Episode Transcript: #1456 - Michael Shermer

I'm fine, thank you. I'm still breathing.

It's good to see you again. We were just saying before we got started that the last time we saw each other was we went to dinner about six weeks ago, and you're thinking that that might be the end of that kind of stuff.

That was my last time I've been in a restaurant, actually, and well, you know, I think restaurants, of course, will reopen, but I think the kind of social distancing we're seeing now, it's not going to go all the way back to the way it used to be.

I think we may quit shaking hands and hugging to the extent that we used to, although I don't think we'll ever go all the way to the, say, the Japanese model of social distancing, but I think there'll be modifications like that.

The other thing I've been thinking about is the change of remote, say, meetings and education. I mean, I'm in the studio here in Santa Barbara where I've been recording lectures from my Chapman University class, skepticism 101, and I just upload them and share them with the students, and then they watch them, and then I send them a quiz.

They take the quiz, they send them back. Now, that's not a complete replacement of a brick and mortar building with a small class seminar discussion, say, but it does adequately replace a lot of traditional education that you don't really need to be in a classroom for.

I think that this is preparing us for the ultimate where we embrace the symbiotic relationship that we have with computers and become one with the machine.

I mean, it seems like we're becoming closer and closer to some sort of an electronic community. It's weird.

I think it was happening slowly already, and this is kind of a jumpstarting that, I mean, already tech companies like Zoom are having to ramp up their game because the systems are crashing because pretty much everybody's doing Zoom meetings now, and then they have to adjust to Zoom bombing because, of course, there's people like that out there that just want to screw with you.

And then I was also thinking about things like theaters. Why do we need to go to theaters anymore? I mean, I love watching a movie on a big screen, but the screens we have at home now, big television screens, super high def, why not just watch movies at home?

Well, I don't think we're going to have much of a choice. I was reading an article this morning about AMC theaters. They might have to go under because of this.

Really?

Yeah, it's not good. I mean, you got to think these companies are accustomed to having a certain amount of money come in every month, and they never, no one anticipated anything like this, where all businesses are just going to shut down.

Gems, I mean, how many gyms are going to go under? How many yoga studios? I mean, it's a strange and trying time for people who have small businesses for sure.

Yeah, one of my cycling buddies owns the Luckin Yacht at Theater Complex and, of course, rents out the space to different retailers, including the theater managers.

Anyway, he was telling me that they normally pay $93,000 a month in rent, but they bring in like $7.5 million a year or something, so it all balances out.

But they just told him, we're not going to make our rent this month, so he has to go to his mortgage company, the bank, where he pays off his mortgage, and say, I can't pay you this month because these guys can't pay me.

Okay, so multiply that by $10 million or $100 million or something, and that's kind of what we've been going through.

Yeah, and I don't really understand the economics of this stimulus package of how they're going to be able to distribute it and sort of balance people out. It seems like it's just a small band-aid on a very large wound.