks, be it things or ideas (writing). It’s written in his IEP so legal the district must meets those needs with their own resources. I’m pretty sure I don’t qualify, lol. And being on the spectrum with ADHD, I really super don’t qualify. However, kid 2 will sit down and write a book report like it’s nothing, at 8. Go on, girl. Unless she can’t, and then the school can figure it out. In fairness, kid 1 does some work at home now, but he refuses to let us help lest we tell him it’s not good enough. Like I’m dying to dip my toe in that shark tank. Lol. So for now, our home rule is if you can get started on your home, sustain the effort to continue and finish it, have fun. We will answer questions of course! But any further help than that and a) they’re too young to manage it or b) their executive functioning skills are lagging. Wouldn’t it be easier to find a way to live without it? A mom can dream. :)

Jessica S

Excellent episode of both the show and the podcast. But to respond to that last little bit re: leaving Twitter.... Got to say, I left almost two years ago to improve mental health. And peeking in now and then - I made the right choice. Miss you guys...

Thad Komorowski

As a not-a-yank I already really enjoy hearing Bob and Henry relate their life experiences to things in The Simpsons, and it's even better when Nina comes on to give the North-America-but-not-USA perspective to see what is similar and what is quite different! Also great work triggering/pandering to our generation of "gifted kids" :D

Wood Duck

(I'm also adamant he knows how to pronounce this right because he's told me this story before. That's all I'm saying on this matter because it's hardly a hill worth dying on!)

nina matsumoto

Thanks for the timestamp! It still sounds like he said "anemone" to me. Also, I was sitting right next to him as he was repeatedly saying it -- trust me on this, I would've caught it if he had said it wrong. I've corrected him for misspeaking during podcasts in the past.

nina matsumoto

I can't believe I actually went to check, but it's at 2:20:10. I realize this is incredibly pedantic, but I figure if there was ever a time and place, this is it lol

Samwise

there's no way in hell I'm searching through a three-hour podcast but I insist I said "sea anemone" correctly

Bob Mackey

I feel obligated to point out that Bob has perpetuated the mispronunciation of "sea anemone", the M comes before the second N! Also, I had many similar interactions with teachers as a kid, luckily they usually handled it pretty gracefully, with the exception of my high school history teacher, who insisted that Japan had a population above 1 billion, and kept going on about not being able to believe they fit so many people on those little islands. When I politely suggested she might be thinking of China, she got unexpectedly upset and sent me to the principal's office, leaving me to implore the class to look it up as I was marched away

Samwise

We didn't have career aptitude tests in my school district growing up, but we certainly had the standardized tests y'all described in this episode. Out in Virginia, ours were called the Standards of Learning test, which only hit me once I was older that they were hilariously referred to commonly as the SOL's. In high school I went to governor's/art school (similar to the IB program Nina described) that due to its structure, operated separately from the requirements of the state— except for the SOLs which we were still required to do. I just remember even my teachers being frustrated that our advanced gifted classes had to still go over the SOL material as a formality even though the tests were designed be as insultingly rudimentary as possible and played a large part in determining our school's budget eligibility. If you told me that tests like these really WERE only in practice today as a tool of the #2 pencil industry, I absolutely would believe it.

John-Charles Holmes

Teacher requirements vary from state to state. My aunt had an unfortunate go of it when her husband decided he wanted to uproot their family and move from Massachusetts to Florida in the early/mid 90s to pursue a career as a photographer. She was a teacher in MA at the time, and during her tenure the state passed a new requirement stating all teachers needed to get a Master's degree in their field. Existing teachers were grandfathered in. Well, they moved to Florida, the marriage didn't go well, but she could teach there without a Master's, but as her kids all moved back to New England she felt trapped there since she could no longer teach in MA. She's still there, my uncle is not, but at least her daughter stayed behind with her and she's at least nearing retirement age now.

Joe Hodgson