Yurts, Geography, and the Supreme Court

March 23, 2026·1 hr 2 min·5 clips

Em describes using duct tape to bind in Florida heat, linking it to Supreme Court rulings on trans youth.

Hayes opens by describing their software engineering work and Em explains a math internship centered on LaTeX typesetting, which Hayes compares to Microsoft Word from hell. Em announces she is moving to France for a doctoral program, prompting mock civic mourning. The hosts record from Boston Public Library early on a Thursday, a detail they acknowledge explains the podcast energy. Hayes recounts being clocked as an improv comedian by a stranger and reflects on whether performing improv should carry some appropriate shame. A Five Below shopping trip leads to a riff on self-checkout and child theft, including a story about Hayes and their brother accidentally stealing gift cards from a grocery store at age four. Em reveals plans to spend the Fourth of July playing the cooperative card game Hanabi for hours with a German friend rather than anything patriotic. Hayes announces tentative plans to apply to law school, citing strong verbal skills and an interest in dressing sharply in court, while allowing they might pivot to teaching law if practice feels wrong. A discussion of geography exposes significant gaps in both hosts knowledge of the world map, prompting a live attempt to name countries from memory and a mutual surprise that France and Germany share a border. The yurt rental in Vermont becomes a centrepiece: Hayes is going glamping with their best friend and plans to take psilocybin mushrooms in a meaningful dose for the first time. Hayes explains a general avoidance of hallucinogens due to family mental health history and recounts a bad weed experience in college involving full-body twitching under a weighted blanket while friends retrieved Taco Bell. Em describes how chronic pain led them to daily edibles and frames the underappreciated psychological toll of living in constant pain. Both hosts then discuss binding - the practice of compressing breast tissue - and the unsafe measures each resorted to before proper resources were available, including duct tape and saran wrap in Florida heat. Hayes connects these experiences directly to a recent Supreme Court ruling they argue restricts trans youth access to gender-affirming care, contending that without legal access to proper binders and surgery, trans people are pushed toward dangerous self-administered alternatives. Em describes how constant binding constrained their high school social life, blocking sports participation, after-school plans, and certain relationships.

As heard by us

LaTeX jokes, a Vermont yurt, and a plan to game search results keep the banter moving.

Good Sports keeps a math intern's week moving through LaTeX, teaching, and the mismatch between what looks simple and what actually takes hours to explain.

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Why you'd press play

You want math, yurts, and one petty metadata prank in the same breath.

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