Ep. 140: "Nadir for Now"
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Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi John.
Merlin: Hi Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
John: Oh, super.
John: Super good.
John: I'm tired.
John: Yeah, I'm sorry I'm a little late.
John: It's the tired season.
Merlin: Yeah, it is.
Merlin: It is.
Merlin: So you had, well, we shouldn't say, but you had trouble getting your kid somewhere today.
John: Ah, you know, just normal stuff.
John: Just normal human adulthood stuff.
John: It takes longer and longer all the time.
John: Yeah, you wake up in the morning and you're like, here it is.
John: Here I am.
John: This is it.
John: This is it.
John: The nadir.
John: Really?
John: Well, yeah, because, you know, when you're young, you're like, oh, it's one of these days.
John: It's all going to make sense.
John: It's all going to come together.
John: Yeah.
John: And then when you're old, you're like, I don't remember.
John: It's the nadir for now.
John: I feel amazing.
John: I'm on medication.
John: I don't remember anything before two days ago.
John: But now, right here, it's like, oh, this is it.
John: Oh, man.
John: Right?
John: I am in it.
John: Here I am in my 40s, just right in the middle of it, and it's not going to get any...
Merlin: different no i don't know i've been having fun lately i've been enjoying kid stuff a lot lately i mean you know it's uh work not work it's a lot of it's a lot of grind but you know a lot of grind yeah grist grist i'm starting to think that the basis for most midlife male midlife crises uh might come out of a lack of gratitude
Merlin: Or a perceived lack of gratitude.
Merlin: From other people for all the hard work that we do.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, not like I actually deserve that, but when I notice myself in my lower moments, I'm like, wait, I should do all these things.
Merlin: I should get a car.
Merlin: But, you know, I don't know.
John: A lot of it has to do with getting sick all the time.
Merlin: Are you still sick or are you re-sick?
John: I got a sick on top of a sick.
John: I got a sick.
John: You got like a different sick?
John: Then I got better, and then it was like some kind of adjunct sick.
John: It was the same sickness, but it recalibrated itself and was like, you know what?
John: I want a second shot at this.
Yeah.
John: And so a week in, I just got super sick the same exact way.
Merlin: That's not reasonable, John.
Merlin: That's completely unacceptable.
Merlin: What the what?
Merlin: It's like double jeopardy or something.
John: Exactly.
Merlin: You've been tried twice for the same illness.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: And so I feel a little bit...
John: I mean, talk about gratitude.
Merlin: Yeah, I really think it's a thing.
Merlin: I really, really do.
John: You know, I have a lot of gratitude for any God.
John: Pound sign blessed.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Any God who would make the Holocaust and get me sick twice in a row.
Merlin: Oh.
John: I just read that Hitler book again.
Merlin: Which one is that?
Merlin: the meaning of hitler oh oh oh i heard that fella on the public radio and the thing is turns out it's not actually about the meaning of hitler it's about people trying to find meaning of hitler it's a widely misunderstood book and it's got hitler's a baby on the cover right is that the book oh no different book oh meaning of hitler was is by is it it was sent to me by a german listener of our program
Merlin: I've got to look this up.
John: And it's a book that was originally published in German by a German man.
John: It's a small book, a thin book.
John: And it was a huge bestseller when it came out in 1979 in Germany.
John: But it is just so full of insight, written in a very chatty, casual style,
John: So full of insight, and you read it, and the first half of the book is you're just like, oh my God, this book is explaining so much about the psychology of...
John: Germany at the time and Hitler and his appeal.
John: And, you know, you just you just like insight, insight, insight.
John: And then the second half of the book, it's just like, oh, my God, this is so much worse than I thought.
John: Even so much after a lifetime of studying this guy, this little thin book is really instructing me on how much worse it is.
Merlin: than i ever imagined really can i cover my ass for a minute the book i was thinking of uh that's highly mentioned on the public radio is called explaining hitler oh explaining hitler uh colon the search for the origins of his evil and this is a 1998 book by journalist ron rosenbaum and it's got a picture of hitler as a baby on the cover and the book is kind of i'm given to believe widely misunderstood because he's not trying to actually explain hitler he's trying to understand the people who try to explain hitler
Merlin: So this might be a nice edge.
Merlin: Explainers.
Merlin: Yeah, if you've wrapped around to reading that one twice, you might want to move back to the States and have a look at explaining Hitler.
Merlin: Explaining Hitler.
John: Yeah, I'm not sure I want to have the explainers of Hitler explained to me, but maybe.
John: Hitler-splaining?
John: Hitler-splaining.
John: God, you sound like shit, John.
John: You sound terrible.
John: But you know what?
John: That's the Northwest.
John: I'm on the mend.
John: The book I'm thinking of was by Sebastian Hafner.
John: That's a great name.
John: Yeah, Sebastian Hafner.
John: And he's so smart.
John: But anyway, so I've been thinking about Hitler and then bummed, like really bummed.
John: The tail end of this book is, I mean, not that I wasn't.
Merlin: You can't look at a book about Hitler you're reading for the second time.
Merlin: I wouldn't boo you more.
John: You know what I mean?
John: You would think I'd walk out of the house with a spring in my step.
Merlin: Nearly goose stepping.
John: You know, really jumped into this book a second time, but it's the type of book.
John: I don't usually read books multiple times, but this is one of those books you could read every few years.
Merlin: Lots of books, and somehow you came back to that one.
John: Like I say, it stands just as a book, because how many books are there?
John: And maybe one of the appeals of it is that I would like to write books about things that everybody thinks they already know everything about.
Merlin: You want to write a Turns Out book?
John: Right.
John: As it turns out.
John: As it turns out.
John: Dot, dot, dot.
John: You thought that toilet water in the southern hemisphere went down counterclockwise.
John: But it turns out.
John: Turns out.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Yeah.
John: And so this is one of those books where it's like everybody thinks they already know about everything there is to know about this story.
John: And it's not really, he doesn't really frame it in a turns out way.
John: He's just like, well, you know, let me show you.
Mm-hmm.
John: Let me show you how we got there.
John: Let me show you why this mattered.
John: Why this thing, which we all just sort of gloss over.
John: Hitler's evil, for instance.
John: We just sort of say that.
John: Hitler's evil.
John: And move on as though we all agree.
John: But let's talk about what that means.
John: And I love that stuff.
John: I would like to have that kind of thought proficiency.
John: Right.
Merlin: So that's kind of what I get from that other book is that same idea is that like if you just try to lump this over here in this big, easy, relatively easy to understand pile called evil, you miss out a lot on like how profoundly bad news it was.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: That's the thing.
Merlin: Once you write something off as evil, I mean, what the fuck does that mean?
Merlin: What does that mean?
John: I mean, I'm sorry.
Merlin: I don't mean to curse Hitler conversation.
Merlin: But, you know, it does seem like, you know, there's... Oh, God.
Merlin: We should talk about illness.
John: Yeah.
John: Evil.
John: I mean, evil is not a thing that you want to start off...
John: Your bright, sunshiny, middle-aged guys podcast.
John: Yeah.
John: Start talking about evil right away.
John: First 10 minutes.
Merlin: I've said this before.
Merlin: I'm going to say it again.
Merlin: The job I had in the 90s was working on a lot of stuff with litigation and environmental assessments involving lots of stuff involving chemicals.
Merlin: So basically, in a nut, here's the job that I had for five years.
Merlin: I was working at a place where...
Merlin: if a giant, giant, giant company got sued by somebody, if there was any chance in the world that that person had actually been injured, like, really, honestly, if there was a chance, they would just write him a check, right?
Merlin: That's a thing that people used to do.
Merlin: Like, GE used to just write, if you said, hey, there was PCBs in my serial, however implausible that was, if they thought there was some chance that that could go to court and, like...
Merlin: They had a chance of winning.
Merlin: They would just write a check.
Merlin: And eventually the companies were like, hey, we can't afford to do this forever.
Merlin: So we got the most cynical, asinine, ambulance-chasing cases and had to go and do a Pigs and Bunnies puppet show of science to show how, look, this guy would have to eat, do nothing but eat cereal full of Chlordane for 40 years.
Merlin: And it's still much more likely his lung cancer came from his three packs of cigarettes a day.
Merlin: And you had to do that, because you've got to really, like I say, pigs and bunnies, you've got to really bring it down.
John: Well, that was the era of a lot of rats in your Coke can, and people were drumming up some specious lawsuits.
Merlin: I remember hearing around the same time, starting maybe in the 80s, I remember hearing, I never did this, but I think this is kind of a coupon guy thing to do.
Merlin: If you write a letter to the Winn-Dixie, and you say, there was a rat in my Coke, they give you free stuff.
Merlin: Right, sure, they'd send you a bunch of free coke.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, and then that became kind of an industry.
Merlin: Thing is, though, a lot of people came in with sick building syndrome, where supposedly the black mold, or not even the black mold, just the fact that you have these really crazy consultant people come in and say you've got to go live in this mobile home that doesn't have any quote-unquote chemicals in it.
Merlin: And that became very suspicious and cynical.
John: No chemicals are used in the construction of mobile homes.
Merlin: No, not at all.
Merlin: But I became very cynical about all that stuff.
Merlin: You know, one-hit theory in cancer and all these ideas that have been, you know, that are pretty bananas.
Merlin: What about radon?
Merlin: How do you feel about radon?
Merlin: I think radon's a thing.
Merlin: Isn't that a big New Jersey thing?
Merlin: You get radon in your basement?
Merlin: Yeah, radon in your basement.
Merlin: I think that's probably a thing.
Merlin: They'd write a check for that.
John: It's the last thing in the world.
John: Radon comes into your basement because it's nature.
John: Because of nature.
John: Yeah, because God put it there.
Merlin: That's what he wants.
Merlin: I tried to make it about being sick, and now we're back to God and Hitler.
Merlin: Sorry.
Merlin: No, not at all, but I do sometimes.
Merlin: Oh, poor John.
Merlin: My gosh, you should sue somebody.
Merlin: Have you been exposed to anything recently?
Merlin: Have I ever?
Merlin: You might have mesothelioma.
Merlin: It's a thing I learned about on daytime TV.
John: I've been exposed to so many bad ideas, and I feel like they are taking a toll.
John: They're making me sick.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Ugh.
Merlin: it just makes you wonder though i live in an old house and there are times when i think my family keeps getting sick i wonder if there's something that's killing us in our house and that's about 20 years ago that's the last thing in the world i ever would have thought about do you have sick house syndrome i don't think so but you know what i think i think it's really purely behavioral and cognitive which is like if i get out of the house and walk around like a fucking gentleman if i get out of the house if i don't lay there and listen to podcasts for literally eight hours i have a slightly better mood and i breathe better
Merlin: I think it's just sitting on my ass.
Merlin: But, you know, but it's nice.
John: Sitting on your ass syndrome.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: Nobody can sue for that.
John: Radon is one of the densest substances that remains a gas under normal conditions.
John: No kidding.
John: Yes, it is.
John: Like the opposite of mercury.
John: It's a very dense gas.
John: Radon.
John: I don't want to read about radon.
John: Yeah, I think we should all learn more about radon.
John: If we do nothing else today, we should learn more about radon.
Merlin: See, it's radioactive, colorless, odorless, and a tasteless noble gas.
John: See, that's how the KGB kills their expatriates.
John: Is that right?
John: That's not the East Germany kind of thing to do.
John: They put radon gas in their basements in New Jersey.
John: They can move to New Jersey.
John: Kids get sick.
John: As I was coming here, I wanted to add an addenda to keep moving and get out of the way.
John: Oh, fantastic.
John: Because I realized that it is, you know, in its basic form, it is complete and holy.
Merlin: Especially if you say it correctly.
Merlin: I would never want to accuse our listeners of not saying it correctly.
Merlin: But you've got to make it.
Merlin: It's not keep moving.
John: It's not and.
John: Or it's not or.
Merlin: It's not or.
Merlin: It's not keep moving or get out of the way.
Merlin: It's keep moving and get out of the way.
Merlin: You have to constantly do both.
John: Do you agree?
John: Yeah, absolutely.
John: Absolutely.
John: And it's a holy edict and it belongs carved into Lincoln's nose on Mount Rushmore.
John: But actually it should be translated into every language and carved onto the Lincoln of your country.
John: On the Mount Rushmore of your country, foreign listeners.
Merlin: In fourth grade every year, you always get state history.
Merlin: Back in Ohio, we'd make papier-mâché Indian mounds and stuff like that.
Merlin: Yeah, the Buckeye State.
Merlin: Yeah, the Buckeye State, absolutely 100%.
Merlin: Go Buckeyes.
Merlin: I think there should be a module regarding keep moving and get out of the way at every level in primary education.
John: Absolutely.
John: And they should teach it.
John: Well, and they should continue to teach it.
John: You should have to recite it.
John: At the DMV.
John: If you get a citation for it, you should have to go to some kind of keep moving and get out of the way school.
John: But I realized that there need to be sort of a bill of rights of keep moving and get out of the way, or there need to be some articles.
John: That go along with it.
Merlin: These are like your amendments.
Merlin: These are like, you're not allowed to drink, no more slavery, that kind of thing.
John: That's right.
John: That's right.
John: That's right.
John: Universal suffrage.
Merlin: The First Amendment?
Merlin: The First Amendment to the... To keep moving and get out of the way.
John: It seems to me to be that we need to introduce an additional concept, which is the concept of...
John: of positional relativity or inertial relativity.
John: Inertional.
John: Inertional relativity.
John: Which is to say that when I am in a crowd of people moving or certainly on the highway moving, any situation where you are in a group of people and you're all moving the same direction more or less.
John: So you could be in this crowd of people and you could be thinking to yourself, I am keeping moving and I'm not in anybody's way because we're all moving together in the same direction more or less.
John: And so I am fulfilling the tenets of keep moving it out of the way, so I'm fine, and I'm going to go back to sleep.
John: I'm going to start looking at my phone, or I'm going to go back into the sort of, you know, a text trance.
Mm-hmm.
John: But the reality is, I find, that you need to keep moving also relative to the other people who are moving around you.
Merlin: It's not enough to just do some motion.
John: Yeah, yeah, that's right.
John: Because of the inertial relativity.
John: Because of inertial relativity, you should always also be either passing or being passed.
Merlin: Oh, that's good.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Right, he's not busy being born, he's busy dying.
Merlin: That is exactly right.
Merlin: We'll call it the Dylan Clause.
John: If you are not being passed by other people, then you should be passing other people.
John: You should not be, do not ever allow yourself to become part of a block movement where everyone is moving at the same pace.
John: Because that is the death of innovation.
Merlin: And you're not leaving a space for somebody who needs to go super fast.
John: Thank you.
John: Exactly.
Merlin: I had to fly on United last week.
John: Wow.
John: United.
John: Oh, man.
John: I'm still mad at them.
John: And all this being mad at them has really paid off for me.
John: How's that?
John: Oh, it just feels good.
John: It just feels good.
John: I keep being mad at United, and they keep being over there, and I keep being over here.
John: This is what they would pay for.
Merlin: This is what they would pay for.
Merlin: I asked them for first glass, and for some reason they wanted to use United.
Merlin: So I was in the nice part of the bus.
Merlin: But here's the thing, and I think this is not – nowhere is this clear.
Merlin: Yes, America's highways, sure, but on the moving sidewalk.
Merlin: I don't want to get all Seinfeld here, but honestly, the moving sidewalk, it betrays so much about how little America understands about getting anywhere.
John: Well, and the moving sidewalk is a very small Petri dish.
John: It is a controlled environment.
John: It sure is narrow.
John: It is limited and narrow.
John: There is only so much you can do, and so, therefore, it is a heightened state where you must practice the ninja levels.
John: Keep moving and get out of the way.
John: And what did you discover on this?
Merlin: Well, let me just tell you.
Merlin: All you need is, you know, well, here's the thing.
Merlin: There are people who don't travel a lot, who don't know about moving to the right, either on an escalator.
Merlin: I mean, that's a thing.
Merlin: I imagine it's a thing in Seattle.
Merlin: It's definitely a thing in San Francisco.
Merlin: I mean, we were downtown yesterday, and you can tell the people who are from out of town because they don't know to move to the right of the escalator and let people get by, right?
John: Right, because they are from Stockton, and there is no right or left in Stockton, California.
John: Yeah.
John: It's all just a flat plane.
John: See, and this is the thing.
John: Let me just add.
John: Yes.
John: That I think people who are from wide open spaces.
John: Central California.
John: I was talking to a woman from the Czech Republic last night.
John: And she said, as we were sitting and chatting, and she was like, have you ever been to the Ukraine?
John: And I was like, never been to the Ukraine.
John: Slovakia.
John: It's all mountains in Slovakia.
Merlin: And she was like, how are the Ukraine's beautiful?
John: Well, she said this is the thing about the Ukraine that people don't fully understand and Russia, too, which is that you get over you get out of the mountains of Slovakia or whatever you have, you know, halfway through Poland, it starts happening.
John: And then it's just a flat pan.
John: It's a flat pan all the way to the Ural Mountains.
John: There is not another bump.
John: The Ukraine is completely flat, and she said all of Russia is flat until you get to the Urals, but the populated part of Russia is just flat as a pancake.
John: I didn't know that.
John: And she said the people in those places, they don't have any geographical features.
Right.
John: And so they do not feel hemmed in by geography.
Merlin: They don't – because there's no ocean there to be a – You spend 30 years – it's like the Old West or something, like walking around the plains.
Merlin: There's no left and right.
John: It's like Stockton.
John: There's no left and right.
John: It's just like Stockton, California.
John: It is eternity in every direction.
John: So why would you move to the left or right for any reason?
John: It's just more Stockton.
John: Yeah, it's basically like the sky, except it's under your feet and it's brown.
Merlin: Right, and what's that thing called where you can fly anywhere in the sky?
Merlin: The open skies theory, what's it called?
Merlin: Oh, open skies theory.
Merlin: Is that what it's called?
Merlin: No, the thing where planes will hardly ever hit each other if they're just flying around.
Merlin: You always have to remind me what that's called.
John: Oh, um...
John: Positional, inertial... Oh, inertial relativity.
John: Inertial relativity.
Merlin: She doesn't have a sense of... She might as well be from Stockton.
John: Well, the thing is, she's from the Czech Republic, which is a very hilly... It's like, if it's not a hill, it's a dale.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Like, the Czech Republic is all hills and dales.
Merlin: So she's really... She was born... She was literally raised in inertial relativity.
Merlin: She has... She had a ton of sense of it.
Merlin: She's got it in her fucking Czech bones.
John: Yeah, and so she was commenting on her fellow Eastern Bloc Slavic peoples...
John: But it was one of these, like... She can do that.
John: She can do that.
John: She can.
John: And the thing is, I think the Czech Republic is the California of Central Europe.
John: They feel like... They feel like... Because... And I think, especially if you were raised in the Czech Republic, when the wall was there, right?
John: The wall was essentially the beach.
John: Left means something.
John: Left means wall.
John: Left means wall.
John: But she's commenting on the Ukrainians and the Russians, and she's trying to explain their mentality.
John: And it sounded exactly like how I would explain the mentality of someone from Nebraska or Montana or North Dakota.
John: There's no left or right.
John: It's just all open.
John: Big sky country.
Mm-hmm.
John: So anyway, so you're on the moving sidewalk and you are encountering some people from Stockton.
John: Let me just say this.
Merlin: The thing is, it's one thing to be a tourist who feels like someone was just brusque in asking you to move aside.
Merlin: But the thing is, if you're here for a week, you'll eventually go, oh, I get it.
Merlin: I'm supposed to move over to the right like it says on the fucking sign.
John: Right.
John: I learned something on my trip to San Francisco.
Merlin: Yes, and now you get to be a local, and people will get that.
Merlin: At an airport, it doesn't happen.
Merlin: It's the same reason the TSA line is so unbearable.
Merlin: It's literally like hell because it's the same thing over and over.
Merlin: People will always – you know what?
Merlin: I tried to put water through the other day.
Merlin: I'm a pro, and I accidentally tried to put water through.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: I'm the worst.
John: And they got a guy that stands right there and shouts at you.
John: Yeah.
John: To take your water.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: And I was I was like I was so was the word like supplicant.
Merlin: I was just like, I am so sorry.
Merlin: I had to get up at 3 a.m.
Merlin: my time to be here.
Merlin: And I'm I can't believe I have a smart water in my bag.
Merlin: I'm really, really sorry.
Merlin: That's not me.
Merlin: No, here's the dangerous one.
Merlin: The dangerous one is the pair of two meaty, big, beefy guys who are walking fast-ish down the middle.
Merlin: Like two big, heavy guys, no offense, walking down the middle at a slightly above-average pace.
John: That's the worst because they think they've nailed it.
John: They think they are both keeping moving and moving.
John: Getting out of the way.
Merlin: If they're thinking at all, and I think they're probably not, they're feeling like cock of the walk.
Merlin: They understand that this is not something to just stand on with your big wide stance.
John: You've got to keep moving.
John: They came all the way here from Central California.
John: They're coming to the Beef Herders Convention downtown in the Castro.
John: And they are having a good old time getting where they're going.
Merlin: They got the roller bag.
John: Here comes Merlin Mongoose.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And I'm like a little squirrely guy, right?
John: You're on your way to somewhere.
Merlin: Yeah, but I need to get somewhere, but I also want to teach.
Merlin: Oh, yes.
Merlin: I want to teach.
Merlin: I don't want to be a dick about it.
Merlin: But the thing is, no matter how fast you're going, there's always somebody else that needs to go faster.
Merlin: And that's why it's the inertial relativity.
Merlin: You have to understand, you've always got to make room for somebody who's like a bullet going through that.
Merlin: And the bullet makes room for the next bullet.
Merlin: Make room for the bullet.
Merlin: Make room for the bullet.
Merlin: And they looked at me like, and I said, excuse me.
Merlin: Not in a mean way, but like, excuse me.
Merlin: Like, as in, like, you're literally walking down the center of the moving sidewalk and taking the entire berth.
Merlin: And just because you're moving doesn't mean you're getting out of the way.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Anyway, God, I just, if we could all get that.
Merlin: There's so many things that would be so much easier to deal with if inertial relativity were introduced.
John: Well, and this is a concept that they understand in Europe that
John: much better, because... Well, there's all kinds of lefts and rights in Europe, John.
John: Everybody in Europe knows right where the left and the right are, because if they step to the left, and then they hip to the right, and they put their hands on their hips, and then all of a sudden they're in the duchy of Luxembourg, and...
John: somebody else, you know, then somebody else is their king, and that's not what they want.
John: They're doing DOS Time Warp.
John: Right.
John: The Zeit Warp.
John: And so, but the thing is, like, however many years ago it was, and I think it was, like, Carter administration, when they put up all those signs that said, slower traffic, move right.
John: Like, they were trying to do that in America.
John: They were trying to teach us, and when I was, when I got my driver's license, it was one of the questions in the driver's license exam that
John: And they really hammered on it.
John: Like, slower traffic, keep right.
John: The left lane is for passing only.
Merlin: Do you remember that, John?
Merlin: Do you remember?
Merlin: Is it just me or wasn't there a time in America where that leftmost lane was literally called the passing lane?
John: The passing lane.
Merlin: It wasn't the fast lane.
Merlin: It was the passing lane.
Merlin: The passing lane.
Merlin: An entire lane for passing, because everybody's got to go faster or slower.
Merlin: You use the passing lane to pass, and then you move over no matter how fast you're going.
John: That's right.
Merlin: You don't just go over there because you're going 65.
Merlin: Go in there and live there.
John: Yeah.
John: The speed limit is 65.
John: I'm going 65, and no one should be allowed to go faster than that?
John: Now you're playing traffic cop.
John: See, and this is the I-5 problem.
John: If you get out there around Sacramento...
John: You encounter these people who not only don't know left from right, but they've got some, you know, they just came from a church in a mobile home.
John: And they believe that they're doing God's work by keeping the traffic.
John: Tempo down, you know like 65 miles an hour is the speed limit and I'm here to enforce it But in in in Europe they never they never Decided that we decided somewhere at some point in America that oh that was we were that was just a suggestion We were just suggesting that you keep right But then we're not really enforcing that and that's not really and there are some states where it actually isn't the law and
John: And, you know, and it became like, oh, let's just, you know, can't we all just agree on cheese?
John: But in Europe, it's amazing.
John: And so you see it not only on the highways, but you see it like in public spaces too.
John: People understand to get out of the way of the bullet.
John: And the problem is the bullet – this is the other thing.
John: The bullet could be Hitler at any time.
John: And so you do want to get out of the way of the bullet in a way that we don't understand.
Merlin: Boy, this is really – I hate to say this.
Merlin: Nothing against our wonderful provincial American friends.
Merlin: But there is something kind of big city about it.
Merlin: And that's why I think one reason Manhattan feels so brusque to people.
Merlin: But here's the part that's really going to bum you out and keep you up at night is that the people who want you to get the hell out of their way on the sidewalk don't actually care about you.
John: No, they don't.
Merlin: It's about society.
Merlin: It's about keeping moving.
Merlin: It's about getting out of the way.
Merlin: It's about – what's the phrase?
Merlin: Inertial relativity.
John: Inertial relativity.
Merlin: Yeah, you're actually right, but it's very self-involved.
Merlin: It's very provincial to say, like, the speed limit is 65, ergo, I can just camp out here.
John: Ergo, I could be at any lane, because no one should be going faster than that.
John: And that's why I love driving in Manhattan, because the rules of driving in Manhattan are, if the nose of your car is one micrometer...
John: in front of the nose of the car next to you, then you have positional authority and you can do whatever you want.
John: And that guy has to watch out, right?
John: Like if you get in front of another car, even half a car length in front of another car, then you can more or less change the lanes at will to,
John: Because the presumption is that you are ahead of that guy, so it's his responsibility to look out for you.
John: And you are looking forward and making decisions about what's coming at you.
John: Like, all of Manhattan traffic is looking forward.
Merlin: Very different from somebody who's used to the on-ramp, off-ramp by the Walmart, where we all wait politely to do the zipper thing.
John: There is no merge...
John: concept in New York.
John: No one ever puts their arm over the passenger seat and cranes their neck around to see if there's a spot and puts their blinker on and slows down and waits for a spot because there's never a spot.
John: No one will ever make a spot for you.
John: So the only way that you can get around is
John: And that's not because they're mean.
John: That's just because that's how driving works.
John: That's just how driving works.
John: Right.
John: And so you just drive and you're looking forward and you assume that the people who are not in your peripheral vision are watching you because you're in front of them.
John: And if you if you turn right, then they get out of your way.
John: And it's it's genius.
John: You drive in New York and no one.
John: The thing is, no one ever hits their brakes.
John: You just are all moving in a symbiosis and.
John: Because you have this awareness and you recognize that because you don't really have to look behind you, then all of a sudden what you need to do is really understood and taken care of.
John: Which is like, I've got three guys in front of me and I'm watching them.
John: And okay, this guy's moving, so I'm moving into that space.
John: I'm moving into that space.
Merlin: It's almost like a beautiful, dangerous dance.
John: It's the best.
John: How in the world could traffic on 3rd Avenue go 65 miles an hour?
John: But it happens all the time, and it's because nobody's looking back.
John: They could just break their rearview mirrors off.
John: They're just looking forward and dealing with the three to five things in front of them, right?
John: Okay, there's a bike messenger on the left.
John: This taxi cab looks like he's looking for a fare.
John: There's a delivery truck up there.
John: I see him two blocks ahead.
Merlin: It's very active as opposed to wondering how soon you get to go 65 on a highway again and being frustrated because of the brake lights.
Merlin: When do I get to go 65 because I want to go 65?
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: It's so sexy.
Merlin: Very passive.
John: Passive.
John: That version of it is, yeah, the country-ass highway version of driving is the worst.
John: And when you get into an environment, and the thing is all...
John: Central cities have their own tempo.
John: I mean, Detroit is very... You would think Detroit kind of Midwest-y, but because the car culture is so strong, going into Detroit, it really feels like lining up...
John: lining up to make a run at the death star you know like you just you strap in and you just here we go we're going in i think it's like that in boston oh yeah miami boston the boston has the additional advantage of like there are no street signs um i think they've given up trying to explain no parallel streets yeah yeah
John: Anyway, so I love that experience of driving in a place where... And that's the thing about driving on the Autobahns in Europe.
John: Like, if you doze for a second, if you get over into that passing lane, and you are going 190 kilometers an hour, and you think to yourself, I'm pretty hot shit.
Yeah.
John: You know, I'm going 190 kilometers an hour.
John: I'm over here in the passing lane.
John: There's a bunch of there's a bunch of trucks.
John: And I'm just going to I'm just going to I'm pretty happy with myself.
John: I'm going to I'm going to relax for one.
Merlin: It's even down to like a sense of like there's nobody who could ever object to what I'm doing.
Merlin: You know, it's again, it's that classic kind of like annoying America thing of like, I've covered my bases here.
Merlin: I know I'm not actively doing anything to harass anyone.
Merlin: So therefore, nobody could ever have any objection to what I'm doing.
John: Yeah, right.
John: I mean, I'm going 190 kilometers an hour.
John: I am fucking I who could who could have a problem with this?
John: And you doze for one second.
John: Here comes the bullet.
John: You look down at the fucking stereo for one second and you look up in your rearview mirror and there is a 500 class Mercedes that was going 220 kilometers an hour and he is now...
John: metallurgically grafted to your rear bumper.
John: While you're observing the Blaupunkt.
John: He is flashing his brights in a way that is so angry.
John: There's something about the brights flash on a German car that is just like...
John: Like it just looks different.
John: It's designed to communicate anger in a way that we can't relate to here.
John: And you feel like such a boob.
John: And then invariably that happens right at a place where in the right-hand lane, there's a stack of trucks and there's nowhere for you to get out of this.
Merlin: Because you thought, oh, why would I ever need to move over?
Merlin: Why would I have to start thinking about that?
John: Right.
John: Look at me.
John: I'm Mr. Guy.
Merlin: I'll wait for somebody to come up behind me and I'll notice them.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And maybe they'll flash their lights or something, which is a very mean thing to do.
Merlin: And then I'll move over when it's convenient for me.
John: I'll move over when it's convenient for me.
John: But invariably, what happens is you become the problem.
John: And you never felt like the problem so much.
Merlin: Nobody's more of the problem than somebody who's pretty convinced they could never be part of the problem.
Merlin: You're like...
John: Me?
John: You're like one of those gummy bouncy balls in a pachinko game.
John: Wrong equipment.
John: Right?
John: Exactly.
John: Everything is just... And then a fucking gummy ball.
John: Hey, guys.
John: Wrong.
Merlin: You ever heard of a city called Passau?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I dated a gal who was visiting the United States.
John: You never tell stories like this.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, I'm a very private guy.
Merlin: I'll just stay over here in my lane.
Merlin: Tell us more.
Merlin: Well, no, it's just interesting because this was in 1999.
Merlin: She's a Bavarian girl.
Merlin: Very young.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Unconscionably young girl that I was seeing.
John: Passau, not to say too much, but Passau is down in that area down around the Czech border.
Merlin: This is why I bring it up.
Merlin: Hills and Dales.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Well, and really, it was more Czech than German in a lot of ways.
Merlin: Tell us more.
Merlin: Well, she had a really super East German kind of childhood.
Yeah.
Merlin: You know, like her father was a surgeon, as they say, like he was a doctor and he got whatever the East German government felt like paying him for stuff.
Merlin: Constant, you know, weird, like mystery meat privations, you know, but it was interesting because she was right on the line.
Merlin: I mean, I think this is that Passau might have been in stripes for all I know.
Merlin: It might as well have been.
John: Oh, I see.
John: I see what you're saying.
Merlin: Go look at the map.
Merlin: It's right there.
Merlin: Oh, I know where it is.
Merlin: It's got a cool-ass coat of arms.
Merlin: It's got like a griffin and like a dragon sticking its tongue out.
John: It's really cool.
John: You know what?
John: We don't have enough griffins in America.
John: That's another problem with this place.
John: I mean, you know, Passau is like, yeah, it's one of those old towns.
John: It's like a town where you start scratching the surface and you're like, oh, it was incorporated in 1100, except it had already been a Roman town for a thousand years.
Merlin: Oh, sure, sure, sure.
John: You know, it's like one of those.
Merlin: I don't really have any more of the story than that, except that I was dating a 20-year-old girl in the 90s.
Merlin: And she was kind of East Germany.
Merlin: She played basketball.
Merlin: She was almost six feet tall.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: It was astonishing.
Merlin: It was a real outlier for me.
John: See, I like that.
John: You know, I always imagine I've got your number.
John: Yeah.
John: But then you throw a curveball like this.
Merlin: I rebound hard.
John: I rebound hard.
John: I once dated an East German basketball player.
Merlin: You should have really large hands.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I worry about the house.
Merlin: I worry about the highway.
Merlin: So that's your denim.
Merlin: The thing is, the beautiful part is, keep moving and get out of the way.
Merlin: It just sits...
Merlin: It's the best of America and the best of Europe in a social psychology – it's a method of understanding the world that will help improve everything.
Merlin: Now you're adding science with the inertial relativity.
Merlin: Make room for the bullet.
John: You have to always – I mean all these edicts.
John: I'm realizing part of what makes them lasting is that they are flexible.
John: They can have sort of amendments to them.
John: They do grow with the times, right?
John: I do not believe that there should be Roderick-on-the-line originalists who are trying to imagine what the founders... Yeah, but you also don't want activist judges out there.
John: You don't want a lot of activism, it's true.
John: You don't want people who are trying to legislate from the bench, if you know what I'm saying.
John: But you do want to allow these edicts to be improved upon by future generations.
John: Because they're going to have to adapt to a future time when everybody's going to be on hoverboards or in pneumatic tubes.
John: And some of these things are going to be... Some of these things they're going to think have been solved.
Merlin: It's not really a truism if it won't work in a pneumatic tube.
John: Well, and I'm not sure how you would pass somebody in a pneumatic tube.
Merlin: Well, I think if you had any sense, you'd engineer a pneumatic tube that takes that into account.
John: Right, right, exactly.
John: There's going to be five tubes, and you're going to be able to choose the tube that best expresses the...
John: the speed with which you would like to be pneumatically transported.
Merlin: It's going to be important that you continually re-choose the appropriate pneumatic tube.
John: Nice.
John: Right?
John: Well, yeah.
John: I mean, I think somebody from Stockton or from, you know, from Kiev is going to walk up to these tubes and he's going to be like, how am I supposed to choose this?
John: Like, I'm not getting in a tube.
John: The last tube, the last thing that they saw that resembled a pneumatic tube transporter was some kind of cow chute.
John: Like a slide at a McDonald's playground.
John: Right.
John: So they're going to choose the one all the way to the right.
John: It's a nice big tube, slow moving tube.
John: Like the minivan of tubes.
John: Yeah.
John: You just, you get in there and it's sort of like whoosh.
John: And it just sort of, oh.
John: Got those captain seats where you just get real comfortable.
John: Yeah.
John: It's just a gentle whoosh that whooshes you off to your destination.
John: All the way on the left, on the other hand.
John: Yeah.
John: You're going to see a line of people.
John: They're in downhill ski costumes.
Merlin: Or people in the app class.
John: Somebody is covering them with motor oil.
John: They have goggles on.
John: And they're lining up to get into that left-hand tube because the pneumatic pressure is a lot higher than that one.
Merlin: Yeah, it's probably tighter fit.
Merlin: It's the tube of extremity.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You were right about Passau, first paragraph.
Merlin: In the 2nd century BC, many of the Boi tribe were pushed north across the Alps out of northern Italy by the Romans.
Merlin: They established a new capital called Boiudorum by the Romans, now within the Instadt district of Passau.
Merlin: 2nd century BC, turns out.
John: really yeah yeah europe is old john europe is old the thing about uh pass out is it is in um it is a bavarian town and bavaria was never in the east no portion of bavaria was part of eastern europe so her resemblance to a um to a czech or eastern person was much i think you were interpreting a kind of
John: universal Germanic severity.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: That's on me.
Merlin: She had very, very blonde hair.
John: Bavarian severity, if you will.
Merlin: Bavarian severity.
John: Or Bavarity, as we call it.
Merlin: Yeah, okay.
John: But, you know, sometimes it's tricky over there
John: You know, there are a lot of Germans.
John: Yeah, it's true.
John: And they're different from each other, which is the confusing part.
John: You know, Germany's not that big.
John: It's not much bigger than, I don't know, Rhode Island or whatever.
John: Stockton, right.
John: Somewhere, you could put all of Germany and California.
Merlin: How big is Germany compared to, like, what state would it be?
Merlin: It's probably not as big as Texas, right?
Yeah.
John: Well, that's a good question.
John: How big is Germany?
Merlin: How big is Germany?
John: Relative to Texas, say.
John: I think there are 80 million people in Germany now.
John: Is that right?
John: 60 million?
John: 80 million people?
Merlin: 80.6 million.
Merlin: Ding.
Merlin: After the United States, Germany is the second most popular migration destination in the world.
John: I think that's true.
John: A lot of people want to move to Germany.
Merlin: They got a mythical creature on their coat of arms.
Merlin: It's pretty handsome.
John: Oh, they do.
John: They do.
John: And I think a lot of them don't think it's mythical.
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John: The woman from the Czech Republic I was talking to, she was like, because we were talking about a lot of different things, and at one point she was like, well, you know, for a while there in the 90s,
John: all the young people in the Czech Republic were learning English because it was very fashionable and it seemed like that's the way we were going.
John: But now, everyone is learning German again because it's just for practical purposes.
John: The Germans are, I mean, basically, they have unschlushed the Sudetenland again, but this time just with tourist caravans.
John: And that was a little bit depressing to me because I do remember being in Prague at a time when it felt like an American colony a little bit.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: I thought Prague was uniquely European.
John: Oh, for sure.
John: But I mean, in the sense of like the young people and the energy that they had for the future.
Merlin: Is it pretty cosmopolitan?
John: Oh, I mean, if it hadn't been for the wall, I think Prague...
John: Prague would have evolved to be the capital of Europe, and I think it may one day.
John: You know, like, Prague had the disadvantage of always, I mean, for a long time, being kind of a colony, right?
John: It was an Austrian...
John: a second city in an empire.
John: And so Vienna was the capital, and Prague could only ever be a spoke.
John: The Czechs could only be a spoke of this empire.
John: And then they had a brief period there between the wars where there seemed like possibility for them, and then they were...
John: They were absorbed by the Nazis, and then they became part of the Warsaw Pact.
John: And they never had their moment in modern times.
John: But Prague itself and the Czech people, I mean, I think they are the best of Central Europe.
John: And the problem is it's going to turn into a tourist shithole now.
John: It already has.
John: But, like, there's something about it.
John: It should be the center of Central Europe.
John: It's a very feminine city.
John: It's a very, like, and feminine in both ways.
John: Like, it's also dangerous.
John: Like, feminine, and it has claws.
Yeah.
Merlin: Claws out, right?
Merlin: I sent you a link to the Bundeswappen.
Merlin: No, Bundeswappen.
Merlin: I don't know if I'm saying that right, the Federal Code of Arms.
Merlin: It's the Weimar Eagle, which they adopted, the Federal Republic of Germany adopted as its symbol in 1950.
Merlin: What's interesting is the evolution of this thing over time.
Merlin: It's become less terrifying, and by the time you get to the standard of the federal president, it looks really more like an angry bird, like from the video game.
John: Yeah, oh, look, that's too bad.
John: Isn't that sweet?
John: Look at that.
John: It did.
John: I mean, I remember.
Merlin: You used to have more of a death from above thing, and now it looks like you're going to try and knock some pigs over.
John: I remember the, you know, the, the, so the, the East German coat of arms always had like a hammer and a compass because they were building a worker's utopia.
Yeah.
John: And it compared to, like, the Federal Republic or whatever, the...
Merlin: The West, right.
John: So the GDR was the German Democratic Republic, and the other one was the Federal Republic of Germany?
John: Is that how it went?
John: Is that right?
John: Whatever.
John: The FRG and the GDR.
John: But yeah, the Eagle seemed pretty badass.
Yeah.
John: But then you don't have to go back too far to see the Nazi eagle, which was not that.
John: That doesn't make you feel warm and fuzzy.
John: But then you go all the way back, and it doesn't look like an eagle at all.
John: It looks like a freaking buzzard.
John: It looks like a griffin, like a death buzzard.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, kind of.
Merlin: And it looks like it's kind of like a little kid going, I have strong muscles.
Merlin: Yeah, I'm strong.
John: Flexing, flexing.
John: Oh, my God.
John: Thank you for sending me that.
John: It's got funny chicken feet.
John: Thank you for sending me that, the Bundeswappen.
Merlin: Isn't that nice?
John: And then there's the... Oh, wait, wait, wait.
John: Then there's the two-headed Bundeswappen.
John: What?
John: If you go even further back, the original German confederation... That would be a Zweihided... Zweihided Bundeswappen?
Merlin: Oh my goodness, there's so many eagles.
Merlin: And there's some naked guys dressed up like a Green Goddess salad dressing outfit.
John: Yeah, well, see, I think that's part of that.
John: German emperor.
John: I've talked about that before, right?
John: The, like, nascent... Yes.
John: The druids, right?
John: Druid worship, right, tree worship that goes on in that country.
John: This is a hell of a page, John.
John: And really, let's be honest, in all of Central Europe, they really are only Christian on the surface.
John: Surface Christians.
John: Surface Christians, and beneath that, they are still sacrificing lambs to the nature gods.
Wow.
Merlin: I know they love the camp.
Merlin: Germans love to camp.
Merlin: They love short pants.
John: They like hiking.
John: They like hiking up to the parking lot and hiking down to the parking lot on the other side.
John: Not to give away too much.
John: Not to reveal too much about my book.
John: Love hiking east.
John: Yes, they do.
John: They really like to hike east.
John: They'll hike west if they have to.
John: Not until they're really cornered.
John: They really want some Lebensraum.
Merlin: Anyway, I don't know why I keep getting cold.
John: You know, I think it might be that you live in a sick house.
Merlin: It might be a sick house.
Merlin: I'm pretty sure we've got the asbestos in our tubes.
John: Yeah, everybody's got asbestos in their tubes.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: But I feel, you know, like ever since my experiment, and now this is how I'm casting it, my experiment in going sugar-free.
Merlin: Oh, wow.
Merlin: Sounds like you're really backing off that.
John: A year ago.
Merlin: Uh-oh.
John: I hear some late-night dining in that statement.
John: There's just been terrible backsliding.
John: Oh, no.
John: And the thing was, when I first...
John: had sugar after i had been sugar-free for for a long time like whenever i would have even a little bit of sugar i would i would immediately recognize that it was poison like it felt like poison like your body almost went to reject it
John: Well, yeah, because you would – you'd just get – I don't know, rather.
John: I would get crazy immediately.
John: Like your mind would just be like, wow, I feel incredible.
Merlin: But also – But also just it tastes weird.
Merlin: If you haven't had a candy bar in a really long time, go to a movie, eat a candy bar.
Merlin: It's like this is – who eats this?
John: This is crazy.
Merlin: Yeah, and your stomach is going – This is like a one-bite – this should be a one-bite operation.
Merlin: No way should there be a supersized Snickers.
Merlin: That's disgusting.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: And that's perfectly true.
John: One bite of confection, everything that's good is in that first bite, and everything that follows is just garbage.
Merlin: That's the perfect way to put it.
John: It's a camp train of followers.
John: What?
John: A camp train?
John: Camp train.
John: Right.
John: You know when an army moves through... Oh, okay, okay.
Merlin: I thought you were talking about German backpacking.
Merlin: Well, in a sense, the original form of German backpacking.
Merlin: I watched Henry V and I ate a pint of vanilla bean ice cream.
John: Yeah, thank you.
John: But I did watch Henry V. That's what's happening to me, too.
John: And you know what my gateway drug was?
John: I found some gluten-free granola.
John: Oh, what?
John: Gluten-free granola.
Merlin: That doesn't seem possible.
John: Well, I know.
John: And then someone else introduced me to nonfat Greek yogurt.
John: And so I was like, listen, I got all the ingredients here.
John: I got nonfat Greek yogurt.
John: I got gluten-free granola.
Merlin: I got those bags... You can drink it with a near beer.
Merlin: It's hardly any alcohol at all.
John: Those bags that you get now at the supermarkets where you get a 15-pound bag of blackberries, raspberries, blueberries, and strawberries all mixed together and frozen, which is a technology that, like...
John: If all of California, if everyone in California has to die in order to keep those fruit factories producing cheap berries, I feel like it's a trade-off that I'm willing to consider.
Merlin: I agree.
Merlin: I agree.
Merlin: It's a terrible state.
Merlin: And the truth is that berries are one of the few things that have not gotten awful yet.
Merlin: It's not awful like tomatoes have gotten awful or peaches have gotten awful.
Merlin: You can still have a good blueberry or a bad blueberry, a good strawberry, a bad strawberry, but they're not categorically shit like peaches.
John: Yeah, they haven't bred them to the point that there's no flavor or texture.
John: You get the banana situation where we got one banana now.
John: That's right.
John: That's right.
John: There is only one kind of banana.
John: The other day, I looked down at my little daughter, and she had a half a banana, and she was applying it to her lips like lipstick.
John: And I was like, what are you doing?
John: And she said, just putting on some banana lipstick.
John: That's adorable.
John: And I felt, and she said it and looked at me as though it couldn't be more obvious what she was doing.
John: But I did feel a little bit like the banana, you know, a banana that's mostly starch.
John: does feel a little bit like lip balm and less like food.
Merlin: A little gritty?
John: Yeah, these starchy, tasteless modern bananas.
John: But anyway, if we have to divert...
John: The whole... Every river that comes out of the southwest.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Well, you know we're having a drought.
Merlin: You're saying plenty of water, plenty of cheap workers.
Merlin: Just keep the frozen berries coming.
John: Just pour that shit onto the berry farms.
John: And if... I mean, L.A.
John: is going to end up devolving into water riots and mass sort of...
John: like terrible emigration and by which i mean like armies of thirsty people marching north in tattered clothes yeah because la needs a reason to be more like either dune or mad max that's what we need right now more resource riots on top of it all
John: Yeah, that's going to happen no matter what.
John: And I just say, fence off those berry fields.
John: Yeah, pop some corn.
John: Let it burn.
John: Put guard towers around the berry fields and just let those LA people, you know, march to the sea or whatever, but keep those berries coming.
John: So I started making gluten-free granola with non-fat Greek yogurt and frozen berries.
John: And I felt very virtuous
John: Because I was doing all the right things here.
John: But what I was really doing was making a giant parfait sundae.
John: That's still technically a lot of sugar.
John: Well, and a lot of just a massive... Because once I felt like I had given myself a pass...
John: I did not just eat a large mixing bowl of it.
John: Yeah, I did not impose any size restrictions on it.
John: And I was I was basically making a popcorn bowl of this stuff.
John: And and I was like, this is incredible.
John: You know, it's like that.
John: The secretary at the place I used to the stock brokerage where I worked back when I was still drinking, who I overheard one day talking to her, her desk desk.
John: partner and she said have you ever have you ever tried these fat-free brownies and the co-worker was like no this was when fat-free yeah brownies were new and she was like they're incredible i mean i ate a whole pan of them
John: They're fat-free.
Merlin: It's like four cups of sugar.
John: Fat-free.
John: And I was like, lady, yeah, four cups of sugar, exactly right.
John: So anyway, so that was my gateway, these parfaits.
John: Oh, John, I'm sorry.
John: And then pretty soon I was just like, well, if I'm going to be eating 4,000 calories of nonfat yogurt, I might as well be...
John: I might as well just eat Ben and Jerry's.
John: But I feel like to get back to where the jumping off point was here, that is why I am sick.
John: Because I still have this sense memory.
John: I still have this distant memory of knowing
John: how poisoned sugar is, and now it's in my body again to the degree that I can't sense it when I put it in.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: You're back on sugar, basically.
Merlin: Well... It's in there.
Merlin: You've got a baseline amount of sugar, which is going to make you want more sugar, even if you're not conscious of it.
Merlin: That's exactly right.
Merlin: I think that's how it is.
John: Yeah, that's exactly how it is.
Merlin: I didn't begin my night saying, well, I'm going to have all of this ice cream.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: But then it was gone, you know?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I'm up to Agincourt and stuff.
Merlin: Polishing off the... It gentled my condition.
John: Yeah, Agincourt.
John: Wow.
Merlin: That's a real thing.
John: It's a real thing.
John: It really happened.
John: Yeah.
John: That 30 years war, I keep... You know, there was a time when I felt like the 30 years war was the key to understanding everything.
Merlin: Was that Egincourt?
John: It's not the 100 years war.
John: It's the 30 years war?
John: No, no.
John: The 30 years... I mean, sort of... Sort of unrelated, but sort of not.
Merlin: Everything in Europe is related.
John: 30 years war came later, but...
John: But 30 Years War is like... Yeah, 100 Years War.
John: Yeah, 100 Years War.
John: That's right.
John: War of the Roses.
John: Okay.
John: You're just saying words now.
John: War of the Ascension.
John: War of the Ascension.
John: War of Attrition.
John: The 30 Years War is the one that happened, you know, sort of post-Martin Luther...
John: And it really felt like that was the... For a long time, it felt like that was the key for me to understand everything that happened subsequently in Europe.
John: But the problem with the Thirty Years' War is there's nothing... There's no way to keep it in your mind.
John: There's no central... There's really no central figure.
John: There's no central battle.
John: There's no central event, really.
John: It's just, like, all against all...
John: Chaos war that lasted for 30 years.
John: And the end result was mostly that everyone was tired.
John: And all of the good things had been burned.
John: You know, it was the first sort of total war where everything just...
John: armies would come into a town and they would go out the other side and there would just be nothing left.
Merlin: Oh, God.
John: And then everybody just got exhausted and just sort of petered out sort of thing.
John: And so it's very hard to keep... Like, I read several books about it and I had this very clear picture of Charles V and all these people that were...
John: were the source material for all the stuff that came after, right?
John: You couldn't look at the American Revolution or Napoleon or the French Revolution or anything that came later without understanding this cauldron of the Thirty Years' War.
John: But now it's been, you know, a half a dozen years since I read a book about it.
John: And I couldn't really...
John: tell you anything about it.
John: Because it just... It's not just that I'm old and my brain is a sieve, but that there's no... Even as I was reading books about it, I was like, the person writing this book does not understand the scope of what they're talking about.
John: Because there's too much... There were too many factors going in and coming out the other side, there were too many factors.
John: And it's just like, oh, King Gustav of Sweden now isn't... He's writing into...
John: What?
John: Now his army is involved?
John: Like, where did they come from?
Merlin: It's such a different time where like today, if anything happened between any two countries, we would know about it the second that it happened and everybody would have a theory.
Merlin: Everybody on the entire planet would have a theory because they have a record about it.
Merlin: And back then, well, it might be weeks before you heard about something.
Merlin: Right, right.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: I mean, it wasn't even like the 40s where you could show a newsreel and go, like, this is what it means.
Merlin: This is Pearl Harbor, right?
Merlin: This is what we're fighting for.
Merlin: It must have been much more local and localized.
John: And I think there were whole swaths of events in the Thirty Years' War where there were no witnesses who survived from the other side of the story, right?
John: You got one side of the story because everybody on the other side of the story died.
John: Yeah.
John: And, you know, I often weep for the lost human... You know, we make so much progress and then we have these sweeping wars and it kind of, like, everything is ruined, right?
John: Like, in a way, the same way that you weep for the library at Alexandria.
John: Right.
John: Like, oh, if only we had all those books...
John: and had always had them there wouldn't have been dark ages or something but in fact you know the more you study the more you realize like it's just all it's just all construction paper and glue it's all we're all just soylent green lining up oh lining up oh go into the grinders that are under every taco bell
John: You know every third person that goes into a Taco Bell doesn't come out.
Merlin: Well, there's a reason all those birds hang out outside, you know?
Merlin: And we walked by yesterday morning on the way for Daddy Daughter Morning.
Merlin: We went out and got some dim sum.
Merlin: And as we walked by, the guy, the bird guy, the guy who gets the free chicken at KFC, 10.30 a.m., he's in there eating chicken.
Merlin: I don't take a photo because I respect his dignity, but I just got to let you know it's a real thing.
Merlin: He was there yesterday morning.
John: 10.30 getting chicken.
John: But interesting that you and your young daughter have now made dim sum part of your daddy-daughter routine.
Merlin: God, she could put it away.
Merlin: I mean, she's no John Roderick, but she could put a hurting on some dim sum.
Merlin: She eats as much as I do.
John: Just talking about it makes me sad that I'm not sitting at your kitchen table right now eating four people's portions of dim sum.
John: I can get you off that sugar.
John: Four big hungry man portions of dim sum.
John: And I'm slapping people's hands as they are reaching...
Merlin: You know, the thing is, it's irresponsible because we went in there and first of all, he really he loves my daughter.
Merlin: He's always asking about her.
Merlin: And whenever I bring her in, I got to do this more.
Merlin: He like slashes the price in half.
Merlin: Oh, hello.
Merlin: So we got like 16 pieces of dim sum for six dollars.
Merlin: And then we went home.
Merlin: We ate it.
Merlin: And then we went downtown and had people literally stand in front of us on the escalator.
Merlin: Attention Generation Super Train.
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Merlin: To see them for yourself, you can find a link in show notes for this episode or just dial up bit.ly slash supertrainshirt.
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Merlin: John and I thank you in advance for having a torso and excellent taste.
Merlin: Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter, more I can tell, but Salisbury and Gluster.
Merlin: So, I have to say... Yeah.
John: I had a little bit of a reality check a couple of days ago because I went to see Judas Priest in concert.
John: And you know how I feel about Judas Priest.
John: Strongly.
John: I feel strongly about Judas Priest.
Merlin: Was Rob Halford singing?
No.
John: The only one that's not in the band is KK Downing.
Merlin: That's pretty good.
John: KK Downing took a pass.
John: Well, except the drummer, I think... It's probably some 20-year-old kid.
John: Spinal Tap drummers over the years.
John: The original drummer has gone 20 years.
John: But you've got Glenn Tipton on guitar and you've got Rob Halford.
John: That's pretty good.
John: They were the two stars, right?
John: They've got a young guy playing in KK Downing's position and he's a great guitar player and a lot of fun to watch and
John: I accepted him as a member of Judas Priest.
John: I was a big fan of Judas Priest all the way back to my youth, but I only ever got to see them twice and both times in the last five or six years.
Merlin: Does he have movement issues?
John: Yeah.
John: I mean, the first time I saw him, he actually was walking around the stage with a cane.
John: Oh, God.
John: Like, that had a skull on the head or whatever.
John: But it was definitely, he was using it as a cane.
John: And now he's, you know, he moves slowly.
John: And after, at the end of every song, he disappears behind a curtain.
John: And maybe gets a vitamin B12 shot and some cortisone in the knees or something and then comes back out.
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: Poor guy.
Merlin: Because the thing is, I've seen videos of old Judas Priest when he had hair.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And, I mean, he was in his 20s.
Merlin: I mean, he's got to be – look at us.
Merlin: I mean, Jesus Christ.
Merlin: I'll be 48 this week.
Merlin: He's got to be 60, right?
John: I think Glenn Tipton is 67.
John: Oh, my Lord.
John: And I don't know how old Rob is.
John: But anyway, it was –
John: It was... Speaking as... So, Rob Halford was born in 51, right?
John: So... 63.
John: 63, yeah.
John: Jeez.
John: Even as a massive fan, and even allowing for the fact that it was great, it was actually terrible.
John: Because... Was it mechanical?
John: Well, no.
John: It was just like metal...
John: is not a thing that you can inhabit at 67.
John: Or rather, if you go see Pink Floyd right now, and those guys are 70, right?
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: I bet you Dave Gilmore is still very entertaining live.
John: Well, I think the way to put that is that Dave Gilmore is still exactly as entertaining as he ever was, which is to say that he stands there and stares at his shoes while he plays fantastically.
John: Pink Floyd never ran over and climbed up on the speaker stacks and said, Do you want to fuck?
John: Like there's not, you know, they were just like all standing and it was the light show that was doing the work.
John: So Pink Floyd, you know, Pink Floyd can play to their 95, I think.
John: And it will still probably be an amazing live show.
John: But metal, like when your guitar part goes... Like every one of those bounds, you want to see some movement from the guitar player because each one of those... Each one of those is an axe chop, right?
John: You are...
John: Those are the musical equivalent of you swinging your battle axe at a dwarf.
John: And I don't... And I mean... No, no, no.
Merlin: You mean like from Middle Earth.
John: I mean a mythical dwarf.
John: Not a little person.
John: Not a little person.
John: But like, so you are using your guitar in metal as a weapon.
John: It is an axe, literally.
John: Yeah.
John: And you should be wielding it, right?
John: Oh, you're just chopping at these Middle Earth creatures with your axe.
John: And if these guys are in their 60s and they've been playing this music for 40 years and you just didn't get the sense anymore that they were connecting...
John: They were connecting the dots and they were playing their music, but you kind of felt like they were thinking about their house in Ibiza and how expensive it was to keep the swimming pool heated or whatever.
John: But I was watching Judas Priest at the Tacoma Dome.
John: And the sort of comedy metal band Steel Panther opened.
John: But looking around, there were 9,000, 10,000 people there, and not a single one of them was concerned with ethics in gaming journalism.
Merlin: Right.
John: There was not a single person there who cared about really any of the evolution, the social evolution that seems to be really gaining a lot of momentum.
John: Are you implying that these are older people?
John: Well, I mean, average age of the place was probably 40, but there were young people, too, who had just adopted whole cloth the attitude and look of the 80s.
John: It's still a culture.
John: It's still an active culture.
Right.
John: um drawing from the rural counties and it was really astonishing that you know like the unabashedness of like girls getting up on stage and flashing the audience and feeling like this was the best day of their life you could just see like i'm on stage with steel panther and they want me to show my boobs and this is my fucking moment
John: And I was like, wow, right.
John: This used to be a thing.
John: And it used to feel like the dominant culture, although it wasn't, right?
John: The dominant culture in pop music was always country and Western.
John: We just didn't know it because we were on one side of the Berlin Wall, right?
John: But it felt like the dominant culture.
John: But now it's still a viable culture.
John: And I was astonished by it.
John: And astonished because it made me realize that I am now living in a culture that seems like... Because I'm on the internet.
John: Because I'm a member of...
John: of of twitter and of the of the world of people who are getting their list of concerns and their their social cues coming from people who engage with one another on the internet i have started to feel like that is reality
John: And it is the dominant culture.
John: But in fact, it's just a culture.
John: It's one of 20,000 simultaneous cultures.
John: And it was like a... I was surprised at what an eye-opener it was.
John: I was like, whoa.
John: Right.
John: Half the people in here...
John: You read that thing, and I know we're over an hour, and I know you're worried that I'm going to start talking about social justice and derail this podcast.
John: I'm not worried.
John: And put this podcast into the Deep Six file.
John: I'm sure it'll be fine.
John: I know you're worried.
John: I'm not worried.
John: I'm sure it'll be fine.
John: I know you're worried that I'm going to start advancing a theory.
John: No, no, no, no.
John: I'm not worried.
John: Me worried.
John: Okay.
John: But, you know, there was all that astonishment when Bill Cosby played in Florida.
John: I'm listening.
John: Five days after all this stuff came out, and he was greeted to rapturous applause from a sold-out crowd.
John: Right.
John: And everybody on the internet was like, how is this even possible?
John: We've been talking about this for five days.
Merlin: This isn't the culture that I look at for 16 hours a day.
John: Yeah, right.
John: For 16 hours a day, I have been agreeing with every single other person in the universe that Bill Cosby needs to be sent to jail.
John: And now I'm getting a report on BuzzFeed that...
John: a thousand people like a retirement community went to his show and applauded and right and said we love you bill cosby and and he made no reference to the controversy and no one stood up in the audience and uh and drew soy bomb on their chest and said stop stop this madness or whatever
John: And I remember reading the astonishment on the web and kind of sharing their astonishment like, whoa, I did not see that coming.
John: I did not see that he was going to.
John: Can you imagine the balls that it takes to go out and do that?
Merlin: To just be like, well, you know.
Merlin: I'm just going to go out and it won't come up.
Merlin: And then it actually worked.
Merlin: It actually worked.
Merlin: One person had a sign that said rape is not a joke.
Merlin: And apart from that, everybody else was pretty into it.
Merlin: They were not equivocal.
Merlin: They're not sitting here like me struggling and going like, oh, my God, this is so awful.
Merlin: And I still can't stop thinking about how much I love Bill Cosby as a kid.
Merlin: I'm still I'm so struggling to try and square this information.
Merlin: They're fine.
Merlin: No problem.
John: Hey, look, it's Dr. Huxtable.
John: And even the ones that were trying to square were like, hmm, well, you know, there's two sides to every story or whatever.
John: That's right.
John: He is pretty funny.
John: He is pretty funny.
John: I bought a t-shirt, but I don't know if I'm going to wear it to work.
John: And it's just like, and going to this Judas Priest concert, it was the same thing.
John: Like, wow, I spend 16 hours a day living in a world where we are talking about...
Merlin: we are talking about gender politics and set and and and and social politics as such a fait accompli or as such a or we're like it's like astonishment that not everybody like is even having the same argument like we may not all agree with each other every time about everything but we kind of agree on the basic rules of the game and then there's a lady who deliberately wants to take her top off and show her boobs while a band called steel panther plays
John: Not a lady.
John: Twenty five.
John: You know, who are just like, I get to go up on stage and take my top off.
John: This is fucking amazing.
John: And and it felt a little bit like going to Thanksgiving dinner with your family and everybody wants to talk about Mitt Romney or something.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Like, oh, whoa, I'm there's a whole other universe happening.
John: Except, unlike, I mean, if I went to Thanksgiving dinner and everybody wanted to talk about Mitt Romney, I would, like my fellow internet people, I would feel the smug certainty that they were like, you know, dinosaurs and fuck them.
John: And I just need, you know, I'm going to post like ironic Instagram photos of my old relatives until I can get out of here.
John: But to go to a Judas Priest concert and feel like these people believe that they are like the hardest core.
John: I mean, they're older, but this is hardcore.
John: This is like the, this is the bleeding edge, right?
John: We are in league with Satan here.
John: We're not getting our B12 shots.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Satan with a little help.
John: Satan with a little nudge to get back out on stage and sing The Ripper one more time.
Merlin: How's his range?
John: Shot.
John: His range is shot and there's a little bit
John: I mean, there's quite a bit of sound guy help along the way.
Merlin: Yeah, you can do a lot with still training your voice at that age to spoof it, and then you just hit just the right amount of reverb for just a little bit at the right time, and you can get away with a lot.
John: A reverb and then the long delay.
John: So he'd be like...
John: And then you just stomp on the long delay and that rings out.
John: But there were like five moments in the concert where he had...
John: signature... One of those signature piercing like... And I really felt like I was hearing some... Not just additional reverb, but like some... Maybe somebody backstage helping him out?
John: Or some tracks or something.
John: Somebody was pushing a button on the Dr. Sample and adding in some pre-recorded Halford...
John: to to make those moments really blow because because there were lots of other moments in the songs where they decided that it wasn't worth doing that and rob was not he was not like making those other moments happen the same way oh god and the thing is like you know say what you will about the guy but like he's always been a hell of a showman i mean really almost like old old
Merlin: old Hollywood or old radio.
Merlin: He's there with your Bruce Dickensons and your Klaus Minas.
Merlin: He's working the crowd.
Merlin: I mean, he genuinely wants to know if you're ready to rock and roll.
John: He does, and he believes...
John: He believes united, united, united, we stand, united, we stand, one and all.
Merlin: He also believes the grinder's looking for meat.
John: He believes that metal is a community and that it's saved, you know, like the punk rockers.
John: He believes that metal saved his life.
Merlin: Well, it's going to be about an hour and 15 minutes now.
John: Let me tell you a thing or two about punk rock.
Fuck.