Ep. 137: "Arsenal of Civilization"
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Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: We got to put that on a shirt.
Merlin: I wonder how you spell it.
Merlin: Lots of P's and B's.
John: Things are good.
John: Things are good.
John: I have not been sleeping enough.
John: Oh, dear.
John: I stay up late, and then I wake up early, and that's a bad combo.
John: That leads to some five hours of sleepness.
John: Five hours of sleep, and then several days in a row, and then pretty soon you're like...
John: Huh, I wonder why I feel like killing people.
John: It's because I haven't been sleeping enough.
Merlin: Homicidal sleep deprivation.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: No, that's the worst.
Merlin: I mean, you know, you can do one of those.
Merlin: You can do a couple of those.
Merlin: And, you know, and also the thing is, if you're, I don't know if it's because you're busy or you're not busy or you're pseudo busy, but like if you're really busy, like you've got a deadline and you do that, you get some kind of like an adrenaline thing where you get mad at the right thing.
John: you know what i mean oh no i like that i work well under those circumstances yeah but last night i was lying in bed and uh and by the way happy happy new year john oh is it oh yeah thank you i feel i had a pretty good new year yeah so i just want to make sure i had a pretty good new year time um uh the guy across the street that's living in the van uh that i realized his name isn't vanny it's gary and of course if you're living in a van behind a hedge of course your name is gary
John: man that's why is that such a perfect name i don't know gary and he and i have had several encounters lately and gary has uh has that thing where you see him and you talk to him for 45 minutes and then you see him the next day and and he's never met you before but i so i ended up
John: I've tried to call my across the street neighbor several times and it's a thing where the anonymous voicemail voice answers the phone and says the mailbox is full and then just hangs up on you.
John: And it's a weird voice.
John: It's not the voice that you normally hear.
John: It's like a voice that you might hear if you bought your phone at a gas station.
Merlin: Yeah, like a Verizon voice or something.
John: Some kind of weird voice where it's like, oh, the moist message mailbox you're trying to reach is full.
John: Click.
John: And so I was like, you know, Gary's out there.
John: He's yelling.
John: He's yelling into the phone.
John: He's yelling at his ex-wife.
John: It's 1 o'clock in the morning.
John: I don't want to hit him with the fire hose, but something's got to... He won't remember the next day, luckily.
John: I started to ask myself the question, hey, what's the long game here?
John: Is Gary going to live in the van in the front yard of my neighbor's house for another year?
John: For two years?
John: For five years?
John: It's starting to...
John: He's a very angry guy, and I have a little kid.
John: So I called the neighbor, went straight to voicemail, but then miraculously she called me back.
Merlin: Oh, so just for folks who haven't been following this, you were pretty worried about her for a while.
Merlin: You hadn't seen her in a while.
Merlin: There were people moving in and out.
Merlin: There appeared to be some parties, a lot of quiet talking, goods coming in and out of the house.
John: It was a bad scene for a while, and then it calmed down, and there was kind of a new normal.
John: Which was, at least it's quiet and the regular characters are there.
John: But I hadn't seen her in a long time.
John: But I figured if they'd buried her in a shallow grave, they wouldn't just be coming and going with 7-Eleven bags and stuff.
John: They'd be hightailing it or they'd be stripping the copper pipes or something.
John: Right.
John: Anyway, I called her.
John: She called me back.
John: It's 1 o'clock in the morning.
John: She's like, hey, I saw that you called.
John: And I was like, hi.
John: I haven't talked to you in a long time.
John: She's like, hi.
John: Nice to hear from you.
John: It's 1 a.m.
John: And in between our two houses, there are two things.
John: There's a laurel hedge that's 25 feet tall.
John: And there is a 1968 Ford van slowly rusting into the ground with four flat tires.
John: populated by gary and in the middle of the van is gary and gary is and there's an extension cord running from the van to the to the outlet on the front of her house and gary is audible to me quite audible in the van going god
John: you know just like having uh an explosion of rage fall on yosemite sam that's been lasting for like you know long enough it's been lasting long enough that i did i decided i was gonna like call my neighbor and she's like what's going on i'm like well i'm calling about gary and she was like yeah
Merlin: You're not going to make this easy for me, are you?
Merlin: She didn't even suck air.
Merlin: She didn't even go, yeah, Gary.
John: No, no, no, nothing.
John: Just like, yeah.
John: And I think what it is is that there is a place in her house she can go where she doesn't hear Gary.
John: And there are places in my house where I can go, but those places are not my living room or bedroom.
John: And I'm like, Gary is, I have to be honest with you, Gary's starting to be a problem for me.
John: And she's like, yeah.
John: And then she does kind of soften and she's like, yeah, Gary, Gary needs to go.
John: And I'm like, I didn't want to be the one to say it, but, you know, Gary, I think, I really think Gary's got to go.
John: And she was like, yeah, he's really gotten to be a problem.
John: He started to, he's cussing me out now.
John: And I'm like, I know you want to help Gary, but I just don't.
Merlin: Do you remember right that it started out as her kind of helping rehab him?
John: Yeah, she thought for a while she was going to run a little rehab house there, and then she got engaged to one of the guys, and then the other guy was fucking living in his van for a year at least.
John: And so we had a very nice conversation about how Gary needed to shuffle off to Buffalo.
John: And on the one hand, I'm thinking, you know, it's the holidays.
John: It's right around the new year.
John: It's a vulnerable time for everybody.
John: Okay.
John: Maybe I should take a softer line on Gary right now.
John: And then the other voice in my head was like, what?
John: No.
John: Fuck Gary.
John: Everybody hits a bottom.
John: And sometimes your bottom is that the next door neighbor finally calls and says that he's going to send a tow truck for your van.
John: Are you there still?
Merlin: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: I'm listening.
Merlin: I'm thinking.
Merlin: It's so difficult because when I have those conversations, I'm braced for it to go poorly.
Merlin: And I don't want to be – I hate being confrontational with people about stuff that is right on the bubble of their business and not my business.
Merlin: I'm so uncomfortable about it.
Merlin: I really –
Merlin: you know it's whether it's a teenager having a party or somebody parking in the driveway or whatever i just think like how much of this is in my head personally how much of this is in my head and i could just be a fucking gentleman and let it go and then when you have the nice conversation i don't feel that much better because now i really do feel like a party pooper when i have that conversation well and also now we broached the topic so if gary's still there in a week which he absolutely is going to be
John: Then there's a new uncomfortableness, which is we talked about Gary getting gone, and now there's the implication of a timeline that...
John: Because we've had a conversation about it.
Merlin: And she's implicitly agreed that it should happen.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Implicitly that it will happen.
John: Yeah, that it will happen.
John: And so then it's like every time I see her now, it's like, so how's it going with Gary?
John: Are we where are we at on that?
John: And that is like not that's not a relationship I want to have with her.
John: You know, I she she definitely has an uphill climb.
Yeah.
John: And, I mean, for a year, I haven't said a word about it because it does.
John: It falls into that category like, well, it's on her property and it is her business.
John: And if Gary was her boyfriend and he was in there drunkenly screaming into the phone every night, it'd be like, well, that's just what happens when you live in a neighborhood, right?
Right.
John: But Gary is... There's a crucial distinction, which is Gary is living in the front yard.
John: And the front yard is enough of a... It's still on her property, but it is public space in the sense that... And, John, it is a van.
John: It's a van.
Merlin: A year is a long time for someone to live in a van in someone's front yard.
Merlin: And, you know, that's Gary...
John: That's Gary's life choice or whatever.
John: But the thing is, the van is tucked behind this laurel hedge in a way that the cops are not aware it's there.
John: Nobody's aware it's there.
John: I thought about it the other day.
John: If the hedge wasn't there and it was just this rusting ass piece of shit van with an extension cord going in one of the windows and a guy in there yelling...
John: into his phone like other people would have taken notice but and you know and like health and human services or whatever would have said are you but Gary are you pissing in a bucket like where how much access does Gary have to the house and how and like that's a crucial especially if you're if you're a chronic alcoholic like sometimes you got to go to the bathroom and
Merlin: I just always think about fires.
Merlin: I don't know why.
Merlin: As I get older, I think about, like, you know, maybe Gary nods off with the Marlboro Red going.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Next thing you know, he's a can of beans.
John: And all his court orders are just Kindle.
John: Because my other next-door neighbor, Patrick...
John: Patrick, every once in a while, Patrick will drop a little science on me every once in a while about Gary.
John: He's like, do you hear that guy?
John: Do you hear that guy out there slamming his van door and stuff in the middle of the night?
John: And I'm like, oh, I hear him, Patrick.
John: You know, Patrick is is definitely he he airs on the other side of like what happens on your property is your business.
John: Patrick's also the guy that fired a gun in the air when some teenage kid climbed on the roof to talk to his teenage daughter.
John: And so, I mean, I know Patrick, when the chips are down, Patrick's capable of handling a situation.
Merlin: If you needed to do a full Gary extraction, you could count on him in his underwear with a gun in the street.
Merlin: Something, something.
John: Yeah, you're back.
John: And I think Patrick's actually off the sauce, too.
John: So the whole neighborhood's cleaning up.
John: But Gary's the last.
John: He's the last of the Mohicans.
John: And I just... I mean, I'm glad that we finally had the conversation, but now it's getting... Now I don't know what to do.
John: There have been times when I've thought that I would just run a hose from Gary's tailpipe right into the back window and we'd solve the problem completely, but Gary never turns the motor on because the van doesn't run anymore.
John: So... Anyway, that's... And that's not why I'm not sleeping.
John: The reason I'm not sleeping is that
John: I sit up until 5 o'clock in the morning looking at eBay on my phone.
John: But Gary screaming at his ex-wife isn't helping me.
John: And I wonder what the hell she's doing at 1 o'clock in the morning taking these hour-long phone calls.
John: You know what I mean?
John: If I were her, I'd hang up the phone after the 40th raged fuck you.
John: I'd be like, okay, Gary.
Merlin: That's the thing about a, what?
Merlin: I was going to say a toxic personality, but I'll say, let's say an incendiary personality.
Merlin: Whether that is in real life or on the internet or whatever, I'll speak for myself.
Merlin: My reaction is to just not poke at it.
Merlin: I would just as soon find some way to just kind of avoid it.
Merlin: And that's probably, that's kind of what everybody wants to do unless you're somebody who is, you know, very confrontational.
Merlin: Like if there's, if I'm on the train with my kid,
Merlin: And somebody is having a meltdown.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Which has happened.
Merlin: I mean you – we've been on the train where they had to stop it and have the cops pull up because the driver had to call the cops.
Merlin: Where basically the entire part of the car has emptied out except for one homeless guy like melting down and screaming obscenities and swinging things around.
Merlin: And so in that case, like, certainly there's a part of me that goes, like, that's a human being who's suffering.
Merlin: That's somebody who, like, with a little bit of medication and a hot meal might do a little better.
Merlin: My inclination is to just get my kid and move to the other side of the train.
Merlin: It's so much easier.
Merlin: And I have to say, in general, I mean, if you're going to live in a city, that is a healthy way to be because you can't fix everything.
Merlin: And you've got to take care of yourself.
Merlin: You've got to, you know, check your six, as you say.
Merlin: But, you know, I don't...
Merlin: Like there's one guy – there's one guy in our neighborhood, not the chicken-eating, rice-throwing guy, but there's one guy in our neighborhood who like I had – maybe three years ago, I almost came to blows with.
Merlin: I think he's deeply schizophrenic.
Merlin: He sleeps in doorways and he would just randomly yell things at people and on one particular occasion –
Merlin: I have a pretty thick skin for city stuff, but he got close enough and loud enough when I was with my kid one time that I kind of stepped to him a little bit, which as you can imagine is unusual for me.
Merlin: But I felt like it was a situation where I had to stick out my chest a little bit and get past the fog with this guy because it felt like it was kind of like an imminent thing.
Merlin: And after that happened, I got really, I would avoid him.
Merlin: I would, I did not like the guy.
Merlin: Yeah, because he had, you know, I felt menaced by the guy, you know, and of course, there's a small part of me that felt bad for him.
Merlin: Well, a funny thing happened, like a year or so later, something happened.
Merlin: Maybe he got picked up and put somewhere for a while, but he got what I'm guessing is medicated.
John: Right.
John: And got healthy.
Merlin: And he was – he would still be sitting in front of the Walgreens with his hand out.
Merlin: And I mean this guy – I mean we're talking like just like same clothes for months covered in stuff and just filthy.
Merlin: And the thing was though, suddenly – and I won't say his name, but eventually he started saying like, hey, any chance you could help me out today?
Merlin: And I was like, whoa.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: And I was like, sorry, man, not today, which is, of course, what you say.
Merlin: And I would hear him having conversations with people.
Merlin: And he sounded like a little bit of a crank, but he wasn't dangerous anymore.
Merlin: And I don't know.
Merlin: I felt like shit about it.
Merlin: I felt terrible about it because I can't really do that much to help this guy.
Merlin: But he is my official adoptive homeless guy.
Merlin: Wherever I live, this is my policy on giving money to homeless people.
Merlin: I pick exactly one person.
Merlin: And every time I see them, I give them $5.
Merlin: And you chose this guy to be your... I've adopted him for like maybe a year and a half now.
Merlin: And if I got a little cash or I feel like, you know, sometimes I say I haven't done this in a while, I'll just say, hey, Larry, take it easy, man.
Merlin: But every part of that makes me feel like shit.
Merlin: I feel like shit that I got emotional with him.
Merlin: I feel terrible that he is a schizophrenic man living on the streets.
Merlin: And you know where I live?
Merlin: We're really in the...
Merlin: in the uh outside lands as they say it's nothing like what you'd get if you lived in the castro or something but i don't know the whole thing makes me feel terrible and of course then it just makes me more filled with self-doubt in the same way that i would be reluctant to call out gary you know what i mean it's like there's a part of me that's like man everybody's fucked up and there hasn't been a fire so i don't want to be a dick
John: Yeah, right.
John: And this is the famous old adage, and I don't know whether it was Churchill or Mark Twain or Genghis Khan or Descartes who said... The conservative and liberal?
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: Any man who's not a liberal by the time he's 20 is hard-hearted.
Merlin: Anyone who's not a conservative by the time they're 40 is soft-headed.
Merlin: Yeah, was that Benjamin Disraeli?
John: Who was that?
John: I've heard it attributed to Churchill, but it's probably Mark Twain.
John: I think it's probably Mark Twain talking to Churchill.
John: Or Rumi.
John: But it's one of those problems of, like, when you're a young person, your sympathies abound, and...
John: And you want to live in a world where none of those things... It's not possible for people to fall through the cracks like that.
John: You feel very invested in the social compact.
John: Why is this man left to... Why can't he be helped?
John: And then as you get older and older, you're like, get the hell off my lawn!
Yeah.
John: And you start to feel, I mean, or certainly I have started to feel as someone who as a young person actually slept on park benches quite a bit.
John: Increasingly, as time goes on, I feel like some of these problems are intractable.
John: Mental health problems.
John: The social compact is not airtight.
John: And a lot of these problems do not have simple solutions.
John: I mean, my mom spent years walking around town adopting homeless people to the point that she would bring them home with her.
John: and reestablish contact with their families and go through these elaborate processes, get them on their medication, find them work, all these things, and then six months, and the transformation was incredible, and you'd have these moments with her where you're just like, you're an absolute angel, and look what's happened.
John: This guy used to be...
John: Sitting in front of the supermarket with drool down his face.
John: And now he's wearing a tie.
John: He's going to work.
John: He's lucid and turns out an amazing guy.
John: And then nine months later, he'd decide on his own volition to stop taking his medication.
John: And then he'd lose his job.
John: And then a few months later, he's living under the freeway again.
John: And you get that other sense of frustration of like, wow, that was a year.
John: It's not just a year's work sort of to end up right back where we started, but also the emotional journey of like, wow, my mom would come out of those experiences feeling like, I don't anymore feel like I can...
John: I don't know how to help.
John: It's not that I don't feel like I can help, but like giving the guy $5 for a bottle of wine is one form of it.
John: Trying to get him in touch with his family back in Ohio is another form of it.
John: And, and ultimately the thing that most people do, which is sorry, man, or, or worse is another form of it.
John: And, and, uh, I don't know the, the solution isn't easy.
John: And in particular with my neighbors, uh,
John: My neighborhood is what we would have in the past referred to as a respectable lower middle class neighborhood.
Merlin: Everybody there is... It's a diverse working class neighborhood.
John: Diverse working class neighborhood where people don't have a disposable income to really...
John: care for their yards or houses in a in a in a way that you would drive through and say like wow these this neighborhood's got curb appeal but people are mining their own business and they're making their payments and they are you know they are solid and a fair number of people who own their house i think everybody in the neighborhood
John: With the exception of those houses where there are a lot of people living.
John: That seems so unusual today.
John: Well, and it's one of the differences of Seattle and Portland compared to a lot of American cities, which is that there aren't really...
John: There aren't really ghettos here.
John: There are single-family homes, and there are neighborhoods that are rich and neighborhoods that are poor, and there are some housing projects.
John: But even those housing projects are built to look and emulate single-family home neighborhoods, winding streets and basketball hoops at the cul-de-sac.
Merlin: In San Francisco, the only way you can tell sometimes is very large signs and very bright lights.
John: That's right.
John: The arc lights used to be the way you could tell.
John: Now Seattle has done away with that concentration camp lighting.
John: And even the poorest neighborhoods in the city kind of just have a neighborhood vibe.
John: But the conflict between me and Gary, for instance, or my interest in the house across the street is also tied up in a lot of
John: class issues where i'm totally super concerned about being the you know about being someone who's moved into the neighborhood and the thing is i've lived in that house longer than they've lived in that house right i mean it's not like i moved into their neighborhood
John: But the question of like, hey, okay, there's got to be some level of decorum here that doesn't include, for instance, that party where people were just ransacking the house.
John: But at the same time, it's like, I don't know, maybe... I've been to a lot of parties where I would have looked to an outsider like...
John: Like we were just stripping the house and it wasn't that at all.
John: And I no longer have the... Another mistake you can make in youth is thinking that because you slept on some park benches for a few nights that you have...
John: Right.
John: Right.
John: But I'm, you know, I mean, I'm a homeowner, and I also feel a little bit of that creeping republicanism of, like, I'm a homeowner.
John: I mean, just to say those words in respect to what your neighbors are doing across the street, like, as a homeowner, I feel like we need to start having, like, homeowner meanings where we...
John: We go around the room and say like, okay, who's got a guy living in a van in his front yard?
John: Anybody?
John: Right.
John: How many people?
John: Let's see a show of hands.
Merlin: Well, you know, there was that phrase that went around a lot.
Merlin: One of the many, many Malcolm Gladwell-isms that has been kind of or partly or mostly disproven, broken windows syndrome.
Merlin: Well, I mean, the thing – as I understand it, the part that was disproven about broken windows syndrome was not the part that if there's a few broken windows, you get more broken windows.
Merlin: The part that seems a little disproven is that fixing those windows does make a substantial difference.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: But I mean, I'll just say this is totally anecdotal, but I think the first part is still very true, which is like what you put up with becomes okay.
Merlin: And then once that's okay, then more stuff that's not so great becomes okay as well.
Merlin: I mean, look no further than the place where you walk in and put your mail down.
Merlin: You come in, you put your mail down.
Merlin: That used to be a working surface, and now it's covered with mail.
Merlin: Like that takes a week.
Merlin: And I think it's I think it's true.
Merlin: I mean, like, you know, do you want to be in the neighborhood where it's OK for somebody to just have a van in the yard and somebody who's a little unstable living in it for a year?
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: My dad called that that table the magic table, because if you put something down on the top of it within a couple of weeks, it would be at the bottom of the pile.
John: And that seemed magic to him.
John: And then his solution was at a certain point when it was teetering, the pile was teetering, he would sweep it all into a cardboard box, put the cardboard box at the bottom of a closet, and then wait... And every past away, you got it.
Merlin: Yeah, then wait 30 years and die.
Merlin: I still do that.
Merlin: I do that with our microwave, where you open the door of the microwave and a leather man and a bill fall off, and it's like, that's it.
Merlin: And I sweep everything into a box.
Merlin: Put it in the closet.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: This is my legacy.
Merlin: The stuff with, I don't know.
Merlin: This is not good for our Happy New Year episode.
Merlin: But, you know, the stuff about dealing with folks who have like serious, you know, mental and chemical stuff.
Merlin: You know, you hear these stories about, you know, you talk about the family and getting in touch with the family.
Merlin: And there are a lot of families who quietly have somebody in their family who's kind of in and out of the system on and off of the streets for decades.
Merlin: I mean, you don't have to poke around very far to find somebody who has a brother.
Merlin: Or maybe has a mother, for that matter, who is just kind of... They're definitely part of the family tree, but there's no amount of, quote-unquote, helping them that anybody can...
Merlin: do that will actually fix the problem.
Merlin: And they're just in and out of the system all the time.
Merlin: And those people aren't happy people, but there's a certain kind of resolution.
Merlin: It's like when on the wire, you know, when Bubbles goes to his sister's house and he's like, I cleaned up.
Merlin: And she's like, here's a key.
Merlin: You can go in the basement.
Merlin: I don't ever want to see you.
Merlin: That's right.
John: You fucked me enough times.
John: Exactly.
Merlin: I'm never going to believe you again.
Merlin: Eventually, eventually the tie comes off and you're back under the bridge.
Merlin: And it's like, it's just, it's so much more complicated than anybody...
Merlin: If you're not around it all the time, certainly I'm not an expert on it, but I do know that something like homelessness is way more – it is at some level very much an economic issue, but there's a lot more to it than that.
Merlin: It might be economics, but you've been to the hate.
Merlin: There's a lot of people living on the street in the hate or like the panhandle who I'm pretty sure will probably be in college in the next five years.
Merlin: They've chosen to be like a skate rat.
Merlin: They've joined the proletariat, and who knows, they might come out of it.
Merlin: A lot of people, if it is purely economical, they do not want to go to a shelter, because that's where you get stabbed.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: It's, you know, anyway.
John: I mean, the confusing thing about it is that on a one-on-one level, we've all had experiences where you say, like, oh, this... And it isn't just mental illness, homelessness, drug abuse, but situations where you go, this is an intractable...
John: Intractable.
Merlin: Intractable.
John: Thank you.
John: Intractable problem.
John: I've tried, you know, like my kid is a drug addict.
John: I've tried this.
John: I've tried that.
John: I've tried tough love.
John: I've tried love love.
John: I've tried help.
Merlin: I've tried ignoring it.
John: Yeah, I've tried all the things.
John: And each of us has had experiences, and all families and all individual people have had experiences.
John: And even just with people where you're like, I've been trying to explain to them for five years that living paycheck to paycheck is...
John: Is like a risky proposition and that they should put 50 bucks in the bank every time they get a paycheck.
John: And if they did that for a year, then they'd have a little bit of money and they wouldn't feel so insecure.
John: And you try and explain that to somebody for three years, five years, and you realize like, oh, nothing I'm doing here can help.
John: This person does not.
John: want to know this they don't want to hear it and they keep spending every paycheck they get and then they keep having financial crises and they keep acting like it's a big mystery and that then that there's something unfair about it you know that like why does everybody else get to like go on vacation it's like well some people save their money and you don't
John: But the problem is we understand those at a personal level, but whenever we start talking as a society and a culture about those problems taken to a larger scale, then all of a sudden it becomes much harder to say some problems are unsolvable.
John: Because we have such faith in ourselves and in technology and in our thought technologies.
John: We have such faith, particularly in the 19th and 20th centuries, that we can solve all problems.
John: And it's just a matter of applying the right theory and the right engine and things become politicized.
John: So then it's not just that there is a problem with drug abuse, but it's a problem with drug abuse and the other political party has the wrong attitude about it.
John: And then it's a battle.
John: And the implication is, if the other side of the coin here wasn't resisting the reforms that we have in mind, we would have solved this problem a long time ago.
John: And it's like, well, every time a new Congress gets elected, we apply all the new reforms that the last party was standing in the way of, and the problem never gets solved.
John: It's very difficult as a society to say, well...
John: All we can do is manage this problem.
John: And not everyone can be healthy and not every problem can get solved.
John: And so what's the best management of it?
John: And Seattle just started doing a thing a couple of years ago where they built a sort of a hotel for chronic alcoholics where they gave them an allotment of booze every day.
Merlin: I've heard about this.
Merlin: I've heard about these different programs of like, it actually costs less money in the long run to set somebody up somewhere than to put them into the system.
John: Yeah, right.
John: I mean, they're just like, these are the people that three times a month are getting transported to the emergency room.
John: In an ambulance.
John: And every one of those times cost $8,000.
John: And then they spend the night in the hospital and that costs $8,000.
John: And we could put them in a hotel and give them a liter of alcohol a day.
John: And that would just cost us $2,000 a month.
John: And they would be happy.
John: It's like when Bunny Colvin started Hamsterdam.
John: That's right.
John: And the problem is the activist classes don't know what to do with that information.
John: Because on the one hand, it's much more humane.
John: But on the other hand, it seems, again, like it's management.
John: No one is suggesting that these people are going to get better.
John: Right.
John: It's just like, here's your liter of booze and the key to your room and try not to bleed on the toilet.
John: See you in the morning.
John: And there's nothing pretty about it.
John: But human beings are, I don't know, this is one of the major themes of my life is like, how far from animals are we really?
Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, I guess I have a similar, maybe slightly different.
Merlin: If there's anything that I feel like has been both super useful and extremely vexing in my journey to trying to figure out whatever you want to call it, productivity, creativity, just problem solving.
Merlin: There's one of the things I think I mentioned this to you a few weeks ago in an episode.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I feel like any solution that's uncomplicated is probably not true and probably not real.
Merlin: It's like if you haven't found something complicated yet, you aren't near the truth.
Merlin: If it seems simple, you're not done looking.
Merlin: You haven't read Beyond Happily Ever After.
John: Or you are meticulously avoiding looking at the things you don't want to look at.
Merlin: A hundred percent.
Merlin: And that's why, I mean, now this might be a little bit too neat and I might be guilty of my own thing here, but you have to understand that everything in life is an engineering problem.
Merlin: There's probably at least three different vectors to everything.
Merlin: And anytime you try to solve one problem one way,
Merlin: One of the first questions to ask yourself, especially if you're a lawmaker or a public person, is how much am I doing about this to just change the way that it looks?
Merlin: Because if you want to just change the way something looks, there's a thousand different angles you can take.
Merlin: You can cook the books.
Merlin: You can put people in and move them over to Amsterdam.
Merlin: There's all kinds of ways that you can change the appearance of something.
Merlin: It's just that once you try to actually change anything, you realize you're actually changing or changing.
Merlin: Another way to put it, rather than changing, is you're upending.
Merlin: You are chaoticizing probably five or six different things, unintended consequences.
Merlin: And what is it you really want to change?
Merlin: So the phrase I always use in this productivity stuff is, ask yourself if you're solving the right problem at the right level for the right reasons.
Merlin: Because if you don't line those up, all you're going to do is it's all optics.
Merlin: It's all just changing how shit looks.
Merlin: And so the thing is, if you're mostly sad because you see homeless people on the streets, your solution – one solution might be to give them $5 for wine.
Merlin: Another solution might be to put them all into some kind of a camp.
Merlin: But like are you really trying to solve – you can't ever solve the total problem of class status and economics in America.
Merlin: So at what level will you try to solve that?
Merlin: And then you have to – if you scope that correctly, you can have successes.
Merlin: But they won't be permanent successes.
Merlin: They won't be easy successes.
Merlin: And they won't be complete successes.
Merlin: And that's what everybody thinks they want.
Merlin: They think if we can't do this completely, perfectly, it's not worth doing.
Merlin: And so anyway, that's a little bit of a rant.
John: And that is – that is absolutely another –
John: another angle to it which is that no one wants no one uh no one is satisfied with a with a half victory right because because so much of the so much of these questions is what energizes the whole political machine in america like if if if a problem if we call a problem solved
John: then the fundraising engine dries up and the outrage engine dries up.
John: And so these ideas, these big ideas and people's lives, really, ultimately, are pitted against one another.
John: In order to keep this big machine of the of the chattering classes and the legislating classes employed.
John: And what amazes me about the Congress is that they find a way to every year.
John: make a bunch of new laws.
John: And it's like there are a lot of laws already.
John: The question is so infrequently that we need a new law.
John: And that standard, applying the standard of like,
John: Making a new law should be a last resort.
John: And so there's a lot of work that the Congress can do.
John: The big glamorous work that they do is make a new law.
John: Right.
John: And we just keep making new laws.
John: Right.
John: And the old laws are like all these skin flakes carpeting the bed where the Congress lays.
Merlin: They don't work anymore.
Merlin: We don't look at the fact that it's this legacy of crufty laws.
Merlin: Remember, there were people 100 or 50 or 25 years ago who had the same bright idea.
Merlin: Let's go make a law.
John: That's right, exactly.
John: And we're not very reflective as a people.
John: We don't look back at our legacy, at our recent history even, and say...
John: Were these attempts, like, use the power of metaphor.
John: Were these attempts that we made 25 years ago, 50 years ago, were they successful?
John: And in what ways were they successful?
John: But also, in what ways were they failures, utter failures?
John: And why would we go down that road again a hundred times, a thousand times?
John: And it's that we are, boy, we are imperfect and unlikable little fucking pig bugs.
John: God damn it.
John: Human beings.
John: I'm looking out the window right now at the freeway on ramp, but I'm just like, God damn you.
Merlin: You know, the other part of this that, man, it's just, it's so beyond obvious, but man, that's the stuff we always miss is like, you know, what vast percentage of the time do we think laws need to be made because other people need to be stopped from doing something?
Merlin: There's no, there are very, very few people out there who are saying that they need a law passed about them.
Merlin: There are very few people who say, you know what?
Merlin: I'm pretty irresponsible in this one area.
Merlin: So I should have some kind of a threat of criminal or civil law introduced so that I'll become a better person.
Merlin: I need some laws against me.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But we're always looking for all these other people who have caused our problems.
Merlin: And then we want a law passed about them.
Merlin: And then there's this entire inefficient arms, inefficient limbs of government who are expected to sweep out and do that in a way that's going to be fair.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, God, fucking people.
John: Oh, my God.
John: There they are.
John: They're all out there.
John: They're wandering around.
John: They're stopping at stoplights.
John: Then the light turns green and they go.
John: They take the whole width of the walkway.
John: Just so... And, you know, at the level of being a parent and watching...
John: And watching a child kind of navigate the very first sort of human... First real human interactions.
John: I mean, when they're little babies, right?
John: They're just sort of like, oh, there they are.
John: Look at them go.
John: Like, throw some food in their crate and put a blanket over it.
John: And then we'll see them in the morning.
John: But, you know, when my daughter has...
John: And ones that like, oh, this is her first encounter with this.
Merlin: A certain kind of interaction that she'll have thousands of times in her life.
John: That she'll have thousands of times.
John: And this is the first one.
John: It's the first one.
John: And she looks at me and she goes, what's going on here?
John: And I think, I wish I could tell you.
John: Because...
John: Everybody I know, myself included, wants to kneel down and say, listen, here's what's going on and here's how you deal with it.
John: But the reality is I am still in this situation that you're in and I still don't know how to deal with it.
Merlin: Oh, right.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: There's no easy way for me to say this and there's certainly no way for me to say this that it will not be...
Merlin: Just a dumb cliche, but like there is just so much stuff in life that is simply not fair.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
Merlin: Every little kid has an innate sense of justice.
Merlin: That's why they call the goat nature's president.
Merlin: Every child has an innate sense of fairness that mostly leans toward them.
Merlin: It's one of the most powerful instincts that they have is the sense of fairness.
Merlin: But it's a self-preservation instinct and it's a fairness to them instinct.
Merlin: They haven't evolved enough, very few of us have evolved enough to go, well, let's make sure everybody got something here.
Merlin: It's definitely a sense of like that person, they got a balloon, they got a balloon, they got a balloon.
Merlin: I better have a balloon coming.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: If this other kid got ice cream, I should get ice cream.
John: Or just that the... Yeah, I mean, one of the things that we're experiencing is like, well, other kids throw tantrums in front of their parents and say no and push their hand in their parents' face and...
John: Why shouldn't I?
Merlin: That's a normal behavior.
Merlin: 100%.
Merlin: And I've got a drumbeat that is such fucking weak sauce, but it's the only thing I can always say, which is, you know, like, for example, we're standing at the crosswalk, and as happens, people start walking before the signal has changed.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: And she starts walking and I say, no, we walk when it's safe for us to walk.
Merlin: Do not rely on what other people do or don't do to help you decide what's right and safe.
Merlin: So, you know, we're going to do this in our own way because that's who we are.
Merlin: The people that we are is that we do the right thing.
Merlin: We don't do this thing because there's a law.
Merlin: We don't do this thing because – that certainly could be part of it.
Merlin: But we do this because this is who we are.
Merlin: And I don't – and I feel like such an idiot, like such a limp-wristed liberal when I say that.
Merlin: But I hope that that becomes true in the same way that I hope it's true when I say it to myself.
Merlin: Well, I do.
Merlin: I say it to remind myself of that, too.
Merlin: We could cross.
Merlin: We could cross 50 times against the light, and we'd probably be fine.
Merlin: But that's not who we're going to be.
John: It's the core of civilization.
John: I mean, that internal governing is the basis of the idea that we should all be philosopher kings, that we should live in a... I mean, the whole premise... Philosopher kings.
Merlin: Fake it till you make it.
John: The whole premise of a civil society is that we each are internally governed, and so don't need...
John: Don't need restrictive laws.
John: I mean, there are versions of that on both sides of the political spectrum, which presumes the best about people.
John: And it used to be that there was a lot more energy devoted to that idea in our culture, where we...
John: where we said to ourselves and to one another, like, this is not what we do.
John: We're not committing a crime because we're afraid of getting caught or because there's a video camera watching us.
John: We're not committing a crime because we do not commit crimes.
John: And this is the problem with the whole torture thing.
John: The whole Bush-Cheney doctrine in American politics is that we squandered that
Merlin: on a global political level, the credibility... All of our good deeds and a measure of moral authority just 50 years of that just went out, 60 years.
Merlin: Just smoked it.
Merlin: Out the window.
Merlin: Just smoked it.
Merlin: Every time we built a well or rebuilt something we blew up, that all went away when people saw how full of shit we were.
John: Yeah.
John: And that's true on a micro level, too.
John: And all around us every day...
John: This is why we're always harping on this stuff of the little shit.
John: Don't take your shoes off on an airplane.
John: Don't wear your fedora into a restaurant.
John: Don't stand there with your earphones in and piss on my shoes or whatever.
John: And it's not because...
John: It's not because it's illegal, right?
John: I mean, all the people that are like, why shouldn't I wear my pajamas on an airplane?
John: It's like, I mean, it's not illegal.
John: That's true.
John: Not yet.
John: And that's basically like their starting point.
John: Like, it's not illegal.
John: It's a free country.
John: And it's like, right.
John: But like, if you don't maintain standards, and I would suggest high standards, personally, right?
John: then you're living in a world where if it's not illegal, it's going to get done.
John: And how would you like it if your neighbors felt that way too?
John: How would you like it if the people that you're encountering were also just making decisions based on what was legal or not?
John: I mean, you're living in chaos.
John: And we are descending culturally.
John: We really are.
John: We have lost a lot.
John: And we've gained a lot.
Merlin: We're losing a lot of – I feel this personally as I have to go and be around other people less as a matter of course.
Merlin: I notice it in myself as I have to remember to try and do the right thing.
Merlin: Boy, what level do you want to attack it at?
Merlin: But I think – I feel like as a culture, just observing, people are either becoming less mindful about how to act and how to be jostled by other people and be okay.
Merlin: How to like just deal with – even whether it's like getting on and off the train, knowing how to wait in line at the store.
Merlin: Like everybody is so fucking mad all the time.
Yeah.
Merlin: And so this sounds contradictory because we are the authors of Keep Moving and Get Out of the Way.
Merlin: But Keep Moving and Get Out of the Way is at the heart of it.
Merlin: Like that's the most basic – like what greater kindness in the world could there be?
Merlin: That's absolutely right.
Merlin: Than to keep moving and get out of the way.
Merlin: But then when you're in line, don't hop and pop.
Merlin: Don't make huff and puff noises in line.
Merlin: Don't do that.
Merlin: Slower traffic moves right.
John: Not because there's a sign, but because... And not because we're mean.
John: Not because we're mean, but because what that suggests, what that implies is that you are looking in your mirrors, conscious that there are other people on the road, and you are trying to get out of the way of somebody who's got a different...
John: who's got a different tempo, and that is courtesy, right?
John: I mean, this is the thing about tipping your hat, right?
John: When we talked about that several episodes ago, I was reminded about the power of tipping your hat, that I had kind of...
John: in the in the the daily grind of the city had had neglected to tip my hat all the time right i had i had resorted to tipping my hat just when i was opening opening the door for somebody at a hotel but for the most part walking around with my hat on my head passing people in the street even looking at them and nodding i
John: I was leaving aside that little gesture, the fingers to the brim of the hat and a little like ta-da.
John: And so we talked about it on the show and I went out into the world and started tipping my hat to people.
John: And it's amazing how much better it makes me feel.
Merlin: It's nice for everybody.
John: And you get the smiles from people.
John: I passed a guy.
John: It was like 2 o'clock in the morning.
John: I'm walking on a deserted street, and it's one of those streets that's like you're walking along, you're in a neighborhood, and then all of a sudden there's trees all around, and then all of a sudden the trees have kind of grown over the street, and you are...
John: And you can't see any lights and you're like, where the hell, what neighborhood am I in?
John: I thought I was in the city and now I'm like, I'm in like a scary book.
John: And here comes a guy down the sidewalk with his hoodie all the way over shrouding his eyes.
John: And he and I are going to meet, we're going to cross paths at the most brambly, spooky little part of this spooky little 200 yards.
John: And he's got his hands jammed into his pockets.
John: And you can see from his body language that he's toughening up for this encounter.
John: He's taller than I am.
John: And he's a black guy.
John: And he's like... I can see him...
John: Getting ready for this, like, pass that we're going to have to make.
John: And I feel myself getting ready.
John: Like, how's this going to go?
John: What are we going to do as we pass in this shadowy little spot?
John: And as we get closer, so that we're within eye contact of each other, he makes the choice to look at me.
John: And he could have made the choice to not look at me, and that would have set a certain tone.
John: But he makes the choice to experiment.
John: He just sends his eye beams out from under his hood, looks at me, and I tip my hat to him.
John: And we both...
John: Like he stands up a little straighter, big smile across his face.
John: I stand up a little straighter, big smile across my face.
John: And he goes, hello.
John: And I say, good evening.
John: And we're like at a Ren Faire.
John: And suddenly you're both the Monopoly man.
John: Yeah, well, they were both Paul and Storm.
John: Like, hello, good evening, good sir.
John: And I'm like, and he goes on with his day.
John: I go on with my day.
John: And both of us had what could have been...
John: There were 20 different levels that that could have gone, and 18 of them were that we just pass in the night and carry away from that encounter.
John: It would have reinforced some pre-belief about how things are.
Merlin: Right, and that's how you both prepped.
John: We walk past each other and it's like, oh, okay, that guy.
John: Right.
John: I mean, good thing.
John: I'm thinking, oh, good thing he didn't mug me.
John: And he's thinking, oh, good thing he didn't call the cops and they shot me.
John: And all of those narratives, pre-existing sort of bullshit narratives, we could have reinforced in that moment.
John: And instead, we both were clowns, like goofy dorks, which is what we all want to be, right?
John: Hello, clowns.
John: And the thing is, nobody's watching, right?
John: So we can be a little dorky.
John: There wasn't a third party across the street smoking a cigarette who was going to shout out like, ha ha, you guys are dorks.
John: Right.
John: And so we got a little moment.
John: And it's all in that, like, I mean, honestly, him looking at me was brave.
John: And then that little tip of the cap was waiting.
John: It was a gesture I had in my arsenal of civilization.
Right.
John: Which is like, I receive your eye, your brave gesture of looking, and I honor it, sir, with a little bit of steampunk horseshit.
Merlin: And he thought to himself, John Roderick seems so much nicer than I would have expected.
Merlin: He's like, wait a minute, isn't that the guy on the music council?
Yeah.
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Merlin: Counselor?
John: Counselor, good to see you.
John: Nice to see you.
John: But the thing about being in school with little kids that I realize is it reinforces the other thing, which is that we cannot perfectly understand ourselves.
John: And the whole premise that's been in place ever since I was a kid in our culture, that the banner is still flown by so many people that we are completely makeable by culture and
John: And that we can, that all of these things about ourselves... It's like a recipe.
Merlin: If you get the ingredients right and bake it just the right amount of time, you become a good cultured person.
John: Yeah, well, or in particular, just like the differences between the genders.
John: It's another one of these kind of issues where it's like, oh, all these things, all these characteristics that people exhibit are enculturated in us, right?
John: Male violence and...
Merlin: Female helplessness.
John: Female helplessness and all these things that just seem like if we could perfectly engineer our culture and if we could eradicate these ideas, if we could eradicate these systems from our culture, then we would be able to achieve, again, like the end goal of like perfect equality.
John: And then you watch little kids and you're like, oh my God, there's nothing engineered about it.
John: Like they're just...
John: There are so many of our human traits that are innate in us and not even, I mean, a lot of them we attribute to gender and they aren't even.
John: They're just human traits across a wide spectrum and impossible to codify, impossible to engineer either in or out.
John: And all you can do is just create like reciprocating cultures of shame and unhappiness and dissatisfaction by getting in there and monkeying and trying to intervene.
John: I mean, this is the thing about like little kids hit each other and you can't let them do it.
John: You say, hey, we can't hit each other in here.
John: And they look at you like you're an idiot because of course you can hit each other.
John: Like they just did it.
John: They just showed you how to hit somebody.
John: Did you ever try it?
John: It works great.
John: That person was trying to get my doll and I hit them and now they stopped.
John: Why are you telling me I can't?
John: It's the most effective strategy I've ever devised, says three-year-old brain, you know?
John: And you're like, well, we can't.
John: We can't hit each other because we don't allow it.
John: Because if we allowed it, then...
John: We would be in a state of perpetual violence with each other because we all feel that way.
John: We walk down the street and we're just like, oh, I just wish I could hit all these people.
John: And then it's like, except I don't want to get hit myself.
John: And it's really like it does come back to a little bit of the fair play on some level.
John: Well, only in the sense that you don't want to get hit yourself.
John: The idea of fair play being that the smaller kid gets it worse...
John: than the bigger kid if everybody's allowed to hit each other.
John: I mean, that's the beginning of sort of fairness rather than just sort of we don't hit each other because we don't like to be hit.
John: But also this other idea of, like, we can't let the big kid get his way over the little kid just because he's big.
John: And, you know, that's a very human...
John: Like I think animals don't, I mean, you know, like orangutans or lions understand the concept of don't just bite your friend because he's going to bite you.
John: Like that's a pretty simple idea.
John: But the human idea of like don't, we're not going to, we're all going to agree that it's not fair for the big kid to get his way more often than the little kid.
John: That's a thing that the animals don't share with us.
John: That's the beginning of a human... That's the beginning of society.
John: And that's, you know... So much stuff follows from that.
John: That we're going to intervene.
John: And one of the things is that the little kid...
John: The little kid has traditionally developed strategies to deal with being swatted by the big kid, right?
John: The little kid develops other skills, and those other skills are part of how culture is built.
John: Culture is kind of built by little kids who developed other skills to avoid being swatted by big kids.
John: And when we intervene, I mean, it's like you're saying, it's all an engineering problem.
John: And if you intervene to correct one thing that you, you know, one little leaky pipe, you see that it's all part of a system.
John: And who knows?
John: Who knows?
Merlin: Yeah, I guess so.
Merlin: I'm kind of glad it's not okay for big kids to hit little kids, personally.
Merlin: But what worries me and what I worry about is just the necessary hypocrisy.
Merlin: of showing a kid, hey, look, here's some things.
Merlin: I can show you some things where doing this kind of behavior instead of that kind of behavior is something you'll instantly understand, right?
Merlin: Where you say to someone, there's a natural order of things where if you say please and thank you, you will make people happy and you will get away with stuff.
Merlin: This is a good thing.
Merlin: Learn to say please and thank you.
Merlin: It's just, it's a really nice thing.
Merlin: And in time, you learn that that's a nice idea.
Merlin: You could say things like it's better to be fair rather than not fair.
Merlin: But then we also have to do these things that seem completely unfair.
Merlin: Last night, I had my daughter got up after she'd gone to bed and my wife and I were watching TV and she came in and she was mad because she couldn't watch TV.
Merlin: So what do I say?
Merlin: Well, I say what I say, which is like, well, it's your bedtime now.
Merlin: Our bedtime is later.
Merlin: We're watching TV.
Merlin: Like, you know, should I apologize for that?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: But that is inherently unfair to a little kid.
Merlin: No, but just from their point of view, that's absolutely unfair.
Merlin: Like you guys get to go have fun and I have to go to bed.
Merlin: You get to use your iPad whenever you want and I don't.
Merlin: Like that's really hypocritical on the face of it.
Merlin: And it's but, you know, so I guess what I'm saying is I think what's complicated is we're asking kids on the one hand to see certain kinds of things as being natural law.
Merlin: And like, isn't that just a good idea to do it that way?
Merlin: Isn't it just a good idea to close the refrigerator door so we don't waste energy and stuff like that?
Merlin: And then other times we have to say, well, except there are times when the thing that seems really natural is actually the opposite of that and you just need to learn that.
Merlin: That's the part that I try to – I don't have an answer to that.
Merlin: I think it's incredibly confusing.
John: Some of those things –
John: Some of those things, we need you to just learn, like, as in just memorize this rule, and one day it'll make sense.
John: And some things, it's like, we want you to learn the concept that governs this and internalize it.
Merlin: Say please and thank you, but don't get in a white van.
John: I still find that a very complicated thing.
John: Right?
John: Right.
John: Well, and the thing is that I don't, you know, watching this experience with kids...
John: uh my instinct is to extrapolate it to adults because i feel like 99 of adult interactions are kid interactions that are just extrapolated to like interactions plus iphones yeah kid interactions plus the the the arrogance of feeling like because you've been alive for 25 more years you are you understand things any better and the thing is that i too believe that
John: The big kid shouldn't be able to hit the little kid.
John: Like, I believe that is an evolution.
John: And I don't think that that, I think that that rule is true in America and in Denmark and in America.
John: In Germany and in certain places in the world.
John: But I don't think that that rule is necessarily true in Russia or the Ukraine or Serbia right now, let alone in places that I haven't been but have suspicions about.
John: Right.
Merlin: But what I don't— So you're saying it's unrealistic in some cultures to say that that's a natural law?
John: Oh, I don't think it is a natural law at all, and this is the point I'm making.
John: The big kid should not hit the little kid is not a natural law.
John: That's what I meant, yeah.
John: It is a thought technology.
John: And the problem with us in America is that 100 years ago, we still recognize that that was a thought technology.
John: And we were proud of having invented this idea.
John: And it was part of, you know, it was part of our legacy of Western Europe.
John: that we had, you know, honor and you didn't hurt the little guy and you, you know, women and children first off the boat.
John: Like these were concepts that we were justifiably proud of because they were inventions.
John: There's nothing natural about that.
John: Oh, okay.
John: And if you let human beings go even a little bit...
John: You see even in modern cultures that those rules are not, that's like pretty far down the road.
John: You know, the big man still is in charge in most of the world.
John: Still.
John: And we're all sharing the same internet, but it doesn't change the fact that you walk into a village somewhere, and you see that the big guy's in charge, and the little guy comes up to him and says, hey, ba-da-ba-da-ba-da, and he kind of whacks him.
John: And everybody goes, oh, shit, you know, right, that's the...
John: That's the law, the normal law.
John: So the fact that we've made these advances, these cultural advances, we have expanded the idea of fairness.
John: What has also happened to us in the last hundred years is that we've stopped recognizing that those are... And not even the last hundred years.
John: We've stopped recognizing that those are...
John: thought technologies and started to talk about them as though they're natural rights.
John: And if you start making policy, if you start living your own life according to this expanded idea of natural rights, that's what causes a tremendous amount of confusion.
Merlin: You're going to have a lot of cognitive dissonance.
John: A lot of cognitive dissonance and a lot of outrage because you're standing there and you're saying, how dare you?
John: And you're saying that because you believe that somehow the intrinsic level of justice is a lot higher than it is.
John: And what you're not doing is giving credit to all the work that went into establishing that bulwark against justice.
John: All against all, against a Hobbesian world.
John: And all that work is our legacy.
John: And I understand that culturally, we've spent a lot of effort to kind of tear down the Western European colonial, the idea that civilization came from...
John: you know, from the English courts or whatever.
John: But in stripping away all of that and saying like, no, no, no, we need to incorporate the traditions of every culture.
John: We don't want to live in this sort of dominant mode.
John: We've forgotten that some of those traditions of chivalry and English law were novel and
John: only occurred in one place, are now widely adopted, but are ultimately an artificial overlay that if we want, if we believe in, we need to protect, and that begins with understanding that it's like air conditioning, that we invented it, it demonstrably makes life better, but if we don't maintain it, then it stops working again,
John: And when the air conditioning goes off, it doesn't do any good to sit in a hot room and scream that the air conditioning went off.
John: You have to get up and fix the air conditioning.
John: And that's true, really, of a system of justice, too.
Merlin: That was some really good explaining.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: You get a bell.
Merlin: That was good.
Merlin: That's a little bit of mansplaining.
John: Yeah.
John: That was good.
John: I want you to mansplain something to me.
John: Sure.
John: I do not.
John: Oh, my God.
John: I'm going to get so many angry letters.
John: Oh, God.
John: Please.
John: I do not.
John: Let me have this one.
John: I do not understand Harry Nilsson.
Merlin: Oh, you're going to get a sad letter.
Merlin: I'm going to get so many sad letters.
Merlin: Well, you're going to get several sad letters from one guy I can think of.
John: I can think of a few guys that are going to send me some sad letters.
Merlin: Have you and Sean gone head-to-head on Harry Nilsson before?
John: No, because we've gone head-to-head on so many things.
Merlin: You live in a civil society, and you realize that's a conversation you guys can't even have.
John: But here's the thing.
John: I'm not against Harry Nilsson.
John: Everything that he does, obviously, I love his voice.
John: You still get why he's so big.
John: I love his hits, right?
John: But the thing that everybody talks about, his songwriting, his miraculous songwriting...
John: It seems to me that he is just sort of meandering both... He's both like lyrically and melodically meandering down a path where he's kind of singing some thoughts with a sort of sing-song melody.
John: And, you know, you get halfway through the song, you get to the end of the song, and it's like, huh, well...
John: Yeah, sure.
John: I like that.
John: That was good.
John: But I do not have this feeling that he is at the dawn of a certain kind of pop that didn't exist before.
John: I get you.
John: Maybe it's that it didn't exist before, and I've grown up since then, and so I don't see the novelty that maybe was apparent in 1969 or something.
Merlin: I think it's... I'll Merlin mansplain this to you.
Merlin: I think part of it is the rise of the documentary.
Merlin: The documentary that will almost certainly feature Chuck Klosterman, Thurston Moore, and Flea at some point.
Merlin: Dave Grohl will be in there, too.
Merlin: Dave Grohl, as you know, there was a law that was quietly passed in the days after 9-11 that they have to be in every music documentary.
Merlin: Or, you know, Martin Scorsese sitting in a theater being interviewed.
Merlin: Mike Watt, maybe.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I'm like Wattsplaining.
Merlin: You know, it's funny, though, because like, you know, I started watching a documentary last night on Nas and the making of Illmatic, which I've listened to about twice or three times that I'd listened to mostly because of Jay-Z and their, you know, their feud.
Merlin: And it's a really, really good record.
Merlin: I can't like I couldn't wrap it to you the way I could like a public enemy record.
Merlin: But I was just thinking as I watched that, it was really well done, beautifully made.
Merlin: Watched the first few minutes of it till my daughter woke up.
John: I just want to ask you, did I have the option that you would wrap me public enemy records?
John: Sure.
John: Because if I had known I had that option, I would have asked for it a lot sooner.
Merlin: 1989, the number.
Merlin: Another summer.
Merlin: Sound of the funky drummer.
Merlin: Music hitting you hard because I know you got soul.
Merlin: Brothers and sisters.
Merlin: John Wayne was a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me.
Merlin: Straight up racist, that sucker was simple.
Merlin: Oh, Elvis.
Merlin: Elvis was a hero to most.
John: That's right.
Merlin: Elvis!
Merlin: John Wayne, too.
Merlin: Elvis was a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me.
Merlin: Straight up racist, that sucker was simple and plain.
Merlin: Motherfucking man, John Wayne!
Merlin: Black and I'm proud, and I'm hype plus I'm amp.
Merlin: Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps.
Merlin: Yes!
Merlin: Boy, did I ever listen to that record a lot.
Woo!
Merlin: But you know, it's funny.
John: See, that record, I understand.
John: I got no problem understanding that record.
Merlin: No, no, but all I'm saying is it's funny because think about like, okay, think of the heavily lauded recent documentaries that are like, you know, good.
Merlin: Like the 20 Feet from Stardom about backup singers.
Merlin: You got the one on Muscle Shoals.
Merlin: There's been a lot of these like high profile, non-Netflix created documentaries.
Merlin: that aren't about weed or food um that that where you watch them and the thing is even if you don't know anything about that person like uh what are other ones the things things about daniel johnston like almost nobody's heard daniel johnston but they think of him as this this character there's something about like once somebody makes a documentary about you like in in a well-made documentary you kind of can't help but disappear into that artist even if you've never heard them before i wonder if that's part of it
Merlin: I mean, it sounds to me like you're saying, you're saying Nilsson, maybe he goes somewhere up with an Eric Carman.
Merlin: Like a good pop songwriter, but not like... Well, yeah, but it's the thing.
John: I mean, a long time... I mean, I understand like the resurgence based on like people were looking back in time and trying... We're doing kind of a northern soul thing, except with our own culture.
John: And saying like, what are some of the great...
John: the great songwriters that we never heard of.
John: Let's go back and find, like, the good ones.
John: But in 1970, like, Randy Newman and, uh, yeah, just the way I say his name, Randy Newman, and, uh, and Brian Wilson.
John: Doing a podcast.
Merlin: I'm recording a song.
Merlin: Talking to Karen Roderick about Gary, who lives in a van.
Merlin: Gary's gotta go.
Merlin: Giant's got an arsenal of civilization.
Merlin: Black people coming over on a ship.
John: But all those guys, they all love Nilsen.
Merlin: I think he is, and I'm not slagging here, but I think of him kind of like Nick Drake or maybe kind of like, oh shit, I just had it and I lost it.
Merlin: Maybe to a certain extent, Jimmy Webb.
John: were there these characters that were very unusual for their time but like nick drake what he had like two records he had two records but the thing about nick drake is good but like you know i mean it's he had one sound and this is the thing about a sound right if you make two if you make two records and even one of them just has a sound all the way through it yeah it's like that's all he needed to do he just invented a sound and then he can go or not invented but
John: He perfected a sound, and then he can get on the boat and go across the water.
John: The thing about Nilsson is that every song is different, and so it's not clear what the connection is.
John: He didn't invent a sound, right?
John: He's got that great voice, but he's... I don't know.
Merlin: I'd have to spend more time now.
Merlin: Where do you stand on, say, John Deck?
Merlin: You got a feeling?
Merlin: I'm trying to think of some other documentary people.
Merlin: Or Scott Walker.
Merlin: You got a feeling on a Scott Walker?
Merlin: You ever seen that documentary?
Merlin: I haven't seen the Scott Walker documentary.
Merlin: Oh, brother, you need to see that one.
Merlin: That guy's got a lot of fucking balls in the air.
John: Scott Walker, you're saying?
Merlin: Scott Walker from the Walker Brothers.
Merlin: And so basically he was in the Walker Brothers.
Merlin: He did those Righteous Brothers style songs, covers.
Merlin: And then like the last Walker Brothers record was pretty fucking weird.
Merlin: And then he went solo and each subsequent record of his has been more like totally bananas.
Merlin: And in the documentary, you can see him recording.
Merlin: He records an album about every 10 years now.
Merlin: And so the percussion involves hitting a side of beef and stuff.
Merlin: And it's harrowing and delightful.
Merlin: You know the singer, though.
Merlin: You've heard of his tunes.
John: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
John: I feel like I need to watch some more music documentaries is one thing.
John: We're going to make this music month.
John: You know what?
John: We should.
John: We should just make this music month.
John: We should talk about music the whole time.
John: Yeah.
John: I feel like as I am thinking about starting to rejoin the songwriting game and wondering what my place in it is and what I have to contribute to the songwriting pile...
John: Contributing to the pile.
John: You know, watching these guys and gals who do it successfully and find their own way through, you know, like, I mean, I don't understand Joni Mitchell either, but I definitely understand that without Joni Mitchell, there would be no Sheryl Crow.
John: And without Sheryl Crow, where would we be?
John: So in that sense, thank God.
Merlin: I was with you all along.
Merlin: Then you sang about a Sheryl Crow song.
Merlin: Going to the car wash Tuesday morning.
John: Gets up every morning and writes a song.
John: That's what he does.
John: Randy Newman gets up every morning.
John: He has a cup of coffee.
John: He has a bagel, and he goes down to the studio, and he writes songs until it's quitting time.
Merlin: Went to bed late.
Merlin: Now I'm feeling kind of foul.
Merlin: I'm going to get up.
Merlin: I'm going to move my bowels.
John: And then the whistle goes off.
John: And then he meets the sheepdog at the punch-out machine.
John: Hey, Frank.
John: Hey, George.
John: Hey, Randy.
John: Hey, Randy.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: That's good.
Merlin: Scott Walker, 30th century man.