Checking In With Crazy People

What this episode is about

The discussion focuses on a trending, unconventional dating scenario where a woman uses a dating app, Hinge, to have a man build IKEA furniture for her on their first date, raising questions about dating dynamics and expectations. The conversation critiques the perceived absurdity of modern dating practices while highlighting the cultural differences between urban and rural perspectives.

Key takeaways

• Building IKEA furniture on a first date? That’s either romance or a new job application.
• When 733 voices declare a 'trend,' we might just need a larger sample size—like 8 billion people.
• Right or left, thinness isn’t a political stance; it’s a paradoxical fitness revolution—fat's the new frontier.
• Claiming conservative thinness obsession ignores NYC's nuanced beauty standards; apparently, the zoo's got some liberal lions.
• In the great obesity vs. democracy debate, it seems the waistlines win—welcome to America, land of the hefty.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Armstrong (Host) · 7 min speaking
• Getty (Host) · 5 min speaking
• Katie (Guest) · 1 min speaking
• Delany (Guest) · 1 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 3:00: Armstrong and Getty, diet culture, Hinge
2. 3:00 – 6:00: gluttony, Boulder, Colorado, LA, New Hampshire
3. 6:00 – 9:00: fat acceptance
4. 9:00 – 11:59: Delany

Notable quotes from "Checking In With Crazy People"

• It happened once and they're just pretending it's a trend, but of a woman who used Hinge, that's one of your popular dating apps, probably owned by Match.com. Match.com bought up all the dating apps, so they're all the same now. But, Hinge,.

  about Hinge · at 0:23

• I'll let you decide. long article about why the right is obsessed with thinness when diet culture meets conservative morality.

  about diet culture · at 2:28

• So, there's a distinct idea that overeating or gluttony, which is one of the seven deadly sins, is immoral. And if your body size is not whatever society thinks is an appropriate body size that is a sin. The whole.

  about gluttony · at 5:37

• Yeah, I would agree. I'll tell you what, our daughter Delany headed back to law school and it's too bad cuz it's great fun having her here. but hanging around to any extent with a 20some with a 20some's metabolism is.

  about Delany · at 9:36

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Delany — Person · Personal anecdote subject (host's daughter) · 1 mention · first at 9:38
  Used to illustrate metabolism/age differences and how food temptation operates in daily life, grounding the weight/food discussion in family experience.

Companies & orgs

• Armstrong and Getty — Company · Podcast / show platform · 1 mention · first at 0:03
  The transcript is from their segment ('One more thing'), providing the conversational context for critiques of NYT, dating apps, and cultural narratives about weight.
• Hinge — Company · Referenced product (dating app) / anecdote trigger · 1 mention · first at 0:28
  Used in a story about a woman allegedly getting a first date to assemble IKEA furniture, illustrating modern dating dynamics and 'being used' for labor.

Concepts & topics

• diet culture — Concept · Core topic (as framed by NYT) / debated concept · 1 mention · first at 2:30
  Introduced via an NYT article claiming conservative morality intersects with diet culture; the hosts dispute the framing and question whether it reflects a real trend.
• gluttony — Concept · Moral framing concept (debated) · 1 mention · first at 5:39
  Introduced as a traditional moral category (one of the seven deadly sins) to discuss whether overeating is treated as immoral and how that intersects with body size judgments.
• fat acceptance — Concept · Countervailing cultural trend (referenced) · 1 mention · first at 6:35
  Raised to argue that contemporary culture has also promoted acceptance of being fat, complicating claims that society uniformly pressures thinness.

Places & events

• LA — Place · Example location (thin/fit city stereotype) · 1 mention · first at 3:00
  Cited as one of the 'thinnest places' in America to counter the idea that thinness is a right-wing obsession.
  The thinnest places in America are usually your lefty cities like LA, San Diego, San Francisco, Boulder, Colorado, places like that. You New Hampshire, that's where all the thin people are.
• Boulder, Colorado — Place · Example location (health/fitness stereotype) · 1 mention · first at 3:03
  Used as shorthand for a health-conscious culture ('granola' stereotype) to argue thinness correlates with certain locales rather than right-wing ideology.
  The thinnest places in America are usually your lefty cities like LA, San Diego, San Francisco, Boulder, Colorado, places like that. You New Hampshire, that's where all the thin people are.
• New Hampshire — Place · Example location (thinness claim) · 1 mention · first at 3:06
  Cited as a place 'where all the thin people are,' reinforcing the hosts' geographic/cultural counterpoint to the NYT narrative.
  Usually your lefty cities like LA, San Diego, San Francisco, Boulder, Colorado, places like that. You New Hampshire, that's where all the thin people are.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 Check in with crazy people real quick. It's one more thing. Armstrong and Getty.

0:05 One more thing before I get to two specific stories from the New York Times, which is like visiting a zoo sometimes. Uh I just saw there's a trend apparently. It's hard to say if it's a trend or if it happened once and they're just pretending it's a trend, but um of a woman who used Hinge, that's one of your popular dating apps, probably owned by Match.com. Match.com bought up all the dating apps, so they're all the same now. But, uh, Hinge, oh, figured out a way to get a guy on a first date to build like a piece of furniture from IKEA for her.

0:54 That's pretty good. Which as a guy, there's a lot of stuff in the modern world that pisses me off. This is not one of them.

1:02 As a guy, you know, I thought it would help. Yeah, I would do that. I'll build your furniture. I kind of enjoy it. But

1:08 Well, yeah. I mean, shows me you know how to do something. She said she felt like she was getting the full boyfriend experience by having him pretending to like him, I guess, briefly, so he would build her some furniture.

1:25 That's pretty brilliant. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's got the RO though, the desperation. If as a guy you agree to it though.

1:34 Oh, totally. I mean, come on, dude. No, that's that's that's what you do for your girlfriend. It's not an audition to become a boyfriend. Otherwise, that's just labor. You're just being used.

1:48 I'm just not being paid. Free labor to work here. Yes, exactly. Um, so I mentioned uh one of these has got to do with dating, but first this one. Uh, the Wall Street uh the the New York Times rather is sometimes like visiting the zoo for me. I I grew up in rural Midwest and I mean it's as different from the culture of the people and because New York isn't even the same as the New York Times. It's a spec special kind of weirdo people. Anyway, they had a long

2:19 very judgmental just because they're of somewhat different uh cultural uh set of norms and and strata frankly a different level.

2:28 I'll let you decide. long article about why the right is obsessed with thinness when diet culture meets conservative morality. Conservative Christian influencers are reshaping beauty standards and promoting diet culture. And uh it goes on and on and on from there for many many many words like these articles do.

2:48 Yeah. So when did when did not being obese become some sort of right-wing thing we need to watch out for? I don't know. And you know,

2:58 the the thinnest places in America are usually your lefty cities like LA, San Diego, San Francisco, Boulder, Colorado, places like that. You New Hampshire, that's where all the thin people are. Granola eating, Subaru driving, Trader Joe's shopping.

3:13 Yeah. Walking to work. Yeah. Exactly. So, yeah. Here's here's a new limitation of the First Amendment that I'd like to uh introduce. If before you write some big magazine/ newspaper website article about a trend, you need to remember and there's there's a test. There's a two-tiered test I'm going to suggest here. But you need to remember that not everything that happens that several people have done is quote unquote a trend. There are 8 billion people on Earth. Probably I don't know a quarter of them are online at least some. And so that's billions of people. If 733 of them who happen to be right-wingers think, you know, you're better off being thin, it's healthier. That's not a trend. And here's here's how the First Amendment will limit you. If I can prove to you as the Globes budsman that there are an equal number of right-wingers who like to be fat, then you don't get to declare that there's a trend of

4:20 right-wingers who think you ought to be thin. It's just a group of people doing something. It's not a trend. You don't have to worry about it.

4:28 Well, there's that, which is obviously true, but then there's the claiming that the trend is something we should be concerned about is the other thing, cuz they're claiming that the right-wing thin moralist influencers are trying to force teenage girls to be thin. And of course, that's dangerous with an anorexia and all these different things. Even though we're the fattest we've ever been, the number of diseases and hospital costs associated to obesity have exploded like our waistlines in recent years. I I I don't think being too thin is our problem. And we've mostly as a country failed to spread democracy around the world world, but we have spread obesity around the world.

5:09 Obesity, a more successful export than democracy. Yes, Katie. Oh, it's just that that was one of the bigger stretches I've heard in a while that you know,

5:20 right? It is a stretch fit is gonna I don't Okay, here's a question for you. This sort of crap drives me crazy. I've hated this for decades and this is a new version of it.

5:32 All right, I'll get to the very interesting and revealing question after Jack rants a little more.

5:37 So, there's a distinct idea that overeating or gluttony, which is one of the seven deadly sins, is immoral. And if your body size is not whatever society thinks is an appropriate body size that that is a sin. The whole

5:49 those are two different things. The whole I'm influenced by society and body size thing.

5:56 Who do you know that falls into that category? I've never known anybody that scenes are are are leading them to like

6:06 ruin their lives because they need to look like What are you talking about? Well, you're not an adolescent girl.

6:13 No, I'm not. I would say that. So, and and that's I think that's a bit of a blind spot for you. But, uh here's a here's my fascinating philosophical question,

6:22 but it would seem to me that society is telling us we should be fat if I look around other than on a magazine.

6:30 Certainly, there's a case being made for it. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty aggressively a few years ago. Yeah.

6:35 Fat acceptance. Mhm. Body positivity. So, here's one of these questions. Uh, you know, uh, what colors the sky in your world? Uh, very two very different sorts of people, a conflict of visions, Thomas soul, blah, blah, blah. Since conservatives tend to be more individuals, individualistic, individual rights, blah, blah, blah, and lefties tend to be a little more collective uh, collective action. We need to band together, blah, blah, blah. Um, is it partly that we can't picture somebody who's easily influenced by the culture around them because we're not like that?

7:18 Whereas they, the collectivist, you know, lefties who actually want to give socialism another try, a lot of them, they are that easily influenced. And so they're much more sensitive to that sort of influence. I couldn't give a crap if some quote unquote trend is going on that, you know, 60-year-old suburban dads ought to look like this, that, or the other. I would look at that and laugh and go back to doing whatever I was doing. I don't care. Now, that might just be me as an individual, but don't you think, I'll throw it to Katie.

7:54 Don't you think that people on the right tend to be less concerned about what everybody else thinks?

8:00 I 100%. Absolutely. Well, and then this, as Katie called it, a stretch to try to turn it into you're using the right, which is more religious, is trying to put a religious spin on you need to look a certain way. What?

8:18 Yeah. Maybe there's some group of 12 women online somewhere like have a Bible study and decided Jesus wants you to be thin. But there's people saying all sorts of crazy online. That doesn't mean you have to pay attention to it or it's a trend.

8:33 But but what if you should be thin? You I should be thin. You we should all be thinner,

8:38 right? We should be. So where where do you stop there? That's not like a moral statement or whatever. It's just ask your doctor. They would tell you you should be thinner.

8:48 Yeah. I don't We're back to people being especially sensitive to criticism, I guess. Or I I don't know. How about uh you know, love the uh you can hate the sin, but love the sinner.

9:01 And I'm guessing that all of these journalists in the New York Times that wrote this because it was a big piece of people together. They're probably all just stick figures who go to the gym every day and, you know,

9:12 offended on other people's behalf, right? Exactly. They're offended on society's behalf,

9:16 which is another commonality over yonder. Uh, I'm glad that we don't have to make up things for a living. Like, well, I don't know if the New York Times I think they think they're actually just observing life and coming up with clever things. I don't think they're making it up.

9:35 They don't think. Yeah, I would agree. I I'll tell you what, our daughter Delany uh headed back to law school and it's too bad cuz it's great fun having her here. Um but uh hanging around to any extent with a 20some with a 20some's metabolism is just bad. It's just bad and and just not good. And and I'm not strong enough to resist. She just she can like pick up a key lime pie on the way home from work and introduce that into the house and you know, do you want to go out for a latte, Dad? Why don't we have a cinnamon roll? We're having dinner in 3 hours.

10:13 Yeah, I know, but I'm hungry and blah blah blah. It just it never ends. The other end of it for old people and I go to my parents house. They just don't eat. They're old now. They just don't need to eat. And does anybody eat?

10:27 Wow. So, it's past that whole the whole get together revolves around food now to being not so much

10:35 cuz I know that's where I am in my life. The amount of food I need to live is so tiny. It's shocking really. It it always makes me think there's we're surrounded by billboards and ads and reviews and discussions and and and all the accutrants that go with it with the new Yeah, we got to have the KitchenAid mixer, all the different things. You need so little food in your life to get by. It should be a minor thing in your life.

11:00 Oh man, I'm just about to spend a lot of money on a grill and you had to say that. Now I feel bad about it.

11:05 What kind of grill? What's it going to do? A good grill. A nice grill. I got that little hobo one that's on the cement.

11:12 Yeah, your homeless guy. Little mini Weber. I have to get down on my knees to use it.

11:17 It's a It's a Weber with three B's. It's Chinese knockup. It did cost like I think it cost $8 and half dollars. I got it on sale.

11:26 Get it in timu or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. So your girl's nicer than that. Oh my lord.

11:37 Jack, spend another $10. Get one with legs so I don't have to lay down on the ground cook.

11:42 So you don't have to hold it in your hands. Ow, it hurts so much. Uh, last night for dinner, three grapes. That's all I had.

11:51 There you go. So yeah, you're right, Jeff. We don't need much food. Well, I guess that's it.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Checking In With Crazy People"?

Armstrong (Host), Getty (Host), Katie (Guest), Delany (Guest).

What is "Checking In With Crazy People" about?

The discussion focuses on a trending, unconventional dating scenario where a woman uses a dating app, Hinge, to have a man build IKEA furniture for her on their first date, raising questions about dating dynamics and expectations. The conversation critiques the perceived absurdity of modern dating practices while highlighting the cultural differences between urban and rural perspectives.

What is mentioned in this Armstrong & Getty episode?

9 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Armstrong and Getty, diet culture, Hinge, gluttony, fat acceptance, Delany. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Checking In With Crazy People"?

The episode runs 12 min; the transcript is about 2,079 words in 48 timestamped sections.

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