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Today’s episode is about three things America now does exceptionally well: making basic life more expensive, making normal human interaction feel weirdly transactional, and taking places that used to be fun and optimizing the fun right out of them.
We start with gas prices climbing past four dollars a gallon again, because apparently, even leaving your house now requires a small act of financial courage.
Then we get into one of the bleakest little signs of the times: people in New York paying for friendship-making services.
Not dating.
Not networking.
Friendship. Just a nice efficient monetization of loneliness.
And then there’s Vegas.
That one got me.
I used to love Vegas. Before I had kids, I went twice a year. And what made Vegas great was the old deal: they were absolutely going to take your money, but they made it feel worth it. Cheap room. Cheap food. Cheap drinks. A little fake glamour. A little smoke in the air. A little bad judgment. That was the pact.
Now it feels like they broke it.
Vegas used to be a place where a regular person could feel rich for a weekend. Now it feels like regular people are just in the way of the people they actually want.
So that’s today’s 3 in 3.
Gas. Friends. Vegas.
A tidy little portrait of a country that has decided everything should cost more and feel worse.
Let me know what you think after you listen.
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