Ep. 110: "The Dignity Police"
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Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
John: Oh man, take a look at my life, I'm a lot like you.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: He was a sports writer.
Merlin: What?
Merlin: Neil Young's father, he was a Canadian sports writer.
John: I didn't know that.
Merlin: Yes, yeah.
Merlin: I'm not sure why he would tell his dad about needing someone to love the whole night through, but...
Merlin: It's Canada.
Merlin: They're very disclosing people.
John: Hard to know what you're supposed to tell your dad.
John: That Neil Young, though, I think about him a lot.
John: Yeah, what do you think about him?
John: Well, you know, he is one of those.
John: He is very affecting.
John: I totally agree.
John: He is one of the songwriters in my very small canon of people that I just go, whatever you do is okay by me.
John: And I think I was embarrassed a little bit when he became sort of a grunge cause celeb or a celeb.
Merlin: Was he already in your pantheon at that point?
Merlin: Oh, from the moment I heard him.
John: Yeah.
John: You know, like back in the 70s, I was like, what is that keeming sound?
Merlin: I used to have really mixed feelings when I was at that kind of high school age when I first was exposed to a lot of Neil Young.
Merlin: I had mixed feelings because I would think every song he plays on acoustic guitar sounds so pretty, and then he does that weird one-note guitar solo, and now I think it's pretty genius.
John: Yeah, I thought – I wasn't so sure about the one-note guitar solo, but –
John: Then I started playing one-note guitar solos, and they are great fun to play.
John: Really, really fun.
John: But yeah, you know, the moment of real conversion for me with Neil Young was 1980, maybe?
John: And I mean, I'd grown up hearing his music, of course, all of the classics.
Merlin: Of AOR tracks.
John: Right, but 1980...
John: I got hip to his weird rockabilly record.
John: Oh yeah, everybody's rocking.
John: And I liked it.
John: I liked it just sort of instinctively.
John: That was back in the $1 record bin era that we've talked about before.
Merlin: It's like trans and landing on water were in the nice price bin pretty much until there stopped being a nice price bin.
John: And that's the thing, trans.
John: So I got the Rockabilly record and I was like, I like this.
John: And then I got trans.
John: And I liked it.
John: And it's so different.
John: Really?
John: And of course, I liked Reactor.
John: That was one of my first ever dollar bin records.
John: And so I was like, this guy makes everything.
John: He makes all kinds of music.
John: And I like it all.
John: Yeah.
John: I really liked Trans.
John: The vocoder stuff connected with me when I was a little kid.
Merlin: Do you have the backstory on that?
John: Yeah, trying to communicate with his son.
John: Isn't that interesting?
John: It's really fascinating.
John: But so by the time Pearl Jam was like wheeling him out, or he was wheeling that out.
Merlin: I imagine him coming out on a supermarket dolly.
Merlin: Oh, my, my, my.
John: I was like, ah, come on.
John: This is gross.
John: Like, I don't want to... This isn't fun.
John: Although, when I think about it now, Neil Young was probably the age then that I am now.
John: Isn't that bizarre?
John: During the Pearl Jam era.
John: And it was like, oh, why is the old man up there?
Merlin: I hate thinking those thoughts.
Merlin: He's very interesting to me because there's...
Merlin: There's certain songwriters and performers that elicit very strong feelings from people.
Merlin: And I think of people like, I guess, Dylan in particular, I guess, maybe Paul McCartney to an extent.
Merlin: But people who – people have extremely strong feelings about like this one record they did is probably one of the greatest things ever made and this other record they did is like the worst thing I've ever heard.
Merlin: And you can hold both those thoughts in your head.
Merlin: And, you know, the thing about Neil Young, like Dylan or like, you know, I guess like Springsteen to an extent, but whoever, whoever you would count in this pantheon, people who are contrarians, especially Dylan.
Merlin: I love a contrarian.
Merlin: I love somebody who's like, you think you got me figured out?
Merlin: You don't got me figured out.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: And then second, like continuing along those lines to just be unflappable about doing whatever they want to do next and just going, well, that's, this is a thing.
Merlin: It's going to be a thing about the Iraq war and it's going to be a lot of people singing in a barn.
Merlin: That's just the thing.
John: It's going to be looking here.
John: Neil Young was 45.
John: My current age in 1990.
John: Oh, you're kidding.
John: Literally.
John: He was the age I am now when he came out with this notes for you.
John: Is that right?
John: It was just like, oh, what's up, Gramps?
Merlin: That's the one, the title track is the advertising song.
Merlin: And then, oh, I guess, is Rockin' in the Free World the title track from that album?
John: I think so.
John: So no, that's 1989, right?
John: Well, so what?
Merlin: 89, around that time, was when he came out with that Nutty Crazy Horse record.
John: He was literally younger than me when he wrote Rockin' in the Free World.
Merlin: That seems like some kind of sci-fi portal thing.
John: That doesn't seem possible.
John: No, he was already profoundly classic artist.
Merlin: You think about it, he was in Buffalo Springfield when he was, I think, like 19.
Merlin: Ugh.
Merlin: Now I hate him.
Merlin: Well, see, that's how Neil works.
John: I know.
Merlin: But I'm telling you, man, getting that, what's it called, that triple album that he had of Greatest Hits came out in like 76 or something like that.
John: Yeah, the one with the guitar case.
Merlin: The one with the guitar case on the cover.
Merlin: But the thing was, he was pretty famous by the time he was like 23.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: On the Beach?
Merlin: How do you feel about On the Beach?
Merlin: I'm not super familiar with it.
Merlin: Is that from that trilogy?
Merlin: I know Tonight's the Night, and I don't know On the Beach well.
Merlin: But every one of them is a little journey.
Merlin: A little journey, that's right.
Merlin: When you put it on, you open your heart to it, and there's something amazing on every one of them.
John: Open your heart with a key.
John: I like that.
John: One is such a lonely number.
Merlin: Comes a time when you're dreaming.
Merlin: And then that awesome Lot of Love song.
Merlin: The guy does it all.
John: That's a nice song.
John: I was thinking yesterday about the Beatles.
Merlin: Yeah, I was too.
John: And I was realizing that all that, well, two things, all of that music hall stuff that Paul McCartney was putting in the later Beatles that Lennon was so mad about being corny.
Merlin: It's granny music.
John: Granny music.
John: That music was essentially the same distance from them as the Beatles are from us.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: That's one of my favorite games to play, as you know.
Merlin: Well, yeah.
Merlin: I like to play that.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: There should be an official name for it.
Merlin: We should just call it the Beatles game, which is to take whatever that – let's call it seven years, right?
Merlin: So their first major British hits were in, I think, 63.
John: Yeah, seven years.
Merlin: Seven years.
Merlin: So that's almost the age of my daughter.
Merlin: That's 2007 until now.
Merlin: There's cheese in my refrigerator that's seven years old.
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Merlin: We could not do it without them, but also, yeah, right.
John: The Beatles game, but it's also like the Beatles were X years old when X. Oh, I know.
John: I know.
John: And then, but the other thing, when I started thinking about the musical business and I realized that I was, I was talking to our good friend, Sean Nelson about this.
John: Lennon was so upset at how, at how McCartney was so cheesy, so corny.
John: But McCartney's corniness is the element that makes the later Beatles music so sinister sounding.
John: Maxwell Silverhammer.
John: I mean, well, even Martha, My Dear, it feels like... I mean, that's a song... I mean, Paul McCartney is corny.
John: That's a song he wrote about his dog in the style of his grandmother's music, but...
John: When it comes on the stereo the first time, you're like, what are these madmen doing?
John: It was the element that, I mean, way more than your blues, it was the Martha My Dear that made that record seem like
John: Like it was insane and that they were insane and that this was the... That it was an acid-drenched psycho future.
Merlin: Yeah, or like George on Piggies.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Like beyond mannered.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And how Lennon in his narrowness could have failed to see... Failed to appreciate...
John: that his idea of what avant-garde was, namely, you know, just like the most obvious version of challenging, as Sean said, you know, Yoko, basically.
John: Like, the very obvious version of avant-garde,
John: outre uh freak freaky stuff and he lennon somehow failed to see that it was it was it was really the juxtaposition of that against this like mccartney like nanny music that makes the beatles still and made them then so scary
John: You know, like the Beatles are still scary in a way.
Merlin: I don't think I don't think Lennon.
Merlin: I mean, I'm not here to dislike John Lennon, but I don't think he would have come up with a lot of that stuff on his own.
Merlin: And as you know, QED, as we discussed before, Paul does not get credit for how much of the banana stuff he brought.
Merlin: especially in their really their amazing years like how much of the stuff was not just his uh facility with like show tune tin pan alley songwriting and knowing how to do interesting turns of a chord i mean john john played blues guitar he was a blues guitar i mean he could play you know he was a great guitar player but paul was the one that had the mind for figuring out what you could do with all that stuff it's just that by himself i think john would just play screeching blues all day long yeah
John: Yeah, right.
John: Well, yeah, right.
John: And he's angry, so he makes angry-sounding music.
John: Yeah, on the nose.
John: Yeah, he's frustrated, so he wrote a frustrated-sounding song.
John: He is feeling sarcastic, so it's a sarcastic song.
John: And it's anybody's guess whether Paul McCartney has any of those emotions.
Mm-hmm.
John: Because he is such a muppet.
Merlin: That's exactly the word I was thinking.
Merlin: How much do you think of that as persona?
Merlin: Because he seems like he's always on.
Merlin: Always on.
John: Yeah.
John: Absolutely always on.
John: Like he wakes up, goes in the bathroom, looks in the mirror and goes, good morning, Louv.
John: And you're just like, fuck you.
John: Just turn it off.
John: But who knows?
John: I mean, this is the thing about, oh my God, here we go.
John: This is the thing about happy that's so insufferable.
Merlin: The analogies?
Merlin: What do you mean?
Merlin: It's an adjective for a chorus, and then there's mostly just a lot of analogies is the lyrics.
Merlin: Like a hexagon wrench without a Volkswagen.
Merlin: I like that song.
Merlin: It's a big hit in our house.
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: My daughter loves it.
Merlin: It's in the Despicable Me Too movie.
John: Oh, we're not talking about the Keith Richards song, Happy.
John: Oh, I'm sorry.
John: I thought you were talking about the guy with the Arby's hat.
Merlin: Oh, the feral.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: No, it would be a long road.
Merlin: Oh, you're talking about...
Merlin: Keep me happy.
Merlin: That's what you're talking about?
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I'll cut all of that out.
Merlin: That's super confusing.
Merlin: I'm sorry, John.
Merlin: You must have thought I had a stroke.
Merlin: Oh, it's okay.
John: I started to get the picture because, you know, I do go on the Internet, so I've heard people talking about it.
Merlin: You must learn about these things on the dark web.
Merlin: You hear about happy.
Merlin: It's out there.
Merlin: Yeah, well, not only that, but... Did they get the Oscars on the dark web?
John: Who knows?
John: Couldn't say.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: Not at liberty to say.
John: I live-tweeted the Grammys this year, not for myself, but under contract for the TalkHouse website.
John: And so I was watching the Grammys...
John: but I had never heard any of the songs.
Merlin: So they're like, it's getting more like that every year for me.
John: Here's the Grammy award goes to Pharaoh and he spelled his name and the song happy.
John: And I was like, wow, amazing.
John: Don't care.
John: Uh, the, the best joke I heard about Pharaoh was that the, that he wears that hat to, uh, to distract us from the fact that he looks like a cartoon ant, uh,
Merlin: Like a Pink Panther style ant?
John: Yeah.
John: You know what?
John: I can't unsee that now.
Merlin: No, but I was even referring... So you're up there in grandpa mode, just tooting away.
Merlin: And then this R&B gal is making a big hit.
Merlin: Oh, look at her.
John: Boy, that dress is sure something.
John: No, I was talking about even more generally the idea of happiness.
John: Oh, you're turboing up.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: Paul McCartney's version of irrepressible, happy go-getterism.
John: You know, he's like a member of Junior Achievement.
John: And, you know, I'm intrinsically suspicious of Happy.
John: Always was.
John: Were you?
John: Are you?
Merlin: Oh, absolutely.
John: Suspicious of happy?
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, for me, it's a little nuanced, but yeah, I mean, I've said this a lot of times, but I am basically suspicious of people.
Merlin: Primarily, I am a little suspicious of people who seem happy all the time, but I'm super suspicious who talk about how happy they are all the time.
Merlin: I think those people are like, talk about a bottle up and explode type situation.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: That's manic.
John: Well, I always come back to that picture of McCartney during the recording of Let It Be, sitting at the mixing desk with his attention fully focused on the knobs, his hands there on the desk,
John: George Martin is relegated to the shadows.
John: Phil Spector is out shooting bitches.
John: McCartney's got, got all of it.
John: You know, he's got Linda's there, all the hangers on, you know, Ringo's sitting in a chair somewhere and Paul's finally in charge and he looks so happy to be there, but also like it's in a way it's where he belongs.
John: Like,
John: It was only radical because that was the first time it had ever happened.
John: that the artist would be self-producing.
John: And now, in light of where we came, like, right, Paul McCartney was the first one, really, to sit down in the... The first one who wasn't an auteur.
John: Or an outsider, yeah.
John: The first pop guy to, like, take the chair and start moving the knobs.
John: And you love him in that picture.
John: You love him in that moment.
John: Even knowing that...
John: lennon is nodding off in the other room having turned to heroin to mask his his seething hatred of paul yoko sitting in george's chair yeah right george i hate that scene so much george is walking up and down the hallway rehearsing his i quit speech he's always going to be the youngest one you know he's always going to be the little kid and you know and and ringo is just like happy to be here
John: But also, like, you get the sense, even Ringo.
Merlin: No, I mean, watch that movie.
Merlin: And this is another reason why, I mean, who knows how much to trust in that movie.
Merlin: But, I mean, it's that, you know, I think Paul gets a bad rap.
Merlin: Because, first of all, I mean, I'm not sure in the pre-Wings era, are there that many songs that you could put out there as a Beatles song that are really just about being happy?
Merlin: I mean, if they are, there's always a little bit of, maybe it's just the John contributions, but there's always a glint of
Merlin: There's cynicism somewhere inside of all of that even on like A Good Day Sunshine or whatever.
Merlin: I mean but it's not like Paul just wrote about being happy.
Merlin: But the thing I just – I can't let this go by is I haven't watched that movie in a while because I actually do find it very difficult to watch.
John: Oh, it's excruciating.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: I mean, I just got the feeling in watching that that he was not trying to be a dick.
Merlin: He was trying really hard to keep the band together and find a way to make it work.
Merlin: Well, he was trying to do that, but he also...
John: Like, as Sean Nelson, ultimate Beatles authority, said so eloquently, like, the competition between John and Paul took the shape of John, you know, like, sneering at Paul.
John: But Paul's response was like, ooh, how many sons have you got?
John: Ooh, five.
John: Oh, that's good, good.
John: I've got 25.
John: like but he was i mean john was practically i mean he would wasn't there points where he was just whispering to yoko he wasn't even speaking to them oh yeah no john is the worst yeah but he was he was not trying very hard he wasn't trying very hard but you know like oh think about in your think about in your relationships or your work situations when a thing is dying or when a thing is like really broken and the one guy who's like cheerfully trying to keep it all together yeah
John: By doing all the work and being the cheerleader, the worst guy.
Merlin: Yeah, and especially because, and this is not just about Paul, but whoever that character is, and it has been me, it's also that that person is clearly ignoring the vibe that everybody else is feeling, which is that we don't get along.
Merlin: And you're not acknowledging that, and that's not making it better.
John: No, that's crazy making.
Merlin: Right.
John: So, yeah, Paul, boy...
John: Oh, Paul.
John: I just can't.
John: I just don't want to revisit thinking about Paul McCartney anymore.
John: All the many, many, many hours of my life.
John: Wondering about what's going on inside Paul's head.
Merlin: I don't – I am – you know, I remember when I did finally see Let It Be and I don't know.
Merlin: I've never been a fan of Yoko Ono's work.
Merlin: I've always thought she seemed like kind of an annoying personality, and I very much – I have to say I'm not proud of this, but I bought into the idea that she was a very divisive factor in the band.
Merlin: But what a lot of people who are bigger Beatles fans than me pointed out that I get now – we talk about a funny age thing.
Merlin: How many years were the Beatles –
Merlin: What's the word I'm looking for?
Merlin: Functional.
Merlin: And I don't want to just say happy, but I mean, you think about, even if you go up through, say, Revolver, even by Revolver, John is starting to withdraw.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: They're all pretty high a lot of the time, which is probably kind of fun.
Merlin: But I doubt that Sgt.
Merlin: Pepper was that much of an exciting group effort every day.
Merlin: They all talked about this at one point, why it was so great to do Happiness is a Warm Gun.
Merlin: That's the song that made them want to do...
Merlin: yeah let it be they wanted to like bring back the fact that we can rock out as a band because it was the first time forever they'd actually recorded kind of written and recorded a song together and played it together because everything up till then had all just been pieces and parts and they didn't even want to be in the room so the funny age thing you talk about of those seven years how many of those years were they like maybe two and even during those two years they're exhausted having to travel and play live from 59 though
Merlin: like the right the amount of time they were really up inside each other's butts yeah yeah i mean i'm i'm playing fast and loose but only because like the time that they were in the national and somewhat definitely in the european consciousness would be 62 63 yeah so 65 it was already all the beatles they're on top of the world they're like they got to be the happiest guys in the world but they didn't have a minute to themselves they were just constantly they were putting out three albums a year
Merlin: Oh, I know.
Merlin: And Shaggin' Birds.
Merlin: Shaggin' Birds.
Merlin: Look at that Beatles for Sale record.
Merlin: They do not look like happy campers.
John: No.
Merlin: And the songs reflect that.
Merlin: They get more cynical.
Merlin: They get a little darker.
John: When you were 26, were you a happy camper?
John: No.
Merlin: I don't know if my camping has ever been all that happy.
John: I was not a happy camper at 26.
John: It's a terrible time.
John: It's a really terrible time.
John: 26 hard times.
Merlin: Oh, it is.
Merlin: It's funny because it's... I mean, nothing can be worse than puberty in a lot of ways.
Merlin: But there's something peculiarly...
Merlin: Something that makes you – I think most people probably feel more like a failure for one reason or another by the time they're 27 than any other time.
Merlin: 27 is that magic age where everybody dies.
Merlin: It's the quarter-life crisis.
Merlin: There's all those Saturn's return, all those different things that people have names for this.
Merlin: All I know is that like everybody feels like some part of their life is completely fucked up when they're 27.
Merlin: I'm never going to make enough money.
Merlin: I'm never going to find somebody who loves me for who I am.
Merlin: I'm never going to make the great – I'm never going to be a millionaire before I'm 30.
Merlin: All those different things.
Merlin: Around 27, 25 to 28 is when those things really start to hit you.
Merlin: I think it's the first really incontrovertible wave of I can't do everything the way I want anymore.
Merlin: The doors are even very, very quietly, gently at a distance starting to close and you first start becoming aware of it.
Merlin: Even if you're in, even if you're really successful.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: This is a hobby horse of mine, but I've talked about it in other places a lot.
Merlin: You talked about some other podcast?
Merlin: Maybe.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Maybe to myself.
Merlin: But, you know, it's really easy to look at anybody else and think that they're living the life of Riley.
Merlin: And it's or that they let's put it this way, especially and this will bring us back to Roderick on the line.
Merlin: It's really easy to look at anybody else who has something that you don't and think that they first of all, they probably got it by guile or theft in a way that you you deserve to have more.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Privilege, if you like.
Merlin: And and everybody else has that and you don't.
Merlin: And there are completely – who could feel sympathy for John Lennon in 1966?
Merlin: I mean when you look at it from outside.
Merlin: But think about – imagine like having to like – you can't even walk around in public and when you do, there's photos of you on every magazine and about like your life.
Merlin: Like that's hell.
Merlin: But yeah, I don't know.
Merlin: You think about that.
Merlin: I mean what do you think they were – I mean because playing in Hamburg doesn't sound like a cakewalk.
Merlin: They were playing like – weren't they at some points playing eight hours a day?
John: Yeah, but I mean, you know, that's the great thing about... They had the speed back then.
John: Yeah, it's a great thing about being 19 and out in the world is that those doors have not closed.
John: They are so far in the distance.
John: They seem like... It seems like you're immortal and you'll live forever.
John: And so that kind of hard... I mean, you know, because of my dark web work, I'm in contact with...
John: You know, some people in their early 20s, let's say.
John: Are you using Tor?
John: And that's not really something I can talk about.
John: Need to know information.
John: And I, you know, and in a lot of ways, like, I'm always surprised by how smart they are and how thoughtful they are.
John: But every once in a while, I do have to sit through a, like, one or two day long journey.
John: Thumb sucking episode where they're like, God, I can't believe it.
John: I got to pay my rent and I got to fucking God.
John: We had to work all day and I just just not fair.
Merlin: I think that pretty much every day.
John: Well, I know it, but I mean... I don't say it.
John: The reason you don't say it is that you don't expect anybody to be surprised.
John: And one of the fantastic things about being 19 is that you can...
John: when four or five things happen all at once, you really do feel like it's the first time it's ever happened.
John: It's the first time anybody ever had to, like they know, they know enough to know that everybody has to go to work or that everybody, sometimes their car breaks down or that everybody's mom is a bitch sometimes.
John: But when, you know, when four of those things happen at once,
John: That's when the 19-year-old mind, when its lack of experience is revealed because they're just, like, so shocked and, like, want to come out to the front of their house and shout, like, I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore because who has ever had to be at work
John: which is already unfair, and their car won't start, and their mom's being a bitch, and they don't have any money, and their clothes don't fit anymore, or whatever.
John: And you just go like, right, well, everybody, and also everybody all the time has experienced that.
John: But that feeling of like, I mean, I remember being 19 and
John: Enduring what now seems like an astonishing level of discomfort and hurt.
John: And being, at the time, unable to distinguish that from what seemed like an equal amount of discomfort and hurt that it turns out was just normal life.
John: Right?
Merlin: Like, I was sleeping... Did it make you feel sheltered, like you had been sheltered?
John: No, no.
John: I mean, I definitely had been sheltered.
John: But the problem for me was that I had no... I mean, I was sleeping outside in city parks.
John: And that seemed less or equal... That seemed either less difficult or equally difficult to just finding or figuring out how to use a washing machine.
John: So the difficulty of the two things, I had no way to tell them apart.
John: And it turns out now, from where I sit, sleeping outside night after night in a city park seems really hard and dangerous and uncomfortable.
John: Yeah, risky.
John: Yeah.
John: Whereas using a washing machine is not hard at all and also not even onerous.
John: It's just what you do.
John: But at 19, I couldn't distinguish the difficulty between the two things because using a washing machine was completely alien to me.
John: My mom had always washed my clothes until I left the house.
John: And that...
John: I imagine them in Hamburg and it's like, yeah, sure, they're playing four sets a night and they're barely sleeping.
John: But that's no more or less difficult.
John: than figuring out how to work an automat or whatever.
John: The simplest thing, like taking a letter down to the post office, it all seems difficult and also all seems easy.
Merlin: Everything's hard until you learn how to do it.
Merlin: I mean, that's, that sounds, it's really facile, but it's true.
Merlin: Um, everything seems possible because you haven't gotten it and it may be overdue for you to get it, but also everything will seem hard and equally hard.
Merlin: And especially if it all comes at once, I mean, that's overwhelming.
John: The, the, the idea that the idea of cleaning my house still after all these years, I have never resigned myself to it.
John: Every time, it seems like a new... The indignation is fresh.
John: Every time of just like, oh my God, seriously?
John: I have to do this again?
John: It's such a waste.
John: It's such a wasted effort.
John: Especially when you have a kid.
John: And that's real.
John: I connect immediately back to the 16-year-old me that was just like, it just gets dirty again.
Merlin: And so many of those others... So does your butt.
Merlin: But there's value.
John: There's value in doing that.
John: The thing is, washing your butt is fun.
John: There's pleasure to be had.
John: Nice diversion.
John: But cleaning your bathroom is not fun.
John: The people that really early on in life accepted, not just accepted cleaning the bathroom, but found a way to make cleaning the bathroom part of their normal life, I guess, with holding on to no...
John: Like resentment about it.
John: I do admire them.
John: That seems like a thought technology.
Merlin: Oh, absolutely.
Merlin: And excuse me, to me, the easy analogy, not to say that I'm great at this, but the easy analogy is brushing your teeth.
Merlin: Brushing your teeth or, for that matter, taking a leak can be a good example of something where you're like.
John: I think you're pretty good at taking a leak.
John: I'm pretty good.
John: You may not be great at brushing your teeth.
Merlin: I'm pretty efficient at it, I would say.
Merlin: But if you've reached the pro level of brushing your teeth, you don't really have to think about it.
Merlin: You don't have to plan for it.
Merlin: Worst case scenario, you get a new toothbrush and new toothpaste sometimes.
Merlin: But it isn't something where you have to wake up every day and ponder whether that's a thing you're going to do, unless it is.
John: Or talk yourself through...
Merlin: Or making coffee is another one because you kind of look forward to that.
Merlin: But I mean that moves out in concentric circles from that.
Merlin: Then you get to stuff like I got to put gas in the car.
Merlin: It's a pain in the ass to have to keep putting gas in the car.
Merlin: But there's dependencies.
Merlin: You got to put the gas in the car because the car is what gets you to work so that you can buy toothpaste.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But I agree with you, because there's some things that everybody else seems to have on the brushing their teeth level that I've never gotten to, and they might as well be magical to me.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: People who actually do stuff like rotate their tires and stuff like that.
John: I was at a gas station the other day.
John: Or clean their house.
John: And a guy walks in.
John: I'm waiting in line, you know.
John: And the guy ahead of me in line is really decked out in some very, like...
John: He is, he is repping that he is kind of a fly guy.
John: He's got very white trainers on.
John: He's wearing a kind of like track suit, very clean track suit, like a fedora of some kind.
John: He is, you know, he is presenting.
John: He has come correct.
Yeah.
John: And he's waiting in line at the gas station.
John: And then it's his turn.
John: And he says to the guy behind the counter, he's like, five on two.
John: Pretty confrontational.
John: Not confrontational, but the tone is, I'm a big wheel.
John: Let's get this moving.
John: Five on two.
John: And he turns and walks out.
John: It took me a second to realize that what he meant was $5 worth of gas on pump two.
John: And I was like, gas is $4.45 a gallon.
John: $5 worth of gas.
John: Really?
John: Yeah.
John: really big wheel he's just topping it off and and i get so his mom's mad if he doesn't return it full five on two so i walk out and i walk past and he you know and again i see him now pumping this one dot one dollar or one gallon worth of gas into the car and he is completely correct like really really uh
John: Steam pressed, this guy.
John: Clean.
John: Dignified.
John: Yeah, but the car is like an 89 Tercel.
John: One of the back windows is held in with electrical tape.
John: And in the driver's seat is his girlfriend, who clearly is working as either a waitress at a Sherry's or...
John: as a, you know, like she, she is younger than he is.
John: And has that kind of hairy dandruffy look of somebody who maybe is sleeping in her car while she's getting back on her feet.
John: And I was like, sir, you are not correct.
John: You have not come correct.
John: Maybe personally you are correct.
John: Personally, your style is taken care of.
John: But there are some things you should be taking care of in advance of your style.
John: Some of that might be that maybe some of the work you could do is replace that back window in the car or some other, other thing other than whatever kind of like it just, it was a, it was a, it was a, a classic moment of like, Hmm, if you are pimping, um,
John: You've got to be pimping in a larger orbit than just... You've got to pimp correct.
John: Yeah, pimp a little bit further out than the tips of your shoes.
Merlin: I guess so.
Merlin: I've been happy to draw those kinds of contrasts over a long time, but I don't know.
Merlin: One of my thought technologies is trying to get...
Merlin: A little broader about who's allowed to have dignity.
Merlin: Because, you know, in some cases, not because of you in this case necessarily, but in some cases, like, I feel like there's like these dignity police out there.
Merlin: People who are like out there actively policing, like who's allowed to not hate themselves today.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And it's like, you know, you're pretty fat for somebody who's happy.
Merlin: You need to check yourself.
Merlin: And it's just something – it's another one of those – it's a very tertiary symptom of our national illness these days.
Merlin: But I feel like there is a lot of like – like there's this idea –
Merlin: There's an idea in mindfulness, in Buddhism, that it's one thing to feel bad, and then it's another thing to feel like it's not okay for you to feel bad, and that's where you get fucked up.
Merlin: Because everybody... No, no, it's not... But I think it's an interesting thought technology, is to think like, you know, I'm always going to have problems, I'm always going to have stress, but when am I allowed to still feel okay, even though I've got problems?
Merlin: No, I'm not saying the guy should...
John: not well and i and i take your i take your comment uh the dignity police i take i take that uh very well i mean that i think you make a good point and in reflecting on it my beef with this guy was that his five on the tone of his five on two was hey little man behind the cash register right get to work because i need five five on two like he was not if he was in if he was a uh
John: If he was dressed to the nines and was like, my good sir, I can only afford $5 of gas and I'm grateful to be on this planet.
John: Pretty, pretty.
John: Would thou credit me $5?
John: If he spoke like Ben Acker, hello, I would like some gas from you, please.
John: Right.
John: But instead, you know, like he was fronting.
John: Oh, God.
John: And his, you know, and having come correct, there was an element of this front of like, I'm a big shot, get out of the way.
John: And then you get out to the car and you're like, oh, right.
Merlin: No, the attitude, I mean, the attitude's excrucible.
Merlin: That's inexcusable to act that way.
John: I agree with you about my tendency to be part of this larger cultural problem of...
John: of just walking around in a, just in a constant, like basically a Genesis machine of judgment.
Merlin: genesis device of just like let me clarify i'm not saying i don't do it it's it's something where i mean unless i am mindful about it i'm out there making little micro decisions about everything that lamp pulls stupid what a dumb place for a stop sign what's up with that guy's hair like that's that's my mo unless i catch myself oh my god if i i could do an entire television show of an entire television show called what a dumb place for a stop sign
John: Like, I have that conversation out loud with myself every day.
John: What the fuck is that stop sign doing there?
Merlin: Who the fuck...
Merlin: Well, and I could fill in your must-see Thursday by coming in at 830 with why the fuck is there not a stop sign here?
Merlin: Well... Well, there are... No, but there are places in my neighborhood.
Merlin: You know how people drive in my neighborhood.
Merlin: And there are places where, like, you know, there's that little park south of our house where the streets kind of terminate right where the park starts.
Merlin: There are no stop signs.
Merlin: At the end of the downhill avenue heading toward the park, there are no stop signs.
Merlin: There are also no stop signs on the cross street going across.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Merlin: And somebody died last week.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Somebody got hit by a taxi last week.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: Because that's just the thing.
Merlin: You know, stop signs are costly.
John: Well, there's an intersection like that right by my house where the arterial, not to use technical terms here.
Merlin: Is this the one where you got in the fight with the Serbian guy and he made a gesture at you?
John: Yes, same one.
John: The arterial turns, and there is a spur off of the arterial that goes exactly one block.
John: There are eight houses down there with a grand total of 22 people.
John: How many times have you ever seen somebody go in that direction?
John: Well, and that's the thing.
John: I can count the number of times.
John: It's five times in seven years.
John: In the meantime, the turn is, you know, there's 700 cars a day make this turn.
John: But the turn requires that they go across, you know, like go out into what would be oncoming traffic if that was a through road.
John: But what's amazing to me is that those 20 people who live down that spur road, and you see them do it, like they drive...
John: 40 miles an hour through that intersection without looking left or right because they're asserting the fact that they have the, because their street is straight.
John: The direction they're going in is straight.
John: So therefore they don't need to look.
John: You should look, you should look out for them.
John: There's no sign of any kind, no yield sign.
John: And so they feel like they have the right of way.
John: And every time it happens, I look and I'm like, you may technically have the right of way.
John: If there was an accident and a cop was here, the cop would have very little choice but to say, well, this person was driving straight.
John: And so it's the person who's turning who has the responsibility.
John: But it's kind of a blind corner.
John: And what I want to say to each one of these people, I want to go down and leave a flyer on every doorstep on that one block street.
John: The fact that you technically have the right-of-way does not change anything.
John: It does not mean that you live in a bubble of safety.
John: The law is not going to protect you from causing an accident, and it would be you causing an accident to go hurtling through this.
Merlin: Like I tell my daughter, when you're dead, it doesn't matter his right.
John: Right.
John: And I got into a confrontation with somebody.
John: We might have even talked about it.
John: Confrontation with somebody where I was backing into a parking spot on a busy street.
John: And the guy comes and whacks the back of my car because he decided he was crossing mid-block at that point.
John: And as I'm backing into the parking spot, checking my left mirror, checking my rear view mirror, checking the side mirror, looking out the back window, I failed to also account for the fact that a pedestrian might decide to cross behind a car that's parking.
John: And he was upset because in his world, pedestrians have the right of way.
Merlin: Well, they do have the right of way unless they're breaking the fucking law.
Merlin: Well, but in Seattle, there is this.
Merlin: You can cross in the middle of a street and then hit somebody's car.
Merlin: That's kind of lame.
John: It's very confusing, the law in Seattle, because technically, I think, or rather the common understanding among pedestrians in Seattle is that they have the ultimate right of way.
John: I think that's just the pope.
John: Well, and every pedestrian in Seattle believes he or she is the pope.
John: And in the many years that I didn't have a car, I walked around Seattle with a very imperial sense that the pedestrian was God in Seattle.
John: And you see it.
John: It's very confusing to people from other places because cars will often stop to let a pedestrian cross.
John: In the mid-block, in the middle of a busy street in the peak of the day.
John: Like, somebody's just standing there on the side of the road and looking around.
John: Not even looking like they want to cross the street.
John: Just standing there looking around.
John: And a Seattle driver will come to a stop and wait for this person to indicate what their plan is.
John: Right.
John: Right.
John: And it's just like... So that is part of the culture here.
Merlin: That's good culture.
Merlin: It is.
Merlin: Especially if it encourages eye contact about what's going to happen next.
John: It's fantastic, but the problem is it is not universally practiced.
John: By either side?
John: Yeah, and the law is... I think the law is that if you're standing on the sidewalk, cars can go.
John: But if you step into the street...
John: Looking like you're going to cross you actually the cars actually do have to yield to you.
John: The only people who routinely do not practice this are the police.
John: Like you, I, multiple times.
John: And my mom has written a thousand angry letters to the editor.
John: She's never published, but you step into the, into the crosswalk, look, you know, trying to make eye contact with the oncoming car.
John: And if it's a cop, they telltale of room.
John: Yeah.
John: They just blow through, blow through without, you know, you know, we get that here, you know, because they're very important people, the police.
John: And yeah,
John: they're probably on their way to something important with their lights off.
John: Yeah.
John: With their lights off and like, you know, there's their, their, their tie loose or whatever.
John: They're, they're on their way to, they're on their way to their break.
John: Anyway,
John: So within Seattle culture, and many, many, many, many, many times, I would walk out into the street, cause a driver to need to not stand on it, but break when he was not anticipating breaking.
John: And then as I'm walking across, I'm just eyeballing him.
John: Like, because I was 26 and I didn't understand how hard it was to wash your clothes every day.
John: And what I did understand was that if he were to touch me with his bumper, there would be a problem and it would be his problem.
John: But now as a driver, I encounter on a fairly regular basis people with a similar attitude who are just mistaken about – they may not be mistaken that if this went to trial –
John: that they would prevail, but they are mistaken in thinking that they are protected from injury and that they aren't, like, causing a problem, like a major problem for the city by acting like they're bulletproof and acting like the, you know, like, if a driver has to, like...
John: skid to avoid hitting you because you decided that this was the moment you wanted to you wanted to assert pedestrian predominance or whatever preeminence you're it's not a safe situation right so I see that a lot and I and it's just on the list of lectures that I want to give when I get when I finally install the police bullhorn in my car
Merlin: It's one of the reasons no one should be allowed to drive until they're 30 because hormones are going to lead you to do a lot of dumb stuff.
Merlin: Oh, this is a good plan.
John: We've never talked about this plan.
Merlin: Well, I think I'd love to dovetail with you on this because I think I have a pretty exhaustive and persuasive theory about how the pedestrian and the motorist might be able to get along better.
Merlin: It's pretty punitive on all sides, let me assure you.
John: You have to wait until you're 30 to get a driver's license.
Merlin: You've got to practice privately for the 14 years preceding that.
Merlin: You have to go somewhere, you pay, you're on a track, you're in a controlled environment, there's a gun tower, and you have to show that you can drive like a gentleman.
John: And then at 60 years old, you have to start, or no, let's say, yeah, let's say 60.
John: At 60 years old, we're making the wheat thins.
John: At 60, you have to start going to quarterly, like passing quarterly tests, agility tests too.
John: Like maybe you have to do like an obstacle course.
John: And you give pop quizzes.
John: People just show up near your house and test you out.
John: And then at 70, it goes to once a month.
John: Right.
John: And then at 75, they just take your keys away and you're riding on the old people bus.
Merlin: I'm a very defensive pedestrian in the same way that we were taught to be defensive drivers, which means I just – I take it very seriously and especially, I have to say, when I'm walking around with my kid because there's – this is super boring.
Merlin: You can cut all this out.
Merlin: Well, you know, our neighborhood is all – pretty much there's tons of four-way stops, which means, as you know – Which I'm opposed to.
Merlin: Well, here's the problem.
Merlin: If you put five stop signs more or less in a row, you know what that means.
Merlin: People are going to blow through them.
Merlin: No, I'm not a fan of four-way stops, but four-way stops do have an unimpeachable logic to them.
Merlin: Whether it's good for traffic or not is different, but there's no question what you do at a four-way stop.
Merlin: It's really simple.
Merlin: Everybody stops full stop.
Merlin: Whoever got there first –
Merlin: goes right whichever whichever whichever car got there to the stop sign first they go first unless you got there at the same time then the one on the right goes first this is this is a plot right but although although what happens at a four-way stop in america or with a lot of people is they bellingham it a little bit well or they assume that it's a four-way stop so the other three people are going to stop
Merlin: This is why what I'm getting to is the ultimate lesson in civics that I have for my daughter after keep moving and get out of the way is to understand how – what an analogy the four-way stop is for like how we live together.
Merlin: Where it's like if everybody – like nobody loves stopping at a stop sign.
Merlin: It's a real pain because you got to stop your car.
Merlin: You're not getting there as fast.
Merlin: But if everybody stops at that four-way stop and honors those rules that I just laid out, which I think are pretty nearly universal, everything will be fine.
Merlin: The problem is not everybody does that.
Merlin: Still, if 99% of people do that, that means one out of 100 people is going to blow through that stop sign.
Merlin: And you know what?
Merlin: I have to tell you honestly, things will be fine an actually disturbing amount of the time.
Merlin: A sad amount of the time, everything will be fine because there's this one asshole that's not honoring what everybody else does.
Merlin: But because they're honoring it, they're still stopped while this guy flies through it.
Merlin: And he's a special guy.
Merlin: Oh, he's a real special guy.
Merlin: He's a special guy.
Merlin: So nobody will die for a while unless you didn't see them or something.
Merlin: The problem becomes when more than a couple people think that's okay.
John: And that's when people start dying.
Merlin: Two special guys.
Merlin: Yep, exactly.
Merlin: And that's kind of – to me, that's a pretty good lesson in how civics works.
Merlin: But in any case, it does not change the fact that we did the right thing, that we stop here.
Merlin: And you make eye contact.
Merlin: And you look.
Merlin: And you drive and walk in a way that is alert.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And so, like, to me, like, the eye contact thing and the hand gesture thing, the nice hand gesture thing is a really good thing.
Merlin: I'll tell you this, John Roderick.
Merlin: I get to a stop sign.
Merlin: Somebody sees my daughter and I waiting there.
Merlin: Like, I treat myself like a car.
Merlin: I wait.
Merlin: If they're there, I give them the wave and the please go right ahead.
Merlin: And then they give me this.
Merlin: And I say, I don't know.
Merlin: And then they give me that.
Merlin: They get me the more aggressive.
Merlin: Like, no, I'm letting you go.
Merlin: Never, ever take the wave and walk through the crosswalk because they can't see what you see.
John: Yeah.
John: It's just a different show.
John: When people do that, when they're like, no, you go, I always take out my phone and just start looking at Twitter.
Merlin: That's the one time I will make eye contact up to the point when I want them to go, and then I'll act like I don't see them, and I'll stare or I'll talk to my daughter and wait for them to go.
John: Well, then this is why I think that...
John: four-way stops should just be they all four of those stop signs should go away because in a in a situation where it's a four-way stop technically that is a four-way stop it might as well if there's no signal it's a four-way stop that's right and and so what what happens with what happens with the four-way stop is it lulls people into thinking that that some super authority is in charge thanks obama thanks obama
John: That's right.
John: Whereas a four-way uncontrolled intersection, everybody is personally responsible.
John: They know it's the Underdome.
John: They're going to be watching their ass.
John: That's right.
John: And so they may not stop, but everybody is sure as shit looking out going into a four-way uncontrolled intersection.
John: And ultimately, that's your point.
John: That's what they should... What you want is everybody's complete attention.
John: And stop signs create...
John: create an environment where over time people just get lulled into a state of like, duh.
Merlin: I will send you a link to a PDF that I think you will find very interesting.
John: I will not release this publicly.
John: You know I love links to PDFs.
Merlin: Well, especially if it's about the project to try and make our streetcar line faster and more efficient and the changes that they will be making, which are somewhat fascinating and a little bit scary, but I'm glad to see them putting some thought into it.
Merlin: I'm very excited because you're a student of this.
Merlin: You go and you do something a couple dozen times and pretty soon you're like you're like an associate professor of that topic.
Merlin: Right.
John: That's right.
Merlin: You know how to make this thing better.
Merlin: I know how to make the line of Walgreens better.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I could do it.
John: I've got the will to power.
John: Walgreens should pay you a million dollars a year like they're paying Jeb Bush or whatever.
John: Is that right?
John: Well, no, it's not Walgreens.
John: It's Barclays.
John: But somebody's paying Jeb Bush a million dollars a year.
Merlin: I should be on some kind of Walgreens retainer for sure.
Merlin: But I think there might be some traffic calming coming, which is one of those things where, yeah, careful, you get that done right.
Merlin: I just hope we don't lose our stop sign.
Merlin: I like our stop sign.
John: Yeah, traffic calming.
John: I know.
John: It starts to feel like it's the local transportation board's version of public housing where they're trying to solve a problem by creating like 20 more problems.
Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, it's a classic liberal idea.
Merlin: It's almost like, let me help you get a, I know you need work, so I'm going to get you a job working in fast food where you have to own a car to get there and you make $8 an hour.
Merlin: That'll help you.
John: And you have to live an hour and a half away because you can't afford to live in the city.
John: Well, I was walking around the other day and I stopped at a train track to let a train go by.
John: And I was watching the train and I was thinking about the trains in America.
John: And I was like, you know what?
John: The trains in America need some reform.
John: I have a big plan.
John: I have a big picture.
John: I mean, I'm just standing here watching this one train go by.
John: But in the course of that 10 minutes of waiting, I developed a pretty big comprehensive picture of trains in America and what I thought the problems were and how I needed to reform them.
John: them and so i'm out for a walk and now i'm in train reform mode
John: And so I start, you know, so I start daydreaming.
John: I start fantasizing about like, well, what would it take for me to be in a, in a position where my train reforms could really be enacted?
Merlin: Would I be jumping ahead to ask if you could lay out a little bit about the problem space as you see it in, in leading up to your train reform program or sure.
Merlin: Well, I mean, you had, you had, you had eight or 10 minutes to sit there.
John: Yeah.
John: So you're staring at a train and thinking, so the trains, you know, the, the reason that the, the, the trains were built, uh,
John: A big part of it was that the federal government granted the railroads all these enormous land grants that not only enabled them to build the railroads, because of course they needed the land, but...
John: The federal government granted them tremendous land around the railroads that they were, you know, that was their incentive to build the railroads because once they built the railroads, then they were in the land business.
John: That's a pretty good deal.
John: They owned the land around where they were building in a kind of checkerboard path.
Merlin: Wow.
John: You could put the train where you want and then make a town?
John: Well, no, like, we need you to build the train out to San Francisco, but we're not going to expect you to make this a tremendous capital investment and then just be the guys who are trying to make that money back by selling train tickets.
John: Like, I mean, this is the plot of every Western...
John: I mean, every other Western, right?
John: It's like, well, the train's coming through, but they're running it around the town.
John: This is the more racially sensitive, municipally minded Western.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Exactly.
John: This is the Western where the problem is that the judge is corrupt.
John: Not that Natalie Wood was kidnapped.
John: Right.
Right.
John: Anyway, so the railroads became very rich, and became rich off of the public...
John: I mean, basically off of the public.
John: And this is the great thing about federal land grants or federal grazing rights or federal water rights or all these federal grants that were initially made by the government as an incentive for somebody to go turn the Southern California desert into strawberry farms or...
John: Or build a dam or whatever it is the federal government wanted you to do.
John: They paid you in land so often.
John: Land and resources rights.
John: Which people immediately think of as that God gave them those things.
John: Right.
John: And that those land grants and rights to resources and land are something like something age old.
John: And with it, you know, like this whole business of this Yahoo down in in Nevada, who feels like his right to graze cattle on federal land is some some God given right, you know.
John: And it's a very common thing.
John: And so many of the oil companies and mining companies, timber companies, railroads, the farmers, they're all being subsidized by the government, by the federal government.
John: But they act, they believe, not just act, they believe that those grants are...
John: Are something that preceded the government and that the government has no right to administrate, I guess.
John: Anyway, so the so we're in a situation now where the railroad.
Merlin: I mean, like, is it too blunt to say, like, when you say your kid, that's a that's a privilege, not a right.
Merlin: Like they feel like it's a right.
Merlin: Oh, they absolutely – It's not a freebie they were lucky enough to lottery their way into.
Merlin: It's something they should have gotten sooner probably.
John: Yeah, and they can point to the fact that they earned it.
John: The railroads earned it because in 1860, some corporate forefather of theirs built a railroad, although that was a subsidized process too.
John: It's not like any of those guys were actually out –
John: hammering spikes i mean that was like they were paying uh they were paying chinese and and uh italian people like a penny a day to do it like there's the idea that the idea that it's a right is not something that they feel it is they they know it is a right it is they have made sure over the over 150 years that they have enshrined it in the law multiple times that it's a right and
John: So that every congressman they had in their pocket over the last 150 years has introduced a new layer of legislation that enshrines it as a right.
John: Kind of like Disney and copyright.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Sort of.
Merlin: I mean, like, we got this thing that one time, but we should get that forever.
John: Absolutely.
John: And so Burlington Northern or, you know, Santa Fe Railroad or whatever, these companies, which are like corporate entities that have absorbed 25 smaller railroads, and it's all changed hands a thousand times, and it was owned by Monsanto at one point, and, you know, like...
John: Now it's owned by Berkshire Hathaway.
John: But the railroad, you know, their rights to those corridors are involuntary.
John: You know, like, they... Not only do they feel like they have...
John: Like an enshrined right to these enormous corridors right through the center of every American place.
John: But that they allow... They graciously allow, for instance, Amtrak to lease...
John: a certain amount of time on that track, let's say three times a day, they allow Amtrak to run a passenger train from X to Y. But that's it.
John: You can't introduce a fourth train into the mix, no matter how many people are riding the trains or whatever.
John: And the arguments for why it's non-negotiable or why there's no access to that track, I mean, there are 40 arguments, some of them economic, some of them imperial.
Yeah.
John: But no awareness or no sense of, like, what should be true, which is that, yeah, you were granted this stuff a long time ago.
John: And really, ultimately, like, that grant is a grant that we are making to you every day.
John: Based on... Like, we're making a good... We are re-signing that grant to you every day until it is a...
John: Until it doesn't work anymore.
John: Like, there is no reason why we shouldn't, except for the vested interests of a thousand pieces of legislation over the last hundred years, there's no reason why any Secretary of Transportation shouldn't say, you know what, let's revisit this.
John: Let's revisit
John: the rights of way of every railroad in the country and figure out what's the best like we're the the nation is a system the national transportation grid is a system and rather than have 40 different jurisdictions and 40 different little fiefdoms and all these people sitting on boards of directors saying well we can't let another we can't repurpose these tracks or these rights of way because because economics
John: We should be able to look at that grid.
John: And this is the thing about the energy grid, about the highway grid, about all the way that resources are extracted and moved about the country.
John: They're all grids.
John: And they are being administered by all these micro-jurisdictions.
John: And there isn't the will to say, no, you know what?
John: This is a grid.
John: It needs to run.
John: It needs to run smoothly and it needs to run and the decisions need to be made from one place.
John: I mean, and that scares a lot of people.
John: But anyway, this was my fantasy as I walked along the street thinking, you know, really the only job for me is secretary of transportation.
Merlin: Oh, God, that would be good.
Merlin: Would you be retired or would you want to have the job for a couple months?
John: No, I would want to have this job.
John: But the problem with it would be... Good for you.
John: The problem with it would be that you would... As soon as... I mean, if I were ever nominated for the secretary of transportation, they would listen...
John: Some staffer would listen to this podcast all the way through, and then they would prepare a very red type memo, like all caps memo saying, listen, we need to get in front of this guy fast.
Merlin: See, I've been thinking about this, and there's so many things where it seems to me like – first of all, I just have to say, John, on a personal level, it seems like you cut yourself short on a lot of these things.
Merlin: You figure out why you can't be a CIA agent.
Merlin: You figure out why you can't be the – excuse me, operative, the retired director of the CIA, all these different things.
Merlin: You've already figured out how you can't get there because of the system.
Merlin: But what if you were more like a Ronin?
Merlin: Like what if you were somebody who was like hired by the community?
Merlin: So what if instead of being elected secretary of transportation, you were basically – they crowdfunded you to be the czar of transportation?
John: A groundswell of popular demand.
John: Yes.
John: And it's like, no, we have, we've decided who secretary of transportation is.
John: It is the czar.
Merlin: This is deeper than grassroots.
John: I like this.
Merlin: This is some deep tendrils.
Merlin: I'm just saying, the thing is, it's one thing to go like, oh, I wonder if my guy's going to make it through the Senate hearing.
Merlin: Well, well, well, you know, one time he smoked pot in 1978.
Merlin: But in your case, there's not going to be anybody looking back.
Merlin: I mean, if you've got literally the mandate of the people, if they've paid your salary and maybe some kind of an armed expeditionary force, but something you could have on your side, you go in there day one, you just start deciding that everything in America is basically an easement.
Merlin: And then we decide, you're all sharing all of this, but we could pull your easement rights at any time.
Merlin: Let's start all over.
Merlin: I'm glad it's here.
Merlin: We enjoyed your railway.
Merlin: Thank you very much, Mr. Railroad Baron's great-great-great-great-granddaughter.
Merlin: But let's zero out the faders here, start again, and Czar John has some ideas for how we're going to move the grid around.
John: Yeah, that's exactly right.
John: And, you know, regulating the trucking industry.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, and... Is that even considered even vaguely regulated at this point?
John: Oh, just only the thinnest veneer.
Merlin: You could regulate the shit out of that.
John: But so here we go.
John: We got the trucking industry.
John: We got the railroad industry.
John: These are big vested interests.
John: And yet...
John: Where are the resources for the gondola industry?
Merlin: Absolutely.
Merlin: The zip lines, the economies of scale that you could get together by bringing the gondola and say the postal service together.
Merlin: There's so many economies of scale to this that are being – they're little fiefdoms right now, John.
Merlin: You've got a bunch of assistant vice presidents running around running the goddamn country.
John: You have to look at it as a system.
John: And the postal service is a perfect example.
John: I was thinking about that the other day as I walked past the post office.
Merlin: As I grind my teeth wondering why we just don't get mail anymore.
John: The post office and the Amtrak, they're branded very similarly in a kind of faded red and blue and gray motif.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: The slogan for Amtrak and USPS should be a middle-aged man shrugging his shoulders.
John: Right.
John: A middle-aged man behind kind of like some bulletproof glass, like, meh, can't help.
John: But like, those two things, like, the health of Amtrak and the health of the Postal Service should be...
John: In some ways – well, now, wait a minute.
John: Let me revisit that because I was thinking about – You have plenty of time to figure out all the details out.
Merlin: Big picture is what's important at this point.
John: I was thinking about is the post office just a thing like the telegraph service that –
John: We used for a long time and we felt very romantically about it, but it's just an anachronism.
John: And there's no reason to preserve it any more than there was a reason to preserve the Erie Canal.
John: Or is the Postal Service...
John: like intrinsically part of the health of the nation and i mean we we still need to move packages around is that a business that the government needs to be in
Merlin: I have such a simple solution.
Merlin: I can't believe no one will listen to me on this.
John: I want to hear it.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Here it is.
Merlin: Keep doing everything you're doing.
Merlin: Keep selling Pixar stamps and stuff.
Merlin: The key strategy over the last few years, such as it is, has been to sell stamps nobody will ever want to use, which I think is brilliant.
Merlin: Oh, just like gift certificates?
John: Yes.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: You ready?
Merlin: Here's Merlin's plan for fixing the postal service.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: Mail delivery two days a week, Monday and Thursday.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: You're welcome.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: Why do we need daily mail delivery?
Merlin: You're absolutely right.
Merlin: We do not need it.
Merlin: We don't need Saturday mail delivery.
Merlin: Nobody needs it.
Merlin: If you need it faster, pay to have it done faster.
Merlin: Pay the postal service because now they've opened up those resources where they can compete on somewhere between not getting your mail and FedEx.
Merlin: See, that is a really, really good idea, Merlin.
Merlin: You pay $5.
Merlin: What is it now?
Merlin: It's something like $3 to get something there in two days?
Merlin: That should be $5.
Merlin: If you want your mail before that, we'll deliver it to this place by hand for $5.
John: Wow.
John: All right.
John: So you obviously need to be... I mean, obviously I serve at your pleasure.
Merlin: But if I can do anything to help with that, I do know.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Would I get the outfit?
Merlin: I could be pretty into it.
Merlin: Could I dress as an admiral?
John: But like the trains, I feel very strongly about the trains, as you know.
John: And the trains, God, could be such a great system.
John: And...
Merlin: I can't believe they're less efficient.
Merlin: I can't believe that an 18-wheel truck is that efficient for the number of things that it's used for.
Merlin: It's absolutely ponderous to me that that could be – it must be.
Merlin: I mean people aren't stupid.
Merlin: People don't spend money where they don't have to.
Merlin: But I can't believe that putting fuel into an 18-wheel truck and driving it halfway across the country is more efficient than putting it on a train.
Merlin: I don't understand that.
Merlin: I never have.
John: You tell me.
Merlin: Why is that?
Merlin: Why do people do that?
Merlin: It's the same containers, same shipping containers.
John: I have wondered and wondered and wondered about it.
John: What sense it makes.
Merlin: To have a person who is not sleeping, driving a multi-ton truck, consuming all of those resources.
John: Yeah, four and a half dollars a gallon.
Merlin: To get lawn chairs to Missouri.
John: Yeah, I don't understand it either, and it's part of, I guess, why I need to go get a master's degree in interstate commerce.
Merlin: No, you need to tear the system open and see what's inside.
Merlin: You need to whack that fucking pinata and find out what's happening in these crooked grid industries.
John: Yeah, it really, really confuses me.
John: I understand why...
John: I barely understand how it can possibly be cost-effective to cut down the trees in Washington, put them on a giant boat, ship them to Asia where they are manufactured into things.
Merlin: That are then put on a ship.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Shipped back to us.
Merlin: Back to us, yes.
John: Trucked to a store.
John: How can we do that for another millennium?
John: How is that possible?
John: Sold for $1.99.
John: Like, that's the thing I don't understand.
John: Like, okay, all of that, if that's what it takes, I guess, to make that thing, fine.
John: How else is he going to know he's the world's greatest grandpa?
John: Well, and this is the thing that you see when you look at old buildings, when you look at cathedrals.
John: You realize that up until 100 years ago, the cheapest element of any project was labor.
John: Raw materials were expensive.
John: Labor was cheap.
John: And you could have 25 Italian guys sitting with hammers and chisels carving the little detail that's going to go on the capstone of your building.
Merlin: A seraphim penis glands.
John: Yeah, they're just going to be sitting and they're going to spend a thousand man hours carving this decorative element.
John: that you're going to put up on top of a building that is a grain warehouse because why not we got all these italians they seem to know how to do it we gotta get them off the streets it does you know bricks are more expensive a pallet of bricks is cost more than this guy's life so yeah you know like have him car have him carve all this work in stone
John: Now we're living in a world completely where that is completely inverted.
John: Labor is far and away the most expensive aspect of anything.
John: And so it makes sense to ship this stuff all the way around the world just because...
John: Somewhere else, there is an 11-year-old girl with tiny hands that will do the work for a penny, and then we're going to ship it all the way back and still sell it for $1.99 and still make 40% profit.
John: They said recording a podcast on their Macintosh computers.
John: Absolutely.
John: I'm sitting here picking my teeth with a toothpick that was hand-carved for me in Thailand.
John: Thank you, Shin Lee.
John: Yeah.
John: But it is insane to me that that can possibly be true.
John: And again, systemically, and we're back to one world government or whatever, but like a global regulatory agency.
John: But like that...
John: That system, which is ultimately like the biggest make work project in human history.
John: Where somebody, some guy with like Oakley sunglasses up on top of his head.
John: On the back of his neck.
John: On the back of his neck says, you know what we need?
John: We need...
John: squeezy bottles.
John: We need, we need beer cozies that say big dick on them.
John: And, and so begins, you know, so the fuse is lit and begins this, you know, this massive undertaking involving hundreds of people, you know, trans global shipping oil being refined, you know, like boats being built and,
John: shit sinking off the coast and all this stuff and it's just like, and here come the big dick beer cozies that this guy envisioned.
John: Finally, we've done it!
John: We've done it!
John: We made these things and we brought them here and he's selling them at the widespread panic show and we feel like we are fucking doing it.
John: Commerce is happening.
John: We are alive!
John: And it's like, where do you start?
John: Like, how far up the chain do you want to go before somebody says like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
John: We don't need that.
John: Yeah.
John: We don't need that.
John: That should be harder.
John: That should be harder for that asshole to do.
John: You know, like, and that's the ultimate, that's the ultimate, like, anti-
John: American thing to say.
John: The ultimate anti-capitalist thing to say.
Merlin: Absolutely.
John: It's like that guy who had that
John: That barely what you would barely describe as an idea.
Merlin: It might have a typo on it.
Merlin: They'll still make it.
Merlin: It should be.
Merlin: It's all going to end up in a goodwill anyway.
Merlin: Big duck.
John: That idea should be harder for that guy to accomplish.
John: And the success of his accomplishment should not be a thing that we all take pride in.
Merlin: So maybe there should be some kind of a broader national Kickstarter for every project.
Merlin: Or people would just have to say – I guess the obvious joke would be a kickstopper or a kickpauser, a kick spoiler, something where people could just jump in and say, no, we reject this.
Merlin: We do not want big duck beer koozies.
John: I feel like the U.S.
John: Patent Office –
John: The patent office should be expanded to a global office.
John: Oh, boy.
John: And the patent office should be like, you know, the steps of the Supreme Court where they just kind of go up and up and up and the building is up there.
John: The patent office should be like this pantheon.
John: And there should be 10 miles of steps.
John: And every single, you know, there should be 10 steps and then a little flat space.
John: It's like a ropes course to get there.
John: Yeah.
John: And on every flat space, there should be a folding table and two people in chairs.
John: And you should have to make your pitch.
John: Every 10 steps as you walk up the hill and, and the two people sitting at tables, like they, they should, each table should have a little stamp, like pass or fail.
Merlin: And you also have to deliver some mail when you arrive there.
John: And, and there, and the, uh, the free credit.com band should be playing.
John: I am a bill.
John: I am only a bill.
John: The entire way up the steps.
Merlin: This is the kind of thinking we need, John.
Merlin: This is what we need at the top is somebody who can find these – I hate to keep using that phrase, but these economies of scale.
Merlin: There's no reason we can't hook some of these train cars together, if you like.
John: Can you imagine a railroad system that was really designed –
John: That was really designed as a national system for maximum efficiency to replace as much of the business of trucking as you can.
John: So that in the same way that there's this movement among the 1% to open up all the regional airports to small jet traffic.
John: So we're no longer clustering everybody through Atlanta.
John: But, you know, within three miles of my house, there are like five airports that could handle a small jet.
Merlin: For like Larry Ellison types?
John: Or Paul Allen?
John: But that it would be a version of...
John: Ultimately, the idea is that if I'm flying to San Francisco tomorrow, rather than get in my car... The Spoken Hub model is dead, essentially.
Merlin: I shouldn't have to go to St.
Merlin: Louis to get to Dallas or whatever.
John: But even I shouldn't have to go to SeaTac, but I could just go down to the airport here in Renton.
John: And if I'm coming to visit you, take an airplane to some airport that's probably there in Golden Gate Park or something.
Merlin: I would be fine with that if all of those regional airports were also serving the hub and spoke railroad stations.
Merlin: I think railroads in America need to become the new internet.
Merlin: If you can't figure out where something goes, you put it on the fucking internet and charge for it, or not, or whatever.
Merlin: You put an ad on it.
Merlin: But the point is, if we put that kind of effort into having trains, I don't want to say replace the internet, but definitely stand alongside it, think how that would be.
Merlin: And then that last mile would just be getting stuff from one place to another.
Merlin: Fine, we'll use a truck for that.
Merlin: We'll use a truck that takes something three miles, not to take it 950 miles.
John: An electric truck that goes from the regional little train hub.
John: Maybe you can make a truck out of fleece.
John: An electric fleece truck.
John: Who could oppose that?
John: And the thing is, then you wouldn't even have to look both ways when you cross the street.
John: Driven by a guy with a curly mustache and a beard.
John: I got hit by the fleece truck.
John: That was great.
John: What if the trucks had to all be old timey?
John: old-timey looking, but made out of modern materials, modern piece.
John: So it's like, oh, look at the cute one.
Merlin: You can honor the unique culture of the region.
Merlin: You can have a steampunk truck.
Merlin: As long as it can hold one of those ship containers, you're good to go.
John: They would all have little fleece mustaches, little pink mustaches.
Merlin: And you could take some mail with you.
Merlin: I'm just saying, this writes itself.
Merlin: It's so crazy that we have a whole system that's just about taking a piece of paper from one place to another.
Merlin: It's so stupid.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Well, or, I mean, oh, the stupidity.
John: Oh, the stupidity.
John: You know, Merlin, a lot of these things, we could be hand crafting in our own homes.
Merlin: Given the right sleuths.
Merlin: Part of my project is a spinning wheel for every home.
Merlin: Now, when you say spinning wheel, a lot of people are going to think of rubble stilt skin.
Merlin: But I'm guessing it's a little more, it's a cyber spinning wheel?
Merlin: Well, listen.
Merlin: Is it like a 3D printer meets like Amish people?
John: Everybody's got these soft little dogs these days.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Right?
John: All across the country, people are carrying around.
Merlin: America has gone crazy for soft dogs.
John: No question.
John: Soft little dogs with soft little fur.
John: Now, why are we not spinning that into wool?
John: God damn it.
Merlin: It's ridiculous that these ideas end with this podcast.
Merlin: It's sickening to me.
Merlin: That shit is softer than alpaca.
John: Yeah.
John: And all these people with these soft little dogs, what are they doing?
John: They're just sitting and watching reality television.
Merlin: They're running around cleaning up their poop, not using the poop for anything.
John: No, no, no.
John: So you put the dog on a high protein diet.
John: And you have to sleep over the sluice.
John: Yeah, and you kind of fasten him to a little tray, a little tray that's always kind of shaking.
John: Yeah.
John: There's like a food chute, and then there's like a shaking tray.
Merlin: And maybe a Jetson's treadmill.
Merlin: Right, a Jetson's treadmill.
Merlin: He can generate the energy to remove his own poop.
John: Well, so the poop's going away on the treadmill, but also... Because we're getting the base minerals and diamonds out of that.
John: Oh, and there's like a robot comb that's combing him.
John: always combing the new fur that he's growing.
John: Oh, is that good boy?
John: And then the people who are sitting and watching reality television could also be, they could be sitting at a spinning wheel.
John: They could be turning that wool into thread, into yarn.
Merlin: We could retrofit Lazy Boy so that that lever on the side actually produces a few kilowatts of energy.
John: Why do we even need trucks?
John: I mean, the thing is we could reduce a lot of the transportation.
Merlin: A lot of it could be done with cannons, artillery.
Hmm.
Merlin: Also, you just don't need that much paper.
John: Blimps.
John: Dirigibles.
John: As transportation secretary, my dirigible platform is going to be dynamite.
Merlin: God, you help a lot of people.
Merlin: Thanks.
Merlin: Oh, that's good.